4 ms·

Shit like looking at the data that Big Tech has been collecting on American citizens? The NSA is incapable of building the type of mass surveillance infastruct

Shit like looking at the data that Big Tech has been collecting on American citizens? The NSA is incapable of building the type of mass surveillance infastructure we see today. That infrastructure is built and maintained by private tech companies. The NSA comes along repurposes that already collected data to their own ends. Further, the NSA's usage of said information has never been linked to any population wide mental health crises, unlike big tech. There is also a wide range of work the NSA does, and most people working there don't know much beyond their own need to know.

soup10 4y ago
>The NSA is incapable of building the type of mass surveillance infastructure we see today. That infrastructure is built and maintained by private tech companies. This is false, the snowden releases showed they have extensive infrastructure that aggregates data from many different sources.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  Parent's point is that any NSA system falls far short (in comprehensiveness and freshness) of what Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple have (in addition to their analogs in other countries). At the end of the day, worldwide profit scales systems faster than even national security dollars.
  - soup10 4y ago
    And parent's point is wrong, because A) the NSA has broader legal powers to collect and use data, and B) the NSA's mission is literally signal intelligence. They aren't in the business of making phones or serving ads. Of course without inside knowledge of how companies are collecting and using data and what exactly the NSA is doing there's no way to know for sure. But the public revelations of what the NSA are doing go far beyond what we've heard tech companies are doing.
    - gizmo686 4y ago
      Yet it was private companies that managed to get almost everyone to carry around a microphone, video camera, accelerometer, gps device which they also use to store and transmit the majority of their personal conversations. Granted, they do not snoop on you to the maximum extent the hardware of these devices allow. But, take a look at [0]. Unless you are one of the few people who goes out of their way to limit tracking, do you think that the NSA would be able to get that detailed tracking of everyone's movements. And this is just the obvious part (which Google is nice enough to share with its users as a feature). Big tech companies have also built detailed models of most people's interests; which is simply not possible without the large amount of data that comes from people actually interacting with them. All of the NSA's dragnet surveillance is built on the back of private industry, and works because that private industry has convinced people to participate in it. [0] https://www.google.com/maps/timeline https://www.google.com/maps/timeline
      - soup10 4y ago
        It's true that state surveillance infrastructure is mostly built on top of civilian infrastructure, the original post just made it sound like the NSA didn't have its own enormous datacenters and wasn't slurping and processing an extraordinary amount of data.
photochemsyn 4y ago
It's certainly another one of those public-private partnerships, for example the NSA keeps its fiber-optic splitters on domestic trunk lines in AT&T buildings, to vacuum up all traffic (including that between US citizens, of course, which seems to be something of a violation of warrantless spying): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2348156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2348156 "AT&T has a fiberoptic splitter copying our data to NSA" (eff.org)" (2011, 200 comments) However there's also the massive Ogden Utah data storage center run by the NSA and contractors, which has a constant demand for 65 MW of power, I think that counts as mass surveillance infrastructure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center Seems pretty Orwellian.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  If someone is transiting sensitive data without encryption over the internet, and the NSA is included in their threat model, then they need to rethink a lot of things. Assuming the NSA catches and stores the traffic (i.e. it passed a keyword/subject filter), they still have to break the encryption. And even if they have devices capable of doing so, they don't have capacity to do so on an unlimited volume of messages.
  - photochemsyn 4y ago
    A dystopian system would be more interested in the metadata, which can't really be hidden. The Gestapo or STASI would work by making graphs of who was in communication with who, and then, they'd go kick down doors and round up everyone on their list for interrogation, because they were somehow connected to some bad person via the metadata. Of course, this would have a stifling effect on communication and lead to constant fear and paranoia in the general population, which is precisely what an authoritarian regime would want. They're still pushing this stuff today, not surprisingly: https://www.ctinsider.com/news/article/NSA-director-pushes-Congress-to-renew-17714026.php https://www.ctinsider.com/news/article/NSA-director-pushes-C... > "WASHINGTON (AP) (Jan 12 2023) — A top U.S. intelligence official on Thursday urged Congress to renew sweeping powers granted to American spy agencies to surveil and examine communications, saying they were critical to stopping terrorism, cyberattacks and other threats." "Other threats" such as what, populist movements unhappy with the increasingly feudalist-aristocratic nature of the United States and the gross corruption seen in Congress and the federal bureaucracy?
rowanG077 4y ago
Data collection has never been used by government agencies to do bad stuff? You must have forgotten about Nazi Germany. Where it suddenly was very convenient the state knew who was Jewish.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  The Holocaust would have been horrendously more effective had Nazi Germany convinced Europe's citizens to self-register on Facebook and declare their own religion.
  - throwaway6734 4y ago
    Many of Europe's citizens actively helped to identify and genocide Jews
    - bushbaba 4y ago
      Many of Europe’s citizens got to keep Jewish apartments, jewelry, and assets for free. Heck take Ukraine, where did all those Jewish belongings go? Ukraine had 1million Jews die in ww2. Even more fled. Yet all the wealth from those Jews was never returned to the families or survivors.
r3trohack3r 4y ago
> Shit like looking at the data that Big Tech has been collecting on American citizens? Yes. When we elect our officials we grant them significant power. We have rules they must abide by to protect us from that power (I.e. using this data to interfere with elections to continue/advance their power.) This is substantially different than private industry. Don’t get me wrong, surveillance capitalism is its own shade of gray. But the government laundering away constitutional rights through collaboration with private industry and protecting themselves from prosecution for their crimes by labeling these collaborations a state secret? Between their clandestine organizations, their militaries, and their law enforcement - the government is capable of perpetuating more crimes against humanity than their private industry counterparts.
hulitu 4y ago
Ahh, you mean TikTok right /s
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
godelski 4y ago
Why is it always framed as a verses conversation? This isn't helpful. It is quite possible that people don't like either form of surveillance. But let's also not pretend that surveillance capitalism is identical to a surveillance state.
- goldfeld 4y ago
  The NSA is a big old bitch, "so are your fangs and VCs" says the crowd who has the itch for cool projects but sees all really as prostitution. Stitch up the foul mouth hey, one who pees in the water is bound to filth drink, work, make, grow rich but don't think.
- gizmo686 4y ago
  In the context of this thread, because we are talking about the NSA hiring laid-off Big Tech workers. The question at issue is not, in general, if people have a problem with Government surveillance. Rather, the question is if people who have built their careers around private surveillance have a problem with government surveillance.
- antisthenes 4y ago
  Large capital is indivisible from the state. I'm not sure making that distinction serves any real purpose, because a government that doesn't regulate surveillance capitalism effectively makes its stance pretty clear about surveillance in general.
elromulous 4y ago
I'm not defending big tech. That's a whole other topic. But as for the government, it is supposed to be held to a high(er) standard. This is codified into law: the limitations the constitution imposes on the government are not imposed on civilians/corporation. This is with good reason: quis custodiet ipsos custodes.
threadweaver34 4y ago
If you blow the whistle on big tech for doing something illegal, you get a pat on the back and a cash reward. Blow the whistle on the US government doing something illegal and you're either hanging out with your new friend Vlad or in pound me in the ass prison.

soup10 4y ago

>The NSA is incapable of building the type of mass surveillance infastructure we see today. That infrastructure is built and maintained by private tech companies. This is false, the snowden releases showed they have extensive infrastructure that aggregates data from many different sources.

ethbr0 4y ago
Parent's point is that any NSA system falls far short (in comprehensiveness and freshness) of what Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple have (in addition to their analogs in other countries). At the end of the day, worldwide profit scales systems faster than even national security dollars.
- soup10 4y ago
  And parent's point is wrong, because A) the NSA has broader legal powers to collect and use data, and B) the NSA's mission is literally signal intelligence. They aren't in the business of making phones or serving ads. Of course without inside knowledge of how companies are collecting and using data and what exactly the NSA is doing there's no way to know for sure. But the public revelations of what the NSA are doing go far beyond what we've heard tech companies are doing.
  - gizmo686 4y ago
    Yet it was private companies that managed to get almost everyone to carry around a microphone, video camera, accelerometer, gps device which they also use to store and transmit the majority of their personal conversations. Granted, they do not snoop on you to the maximum extent the hardware of these devices allow. But, take a look at [0]. Unless you are one of the few people who goes out of their way to limit tracking, do you think that the NSA would be able to get that detailed tracking of everyone's movements. And this is just the obvious part (which Google is nice enough to share with its users as a feature). Big tech companies have also built detailed models of most people's interests; which is simply not possible without the large amount of data that comes from people actually interacting with them. All of the NSA's dragnet surveillance is built on the back of private industry, and works because that private industry has convinced people to participate in it. [0] https://www.google.com/maps/timeline https://www.google.com/maps/timeline
    - soup10 4y ago
      It's true that state surveillance infrastructure is mostly built on top of civilian infrastructure, the original post just made it sound like the NSA didn't have its own enormous datacenters and wasn't slurping and processing an extraordinary amount of data.

photochemsyn 4y ago

It's certainly another one of those public-private partnerships, for example the NSA keeps its fiber-optic splitters on domestic trunk lines in AT&T buildings, to vacuum up all traffic (including that between US citizens, of course, which seems to be something of a violation of warrantless spying): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2348156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2348156 "AT&T has a fiberoptic splitter copying our data to NSA" (eff.org)" (2011, 200 comments) However there's also the massive Ogden Utah data storage center run by the NSA and contractors, which has a constant demand for 65 MW of power, I think that counts as mass surveillance infrastructure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center Seems pretty Orwellian.

ethbr0 4y ago
If someone is transiting sensitive data without encryption over the internet, and the NSA is included in their threat model, then they need to rethink a lot of things. Assuming the NSA catches and stores the traffic (i.e. it passed a keyword/subject filter), they still have to break the encryption. And even if they have devices capable of doing so, they don't have capacity to do so on an unlimited volume of messages.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  A dystopian system would be more interested in the metadata, which can't really be hidden. The Gestapo or STASI would work by making graphs of who was in communication with who, and then, they'd go kick down doors and round up everyone on their list for interrogation, because they were somehow connected to some bad person via the metadata. Of course, this would have a stifling effect on communication and lead to constant fear and paranoia in the general population, which is precisely what an authoritarian regime would want. They're still pushing this stuff today, not surprisingly: https://www.ctinsider.com/news/article/NSA-director-pushes-Congress-to-renew-17714026.php https://www.ctinsider.com/news/article/NSA-director-pushes-C... > "WASHINGTON (AP) (Jan 12 2023) — A top U.S. intelligence official on Thursday urged Congress to renew sweeping powers granted to American spy agencies to surveil and examine communications, saying they were critical to stopping terrorism, cyberattacks and other threats." "Other threats" such as what, populist movements unhappy with the increasingly feudalist-aristocratic nature of the United States and the gross corruption seen in Congress and the federal bureaucracy?

rowanG077 4y ago

Data collection has never been used by government agencies to do bad stuff? You must have forgotten about Nazi Germany. Where it suddenly was very convenient the state knew who was Jewish.

ethbr0 4y ago
The Holocaust would have been horrendously more effective had Nazi Germany convinced Europe's citizens to self-register on Facebook and declare their own religion.
- throwaway6734 4y ago
  Many of Europe's citizens actively helped to identify and genocide Jews
  - bushbaba 4y ago
    Many of Europe’s citizens got to keep Jewish apartments, jewelry, and assets for free. Heck take Ukraine, where did all those Jewish belongings go? Ukraine had 1million Jews die in ww2. Even more fled. Yet all the wealth from those Jews was never returned to the families or survivors.

r3trohack3r 4y ago

> Shit like looking at the data that Big Tech has been collecting on American citizens? Yes. When we elect our officials we grant them significant power. We have rules they must abide by to protect us from that power (I.e. using this data to interfere with elections to continue/advance their power.) This is substantially different than private industry. Don’t get me wrong, surveillance capitalism is its own shade of gray. But the government laundering away constitutional rights through collaboration with private industry and protecting themselves from prosecution for their crimes by labeling these collaborations a state secret? Between their clandestine organizations, their militaries, and their law enforcement - the government is capable of perpetuating more crimes against humanity than their private industry counterparts.

hulitu 4y ago

Ahh, you mean TikTok right /s

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

godelski 4y ago

Why is it always framed as a verses conversation? This isn't helpful. It is quite possible that people don't like either form of surveillance. But let's also not pretend that surveillance capitalism is identical to a surveillance state.

goldfeld 4y ago
The NSA is a big old bitch, "so are your fangs and VCs" says the crowd who has the itch for cool projects but sees all really as prostitution. Stitch up the foul mouth hey, one who pees in the water is bound to filth drink, work, make, grow rich but don't think.
gizmo686 4y ago
In the context of this thread, because we are talking about the NSA hiring laid-off Big Tech workers. The question at issue is not, in general, if people have a problem with Government surveillance. Rather, the question is if people who have built their careers around private surveillance have a problem with government surveillance.
antisthenes 4y ago
Large capital is indivisible from the state. I'm not sure making that distinction serves any real purpose, because a government that doesn't regulate surveillance capitalism effectively makes its stance pretty clear about surveillance in general.

elromulous 4y ago

I'm not defending big tech. That's a whole other topic. But as for the government, it is supposed to be held to a high(er) standard. This is codified into law: the limitations the constitution imposes on the government are not imposed on civilians/corporation. This is with good reason: quis custodiet ipsos custodes.

threadweaver34 4y ago

If you blow the whistle on big tech for doing something illegal, you get a pat on the back and a cash reward. Blow the whistle on the US government doing something illegal and you're either hanging out with your new friend Vlad or in pound me in the ass prison.