8 ms·

define "the government" -- who and what exactly is controlling this supposed policy?

smoldesu 4y ago
Well, I guess the NSA makes the most sense. They've been integrated into the corporate structure of FAANG for over a decade now, and they're the primary government entity making demands over this stuff. The who is a lot harder to track down - maybe there is a Wizard of Oz hiding behind one of our administrative curtains, but I think it's more of a bureaucratic process. Judging by what we know about America's surveillance infrastructure (eg. XKeyscore, Tempora, Boundless Informant), it would make sense if most of this software is developed in-house and then passed off to FAANG to implement and obfuscate. Again, all of this is conjecture. There's a lot of strangeness that surrounds the US intelligence agencies though, so I'm inclined to make some sense of it.
- hunter-gatherer 4y ago
  I'm sure I'll get downvoted for this and not believed by hardly anyone on this crowd so I'll keep it short and without evidence, only testimony: I was a US intelligence officer for some time. Not woth NSA, but did a lot of work with NSA, CIA, and the Bureau. The involvement between the US intelligence agencies and FAANG (in terms of the rough narrative involved) is a lot less impressive and threatening than people here suppose. The reality is that the US government hires some smart people to solve hard problems. When the problems get harder, they higher more smart people. The costs arent completely opaque, either. So at the end of the FY the costs get seen by elected officials and actions get justified and legally scrutinized. As it turns out, the US government is a lot less interested in spying on people who aren't threats to the state, and the intelligence agencies have to be judicial in who they target, because there are limited resources for such activities. The US intelligence service is also a bureaucracy, and people seem to forget that. Just because something is "secret" doesn't mean it is romantic or Bornesque. Context: I have not held a TS clearance or been employed with the US government nor contractor for a little over 3 years.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    I won't downvote you, but I have a really hard time believing you (and prefer to entertain the possibility you didn't have complete insight into the intelligence agencies). Thank you for replying though, it's interesting to hear alternate perspectives on the topic!
    - Wiring8490 4y ago
      Bleh. I'll use up a spare account. hunter-gatherer sounds about right on the money. I've previously held a TS SCI clearance within an organization. I wasn't an S-2 guy, but worked with them and troubleshot stuff in the SCIF from time-to-time. I did some auditing in well-known buildings, blah blah blah. Basically, the more secretive things get, the more bureaucratic and tedious they get. The more impossibly hard it is to do literally anything without at least 5 or 6 meetings to discuss the poteintal outcomes and risks therein. I suppose when you get to the kinds of things POTUS wants done right now, it could get weird? I don't know, never been in that position. But the amount of oversight and auditing that gets done by people that refuse to do anything that could risk their retirement? It is excessive. At more than a few points I found myself "preparing for the pre-inspection, inspection." That inspection, which would happen however often, was essentially always happening. You were either "learning from the last one" or you were "cleaning up for the next one". Just absolutely soul crushing. I should also mention, even though some of the words I used above might sound interesting, it really comes down to carpeting. Carpeting sucks everywhere in the government. They can spend tons of cash on stupid meeting room tables for conference calls or whatever, but the thing you walk and stand on is just absolutely awful. Except in an executive officers office. The office that goes completely unused because they're out doing...whatever it is they do. Golf? Lunch? Who knows. Once you notice the little things like that, or light fixtures just looking like trash, you realize that all of the magical ideas people have about the big scary government is just kind of...quaint. Like things can be important or sensitive or whatever, but it's just not the way people imagine it being. It's too bogged down in the mud to be what people think it is. Getting basic things like light fixtures changed out becomes a major hassle because, if it requires a dude on a ladder, now that dude on a ladder also has to have a clearance, and the room has to be sanitized. Don't forget to turn on the red light, so no one forgets that there is a guy up on that ladder! Getting one bulb changed can interrupt your work for at least an hour or two. It's insane. Like, we had one cleaning lady. For a building of...a lot of people. Everyone loved her and treated her great. Do you know why that was? (Well, she was totally awesome and nice. But besides that.) It was because if she quit, there would be no one to replace her. That would mean every desk jockey in the building would be lugging their trash to the locked dumpster halfway across the parking lot in the hot sun. Then have to go through all of the fun stuff that goes with getting through the front door. They treated her like royalty! Right before I left, they did actually get some young guy in there. If I had to guess, they went with him because they were hoping he would stick around for at least two to three decades.
- ailef 4y ago
  Do you have any suggested readings to know more about this topic?
r3trohack3r 4y ago
I mean... It's pervasive? Many elected officials across both parties in the United States have advanced the surveillance state and have passed legislation at the behest of 3 letter agencies. Of the last 4 presidents, 3 were pretty involved with advancing it: Bush, Obama, and Biden. I don't know if Trump did anything to advance the surveillance state. Bush+Cheney did the PSP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President%27s_Surveillance_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President%27s_Surveillance_Pro... The courts found that unconstitutional: https://www.aaup.org/brief/aclu-v-nsa-493-f3d-644-6th-cir-2007 https://www.aaup.org/brief/aclu-v-nsa-493-f3d-644-6th-cir-20... Obama publicly condemned the Patriot Act, but extended it in 2015: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_Freedom_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_Freedom_Act Meanwhile Obama's VP (Joseph Biden) claims to have written the Patriot Act: https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4876107/user-clip-joe-biden-wrote-patriot-act https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4876107/user-clip-joe-biden-w... In '91, the FBI got Joseph Biden to introduce a bill banning encrypted cellphone calls in the United States (Subtitle B: Electronic Communications): https://www.congress.gov/bill/102nd-congress/senate-bill/266 https://www.congress.gov/bill/102nd-congress/senate-bill/266 This move by Joseph Biden was condemned by the founder of the EFF: https://www.eff.org/pages/decrypting-puzzle-palace https://www.eff.org/pages/decrypting-puzzle-palace You can watch a gaggle of senators from both parties go to bat defending the PSP in 2013 here: https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/hearings/open-hearing-fisa-legislation https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/hearings/open-hearing-fi... After the PSP was found to be unconstitutional, you can watch another gaggle of senators from both parties go to bat defending the PSP in 2017 here: https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/hearings/open-hearing-fisa-legislation-0 https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/hearings/open-hearing-fi... A notable quote from the above video from Senator Wyden suggests the 3 letter agencies are harvesting location data in mass from cellphone towers. You see surveillance legislation move forward with support from both parties - often under the guise of protecting children or stopping terrorists. It's not a stretch to connect the dots between our 3 letter agencies working with legislators in the background to advance the surveillance state, and those legislators simultaneously working with MAANG on multiple fronts, to assume there is some level of crossover with the surveillance agenda. It would be more unreasonable to assume they keep their surveillance objectives isolated from their interactions with industry after the Snowden revelations - which showed us that they absolutely worked with industry to collect PII of U.S. citizens in mass.
concinds 4y ago
There's no conspiracy. Mostly think tanks, policy circles, and White House wonks over every successive Internet-age administration. All segments of the U.S. government pay close attention to, among many people, geopolitical analysis of all stripes, who can help them understand how to remain the world hegemon. The U.S. frequently commissions studies by outfits like Booz Allen Hamilton on geopolitical matters (you can browse the "DoD Reading Room" to read plenty of the these thanks to FOIA requests[0]). "Breaking them up would hurt the U.S." isn't just a lobbyist argument, it's deeply understood at all levels of the government. The White House absolutely understands that Silicon Valley is part of the U.S.'s soft power, draws plenty of international students to the U.S., and helps the U.S.'s cultural hegemony. It's not just about the most popular social networks and search engine "belonging to them" (though that's obviously important, and an advantage no rational nation would give up); Google and Meta's R&D spending are also huge elements of the U.S.'s "artificial intelligence dominance" over China, and the U.S. will never break them up simply because it sees AI-dominance as one of the most important elements of its geopolitical strategy. It's easy to get the impression that the government mostly deals with domestic politics; but at its root, it is deeply and overwhelmingly concerned with fundamental strategic questions. The government cares deeply about U.S. universities remaining the world's best; about immigration remaining high (Republican administrations too) so that it can attract as much skilled labor as possible, grow the economy, compete with China's 1.4B population, and avoid an aging population that would decimate the economy for decades. Policy debates "inside the government" bear very little resemblence to the TV version the American citizenry is obsessed with. [0]: see, for example, "The Future of Europe", a 177 page evaluation of Europe's future economic, industrial, demographic, and political trends. https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/FOID/Reading%20Room/Litigation_Release/Litigation%20Release%20-%20The%20Future%20of%20Europe-Final%20Report%20%20201304.pdf https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/FOID/Reading%20... After you read it, you'll understand that the "policy debates" the masses are exposed to have very little resemblence with what preoccupies decisionmakers! The government, no matter the administration, is far more rigorous and strategic than people give it credit for.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  The most maddening thing is how little other governments seem to care about it it. Forcing windows, android, and ios on your citizens and gifting silicon valley a constant worldwide surveillance feed is incredibly harmful to long term interests. Forcing every business to use office365 to interact with any government office is a 1% income tax gifted to the american economy.

Well, I guess the NSA makes the most sense. They've been integrated into the corporate structure of FAANG for over a decade now, and they're the primary government entity making demands over this stuff. The who is a lot harder to track down - maybe there is a Wizard of Oz hiding behind one of our administrative curtains, but I think it's more of a bureaucratic process. Judging by what we know about America's surveillance infrastructure (eg. XKeyscore, Tempora, Boundless Informant), it would make sense if most of this software is developed in-house and then passed off to FAANG to implement and obfuscate. Again, all of this is conjecture. There's a lot of strangeness that surrounds the US intelligence agencies though, so I'm inclined to make some sense of it.

hunter-gatherer 4y ago
I'm sure I'll get downvoted for this and not believed by hardly anyone on this crowd so I'll keep it short and without evidence, only testimony: I was a US intelligence officer for some time. Not woth NSA, but did a lot of work with NSA, CIA, and the Bureau. The involvement between the US intelligence agencies and FAANG (in terms of the rough narrative involved) is a lot less impressive and threatening than people here suppose. The reality is that the US government hires some smart people to solve hard problems. When the problems get harder, they higher more smart people. The costs arent completely opaque, either. So at the end of the FY the costs get seen by elected officials and actions get justified and legally scrutinized. As it turns out, the US government is a lot less interested in spying on people who aren't threats to the state, and the intelligence agencies have to be judicial in who they target, because there are limited resources for such activities. The US intelligence service is also a bureaucracy, and people seem to forget that. Just because something is "secret" doesn't mean it is romantic or Bornesque. Context: I have not held a TS clearance or been employed with the US government nor contractor for a little over 3 years.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  I won't downvote you, but I have a really hard time believing you (and prefer to entertain the possibility you didn't have complete insight into the intelligence agencies). Thank you for replying though, it's interesting to hear alternate perspectives on the topic!
  - Wiring8490 4y ago
    Bleh. I'll use up a spare account. hunter-gatherer sounds about right on the money. I've previously held a TS SCI clearance within an organization. I wasn't an S-2 guy, but worked with them and troubleshot stuff in the SCIF from time-to-time. I did some auditing in well-known buildings, blah blah blah. Basically, the more secretive things get, the more bureaucratic and tedious they get. The more impossibly hard it is to do literally anything without at least 5 or 6 meetings to discuss the poteintal outcomes and risks therein. I suppose when you get to the kinds of things POTUS wants done right now, it could get weird? I don't know, never been in that position. But the amount of oversight and auditing that gets done by people that refuse to do anything that could risk their retirement? It is excessive. At more than a few points I found myself "preparing for the pre-inspection, inspection." That inspection, which would happen however often, was essentially always happening. You were either "learning from the last one" or you were "cleaning up for the next one". Just absolutely soul crushing. I should also mention, even though some of the words I used above might sound interesting, it really comes down to carpeting. Carpeting sucks everywhere in the government. They can spend tons of cash on stupid meeting room tables for conference calls or whatever, but the thing you walk and stand on is just absolutely awful. Except in an executive officers office. The office that goes completely unused because they're out doing...whatever it is they do. Golf? Lunch? Who knows. Once you notice the little things like that, or light fixtures just looking like trash, you realize that all of the magical ideas people have about the big scary government is just kind of...quaint. Like things can be important or sensitive or whatever, but it's just not the way people imagine it being. It's too bogged down in the mud to be what people think it is. Getting basic things like light fixtures changed out becomes a major hassle because, if it requires a dude on a ladder, now that dude on a ladder also has to have a clearance, and the room has to be sanitized. Don't forget to turn on the red light, so no one forgets that there is a guy up on that ladder! Getting one bulb changed can interrupt your work for at least an hour or two. It's insane. Like, we had one cleaning lady. For a building of...a lot of people. Everyone loved her and treated her great. Do you know why that was? (Well, she was totally awesome and nice. But besides that.) It was because if she quit, there would be no one to replace her. That would mean every desk jockey in the building would be lugging their trash to the locked dumpster halfway across the parking lot in the hot sun. Then have to go through all of the fun stuff that goes with getting through the front door. They treated her like royalty! Right before I left, they did actually get some young guy in there. If I had to guess, they went with him because they were hoping he would stick around for at least two to three decades.
ailef 4y ago
Do you have any suggested readings to know more about this topic?

r3trohack3r 4y ago

I mean... It's pervasive? Many elected officials across both parties in the United States have advanced the surveillance state and have passed legislation at the behest of 3 letter agencies. Of the last 4 presidents, 3 were pretty involved with advancing it: Bush, Obama, and Biden. I don't know if Trump did anything to advance the surveillance state. Bush+Cheney did the PSP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President%27s_Surveillance_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President%27s_Surveillance_Pro... The courts found that unconstitutional: https://www.aaup.org/brief/aclu-v-nsa-493-f3d-644-6th-cir-2007 https://www.aaup.org/brief/aclu-v-nsa-493-f3d-644-6th-cir-20... Obama publicly condemned the Patriot Act, but extended it in 2015: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_Freedom_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_Freedom_Act Meanwhile Obama's VP (Joseph Biden) claims to have written the Patriot Act: https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4876107/user-clip-joe-biden-wrote-patriot-act https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4876107/user-clip-joe-biden-w... In '91, the FBI got Joseph Biden to introduce a bill banning encrypted cellphone calls in the United States (Subtitle B: Electronic Communications): https://www.congress.gov/bill/102nd-congress/senate-bill/266 https://www.congress.gov/bill/102nd-congress/senate-bill/266 This move by Joseph Biden was condemned by the founder of the EFF: https://www.eff.org/pages/decrypting-puzzle-palace https://www.eff.org/pages/decrypting-puzzle-palace You can watch a gaggle of senators from both parties go to bat defending the PSP in 2013 here: https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/hearings/open-hearing-fisa-legislation https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/hearings/open-hearing-fi... After the PSP was found to be unconstitutional, you can watch another gaggle of senators from both parties go to bat defending the PSP in 2017 here: https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/hearings/open-hearing-fisa-legislation-0 https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/hearings/open-hearing-fi... A notable quote from the above video from Senator Wyden suggests the 3 letter agencies are harvesting location data in mass from cellphone towers. You see surveillance legislation move forward with support from both parties - often under the guise of protecting children or stopping terrorists. It's not a stretch to connect the dots between our 3 letter agencies working with legislators in the background to advance the surveillance state, and those legislators simultaneously working with MAANG on multiple fronts, to assume there is some level of crossover with the surveillance agenda. It would be more unreasonable to assume they keep their surveillance objectives isolated from their interactions with industry after the Snowden revelations - which showed us that they absolutely worked with industry to collect PII of U.S. citizens in mass.

concinds 4y ago

There's no conspiracy. Mostly think tanks, policy circles, and White House wonks over every successive Internet-age administration. All segments of the U.S. government pay close attention to, among many people, geopolitical analysis of all stripes, who can help them understand how to remain the world hegemon. The U.S. frequently commissions studies by outfits like Booz Allen Hamilton on geopolitical matters (you can browse the "DoD Reading Room" to read plenty of the these thanks to FOIA requests[0]). "Breaking them up would hurt the U.S." isn't just a lobbyist argument, it's deeply understood at all levels of the government. The White House absolutely understands that Silicon Valley is part of the U.S.'s soft power, draws plenty of international students to the U.S., and helps the U.S.'s cultural hegemony. It's not just about the most popular social networks and search engine "belonging to them" (though that's obviously important, and an advantage no rational nation would give up); Google and Meta's R&D spending are also huge elements of the U.S.'s "artificial intelligence dominance" over China, and the U.S. will never break them up simply because it sees AI-dominance as one of the most important elements of its geopolitical strategy. It's easy to get the impression that the government mostly deals with domestic politics; but at its root, it is deeply and overwhelmingly concerned with fundamental strategic questions. The government cares deeply about U.S. universities remaining the world's best; about immigration remaining high (Republican administrations too) so that it can attract as much skilled labor as possible, grow the economy, compete with China's 1.4B population, and avoid an aging population that would decimate the economy for decades. Policy debates "inside the government" bear very little resemblence to the TV version the American citizenry is obsessed with. [0]: see, for example, "The Future of Europe", a 177 page evaluation of Europe's future economic, industrial, demographic, and political trends. https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/FOID/Reading%20Room/Litigation_Release/Litigation%20Release%20-%20The%20Future%20of%20Europe-Final%20Report%20%20201304.pdf https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/FOID/Reading%20... After you read it, you'll understand that the "policy debates" the masses are exposed to have very little resemblence with what preoccupies decisionmakers! The government, no matter the administration, is far more rigorous and strategic than people give it credit for.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
The most maddening thing is how little other governments seem to care about it it. Forcing windows, android, and ios on your citizens and gifting silicon valley a constant worldwide surveillance feed is incredibly harmful to long term interests. Forcing every business to use office365 to interact with any government office is a 1% income tax gifted to the american economy.