6 ms·

This has been asked before, but I'd love to hear from a dev (anonymously of course) who actually helped build this NSA madness. Is it like The Cube, where no on

by SCdF 13y ago

This has been asked before, but I'd love to hear from a dev (anonymously of course) who actually helped build this NSA madness. Is it like The Cube, where no one really knew what each piece was for? Is it that they are morally pro the NSA's attitude toward personal and corporate privacy, or do they just not care either way?

zaqokm 13y ago
William Binney in an interview suggested that the tech he built for spying on foreign countries was simply retrofitted and used to spy internally. I am gathering not a lot of people actually knew what was happening at the beginning, and the tools they were using for "valid" purposes were just refocused.
- PakG1 13y ago
  There still have to be technical people involved for refocusing software. You don't simply drag and drop an icon to get something redeployed for another purpose, and definitely not for something of this complexity.
  - zaqokm 13y ago
    I agree, however I think it is very credible that a lot of people involved in this were not fully aware or complicit in regards to what was happen. I do not think they were stupid, but just didn't see the entire picture, or were never given the entire picture.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
wmf 13y ago
In The Shadow Factory (written after the Klein leaks but before Snowden), Bamford notes that a lot of surveillance equipment comes from Israel. I don't know much about Israeli culture but it may be significantly different from the US.
- samstave 13y ago
  I am at the openstack conference right now. My colleague was talking in hebrew to a lot of folks the past few days. I said to him jokingly "Where did all these Israeli's come from that are here" His reply: "Dude, all this shit comes out of Israel! its the whole tech/NSA bullshit used against the palestinians!" It was a casual comment - but very interesting in that its a foregone conclusion that the surveillance state is just a function of the culture of Israeli tech development.
  - rhizome 13y ago
    Highly self-aggrandizing. I think the most that can be said is that it's a highly symbiotic relationship between .us/.il.
- YZF 13y ago
  As an (ex-) Israeli with no inside information I'd say the NSA is probably way ahead of Israel on this and wouldn't need or use any Israeli knowledge or equipment. I'd also say traditionally Israel relies on human intelligence while the US on signal intelligence. In terms of commercial surveillance equipment I'm sure there's a lot on the market from lots of countries.
  - wyck 13y ago
    I'm not implying anything, but there are some large Israeli companies which have access to lots of data or provide surveillance or spy tech; Narus, Trusteer, Amdocs, Comverse, Verint, to name a few.
- pytrin 13y ago
  Some equipment might come from Israel (it's just guessing though), but I do not like your implicit hinting that Israeli developers are somehow less moral than U.S developers (because of "cultural" differences?) - especially since you don't know much about it. You seem to be forgetting which government and agency is at the center of this debacle, don't try to share the blame on other nations or cultures for developing those spying system
digitalboss 13y ago
I asked this question 6 months ago, I liked the reply. ---- Most programmers are very much unlike you or I. Think about those legions of DoD/DoD contractor engineers that trust government implicitly and totally, and really don't give a shit about more "hacker"/"technologist" subjects. ---- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5836416 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5836416
- Amadou 13y ago
  The other half of that equation is that the requirements for a security clearance tend to filter out the people who are mentally predisposed to question authority. It is a very rare person who can see all the things wrong with the various Wars on Dignity (drugs, terror, etc) and yet has a nose so clean as to qualify for a top secret clearance. It's kind of like the saying about walking a mile in someone else's shoes before you criticize them - most people just can't conceive of what life is like for someone with an entirely different set of experiences and the logic of authoritarianism is so deceptively simple. That's not to say that the people with clearances aren't perceptive, just that they are likely to have a focus on other, more technical, issues.
  - paxswill 13y ago
    Just because someone can see what's wrong doesn't mean they do anything about it. Without that evidence of action, there's nothing for a background check to turn up. Getting a security clearance is not incredibly difficult.
    - BrandonY 13y ago
      Indeed, there are over 4 MILLION top secret holders. That's almost twice as many people as are in prison.
  - Daniel_Newby 13y ago
    You have it utterly backwards. In my experience, clearance holders have a far more bleak outlook on government than you. If you think people will elect madmen and witch hunters no matter what, which seems to be the case, you might as well make sure the spy-fest is good enough to stop the occassional war. In this view there are not well-meaning plans with collateral damage, but planned crass destruction with collateral benefits. Incidentally, the U.S. system is strongly anti-authoritarian. There is no wise man or even thug running the show, just a parliament of whores tarting themselves up for the next election. We could really use some authorities in charge. Even a bad plan would be better than what we have if we just stuck to it.
presty 13y ago
It's really not surprising that we don't hear about someone speaking up - would you be willing to risk doing so (even anonymously) after working on projects that you _knew_ that were monitoring everything on the internet? About who made these tools, I would say that this was built through a combination of different people: - very patriotic individuals: e.g. someone who joins the military and gets a military sponsored world class education in comp sci; or someone who gets recruited at an early age on the campus of berkeley/stanford/yale/mit/etc (remember how spies were recruited back in the days) - consultants: Palantir, Booz Allen and many more - buying outsourced tech (e.g. from startups in the Valley/Boston/Penn/Virginia/Maryland or Israel) - captured black hats in exchange for softer sentences - renegades from big tech companies: i.e. ex-google employees. You'd be surprised how pissed off some people can be at their previous employees and to what lengths they might go to hurt them
bambax 13y ago
It's like being a cop: you get to shoot people (and people's dogs) and break most laws every non-cop has to abide by, with impunity.
nl 13y ago
Maybe there are some good programmers and engineers who agree with the NSA's goals and methods? There are some politicians, judges and journalists who agree with what they do - why should any other field be different? Plenty of good engineers work on weapons systems, despite the use those systems are put to. The fact the systems are also used for national defence is often used as self-justification. More directly: many good programmers build viruses and/or sell exploits for systems (and don't try and claim "they aren't from the US" - plenty are). Being a good programmer does not mean a persons moral code is the same as yours or mine.
- Theodores 13y ago
  A few of my school friends worked for GCHQ and I questioned their reasons for doing so around ten years or so ago (a lot has changed in the world since then, but a lot hasn't). Back then there were three reasons beyond 'I need an income': 1) terrorists - someone has got to stop them blowing up innocent babies and children 2) kiddie porn - someone has got to take the war on paedophiles seriously 3) organised crime - who knows? Selling arms to the terrorists? Laundering money. That's it. Laundering money and drugs. I remember now. These 'reasons' can be trotted out like a mantra and working for them is a bit like being a soldier fighting a noble cause that everyone else has to respect. As per other comment on 'The Cube', people at GCHQ are kept in little boxes and not made aware of what the big plan is. It is a system that works really well. So, even if someone's job has nothing to do with the war on kiddie porn, the war on drugs or The War Against Terror, they know that without their organisation's effort then we would be flooded with the evil stuff and democracy would be doomed. The 'I cannot talk about my work' thing works really well. Although I am not convinced by it. I think that it is all too convenient to hide behind that rather than be honest about how dull/wrong a given job is. I think you also place too much thought into the idea that NSA/GCHQ build these systems. Actually it is the guys at the contractors - Lockheed Martin - that build these things, the NSA/GCHQ guys are no more involved in things than the checkout staff at a supermarket are involved in all the evil things Walmart/Monsanto/whoever do. That is the saddest part of it. We uphold NSA/GCHQ to be omnipotent and omniscient, but they are not. The main contractor - Lockheed Martin - are upstream of what the NSA/GCHQ does and they are experts at getting government contracts. Since they can listen in to what all of the other contractors bid they can bid competitively if they really want the work. Since they also own most of the politicians and can promise so many jobs in so many states, they can own the entire government. NSA are not the enemy, Lockheed Martin and their rivals are. And, to answer your question, the dark side programmers work for them.
Daniel_Newby 13y ago
> Is it like The Cube, where no one really knew what each piece was for? Not possible. You cannot unwittingly buy a house in Cupertino, fill it with 48 V batteries and wave division multiplexing transceivers, and trench the back yard. The maintenance techs driving the fake pool service van knew exactly what they were doing.

by SCdF 13y ago

zaqokm 13y ago

William Binney in an interview suggested that the tech he built for spying on foreign countries was simply retrofitted and used to spy internally. I am gathering not a lot of people actually knew what was happening at the beginning, and the tools they were using for "valid" purposes were just refocused.

PakG1 13y ago
There still have to be technical people involved for refocusing software. You don't simply drag and drop an icon to get something redeployed for another purpose, and definitely not for something of this complexity.
- zaqokm 13y ago
  I agree, however I think it is very credible that a lot of people involved in this were not fully aware or complicit in regards to what was happen. I do not think they were stupid, but just didn't see the entire picture, or were never given the entire picture.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]

wmf 13y ago

In The Shadow Factory (written after the Klein leaks but before Snowden), Bamford notes that a lot of surveillance equipment comes from Israel. I don't know much about Israeli culture but it may be significantly different from the US.

samstave 13y ago
I am at the openstack conference right now. My colleague was talking in hebrew to a lot of folks the past few days. I said to him jokingly "Where did all these Israeli's come from that are here" His reply: "Dude, all this shit comes out of Israel! its the whole tech/NSA bullshit used against the palestinians!" It was a casual comment - but very interesting in that its a foregone conclusion that the surveillance state is just a function of the culture of Israeli tech development.
- rhizome 13y ago
  Highly self-aggrandizing. I think the most that can be said is that it's a highly symbiotic relationship between .us/.il.
YZF 13y ago
As an (ex-) Israeli with no inside information I'd say the NSA is probably way ahead of Israel on this and wouldn't need or use any Israeli knowledge or equipment. I'd also say traditionally Israel relies on human intelligence while the US on signal intelligence. In terms of commercial surveillance equipment I'm sure there's a lot on the market from lots of countries.
- wyck 13y ago
  I'm not implying anything, but there are some large Israeli companies which have access to lots of data or provide surveillance or spy tech; Narus, Trusteer, Amdocs, Comverse, Verint, to name a few.
pytrin 13y ago
Some equipment might come from Israel (it's just guessing though), but I do not like your implicit hinting that Israeli developers are somehow less moral than U.S developers (because of "cultural" differences?) - especially since you don't know much about it. You seem to be forgetting which government and agency is at the center of this debacle, don't try to share the blame on other nations or cultures for developing those spying system

digitalboss 13y ago

I asked this question 6 months ago, I liked the reply. ---- Most programmers are very much unlike you or I. Think about those legions of DoD/DoD contractor engineers that trust government implicitly and totally, and really don't give a shit about more "hacker"/"technologist" subjects. ---- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5836416 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5836416

Amadou 13y ago
The other half of that equation is that the requirements for a security clearance tend to filter out the people who are mentally predisposed to question authority. It is a very rare person who can see all the things wrong with the various Wars on Dignity (drugs, terror, etc) and yet has a nose so clean as to qualify for a top secret clearance. It's kind of like the saying about walking a mile in someone else's shoes before you criticize them - most people just can't conceive of what life is like for someone with an entirely different set of experiences and the logic of authoritarianism is so deceptively simple. That's not to say that the people with clearances aren't perceptive, just that they are likely to have a focus on other, more technical, issues.
- paxswill 13y ago
  Just because someone can see what's wrong doesn't mean they do anything about it. Without that evidence of action, there's nothing for a background check to turn up. Getting a security clearance is not incredibly difficult.
  - BrandonY 13y ago
    Indeed, there are over 4 MILLION top secret holders. That's almost twice as many people as are in prison.
- Daniel_Newby 13y ago
  You have it utterly backwards. In my experience, clearance holders have a far more bleak outlook on government than you. If you think people will elect madmen and witch hunters no matter what, which seems to be the case, you might as well make sure the spy-fest is good enough to stop the occassional war. In this view there are not well-meaning plans with collateral damage, but planned crass destruction with collateral benefits. Incidentally, the U.S. system is strongly anti-authoritarian. There is no wise man or even thug running the show, just a parliament of whores tarting themselves up for the next election. We could really use some authorities in charge. Even a bad plan would be better than what we have if we just stuck to it.

presty 13y ago

It's really not surprising that we don't hear about someone speaking up - would you be willing to risk doing so (even anonymously) after working on projects that you _knew_ that were monitoring everything on the internet? About who made these tools, I would say that this was built through a combination of different people: - very patriotic individuals: e.g. someone who joins the military and gets a military sponsored world class education in comp sci; or someone who gets recruited at an early age on the campus of berkeley/stanford/yale/mit/etc (remember how spies were recruited back in the days) - consultants: Palantir, Booz Allen and many more - buying outsourced tech (e.g. from startups in the Valley/Boston/Penn/Virginia/Maryland or Israel) - captured black hats in exchange for softer sentences - renegades from big tech companies: i.e. ex-google employees. You'd be surprised how pissed off some people can be at their previous employees and to what lengths they might go to hurt them

bambax 13y ago

It's like being a cop: you get to shoot people (and people's dogs) and break most laws every non-cop has to abide by, with impunity.

nl 13y ago

Maybe there are some good programmers and engineers who agree with the NSA's goals and methods? There are some politicians, judges and journalists who agree with what they do - why should any other field be different? Plenty of good engineers work on weapons systems, despite the use those systems are put to. The fact the systems are also used for national defence is often used as self-justification. More directly: many good programmers build viruses and/or sell exploits for systems (and don't try and claim "they aren't from the US" - plenty are). Being a good programmer does not mean a persons moral code is the same as yours or mine.

Theodores 13y ago
A few of my school friends worked for GCHQ and I questioned their reasons for doing so around ten years or so ago (a lot has changed in the world since then, but a lot hasn't). Back then there were three reasons beyond 'I need an income': 1) terrorists - someone has got to stop them blowing up innocent babies and children 2) kiddie porn - someone has got to take the war on paedophiles seriously 3) organised crime - who knows? Selling arms to the terrorists? Laundering money. That's it. Laundering money and drugs. I remember now. These 'reasons' can be trotted out like a mantra and working for them is a bit like being a soldier fighting a noble cause that everyone else has to respect. As per other comment on 'The Cube', people at GCHQ are kept in little boxes and not made aware of what the big plan is. It is a system that works really well. So, even if someone's job has nothing to do with the war on kiddie porn, the war on drugs or The War Against Terror, they know that without their organisation's effort then we would be flooded with the evil stuff and democracy would be doomed. The 'I cannot talk about my work' thing works really well. Although I am not convinced by it. I think that it is all too convenient to hide behind that rather than be honest about how dull/wrong a given job is. I think you also place too much thought into the idea that NSA/GCHQ build these systems. Actually it is the guys at the contractors - Lockheed Martin - that build these things, the NSA/GCHQ guys are no more involved in things than the checkout staff at a supermarket are involved in all the evil things Walmart/Monsanto/whoever do. That is the saddest part of it. We uphold NSA/GCHQ to be omnipotent and omniscient, but they are not. The main contractor - Lockheed Martin - are upstream of what the NSA/GCHQ does and they are experts at getting government contracts. Since they can listen in to what all of the other contractors bid they can bid competitively if they really want the work. Since they also own most of the politicians and can promise so many jobs in so many states, they can own the entire government. NSA are not the enemy, Lockheed Martin and their rivals are. And, to answer your question, the dark side programmers work for them.

Daniel_Newby 13y ago

> Is it like The Cube, where no one really knew what each piece was for? Not possible. You cannot unwittingly buy a house in Cupertino, fill it with 48 V batteries and wave division multiplexing transceivers, and trench the back yard. The maintenance techs driving the fake pool service van knew exactly what they were doing.