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How is 1978 to 2000 blank? Were all the cool kids who added random NSA filter bait to their usenet and email sigs in the 90's just watching too much x-files?
by Steko 13y ago
How is 1978 to 2000 blank? Were all the cool kids who added random NSA filter bait to their usenet and email sigs in the 90's just watching too much x-files?
Maybe this is why I lack the same level of outrage as the kids do over Snowden's disclosures: I've pretty much always assumed the NSA has always had pretty much everything (along with the Russians and the Chinese and I guess the Time Warner Corporation and now Google).
- belorn 13y agoIn the cold war, US needed to maintain a image of being free'er than the oppressive international communism. They also suspected evey shrubbery to have a spy in them. As such, I think covert activities had a natural upper limit on how much activity it could do without upsetting things. Incidents could be hushed (and at a very more effective manner than doay), but too much, and you get a Watergate scandal. As a result, 80s and 90s US didnt have that many scandals in the same league as wikileaks and Snowden's disclosures.
- mjn 13y agoThere was more solid delineation of turf between the FBI and CIA/NSA for some decades as well: the former was responsible for domestic intelligence and the latter for foreign operations. Hence most of the domestic abuses you read about in that period, like COINTELPRO, came from the FBI.
- samstave 13y agoAnyone paying attention in the 80s and 90s were well aware of Echelon, and protested it as the capability to do exactly what we are talking about with the NSA today. To claim what you have indicates that you may not have been interested in this topic at that time. I have followed echelon claims since 1992.