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It's classic, fighting the last war, for the "security" agencies. They think that by surveilling their own people they can protect the politicians. What they ha

by kurthr 5y ago

It's classic, fighting the last war, for the "security" agencies. They think that by surveilling their own people they can protect the politicians. What they have in fact done is collected huge dossiers on their public (and gov employees), which can be compromised and used by foreign powers for targeted misinformation, agitprop, and blackmail. They are the weakest link. Since the rise of PGP and fall of key-escrow it has become more and more clear that spreading free (ussurveilled) communication between individuals and businesses was necessary to the operation of capitalist democracies. However, they can't give up their dreams of controlling their own populations so they will cede them to competing totalitarian states, which already know how to control their populations and can well afford to breach such "security".

marcosdumay 5y ago
> They think that by surveilling their own people they can protect the politicians. That idea is so outrageously stupid that no, I don't believe they think that. Every one of those intelligence agencies are perfectly aware they are collecting dossiers on their public (with emphasis to gov employees) that can be used to compromise the administration and coerce people into doing illegal or immoral acts. You just got the wrong adversary in mind.
- kurthr 5y ago
  Wow, you really think they are either completely treasonous or utterly incompetent? If they wanted to surveil their own (as presumably some do), they wouldn't need to compromise standard coms protocols. It's not collecting the dossiers... it's that they are the weak link, whether they like it or not.
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    > Wow, you really think they are either completely treasonous or utterly incompetent? Well, any other one would require that people on the intelligence community, whose work consists mostly on either using dossiers to compromise people or avoiding the creation of dossiers so people aren't compromised to not noticing that they are collecting a dossier on every citizen or not being aware that will lead to people being compromised... and incompetence or dishonesty not being involved.

by kurthr 5y ago

marcosdumay 5y ago

> They think that by surveilling their own people they can protect the politicians. That idea is so outrageously stupid that no, I don't believe they think that. Every one of those intelligence agencies are perfectly aware they are collecting dossiers on their public (with emphasis to gov employees) that can be used to compromise the administration and coerce people into doing illegal or immoral acts. You just got the wrong adversary in mind.

kurthr 5y ago
Wow, you really think they are either completely treasonous or utterly incompetent? If they wanted to surveil their own (as presumably some do), they wouldn't need to compromise standard coms protocols. It's not collecting the dossiers... it's that they are the weak link, whether they like it or not.
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  > Wow, you really think they are either completely treasonous or utterly incompetent? Well, any other one would require that people on the intelligence community, whose work consists mostly on either using dossiers to compromise people or avoiding the creation of dossiers so people aren't compromised to not noticing that they are collecting a dossier on every citizen or not being aware that will lead to people being compromised... and incompetence or dishonesty not being involved.