8 ms·

I love how the politicians presume NSA is safe partner and their danish citizens are not in the data. It does not really help if every other neighbouring count

I love how the politicians presume NSA is safe partner and their danish citizens are not in the data. It does not really help if every other neighbouring country does the same. NSA will get danish info elsewhere. Everyone gets played. It works as long as USA is an trusthworthy ally. They wouldn't dare to abuse the information for private gains... right?

vinay427 6y ago
This doesn't even need to be a specifically anti-US thing. I think countries should generally not trust other countries that don't have a strong and nearly binding interest in their stability, security, prosperity, etc. In a close multinational union like the EU, one could argue that this is currently the case, or perhaps with closely-tied countries like Australia and New Zealand. It becomes harder to justify as you move down the line, even if the US is far from an enemy of the aforementioned places. Consequently, in the other direction I don't think the US should necessarily trust Germany with sensitive data, or Switzerland should trust Canada, etc. EDIT for clarity.
- op03 6y ago
  That is exactly what I do. Today in fact, I got my Postman to sign an affidavit that he has "a strong and nearly binding interest in my stability, security, prosperity, etc".
aliceryhl 6y ago
Are you sure? I find it very convincing that NSA would not betray the trust, as it also says in the article. > "I can not at all imagine in my imagination that the NSA would betray that trust. I consider it completely and utterly unlikely. If the NSA had a desire to obtain information about Danish citizens or companies, the United States would simply turn to [the domestic security service] PET, which would then provide the necessary legal basis." I definitely think it would make more sense to give up on using the system on the citizens of a single small country, in exchange for not risking the extensive access to citizens of many other countries, including China and Russia. If they want to investigate danes, they still have all their other methods at disposal.
- colordrops 6y ago
  A statement is not a scientific fact. The head of the NSA lied to the American public about their extra-legal monitoring. What has changed since the Snowden revelations? Why would Danes be more respected by the NSA than US citizens themselves? This makes absolutely no logical sense.
  - chiefalchemist 6y ago
    To your point, the IC trades in misinformation and distraction as much as it trades in truth and fact. When any of those acronyms make a statement it's fitting to wonder if there's a broader arc, a bigger picture. Their responsibilities and mission are clear. There are no style points. They'll do whatever it takes to accomplish that mission. History is very clear about this M.O.
    - colordrops 6y ago
      An interesting thing is no one is willing to say "lies" anymore. It's always "misinformation" because it gives the perpetrator a way out to claim it wasn't intentional. The NSA and CIA do LIE.
  - aliceryhl 6y ago
    This has nothing to do with scientific fact? It's about risk/reward for NSA. If Denmark finds out that they were deliberately using the system on Danish citizens, the NSA risks losing access to the system. Not taking that risk in exchange for having to use other methods to investigate Danes sounds like a perfectly reasonable risk/reward calculation from the NSA's point of view, especially considering how small Denmark is. I mean, sure, they can lie about it, but that always carries a risk of being found out. Especially considering it sounds like from the article that FE can see who the NSA is searching for (and even has to approve the search queries).
- lgl 6y ago
  > (...) NSA would not betray the trust (...) While I find the above quote hilarious, you're probably right since the article also hints that they have a similar setup in Germany and most likely also in Sweden, Norway and many other surrounding countries. And since most of their comms probably also go through those, they'll just eavesdrop on the next hop and bypass all that trust and save themselves any potential political repercussions.
seppin 6y ago
> abuse the information for private gains What do you think intelligence is?
- HenryKissinger 6y ago
  "Intelligence is probably the least understood and the most misrepresented of the professions. One reason for this was well expressed by President Kennedy when, on November 18, 1961, he came out to inaugurate the new CIA Headquarters Building and to say good-bye to me as Director. He then remarked: 'Your successes are unheralded, your failures are trumpeted.' For obviously you cannot tell of operatives that go along well. Those that go badly generally speak for themselves. The President then added a word of encouragement to the several thousand men and women of CIA: '...but I am sure you realize how important is your work, how essential it is - and in the long sweep of history how significant your efforts will be judged. So I do want to express my appreciation to you now, and I am confident that in the future you will continue to merit the appreciation of your country, as you have in the past.' It is hardly reasonable to expect proper understanding and support for intelligence work in this country if it is only the insiders, a few people within the executive and legislative branches, who know anything whatever about the CIA. Others continue to draw their knowledge from the so-called inside stories by writers who have never been on the inside." - Allen W. Dulles, 'The Craft of Intelligence'
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    > Dulles One gets the impression his claim that all the CIA's successes are secret is a lie. Because there never were any. You would thing 50 years after the man kicked it that at least something would be come out. Not really surprising. If you look at how successful organizations are structured the CIA is not that.
    - seppin 6y ago
      > One gets the impression his claim that all the CIA's successes are secret is a lie. Because there never were any Who do you think fought and won the cold war, Seal Team Six?
markus_zhang 6y ago
If you model human society within the class structure then a lot of stuffs begin to make sense.
enkid 6y ago
Are you looking for more oversight than is expressed in the article? It says the Danes check to make sure what the NSA searches for on that system does not include Danish citizen identifiers.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  The data used by XKEYSCORE is stored on multiple servers, including the NSA's long term storage servers. How could the Danes be certain the NSA wasn't conducting searches from some cache they do not have access to? At the end of the day, this will rely on trusting the NSA despite their dubious history.
- sneak 6y ago
  The very concept that people should have their basic human right to privacy protected or denied based on the happenstance of their location of birth is insanity. Governments that gate human rights on nationality are fundamentally amoral, and should never be trusted to self-regulate.
  - enkid 6y ago
    What's the alternative?
- nelaboras 6y ago
  Part of the Snowden revelations was that the German BND was also granting this access. The NSA sent so many keywords that the BND basically stopped checking, and looking at it in an investigative committee of the german parliament they found a massive amount of clear domestic espiomlnage (keywords like 'Siemens' or product/technology names). Basically the BND was too incompetent to realise they were enabling US espionage on their own companies. Insane but true. You could and should blame the BND but honestly what kind of partner is the NSA if you can't even trust them on such basic level? Even more surprising that DK hasn't been paying attention to any of that apparently...
amoshi 6y ago
As I have pointed out in a comment some time ago [0], there have been multiple instances where US (ab)used their intelligence for economic gains - be it getting a US company to file a patent (that the NSA "obtained") before the German company who actually came up with the idea does, or subverting Airbus so contracts go to Boeing. [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24546046 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24546046
DethNinja 6y ago
https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/960011/trans-atlantic-espionage-claimed-german-wind-company https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/960011/trans-atlant... They already abuse this, I would even go as far and say that huge portion of data collection is just for industrial espionage to prop up government backed companies. If you are developing a novel algorithm or even a different approach to AI then you should absolutely setup an offline work office otherwise either USA or China will take your work and give it to a government backed company. It also doesn’t matter if your company is located in the USA or if you are an American citizen, so long as you don’t have governmental connections, you have to be 100% more careful as game is pretty much rigged.
- ficklepickle 6y ago
  speaks into wrist: Target identified.
eeZah7Ux 6y ago
> the politicians presume NSA is safe partner Do you have any evidence to make this claim? Or perhaps politicians are the experts at both telling and detecting lies and manipulations? Maybe they know the risks very well and yet chose their own personal interest e.g. non making enemies of the US...
ilyagr 6y ago
I don't think people are that naive. The reason for that arrangement is simply that it is only necessary for the NSA to collaborate with one Danish intelligence agency (foreign intelligence, which is probably forbidden from spying on Danes), rather than two (foreign and domestic). In a larger sense, the arrangement might, to a degree, defeat the purpose of having separate foreign and domestic intelligence agencies, but that is a more abstract notion. I guess we'll see what the Danish public will think or do about.

vinay427 6y ago

This doesn't even need to be a specifically anti-US thing. I think countries should generally not trust other countries that don't have a strong and nearly binding interest in their stability, security, prosperity, etc. In a close multinational union like the EU, one could argue that this is currently the case, or perhaps with closely-tied countries like Australia and New Zealand. It becomes harder to justify as you move down the line, even if the US is far from an enemy of the aforementioned places. Consequently, in the other direction I don't think the US should necessarily trust Germany with sensitive data, or Switzerland should trust Canada, etc. EDIT for clarity.

op03 6y ago
That is exactly what I do. Today in fact, I got my Postman to sign an affidavit that he has "a strong and nearly binding interest in my stability, security, prosperity, etc".

aliceryhl 6y ago

Are you sure? I find it very convincing that NSA would not betray the trust, as it also says in the article. > "I can not at all imagine in my imagination that the NSA would betray that trust. I consider it completely and utterly unlikely. If the NSA had a desire to obtain information about Danish citizens or companies, the United States would simply turn to [the domestic security service] PET, which would then provide the necessary legal basis." I definitely think it would make more sense to give up on using the system on the citizens of a single small country, in exchange for not risking the extensive access to citizens of many other countries, including China and Russia. If they want to investigate danes, they still have all their other methods at disposal.

colordrops 6y ago
A statement is not a scientific fact. The head of the NSA lied to the American public about their extra-legal monitoring. What has changed since the Snowden revelations? Why would Danes be more respected by the NSA than US citizens themselves? This makes absolutely no logical sense.
- chiefalchemist 6y ago
  To your point, the IC trades in misinformation and distraction as much as it trades in truth and fact. When any of those acronyms make a statement it's fitting to wonder if there's a broader arc, a bigger picture. Their responsibilities and mission are clear. There are no style points. They'll do whatever it takes to accomplish that mission. History is very clear about this M.O.
  - colordrops 6y ago
    An interesting thing is no one is willing to say "lies" anymore. It's always "misinformation" because it gives the perpetrator a way out to claim it wasn't intentional. The NSA and CIA do LIE.
- aliceryhl 6y ago
  This has nothing to do with scientific fact? It's about risk/reward for NSA. If Denmark finds out that they were deliberately using the system on Danish citizens, the NSA risks losing access to the system. Not taking that risk in exchange for having to use other methods to investigate Danes sounds like a perfectly reasonable risk/reward calculation from the NSA's point of view, especially considering how small Denmark is. I mean, sure, they can lie about it, but that always carries a risk of being found out. Especially considering it sounds like from the article that FE can see who the NSA is searching for (and even has to approve the search queries).
lgl 6y ago
> (...) NSA would not betray the trust (...) While I find the above quote hilarious, you're probably right since the article also hints that they have a similar setup in Germany and most likely also in Sweden, Norway and many other surrounding countries. And since most of their comms probably also go through those, they'll just eavesdrop on the next hop and bypass all that trust and save themselves any potential political repercussions.

seppin 6y ago

> abuse the information for private gains What do you think intelligence is?

HenryKissinger 6y ago
"Intelligence is probably the least understood and the most misrepresented of the professions. One reason for this was well expressed by President Kennedy when, on November 18, 1961, he came out to inaugurate the new CIA Headquarters Building and to say good-bye to me as Director. He then remarked: 'Your successes are unheralded, your failures are trumpeted.' For obviously you cannot tell of operatives that go along well. Those that go badly generally speak for themselves. The President then added a word of encouragement to the several thousand men and women of CIA: '...but I am sure you realize how important is your work, how essential it is - and in the long sweep of history how significant your efforts will be judged. So I do want to express my appreciation to you now, and I am confident that in the future you will continue to merit the appreciation of your country, as you have in the past.' It is hardly reasonable to expect proper understanding and support for intelligence work in this country if it is only the insiders, a few people within the executive and legislative branches, who know anything whatever about the CIA. Others continue to draw their knowledge from the so-called inside stories by writers who have never been on the inside." - Allen W. Dulles, 'The Craft of Intelligence'
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  > Dulles One gets the impression his claim that all the CIA's successes are secret is a lie. Because there never were any. You would thing 50 years after the man kicked it that at least something would be come out. Not really surprising. If you look at how successful organizations are structured the CIA is not that.
  - seppin 6y ago
    > One gets the impression his claim that all the CIA's successes are secret is a lie. Because there never were any Who do you think fought and won the cold war, Seal Team Six?

markus_zhang 6y ago

If you model human society within the class structure then a lot of stuffs begin to make sense.

enkid 6y ago

Are you looking for more oversight than is expressed in the article? It says the Danes check to make sure what the NSA searches for on that system does not include Danish citizen identifiers.

boomboomsubban 6y ago
The data used by XKEYSCORE is stored on multiple servers, including the NSA's long term storage servers. How could the Danes be certain the NSA wasn't conducting searches from some cache they do not have access to? At the end of the day, this will rely on trusting the NSA despite their dubious history.
sneak 6y ago
The very concept that people should have their basic human right to privacy protected or denied based on the happenstance of their location of birth is insanity. Governments that gate human rights on nationality are fundamentally amoral, and should never be trusted to self-regulate.
- enkid 6y ago
  What's the alternative?
nelaboras 6y ago
Part of the Snowden revelations was that the German BND was also granting this access. The NSA sent so many keywords that the BND basically stopped checking, and looking at it in an investigative committee of the german parliament they found a massive amount of clear domestic espiomlnage (keywords like 'Siemens' or product/technology names). Basically the BND was too incompetent to realise they were enabling US espionage on their own companies. Insane but true. You could and should blame the BND but honestly what kind of partner is the NSA if you can't even trust them on such basic level? Even more surprising that DK hasn't been paying attention to any of that apparently...

amoshi 6y ago

As I have pointed out in a comment some time ago [0], there have been multiple instances where US (ab)used their intelligence for economic gains - be it getting a US company to file a patent (that the NSA "obtained") before the German company who actually came up with the idea does, or subverting Airbus so contracts go to Boeing. [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24546046 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24546046

DethNinja 6y ago

https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/960011/trans-atlantic-espionage-claimed-german-wind-company https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/960011/trans-atlant... They already abuse this, I would even go as far and say that huge portion of data collection is just for industrial espionage to prop up government backed companies. If you are developing a novel algorithm or even a different approach to AI then you should absolutely setup an offline work office otherwise either USA or China will take your work and give it to a government backed company. It also doesn’t matter if your company is located in the USA or if you are an American citizen, so long as you don’t have governmental connections, you have to be 100% more careful as game is pretty much rigged.

ficklepickle 6y ago
speaks into wrist: Target identified.

eeZah7Ux 6y ago

> the politicians presume NSA is safe partner Do you have any evidence to make this claim? Or perhaps politicians are the experts at both telling and detecting lies and manipulations? Maybe they know the risks very well and yet chose their own personal interest e.g. non making enemies of the US...

ilyagr 6y ago

I don't think people are that naive. The reason for that arrangement is simply that it is only necessary for the NSA to collaborate with one Danish intelligence agency (foreign intelligence, which is probably forbidden from spying on Danes), rather than two (foreign and domestic). In a larger sense, the arrangement might, to a degree, defeat the purpose of having separate foreign and domestic intelligence agencies, but that is a more abstract notion. I guess we'll see what the Danish public will think or do about.