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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 inte

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.
tingol 4y ago
So where were you exactly when PRISM was sweeping info from all tech companies?
somenameforme 4y ago
This directly contradicts nearly everything that was stated by Snowden, where his identity is not only known and affirmed, but also came with extensive documentation affirming, more or less, everything he said. For one such example, here's a fun manual from the NSA on spying on Skype in realtime [1]. It even comes with a handy Q&A technical FAQ like ensuring you can also get the chat of the person the target is speaking to, or why you might receive multiple copies of one message (a target that is synching on another device has all of that data forwarded onto the NSA as well, so you get repeat messages). Quite user friendly! I'd love to see the UI. --- Incidentally, I'm not saying you're lying. The reality is that most of government is just bureaucracy. The NSA has tens of thousands of employees, a budget in the tens of billions of dollars, and their fingers in everything all the way down to World of Warcraft. [2] The guy tasked with spying on elves and death knights (which, shockingly, never turned up anything) is going to have a different view of the agency than the guy who is doing things like spying on people's Skype conversations, or the person who is producing the metadata upon which people end up being killed. [1] - https://grid.glendon.yorku.ca/items/show/74 https://grid.glendon.yorku.ca/items/show/74 [2] - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-nsa-was-spying-in-world-of-warcraft-180948120/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-nsa-was-spying...
- vinyl7 4y ago
  My theory behind snowden is that the NSA "leaked" a bunch of stuff through him that isn't actually true. It was there to provide a chilling effect so that people would use the internet with fear. After all that came out people started self-censoring.

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.

tingol 4y ago

So where were you exactly when PRISM was sweeping info from all tech companies?

somenameforme 4y ago

This directly contradicts nearly everything that was stated by Snowden, where his identity is not only known and affirmed, but also came with extensive documentation affirming, more or less, everything he said. For one such example, here's a fun manual from the NSA on spying on Skype in realtime [1]. It even comes with a handy Q&A technical FAQ like ensuring you can also get the chat of the person the target is speaking to, or why you might receive multiple copies of one message (a target that is synching on another device has all of that data forwarded onto the NSA as well, so you get repeat messages). Quite user friendly! I'd love to see the UI. --- Incidentally, I'm not saying you're lying. The reality is that most of government is just bureaucracy. The NSA has tens of thousands of employees, a budget in the tens of billions of dollars, and their fingers in everything all the way down to World of Warcraft. [2] The guy tasked with spying on elves and death knights (which, shockingly, never turned up anything) is going to have a different view of the agency than the guy who is doing things like spying on people's Skype conversations, or the person who is producing the metadata upon which people end up being killed. [1] - https://grid.glendon.yorku.ca/items/show/74 https://grid.glendon.yorku.ca/items/show/74 [2] - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-nsa-was-spying-in-world-of-warcraft-180948120/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-nsa-was-spying...

vinyl7 4y ago
My theory behind snowden is that the NSA "leaked" a bunch of stuff through him that isn't actually true. It was there to provide a chilling effect so that people would use the internet with fear. After all that came out people started self-censoring.