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I was surprised to see, in the 1999 email you linked, that NSA mass surveillance was already widely known, before the NSA ramp up from 9/11 and before the Snowd
by aarchi 6y ago
I was surprised to see, in the 1999 email you linked, that NSA mass surveillance was already widely known, before the NSA ramp up from 9/11 and before the Snowden disclosures.
> Actually, I don't think of the NSA's plots to deny everyone but themselves (and those they dub worthy) access to strong un-GAKed commercial cryptography as a conspiracy, per se. NSA officials acted upon a fairly open if Byzantine strategy. It was hatched by men who obviously believe that Western liberal society is best safeguarded if the US can continue to gleen the benefits of the huge passive eavesdropping net that has for decades sustained America's geo-political dominance.
- dleslie 6y agoAt the time ECHELON was well-known among hacker and conspiracy circles, and it was making big news overseas due to major disclosures by partner governments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON
- walrus01 6y agoJames Bamford wrote a lot of books on the nsa before 9/11.
- q-big 6y ago> I was surprised to see, in the 1999 email you linked, that NSA mass surveillance was already widely known, before the NSA ramp up from 9/11 and before the Snowden disclosures. Exactly. But before the Snowden leaks hardly anyone in the mainstream believed or listened to these "conspiracist" hacker/cypherpunk dudes.
- mimimi31 6y agoI recently rewatched the movie "Enemy of the State" from 1998. Money quotes: >The government's been in bed with the entire telecommunications industry since the forties. They've infected everything. They get into your bank statements, computer files, email, listen to your phone calls... Every wire, every airwave. The more technology used, the easier it is for them to keep tabs on you. It's a brave new world out there. >Fort Meade has 18 acres of mainframe computers underground. You're talking to your wife on the phone and you use the word "bomb", "president", "Allah", any of a hundred keywords, the computer recognizes it, automatically records it, red-flags it for analysis. That was 20 years ago.
- Klonoar 6y agoIf you want a “spiritual predecessor”, go watch “The Conversation”. Amazing film.
- gerikson 6y agoI've been aware of the Emacs function 'spook'[1] since the late 90s. Here's a current output from `M-x spook` on my machine: > Europol BATF bluebird secure Narco banners Blister agent BVD fraud SADMS UKUSA mania weapons of mass destruction Virii EDI Bin Laden [1] https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Mail-Amusements.html https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Ma...
- tmp538394722 6y ago> The idea is that if lots of people add suspicious words to their messages, the agencies will get so busy with spurious input that they will have to give up reading it all. Wow - so quaint!
- bananapub 6y agoit was widely known that they were At It, but things like "they undetectably tap fibres" or "AT&T would allow mass tee-ing of traffic" were considered a bit fringe-y, in my recollection. and of course turned out to be true and not even in the most extreme of their operations.
- jhart99 6y agoHere is a little background on one of those fringe theories that turned out to be true. Not pre-9/11, but pre-Snowden. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A