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If there’s any comfort to be had, South Africa’s intelligence agencies are a shambles, and unable to deal with real-life threats right under their noses. The i

by buyx 7y ago

If there’s any comfort to be had, South Africa’s intelligence agencies are a shambles, and unable to deal with real-life threats right under their noses. The idea that they’d be able to do anything actionable with bulk—collected electronic intel is laughable. The way things are going, wouldn’t be surprising if whole thing is a corrupt scheme linked to procurement of storage media.

rcthompson 7y ago
You mean other than leak (or sell) that intel to someone who can do something with it?
bonyt 7y ago
Is that comforting? It just leaves all the risks associated with an invasion of privacy with none of the claimed security upsides. Just because they can’t use it competently doesn’t mean they can’t abuse it.
- turk73 7y ago
  The NSA is the same way. Just because they can hoover up all that data doesn't mean they can do much with it. I wrote an article about this issue years ago. The false positive rate looking for terrorists must be horrifying--like millions of false positives for every real positive. Utterly worthless. Then they changed the mission to identifying all kinds of criminal acts and passed the intel along to the FBI and other police agencies, who then lie about how they found out about the perpetrators and develop a "parallel construction" in order not to expose the intelligence collection apparatus. Unfortunately, parallel construction is illegal. This is the America we live in. I am patiently waiting for any justice to be visited in the right places. I will wait forever.
vageli 7y ago
> If there’s any comfort to be had, South Africa’s intelligence agencies are a shambles, and unable to deal with real-life threats right under their noses. The idea that they’d be able to do anything actionable with bulk—collected electronic intel is laughable. > The way things are going, wouldn’t be surprising if whole thing is a corrupt scheme linked to procurement of storage media. If anything, this is _more_ alarming because they are probably not securing the data they intercept all too well.
reaperducer 7y ago
wouldn’t be surprising if whole thing is a corrupt scheme linked to procurement of storage media. Reminds me a little bit of a guy I knew in the late 90's who repeatedly set off fire alarms at his company in order to convince management to allocate money for off-site backups.

by buyx 7y ago

rcthompson 7y ago

You mean other than leak (or sell) that intel to someone who can do something with it?

bonyt 7y ago

Is that comforting? It just leaves all the risks associated with an invasion of privacy with none of the claimed security upsides. Just because they can’t use it competently doesn’t mean they can’t abuse it.

turk73 7y ago
The NSA is the same way. Just because they can hoover up all that data doesn't mean they can do much with it. I wrote an article about this issue years ago. The false positive rate looking for terrorists must be horrifying--like millions of false positives for every real positive. Utterly worthless. Then they changed the mission to identifying all kinds of criminal acts and passed the intel along to the FBI and other police agencies, who then lie about how they found out about the perpetrators and develop a "parallel construction" in order not to expose the intelligence collection apparatus. Unfortunately, parallel construction is illegal. This is the America we live in. I am patiently waiting for any justice to be visited in the right places. I will wait forever.

vageli 7y ago

> If there’s any comfort to be had, South Africa’s intelligence agencies are a shambles, and unable to deal with real-life threats right under their noses. The idea that they’d be able to do anything actionable with bulk—collected electronic intel is laughable. > The way things are going, wouldn’t be surprising if whole thing is a corrupt scheme linked to procurement of storage media. If anything, this is _more_ alarming because they are probably not securing the data they intercept all too well.

reaperducer 7y ago

wouldn’t be surprising if whole thing is a corrupt scheme linked to procurement of storage media. Reminds me a little bit of a guy I knew in the late 90's who repeatedly set off fire alarms at his company in order to convince management to allocate money for off-site backups.