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I'm a little confused about what's actually going on here. >The tool, called Augury, is developed by cybersecurity firm Team Cymru and bundles a massive amount

I'm a little confused about what's actually going on here. >The tool, called Augury, is developed by cybersecurity firm Team Cymru and bundles a massive amount of data together and makes it available to government and corporate customers as a paid service. So they just bought the data? Why couldn't they just ... ask for it from NSA, for free? Is there some legal distinction here that prevents them from getting it from already-running government snooping activities? I suspect that's the case, and is probably the real story here ... DoD circumventing the spirit of some rule or regulation and buying the data direct from brokers. Side note: it bugs me when articles about the military feature a stock photo of someone in uniform and the uniform is all sorts of wrong. Makes me skeptical of the accuracy in the rest of the reporting.

scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
I remember this being discussed somewhere on HN or Metafilter before. There was this bit where someone was explaining how surveillance efforts are extremely bureaucratized and disjointed across countless departments and entities. So, depending on the objective, it can be much more difficult to get something from someone else in a different government organization through official channels than it would be to just spend money on buying the info through the private sector. And this makes sense when you think about it. Like yeah, the NSA has everything locked away somewhere but the limitations on giving access to that are probably very serious. When you’re a smaller guy in some other government or corporate organization and you’re on a fishing expedition for some lower level routine investigation, you’re probably not going to be asking your boss or higher ups for the most expensive solution to your problem. And yeah - the stock photo is just lazy.
- remarkEon 4y ago
  Totally. A mapping of this bureaucracy to see how e.g. the Department of the Navy is being blocked was what I was hoping for in this article. We so often hear about the terrible controls that exist within USG for surveillance, and in parallel how the vast bureaucracy makes USG horribly inefficient and wasteful and so on. Bureaucracy as a feature to prevent (literally) unwarranted state surveillance, circumvented by the accessibility provided by surveillance capitalism. That’s a story, would read.
pydry 4y ago
Interservice rivalry, probably.
- remarkEon 4y ago
  Possibly, yes. Hadn’t considered that.

scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago

I remember this being discussed somewhere on HN or Metafilter before. There was this bit where someone was explaining how surveillance efforts are extremely bureaucratized and disjointed across countless departments and entities. So, depending on the objective, it can be much more difficult to get something from someone else in a different government organization through official channels than it would be to just spend money on buying the info through the private sector. And this makes sense when you think about it. Like yeah, the NSA has everything locked away somewhere but the limitations on giving access to that are probably very serious. When you’re a smaller guy in some other government or corporate organization and you’re on a fishing expedition for some lower level routine investigation, you’re probably not going to be asking your boss or higher ups for the most expensive solution to your problem. And yeah - the stock photo is just lazy.

remarkEon 4y ago
Totally. A mapping of this bureaucracy to see how e.g. the Department of the Navy is being blocked was what I was hoping for in this article. We so often hear about the terrible controls that exist within USG for surveillance, and in parallel how the vast bureaucracy makes USG horribly inefficient and wasteful and so on. Bureaucracy as a feature to prevent (literally) unwarranted state surveillance, circumvented by the accessibility provided by surveillance capitalism. That’s a story, would read.

pydry 4y ago

Interservice rivalry, probably.

remarkEon 4y ago
Possibly, yes. Hadn’t considered that.