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The executive order that led to mass spying, as told by NSA alumni
- duncan_bayne 12y agoInteresting article, but it's a pity they chose to lead with weasel words. "One thing sits at the heart of what many consider a surveillance state within the US today."
- Dolimiter 12y agoIf you're wondering why you are being downvoted... The readership at Hacker News firmly believes that the US is a surveillance state. Stories are chosen and upvoted which confirm this worldview. Dissenting opinions are downvoted. If you're looking for a reasoned evidence-based discussion of the NSA, then choose a different website.
- duncan_bayne 12y agoThat was actually my point - it is a surveillance state, but the author of the piece lacked the balls to say it directly.
- RDeckard 12y agoshiiieeeettt... let's see how many downvotes I get for this comment.
- RDeckard 12y agoCome at me bro!
- daigoba66 12y agoI recommend that anyone interested in the topic watch this film: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/united-states-of-secrets/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/united-states-of-sec... It's incredibly detailed, though focusing primarily on executive action post 2011.
- Soyuz 12y agoThat page has full of very important documentaries.
- simplemath 12y agoThat two part documentary should be required viewing. For everyone.
- higherpurpose 12y agoFigures that the cause for one of the biggest government abuses in history is the extension of the president's power. It's like humans never learn. Never give a single man too much power. AUMF is just as bad, too. Did you know US is effectively still in a "state of emergency", today? - and will probably continue to be for long, long, LONG time, if nobody does anything about it. http://www.buzzfeed.com/gregorydjohnsen/60-words-and-a-war-without-end-the-untold-story-of-the-most#2028b1w http://www.buzzfeed.com/gregorydjohnsen/60-words-and-a-war-w...
- lukifer 12y agoWhat's interesting is that the "office" of president has grown into countless agencies and sub-agencies, each with their own motives, political will, and desire for survival. It's like Daenerys with her dragons: completely under command, yet good luck ordering them not to eat the local children.
- bakhy 12y agoThe same offensive narrative repeats itself. - The government is bulk collecting data on foreigners. - Meh... - They're also incidentally spying on US citizens in the processs. - SAY WHAT?! If the USA could try to acknowledge the human rights of non-US citizens, that would be really nice.
- atmosx 12y agoI feel offended by the way US-media approaches this matter and by my country's stance on the matter (not even a comment about it). Civilisation (broadly speaking) doesn't evolves hand-in-hand with technology. It is the major danger of our future.
- tinco 12y agoBecause for non-US countries nothing has changed. It's been a publicly known fact that the US spies on non-US citizens by monitoring internet traffic for over 20 years. Ask any hacker aged over 24. There's simply hardly anything worth being surprised about as a foreign national. If you asked anyone in The Netherlands 10 years ago if they thought their e-mail on Hotmail or GMail was monitored by authorities in the U.S. I am sure their answer would have been yes.
- Dolimiter 12y agoThink about it. You're saying that the USA spies on all non-US internet traffic. Does that make any sense? Is there any evidence? No and no.
- NicoJuicy 12y agoI'm from Belgium and he is right - i do think that USA spies on everyone, it makes sense and USA had admitted it multiple times. They are just worried that US citizens think the USA spies on them. PS. The USA doesn't only spy on non-US traffic, they just hide the spying inside the US more secretive :) PS2. Every country tries to spy though, not only the US :)
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- toyg 12y agoYou can't make this stuff up. According to TFA: 1. CIA created black propaganda in USSR linking Soviets and international terrorists to foment dissent in Russia. 2. Somebody picked it up from outside and wrote a book about Soviet-terrorism links. 3. CIA director read the book, took it seriously, freaked out, lobbied for more powers. 4. CIA and NSA got more powers. It's clearly not the first time in history that an intelligence organisation engineered a privilege escalation from fraudulent circumstances, but doing it by accident seems almost funny.
- mpweiher 12y agoAs retold by Adam Curtis in the excellent BBC three-parter "The Power of Nightmares": 3a. CIA people told new director, "er, boss, that was actually us". 3b. CIA director does not believe his own people. And of course the whole "Team B" episode (Rumsfeld etc.), where the complete lack of evidence that the Soviets had <weapon-of-choice> was reinterpreted to mean they MUST OBVIOUSLY HAVE <even-worse-than-weapon-of-choice-even-if-physically-impossible> and perfect secrecy, otherwise how could we not have found any evidence? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Nightmares http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Nightmares http://vimeo.com/84414208 http://vimeo.com/84414208 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_B http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_B
- Soyuz 12y agoThat was wonderful documentary. I will watch it. Thanks
- chc 12y agoCurtis wrote also wrote a great piece about the role incompetence played in the formation of intelligence agencies, titled "BUGGER: Maybe the Real State Secret Is That Spies Aren't Very Good At Their Jobs And Don't Know Very Much About the World". http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/BUGGER http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/BUGGER
- mpweiher 12y agoYep, that was also excellent. Some confirmation from the highest places: Former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt recounts that he never read the BND reports, because anything they wrote was tainted. He just asked other world leaders directly instead. http://www.zeit.de/2013/45/nsa-abhoeraffaere-gelassenheit http://www.zeit.de/2013/45/nsa-abhoeraffaere-gelassenheit
- Dolimiter 12y agoAnother top-voted article about the NSA on Hacker News that is thin on evidence to say the least. It appears to be hearsay from a disgruntled ex-employee. However I understand that the story fits the political narrative of the forums here, and will therefore be upvoted despite any lack of sense or evidence.
- lotsofmangos 12y agoHow would you find any information on the internals of the NSA that isn't hearsay from a disgruntled ex-employee? Current employees who are happy and fulfilled in their work in the security services don't tend to say all that much to the press.
- XorNot 12y agoThe structure of every single one of these stories is a single slide or page or quote, containing maybe less then 50 words maximum. From there, wild speculation then goes on to breathlessly exclaim about what this really proves, while failing to actually support any of the assertions. For good measure toss in some wilful blindness about the point of surveillance, mechanics of law enforcement, collective action problems or the fundamental differences between one's own government and a foreign government (hint: foreign governments don't have a monopoly of violence over the citizens of foreign countries). The people who keep yelling about how nobody cares enough need to consider that just maybe they're not very good at arguing their point. Cue downvotes.
- shiven 12y agoPray, share it if you have anything that can disprove the wild speculation. Hysterical speculation is to be expected when dealing with the doings of an arm of the government that is willfully shrouded in secrecy. The leaks so far have only confirmed what was being called "tin-foil hattery" until pre-Snowden. If you are so concerned about subduing rampant speculation, how about showing up with proofs to the contrary instead of ad hominems and downvote baiting?
- lasermike026 12y agoEnd to end encryption for everything. Anonymizing technology especially when you need it. Governments always tap everything.
- coldcode 12y agoThere is no room in a supposedly democracy (republic) for law by fiat. Either the people are ultimately in charge or we live in a dictatorship. The Constitution is not an option.
- happyscrappy 12y agoThis is the real problem, you cannot have secret laws. Period. Wasting time wishing nations would just not spy is foolish.
- Padding 12y agoThe real issue here is that the public has no control over the spying. Imho, many would probably be fine with other people listening in on their phone calls, or going over their browsing history, if the only effect of that would be terrorists getting caught. The problem is that currently there is too much potential for the surveilance data to be comercialized or abused for trivial legal matters. I think much of the debate could be settled by alowing the public to scrutinize the surveillance process, and putting any abuse of the data (i.e. its usage in non-terror-related situations) under extordinarily humiliating punishments (like denationalization).
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- mikeash 12y agoThis quote struck me: "After the United States faced another existential threat in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks...." I'm amazed at how accepting the media is of the threat of terrorism. That statement implicitly compares al Qaeda to the Soviets. The Soviets who, if they had had a bad day and decided to say "screw it" and wipe out capitalism for good could have done so within an hour. A country which, at any moment, could have pressed a button and killed a billion people. (And to be fair, the US of course had/has the same ability.) This is being compared to a loose organization of fanatics where the worst-case scenario was pretty much, "What if they crashed the fourth plane into the White House and killed the President!" I think we need an enemy. The country is built on it. After four decades of the Cold War, we needed something to put in the "USSR" slot. Terrorists are a terrible fit, but it's the best we could find.
- ivanca 12y agoAny given couple of days more Americans die from heart diseases than those who died by the 911 attacks, I have yet to see someone call those "an existential thread for America". But we never learn. The best thing that could happen right now for the NSA and the military in the mist of this criticism is another attack on US land, the former will say " see! This is why we need to spy today more than ever! " and the military would get another major money injection for decades to come and it gets to invade any country where they think the enemy might be.
- happyscrappy 12y agoI am so tired of this specious argument. Committing suicide is not the same as being murdered.
- andrewljohnson 12y agoReminds me of the spy novels that led the British to create MI5. http://graemeshimmin.com/william-le-queux-and-british-spying/ http://graemeshimmin.com/william-le-queux-and-british-spying...