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NSA Chief: Terrorists Using Leaked Info [video]
- downandout 13y agoThis is nothing more than a combination of fear mongering and pouting over the loss of the secrecy that their little fiefdom once enjoyed. These are government servants at their worst.
- bittired 13y agoWell, doubting that leaks of information won't have a negative impact on our security is pretty obtuse also. I'm not afraid, but I also wouldn't be surprised if we have a greater number of terrorist attacks in the coming years. It's in their interest to complain for multiple reasons.
- moocowduckquack 13y agoMost terrorist attacks in the US are by US citizens, such as bombing of abortion clinics and the like. I doubt that the Snowden leaks are likely to change their frequency that much, especially when compared to other factors.
- dhimes 13y agoI hate to state the obvious rebuttal, but: maybe the programs were working? Maybe that's why Obama didn't cut them. Maybe he decided he couldn't be the guy to pull the plug and have $avg_fatalities people die every year. Maybe. On the other hand, you would think he would say so if that were the case.
- ThomPete 13y agoThat is not the question. The question is a what price.
- jonknee 13y agoI'm sure he was told that if he ended the programs it would cost lives, but it's not like we had lot of terrorist deaths before the government threw out the 4th amendment without telling anyone. There were attacks before and after, there will be more in the future as well. Most terrorist attacks get stopped because they actually aren't very sophisticated (see the shoe or underwear bombers), not because the NSA has everyone's email.
- dhimes 13y agoMost terrorist attacks get stopped because they actually aren't very sophisticated Perhaps you are right, but some are stopped because of intelligence. It could be that the bad guys are getting more sophisticated, even though there are still lower-probability lone-wolf types out there.
- KMag 13y agoJust a side note: the Boston bombers and the Times Square bombers are much better examples. The shoe bomb plot was actually very sophisticated, planned and built by something like terrorism's version of Q. Luckily, they sent more of a Johnny English than a James Bond.
- lukifer 13y agoIt's a no-win perception issue for Obama. If even a few Americans die in a terror attack, his administration looks weak (look at how badly Fox has gone after him on Benghazi). If he does "whatever is necessary", he looks like a warmonger with no respect for the Constitution. But people die in all sorts of preventable ways. Dropping the national speed limit would save hundreds or thousands of lives. So would nutritional subsidies for kids, or all other sorts of things we could spend our political capital on. But those things do not have the same broad support as anti-terrorism measures, because the public is not willing to pay the cost, even though more lives are at stake. You could say our fear of The Other comes from Bush's fear-mongering, or the shock of 9/11, or a genuine clash of civilizations, or just human nature. But whatever the origin, that irrational fear is the real root of our disproportionate reaction to the theatrical murder called "terrorism". Our culture has been conditioned to be afraid by reflex, and it has to end. The fear of death is the beginning of slavery.
- dhimes 13y agoThis is probably completely naïve of me, but I would think that if he just came out and honestly said, "I couldn't be the guy to pull the plug once I saw how effective the programs are," then that would be a brilliant way to start the national conversation. Not only about spying, but Gitmo- which he has been very slow about closing.
- lukifer 13y agoHe basically said as much, though less directly, and without specifics: http://youtu.be/m8F99BT8QAA?t=6m0s http://youtu.be/m8F99BT8QAA?t=6m0s It's also telling how clumsily he's stumbling over his words. Whether Obama fears speaking freely for political reasons, security reasons, or just plain deception is something I can't answer. (And obviously, much of what he's saying is demonstrably false, or at least misleading. But it also wouldn't surprise me for the NSA to be misinforming the President.)
- warmwaffles 13y ago> Dropping the national speed limit would save hundreds or thousands of lives. Fine I'll bite. Where is this evidence?
- ajays 13y agoIt's not the programs that prevented attacks; it's this magic stone that I have and pray to. It keeps "terrorists and other groups" at bay. But now, since I've divulged its existence, it may not be as effective.
- onebaddude 13y ago>I also wouldn't be surprised if we have a greater number of terrorist attacks in the coming years Greater than what? The last 1 year? 2 years? 5 years? 100 years?
- downandout 13y agoSnowden merely confirmed a widely held suspicion that the feds are recording and analyzing most modern communications. The notion that terrorists didn't already assume this and use encryption online and burner cell phones is dubious to me. If anything, Snowden may have stopped some would-be terrorists by showing them just how many ways there are for them to get caught.
- BWStearns 13y agoThere's also another layer to this: The terrorists that actually exist are not 10 feet tall and not all geniuses. If I told some of my non-technologically oriented friends how to encrypt and anonymize their communications, they couldn't do it. If I went one step further and configured their computers and explained to them how to use it, they would probably still leak information by misusing it. Are the terrorists changing their tactics? Probably. Is it going to do them any good? Unlikely.
- rbanffy 13y agoIt's not like the collection of vast amounts of information on everyone everywhere had a positive impact on the US citizens security either... The shining example that pops up is the Boston marathon bombing. If the NSA, with its vast dragnet couldn't catch two amateurs, does anyone really think it would catch someone who actually knows how to pull of a bombing?
- WayneDB 13y agoNothing new was even revealed though! There were articles in major publications over 5 years ago about the NSA putting boxes on mirror ports at Internet backbone sites. That's when we started hearing about the CEO of Qwest.
- bartl 13y agoWhat is this supposed to link to? What I see is "As civil war rages on in Syria, humanitarian suffering is reaching new catastrophic levels."
- VLM 13y agoProbably a "hidden" message about where this is leading America to...
- dantheman 13y agoIs he merely telling us the least untruthful statement? I mean how can anyone trust a word he says?
- scrrr 13y agoAh, the liars are releasing a new statement. Very interesting. And their job is tougher now? Interesting. How did they ever fight criminals and terrorists before mass surveillance! Unimaginable.
- rocky1138 13y agoThere has always been mass surveillance. Consider: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/tudors/spying_01.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/tudors/spying_01.shtml
- lukifer 13y agoBut there has never been the capability to capture, store, index and query every piece of audio and text communication, for all persons, forever. Comparing historical spies to the modern surveillance state is like comparing the musket to the A-bomb.
- droopyEyelids 13y agoI liked how he said 'No one can listen to all the phone calls and read all the emails, the volume is simply too much!' neatly side stepping the fact that a computer is not a person.
- Roboprog 13y agoExactly, as if they couldn't store them. Maybe, just maybe, enough lay people are used to using "Google" to query a mountain of crap (the internet) to find a few interesting nuggets that they realize the government could do the same. Step 2: getting people to realize how badly this can go when correlation = causation, and you are guilty by association.
- anonymoushn 13y ago"You have seen concrete proof that maybe places where you used to be able to listen to are now silent?" "We have concrete proof that terrorist groups and others are taking action, making changes, and it's gonna make our job tougher." Although the lead-in mentions that intelligence collection has been hindered (in the past tense), Keith Alexander is only willing to say that it will be hindered in the future.
- danenania 13y agoBecause clearly our entire legal framework should be designed around making the NSA's job easier. Why not put surveillance cameras in everyone's houses? Why not implant everyone with tracking chips? Why not have TSA agents look up our assholes with a flashlight at airport security? All these things would certainly make the country safer. Just as concerning as the programs themselves are these kinds of idiotic arguments that their proponents make to justify them. I'm not hugely keen on trusting someone who can't avoid extremely simplistic logical fallacies in his reasoning to oversee the surveillance of all humanity.
- w_t_payne 13y agoDon't joke about it. This sort of thing is all to plausible. Think about the data collected by fitness-tracking devices. What about when these are mandated by your insurance provider? After all, some car insurance companies are already promoting the use of tracking devices in your car. There are all sorts of ways that we can be induced to buy and install the infrastructure that facilitates an Orwellian police state. This book does a good job of laying out how it could (all to plausibly) come about: http://amzn.com/1841499390 http://amzn.com/1841499390
- knowaveragejoe 13y agoProvider-issued set top boxes and routers are scarier, IMO.
- dhimes 13y ago
- joelrunyon 13y ago"Not to hide it from you. But to hide it from those AMONG you who are trying to kill you." Oh, well that makes me feel safe...
- _sabe_ 13y agoHaven't you seen them? I hear they're everywhere.
- fastfade 13y agoYawn...I just want to be safe from all the bad people - hang on a sec, I've got to go check & see if my Gov. check is in the mail.
- w_t_payne 13y agoSince the definition of "terrorism" has been watered down to the point where it can mean almost anything, a "terrorist" can therefore be almost anyone .. or, to be a little kinder to our lords and masters, the number of people to whom the term "terrorist" can potentially be applied has increased dramatically. If enough people have changed their behaviour as a result of the surveillance / nascent police-state scandal, then this statement is statistically plausible, so I am not calling out "B.S." just yet - although the usual warnings about rampant language-lawyering apply as per normal.
- chao- 13y agoThe majority of my HN comments are multi-paragraph, needlessly thought-out statements. But on this one all I can muster is: Boo Fucking Hoo.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- foobarbazqux 13y agoPithy one-liners are much more fun.
- perlpimp 13y agoNow NSA is terrorizing American public, shame on them! or wait they are shameless. SAD.
- alan_cx 13y agoSorry to be cynical and grumpy, but..... Careful folks, come high karma folks here will accuses you of trite anarchy for these comments.
- jacquesm 13y agoIf there is one thing these leaks have done then it is to register in the mind of the general public that these institutions are not just benign clubs of mathematicians that boldly crack evildoer codes that no man has cracked before but that they are collecting any kind of data they can get their hands on, including yours, to decide later on if it was useful or not. The fact that that alone and the potential consequences are now (slowly) sinking in to the public consciousness made these leaks more than worth it. That debate needs to be had and it needs to be had in the open, the hypocrisy of politicians (Merkel comes to mind) when they address the subject is telling. That 'terrorists' (who are these guys anyway, didn't you mean criminals) are using the leaked info is a statement of fact which is hard to falsify (terrorists won't own up to it) and probably even harder to prove so it should carry very little or no weight at all.
- dhimes 13y agoin the mind of the general public I wish this was true. I don't think it's there yet. I virtually hear nobody outside of tech talking about it. It's really quite remarkable.
- lukifer 13y agoIt's the Big Lie phenomenon at work. Someone revealing a specific embarassing private email between two law-abiding citizens? That would be a story. But reading and processing every email is just too big to contemplate, and to those who don't know how databases work, I'm sure that it seems impossible. Surely no one could or would do that, right? I'll tell you what, though: young people are absolutely paying attention.
- dominotw 13y agoI think there is a whole lot of 'It doesn't effect me' going on.
- throwit1979 13y agoQuite relevant to your post, although image memes are generally frowned upon by HN: http://i.imgur.com/mW0YHRK.jpg http://i.imgur.com/mW0YHRK.jpg
- beedogs 13y agoI like that he covers his ass by saying "terrorists and other groups" have been changing their habits. "Other groups" probably means stuff like Occupy, animal welfare activists, other sorts of scary 'fringe' groups, and probably rank-and-file citizens too, but it's a useful way to bulk up his claim a little more.
- bjornsing 13y agoI think he's specifically referring to the HN community there. ;)
- crumblan 13y agoThey define terrorist pretty loosely anyway, so it'd be hard for all "terrorists" to be totally unaffected by the leaks, thus making their statement "true" or, rather, least untrue.
- steveklabnik 13y agoThe animal rights movement and anarchists have been referred to as 'domestic terrorists' by the FBI for quite a while now, and Occupy has gotten that mention once or twice. Not to mention the whole Tartan thing: http://rt.com/usa/trapwire-abraxas-cubic-surveillance-251/ http://rt.com/usa/trapwire-abraxas-cubic-surveillance-251/
- diminoten 13y agoOWS is pretty damn dead. I doubt anyone cares what their tactics are, in any event.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- delinka 13y agoMods: Can we get a (vidoe) in the title?
- forgotAgain 13y agoHopefully Congress does as well.
- headShrinker 13y agoLeave it to NBC News to cover the NSA's BS stance, as well as the the programs legality issue, yet completely zone out about the programs effectiveness, expense, expanse, or actually question the NSA chief's statement, 'it is impossible to listen to phone calls, and read all emails due to their shear number'. But they are recording them all... which is the problem!
- ynniv 13y agoBillions of documents sounds like a lot to people who aren't programmers!
- sudonim 13y agoNice fearmongering: "The reason we use secrecy is not to hide it from the american people, not to hide it from you, but to hide it from those who walk among you who are trying to kill you." ... well in that case, please take my rights and the rights of my neighbors if it gives me a little temporary security.
- squozzer 13y agoThe Enlightenment. Born 1632, died 2013. Rest in peace.
- Roboprog 13y agoDied 2001, you mean. At least in the U.S. (Sometimes, I think the U.S. started to commit suicide in 1981, though, with the advent of Reaganism, but that's a slightly different discussion)
- thejteam 13y agoThis illustrates nicely the problem that I have with the way Manning and Snowden went about leaking their information. It seems that they grabbed a bunch of information and sent it to reporters without really thinking what information ought to be released. Do I think that the existence of the NSA spying programs should be public knowledge? Yes. Do I think that I really have a need to know the exact methods they use to implement these programs? No. That part is not necessary for us to make an informed decision and whether or not the programs should exist.
- dmd 13y agoManning, probably. Snowden? Have you been paying any attention at all? It's been extremely clear that he (and the Guardian) have been extremely conservative in what they've released and have spent enormous effort on making sure it doesn't contain information that would harm anyone or anything other than the reputation of the US government.
- thejteam 13y agoIn what has been publicly released, I agree with you. I'm also sure he has a lot of information on his pen drive that is being circulated around back channels, whether he really wanted it to or not.
- jessaustin 13y agoYou're sure, I'm not sure. Do you have anything to back up your statement?
- samstave 13y agoScrew that reasoning. The NSA wants 100% transparency into everybody's comms, I demand a hell of a lot more transparency into their methods. I am funding them afterall, and there are far more useful things that can be done with that money. We have a completely failing country in all facets aside from the military industrial complex. All military funding needs to be drastically cut.
- unclebucknasty 13y ago>The reason we use secrecy is not to hide it from the American people. But, to hide it from those who walk among you who want to kill you. Fear-monger much? What can you not justify with this line of reasoning? "Well, we're not herding you all up into concentration camps because of anything you've done innocent Americans. We're putting you all there because of the evil Americans who walk among you." If we buy the mindset that the "evil-doers" are indistinguishable from innocent Americans, then we will allow virtually anything. And, is this overt paranoia inducement even remotely justified? I mean, really, what percentage of the so-called terrorists are "other Americans that walk among us"? For that matter, how many "terrorists" are really out there? But, this is a subtle, insidious, and very purposeful shift. It's an example of how they've moved the goalposts and are increasingly morphing these "terrorist-tools" into a hyper-surveillance program to keep tabs on all Americans. There was a time when they'd have to justify their actions and abide by Constitutional protections by pointing to foreign involvement in monitored communications. The line was that they are not monitoring us, as much as they are monitoring those foreigners who happened to be talking to us. Now, he's allowing that Americans are specifically being targeted domestically, but that it must be done because the terrorists "walk among us". Also love the way the story frames the NSA activity as more benign and highly targeted: "[a program that] gathers data on numbers dialed and length of calls, though not call content, and another that allows the NSA to monitor overseas e-mails and Internet sites used by suspected terrorists." Makes it sound highly targeted and less invasive to innocent Americans. But, we've already learned how they get call content, that the distinction between foreign and domestic communication is less meaningful than we originally thought, and other details that go beyond the benign characterization of the story. This story seems to be stuck in the days before so many more revelations came out. They left out all but the "This message brought to you by the NSA."
- swalkergibson 13y ago> How many "terrorists" are really out there? I was intrigued by this question and wondered the same. I created this Google spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhTjVTjz9GpldFJoYUVEMjJ1bHI2NFh5V3YxWUwzR3c#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhTjVTjz9GpldFJ...) with the estimated strength of all groups listed here: http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2011/195553.htm#ano http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2011/195553.htm#ano. As of 2011, it would appear that the US government has calculated there are approximately 50,000-100,000 terrorists worldwide. I did not include the names of the groups in the spreadsheet, but I went top-to-bottom through the list and recorded the "Strength" of each group and put it into a cell. Unfortunately, the estimates are almost entirely vague and nebulous (probably intentionally), so I was very generous in my calculations. The spreadsheet is world editable, so I invite any contributions. For scale, according to Wikipedia and this site: http://www.citypopulation.de/USA-California.html http://www.citypopulation.de/USA-California.html, all terrorists in the world identified by the US government would fit in a city between the size of Novato, CA (50K population) and Boulder, CO (100K population). According to the DoD budget here (http://comptroller.defense.gov/defbudget/fy2014/FY2014_Budget_Request_Overview_Book.pdf http://comptroller.defense.gov/defbudget/fy2014/FY2014_Budge...) we have spent $1.5 trillion dollars on "Overseas Contingency Operations" since FY2001. Taking that data into account, we have spent $17 million for every single known terrorist in the world since 2001, at a rate of $1.2 million per year (14 years). According to this: http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66 http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66 we spend $10,694 per year on pupils in the US public education system. Are there any people out there who happen to know off-hand how much money the French government spends per person on healthcare?