4 ms·

You know, within my lifetime there was an actual state-level adversary with actual nuclear weapons, an active campaign of support of terrorist organizations far

You know, within my lifetime there was an actual state-level adversary with actual nuclear weapons, an active campaign of support of terrorist organizations far more effective than Al Qaeda, and a well-funded espionage program with real, live agents in the most sensitive parts of the US and allied governments. But somehow this threat is worthy of pooping our collective pants over.

philwelch 13y ago
You mean the era of J. Edgar Hoover and COINTELPRO, which spied on every domestic activist group and potential subversive from Vietnam war protestors to Martin Luther King? The same FBI that assassinated Fred Hampton? Or a CIA that operated with zero oversight, ran drugs, orchestrated coups, committed assassinations, and experimented on people to see whether LSD was a truth serum? You think that's a government that's in control? You think all these abuses and expansions of power are a new thing?
- VladRussian2 13y ago
  >You mean the era of J. Edgar Hoover and COINTELPRO, which spied on every domestic activist group and potential subversive from Vietnam war protestors to Martin Luther King? they were forced to prioritize their limited resources and abilities somehow. Thanks to technology advancements, today the NSA is spying on everybody who uses any technical means of communications. >The same FBI that assassinated Fred Hampton? try to gather a group of armed young black men in an appartment in a city today and see what happens. Or imagine if "Occupy" guys were armed. >Or a CIA that operated with zero oversight, ran drugs, orchestrated coups, committed assassinations, and experimented on people to see whether LSD was a truth serum? CIA black prisons around the world. Extra-judicial renditions and torture. Drones. The only change here is that the effects of LSD are well known today so no more experiments. I mean with LSD. The stuff they experiment with today is much more interesting.
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  - philwelch 13y ago
    What happens today is less of a change in direction and more of a logical extension in what covert agencies have always been doing. NSA has always done dragnet surveillance as long as it's been feasible. Look up Echelon.
    - rhizome 13y ago
      I'm not even sure the word "logical" is necessary there, and I haven't seen any indication that the activities are anything other than a continuation of what Hoover started.
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- fiatmoney 13y ago
  I'm not sure you disagree with me. I'm not saying the abuses are new. I'm saying that those abuses happened in the context of trying to, for instance, suppress large-scale domestic insurgency in the context of a cold war against a state-level foe that specialized in generating domestic insurgencies. Compared to that, you have a "group" so paltry that every couple years the FBI has to convince a mentally unstable guy to "join al qaeda" so he can be busted. Yet, the level of pants-wetting insecurity seems to be much higher.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  Hoover's overreaches were one thing, and certainly created their own set of harms. The level of overreach possible people's entire existence is logged in minute detail via online and electronic services -- your location, contacts, calls, and texts via your phone, your reading via your browser and ISP, emails, purchases, etc., is simply beyond compare in all of history. The map circulating a few months back comparing the size of the surveillance archives of East Germany's Stasi vs. the NSA, if both were represented as paper files, is hugely telling: http://falkvinge.net/2013/07/05/stasi-vs-the-u-s-nsa-back-to-back-whos-worse-and-by-how-much/ http://falkvinge.net/2013/07/05/stasi-vs-the-u-s-nsa-back-to...
  - ajayjain 13y ago
    A quote from that link: "So where the hated Stasi surveillance was a building in area, the NSA surveillance today is an entire continent." And: "As a final note, the word Stasi was a contraction of the East German surveillance agency’s full name, Ministerium für Staatssicherheit. It translates to National Security Agency." (Google translate says Ministry of State Security). In the French revolution, the group pretty much playing the role of government during the Reign of Terror with many beheadings every day was called the Committee of Public Safety. The original or supposed reason these organizations claim to exist seems to be a justification to claim power and rights from the population.
bbllee 13y ago
This one is so much smaller it takes a lot more effort to make it seem threatening.
fragsworth 13y ago
I get the impression that these agencies are now going for a power-grab. They've noticed how little the NSA has suffered for what they've done, and now they are all in overdrive trying to abuse their positions in every way possible.
- rhizome 13y ago
  The setup has already happened, though, no grab necessary. Through the PATRIOT Act and others, "national security" is now an official arm of the law enforcement and military establishments. It's just now that people are finding out what is going on, the cockroaches are scurrying from the light under the umbrella of that which can no longer be defined away from them. Said another way, 15 years ago they couldn't redefine themselves even if they wanted to, because the military and intelligence functions of the nation were already handled by other agencies. By creating an entirely new area of the government for spying and killing, the government has built an open-ended bucket for everybody who wants a piece of the action. Said yet another way: what's to stop them?
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  Kinda like HN kills such stories because hey, we're still using it.
barkingcat 13y ago
Just to remind everyone that there still is a state-level adversary with actual nuclear weapons, and it has ~2.3 million active military personnel.
- saraid216 13y ago
  This is funny because, if there's a good justification for what the NSA has been doing, the word "China" is going to be in it somehow.
- gaius 13y ago
  ... Who will be bankrupt if anything happens to the US as they've invested all their currency reserves in T-bills. The situations are not really comparable.
melling 13y ago
It's what we do daily on HN. Can it get its own menu item? Hacker News new | threads | comments | ask | jobs | submit | NSA

philwelch 13y ago

You mean the era of J. Edgar Hoover and COINTELPRO, which spied on every domestic activist group and potential subversive from Vietnam war protestors to Martin Luther King? The same FBI that assassinated Fred Hampton? Or a CIA that operated with zero oversight, ran drugs, orchestrated coups, committed assassinations, and experimented on people to see whether LSD was a truth serum? You think that's a government that's in control? You think all these abuses and expansions of power are a new thing?

VladRussian2 13y ago
>You mean the era of J. Edgar Hoover and COINTELPRO, which spied on every domestic activist group and potential subversive from Vietnam war protestors to Martin Luther King? they were forced to prioritize their limited resources and abilities somehow. Thanks to technology advancements, today the NSA is spying on everybody who uses any technical means of communications. >The same FBI that assassinated Fred Hampton? try to gather a group of armed young black men in an appartment in a city today and see what happens. Or imagine if "Occupy" guys were armed. >Or a CIA that operated with zero oversight, ran drugs, orchestrated coups, committed assassinations, and experimented on people to see whether LSD was a truth serum? CIA black prisons around the world. Extra-judicial renditions and torture. Drones. The only change here is that the effects of LSD are well known today so no more experiments. I mean with LSD. The stuff they experiment with today is much more interesting.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- philwelch 13y ago
  What happens today is less of a change in direction and more of a logical extension in what covert agencies have always been doing. NSA has always done dragnet surveillance as long as it's been feasible. Look up Echelon.
  - rhizome 13y ago
    I'm not even sure the word "logical" is necessary there, and I haven't seen any indication that the activities are anything other than a continuation of what Hoover started.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
fiatmoney 13y ago
I'm not sure you disagree with me. I'm not saying the abuses are new. I'm saying that those abuses happened in the context of trying to, for instance, suppress large-scale domestic insurgency in the context of a cold war against a state-level foe that specialized in generating domestic insurgencies. Compared to that, you have a "group" so paltry that every couple years the FBI has to convince a mentally unstable guy to "join al qaeda" so he can be busted. Yet, the level of pants-wetting insecurity seems to be much higher.
dredmorbius 13y ago
Hoover's overreaches were one thing, and certainly created their own set of harms. The level of overreach possible people's entire existence is logged in minute detail via online and electronic services -- your location, contacts, calls, and texts via your phone, your reading via your browser and ISP, emails, purchases, etc., is simply beyond compare in all of history. The map circulating a few months back comparing the size of the surveillance archives of East Germany's Stasi vs. the NSA, if both were represented as paper files, is hugely telling: http://falkvinge.net/2013/07/05/stasi-vs-the-u-s-nsa-back-to-back-whos-worse-and-by-how-much/ http://falkvinge.net/2013/07/05/stasi-vs-the-u-s-nsa-back-to...
- ajayjain 13y ago
  A quote from that link: "So where the hated Stasi surveillance was a building in area, the NSA surveillance today is an entire continent." And: "As a final note, the word Stasi was a contraction of the East German surveillance agency’s full name, Ministerium für Staatssicherheit. It translates to National Security Agency." (Google translate says Ministry of State Security). In the French revolution, the group pretty much playing the role of government during the Reign of Terror with many beheadings every day was called the Committee of Public Safety. The original or supposed reason these organizations claim to exist seems to be a justification to claim power and rights from the population.

bbllee 13y ago

This one is so much smaller it takes a lot more effort to make it seem threatening.

fragsworth 13y ago

I get the impression that these agencies are now going for a power-grab. They've noticed how little the NSA has suffered for what they've done, and now they are all in overdrive trying to abuse their positions in every way possible.

rhizome 13y ago
The setup has already happened, though, no grab necessary. Through the PATRIOT Act and others, "national security" is now an official arm of the law enforcement and military establishments. It's just now that people are finding out what is going on, the cockroaches are scurrying from the light under the umbrella of that which can no longer be defined away from them. Said another way, 15 years ago they couldn't redefine themselves even if they wanted to, because the military and intelligence functions of the nation were already handled by other agencies. By creating an entirely new area of the government for spying and killing, the government has built an open-ended bucket for everybody who wants a piece of the action. Said yet another way: what's to stop them?
PavlovsCat 13y ago
Kinda like HN kills such stories because hey, we're still using it.

barkingcat 13y ago

Just to remind everyone that there still is a state-level adversary with actual nuclear weapons, and it has ~2.3 million active military personnel.

saraid216 13y ago
This is funny because, if there's a good justification for what the NSA has been doing, the word "China" is going to be in it somehow.
gaius 13y ago
... Who will be bankrupt if anything happens to the US as they've invested all their currency reserves in T-bills. The situations are not really comparable.

melling 13y ago