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The basic premise is false. > "Why did we never see it coming?" Many people saw it coming. I was warning about the possibility of dragnet surveillance, the ex

• badrabbit 6y ago
  There were others before snowden, like: James bamford https://media.ccc.de/v/31c3_-_6600_-_en_-_saal_2_-_201412281245_-_tell_no-one_-_james_bamford https://media.ccc.de/v/31c3_-_6600_-_en_-_saal_2_-_201412281... What snowden did was provide independently verifiable content and details of their activities. His leaks were outdates by half a decade by the time they were public too. Everyone sort of accepted the IC will do shady stuff to stop terrorists after 9/11 because "american lives" so it was a solid conspiracy theory backed (not proven) by facts at the time. We sort of hoped they didn't care enough to snoop into our boring lives.
  • grey-area 6y ago
    If the tools are there, they will be used for evil. When you can surveil and blackmail the entire world, including your political taskmasters, what sort of person will that role attract?
    • Spooky23 6y ago
      2016 answered that question.
      • Proziam 6y ago
        The issue far predates 2016. The NSA and the mass-surveillance apparatus has been around far longer, with massive bipartisan support.
      • WhyIsItLikeThis 6y ago
        You mean Hillary Clinton?
      • mc32 6y ago
        That sounds like conspiracy NWO kinds of things, but then again maybe there was a kernel of truth to that. It seems since Kennedy intelligence apparatuses have taken preeminence, perhaps somewhat necessarily though the results seem worse than the alternative of them not being there (Gulf II).
    • TeMPOraL 6y ago
      > If the tools are there, they will be used for evil. I use a stronger (more specific) form of that heuristic that seems to hold up well in practice: If something evil is within technological possibility, and there is economic gain to be had from doing it, someone will end up doing it. (Note, by "within technological possibility" I don't mean "there are COTS tools available for doing that", but closer to "physics doesn't prohibit it, and we have a good grasp on how it could be done in theory".) I actually first figured out this phrasing of my intuition during Snowden revelations, to explain to myself why my initial reaction was a complete lack of surprise.
  • hindsightbias 6y ago
    Puzzle Palace is from 1982. Everyone knew overseas cables were tapped and many peers joked about big brother listening on their long distance domestic calls. Like life, technology always finds a way. Much of the talk back in the day was not based on reality because it was not based on what tech could practically do. The compute and storage weren’t there. But it was pretty obvious by the late aughts that all the pieces for panopticon were coming together nicely. Tech finds a way.
  • discreditable 6y ago
    NSA surveillance was a joke in the Simpsons Movie in 2007. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2CVTH3_Bf-I https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2CVTH3_Bf-I
• austincheney 6y ago
  It's not that nobody saw them coming it's that nobody cared enough to produce better technology. When a few key entities are central points of information distribution it is very simple to monitor everything. End-to-end encryption is helpful, but it isn't enough, becaues no effort is required to know where to find everything. If you really want to lower the probability of state monitoring you need end-to-end encryption and point-to-point communication without a central service provider. Major information providers and social media have no motivation to solve that problem. Removing them from the communication channel between you and your grandma instantly renders them irrelevant.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • jrexilius 6y ago
    Very much this. Anyone who has tried to sell better defensive products to the market knows that the issue is not with the difficulty of doing things better, it's the interest and will of the market.
• gnarbarian 6y ago
  Yep. Remember the "carnivore" boxes installed at ISPs?
• boomboomsubban 6y ago
  >Many people saw it coming. This article is asking how the NSA managed a hacking empire leaving practically no evidence. Many people correctly assumed it was happening, they just couldn't prove much. "Why did we never see it coming?" Is a poor way of phrasing their premise, but it's not false.
  • oefrha 6y ago
    Exactly. The other emphasized question, while less sexy and less quotable, is a much more accurate representation of the question TFA tries to answer: > If the NSA was owning everything in sight (and by all accounts they have) then how is it that nobody ever spotted them? It’s sad that people routinely find the first disagreeable thing in any submission then derail the whole discussion based on an out-of-context misrepresentation of that.
    • mh_ 6y ago
      As the original author of the piece... I agree :)
      • boomboomsubban 6y ago
        It was a great article, but that particular phrase is so often used with the "a mile away" idiom to refer to things that are obvious. Using it to refer to how people didn't spot any evidence was a bit confusing.
        • WhyIsItLikeThis 6y ago
          The whole thing is nonsense. Years before Snowden there was plenty of evidence that some gov agency was scooping up ALL At&T's data (for example). Just like now, idiots will ignore the obvious until they can't. Right now you idiots are ignoring ALL the obvious signs of the Dollar collapsing (it already has). Then when your money is worthless you all will be asking, how did we not see it coming?
    • boomboomsubban 6y ago
• guerrilla 6y ago
  Indeed and consequently "your experts failed you" is also ahistorical. Maybe some talking heads did but not experts in general. The better questions then would be "why didn't people listen? and "why didn't the general public see it coming?" It would be useful to understand these well to prevent future occurrences and even possibly to escape the current situation and future unfolding.
• darawk 6y ago
  Everyone saw the mass surveillance coming. What the premise of this article is, is that nobody ever detects the NSA in their systems.
• roenxi 6y ago
  > We were called Conspiracy Theorists... It was a theory that there was a conspiracy. The issue is that people dismiss conspiracy theories out of hand - even when the theory is backed by means, motive and incentives. "This power is being used to influence the political process in the US" is still a conspiracy theory and will likely turn out to be true as well one day - because again the people involved have means, motive and incentives. But incentives based predictions are a bit subjective and most people don't seem to believe that incentives overrule character.
  • specialist 6y ago
    I've long wondered how to side step the "conspiracy theorist" pejorative. Personal interest. A local newspaper called me a "sweaty paranoid kook". All true. But also a distraction from the lede. There must be a Luntzian phrase for believing in proven conspiracies.
    • zerocrates 6y ago
      I feel like Luntz would like "conspiracy realist." Or maybe that's more of a Stallmanism.
    • raincom 6y ago
      As other poster jitteriest noted already, "conspiracy theorist" labeling is used to stop having any discussion with those who are labelled as "conspiracy theorists". The whole dialogue is skewed in the favor of those who call others "conspiracy theorists". Once labeled, no more dialogue. This is one of the dialogical moves, and conflicts with the cooperation principle to resolve disputes.
  • jitteriest 6y ago
    Conspiracy theory is just a buzzword to stop thought. "That doesn't need to be discussed or disproved because it is a conspiracy theory."
• autisticcurio 6y ago
  > The basic premise is false. >> "Why did we never see it coming?" You were never taught it in a rote fashion. Fact is all intelligence services are heavily into their science and control. Its not just computer hacking they are into, they use psychology, medicine and finance to control the population. They have evolved the techniques first used and developed by successive religions since at least as far back as the ancient Sumerians. Solomon Asch and his conformity experiments https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYIh4MkcfJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYIh4MkcfJA which continue to evolve to this day, is a useful tool for keeping people out of trouble, otherwise to quote an ancient religious expression "The devil makes work for idle hands to do" and who wants to go backwards in the Maslow's Hierarchy of needs? So just like some people do not want to believe that God doesnt exist, some people do not want to believe their country's security services are spying on them 24/7 since the day they were born, hence why the hierarchical structure of society, currently called democracy, but included Royal governance and religious governance in the past, is still the leading way to operate in plain sight after more than 10,000 years of society. Maybe I should be called Mustapha Mond ;-)
• arminiusreturns 6y ago
  >why is it still ridiculed to say it might be happening? This thread is full of opportunities for me to contribute, but this is the comment that is the most important. I've spent a long time sifting through conspiracy theories, and I came to a conclusion at one point that the most important thing in the world the oligarchs and TPTB have at their disposal is control and influence of various degrees on the mass media in all it's forms. Therefor, the most important task is to inform people. Problem one is that the propaganda mass conciousness influence has been almost perfected, and it's very numbers based. So for example, lets say I showed you some of the more crazy conspiracies that have been at play in the US. If you are someone who wants an ugly truth over a beautiful lie, you might see the merit to my arguments. I can take the time to do that, but my numbers will never reach the MSM numbers... and so they keep doing what they are doing, because we are far away from the critical mass needed to actually push back against that power with power. The few movements that do start with that intention are quickly infiltrated and taken over, etc. Essentially, as long as the media can fool X percentage of people, it doesn't matter how many people want to fight the system, the fooled masses in their herd mentality will quash any dissent, and the perpetual cycle of abuse continues. Second, is that I have discovered that most people simple don't want to know the truth, and in particular the ugly truth over the beautiful lie. I've "woken" (sorry it's cliche but appropos) people up who at a later point said "I don't want to know, that's too dark..." etc, but a lot of people really would rather hang on to any lie that makes them feel better than to hear about how borked the US is (and the world). Combined, these two principles work in tandem to make sure even those who might still have a spark of dissent in their bones tend to be extra dismissive of any "conspiracy theory", either for self-preservation whether concious or not, because of herd mentality, and/or because they've been propagandized too heavily. Also, there was a definite leap in sockpuppetry tech about ~2010, and I think there are a lot more "digital dissociative disorder people" on the web than anyone is willing to admit. (largely working to create the illusion of that herd mentality which then becomes reality) The problem I'm running into now isn't yesterdays NSA conspiracy, it's trying to tell people about what TPTB are doing now! So maybe some people were forced to eat their words about NSA (not that many admitted that), but if you bring up the scandal of today or of tomorrow, you go right back to being considered a "wackjob crazy conspiracy nut" or some such nonsense. I don't know how you could possibly break through the control of mass conciousness to change this... These reasons are also why the oligarchs are after control of the internet. As a withering but still standing bastion of anarchistic freedom of speech, it is their primary threat right now. Anyway, the bottom line is that the truth, the real world, is chock full of actual conspiracies that are so much stranger than fiction. You'll notice I kept it meta to avoid digressing into a debate about a particular conspiracy, but the number one issue is that people seem to have completely forgotten what inductive logic is, and how powerful it can be. Of course evidence (deductive logic) is preferred wherever possible, but in the arena of intelligence agencies and billionares who spend a lot of time covering up their tracks (especially by degrees of seperations), you aren't going to get that evidence except in the most rare cases. Even in the cases where the evidence does show up, it is often covered up, destroyed, lost, inadmissable, gag ordered, blackbagged, etc.
• net2net2net 6y ago
  Your comment resonates deep with me. Although I will shamefully admit that I was one of the naysayers. I might have even called someone a Conspiracy Nut in a prior conversation, with my perception of the person being obsessed with potential NSA spying / collection. Oh, how wrong I was. Side note: I find it interesting that a period of time developed where any type of deep curiosity into government activity was enough to get oneself stamped as a Conspiracy Nut. If I were the person pumping these narratives and troupes out, I'd be very happy with my result, in retrospect.
• godelski 6y ago
  > The basic premise is false. > We were called _Conspiracy Theorists_ Depends who "we" is. If "we" is people on HN, who are tuned in and more closely associated with this stuff, then yeah. _You are not_ just some rando on the internet who follows the mainstream news, you are tech literate and actively participating in a niche technology forum. But if "we" is more a general term then the premise isn't false and I'd argue is still relatively true today. The general public is only starting to turn away from ideas like "I don't care if Google reads my emails, what are they going to do?" And that's only because ad suggestions have gotten too good, enough that they believe that Facebook is turning on their microphones. Obviously didn't learn from Target[0]. You're clearly aware of this because of your last sentence! You can sit with your pride telling everyone that you were right all along and not crazy, or you can further the reach to the more generalized "we." The two options are not really inclusive. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits....
• mellow2020 6y ago
  Sebastian Haffner warned of it as early as 1940. Not of the internet itself of course, but still. Note the bit about a microphone in every house. > Yet another circumstance must be mentioned which proves favorable for the Nazis and their immensely powerful apparatus of oppression: the development of modern technology gives the rulers, as has long been insufficiently understood, an advantage over the ruled. The more effective the weapons become and the less you can protect yourself against them, the more the armed is superior to the unarmed. The Bastille could not be successfully stormed in the age of airplanes and tear gas. Rifles equipped with rifles have no chance against motorized police forces; it makes no sense to build barricades against a government that has tanks. And in the event of a revolution, it is not only weapons development that favors those in power, the state over the individual: modern technical development and the associated sophisticated organization work in the same direction. Traffic has led to the countries becoming small and easy to monitor. How many hiding places there were in a country a hundred years ago! At that time, every power hit natural barriers! Today there is no loophole and no hideout for the rebel anymore. Even the thoughts that are able to penetrate the walls have become "controllable" because they are tied to the mass distribution of news, to radio, film and the press. How long will it take before every house has its own microphone and every private word, like every telephone call today, can be heard? The ant state is at hand. It may not be a coincidence that states like Germany and Russia have elevated technology to the status of a religion. Conversely, this development of modern technology makes the preservation of freedom a human task that is more urgent than ever. -- Sebastian Haffner "Germany: Jekyll & Hyde (1939 - Deutschland von innen betrachtet)" The above is my crappy translation because I don't have the English original (!). Apologies to Haffner as author and anyone who enjoys reading good English, but I think the content speaks for itself. It's not just so-called conspiracy theorists who warned us, but also people in the midst of our society, near the zenith of human achievement. Our best and brightest. And we paid a LOT of lip service to respecting a LOT of people who warned us, while trampling what they held up as most important underfoot. We just wanted their gimmicks, their clever oneliners, the stuff we could kill time with. > Now the police dreams that one look at the gigantic map on the office wall should suffice at any given moment to establish who is related to whom and in what degree of intimacy; and, theoretically, this dream is not unrealizable although its technical execution is bound to be somewhat difficult. If this map really did exist, not even memory would stand in the way of the totalitarian claim to domination; such a map might make it possible to obliterate people without any traces, as if they had never existed at all. -- Hannah Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism" She wasn't the type to get excited and pushy, about anything. And maybe she wasn't aware of how she hit bulls eye when she wrote that. But here we are, and we know she did. > If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then? -- George Orwell What if society became completely digital? What if people completely loose the ability to remember things, and look up their own lifes and history in the data stores? I've seen dozens, countless comments on HN that seem to be longing for something like that, of course while completely ignoring the implications, the destruction of humans and human society that would entail. > Meanwhile, in the course of this "Terrorist Generation" campaign, for Obama to claim, "you know, I'm really worried about terrorists, so I have to to read -- well, they claim they don't read it -- I have to get information about your email, where you are, who you're talking to, what you have on Facebook; I've gotta put that on my big database"... actually, we're moving into a world which was described, pretty accurately I think, by one of the founders of Google... I don't know if you followed the stories about Google Glass? Well, Google has some new, ridiculous thing, they're marketing glasses which have a small computer on them. So you can be on the internet 24 hours a day, just what you want. It's a way of destroying people, but quite apart from that, this little device has a camera, and presumably, if it doesn't already it will soon have a recorder, which means that everything that's going on around you, goes up on the internet. Some reporter asked Erich Schmidt, didn't he think this was an invasion of privacy, and his answer was exactly right, comes right out of the Obama administration, he said: "If you're doing anything that you don't want to be on the internet, you shouldn't be doing it." This is a dream that Orwell couldn't have concocted. We're moving into it, and it's not the only case. if you read the technical journals, there's more stuff coming along. So, for example, right now there are corporations that are concerned about using computers with components made in China, because it's technically possible to build into the hardware devices which will record what the computer is doing and send it to those bad guys. well, the articles don't point out that if the Chinese can do it, we can do it better, and probably are, so it may end up in Obama's database the next time you hit the computer. -- Noam Chomsky That was located at http://grittv.org/?video=noam-chomsky-on-secret-trade-deals-killing-polio-workers-fighting-for-the-commons-in-turkey-the-heroism-of-bradley-manning http://grittv.org/?video=noam-chomsky-on-secret-trade-deals-... but that site is dead and directs somewhere else. Don't click. I transcribed it 7 years ago, I can't prove that, but if seriously challenged I would go try looking for another source. My point is, that's not some old man who doesn't understand technology. He understands it better than the people who are used to make it. And did you catch what he called Google Glass? "a way of destroying people" That's not exaggeration, that's cutting right to the heart of the matter.
• mikorym 6y ago
  Not sure if this helps, but Thinkst is a South African company that provides "security services". Maybe they mean that most security providers didn't see it coming. Some people would think that the NSA are part of the set of security providers and hence, in a way, it's not that you don't see something coming, it's simply that you don't see them as the aggressor. If you change from the topic of "computer security" to "nuclear weapons" then perhaps you can see how intelligence gathering, obfuscation and subterfuge is perhaps not an inherently offensive thing. For nuclear weapons, I think the only objective is to prevent nuclear explosions. Some people think the US's role is to stop nuclear war; some people think the US is part of the problem. My personal take on the topic is that Snowden's main role was to challenge the idea that the NSA is keeping the peace.
• cue_the_strings 6y ago
  I first heard about this as a kid in 1999. I didn't even have internet back then (only got it in year 2000), and my country had just been bombed by NATO (your regular bombing campaign sprinkled with bombing civilians, as is tradition) and was lead by Slobodan fucking Milošević (a colossal piece of shit), so all kinds of conspiracies were flying around, everything was disinformation, and I didn't put much weight on this story even though my parents discussed it with friends several times during the next decade, which is why I remember it. My parents' friend who had lived in New Zealand for a decade at that point came to the country to bury his father and was over at our house for dinner. He's an electrical engineer and used to work for a telco in New Zealand. He had heard about this ECHELON thing from multiple colleagues and found it plausible enough to talk about. He was told that all internet and phone traffic was being recorded realtime. Mind you, this was pre-9/11, so no 'terrorist threats'. The world ran on shitty computers and expensive storage and voice in any form (even compressed telephony) was considered bulky at the time. And this is 15 years prior to the machine learning boom, voice transcription was really bad, I still doubt it was used at that point, even though he mentioned it. But he had witnessed an expansion of fiber and datacenter capacity sometime in 1997-99 and it seemed plausible to him (a real serious and professional guy). Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be true. I mean, the story slowly became less and less far fetched over the following decade, but was still a total surprise when Snowden blew the whistle.