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It's obvious he's not really taking this seriously. These are empty promises with only one goal, and that's restoring the public's trust without hampering the N

It's obvious he's not really taking this seriously. These are empty promises with only one goal, and that's restoring the public's trust without hampering the NSA's abilities too much (if at all). EDIT: After having very quickly skimmed the PPD, here's something interesting: The collection of foreign private commercial information or trade secrets is authorized only to protect the national security of the United States or its partners an d allies. It is not an authorized foreign intelligence or counterintelligence purpose to collect such information to afford a competitive advantage to U.S. companies and U.S. business sectors commercially. Bascially what they're saying is that, in the name of security, we can do whatever the fuck we want. Good luck trying to stop an agency operating in total secrecy from abusing these powers.

psbp 13y ago
Don't have the transcript but to paraphrase the bit about NSA reform it was basically "We can set up a shell operation to do all the dirty work, we can't guarantee that it won't be even dirtier and less under congressional control, but we can definitely do that if you want us to"
- harshreality 13y ago
  Does that mean we can sue the company and the individuals involved, for tresspassing and vandalizing equipment to enable sigint for internal corporate data? Will they be subject to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act the same as everyone else? Can we catch and prosecute individuals participating in operations that involve crimes (vandalism/b&e/sabotage) by enabling sigint on corporations' servers and networking equipment? And if such individuals are armed during an occasional physical incursion into corporate infrastructure, can they be shot in self defense? More fundamentally, let's follow the money. Who is going to fund this corporation? If they take money from the USG, money which is then paid to corporations to persuade those corporations to give up personal data or allow network taps and collocated spying equipment, that is no different from the current situation.
- mpyne 13y ago
  I think people forgot that the original reason there was a FISC order to turn over the phone records was because the telecom companies had already been doing it, and were quite happy to cooperate. But they felt there would be recrimination if the fact that it was voluntary on their part came out and so requested to be ordered to do so (if that makes sense). But you're right, at best there will be a third-party private company setup to hold the records and act as an "independent" review of the request, since none of the telecoms want to maintain the records themselves, since now that it's public it would risk discovery motions in every random case until the end of time. And now that we would have an "independent" third party watching the NSA, who watches the watchers? At least NSA analysts are trained from Day 0 about the Constitution, USSID 18, FISA, etc. Who monitors the shell company to verify that they're not doing evil things with the database? Perhaps we could have FBI constantly monitor their comms and at least spread the risk around.
  - gretful 13y ago
    " At least NSA analysts are trained from Day 0 about the Constitution, USSID 18, FISA, etc." And we all know how well that worked out. What's your point? The NSA is currently not doing it's job.
    - mpyne 13y ago
      > And we all know how well that worked out. What's your point? The NSA is currently not doing it's job. AFAICT the NSA analysts have been operating under the assumption that they are following the law as written and interpreted by the Courts (Supreme and FISC), and handling incidental abuses that they discover via the same types of procedures (albeit more strict) used in other branches of government. The fact that the lawyers and courts happen to disagree on your personal interpretation of the law and Constitution doesn't mean they weren't trying to follow it. And however bad their actions are, there's no telling how bad it will get when you introduce profit motive.
res0nat0r 13y ago
Not really. He is addressing the concerns of the majority of people, not the .00001% of America that comprises HN, where the only acceptable speech would be that the NSA is being shut down tomorrow.
- rayiner 13y ago
  I can't believe this got down-voted. This is absolutely true. To the extent that Americans have a problem with what the NSA is doing, it's with the fact that NSA's collection of phone records doesn't try hard enough to filter out information from Americans. Their opposition to this does not mean they embrace the leftist/globalist ideas that are so common on HN (e.g. foreigners should have the same rights as Americans!) If the reform is actually just: 1) We stop spying on prominent politicians in heavily allied countries; and 2) We shut down the mass collection of call records and implement a new system that only does mass collection of international calls and traffic; That would make the vast majority of people perfectly happy.
  - joe_the_user 13y ago
    The gp certainly deserved downvoting. It was more or less Nixonian "silent majority" propaganda with no substance behind it. In any given scandal that's not of truly titanic proportions, "addressing the concerns of the majority of people" inherently is papering-over any problems without addressing them - since the majority is going to be concerned with other stuff and no have that much of an opinion. And your claims of the reactionary-ness of the majority hasn't been born-out by polls. The majority may indeed be satisfiable by simple thing but the rhetoric of that is not so much democratic as demagogic.
  - Shivetya 13y ago
    I think you overestimate the requirements of most Americans. Most of them just want to hear "I will fix this" and "we won't spy on YOU". Many could care less if you spy on the other guys, let alone other world leaders.
    - rayiner 13y ago
rayiner 13y ago
> Basically what they're saying is that, in the name of security, we can do whatever the fuck we want. That's not an accurate paraphrasing. Of course when it comes to "foreign private commercial information or trade secrets" it is the sovereign right of the U.S. to "do whatever the fuck we want." The paraphrased language actually makes a concession: we will only use this information for security purposes as opposed to commercial purposes.
- MisterWebz 13y ago
  > we will only use this information for security purposes as opposed to commercial purposes. They obviously wouldn't lie, would they? And I guess abuse also never happens. I thought the point of this was to implement mechanisms that would make occurrence of abuse less likely, instead they're just trying to calm people down.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    > They obviously wouldn't lie, would they? The only lie would be if they said they were going to stop monitoring foreign Internet comms completely. Beyond that, if you're assuming the government will lie as a matter of course then it doesn't matter what Obama said in his speech, as there's nothing he could have said to conclusively guarantee anything you'd want.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  I think granting "do whatever we want to citizens of other countries when they are in their home country" as a part of sovereignty is bizarre. We are not sovereign over that territory.
  - dictum 13y ago
    You could say that the US government can do whatever with the data of citizens of other countries that flows through US networks, but that still wouldn't justify the NSA tapping on foreign-only networks on grounds of do-whatever-we-want sovereignity, would it?
  - 13y ago

psbp 13y ago

Don't have the transcript but to paraphrase the bit about NSA reform it was basically "We can set up a shell operation to do all the dirty work, we can't guarantee that it won't be even dirtier and less under congressional control, but we can definitely do that if you want us to"

harshreality 13y ago
Does that mean we can sue the company and the individuals involved, for tresspassing and vandalizing equipment to enable sigint for internal corporate data? Will they be subject to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act the same as everyone else? Can we catch and prosecute individuals participating in operations that involve crimes (vandalism/b&e/sabotage) by enabling sigint on corporations' servers and networking equipment? And if such individuals are armed during an occasional physical incursion into corporate infrastructure, can they be shot in self defense? More fundamentally, let's follow the money. Who is going to fund this corporation? If they take money from the USG, money which is then paid to corporations to persuade those corporations to give up personal data or allow network taps and collocated spying equipment, that is no different from the current situation.
mpyne 13y ago
I think people forgot that the original reason there was a FISC order to turn over the phone records was because the telecom companies had already been doing it, and were quite happy to cooperate. But they felt there would be recrimination if the fact that it was voluntary on their part came out and so requested to be ordered to do so (if that makes sense). But you're right, at best there will be a third-party private company setup to hold the records and act as an "independent" review of the request, since none of the telecoms want to maintain the records themselves, since now that it's public it would risk discovery motions in every random case until the end of time. And now that we would have an "independent" third party watching the NSA, who watches the watchers? At least NSA analysts are trained from Day 0 about the Constitution, USSID 18, FISA, etc. Who monitors the shell company to verify that they're not doing evil things with the database? Perhaps we could have FBI constantly monitor their comms and at least spread the risk around.
- gretful 13y ago
  " At least NSA analysts are trained from Day 0 about the Constitution, USSID 18, FISA, etc." And we all know how well that worked out. What's your point? The NSA is currently not doing it's job.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    > And we all know how well that worked out. What's your point? The NSA is currently not doing it's job. AFAICT the NSA analysts have been operating under the assumption that they are following the law as written and interpreted by the Courts (Supreme and FISC), and handling incidental abuses that they discover via the same types of procedures (albeit more strict) used in other branches of government. The fact that the lawyers and courts happen to disagree on your personal interpretation of the law and Constitution doesn't mean they weren't trying to follow it. And however bad their actions are, there's no telling how bad it will get when you introduce profit motive.

res0nat0r 13y ago

Not really. He is addressing the concerns of the majority of people, not the .00001% of America that comprises HN, where the only acceptable speech would be that the NSA is being shut down tomorrow.

rayiner 13y ago
I can't believe this got down-voted. This is absolutely true. To the extent that Americans have a problem with what the NSA is doing, it's with the fact that NSA's collection of phone records doesn't try hard enough to filter out information from Americans. Their opposition to this does not mean they embrace the leftist/globalist ideas that are so common on HN (e.g. foreigners should have the same rights as Americans!) If the reform is actually just: 1) We stop spying on prominent politicians in heavily allied countries; and 2) We shut down the mass collection of call records and implement a new system that only does mass collection of international calls and traffic; That would make the vast majority of people perfectly happy.
- joe_the_user 13y ago
  The gp certainly deserved downvoting. It was more or less Nixonian "silent majority" propaganda with no substance behind it. In any given scandal that's not of truly titanic proportions, "addressing the concerns of the majority of people" inherently is papering-over any problems without addressing them - since the majority is going to be concerned with other stuff and no have that much of an opinion. And your claims of the reactionary-ness of the majority hasn't been born-out by polls. The majority may indeed be satisfiable by simple thing but the rhetoric of that is not so much democratic as demagogic.
- Shivetya 13y ago
  I think you overestimate the requirements of most Americans. Most of them just want to hear "I will fix this" and "we won't spy on YOU". Many could care less if you spy on the other guys, let alone other world leaders.
  - rayiner 13y ago

rayiner 13y ago

> Basically what they're saying is that, in the name of security, we can do whatever the fuck we want. That's not an accurate paraphrasing. Of course when it comes to "foreign private commercial information or trade secrets" it is the sovereign right of the U.S. to "do whatever the fuck we want." The paraphrased language actually makes a concession: we will only use this information for security purposes as opposed to commercial purposes.

MisterWebz 13y ago
> we will only use this information for security purposes as opposed to commercial purposes. They obviously wouldn't lie, would they? And I guess abuse also never happens. I thought the point of this was to implement mechanisms that would make occurrence of abuse less likely, instead they're just trying to calm people down.
- mpyne 13y ago
  > They obviously wouldn't lie, would they? The only lie would be if they said they were going to stop monitoring foreign Internet comms completely. Beyond that, if you're assuming the government will lie as a matter of course then it doesn't matter what Obama said in his speech, as there's nothing he could have said to conclusively guarantee anything you'd want.
dllthomas 13y ago
I think granting "do whatever we want to citizens of other countries when they are in their home country" as a part of sovereignty is bizarre. We are not sovereign over that territory.
- dictum 13y ago
  You could say that the US government can do whatever with the data of citizens of other countries that flows through US networks, but that still wouldn't justify the NSA tapping on foreign-only networks on grounds of do-whatever-we-want sovereignity, would it?
- 13y ago