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One of the biggest lies about the surveillance state is that it'll be professional. NSA employees have used multi-billion dollar American surveillance assets t
by areoform 6mo ago
One of the biggest lies about the surveillance state is that it'll be professional.
NSA employees have used multi-billion dollar American surveillance assets to spy on women they're infatuated with. There's even a cute term for it, LOVEINT.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/loveint-nsa-letter-discloses-employee-eavesdropping-girlfriends-spouses-flna8C11271620 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/loveint-nsa-letter-disclo...
https://www.yahoo.com/news/nsa-staff-used-spy-tools-spouses-ex-lovers-193227203.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/nsa-staff-used-spy-tools-spouses-...
In another instance, a foreign woman who was employed by the U.S. government suspected that her lover, an NSA civilian employee, was listening to her phone calls. She shared her suspicion with another government employee, who reported it. An investigation found the man abused NSA databases from 1998 to 2003 to snoop on nine phone numbers of foreign women and twice collected communications of an American, according to the inspector general's report.
People aren't able to imagine the ramifications of pervasive surveillance because there never has been such pervasive surveillance in human history. And humans are terrible at predicting how this is going to change things. Especially, with LLMs in the mix.
Unless a very strict line is maintained for privacy across the board; the world that's coming will be many, many custom, tailor-made hells co-existing as tumors off of the back of state and corporate surveillance infrastructure.
- 1a527dd5 6mo ago> She shared her suspicion with another government employee, who reported it. And what pray tell do you do if you don't have anyone to report it to inside the government? Reports like that can easily get blackholed.
- nielsbot 6mo agoi’m surprised it went anywhere even inside the government. and imagine all the cases we don’t know about. not only that but - someone in the Senate (Wyden?) recently said it’s worse than anyone thinks and people would be outraged - a judge from the FISA court, said FISA should be revised e.g. https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/04/15/congress/wyden-urges-democrats-to-back-fisa-privacy-amendments-00873053 https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/04/15/congress/wy...
- nielsbot 6mo agoLooks like the judge I'm referring to is Collyer. Not quite a call for reform, but she did say the FBI is abusing the court. > Consequently, in an extraordinary public order on Tuesday, the secret court’s presiding judge, Rosemary Collyer, directed the Justice Department and the FBI to conduct a thorough review of all submissions the bureau has made to the FISC. They have about three weeks (until Jan. 10, 2020) to explain what steps have been taken to assure the candor of each submission. https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/475053-fisa-courts-rebuke-of-the-fbi-it-broke-or-ignored-the-rules-and-our/ https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/475053-fisa-courts-reb...
- MisterTea 6mo ago> Unless a very strict line is maintained for privacy across the board; the world that's coming will be many, many custom, tailor-made hells co-existing as tumors off of the back of state and corporate surveillance infrastructure. The future black markets are going to be filled with all sorts of illegal "private comms" devices to give us our privacy back. I am sure there are sci-fi novels with this theme.
- intended 6mo ago> Unless a very strict line is maintained for privacy across the board; > many, many custom, tailor-made hells co-existing as tumors off of the back of state and corporate surveillance infrastructure. We already live in this world. Most of the conversations here on HN are naturally America centric, and the situation with the rest of the humans on the planet is secondary. The more distant, the less interest. For most of that world, please for help are sent via stomach churning amounts of appeals on via WhatsApp. The hope is that someone knows someone at a platform to get them help. Something like being having your non-consensual intimate imagery shared, means you are pretty much done. Since a majority of people live in nations with more conservative mores (on average) than the west, this means an absurd number of lives ruined. Fraud, pig butchering scams, are examples of outright crimes. Tech isn’t much better when it comes to customer support. You want to recover your account, or reach a human? Good luck. I’d love to hear a counter argument for this position: Tech platforms are as valuable as they are, because they do not pay the support costs they incur.
- cedws 6mo agoIIRC Snowden said the same in his biography - that the NSA had a bro culture and they abused their powers to obtain compromising images and texts (often sexual) and share them around. If you're going to use technology to illegally spy on millions people, at least do it with some professionalism and restraint. Bastards.
- ikrenji 6mo agoall this techno surveillance should just be straight out banned by law. the little extra security it might offer is not worth the huge costs in privacy and other unforeseen impacts