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NSA Spied On Human Rights Groups, Says Snowden
- ForHackernews 13y agoMaybe at this point it would be simpler to just have a list of people the NSA isn't spying on.
- toufka 13y agoI've got it right here:
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- tomswartz07 13y agoWith the way things have been unfolding, perhaps that list only includes the NSA itself. Even that might be a stretch.
- pvnick 13y agoProbably less of a stretch than you'd think, considering the lack of accountability. But that's a feature, not a bug.
- ForHackernews 13y agoYou think the NSA spies on the CIA and vice versa?
- rhizome 13y agoFrom a citizen's perspective they are effectively separate in name only, with slightly different legal authorities underpinning their actions. That one is organized under the DoD and the other the Executive matters little.
- saraid216 13y ago> That one is organized under the DoD and the other the Executive matters little. I am very disappointed that you think the DoD is not organized under the Executive. Please learn to citizen.
- natrius 13y agoIt was clearly a simple mistake. The intended distinction was between the Department of Defense and the Department of State, which was once a meaningful distinction.
- mikecb 13y agoCIA is not under DoS. It is an independent executive agency that reports directly to the President.
- natrius 13y agoOops, you're right. The CIA is and always was an independent executive agency.
- saraid216 13y agoThese comments are the single best illustrations of why the NSA has gotten away with what it has. So many of its most strident critics have no idea what they're actually criticizing. It's not so much that you have zero credibility–that part is obvious. It's that you have absolutely no capacity for making things better; other than being a constituent (i.e., a target for manipulation), you're irrelevant.
- rhizome 13y agoYou knew what I meant. They are putatively under different hierarchies.
- Torgo 13y agohttps://www.propublica.org/article/nsa-says-it-cant-search-own-emails https://www.propublica.org/article/nsa-says-it-cant-search-o...
- pvnick 13y ago>Any kind of Internet traffic that passes before these mass surveillance sensors can be analyzed in a protocol-agnostic manner, meta-data and content both, and it can be today, right now, searched not only with very little effort, via a complex regular expression — which is a type of shorthand programming — but also via any algorithm an analyst can implement in popular high level programming That's amazing. Imagine being able to construct a regular expression that get's applied on every single piece of communication in the world. Yes, it's far too much power to entrust to anyone, much less an unaccountable secretive organization, but I'll be damned if that's not an incredibly fascinating and attractive proposition. No wonder these bureaucrats are willing to so thoroughly overstep the law, that kind of power must be very tempting.
- MrZongle2 13y agoThe movie "Sneakers" keeps coming to mind. "Too many secrets" indeed.
- id 13y agoYes, power can be amazing. But this is also very scary, especially because we know it has already been used repeatedly in a harmful way.
- coldtea 13y agoScary if you are on the receiving end, like most people. But they are on the power end.
- rosser 13y ago...and apparently oblivious to the possibility that they might ever be on the "wrong" end of it.
- enraged_camel 13y agoThis is a foolish belief. The higher ups in NSA are most likely under the very same surveillance that they oversee, whether they know it or not. After all, the NSA cannot be immune to internal politics and power-plays.
- Theodores 13y agoGosh I am shocked. Of all the people they would spy on they target a human rights group. Who would have thought it? We have heard a lot about how people don't want their cloud computing in the US any more, however, as of yet, there has not been a lot about how those that now know they are effectively being targeted have changed procedures. Anyone in a 'save the world' group care to comment?
- conkrete 13y agoI'm not in a "save the world" group but I do have friends that are in conservation groups. The common response was a sarcastic "who would have guessed?!?!" type of response. These days everyone drinks at the NSA bar. where everything is on tap, all the time.
- rhizome 13y agoThat implies a benefit to the customer.
- conkrete 13y agoDepends on your perspective
- leviathant 13y agoI'm not sure how exactly to quantify this, but I think it might be interesting to figure out what groups the NSA does NOT appear to report on.
- secfirstmd 13y agoWell in theory, Congress and the UK Parliament...though the recent allegations about spying on the investigation into CIA torture suggests otherwise.
- Zigurd 13y agoPfft. Spying on Congress dates back to Russel Tice's revelations.
- saraid216 13y agoGenuinely impressed a headline with "NSA" and "Snowden" made it onto the front page.
- RexRollman 13y agoWhat are you talking about? I've read lots of articles on HN with those items on the front page.
- easong 13y agoHN punishes (punished?) the ranking of articles with those keywords very heavily.
- digitalengineer 13y agoI think the treshold is about 40 comments before it gets pushed down on the frontpage.
- dublinben 13y agoIf anyone could post a video link or download that doesn't require flash, it would be appreciated. There seems to be a MP4 file hidden somewhere in the layers of obfuscation in their streaming player.
- ds9 13y agotranscript: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1403/S00108/edward-snowdens-testimony-to-european-parliament-on-nsa.htm http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1403/S00108/edward-snowdens... , http://www.independentsciencenews.org/science-media/edward-snowdens-testimony-to-the-european-parliament-on-nsa-spying-and-its-consequences/ http://www.independentsciencenews.org/science-media/edward-s...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- happyscrappy 13y ago“I am proud of the fact that despite the dramatic protestations of intelligence chiefs, no evidence has been shown by any government that the revelations of the last year have caused any specific harm,” he added. “My motivation is to improve government, not to bring it down.” I think this goes against the grain for a lot of HN.
- SoftwareMaven 13y agoI disagree. I've seen very few arguments on HN for anarchy. I have seen many libertarian posts, but that is a very different thing. Anarchy is about removing the government; libertarianism is about keeping it tightly constrained. The NSA is a great example of government not kept constrained.
- happyscrappy 13y agoNot anarchy, diminishing the power of the US.
- Zigurd 13y agoHow does a secret treaty that enables us to spy on everyone in Austria actually enhance our power? It diminishes the sovereignty of Austrians. It makes us a global spook. It didn't prevent a single bit of terrorism. Activity like this only enhances power to the short-sighted and self-important. There is a lot we should simply stop doing, and stop paying for it to be done, and spend that on things that make the lives of Americans better, because we rate poorly on quality of life measures. Power comes from a strong, productive economy. Putting ourselves in a panopticon is not productive.
- w_t_payne 13y agoPersonally, I just want effective government. I happen to believe that it will be more effective if it is smaller (in manpower terms, at least) ... but constraining & minimising government is a means to an end, not the end itself.
- dmix 13y ago
- secfirstmd 13y agoAs someone who has worked for a number of sensitive human rights groups over the years this sickens but doesn't surprise me. I would be very surprised if some of my operations haven't been targeted by this. Many of the groups targeted are involved with actively investigating human rights abuses conducted by many countries in the world - including the USA in Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, drone strikes, secret prisons, etc. I fail to see exactly what the US National Security interest is in investigating these groups (Caveat: not all NGOs worldwide should be outside scrutiny, ie ones which funnel arms to Al Qaeda obviously but these ones certainly don't do that). The security community (as has happened in many countries over the years - the UK in Northern Ireland for example) has confused "National Security" with "embarrassment." I say "security community" as there are many fantastic people within US government and private institutions that are capable of looking at the long-term interest and are doing a good job of supporting human rights and freedom on the internet. For example, it is a credit that so much great work like The Guardian Project and Whisper Systems is underway to address such problems. Human rights groups and journalists have been consistently the victim of high-level APT from China, Russia and elsewhere - there are many cases documented online. Many of these have been targeted through the exact same methods that large corporations like banks, defence companies, nuclear energy businesses. It's somehow morally wrong that organisations like GCHQ and the NSA actively thwart attacks (and share information) on such companies, while ignoring and obviously exploiting threats against human rights groups (which often end in the deaths of human rights defenders, aid workers and journalists). The long-term national interest of the USA and other countries is the spread of our good values - freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, self determination, respect for international law etc. The "war on terror" has caused too many to lose sight of these soft-power instruments and that is a pity. Which does more long-term good for our way of life, values and foreign policy these days, Lockheed Martin or Amnesty International?
- w_t_payne 13y agoEmbarrassment, or is any form of political activism now seen as a threat?
- secfirstmd 13y ago
- w_t_payne 13y agoYes, ... but why? And why specifically these groups? What's the agenda?
- TeMPOraL 13y ago> (...) as part of its dragnet mass surveillance programs. There is likely no agenda related to those groups in particular. They are spying on everyone.
- coldtea 13y agoThose groups investigate and report things like the torture by those guards in Afghanistan, and other such abuses. But also abuses of local lackeys ("allies") worldwide. Including stuff done by corporations that have powerful lobbyists, in banana republics, the third world, etc. The agenda one would guess is: get them to stop, intimidate people who follow a hot lead, know anything that's about to be reported in advance, etc. It even happens for ecology groups. Here's a case from Britain -- see how far these things can go: http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jan/20/undercover-police-children-activists http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jan/20/undercover-police-...
- Guthur 13y agoIt's just a move covert intelligent gathering approach of using a vaccination program to obtain DNA samples of the local populace. It's exercise for the reader to work out when technique was apparently used. Certain groups that the US deems contrary to their national interests may come to an aid agency for help.