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Gosh 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

Gosh 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 ago
I'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 ago
  That implies a benefit to the customer.
  - conkrete 13y ago
    Depends on your perspective
- leviathant 13y ago
  I'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 ago
    Well in theory, Congress and the UK Parliament...though the recent allegations about spying on the investigation into CIA torture suggests otherwise.
    - Zigurd 13y ago
      Pfft. Spying on Congress dates back to Russel Tice's revelations.
ihsw 13y ago
The NSA's job is more than simply spying -- they also subvert security through intentionally and maliciously weakening it. I wouldn't be surprised if the NSA considers it an acceptable risk that sensitive government systems are allowed to continue remaining vulnerable regardless of the dangers because fixing those security vulnerabilities would alert their adversaries to such vulnerabilities. Even furthermore, the various intelligence agencies also weaken systems for their own convenience, and yet there is nothing stopping anyone else from exploiting such weaknesses. Isn't this simply recklessness and negligence? We keep hearing about hackers getting customer data over and over again, is that because of what our government has done? It's not just spying.
- bediger4000 13y ago
  Agreed. I have a somewhat concrete example, the US credit card system. We know that GCHQ, and probably the NSA, knew about public-key encryption a long time before it was reinvented. Therefore, the US credit card system could have been made quite secure, instead of the amalgam of cheapest-to-implement patches that it is today. Very probably, the NSA could have prevented the largest part of "identity theft". I guess we also have to ask ourselves if this was deliberate on their part, or did they just miss the emergence of the credit-card-as-electronic-money?
  - DanBC 13y ago
    How long is "a long time"? GCHQ had RSA a few years before RSA invented it. (About 3 years according to WP). The story of it is interesting: Clifford Cocks was working on it, he went home, and had the realisation at home. He could not write it down because that's not what mathematician spies do, so he had to remember it overnight u til he went back to the office the next morning.
  - leot 13y ago
    Widely deployed PKI would transform humanity as we know it, and I believe largely for the better (Yelp, Facebook, and many other websites besides would be rendered irrelevant with widespread PKI). "Like" this restaurant? Sign its public key and give it a star rating. Want to consult with person X who is trusted by authority Y to do Z at a level L? This is straightforward without a bespoke who-trusts-whom website (heck, it's possible without "users") if we have PKI. Every year we don't have PKI is quite possibly trillions lost globally. If the NSA has been the one preventing the adoption of widespread PKI, then this is the cost they have imposed.
Ihmahr 13y ago
Remember that April fools joke by the pirate bay a few years ago..? They moved their hosting to the land of the free. I am in two Dutch groups that are saving the world, both of them were not hosted there but definitively won't now. Also a company I work for was collecting client customer data, they moved storage from US to Netherlands.
- secfirstmd 13y ago
  I think based on other Snowden revelations about non five-eye countries like Germany, Austria collaborating with the NSA and GCHQ - I think we all need to question whether any NATO country can be trusted for data privacy...
  - happyscrappy 13y ago
    So you can't trust the US, UK, Canada, Australia, NZ, Germany, France, basically all of the West, who can you trust?
    - secfirstmd 13y ago
      This is a very valid question.
    - porsupah 13y ago
      I have no answers. However, with the EU Parliament elections coming on May 22, I hope that someone with a less goldfish-like memory than mine may try to collate what the various electoral options may be. Evidently, none of the big three UK political parties have any interest in reining in GCHQ, just as neither the Democrats nor Republicans have any interest in constraining the NSA. Who does wish to pull that leash back?

conkrete 13y ago

I'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 ago
That implies a benefit to the customer.
- conkrete 13y ago
  Depends on your perspective
leviathant 13y ago
I'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 ago
  Well in theory, Congress and the UK Parliament...though the recent allegations about spying on the investigation into CIA torture suggests otherwise.
  - Zigurd 13y ago
    Pfft. Spying on Congress dates back to Russel Tice's revelations.

ihsw 13y ago

The NSA's job is more than simply spying -- they also subvert security through intentionally and maliciously weakening it. I wouldn't be surprised if the NSA considers it an acceptable risk that sensitive government systems are allowed to continue remaining vulnerable regardless of the dangers because fixing those security vulnerabilities would alert their adversaries to such vulnerabilities. Even furthermore, the various intelligence agencies also weaken systems for their own convenience, and yet there is nothing stopping anyone else from exploiting such weaknesses. Isn't this simply recklessness and negligence? We keep hearing about hackers getting customer data over and over again, is that because of what our government has done? It's not just spying.

bediger4000 13y ago
Agreed. I have a somewhat concrete example, the US credit card system. We know that GCHQ, and probably the NSA, knew about public-key encryption a long time before it was reinvented. Therefore, the US credit card system could have been made quite secure, instead of the amalgam of cheapest-to-implement patches that it is today. Very probably, the NSA could have prevented the largest part of "identity theft". I guess we also have to ask ourselves if this was deliberate on their part, or did they just miss the emergence of the credit-card-as-electronic-money?
- DanBC 13y ago
  How long is "a long time"? GCHQ had RSA a few years before RSA invented it. (About 3 years according to WP). The story of it is interesting: Clifford Cocks was working on it, he went home, and had the realisation at home. He could not write it down because that's not what mathematician spies do, so he had to remember it overnight u til he went back to the office the next morning.
- leot 13y ago
  Widely deployed PKI would transform humanity as we know it, and I believe largely for the better (Yelp, Facebook, and many other websites besides would be rendered irrelevant with widespread PKI). "Like" this restaurant? Sign its public key and give it a star rating. Want to consult with person X who is trusted by authority Y to do Z at a level L? This is straightforward without a bespoke who-trusts-whom website (heck, it's possible without "users") if we have PKI. Every year we don't have PKI is quite possibly trillions lost globally. If the NSA has been the one preventing the adoption of widespread PKI, then this is the cost they have imposed.

Ihmahr 13y ago

Remember that April fools joke by the pirate bay a few years ago..? They moved their hosting to the land of the free. I am in two Dutch groups that are saving the world, both of them were not hosted there but definitively won't now. Also a company I work for was collecting client customer data, they moved storage from US to Netherlands.

secfirstmd 13y ago
I think based on other Snowden revelations about non five-eye countries like Germany, Austria collaborating with the NSA and GCHQ - I think we all need to question whether any NATO country can be trusted for data privacy...
- happyscrappy 13y ago
  So you can't trust the US, UK, Canada, Australia, NZ, Germany, France, basically all of the West, who can you trust?
  - secfirstmd 13y ago
    This is a very valid question.
  - porsupah 13y ago
    I have no answers. However, with the EU Parliament elections coming on May 22, I hope that someone with a less goldfish-like memory than mine may try to collate what the various electoral options may be. Evidently, none of the big three UK political parties have any interest in reining in GCHQ, just as neither the Democrats nor Republicans have any interest in constraining the NSA. Who does wish to pull that leash back?