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https://search.edwardsnowden.com/docs/FullSpectrumCyberEffects2014-04-04_nsadocs_snowden_doc https://search.edwardsnowden.com/docs/FullSpectrumCyberEffec... se

https://search.edwardsnowden.com/docs/FullSpectrumCyberEffects2014-04-04_nsadocs_snowden_doc https://search.edwardsnowden.com/docs/FullSpectrumCyberEffec... see page 8. GCHQ has a program called ROYALCONCIERGE, where they hack the reservation systems of hotels to watch for targets renting rooms. then GCHQ sends teams ahead of time to intercept the targets, preaumably to spy on them, or assassinate them or rendition them to a black site. from another Snowden doc which i can no longer find, it was revealed that ROYAL CONCIERGE hacked hotels owned by Starwood, one of the biggest umbrella corps owning multiple global hotel chains. you think NSA only went after Starwood hotels? remember NSA said their "Full Spectrum Domination" posture means "Collect It All." you think if NSA/GCHQ are hacking into hotel reservation databases to exfiltrate the whole shebang, that Airline reservation systems are NOT a higher priority? a commenter said it is ridiculous hypocracy how we blast China for forcing its tech companies to become appendages of their military/intelligence complex, while ignoring FBI/CIA/NSA do the very exact same thing under the rubric of NSLs and Bulk FISA Warrants and Business Records "All Tangible Things" and EO12333 get-out-of-jail-free cards to target anything loosely related to "understanding foreign intelligence." there is zero difference between what China does and what the FVEYs do, except that our Overlords tell us they are not spying on us, while every peasant in China knows they are being spied on by their govt because the Chinese govt openly admits to it.

antocv 6y ago
China spying on us thru Tiktok 5g huawei, somehow this gives China power over us and that is bad. Meanwhile, no no, CIA/GHCQ/Five-Eyes, spies on us, nothing to see, nothing to fear, no.
tdeck 6y ago
I don't understand what this has to do with China. Can't they both be bad? How does the NSA spying on people make China doing it any better? If I've got five eyes spying on me I'm still not keen to add a sixth.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  It has to do with China as the parent comment made clear: We’re constantly told China is a threat, and that’s probably a reasonable bit of advice. We’re not constantly told our own governments are a threat, and that forms the basis of propaganda and misinformation.
  - thephyber 6y ago
    > We’re constantly told China is ... > We’re not constantly told our own governments are ... When I read these statements, I can't help to substitute these nouns with "a used car salesperson". Of course a used car salesperson will talk up the cars on their lot and won't go out of their way to point out the defects or bad value. That's exactly why we should look for sources other than the salesperson and their allies. Look for data supplied by neutral third parties who have a slight adversarial stance. Also look for data from strong adversaries and evaluate the likelihood of truth versus pure propaganda.
  - roenxi 6y ago
    And just to be clear; in the normal case a local government is much more of a threat than a foreign government. The experience in the 20th century made it very clear - if a government causes you to die, it was probably your government. Not a foreign government. The experience in the 21st century has thankfully been a little bit milder but (1) we're only 20 years in and (2) if you are going to be persecuted it is still far more likely to be by a local government than a foreign government.
  - unishark 6y ago
    > We’re not constantly told our own governments are a threat, and that forms the basis of propaganda and misinformation. On the contrary I'd say a very notable feature the US culture is the adversarial view people have of the government. It's practically part of every major party's platform.
  - catalogia 6y ago
    > We’re not constantly told our own governments are a threat That has not been my experience living in America. Not even remotely.
coliveira 6y ago
Exactly. The moment the US created a global network of cyber spying it gave the motivation for all other countries to do the same. After all why would anyone believe in the goodness of the US when it is already proven that they will use this data as a commercial advantage?
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  Global cyber surveillance was inevitable. First mover advantage matters. But now first movers are watching their lunch get eaten by new comers who can move with more agility and know the lay of the land. Same bit of typical history-repetition.
echelon 6y ago
> there is zero difference between what China does and what the FVEYs do, except that our Overlords tell us they are not spying on us, while every peasant in China knows they are being spied on by their govt because the Chinese govt openly admits to it. We can fight it by electing the correct people. But more importantly, I won't be spirited away to a black site by speaking ill about the president. Nor can the government decide it doesn't want me as CEO of my company anymore. Or prevent me from funding the opposition party. There's an enormous difference between the West and totalitarian dystopia China.
- wonnage 6y ago
  While in theory we could fight it via electing people, the fact is that these programs were built over the last three decades by elected administrations (both D and R), and this two-party setup doesn't seem to be changing any time soon.
  - kortex 6y ago
    Annoyed at both sides enabling surveilance? Time to advocate for STAR Voting and NPVIC, your cure to "lesser of two evils"! (not implying parent comment is both-siding, I am just trying to boost these ideas wherever it's relevant) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/STAR_voting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/STAR_voting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Inters...
    - skissane 6y ago
      Why STAR voting and not IRV? IRV has worldwide use – probably most heavily used in Australia, but also for some elections in Ireland, India, Papua New Guinea, and the United States (elections in Maine; also some local elections in a number of states). IRV also has a long history – Australia has been using it at the federal level for over a century now (and at the state level for even longer than that). By contrast, STAR doesn't appear to be used anywhere of any significance. There is a movement in Oregon to get it adopted, but thus far the movement hasn't had success. According to Wikipedia, the only people using it are Multnomah County Democratic Party for internal elections. And that's unsurprising given how new it is – it was invented in 2014. Why prefer a system which was only invented six years ago, to a system which has over a century of significant real world use?
mNovak 6y ago
Are the US co's complicit in the hack, or is NSA et al doing it adversarially? That would be at least a slight difference.
MAGZine 6y ago
Airlines report flights booked directly to security agencies, including new, cancelled, and changed itineraries, with complete customer information. They don't need to hack airlines—the regulatory system has given them what they need. https://papersplease.org/wp/2013/09/29/how-the-nsa-obtains-and-uses-airline-reservations/ https://papersplease.org/wp/2013/09/29/how-the-nsa-obtains-a... For all we know, all major hotel chains could just be forced to comply with secret injunctions from FISA, and it would still be totally legal, and totally cool.
DangerousPie 6y ago
I can see your point for why China is not unlike the US in this regard. But where the two countries differ are the concentration camps, the huge restrictions on press and individual freedom, the imprisonment of political opponents and the massive censorship. Yes, the US does some bad things and may be moving in the wrong direction but you can't tell me that the degrees to which the two countries are bad are even remotely comparable.
- deadbunny 6y ago
  Or how about we're not fine with the bad things either does?
cataphract 6y ago
The US doesn't have concentration camps with hundreds of thousands of their own citizens. At most there is Guantanamo and black sites abroad. And at least for Guantanamo the prisoners have a modicum of rights (see Boumedine, though I concede that the current scotus majority is limiting it as much as possible.)
- steffandroid 6y ago
  The US has 2.2 million people in prison, more than any other country in the world.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - SalmoShalazar 6y ago
    Not to mention the family separation/children in cages along the Southern border, but I guess everyone got distracted and forgot about this.
    - refurb 6y ago
      This includes migrants who claim to be children, but who are actually 18 or older, as well as adults who falsely claim to be parents of minors they're traveling with, according to Brian Hastings, chief of law enforcement operations for Customs and Border Protection. [1]https://www.npr.org/2019/04/10/711850056/fake-documents-a-growing-problem-among-migrants-crossing-u-s-mexico-border https://www.npr.org/2019/04/10/711850056/fake-documents-a-gr...
      - La1n 6y ago
        Yes? So? That doesn't mean it does not also includes actual children, and people who are actual parents of minors they're traveling with.
        refurb 6y ago
eloff 6y ago
This is a false equivalence. There is a huge difference between free Western democracies, and totalitarian China, just ask the people of Hong Kong.
- umanwizard 6y ago
  Is it as clear-cut as you claim? The US has far more people incarcerated per capita than Hong Kong, or mainland China for that matter.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - eloff 6y ago
    Is the US more free than China in every dimension? Perhaps not. But generally, yes. There are societal reasons why the incarceration is higher (per-capita) in the US. It's also worth noting that if you execute a criminal after a non-fair trial and send his parents the bill for the bullet, it saves some space in the jails, plus has somewhat of a deterrent effect on crime.
  - adventured 6y ago
    Yes, it's that clear-cut. Which also doesn't imply that the US is somehow perfect. The US puts people in prison for too long for violent crimes due to minimum sentencing laws. That's the reason the prison population is so high (although it has been rapidly declining for the past decade), not because it's randomly putting a million people into prison. The US gets an immense amount of flak for its mandatory minimum sentencing laws and rightfully so. As one example, everyone knows the US has a high murder rate compared to other affluent nations for example (typically five or higher per 100k). If you have half a million murders every 30 years, it stands to reason you're going to have a lot of people in prison just from that one category and all of its intertwined consequences and related crime. China has zero human rights, the government can do anything it wants to, to anyone, at any time, with or without a reason. That's not an exaggeration, it's how their system works de facto. They don't apologize for that and they flex that power routinely. Their government is all-powerful, it assumes all rights by default (anything you're allowed to have is a privilege they're granting to you, and they may revoke it at any time). Referencing US incarceration numbers isn't enough. You have to demonstrate to a very high degree that the people in prison didn't commit the crimes in question, such as armed robbery, rape, murder, and so on. You need to show that a very large percentage of those people didn't commit the crimes they're in prison for (and no, it's not good enough to reference a few cases, you have to show that it applies to hundreds of thousands of instances). The majority of people in prison in the US are there for violent crimes.
all_blue_chucks 6y ago
These are equivalent? What kind of warrant does the CCP have to get before they surveil someone?
- justanotheranon 6y ago
  back in 2018, DOJ deputy AG Rod Rosenstein testified under oath to Congress that when he signed the authorization for the FISA warrant against Carter Page in 2017, that it was rock solid because every FISA warrant "package" is 250 pages long and is meticulously combed through by a small army of DOJ attorneys. then last year winter 2019, after the DOJ OIG reported that every FISA warrant submitted by FBI dating back to 2013 was riddled with multiple legal errors that should have invalidated those warrants, Rod Rosenstein once again was summoned to explain himself to Congress. Rosenstein told Congress the reason he signed the 4 FISA warrants extending NSA/FBI/CIA surveillance of Carter Page was because he didnt read the warrants, he just trusted DOJ and FBI and blindly signed away. that is how America ends up just like China. we dont even question the system.
  - all_blue_chucks 6y ago
    So you're saying that not every US search warrant received enough scrutiny? What kind of warrant does the CCP have to get before they surveil someone? Since you think their system is equivalent, please explain why you think CCP warrants receive an equivalent amount of scrutiny.
rmah 6y ago
I don't see why the NSA would have to hack Starwood given the designated nationals checks of the State Dept. I know firsthand that about 15 years ago, every major US hotel chain (and possibly small ones, don't know) matched every guest (globally) against a rather large list of names supplied by the US Gov and reported back the matches. This was done daily for every guest. I do not know if it is still done or not. An aside, the first thing the team tasked with implementing this did was check their names against the list.
- 77pt77 6y ago
  I was told all guest names were sent to Interpol. I always found that dubious.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  So that they can track people without anyone else knowing, likely for illegal purposes.
- justanotheranon 6y ago
  when the Snowden leaks came out, i was horrified. our worst nightmares about an Orwellian Dystopia far in the future had already happened 20 years ago in secret and we were only finding out. but then i did some research into Starwood hotels. when Snowden ran to HK in May/June 2013, he stayed at the Mira hotel, paying with his personal credit card. guess who owns Mira? Mira is a Starwood hotel. i guess that ROYALCONCIERGE program didnt work too well LOL. i now no longer fear NSA and the FVEYs the same way i did back in 2013. NSA/FVEYs are not 1984 meets Skynet. NSA is the Cyber DMV. govt clerks punching a clock and squabbling with each other over internal turf wars. they are morons, just with a bigger budget and an invisibility cloak of TOP SECRET. NSA/FVEYs have already crippled themselves by their spectacular success. they hacked everyone, they exfiltrated all data on Earth, but what good is it? they couldnt even find Snowden in their own hotel spy program? i bet more sand falls through the cracks in NSA's hands than any finite number of grains they do manage to catch. there simply is no way to scale putting a human eyeball on every piece of SIGINT. the more SIGINT you collect, the more blind you become. these days i am NSA's #1 cheerleader. i fervently hope they intercept and wiretap and collect everything. because one day poetic justice will knock NSA on their asses and blindside their hubris and they will never see it coming.
jariel 6y ago
There is enormous difference between 'China' and the 'US' and frankly quite a bit between 'US' and 'Germany' and 'UK'. Being able to hack into systems to hunt down individuals of interest to the state, is something totally different than everyone, everywhere, at all times surveyed, by everyone, even their neighbours, and then putting people in 'internment camps' because of their ethnicity. This is all tricky stuff, it all needs context.
UnbugMe 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes PS - fuck you, you are a worthless piece of shit.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ekianjo 6y ago
> there is zero difference between what China does and what the FVEYs do, except that our Overlords tell us they are not spying on us, while every peasant in China knows they are being spied on by their govt because the Chinese govt openly admits to it. Zero difference ? Except that you don't have a totalitarian power on top for which laws are meaningless pieces of paper. Look at HK and ask them under which regime they would prefer to live in.
- La1n 6y ago
  > Look at HK and ask them under which regime they would prefer to live in. And if you ask minorities that go to jail for years for non-violent crime, or marijuana possession they would likely say something else.
JoeSmithson 6y ago
> "GCHQ has a program called ROYALCONCIERGE, where they hack the reservation systems of hotels to watch for targets renting rooms" Your own source makes it clear that this system works/worked by intercepting emails. > "then GCHQ sends teams ahead of time to [...] assassinate them" Unless Snowden buried the lede quite spectacularly, I think this is not true.
xster 6y ago
> there is zero difference between what China does Do you have a primary source for what you're alluding to?
kmonsen 6y ago
Two things afterwards having worked in intelligence: - your examples are really child’s play, I have seen much more sneaky stuff. For example if you think NSA is interested in you, how would you acquire a new computer? - The flip side is that there is still reasonable oversight that is adversarial. At least in the country I’m from. And different branches of government is a real difference from China, at least from now although the executive branch clearly has too much power in the US.
nannal 6y ago
There is a significant difference, the repercussions for expressing thoughts and opinions in China are much more significant. I wouldn't argue that we should ignore or accept constant surveillance in our daily lives, but I would argue that I'd rather not have my travel rights revoked for expressing opinions against the state.
throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
"hypocracy how we blast China" My spidey senses are tingling again. The 'we' that implies the poster (acct. created 8 days ago BTW) is 'one of us'. Seeing a lot of that 'we' recently. Keep an eye out for this sort of thing, people!
- La1n 6y ago
  Calling someone a shill, or implying they are is not helpful to any discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23839602 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23839602 "I'm merely saying that the overwhelming majority of the insinuations and accusations that people come up with about it lead to precisely nothing when we investigate. It's like flipping a coin and having it come up tails a thousand times in a row: you start to look for simpler explanations, and there are clear, simple explanations for why this might be."
  - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
    So is (ab)using the rules to try to suppress discussion. Anyway when I see comments I often have a look at the poster's past comments. > La1n 1 hour ago | parent | on: The FBI is secretly using Sabre as a global travel... >> Look at HK and ask them under which regime they would prefer to live in. > And if you ask minorities that go to jail for years for non-violent crime, or marijuana possession they would likely say something else.
- dang 6y ago
  You can't post like this here—the overwhelming majority of such accusations are completely bogus, and they're poison. "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturf https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
dang 6y ago
You took this thread into a huge, predictable, and off topic flamewar about China. That's exactly what the site guidelines ask you not to do. Please stick to the rules when posting here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

antocv 6y ago

China spying on us thru Tiktok 5g huawei, somehow this gives China power over us and that is bad. Meanwhile, no no, CIA/GHCQ/Five-Eyes, spies on us, nothing to see, nothing to fear, no.

tdeck 6y ago

I don't understand what this has to do with China. Can't they both be bad? How does the NSA spying on people make China doing it any better? If I've got five eyes spying on me I'm still not keen to add a sixth.

TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
It has to do with China as the parent comment made clear: We’re constantly told China is a threat, and that’s probably a reasonable bit of advice. We’re not constantly told our own governments are a threat, and that forms the basis of propaganda and misinformation.
- thephyber 6y ago
  > We’re constantly told China is ... > We’re not constantly told our own governments are ... When I read these statements, I can't help to substitute these nouns with "a used car salesperson". Of course a used car salesperson will talk up the cars on their lot and won't go out of their way to point out the defects or bad value. That's exactly why we should look for sources other than the salesperson and their allies. Look for data supplied by neutral third parties who have a slight adversarial stance. Also look for data from strong adversaries and evaluate the likelihood of truth versus pure propaganda.
- roenxi 6y ago
  And just to be clear; in the normal case a local government is much more of a threat than a foreign government. The experience in the 20th century made it very clear - if a government causes you to die, it was probably your government. Not a foreign government. The experience in the 21st century has thankfully been a little bit milder but (1) we're only 20 years in and (2) if you are going to be persecuted it is still far more likely to be by a local government than a foreign government.
- unishark 6y ago
  > We’re not constantly told our own governments are a threat, and that forms the basis of propaganda and misinformation. On the contrary I'd say a very notable feature the US culture is the adversarial view people have of the government. It's practically part of every major party's platform.
- catalogia 6y ago
  > We’re not constantly told our own governments are a threat That has not been my experience living in America. Not even remotely.

coliveira 6y ago

Exactly. The moment the US created a global network of cyber spying it gave the motivation for all other countries to do the same. After all why would anyone believe in the goodness of the US when it is already proven that they will use this data as a commercial advantage?

TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
Global cyber surveillance was inevitable. First mover advantage matters. But now first movers are watching their lunch get eaten by new comers who can move with more agility and know the lay of the land. Same bit of typical history-repetition.

echelon 6y ago

> there is zero difference between what China does and what the FVEYs do, except that our Overlords tell us they are not spying on us, while every peasant in China knows they are being spied on by their govt because the Chinese govt openly admits to it. We can fight it by electing the correct people. But more importantly, I won't be spirited away to a black site by speaking ill about the president. Nor can the government decide it doesn't want me as CEO of my company anymore. Or prevent me from funding the opposition party. There's an enormous difference between the West and totalitarian dystopia China.

wonnage 6y ago
While in theory we could fight it via electing people, the fact is that these programs were built over the last three decades by elected administrations (both D and R), and this two-party setup doesn't seem to be changing any time soon.
- kortex 6y ago
  Annoyed at both sides enabling surveilance? Time to advocate for STAR Voting and NPVIC, your cure to "lesser of two evils"! (not implying parent comment is both-siding, I am just trying to boost these ideas wherever it's relevant) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/STAR_voting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/STAR_voting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Inters...
  - skissane 6y ago
    Why STAR voting and not IRV? IRV has worldwide use – probably most heavily used in Australia, but also for some elections in Ireland, India, Papua New Guinea, and the United States (elections in Maine; also some local elections in a number of states). IRV also has a long history – Australia has been using it at the federal level for over a century now (and at the state level for even longer than that). By contrast, STAR doesn't appear to be used anywhere of any significance. There is a movement in Oregon to get it adopted, but thus far the movement hasn't had success. According to Wikipedia, the only people using it are Multnomah County Democratic Party for internal elections. And that's unsurprising given how new it is – it was invented in 2014. Why prefer a system which was only invented six years ago, to a system which has over a century of significant real world use?

mNovak 6y ago

Are the US co's complicit in the hack, or is NSA et al doing it adversarially? That would be at least a slight difference.

MAGZine 6y ago

Airlines report flights booked directly to security agencies, including new, cancelled, and changed itineraries, with complete customer information. They don't need to hack airlines—the regulatory system has given them what they need. https://papersplease.org/wp/2013/09/29/how-the-nsa-obtains-and-uses-airline-reservations/ https://papersplease.org/wp/2013/09/29/how-the-nsa-obtains-a... For all we know, all major hotel chains could just be forced to comply with secret injunctions from FISA, and it would still be totally legal, and totally cool.

DangerousPie 6y ago

I can see your point for why China is not unlike the US in this regard. But where the two countries differ are the concentration camps, the huge restrictions on press and individual freedom, the imprisonment of political opponents and the massive censorship. Yes, the US does some bad things and may be moving in the wrong direction but you can't tell me that the degrees to which the two countries are bad are even remotely comparable.

deadbunny 6y ago
Or how about we're not fine with the bad things either does?

cataphract 6y ago

The US doesn't have concentration camps with hundreds of thousands of their own citizens. At most there is Guantanamo and black sites abroad. And at least for Guantanamo the prisoners have a modicum of rights (see Boumedine, though I concede that the current scotus majority is limiting it as much as possible.)

steffandroid 6y ago
The US has 2.2 million people in prison, more than any other country in the world.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- SalmoShalazar 6y ago
  Not to mention the family separation/children in cages along the Southern border, but I guess everyone got distracted and forgot about this.
  - refurb 6y ago
    This includes migrants who claim to be children, but who are actually 18 or older, as well as adults who falsely claim to be parents of minors they're traveling with, according to Brian Hastings, chief of law enforcement operations for Customs and Border Protection. [1]https://www.npr.org/2019/04/10/711850056/fake-documents-a-growing-problem-among-migrants-crossing-u-s-mexico-border https://www.npr.org/2019/04/10/711850056/fake-documents-a-gr...
    - La1n 6y ago
      Yes? So? That doesn't mean it does not also includes actual children, and people who are actual parents of minors they're traveling with.
      - refurb 6y ago

eloff 6y ago

This is a false equivalence. There is a huge difference between free Western democracies, and totalitarian China, just ask the people of Hong Kong.

umanwizard 6y ago
Is it as clear-cut as you claim? The US has far more people incarcerated per capita than Hong Kong, or mainland China for that matter.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- eloff 6y ago
  Is the US more free than China in every dimension? Perhaps not. But generally, yes. There are societal reasons why the incarceration is higher (per-capita) in the US. It's also worth noting that if you execute a criminal after a non-fair trial and send his parents the bill for the bullet, it saves some space in the jails, plus has somewhat of a deterrent effect on crime.
- adventured 6y ago
  Yes, it's that clear-cut. Which also doesn't imply that the US is somehow perfect. The US puts people in prison for too long for violent crimes due to minimum sentencing laws. That's the reason the prison population is so high (although it has been rapidly declining for the past decade), not because it's randomly putting a million people into prison. The US gets an immense amount of flak for its mandatory minimum sentencing laws and rightfully so. As one example, everyone knows the US has a high murder rate compared to other affluent nations for example (typically five or higher per 100k). If you have half a million murders every 30 years, it stands to reason you're going to have a lot of people in prison just from that one category and all of its intertwined consequences and related crime. China has zero human rights, the government can do anything it wants to, to anyone, at any time, with or without a reason. That's not an exaggeration, it's how their system works de facto. They don't apologize for that and they flex that power routinely. Their government is all-powerful, it assumes all rights by default (anything you're allowed to have is a privilege they're granting to you, and they may revoke it at any time). Referencing US incarceration numbers isn't enough. You have to demonstrate to a very high degree that the people in prison didn't commit the crimes in question, such as armed robbery, rape, murder, and so on. You need to show that a very large percentage of those people didn't commit the crimes they're in prison for (and no, it's not good enough to reference a few cases, you have to show that it applies to hundreds of thousands of instances). The majority of people in prison in the US are there for violent crimes.

all_blue_chucks 6y ago

These are equivalent? What kind of warrant does the CCP have to get before they surveil someone?

justanotheranon 6y ago
back in 2018, DOJ deputy AG Rod Rosenstein testified under oath to Congress that when he signed the authorization for the FISA warrant against Carter Page in 2017, that it was rock solid because every FISA warrant "package" is 250 pages long and is meticulously combed through by a small army of DOJ attorneys. then last year winter 2019, after the DOJ OIG reported that every FISA warrant submitted by FBI dating back to 2013 was riddled with multiple legal errors that should have invalidated those warrants, Rod Rosenstein once again was summoned to explain himself to Congress. Rosenstein told Congress the reason he signed the 4 FISA warrants extending NSA/FBI/CIA surveillance of Carter Page was because he didnt read the warrants, he just trusted DOJ and FBI and blindly signed away. that is how America ends up just like China. we dont even question the system.
- all_blue_chucks 6y ago
  So you're saying that not every US search warrant received enough scrutiny? What kind of warrant does the CCP have to get before they surveil someone? Since you think their system is equivalent, please explain why you think CCP warrants receive an equivalent amount of scrutiny.

rmah 6y ago

I don't see why the NSA would have to hack Starwood given the designated nationals checks of the State Dept. I know firsthand that about 15 years ago, every major US hotel chain (and possibly small ones, don't know) matched every guest (globally) against a rather large list of names supplied by the US Gov and reported back the matches. This was done daily for every guest. I do not know if it is still done or not. An aside, the first thing the team tasked with implementing this did was check their names against the list.

77pt77 6y ago
I was told all guest names were sent to Interpol. I always found that dubious.
sudosysgen 6y ago
So that they can track people without anyone else knowing, likely for illegal purposes.
justanotheranon 6y ago
when the Snowden leaks came out, i was horrified. our worst nightmares about an Orwellian Dystopia far in the future had already happened 20 years ago in secret and we were only finding out. but then i did some research into Starwood hotels. when Snowden ran to HK in May/June 2013, he stayed at the Mira hotel, paying with his personal credit card. guess who owns Mira? Mira is a Starwood hotel. i guess that ROYALCONCIERGE program didnt work too well LOL. i now no longer fear NSA and the FVEYs the same way i did back in 2013. NSA/FVEYs are not 1984 meets Skynet. NSA is the Cyber DMV. govt clerks punching a clock and squabbling with each other over internal turf wars. they are morons, just with a bigger budget and an invisibility cloak of TOP SECRET. NSA/FVEYs have already crippled themselves by their spectacular success. they hacked everyone, they exfiltrated all data on Earth, but what good is it? they couldnt even find Snowden in their own hotel spy program? i bet more sand falls through the cracks in NSA's hands than any finite number of grains they do manage to catch. there simply is no way to scale putting a human eyeball on every piece of SIGINT. the more SIGINT you collect, the more blind you become. these days i am NSA's #1 cheerleader. i fervently hope they intercept and wiretap and collect everything. because one day poetic justice will knock NSA on their asses and blindside their hubris and they will never see it coming.

jariel 6y ago

There is enormous difference between 'China' and the 'US' and frankly quite a bit between 'US' and 'Germany' and 'UK'. Being able to hack into systems to hunt down individuals of interest to the state, is something totally different than everyone, everywhere, at all times surveyed, by everyone, even their neighbours, and then putting people in 'internment camps' because of their ethnicity. This is all tricky stuff, it all needs context.

UnbugMe 6y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes PS - fuck you, you are a worthless piece of shit.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ekianjo 6y ago

> there is zero difference between what China does and what the FVEYs do, except that our Overlords tell us they are not spying on us, while every peasant in China knows they are being spied on by their govt because the Chinese govt openly admits to it. Zero difference ? Except that you don't have a totalitarian power on top for which laws are meaningless pieces of paper. Look at HK and ask them under which regime they would prefer to live in.

La1n 6y ago
> Look at HK and ask them under which regime they would prefer to live in. And if you ask minorities that go to jail for years for non-violent crime, or marijuana possession they would likely say something else.

JoeSmithson 6y ago

> "GCHQ has a program called ROYALCONCIERGE, where they hack the reservation systems of hotels to watch for targets renting rooms" Your own source makes it clear that this system works/worked by intercepting emails. > "then GCHQ sends teams ahead of time to [...] assassinate them" Unless Snowden buried the lede quite spectacularly, I think this is not true.

xster 6y ago

> there is zero difference between what China does Do you have a primary source for what you're alluding to?

kmonsen 6y ago

Two things afterwards having worked in intelligence: - your examples are really child’s play, I have seen much more sneaky stuff. For example if you think NSA is interested in you, how would you acquire a new computer? - The flip side is that there is still reasonable oversight that is adversarial. At least in the country I’m from. And different branches of government is a real difference from China, at least from now although the executive branch clearly has too much power in the US.

nannal 6y ago

There is a significant difference, the repercussions for expressing thoughts and opinions in China are much more significant. I wouldn't argue that we should ignore or accept constant surveillance in our daily lives, but I would argue that I'd rather not have my travel rights revoked for expressing opinions against the state.

throwaway_pdp09 6y ago

"hypocracy how we blast China" My spidey senses are tingling again. The 'we' that implies the poster (acct. created 8 days ago BTW) is 'one of us'. Seeing a lot of that 'we' recently. Keep an eye out for this sort of thing, people!

La1n 6y ago
Calling someone a shill, or implying they are is not helpful to any discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23839602 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23839602 "I'm merely saying that the overwhelming majority of the insinuations and accusations that people come up with about it lead to precisely nothing when we investigate. It's like flipping a coin and having it come up tails a thousand times in a row: you start to look for simpler explanations, and there are clear, simple explanations for why this might be."
- throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
  So is (ab)using the rules to try to suppress discussion. Anyway when I see comments I often have a look at the poster's past comments. > La1n 1 hour ago | parent | on: The FBI is secretly using Sabre as a global travel... >> Look at HK and ask them under which regime they would prefer to live in. > And if you ask minorities that go to jail for years for non-violent crime, or marijuana possession they would likely say something else.
dang 6y ago
You can't post like this here—the overwhelming majority of such accusations are completely bogus, and they're poison. "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturf https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

dang 6y ago

You took this thread into a huge, predictable, and off topic flamewar about China. That's exactly what the site guidelines ask you not to do. Please stick to the rules when posting here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html