4 ms·

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 ma

by 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.

by rmah 6y ago

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.