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Top-Secret Document Reveals NSA Spied On Porn Habits To Discredit 'Radicalizers'
- efoto 13y agoFinally, something about NSA that I can hear without disgust and horror. This is actually the kind of job I was expecting them to do. Unlike dragnet surveillance, breaking internet protocols, etc. Although the problem remains: the same methods can be used to silence dissidents...
- yread 13y agoDo you think that jihadis will trust a press release from NSA? "Oh, The Great Devil (US) says you're browsing kinky pictures, so we're not gonna trust you anymore and we're gonna take whoever The Great Devil recommends us instead"
- Amadou 13y agoObviously it wouldn't work that way. They would arrange to have the incriminating information show up in a way that wasn't obviously linked to the great satan. Then they would have a double-agent positioned to take control once the main guy was discredited. It isn't like the great satan would be publicly endorsing the double-agent.
- yread 13y agoCool. So how can the double-agent prove that the guy is browsing porn?
- alan_cx 13y agoAmerican and allied lap dogs will. And that helps demonise the "enemy", thus justifying the over reaches and so on.
- Zigurd 13y ago> Although the problem remains: the same methods can be used to silence dissidents But you and the NSA know which is which, right?
- Gustomaximus 13y agoI can see why this is a useful tool but this has such potential to be part of the slippery slope. After reading this I thought I would Google the NSA wiki page. I was surprised that illegal domestic wiretapping issue is not new but going back to the 60's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MINARET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MINARET
- a3n 13y agoBack in the 20's, and probably earlier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Chamber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Chamber The American Cipher Bureau was just another government agency doing then what the NSA does today. Note that the page describes the Bureau as spying on negotiating partners: "Its most notable known success was during the Washington Naval Conference during which it aided American negotiators considerably by providing them with the decrypted traffic of many of the Conference delegations, most notably the Japanese." Sound familiar? I see no reason to think that they weren't doing everything else that today's NSA has been caught doing.
- paul_willis 13y agoLet's examine who they're targeting: One that stands out has the cause of targeting as "The U.S. brought the 9/11 attacks upon itself", a view Ron Paul holds - I'd hardly call this appropriate targeting of terrorists. The second one that is perhaps more inappropriate than the first: "The US perpetrated the 9/11 attacks." Who said this? A "well-known media celebrity". There are many far right-wing media celebrities who espouse this view. While it's an absurd view, I'd hardly call labeling them as terrorists and targeting them (with intent to discredit) an appropriate reaction. Pretty disgusting behaviour from the NSA.
- alan_cx 13y agoIt shows that, like its British equivalents, the NSA is not an intelligence service who purpose is to protect American people, its a propaganda tool of the sitting government used against its people. Never forget, the one single thing governments are afraid of is the electorate. No terrorist group has toppled a western government as far as I know, but voters do it all the time.
- 001sky 13y agoIts the 21st century compliment to "bread and circuses"...
- M2Ys4U 13y ago> Never forget, the one single thing governments are afraid of is the electorate. No terrorist group has toppled a western government as far as I know, but voters do it all the time. For a certain definition of "government", sure. The elected leadership may change, but think of the (hundreds of) thousands of civil servants who survive in their jobs in the executives and legislatures over the lifetime of many governments...
- nl 13y agoI agree, but it is worth noting that these single phrase labelling isn't all that the NSA knows about these people. For example, the first one you mentioned ("The U.S. brought the 9/11 attacks upon itself") has also had "writings appear on a number of jihadi websites". Even combining those two things doesn't make that person a terrorist. OTOH I do think it is reasonable that the NSA has a file on a person like that. Also, note that the NSA does not label them as terrorists - they use the word "Radicalizers". Finally, the NSA doesn't actually seem to intend to discredit them - these are merely documented plans for how it could be done if required.
- digitalengineer 13y agoSo, this made the first page even with the word 'NSA' in it. Let's see what happens when it reaches 40 comments.
- alan_cx 13y agoWell, it didnt take too long. Interesting that now "controversial" means "popular".
- sentenza 13y agoI find it funny that the comment police seems to think the NSA scandal is over, when it is in fact very much alive and kicking over here in Europe. Mainstream press is reporting and new things come to light every day. On top of that, the scandal is completely devouring any trust people had in US cloud companies.
- 1337biz 13y agoI suspect that the comment was more a critique on hn ranking algorithm. NSA seems one of the headline trigger words that makes a story decay a lot faster than other stories.
- digitalengineer 13y agoCorrect, this was the first story to pop up after the hn ranking algorithm article yesterday.
- Zigurd 13y ago> I find it funny that the comment police seems to think the NSA scandal is over It's pretty obnoxious that a scandal that is projected to cost the US tech industry $180 billion by 2016 is treated this way on HN. The NSA poisoned the tech well in America, and it could mean the end of telecom infrastructure companies in the US and it could prevent the overseas expansion of telecom service providers.
- brymaster 13y agoThis reminds me of a link I found while browsing Woz's tweets several months ago. https://twitter.com/stevewoz/status/364464427736633344 https://twitter.com/stevewoz/status/364464427736633344 It was a video about a possible attempted 'setup' of someone named Luke Rudkowski who runs an investigative/dissenter/truthseeker blog. Someone claiming to be a whistleblower had emailed Rudkowski's personal account from an anonymous Tor address supposedly having information that might interest him but attached were graphic images of CP. He was overseas at the time so if he had happened to get detained in customs while reentering the US and had his browser cache searched he'd be in some serious shit. Apparently he'd been detained in the past and had his computer searched. A nefarious organization could use this method and tip off customs or local law enforcement to discredit a 'radicalizer.' Very scary stuff.
- sdoering 13y agoThis reminds me of the German, so called "State Trojan", a Trojan used by the German domestic state police to search targets computers, that has the capabilities to alter the and upload to the targets computer in a way, that the messing with this computer cannot (in reasonable time) be found in court. So the police could plant evidence, it then uses. This was the reason our supreme court forbid the usage of these tools, as contra to our constitution. Non the less, the police and right-wing politicians lobby very hard for the use of these tools.
- malandrew 13y agoThey just added to the list of legal defenses that can protect "bothersome" people [0]. We basically now have evidence that can be used to claim reasonable doubt whenever a bothersome person is in court defending themselves. Since the state is likely to rely on state secrets laws to prevent this information from being subpoenaed in a trial, the possibility that the state used this tactic against a bothersome person can no longer be ruled out and that should constitute reasonable doubt. It would be supremely ironic if all these NSA surveillance shenanigans resulted in a broad invalidation of any digital evidence in a court of law when bothersome people are involved. [0] http://martinfowler.com/articles/bothersome-privacy.html http://martinfowler.com/articles/bothersome-privacy.html
- Amadou 13y agoRemember the unfortunately named us congressman Anthony Weiner? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Weiner_sexting_scandals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Weiner_sexting_scandal... Ever wonder if maybe he didn't accidentally post that dick pic to his political twitter feed? That maybe someone else who knew he had another private twitter account which he used to perv out with women online was responsible for putting that pic out on the public twitter feed? Weiner lost his congressional seat in the fallout and his replacement, Robert Turner, is a republican. The first republican to hold that seat in roughly 80 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York%27s_9th_congressional_district#List_of_representatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York%27s_9th_congressional...
- growupkids 13y agoI don't follow, Weiner admitted he posted the pics.
- selmnoo 13y agoI think what OP is trying to get at is that pretty much everyone does or has done something or other which is embarrassing and potentially career-destroying. In Weiner's case, it's conceivable that the first dick pic was posted by a bad actor. Once it's out, and it's clear what's happening, the "well, I didn't mean to post it!" excuse simply doesn't fly. There's really no choice but to admit it and say sorry, and hope your career isn't ruined.
- keevie 13y agoYeah I'm afraid that doesn't make any sense. Why would he admit to it? And then admit to it again.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Weiner_sexting_scandals#2013_mayoral_race_and_second_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Weiner_sexting_scandal...
- TheCraiggers 13y agoBecause oftentimes denying it just makes people think you did the act all the more.
- Amadou 13y agoEveryone should remember how the FBI tried to blackmail Martin Luther King. http://studentactivism.net/2012/01/15/the-fbis-attempt-to-blackmail-martin-luther-king-into-suicide/ http://studentactivism.net/2012/01/15/the-fbis-attempt-to-bl...
- RexRollman 13y agoAnd that's what they do. They are supposed to be guarding us against threats but then they start to preceive everything as a threat, including lawful political activitism.
- epo 13y agoThey are supposed to guard the people but job security and mission creep means their priority becomes guarding themselves. This should come as a shock, unfortunately it does not.
- a3n 13y agoI think it's even more mundane and evil than perceiving us as threats. They perceive us as a resource of arrests and prosecutions, for good job performance evaluations.
- arprocter 13y agoWasn't there a story that they 'found' smut in OBL's hideout?
- Amadou 13y agoThat is indeed what anonymous US officials have claimed. http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/porn-found-osama-bin-laden-evidence-trove/story?id=13599025 http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/porn-found-osama-bin-laden-evi...
- jmadsen 13y agoMy first thoughts on reading this: 1) Looks like (perhaps) one step short of where we all said it was going - "collect what we can now, never knowing when & how we might need to use it against someone later" 2) Wouldn't it be easier/cheaper/better/whatever to simply fake the data & frame someone?
- lotyrin 13y agoAs far as #2, they are still people, no matter how authoritarian/establishmentarian, so they still need to convince themselves (and each-other) that what they're doing is right (even though, seemingly, the bar for achieving that may be lower than for a typical person).
- a3n 13y agoAt the risk of violating some internet law, the people (they were still people) of Nazi Germany convinced themselves and each other to commit mass evil, or at least to go with the flow and not rise up against it. The people of Nazi Germany were not special, they were no different than any other group of people. We are all our own worst danger. When we restrain our government through laws and constitutions, it's not to protect ourselves from some "other," it's to protect ourselves from ourselves.
- TheCraiggers 13y agoYou could always not bring up Nazi and just use the Milgram experiment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
- Crito 13y agoOr better yet, mention both. Rendering certain segments of history taboo is a great way to fail to learn from them.
- malandrew 13y agoBesides the Milgram experiment, Soloman Asch's conformity experiments, Zombardo's Stanford Prison study, the innocent bystander and the fundamental attribution error should all be required for politicians writing laws, police enforcing them, prosecutors bringing charges against people using them and judges meting out the final judgement. Possibly even jurors should be required to learn about those basic psychological principles before sitting in on a trial. You could cover all of them for the jurors in 2 days I reckon.
- digitalengineer 13y agoOkay, so you're someone that doesn't want them tracking your every move. How much would a VPN, scripts like Ghostly/NoScript and encripted mail help?
- savszymura 13y agoIf they have identified you as a target, and they really want to get you, have time and the resources - probably not much, e.g. they could break into your house, and install a hardware keylogger in your machine - a VPN wouldn't help much!
- digitalengineer 13y agoBut isn't their method of operation: Collect Everything and see if we've got something on someone later if they're going 'rogue'? (E.g. against the establishment)
- a3n 13y agoYes, but that would be worthless without the next step of targeting an individual identified by the dragnet. I imagine all you need to be a person of interest is to have communicated with someone who is a small number of hops away from some other person of interest. Or later, when they really get going on their data mining, all you'll need to have done is to have said something particularly interesting and negative about the NSA or the government; they'll have to start doing that, because they'll run out of actual terrorists and they'll have to find a way to keep racking up "successes."
- salient 13y agoIf someone would've said this before, they would've definitely been seen as paranoid/conspiracy type people. I mean it's ridiculous to even think that a government agency would concern itself with stuff like this - and here we are. It's like you can think of the worst stuff NSA could do to blackmail/discredit someone - and now you can bet they are already doing it.
- blahbl4hblahtoo 13y agoWe are all doomed.
- freejack 13y agoI read this story and I couldn't help but think about the actual extent of the pressure that was brought to bear on Aaron Swartz and whether or not there's a lot more to that story than we've been made aware of.
- malandrew 13y agoTBH, even though these details aren't used to prosecute, I wouldn't be surprised if they are used to intimidate during an interrogation in an effect to force cooperation via a plea bargain. I reckon its very valuable info when trying to get people to rat each other out (or fabricate information about each other). The entire interrogation process AFAICT is infected by detectives and other LEOs committing the fundamental attribution error [0]. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error