8 ms·

The FBI as advanced persistent threat

232 points by jjgreen 3y ago

monero-xmr 3y ago
This podcast provides a non-partisan overview of what the FBI did related to Hillary Clinton’s email servers and Trump’s Russian collusion investigation: https://reason.com/podcast/2023/05/26/eli-lake-trump-russiagate-and-the-end-of-fbi-credibility/ https://reason.com/podcast/2023/05/26/eli-lake-trump-russiag... Even the extra-informed person could be forgiven from knowing the ins and outs of this because of how long it has gone on. But this is a great summary. Essentially the FBI is a rogue agency. They have no one watching them. They are beyond repair, and even when it comes to presidential candidates they have no limits to their ability to violate constitutional rights and lie under oath. Their leaders have no dedication to upholding the truth - it’s about protecting themselves. A thoroughly corrupt organization. When people say “drain the swamp” the FBI is target number 1.
- kevviiinn 3y ago
  All law enforcement agencies have the same amount of zero oversight that the FBI has, but local police departments also get to terrorize their local communities with military hardware on top of constant monitoring with stuff like Palantir
  - dontupvoteme 3y ago
    They listen to the mossad at least.
    - kevviiinn 3y ago
      Yea because Israel is exactly the same as the US if not worse in terms of terrorizing the Palestinians
  - local_crmdgeon 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - ahiknsr 3y ago
      > which is why crime is rising catastrophically and people are fleeing to states like Texas. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/texas-governor-seeks-to-pardon-man-found-guilty-of-murdering-black-lives-matter-protester https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/texas-governor-seeks-to-pa...
      - local_crmdgeon 3y ago
        Please attempt to refute the central point instead of posting non-sequitors. Engaging in good faith is what keeps this place from being Twitter.
    - Arkhaine_kupo 3y ago
      > which is why crime is rising catastrophically and people are fleeing to states like Texas. California violent crime rate : 25.2 / 100k Texas violent crime rate : 24.8 / 100k California property crime : 35.4 / 100k Texas property crime. : 38.0 / 100k Yep, trully a disproportionate crime rate that warrants narratives about "people fleeing", which btw is not happening, demographic movements have been pretty steady. Largest moves have been a few real state companies and some dudes with podcasts. > at some point y'all have to look at SF and say "huh, maybe we weren't right about everything" Is SF somehow not part of the american police state? Like what part of California is suddenly this leftist utopia and warrants careful consideration before american follows suit into hell? Cali is notorious for NIMBYism, where police are called by rich white liberals to keep minorities, homeless etc away. Police action is as violent and as class aware as anywhere else in the US. The SF police budget is 780 million yearly, that would put them above 60 countries on earth by gdp. The entire country of micronesia, with 500k people could work for 2 whole years and not be able to pay 1 year of the SF police budget.
      - local_crmdgeon 3y ago
        Yes, Californians and New Yorkers and Minnesotans are moving to red states in droves. Source: https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/05/21/5-charts-that-explain-the-california-and-bay-area-exodus/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/05/21/5-charts-that-explain... That's why there are fearmongering billboards going up in SF: https://www.newsweek.com/billboards-warn-california-residents-not-move-texas-after-mass-exodus-1737368 https://www.newsweek.com/billboards-warn-california-resident... Pretending that the exodus isn't happening isn't going to change the fact that SF is a failing city. Seattle, Philly, and NYC have just voted in pro-cop mayors who are running on a "fund the police" platform. Most of that vote comes from minorities, particularly Black people (in the case of Eric Adams and Cherelle Parker) Please, please, please try to address your problems today, before things get worse. Last time I was in Seattle people were shocked that I'd never seen someone shit on the street in Detroit.
  - xyzelement 3y ago
    I hear this but I don't experience it. Living in NYC as a poor immigrant teen 1990s through upper-middle-class (or whatever) adult through 2021, I did not feel "terrorized" by the NYPD. Now I live in a small town not far from NYC and the police are literally part of the community, it's a few dozen folks that most people in town know on first name basis. No terrorizing. To be clear, as someone who grew up in the USSR, I am certainly in sync with the idea that police can be oppressive, it just does not resonate at all with what I see in my now 3 decades in the US.
    - kevviiinn 3y ago
      Did you grow up as a black american? People from different communities have radically different experiences, which is why we see denials such as yours
      - xyzelement 3y ago
        Did you? FWIW I grew up very much "in the hood" in Brooklyn.
        goolz 3y ago
        No, but I agree with them. I live in the hood and am white and live an easy life compared to those who are not. Get some perspective. EDIT: and my whole family is from BK, what was once filled with immigrants is now filled with the rich and privileged in most parts. All I am saying is that if you wanna use anecdotes so can I. Brown people in this country are systemically treated like trash. I see it every day. I don’t fear my life but I sure would if I was a 16 year old black kid in my city (Philadelphia).
        deleted 3y ago
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        A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
        I come from the old country that has ( maybe had? ) fairly homogeneous population. We still had locations you did not go to after dark, pathology that rivaled some of the ghetto stories and police that could abuse you if they so chose ( communism - cops could really do whatever ). I posit that the issue is poverty and people. We just kinda suck as a species. I am saying it is not the skin color. I am saying it is generations of living in ways that make integration into society somewhat hard. << Get some perspective. I believe parent is correct. Immigrants from Africa are able to prosper in US, because they are not bound by culture infused in them by the 'street'. The fact is he made it out despite being the 'wrong' color.
- bell-cot 3y ago
  > Essentially the FBI is a rogue agency. They have no one watching them. They are beyond repair... Outside of dictatorships, is there any law enforcement agency that gets the sort of oversight and accountability which the government departments (say) plowing snow off the roads receive? I am not aware of any. And outside of utopian delusions, "eliminate law enforcement" doesn't actually work in a large, modern-ish society - they are very quickly replaced by even-less-accountable private vigilante groups / criminal gangs / military / etc. Human nature abhors a power vacuum. Perhaps it would be more useful to look at who benefits from unaccountable law enforcement, and do something about the roots of the problem? Especially look at all the "innocent citizens" who really don't want to believe "good cops" may be rotten creeps, or to hear about the messy details of law enforcement unofficially upholding a social order which is quite beneficial to those "innocent" citizens.
  - monero-xmr 3y ago
    I never said I thought an institution with similar powers to the FBI shouldn’t exist. I said that the FBI itself has proven itself beyond repair and control. So it should be disbanded. I can think of many ways it could be done better but for decades the same problems at the FBI have been occurring so the slate needs to be wiped clean.
    - bell-cot 3y ago
      With similar powers (and similar lack if oversight), I’m thinking that such an FBI-replacement agency would have similar problems in very short order. Sounds like a laborious feel-good exercise.
      - monero-xmr 3y ago
        You are somehow advocating for the FBI by saying “yes it’s a corrupt mess but nothing could ever be better”. What a defeatist, nihilistic opinion.
        bell-cot 3y ago
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  > even when it comes to presidential candidates I get that some of us are more equal than others, but the ideal is that even the president is not above the law, and a candidate isn't even the president yet.
  - lordloki 3y ago
    Right, but neither are they below the law and proper standards should be followed and proper justifications met before investigations begin.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- SkyMarshal 3y ago
  FYI, Reason.com is far from non-partisan.
  - boomboomsubban 3y ago
    It's openly a libertarian organization[1] arguing a government agency should be shut down. Definitely partisan, though doesn't mean their conclusion is wrong here. https://reason.com/about/ https://reason.com/about/
  - partiallypro 3y ago
    It's not "partisan" in the sense that it is for Democrats or Republicans. It is partisan in that it's libertarian (small l) leaning. That's not as bad, viewing a civil item through a civil libertarian lens doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong.
  - monero-xmr 3y ago
    [flagged]
web3-is-a-scam 3y ago
Better solution. Just disband the FBI.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  No, improve the FBI and do proper oversight. You need an institution like the FBI but it needs to be kept as sharply focused as possible.
  - Aerbil313 3y ago
    > You need an institution like the FBI You don't need it in a world without modern technology. Not that you can have it. Technology is this enslaving, centralizing force which leads to all this... everything. Abolish it.
  - pclmulqdq 3y ago
    Why do we need an FBI? There are over 200 other federal law enforcement operations, and certainly one (or ten) of them will step up to fill the gaps in cross-state criminal investigation that would be left by disbanding the FBI.
    - j16sdiz 3y ago
      How do you make sure the one who step up won't become next FBI?
      - willcipriano 3y ago
        Strong states rights protections. Recover the republic from the ashes of democracy.
        rtkwe 3y ago
        States have their own FBI-alikes and they're not much better when it comes to privacy they just have fewer tools but mostly because they're not getting that much in the way of work that would need it. If they get delegated responsibility they're not going to turn out much better than the FBI.
ExoticPearTree 3y ago
The problem with law enforcement in pretty much any country and with the intelligence services in particular is that they tend to see everyone as a suspect and the group think perspective is that the means justify the end. And most of the time oversight of these agencies is a joke. Unless a director and its subordinates actually do jail time for what they did, just maybe firing them is a slap in the face of the victims.
- ajsnigrutin 3y ago
  The problem I see is, that there is no personal responsibility for anything. A cop beats someone, plants drugs, fbi does an illegal search, cia trains a future terrorist and people die, etc... The "best case" that can happen to victims is, that taxpayers cover some costs, and that's it. For every action, there is a field worker, a chain of command and someone paid to give commands and take responsibility for that. If those people ended up in jail for everything illegal they do (as do all the other people in other industries), the world would be a lot nicer place.
  - efitz 3y ago
    There are several challenges with this: first, courts have adopted the concept of “sovereign immunity” that shields government personnel in most situations. Next, prosecutors usually have a very close relationship with law enforcement and are generally reluctant to prosecute (although there are some that seem to delight in it, different problem). Finally, we have a judiciary that in general is very deferential to law enforcement (again there are some exceptions but the rule holds). I think that there are two cultural aspects to the whole law enforcement apparatus that are undesirable- first, that they are a closed brotherhood and have to always take care of each other, and second, that it’s “us against them”, eg that LE is adversarial to the general populace. For most of US history the armed forces have tried to stamp out these ideas in our officer corps, trying to walk the fine line of encouraging obedience to superiors while emphasizing personal responsibility and ethics. Not always successful but a serious attempt to establish and maintain a culture that avoids the toxic aspects that we see in LE culture. This is all my own opinion.
arisbe__ 3y ago
It seems the policy might have become to spread fear among the the population which will reduce terrorism, which is of course silly.
causi 3y ago
"If the Durham report shows anything, it is that the FBI leadership bent over backward to protect [Hillary] Clinton's campaign while launching a full investigation into [Donald] Trump's campaign on the thinnest of pretexts," What I never understood is why people assumed that alliance necessarily involved collusion. It didn't. Russia saw Trump as both ally and self-destructive weapon therefore they acted in his favor. Trump is a greedy fool and sees Russia as a source of profit and so he aided them. These activities do not require a mutual agreement.
- wrycoder 3y ago
  I agree with everything you said, except there is no evidence that Trump aided Russia (or anybody). Russia’s basic approach is to sow discord in the USA any way it can.
- lordloki 3y ago
  How did Trump aid Russia? He was chastising Europe and Germany in particular for being economically tied to Russia. He literally encouraged their decoupling, which would have been extremely detrimental to Russia. I've read in the "news" that Trump supported Russia for 7 years now but I never saw any evidence of him doing much of anything to actually help Russia. Unless you think that encouraging European countries to pay their share of NATO dues actually helped Russia, but that takes some mental gymnastics, since NATO was never actually weakened.
  - Arkhaine_kupo 3y ago
    > How did Trump aid Russia? Leaked US secrets with the Russian Ambassador. Secrets that cost years of political capital with Israel that had gotten those secrets. The leaked info included the name and face of a israeli spy still inside ISIS putting his life at risk. He also did not tell about this meeting to US media and the media found out after Russian gov sources posted photos of trump and 2 senior russian members giggling together in the white house Eased sanctions on multiple Russian oligarchs such as Deripaska. Also planned on removing multiple sanctions on high end tech for Russia. Told the international community he believed Crimea was Russian, despite Ukraine still claiming it as theirs. Also froze US aide to Ukraine which helped bost russian mobilisation before the invasion. In terms of PR, he publically praised Putin multiple times, defended the Russian Syrian invassion, he defended russian allied states like Belarus over the EU. Dismished condeming russian attacks and the poisoning of UK citizens. Hired Manafort, a guy condemed for running pro russian campaigns in Ukraine, as his campaign manager. Publically sided with Russia over US intelligence sources that claimed Russia was using the taliban to kill american soldiers. So how has Trump aided russia in summary: Reduced sanctions, shared classified info, talked them up internationally, hired their propaganda internationally to run his campaign and sided with russian sources over us intelligence in multiple PR nightmares. Seems pretty straight forward.
deleted 3y ago
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infinghxsg 3y ago
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DirectorKrennic 3y ago
Lots of criticism in this thread and a shortage of empathy for the position that the FBI finds itself in trying to do its job to protect the public. The following quote from "A Few Good Men" encapsulates my feelings about the subject. “We live in a world that has walls. And those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Lieutenant Weinberg? I have a great responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. The luxury of the blind. The luxury of not knowing what I know: That Santiago’s death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and uncomprehensible to you, saves lives. You can’t handle it. Because deep down, in places you don’t talk about, you want me on that wall. You need me there. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as a backbone to a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it. I’d prefer you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I’d suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post.”
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  Breaking the law is no justification for enforcing the law or protecting the public. Jack Nicholson was not the good guy in that movie.
  - DirectorKrennic 3y ago
    I agree on both counts, but even the bad guy can make a good point.
    - cliffy 3y ago
      He doesn't make a good point. I'd rather have people of high moral character responsible for enforcing the law.
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  This is a megalomaniacal rant delivered by a character responsible for the murder of one of the soldiers under his command. The "walls" are meant to protect society from the Jesseps of the world, not glorify them and put them in positions of power.
cumshitpiss 3y ago
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jmclnx 3y ago
This article pretty much morphs into "Cell Phones Spy on you". Most people here already knows that I think :)
PrimeMcFly 3y ago
To treat state actors as hostile, there are a few things you can do. When traveling, travel with a wiped/clean system, maybe restore from an image that has casual use so as not to be completely clean and arouse suspicion. Then when on the other side of immigration, download your real image. Use something like VeraCrypt to protect your data. You can use this in conjunction with a script running in the background, so if the volume dismounts, any sensitive programs open can be closed automatically. Also set it up as a bosskey type thing so it can auto-dismount and close sensitive programs on a specific key combo. Ideally some form of steganography would be used also, but there is no solution I'm aware of that can hide gigs of data in a movie file or something. If possible, remove vendor keys from SecureBoot and use your own key and sign your own bootloader. Have it boot into Windows unless a specific key combo is pressed, and then it can boot into whatever you want. As a hobby, I'm trying to come up with a way for it to boot into a virtualized windows instance, without giving any signs of it being virtualized. Software like Prey may also be useful, to allow remote locking of the device.
- glitchc 3y ago
  The challenge is that these are all terribly inconvenient solutions. For ex. what do you do if your flight is delayed and you're stuck in the terminal for an additional few hours? In effect, we are trying to solve a problem with technology that could be better solved with laws limiting powers and adding oversight.
  - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
    > For ex. what do you do if your flight is delayed and you're stuck in the terminal for an additional few hours? Consume recreation materials like books or movies, work on stuff that you don't care if a state actor sees, or do work purely remotely on a server you control. > In effect, we are trying to solve a problem with technology that could be better solved with laws limiting powers and adding oversight. It's going to be a long time, probably not in my lifetime, that we would be able to completely trust any state and have such oversight and regulation. We won't get there the way we are going now. I mean I agree with you, it's a better solution, I just don't see it happening anytime soon.
benreesman 3y ago
I’ve got curve 25519 inked on one arm, a stylized “citizen four” on the other, and little else (a Galois quote). My opinions on this are no secret. But I don’t see a solution or even mitigation at lower cost than the benefit. It’s just too easy for mediocre technologists with a mandate to do effective surveillance. I’ve adopted a policy of transparency so extreme that surveillance is a non-issue, and that’s a privilege. I live in a jurisdiction where the authoritarian ambitions of the state are still merely ambitions, and I understand that not everyone has that luxury. For people really against the wall on this, political dissidents in an authoritarian state, there are ways to be hard as fuck on cryptography and privacy, but it’s a lot of work and you only need to make a mistake once. And that sucks. The real answer feels like a fantasy but it’s always worth remembering the fantasy: stop capture, the fungibility of wealth into political power, and the ability to inherit legal immunity as well as a mansion. Nice dream right?
h2odragon 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee Ruby Ridge. Waco. The FBI hasn't "gone rotten" recently; they've been like this for quite some time.
- IYasha 3y ago
  It's rather just "by design".
- llamaimperative 3y ago
  The Waco incident obviously had a less than ideal outcome but actually I’m a huge, huge fan of the fact that someone went after a compound of militant child-enslaving rapists. Kind of weird to put it here as an indictment of the FBI.
  - at_a_remove 3y ago
    They killed twenty-eight kids. This suggests that "going after" the compound was not really about the welfare of any children. They could have hardly performed worse in said child welfare unless they had made an itty-bitty Dachau and ran the kids through it.
    - bacchusracine 3y ago
      >They killed twenty-eight kids. >This suggests that "going after" the compound was not really about the welfare of any children. Not just that, but given the way things played out repeatedly (not just Waco, Ruby Ridge, the Elián González situation, etc) it's hard to believe much of what the FBI asserts happened in those cases. It's too difficult to not see some higher up putting their fingers on the scale and trying to whitewash what happened after the fact. What little we do know seems to really reek of REMFer controls over what was allowed to happen. And who can forget the infamous images of some of the agents standing over the ashes with grins? No the official story on Waco is one of the things that I cannot take at face value. It certainly didn't help going to public school and hearing about the events while attending a church that had an (undeserved) reputation due to busybodies who made up stories. I grew up sincerely wondering if one day the government was going to show up at my church one Sunday. For all that we're told the Branch Davidians were a cult (and certainly it sounded like they were depending on the sources you read up on) they had all the trappings of being just another church. It is only because we were told that they were cultists, that we were told they were child abusers that we mostly didn't wonder at how the government was acting towards a CHURCH, a place of WORSHIP. It's a serious blindspot, compounded by the fact that it was the government, their accusers who were responsible for all these deaths. Yeah, I've got questions.
andrewclunn 3y ago
Local police forces can be reformed and replaced outright as needed when they become corrupt. There really is a "too big to fail" effect where any institution that is no longer allowed to fail will invariably become about maintaining itself and its own power rather than performing whatever duties it was established for. The question with the FBI however, is whether it has become corrupt, or if it always was.
WaitWaitWha 3y ago
> There are four major classes of threat vector in your phone. Hardware, OS, apps and malware. I would correct this as hardware, OS, Apps (including malware), and external systems including carrier and destination sites. In my opinion when it comes to data flow, there is little to no distinction between apps and malware. On the other hard, the carriers do collect both meta and data about activities, so do the other end of most communications. I am also uncomfortable with not dwelling in to this vector. It is very much akin to "just use Private/privacy/Incognito mode when browsing". It may take care at the device, but nothing outside of the device is protected. APTs often pick their target based on external data availability.
- celtoid 3y ago
  Agreed. "A fundamental vulnerability in the Network Processing Unit (NPU) chipset has been uncovered recently, which can be exploited by attackers to eavesdrop on data transmitted over a wireless network, affecting over 89% of real-world Wi-Fi networks." [0] [0] https://blog.apnic.net/2023/05/29/mitm-attacks-in-public-wi-fi-networks-without-rogue-access-points/ https://blog.apnic.net/2023/05/29/mitm-attacks-in-public-wi-...
- TheRealDunkirk 3y ago
  Yeah, in the discussion about privacy, most of it centers on the social networks and the OS, but dishearteningly leaves out the cell carriers and the internet providers. I'm sure AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast, et. al. love this. They're flying under the radar, and I'm convinced that data is a lot of what organizations like the FBI are buying, so that Facebook and Twitter can claim they aren't giving them that data.
AndrewKemendo 3y ago
Most of the "dragnet" surveillance technology and operations aren't being operated by the federal govt itself. The data is (usually) very eagerly handed over from private company CSOs (or equivalent) to agents who ask very nicely in that meeting you weren't invited to that wasn't on the calendar. The cases you hear about with formal warrants etc are some non-existent-percentage of collection. Go look up the legal definition of "collection" "exploitation" etc... because it's not what you think it is. Collection "at scale" is only possible via the massive and growing privately owned surveillance capitalism systems. Just think of the infrastructure you have to RUN to be able to collect at scale. I can also tell you that if you can dream up a way to spy on people it's already being done at some level. [nb. SIGINT and IMINT are different stories so please don't tell me how most of the data we have is MASINT or some shit - citizens don't care about that data (and shouldn't)].
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
@dang why is there a flamebait article about a 3-letter-org on the front page practically every single day?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 3y ago
  Flamebait and clickbait get upvoted a lot. That's the bait part. The general topic has always featured on HN as it is well nested in the Venn diagram of things people are curious about here: security, surveillance, public policy, espionage, you name it. I'd separate those two issues. That topic is fine, as long as the article is good. If the article is bad, it doesn't matter whether it's this topic or another. (You're exaggerating the frequency with which it happens, though - might be a case of the notice-dislike bias - a terrible name which I'm still waiting for someone to improve on - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20notice%20dislike&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) Last point - @dang doesn't work. I only saw this randomly. If you want reliable message delivery, you need to use hn@ycombinator.com.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
    Thanks for the reply! Not to derail any further but there have been numerous events that ought to be a perfect fit if it were only a matter of the Venn diagram. For example there has been no mention of Volt Typhoon malware on Guam or Russia's Snake malware. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=snake%20malware&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=guam%20malware&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... I could be biased but I think there is a concerted effort to bury these topics. I would have loved to see a discussion with this crowd! I'm sure you're busy so don't worry about responding, I'm just airing something that's been on my mind.
    - 3y ago
JustBreath 3y ago
The spooky part is we think encrypted/secure communications protect us, but with quantum computers just around the corner and a near unlimited appetite for storing records, very soon all that historical data will be broken into. Quantum resistant encryption doesn't protect the past.
- Tepix 3y ago
  What about PFS? I guess it will fails when both keys are compromised?
  - Vecr 3y ago
    Perfect Forward Security just requires them to crack the key exchange they stored for each session instead of the static keys. I guess that's somewhat harder, but not that much.
we_never_see_it 3y ago
[flagged]
- droopyEyelids 3y ago
  If the right wing latches onto an idea, does that prove the idea is false?
  - dghughes 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - Vecr 3y ago
      What? Even allowing that all those nines are hyperbolic, at various points in time it was reasonably popular for "right wing" people to be concerned about defending from Russia and biological preparedness. The past few years have shown those to be more than mirages.
      - actionfromafar 3y ago
        OTOH they are switching tunes now that Russia is actually warring. Now they are starting to both-sides Russia.
      - fundad 3y ago
        In practice the right treated both as hoaxes.
        Vecr 3y ago
        I don't think so, you can find quotes where George W. Bush showed a reasonably good understanding of Influenza pandemics, and Mitt Romney called Russia "without question, our No. 1 geopolitical foe".
      - dghughes 3y ago
        I wouldn't call right-wing reasonable it is quite different than Conservative/Republican. Right-wing is the wildly unreasonable distance cousin of Conservatism. I have no problem with political Conservatism I've even voted for my local and federal politicians a few times and other times Liberal political parties. And yes the same applies to the political Left. I like to consider myself politically Centrist as best as I can.
netbioserror 3y ago
So long as we persist with the ridiculous idea of "independent" executive departments, we will have out-of-control bureaucracies and agencies with toothless congressional oversight and impunity versus the president. The president either has control of executive departments or does not. The presidency is the most direct path to voter accountability for executive departments (by design), because we all know Congress slow-walks and sandbags accountability until it ceases to be a campaign concern.
boffinAudio 3y ago
>The IT security equivalent is an "Assume This Device Is Tapped" sticker on every phone, tablet and computer. I stick them everywhere, but mostly on toilets as I feel this has the most impact - but its also an eye-catcher on my new electric motorbike, since it makes the point fairly well: https://www.redbubble.com/i/sticker/NSA-Monitered-Device-No-Markup-by-fufulord/28932692.EJUG5 https://www.redbubble.com/i/sticker/NSA-Monitered-Device-No-...
Simulacra 3y ago
The problem with the FBI is that it should never have been allowed to be a police force. It should be a scientific advisory agency only. From the civil rights era to the Russian dossier, The FBI has become a political tool and that's wrong
indymike 3y ago
The real threat is systematic violation of legal and Constitutional rights & protections. That is very different than a law enforcement agency that occasionally overreaches. The threat is the overreach.
seee-I-Told-you 3y ago
My perspective is this, and disclosure: I've been working with the FBI on numerous occations.. The FBI is a large organization of around 35 000 - 40 000 employees with 50+ field offices. The FBI's mission is to uphold the consitution and protect the U.S from foreign intelligence, espionage and terrorism. Note that the U.S. population is ~ 332 million right now. I think the FBI's dilemma is "damned if you do, damned if you don't", constantly having to find the right balance with regards to "what is too little, what is too much?". There is also the classic services-dilemma of.. if you get attacked.. everybody will yell "where was the FBI??". If an attacked is stopped in it's tracks the majority of times you won't even know about it.
- twic 3y ago
  > I think the FBI's dilemma is "damned if you do, damned if you don't" It's more "tutted at if you do, damned if you don't", so they are strongly incentivised to do.
- photochemsyn 3y ago
  Another (equally flawed) take on the FBI is that it's main job is serving as the enforcement arm for the organized white-collar crime cartel known as Wall Street. This is supported by the fact that so many FBI executives get lucrative jobs on Wall Street after they retire, and that very few executives are ever prosecuted or investigated for criminal behavior (see 2008 subprime fraud - in contrast, Iceland sent 39 bankers to jail over that). A nice case example is the HSBC drug cartel laundering scandal, in which HSBC laundered $2 billion in Central/South American drug cartel money and yet noone in that organization ever served prison time for it, due to decisions made by the FBI and the US Justice Department. Indeed, James Comey (later FBI head) got a job as an HSBC consultant. However, if we didn't have some kind of federal legal enforcement system, then American corporations would start acting like drug cartels, e.g. if Goldman Sachs could steal from JPMorganChase without any consequences, then JPMorganChase might retaliate with violent attacks on GoldmanSachs offices (which is how cartel wars play out in Mexico, and see also alcohol prohibition in the 1920s). The problem is that the FBI doesn't limit itself to legitimate law enforcement issues, but also tries to manipulate and destroy political movements that are not aligned with the interests of Wall Street, the military-industrial complex, and their corrupt Washington politicians, using illegal surveillance and infiltration tactics, etc., rather like the Gestapo/STASI outfits in German history.
the-printer 3y ago
Most people would love for an organization like the FBI that possesses their reach and oversight to protect their values and authority, although particular means may vary. I’m coming to feel like there are too many ambiguities in regard to anti-State, surveillance, security, etc. sentiment. A lot of the kind of talk like in this article boils down to disputes over power and its preservation. I’m not familiar with the Register’s ideological bend, if they possess one at all, nor that of the author’s. Nonetheless it’s worth taking into consideration the liberty and agency that this article is seeking to defend in response to the state’s.
- twosdai 3y ago
  I hear you about people offloading the work of their values being protected by another organization. However I think that time has shown the following: - The values of organizations can change rapidly within a human lifetime. - It's possible that tomorrow you're actions in the past are seen as a problem for these organizations. What I mean practically by these two remarks is that it can't be relied on for any organization to have your best interests at heart "tomorrow". So I believe that it's in the best interest of the user to always be the first line of defense for their data and privacy. With regards to the register, not sure it matters what way they swing for political affiliation if the end result is that the individual has control.
anonymousiam 3y ago
"Or you can buy a top brand like Samsung, if you're happy with the bloatware and the recent deal with Meta – details not revealed, but it's safe to assume Zuck's hummingbird will be slipping its tongue into your sweet data nectar somewhere along the line. That may not end well." It doesn't mention Samsung's cloud backup, which is enabled by default. It stores EVERYTHING from your phone on a server in South Korea. (This includes the contents of the removable uSD card, if one is present.) I'm sure the NSA loves this.
DennisP 3y ago
127 comments so far with no mention of the partial solution described at the bottom of the article: > take all the Play stuff and move it out of its tight integration with the low level system and into userland, where it can be sandboxed. That gives you back granular control over all the resources Play Services wants to use, and what data it and the app which use it want to send back. That's the approach GrapheneOS takes, a Pixel-only open source Android distro – OK, ROM – that by many reports hits the sweet spot of maximum control over security with minimal impact on the daily Android experience. > Teamed with a second-hand last-but-one generation Pixel, GrapheneOS raises the seemingly oxymoronic possibility that the most data-tight and user-configurable mobile platform costs less than $200, has negligible environmental impact, and is powered by the data ogre Google itself. > It doesn't matter how badly the FBI, NSA, GCHQ or the dictatorships behave, they can't have your data if you never send it. You'll still have to take care of what you do online and how you do it, but at least you can build that castle on a halfway decent rock.
- georgeecollins 3y ago
  I don't think that is a workable solution for your average citizen.
  - kornhole 3y ago
    I gave one to my sister, mom, and tech challenged partner. They love them. The area that required help was coaching them on operational security by picking better apps/networks and maintaining their firewall settings properly.
    - standardUser 3y ago
      And the millions of people who don't know anyone who knows what half those words mean?
- maerF0x0 3y ago
  The more important piece highlighted by your comment is "Why should we have to?" They're the one committing crimes, in pursuit of hypothetical crimes we're not committing, and also with very little evidence that what they're doing even helps. They've broken trust and should lose all access.
fredgrott 3y ago
It's not the FBI that is the problem as they are implementing a system that US Congress designed. We need to revisit the statutes that keep getting renewed despite our complaints. In the non electronic world would we tolerate the post office opening every letter we send and photo copying it and turning it over the FBI?
barbacoa 3y ago
Alexander Acosta the US attorney who let off Jeff Epstein reportedly did so because he was told Epstein "belonged to intelligence". Turns out Epstein was an FBI informant. https://technofog.substack.com/p/confirmed-jeffrey-epsteins-history https://technofog.substack.com/p/confirmed-jeffrey-epsteins-... Or there was that time the FBI found links between the 9/11 hijackers and Saudi government. Which they promptly covered up. https://archive.is/20230115173049/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/magazine/9-11-saudi-arabia-fbi.html https://archive.is/20230115173049/https://www.nytimes.com/20...
- frfsfgxffd 3y ago
  just yesterday on the pro-cashless WSJ article comments someone mentioned the fbi was a bad actor, and everyone jumped in saying there were so many rules added after JER that something bad would never happen again. sigh.
pxc 3y ago
If you're curious about the debates in this comment section over just when the FBI became corrupt or political or conducting illegal surveillance or whatever, you should read Tim Wiener's history of the FBI, Enemies. (It's available in audiobook form, if that is a format that works better for you these days.) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13155934-enemies https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13155934-enemies

232 points by jjgreen 3y ago

This podcast provides a non-partisan overview of what the FBI did related to Hillary Clinton’s email servers and Trump’s Russian collusion investigation: https://reason.com/podcast/2023/05/26/eli-lake-trump-russiagate-and-the-end-of-fbi-credibility/ https://reason.com/podcast/2023/05/26/eli-lake-trump-russiag... Even the extra-informed person could be forgiven from knowing the ins and outs of this because of how long it has gone on. But this is a great summary. Essentially the FBI is a rogue agency. They have no one watching them. They are beyond repair, and even when it comes to presidential candidates they have no limits to their ability to violate constitutional rights and lie under oath. Their leaders have no dedication to upholding the truth - it’s about protecting themselves. A thoroughly corrupt organization. When people say “drain the swamp” the FBI is target number 1.

kevviiinn 3y ago
All law enforcement agencies have the same amount of zero oversight that the FBI has, but local police departments also get to terrorize their local communities with military hardware on top of constant monitoring with stuff like Palantir
- dontupvoteme 3y ago
  They listen to the mossad at least.
  - kevviiinn 3y ago
    Yea because Israel is exactly the same as the US if not worse in terms of terrorizing the Palestinians
- local_crmdgeon 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - ahiknsr 3y ago
    > which is why crime is rising catastrophically and people are fleeing to states like Texas. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/texas-governor-seeks-to-pardon-man-found-guilty-of-murdering-black-lives-matter-protester https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/texas-governor-seeks-to-pa...
    - local_crmdgeon 3y ago
      Please attempt to refute the central point instead of posting non-sequitors. Engaging in good faith is what keeps this place from being Twitter.
  - Arkhaine_kupo 3y ago
    > which is why crime is rising catastrophically and people are fleeing to states like Texas. California violent crime rate : 25.2 / 100k Texas violent crime rate : 24.8 / 100k California property crime : 35.4 / 100k Texas property crime. : 38.0 / 100k Yep, trully a disproportionate crime rate that warrants narratives about "people fleeing", which btw is not happening, demographic movements have been pretty steady. Largest moves have been a few real state companies and some dudes with podcasts. > at some point y'all have to look at SF and say "huh, maybe we weren't right about everything" Is SF somehow not part of the american police state? Like what part of California is suddenly this leftist utopia and warrants careful consideration before american follows suit into hell? Cali is notorious for NIMBYism, where police are called by rich white liberals to keep minorities, homeless etc away. Police action is as violent and as class aware as anywhere else in the US. The SF police budget is 780 million yearly, that would put them above 60 countries on earth by gdp. The entire country of micronesia, with 500k people could work for 2 whole years and not be able to pay 1 year of the SF police budget.
    - local_crmdgeon 3y ago
      Yes, Californians and New Yorkers and Minnesotans are moving to red states in droves. Source: https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/05/21/5-charts-that-explain-the-california-and-bay-area-exodus/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/05/21/5-charts-that-explain... That's why there are fearmongering billboards going up in SF: https://www.newsweek.com/billboards-warn-california-residents-not-move-texas-after-mass-exodus-1737368 https://www.newsweek.com/billboards-warn-california-resident... Pretending that the exodus isn't happening isn't going to change the fact that SF is a failing city. Seattle, Philly, and NYC have just voted in pro-cop mayors who are running on a "fund the police" platform. Most of that vote comes from minorities, particularly Black people (in the case of Eric Adams and Cherelle Parker) Please, please, please try to address your problems today, before things get worse. Last time I was in Seattle people were shocked that I'd never seen someone shit on the street in Detroit.
- xyzelement 3y ago
  I hear this but I don't experience it. Living in NYC as a poor immigrant teen 1990s through upper-middle-class (or whatever) adult through 2021, I did not feel "terrorized" by the NYPD. Now I live in a small town not far from NYC and the police are literally part of the community, it's a few dozen folks that most people in town know on first name basis. No terrorizing. To be clear, as someone who grew up in the USSR, I am certainly in sync with the idea that police can be oppressive, it just does not resonate at all with what I see in my now 3 decades in the US.
  - kevviiinn 3y ago
    Did you grow up as a black american? People from different communities have radically different experiences, which is why we see denials such as yours
    - xyzelement 3y ago
      Did you? FWIW I grew up very much "in the hood" in Brooklyn.
      - goolz 3y ago
        No, but I agree with them. I live in the hood and am white and live an easy life compared to those who are not. Get some perspective. EDIT: and my whole family is from BK, what was once filled with immigrants is now filled with the rich and privileged in most parts. All I am saying is that if you wanna use anecdotes so can I. Brown people in this country are systemically treated like trash. I see it every day. I don’t fear my life but I sure would if I was a 16 year old black kid in my city (Philadelphia).
        deleted 3y ago
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        A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
        I come from the old country that has ( maybe had? ) fairly homogeneous population. We still had locations you did not go to after dark, pathology that rivaled some of the ghetto stories and police that could abuse you if they so chose ( communism - cops could really do whatever ). I posit that the issue is poverty and people. We just kinda suck as a species. I am saying it is not the skin color. I am saying it is generations of living in ways that make integration into society somewhat hard. << Get some perspective. I believe parent is correct. Immigrants from Africa are able to prosper in US, because they are not bound by culture infused in them by the 'street'. The fact is he made it out despite being the 'wrong' color.
bell-cot 3y ago
> Essentially the FBI is a rogue agency. They have no one watching them. They are beyond repair... Outside of dictatorships, is there any law enforcement agency that gets the sort of oversight and accountability which the government departments (say) plowing snow off the roads receive? I am not aware of any. And outside of utopian delusions, "eliminate law enforcement" doesn't actually work in a large, modern-ish society - they are very quickly replaced by even-less-accountable private vigilante groups / criminal gangs / military / etc. Human nature abhors a power vacuum. Perhaps it would be more useful to look at who benefits from unaccountable law enforcement, and do something about the roots of the problem? Especially look at all the "innocent citizens" who really don't want to believe "good cops" may be rotten creeps, or to hear about the messy details of law enforcement unofficially upholding a social order which is quite beneficial to those "innocent" citizens.
- monero-xmr 3y ago
  I never said I thought an institution with similar powers to the FBI shouldn’t exist. I said that the FBI itself has proven itself beyond repair and control. So it should be disbanded. I can think of many ways it could be done better but for decades the same problems at the FBI have been occurring so the slate needs to be wiped clean.
  - bell-cot 3y ago
    With similar powers (and similar lack if oversight), I’m thinking that such an FBI-replacement agency would have similar problems in very short order. Sounds like a laborious feel-good exercise.
    - monero-xmr 3y ago
      You are somehow advocating for the FBI by saying “yes it’s a corrupt mess but nothing could ever be better”. What a defeatist, nihilistic opinion.
      - bell-cot 3y ago
hotpotamus 3y ago
> even when it comes to presidential candidates I get that some of us are more equal than others, but the ideal is that even the president is not above the law, and a candidate isn't even the president yet.
- lordloki 3y ago
  Right, but neither are they below the law and proper standards should be followed and proper justifications met before investigations begin.
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SkyMarshal 3y ago
FYI, Reason.com is far from non-partisan.
- boomboomsubban 3y ago
  It's openly a libertarian organization[1] arguing a government agency should be shut down. Definitely partisan, though doesn't mean their conclusion is wrong here. https://reason.com/about/ https://reason.com/about/
- partiallypro 3y ago
  It's not "partisan" in the sense that it is for Democrats or Republicans. It is partisan in that it's libertarian (small l) leaning. That's not as bad, viewing a civil item through a civil libertarian lens doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong.
- monero-xmr 3y ago
  [flagged]

web3-is-a-scam 3y ago

Better solution. Just disband the FBI.

jacquesm 3y ago
No, improve the FBI and do proper oversight. You need an institution like the FBI but it needs to be kept as sharply focused as possible.
- Aerbil313 3y ago
  > You need an institution like the FBI You don't need it in a world without modern technology. Not that you can have it. Technology is this enslaving, centralizing force which leads to all this... everything. Abolish it.
- pclmulqdq 3y ago
  Why do we need an FBI? There are over 200 other federal law enforcement operations, and certainly one (or ten) of them will step up to fill the gaps in cross-state criminal investigation that would be left by disbanding the FBI.
  - j16sdiz 3y ago
    How do you make sure the one who step up won't become next FBI?
    - willcipriano 3y ago
      Strong states rights protections. Recover the republic from the ashes of democracy.
      - rtkwe 3y ago
        States have their own FBI-alikes and they're not much better when it comes to privacy they just have fewer tools but mostly because they're not getting that much in the way of work that would need it. If they get delegated responsibility they're not going to turn out much better than the FBI.

ExoticPearTree 3y ago

The problem with law enforcement in pretty much any country and with the intelligence services in particular is that they tend to see everyone as a suspect and the group think perspective is that the means justify the end. And most of the time oversight of these agencies is a joke. Unless a director and its subordinates actually do jail time for what they did, just maybe firing them is a slap in the face of the victims.

ajsnigrutin 3y ago
The problem I see is, that there is no personal responsibility for anything. A cop beats someone, plants drugs, fbi does an illegal search, cia trains a future terrorist and people die, etc... The "best case" that can happen to victims is, that taxpayers cover some costs, and that's it. For every action, there is a field worker, a chain of command and someone paid to give commands and take responsibility for that. If those people ended up in jail for everything illegal they do (as do all the other people in other industries), the world would be a lot nicer place.
- efitz 3y ago
  There are several challenges with this: first, courts have adopted the concept of “sovereign immunity” that shields government personnel in most situations. Next, prosecutors usually have a very close relationship with law enforcement and are generally reluctant to prosecute (although there are some that seem to delight in it, different problem). Finally, we have a judiciary that in general is very deferential to law enforcement (again there are some exceptions but the rule holds). I think that there are two cultural aspects to the whole law enforcement apparatus that are undesirable- first, that they are a closed brotherhood and have to always take care of each other, and second, that it’s “us against them”, eg that LE is adversarial to the general populace. For most of US history the armed forces have tried to stamp out these ideas in our officer corps, trying to walk the fine line of encouraging obedience to superiors while emphasizing personal responsibility and ethics. Not always successful but a serious attempt to establish and maintain a culture that avoids the toxic aspects that we see in LE culture. This is all my own opinion.

arisbe__ 3y ago

It seems the policy might have become to spread fear among the the population which will reduce terrorism, which is of course silly.

causi 3y ago

"If the Durham report shows anything, it is that the FBI leadership bent over backward to protect [Hillary] Clinton's campaign while launching a full investigation into [Donald] Trump's campaign on the thinnest of pretexts," What I never understood is why people assumed that alliance necessarily involved collusion. It didn't. Russia saw Trump as both ally and self-destructive weapon therefore they acted in his favor. Trump is a greedy fool and sees Russia as a source of profit and so he aided them. These activities do not require a mutual agreement.

wrycoder 3y ago
I agree with everything you said, except there is no evidence that Trump aided Russia (or anybody). Russia’s basic approach is to sow discord in the USA any way it can.
lordloki 3y ago
How did Trump aid Russia? He was chastising Europe and Germany in particular for being economically tied to Russia. He literally encouraged their decoupling, which would have been extremely detrimental to Russia. I've read in the "news" that Trump supported Russia for 7 years now but I never saw any evidence of him doing much of anything to actually help Russia. Unless you think that encouraging European countries to pay their share of NATO dues actually helped Russia, but that takes some mental gymnastics, since NATO was never actually weakened.
- Arkhaine_kupo 3y ago
  > How did Trump aid Russia? Leaked US secrets with the Russian Ambassador. Secrets that cost years of political capital with Israel that had gotten those secrets. The leaked info included the name and face of a israeli spy still inside ISIS putting his life at risk. He also did not tell about this meeting to US media and the media found out after Russian gov sources posted photos of trump and 2 senior russian members giggling together in the white house Eased sanctions on multiple Russian oligarchs such as Deripaska. Also planned on removing multiple sanctions on high end tech for Russia. Told the international community he believed Crimea was Russian, despite Ukraine still claiming it as theirs. Also froze US aide to Ukraine which helped bost russian mobilisation before the invasion. In terms of PR, he publically praised Putin multiple times, defended the Russian Syrian invassion, he defended russian allied states like Belarus over the EU. Dismished condeming russian attacks and the poisoning of UK citizens. Hired Manafort, a guy condemed for running pro russian campaigns in Ukraine, as his campaign manager. Publically sided with Russia over US intelligence sources that claimed Russia was using the taliban to kill american soldiers. So how has Trump aided russia in summary: Reduced sanctions, shared classified info, talked them up internationally, hired their propaganda internationally to run his campaign and sided with russian sources over us intelligence in multiple PR nightmares. Seems pretty straight forward.

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infinghxsg 3y ago

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DirectorKrennic 3y ago

Lots of criticism in this thread and a shortage of empathy for the position that the FBI finds itself in trying to do its job to protect the public. The following quote from "A Few Good Men" encapsulates my feelings about the subject. “We live in a world that has walls. And those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Lieutenant Weinberg? I have a great responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. The luxury of the blind. The luxury of not knowing what I know: That Santiago’s death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and uncomprehensible to you, saves lives. You can’t handle it. Because deep down, in places you don’t talk about, you want me on that wall. You need me there. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as a backbone to a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it. I’d prefer you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I’d suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post.”

PrimeMcFly 3y ago
Breaking the law is no justification for enforcing the law or protecting the public. Jack Nicholson was not the good guy in that movie.
- DirectorKrennic 3y ago
  I agree on both counts, but even the bad guy can make a good point.
  - cliffy 3y ago
    He doesn't make a good point. I'd rather have people of high moral character responsible for enforcing the law.
AlexandrB 3y ago
This is a megalomaniacal rant delivered by a character responsible for the murder of one of the soldiers under his command. The "walls" are meant to protect society from the Jesseps of the world, not glorify them and put them in positions of power.

cumshitpiss 3y ago

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jmclnx 3y ago

This article pretty much morphs into "Cell Phones Spy on you". Most people here already knows that I think :)

PrimeMcFly 3y ago

To treat state actors as hostile, there are a few things you can do. When traveling, travel with a wiped/clean system, maybe restore from an image that has casual use so as not to be completely clean and arouse suspicion. Then when on the other side of immigration, download your real image. Use something like VeraCrypt to protect your data. You can use this in conjunction with a script running in the background, so if the volume dismounts, any sensitive programs open can be closed automatically. Also set it up as a bosskey type thing so it can auto-dismount and close sensitive programs on a specific key combo. Ideally some form of steganography would be used also, but there is no solution I'm aware of that can hide gigs of data in a movie file or something. If possible, remove vendor keys from SecureBoot and use your own key and sign your own bootloader. Have it boot into Windows unless a specific key combo is pressed, and then it can boot into whatever you want. As a hobby, I'm trying to come up with a way for it to boot into a virtualized windows instance, without giving any signs of it being virtualized. Software like Prey may also be useful, to allow remote locking of the device.

glitchc 3y ago
The challenge is that these are all terribly inconvenient solutions. For ex. what do you do if your flight is delayed and you're stuck in the terminal for an additional few hours? In effect, we are trying to solve a problem with technology that could be better solved with laws limiting powers and adding oversight.
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  > For ex. what do you do if your flight is delayed and you're stuck in the terminal for an additional few hours? Consume recreation materials like books or movies, work on stuff that you don't care if a state actor sees, or do work purely remotely on a server you control. > In effect, we are trying to solve a problem with technology that could be better solved with laws limiting powers and adding oversight. It's going to be a long time, probably not in my lifetime, that we would be able to completely trust any state and have such oversight and regulation. We won't get there the way we are going now. I mean I agree with you, it's a better solution, I just don't see it happening anytime soon.

benreesman 3y ago

I’ve got curve 25519 inked on one arm, a stylized “citizen four” on the other, and little else (a Galois quote). My opinions on this are no secret. But I don’t see a solution or even mitigation at lower cost than the benefit. It’s just too easy for mediocre technologists with a mandate to do effective surveillance. I’ve adopted a policy of transparency so extreme that surveillance is a non-issue, and that’s a privilege. I live in a jurisdiction where the authoritarian ambitions of the state are still merely ambitions, and I understand that not everyone has that luxury. For people really against the wall on this, political dissidents in an authoritarian state, there are ways to be hard as fuck on cryptography and privacy, but it’s a lot of work and you only need to make a mistake once. And that sucks. The real answer feels like a fantasy but it’s always worth remembering the fantasy: stop capture, the fungibility of wealth into political power, and the ability to inherit legal immunity as well as a mansion. Nice dream right?

h2odragon 3y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee Ruby Ridge. Waco. The FBI hasn't "gone rotten" recently; they've been like this for quite some time.

IYasha 3y ago
It's rather just "by design".
llamaimperative 3y ago
The Waco incident obviously had a less than ideal outcome but actually I’m a huge, huge fan of the fact that someone went after a compound of militant child-enslaving rapists. Kind of weird to put it here as an indictment of the FBI.
- at_a_remove 3y ago
  They killed twenty-eight kids. This suggests that "going after" the compound was not really about the welfare of any children. They could have hardly performed worse in said child welfare unless they had made an itty-bitty Dachau and ran the kids through it.
  - bacchusracine 3y ago
    >They killed twenty-eight kids. >This suggests that "going after" the compound was not really about the welfare of any children. Not just that, but given the way things played out repeatedly (not just Waco, Ruby Ridge, the Elián González situation, etc) it's hard to believe much of what the FBI asserts happened in those cases. It's too difficult to not see some higher up putting their fingers on the scale and trying to whitewash what happened after the fact. What little we do know seems to really reek of REMFer controls over what was allowed to happen. And who can forget the infamous images of some of the agents standing over the ashes with grins? No the official story on Waco is one of the things that I cannot take at face value. It certainly didn't help going to public school and hearing about the events while attending a church that had an (undeserved) reputation due to busybodies who made up stories. I grew up sincerely wondering if one day the government was going to show up at my church one Sunday. For all that we're told the Branch Davidians were a cult (and certainly it sounded like they were depending on the sources you read up on) they had all the trappings of being just another church. It is only because we were told that they were cultists, that we were told they were child abusers that we mostly didn't wonder at how the government was acting towards a CHURCH, a place of WORSHIP. It's a serious blindspot, compounded by the fact that it was the government, their accusers who were responsible for all these deaths. Yeah, I've got questions.

andrewclunn 3y ago

Local police forces can be reformed and replaced outright as needed when they become corrupt. There really is a "too big to fail" effect where any institution that is no longer allowed to fail will invariably become about maintaining itself and its own power rather than performing whatever duties it was established for. The question with the FBI however, is whether it has become corrupt, or if it always was.

WaitWaitWha 3y ago

> There are four major classes of threat vector in your phone. Hardware, OS, apps and malware. I would correct this as hardware, OS, Apps (including malware), and external systems including carrier and destination sites. In my opinion when it comes to data flow, there is little to no distinction between apps and malware. On the other hard, the carriers do collect both meta and data about activities, so do the other end of most communications. I am also uncomfortable with not dwelling in to this vector. It is very much akin to "just use Private/privacy/Incognito mode when browsing". It may take care at the device, but nothing outside of the device is protected. APTs often pick their target based on external data availability.

celtoid 3y ago
Agreed. "A fundamental vulnerability in the Network Processing Unit (NPU) chipset has been uncovered recently, which can be exploited by attackers to eavesdrop on data transmitted over a wireless network, affecting over 89% of real-world Wi-Fi networks." [0] [0] https://blog.apnic.net/2023/05/29/mitm-attacks-in-public-wi-fi-networks-without-rogue-access-points/ https://blog.apnic.net/2023/05/29/mitm-attacks-in-public-wi-...
TheRealDunkirk 3y ago
Yeah, in the discussion about privacy, most of it centers on the social networks and the OS, but dishearteningly leaves out the cell carriers and the internet providers. I'm sure AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast, et. al. love this. They're flying under the radar, and I'm convinced that data is a lot of what organizations like the FBI are buying, so that Facebook and Twitter can claim they aren't giving them that data.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

Most of the "dragnet" surveillance technology and operations aren't being operated by the federal govt itself. The data is (usually) very eagerly handed over from private company CSOs (or equivalent) to agents who ask very nicely in that meeting you weren't invited to that wasn't on the calendar. The cases you hear about with formal warrants etc are some non-existent-percentage of collection. Go look up the legal definition of "collection" "exploitation" etc... because it's not what you think it is. Collection "at scale" is only possible via the massive and growing privately owned surveillance capitalism systems. Just think of the infrastructure you have to RUN to be able to collect at scale. I can also tell you that if you can dream up a way to spy on people it's already being done at some level. [nb. SIGINT and IMINT are different stories so please don't tell me how most of the data we have is MASINT or some shit - citizens don't care about that data (and shouldn't)].

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

@dang why is there a flamebait article about a 3-letter-org on the front page practically every single day?

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dang 3y ago
Flamebait and clickbait get upvoted a lot. That's the bait part. The general topic has always featured on HN as it is well nested in the Venn diagram of things people are curious about here: security, surveillance, public policy, espionage, you name it. I'd separate those two issues. That topic is fine, as long as the article is good. If the article is bad, it doesn't matter whether it's this topic or another. (You're exaggerating the frequency with which it happens, though - might be a case of the notice-dislike bias - a terrible name which I'm still waiting for someone to improve on - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20notice%20dislike&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) Last point - @dang doesn't work. I only saw this randomly. If you want reliable message delivery, you need to use hn@ycombinator.com.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  Thanks for the reply! Not to derail any further but there have been numerous events that ought to be a perfect fit if it were only a matter of the Venn diagram. For example there has been no mention of Volt Typhoon malware on Guam or Russia's Snake malware. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=snake%20malware&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=guam%20malware&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... I could be biased but I think there is a concerted effort to bury these topics. I would have loved to see a discussion with this crowd! I'm sure you're busy so don't worry about responding, I'm just airing something that's been on my mind.
  - 3y ago

JustBreath 3y ago

The spooky part is we think encrypted/secure communications protect us, but with quantum computers just around the corner and a near unlimited appetite for storing records, very soon all that historical data will be broken into. Quantum resistant encryption doesn't protect the past.

Tepix 3y ago
What about PFS? I guess it will fails when both keys are compromised?
- Vecr 3y ago
  Perfect Forward Security just requires them to crack the key exchange they stored for each session instead of the static keys. I guess that's somewhat harder, but not that much.

we_never_see_it 3y ago

[flagged]

droopyEyelids 3y ago
If the right wing latches onto an idea, does that prove the idea is false?
- dghughes 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - Vecr 3y ago
    What? Even allowing that all those nines are hyperbolic, at various points in time it was reasonably popular for "right wing" people to be concerned about defending from Russia and biological preparedness. The past few years have shown those to be more than mirages.
    - actionfromafar 3y ago
      OTOH they are switching tunes now that Russia is actually warring. Now they are starting to both-sides Russia.
    - fundad 3y ago
      In practice the right treated both as hoaxes.
      - Vecr 3y ago
        I don't think so, you can find quotes where George W. Bush showed a reasonably good understanding of Influenza pandemics, and Mitt Romney called Russia "without question, our No. 1 geopolitical foe".
    - dghughes 3y ago
      I wouldn't call right-wing reasonable it is quite different than Conservative/Republican. Right-wing is the wildly unreasonable distance cousin of Conservatism. I have no problem with political Conservatism I've even voted for my local and federal politicians a few times and other times Liberal political parties. And yes the same applies to the political Left. I like to consider myself politically Centrist as best as I can.

netbioserror 3y ago

So long as we persist with the ridiculous idea of "independent" executive departments, we will have out-of-control bureaucracies and agencies with toothless congressional oversight and impunity versus the president. The president either has control of executive departments or does not. The presidency is the most direct path to voter accountability for executive departments (by design), because we all know Congress slow-walks and sandbags accountability until it ceases to be a campaign concern.

boffinAudio 3y ago

>The IT security equivalent is an "Assume This Device Is Tapped" sticker on every phone, tablet and computer. I stick them everywhere, but mostly on toilets as I feel this has the most impact - but its also an eye-catcher on my new electric motorbike, since it makes the point fairly well: https://www.redbubble.com/i/sticker/NSA-Monitered-Device-No-Markup-by-fufulord/28932692.EJUG5 https://www.redbubble.com/i/sticker/NSA-Monitered-Device-No-...

Simulacra 3y ago

The problem with the FBI is that it should never have been allowed to be a police force. It should be a scientific advisory agency only. From the civil rights era to the Russian dossier, The FBI has become a political tool and that's wrong

indymike 3y ago

The real threat is systematic violation of legal and Constitutional rights & protections. That is very different than a law enforcement agency that occasionally overreaches. The threat is the overreach.

seee-I-Told-you 3y ago

My perspective is this, and disclosure: I've been working with the FBI on numerous occations.. The FBI is a large organization of around 35 000 - 40 000 employees with 50+ field offices. The FBI's mission is to uphold the consitution and protect the U.S from foreign intelligence, espionage and terrorism. Note that the U.S. population is ~ 332 million right now. I think the FBI's dilemma is "damned if you do, damned if you don't", constantly having to find the right balance with regards to "what is too little, what is too much?". There is also the classic services-dilemma of.. if you get attacked.. everybody will yell "where was the FBI??". If an attacked is stopped in it's tracks the majority of times you won't even know about it.

twic 3y ago
> I think the FBI's dilemma is "damned if you do, damned if you don't" It's more "tutted at if you do, damned if you don't", so they are strongly incentivised to do.
photochemsyn 3y ago
Another (equally flawed) take on the FBI is that it's main job is serving as the enforcement arm for the organized white-collar crime cartel known as Wall Street. This is supported by the fact that so many FBI executives get lucrative jobs on Wall Street after they retire, and that very few executives are ever prosecuted or investigated for criminal behavior (see 2008 subprime fraud - in contrast, Iceland sent 39 bankers to jail over that). A nice case example is the HSBC drug cartel laundering scandal, in which HSBC laundered $2 billion in Central/South American drug cartel money and yet noone in that organization ever served prison time for it, due to decisions made by the FBI and the US Justice Department. Indeed, James Comey (later FBI head) got a job as an HSBC consultant. However, if we didn't have some kind of federal legal enforcement system, then American corporations would start acting like drug cartels, e.g. if Goldman Sachs could steal from JPMorganChase without any consequences, then JPMorganChase might retaliate with violent attacks on GoldmanSachs offices (which is how cartel wars play out in Mexico, and see also alcohol prohibition in the 1920s). The problem is that the FBI doesn't limit itself to legitimate law enforcement issues, but also tries to manipulate and destroy political movements that are not aligned with the interests of Wall Street, the military-industrial complex, and their corrupt Washington politicians, using illegal surveillance and infiltration tactics, etc., rather like the Gestapo/STASI outfits in German history.

the-printer 3y ago

Most people would love for an organization like the FBI that possesses their reach and oversight to protect their values and authority, although particular means may vary. I’m coming to feel like there are too many ambiguities in regard to anti-State, surveillance, security, etc. sentiment. A lot of the kind of talk like in this article boils down to disputes over power and its preservation. I’m not familiar with the Register’s ideological bend, if they possess one at all, nor that of the author’s. Nonetheless it’s worth taking into consideration the liberty and agency that this article is seeking to defend in response to the state’s.

twosdai 3y ago
I hear you about people offloading the work of their values being protected by another organization. However I think that time has shown the following: - The values of organizations can change rapidly within a human lifetime. - It's possible that tomorrow you're actions in the past are seen as a problem for these organizations. What I mean practically by these two remarks is that it can't be relied on for any organization to have your best interests at heart "tomorrow". So I believe that it's in the best interest of the user to always be the first line of defense for their data and privacy. With regards to the register, not sure it matters what way they swing for political affiliation if the end result is that the individual has control.

anonymousiam 3y ago

"Or you can buy a top brand like Samsung, if you're happy with the bloatware and the recent deal with Meta – details not revealed, but it's safe to assume Zuck's hummingbird will be slipping its tongue into your sweet data nectar somewhere along the line. That may not end well." It doesn't mention Samsung's cloud backup, which is enabled by default. It stores EVERYTHING from your phone on a server in South Korea. (This includes the contents of the removable uSD card, if one is present.) I'm sure the NSA loves this.

DennisP 3y ago

127 comments so far with no mention of the partial solution described at the bottom of the article: > take all the Play stuff and move it out of its tight integration with the low level system and into userland, where it can be sandboxed. That gives you back granular control over all the resources Play Services wants to use, and what data it and the app which use it want to send back. That's the approach GrapheneOS takes, a Pixel-only open source Android distro – OK, ROM – that by many reports hits the sweet spot of maximum control over security with minimal impact on the daily Android experience. > Teamed with a second-hand last-but-one generation Pixel, GrapheneOS raises the seemingly oxymoronic possibility that the most data-tight and user-configurable mobile platform costs less than $200, has negligible environmental impact, and is powered by the data ogre Google itself. > It doesn't matter how badly the FBI, NSA, GCHQ or the dictatorships behave, they can't have your data if you never send it. You'll still have to take care of what you do online and how you do it, but at least you can build that castle on a halfway decent rock.

georgeecollins 3y ago
I don't think that is a workable solution for your average citizen.
- kornhole 3y ago
  I gave one to my sister, mom, and tech challenged partner. They love them. The area that required help was coaching them on operational security by picking better apps/networks and maintaining their firewall settings properly.
  - standardUser 3y ago
    And the millions of people who don't know anyone who knows what half those words mean?
maerF0x0 3y ago
The more important piece highlighted by your comment is "Why should we have to?" They're the one committing crimes, in pursuit of hypothetical crimes we're not committing, and also with very little evidence that what they're doing even helps. They've broken trust and should lose all access.

fredgrott 3y ago

It's not the FBI that is the problem as they are implementing a system that US Congress designed. We need to revisit the statutes that keep getting renewed despite our complaints. In the non electronic world would we tolerate the post office opening every letter we send and photo copying it and turning it over the FBI?

barbacoa 3y ago

Alexander Acosta the US attorney who let off Jeff Epstein reportedly did so because he was told Epstein "belonged to intelligence". Turns out Epstein was an FBI informant. https://technofog.substack.com/p/confirmed-jeffrey-epsteins-history https://technofog.substack.com/p/confirmed-jeffrey-epsteins-... Or there was that time the FBI found links between the 9/11 hijackers and Saudi government. Which they promptly covered up. https://archive.is/20230115173049/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/magazine/9-11-saudi-arabia-fbi.html https://archive.is/20230115173049/https://www.nytimes.com/20...

frfsfgxffd 3y ago
just yesterday on the pro-cashless WSJ article comments someone mentioned the fbi was a bad actor, and everyone jumped in saying there were so many rules added after JER that something bad would never happen again. sigh.

pxc 3y ago

If you're curious about the debates in this comment section over just when the FBI became corrupt or political or conducting illegal surveillance or whatever, you should read Tim Wiener's history of the FBI, Enemies. (It's available in audiobook form, if that is a format that works better for you these days.) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13155934-enemies https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13155934-enemies