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Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal

344 points by not_that_noob 12y ago

not_that_noob 12y ago
Why was the title changed? Here's the operative paragraph from the article below - there is a document that indicates the NSA is spying on porn visits of ordinary Americans to use against them in intimidation for exercising their rights to free speech. It doesn't get any worse than this. "It should also trouble Americans that the N.S.A. could head down a similar path in this country. Indeed, there is some indication, from a top-secret 2012 document from Mr. Snowden’s leaked files that I saw last year, that it already is. The document, from Gen. Keith B. Alexander, then the director of the N.S.A., notes that the agency had been compiling records of visits to pornographic websites and proposes using that information to damage the reputations of people whom the agency considers “radicalizers” — not necessarily terrorists, but those attempting, through the use of incendiary speech, to radicalize others. (The Huffington Post has published a redacted version of the document.)" [Edit] For reference, the original title was: "NSA spying on porn visits of ordinary Americans" - which is exactly what they seem to be doing.
- cryoshon 12y ago
  Don't forget the JTRIG program, either. Discrediting anyone looking to change the status quo.
  - not_that_noob 12y ago
    Yes, they get to designate "radicalizers" with almost no oversight.
- MatthewMcDonald 12y ago
  HN's Guidelines say to use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - not_that_noob 12y ago
    The article clearly states the NSA is cataloging porn visits of ordinary Americans exercising their rights to free speech. How was the title not appropriate?
    - lwhalen 12y ago
      The given title was not appropriate because it did not fit the HN rule of "Use the original title"
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
    - MatthewMcDonald 12y ago
      >How was the title not appropriate? I'm not arguing that what you submitted as the title is not an accurate summary of the article; HN guidelines are that you're supposed to submit the original title of the article, and only submit a new title if the article's original title is appropriate.
    - anigbrowl 12y ago
      Because that is peripheral to what the article is mainly about.
- yetanotherHNacc 12y ago
  There was a similar incident that comes to mind, BlueCoat hardware deployed by Assad's government in Syria. It was found that Assad was having traffic monitored through BlueCoat proxies installed at the ISP level. Logs were leaked showing monitoring of religious, sexual, political content. Of course many are now dead, countless others imprisoned. Much thanks to BlueCoat and salesmen who assisted Assad's government in procuring the hardware. Sidenote: This topic, and others around it have gotten several accounts of mine here ghosted. Best stick to discussing how your start-up wants to sell traffic monitoring hardware and SaaS via independent sales agents to whoever has cash.
  - rgkjrengkjreng 12y ago
    I've noticed this as well. Similarly, reddit will completely shut down any threads that start to become too activist on the grounds of "witch hunting." It's amazing how we've already systematically nerfed the internet as a tool for bringing about political change.
    - CamperBob2 12y ago
      To be fair to the authors of the HN guidelines, witch hunting has been a serious problem on Reddit. Few people want to see HN become another Reddit. But reverting this title was arguably inappropriate because the NYT's original title is misleading in its understatement.
- dang 12y ago
  The title you submitted (which was not the original title at all) was a classic case of editorializing: cherry-picking one thing you think is important about the article. HN doesn't allow that. HN titles are pointers to stories, not little op-eds, and need to neutrally reflect the story's content as a whole. HN readers can make up their own minds about what parts of an article are important. It's not the submitter's prerogative to do that for everybody. Being first to submit a story confers no authority over it. If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do so in the comments, so your view is on a level playing field with everyone else's. HN's value hierarchy starts with respect for the content and for the reader; submitters are somewhat down on the list. Sorry, but it does apply to all of us qua submitter. I'm not disagreeing about the detail you singled out. Arguably, the article buries the lede. The place to point that out, however, is not in the title but in the comments, where there is ample opportunity to discuss the details and where the submitter is on the same footing as everyone else. Edit: this discussion always comes up in the context of a title where people agree with the submitter's rewrite and disagree with moderators' reversion to the original. But that's not a good basis for assessing the rule. Instead, you should consider the far more common case of all the rewritten titles you disagree with, either because they're flat-out wrong or because the author's and your opinions differ. Imagine what HN would be like if it that were routinely ok. The front page would mostly be spin. HN would be more tendentious and have more kibitzing about titles than it does now. Those effects would be compounded everywhere else. It would be a very different place. The more experience I have with HN, the more I feel that pg's decision to have it always focus neutrally on content is one of the wisest design choices he made.
CamperBob2 12y ago
Instead of being buried at the end of the article, Bamford's penultimate paragraph In Moscow, Mr. Snowden told me that the document reminded him of the F.B.I.’s overreach during the days of J. Edgar Hoover, when the bureau abused its powers to monitor and harass political activists. “It’s much like how the F.B.I. tried to use Martin Luther King’s infidelity to talk him into killing himself,” he said. “We said those kinds of things were inappropriate back in the ’60s. Why are we doing that now? Why are we getting involved in this again?” ... should be cut-and-pasted into any comment thread where a security-state apologist is trying to make people believe that Snowden is anything other than a patriot. We can't fix this by working within the system. That's what the Church Committee tried to do. They failed. There is no reason to think their twenty-first century counterparts will not fail again.
- cryoshon 12y ago
  Okay, if not fixing it by working within the system, then what is the next step?
  - CamperBob2 12y ago
    Those working within the system should follow Snowden's example, IMHO. Force the government to either stop these practices altogether, or reveal their true cost to the American way of life.
    - alan_cx 12y ago
      Why should any insider do that? Snowden did it, and look what happened. Nothing. Sad truth is, the majority don't care. If they did, then it would be reflected in voting, and things would change. But no. Mean while, Snowden is a wanted man in exile. Don't get me wrong, I don't like this one little bit, but it seems I'm in a minority.
      - dragonwriter 12y ago
        > Snowden did it, and look what happened. Nothing. "Nothing" understates the impact. Sure, no one insider's revelations alone will suffice to radically change the situation, but, to borrow a Medieval adaptation of a classical aphorism, gutta cavet lapidem, non vi, sed saepe cadendo.
rasz_pl 12y ago
> it would first be “minimized,” meaning that names and other personally identifiable information would be removed. minimized?? Im pretty sure he meant Anonymized
- mox1 12y ago
  No he meant minimized, which in FISA terms means purged of irrelevant and over-collected information, including data about US persons. http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/jun/20/exhibit-b-nsa-procedures-document http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/jun/20/exh...
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
javajosh 12y ago
I think this all is going to take time to sink in, but in the end, Americans will do the right thing, which has been the overwhelming trend in the past. Think slavery. Think women's suffrage. Think civil rights. Think gay marriage. This one is a little tough because the targets are unsympathetic and the anecdotes of specific harm are non-existent. It's difficult to argue against fighting dirty as a principle; it's much easier when you can point to a specific person (like MLK) and say, "That dude was clearly wronged." I wish it was different. I wish people got more upset about government fighting dirty against anyone[1], even against the enemies that we ourselves agree are despicable and evil. Fighting dirty hurts us far more than it hurts them, because it damages our moral identity. [1] The one exception is if there is an existential threat to the US. However, terrorism has never been, and will never be, an existential threat to the US[2] - except insofar as, in a fit of epic but unfunny irony, they manage to manipulate us into destroying our own moral fabric. [2] The same argument applies to Israel. Israel playing dirty against state actors like Iran would be far more defensible, because Iran really could wipe Israel out.
jostmey 12y ago
I think this is the most damning leak to date. There is no justification for freely giving information to Israel. And the part about people's porn habits being tracked is even scarier. That could be used to discredit virtually anyone (well, any male at least). Who hasn't visited an embarrassing porn website at least once in their life ? Now imagine your name being publicly associated with that website.
- ronreiter 12y ago
  There is justification, it's a co-operation between Israel and the U.S. Just like the US helps Israel, Israel helps the US.
  - colordrops 12y ago
    Co-operation between countries still requires that laws are followed. You can't just send the private data of your citizens to foreign nationals. That is unequivocally against the law and could even be interpreted as treason.
    - dllthomas 12y ago
      "could even be interpreted as treason." That seems far-fetched. Edited to add: Just to be clear, "not treason" doesn't mean "good"; "not deplorable"; or even, necessarily, "not deserving of the death penalty" - it just means "not treason".
      - snarfy 12y ago
        Not really. Treason requires we be at war, but the 'war on terror' never really ends.
        dllthomas 12y ago
        Any reasonable interpretation requires that someone involved (either the traitor or a person specifically aided by the traitor) be engaged in "making war against the US." There being a war isn't anything like sufficient, and not all criminal acts make one "an Enemy of the United States," foreign national or not.
autism_hurts 12y ago
Palantir has their hand in all of this.
- tokenadult 12y ago
  Palantir has their hand in all of this. What is the evidence for this statement? (I read the fine article, and didn't see a lot of discussion of the business corporation Palantir there.)
  - autism_hurts 12y ago
    They're the only company that has the technology to parse / analyze datasets like the ones mentioned in the article.
    - cyphunk 12y ago
      can you be more specific? the xkeyscore100 rule set leak seems to indicate hadoop map reduce use which to me indicates a vanilla build out of the NSAs own. so what could you use to show more clear involvement from Palantir
- tedks 12y ago
  We live in such a cyberpunk novel. Governmental conspiracies, global dystopia (overt or covert), and slick-named surveillance-tech megacorps. Except, in this world, the balance is too weighted in favor of the powerful. There will be no Panther Moderns in our world's cyberpunk future. There will be no punk in our cyberpunk. Only a cyberboot stamping on our cyberface(book), forever.
guelo 12y ago
The way Israel owns American military and foreign policy should be a national shame. Reminds me of this other story about Israel going behind Obama's back to get weapons straight from the Pentagon. http://online.wsj.com/articles/u-s-sway-over-israel-on-gaza-at-a-low-1407979365 http://online.wsj.com/articles/u-s-sway-over-israel-on-gaza-...
- sabalaba 12y ago
  Political influence arising from an active group of Jewish-Americans lobbying their own government not "ownership". If you're against it, you too are free to get involved, form a special interest group, and lobby our government in the other direction.
  - colordrops 12y ago
    That's not how a democracy is supposed to work. Extreme influence by a small group of individuals outside of the voting process indicated a broken system.
- ronreiter 12y ago
  That's politics bullshit, Obama wanted to "remind" the Israelis who's boss and make sure the world sees.
shna 12y ago
Sounds like U.S. has not been a sovereign country for sometime. It's intelligence service has been working for another country, passing sensitive information of its own citizens to Israel. Interesting. Even more interesting is that the bulk of the comments are on somewhere else whether this is a witch hunt or not, if it resembles to what Mr. Hoover did or did not do, if the committee in the past succeeded or not.
BugBrother 12y ago
A discussion of Unit 8200 I read today: http://strategypage.com/htmw/htintel/articles/20140923.aspx http://strategypage.com/htmw/htintel/articles/20140923.aspx (I read other sources because my Swedish media is like some inverse of Fox News. Stories like that Hamas had admitted murdering the three teens that started the last war is not... emphasized. The biggest morning newspaper didn't even mention that the accused murders of those teens died in a firefight today. Pallywood was never mentioned. Neither torture between Palestinian groups. Etc.)
ronreiter 12y ago
The US is a close ally of Israel for obvious reasons. Israel wants to better defend itself, so it co-operates with the N.S.A. This is what Israel needs to defend itself, and Israel probably does the same thing to help defend the US. There will always be a conflict between privacy and security, you can stick to one on expense of the other, but you will never be able to "fix" things.
- bjourne 12y ago
  Wait a minute. What are those "obvious reasons" you speak of?
  - justin66 12y ago
    We're allied with Israel so we can get valuable intelligence from Israel on all the people who want to blow us up because we're allied with Israel.
- colordrops 12y ago
  How is Israel any different from any other country? What's so obvious about why they are a close ally?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
bengrunfeld 12y ago
Israel's Arab civilian's regularly attempt to blow themselves up in public places (believe me, I've stopped a few on them myself). Meanwhile the Palestinians gleefully lob rockets at populated cities in Israel. Of course Israel would want to monitor them as much as possible, and corroborate with the NSA to get as much data as possible. If that monitoring saved YOUR child from getting blown up on a bus, wouldn't you support it, or would you prefer your kid gets blown to smithereens so that social justice can be upheld? There's a big difference between America's domestic surveillance program and Israel's. Last time I checked, the central USA hadn't just recently been shelled.
- conover 12y ago
  So if you object to this type of surveillance then you prefer your children to be blown up by suicide bombers?
  - BugBrother 12y ago
    Most every democracy with serious and continuing problems with terrorism throw out the law book and human rights. Afaik, this goes for USA, Britain, Israel, Germany, Spain and Italy. And probably more cases. (Note "continuing problems". e.g. Breivik was a lone crazy.) The reason is shown by the grandparent comment; terrorism is optimized to scare voters. And politicians are scared of hysterical voters, they need to fix that to keep their jobs.
    - bengrunfeld 12y ago
      I've went through 9 terrorist attacks in Israel before I joined the military - I lived in downtown Jerusalem during the Second Intifada. In the other countries, you're right - there is no excuse for getting rid of personal rights and freedoms, but in Israel the sheer number of terrorist attacks cause the reality to be different. If we didn't have the intel, we could never stop the terrorists, and that is simply unacceptable.
      - BugBrother 12y ago
rrggrr 12y ago
This was not a one-sided trade. You can be sure the NSA received similar feeds from Israel on targets of great interest to US national interests. The inherent problem in these NSA debates is the inability of the NSA or policy makers to give the American people believable metrics that describe the value received for the effort. Could it be the US received important intel in return for its feeds? Yes. By not articulating a believable ROI on collection or sharing its looks increasingly like there wasn't one.
GameOfTrolls 12y ago
B-But why does errbody hate Israel??? This. this is why. Amongst other things.
cyphunk 12y ago
Over 10 years ago I had a friend who confided that he left his unit, Israels unit 8200, that he had wanted for years to get in because he was disturbed by the type of intelligence they gathered. He explained they would go into the west bank in the middle of the night and monitor valleys waiting in hopes that a Palestinian would masturbate or better take part in some bestiality that they could photograph to use as blackmail. He clarified that these were not targets in some terrorist organization, remotely connected to one. They were just random people. He spent almost a year in intense training learning how to be a covert scout and a sniper. I remember he was beaming for that period of time. But no more than a month after training ended he quit the unit (started his exit from it at least) and told me what was happening.

344 points by not_that_noob 12y ago

Why was the title changed? Here's the operative paragraph from the article below - there is a document that indicates the NSA is spying on porn visits of ordinary Americans to use against them in intimidation for exercising their rights to free speech. It doesn't get any worse than this. "It should also trouble Americans that the N.S.A. could head down a similar path in this country. Indeed, there is some indication, from a top-secret 2012 document from Mr. Snowden’s leaked files that I saw last year, that it already is. The document, from Gen. Keith B. Alexander, then the director of the N.S.A., notes that the agency had been compiling records of visits to pornographic websites and proposes using that information to damage the reputations of people whom the agency considers “radicalizers” — not necessarily terrorists, but those attempting, through the use of incendiary speech, to radicalize others. (The Huffington Post has published a redacted version of the document.)" [Edit] For reference, the original title was: "NSA spying on porn visits of ordinary Americans" - which is exactly what they seem to be doing.

cryoshon 12y ago
Don't forget the JTRIG program, either. Discrediting anyone looking to change the status quo.
- not_that_noob 12y ago
  Yes, they get to designate "radicalizers" with almost no oversight.
MatthewMcDonald 12y ago
HN's Guidelines say to use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- not_that_noob 12y ago
  The article clearly states the NSA is cataloging porn visits of ordinary Americans exercising their rights to free speech. How was the title not appropriate?
  - lwhalen 12y ago
    The given title was not appropriate because it did not fit the HN rule of "Use the original title"
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
  - MatthewMcDonald 12y ago
    >How was the title not appropriate? I'm not arguing that what you submitted as the title is not an accurate summary of the article; HN guidelines are that you're supposed to submit the original title of the article, and only submit a new title if the article's original title is appropriate.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    Because that is peripheral to what the article is mainly about.
yetanotherHNacc 12y ago
There was a similar incident that comes to mind, BlueCoat hardware deployed by Assad's government in Syria. It was found that Assad was having traffic monitored through BlueCoat proxies installed at the ISP level. Logs were leaked showing monitoring of religious, sexual, political content. Of course many are now dead, countless others imprisoned. Much thanks to BlueCoat and salesmen who assisted Assad's government in procuring the hardware. Sidenote: This topic, and others around it have gotten several accounts of mine here ghosted. Best stick to discussing how your start-up wants to sell traffic monitoring hardware and SaaS via independent sales agents to whoever has cash.
- rgkjrengkjreng 12y ago
  I've noticed this as well. Similarly, reddit will completely shut down any threads that start to become too activist on the grounds of "witch hunting." It's amazing how we've already systematically nerfed the internet as a tool for bringing about political change.
  - CamperBob2 12y ago
    To be fair to the authors of the HN guidelines, witch hunting has been a serious problem on Reddit. Few people want to see HN become another Reddit. But reverting this title was arguably inappropriate because the NYT's original title is misleading in its understatement.
dang 12y ago
The title you submitted (which was not the original title at all) was a classic case of editorializing: cherry-picking one thing you think is important about the article. HN doesn't allow that. HN titles are pointers to stories, not little op-eds, and need to neutrally reflect the story's content as a whole. HN readers can make up their own minds about what parts of an article are important. It's not the submitter's prerogative to do that for everybody. Being first to submit a story confers no authority over it. If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do so in the comments, so your view is on a level playing field with everyone else's. HN's value hierarchy starts with respect for the content and for the reader; submitters are somewhat down on the list. Sorry, but it does apply to all of us qua submitter. I'm not disagreeing about the detail you singled out. Arguably, the article buries the lede. The place to point that out, however, is not in the title but in the comments, where there is ample opportunity to discuss the details and where the submitter is on the same footing as everyone else. Edit: this discussion always comes up in the context of a title where people agree with the submitter's rewrite and disagree with moderators' reversion to the original. But that's not a good basis for assessing the rule. Instead, you should consider the far more common case of all the rewritten titles you disagree with, either because they're flat-out wrong or because the author's and your opinions differ. Imagine what HN would be like if it that were routinely ok. The front page would mostly be spin. HN would be more tendentious and have more kibitzing about titles than it does now. Those effects would be compounded everywhere else. It would be a very different place. The more experience I have with HN, the more I feel that pg's decision to have it always focus neutrally on content is one of the wisest design choices he made.

CamperBob2 12y ago

Instead of being buried at the end of the article, Bamford's penultimate paragraph In Moscow, Mr. Snowden told me that the document reminded him of the F.B.I.’s overreach during the days of J. Edgar Hoover, when the bureau abused its powers to monitor and harass political activists. “It’s much like how the F.B.I. tried to use Martin Luther King’s infidelity to talk him into killing himself,” he said. “We said those kinds of things were inappropriate back in the ’60s. Why are we doing that now? Why are we getting involved in this again?” ... should be cut-and-pasted into any comment thread where a security-state apologist is trying to make people believe that Snowden is anything other than a patriot. We can't fix this by working within the system. That's what the Church Committee tried to do. They failed. There is no reason to think their twenty-first century counterparts will not fail again.

cryoshon 12y ago
Okay, if not fixing it by working within the system, then what is the next step?
- CamperBob2 12y ago
  Those working within the system should follow Snowden's example, IMHO. Force the government to either stop these practices altogether, or reveal their true cost to the American way of life.
  - alan_cx 12y ago
    Why should any insider do that? Snowden did it, and look what happened. Nothing. Sad truth is, the majority don't care. If they did, then it would be reflected in voting, and things would change. But no. Mean while, Snowden is a wanted man in exile. Don't get me wrong, I don't like this one little bit, but it seems I'm in a minority.
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      > Snowden did it, and look what happened. Nothing. "Nothing" understates the impact. Sure, no one insider's revelations alone will suffice to radically change the situation, but, to borrow a Medieval adaptation of a classical aphorism, gutta cavet lapidem, non vi, sed saepe cadendo.

rasz_pl 12y ago

> it would first be “minimized,” meaning that names and other personally identifiable information would be removed. minimized?? Im pretty sure he meant Anonymized

mox1 12y ago
No he meant minimized, which in FISA terms means purged of irrelevant and over-collected information, including data about US persons. http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/jun/20/exhibit-b-nsa-procedures-document http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/jun/20/exh...

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

javajosh 12y ago

I think this all is going to take time to sink in, but in the end, Americans will do the right thing, which has been the overwhelming trend in the past. Think slavery. Think women's suffrage. Think civil rights. Think gay marriage. This one is a little tough because the targets are unsympathetic and the anecdotes of specific harm are non-existent. It's difficult to argue against fighting dirty as a principle; it's much easier when you can point to a specific person (like MLK) and say, "That dude was clearly wronged." I wish it was different. I wish people got more upset about government fighting dirty against anyone[1], even against the enemies that we ourselves agree are despicable and evil. Fighting dirty hurts us far more than it hurts them, because it damages our moral identity. [1] The one exception is if there is an existential threat to the US. However, terrorism has never been, and will never be, an existential threat to the US[2] - except insofar as, in a fit of epic but unfunny irony, they manage to manipulate us into destroying our own moral fabric. [2] The same argument applies to Israel. Israel playing dirty against state actors like Iran would be far more defensible, because Iran really could wipe Israel out.

jostmey 12y ago

I think this is the most damning leak to date. There is no justification for freely giving information to Israel. And the part about people's porn habits being tracked is even scarier. That could be used to discredit virtually anyone (well, any male at least). Who hasn't visited an embarrassing porn website at least once in their life ? Now imagine your name being publicly associated with that website.

ronreiter 12y ago
There is justification, it's a co-operation between Israel and the U.S. Just like the US helps Israel, Israel helps the US.
- colordrops 12y ago
  Co-operation between countries still requires that laws are followed. You can't just send the private data of your citizens to foreign nationals. That is unequivocally against the law and could even be interpreted as treason.
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    "could even be interpreted as treason." That seems far-fetched. Edited to add: Just to be clear, "not treason" doesn't mean "good"; "not deplorable"; or even, necessarily, "not deserving of the death penalty" - it just means "not treason".
    - snarfy 12y ago
      Not really. Treason requires we be at war, but the 'war on terror' never really ends.
      - dllthomas 12y ago
        Any reasonable interpretation requires that someone involved (either the traitor or a person specifically aided by the traitor) be engaged in "making war against the US." There being a war isn't anything like sufficient, and not all criminal acts make one "an Enemy of the United States," foreign national or not.

autism_hurts 12y ago

Palantir has their hand in all of this.

tokenadult 12y ago
Palantir has their hand in all of this. What is the evidence for this statement? (I read the fine article, and didn't see a lot of discussion of the business corporation Palantir there.)
- autism_hurts 12y ago
  They're the only company that has the technology to parse / analyze datasets like the ones mentioned in the article.
  - cyphunk 12y ago
    can you be more specific? the xkeyscore100 rule set leak seems to indicate hadoop map reduce use which to me indicates a vanilla build out of the NSAs own. so what could you use to show more clear involvement from Palantir
tedks 12y ago
We live in such a cyberpunk novel. Governmental conspiracies, global dystopia (overt or covert), and slick-named surveillance-tech megacorps. Except, in this world, the balance is too weighted in favor of the powerful. There will be no Panther Moderns in our world's cyberpunk future. There will be no punk in our cyberpunk. Only a cyberboot stamping on our cyberface(book), forever.

guelo 12y ago

The way Israel owns American military and foreign policy should be a national shame. Reminds me of this other story about Israel going behind Obama's back to get weapons straight from the Pentagon. http://online.wsj.com/articles/u-s-sway-over-israel-on-gaza-at-a-low-1407979365 http://online.wsj.com/articles/u-s-sway-over-israel-on-gaza-...

sabalaba 12y ago
Political influence arising from an active group of Jewish-Americans lobbying their own government not "ownership". If you're against it, you too are free to get involved, form a special interest group, and lobby our government in the other direction.
- colordrops 12y ago
  That's not how a democracy is supposed to work. Extreme influence by a small group of individuals outside of the voting process indicated a broken system.
ronreiter 12y ago
That's politics bullshit, Obama wanted to "remind" the Israelis who's boss and make sure the world sees.

shna 12y ago

Sounds like U.S. has not been a sovereign country for sometime. It's intelligence service has been working for another country, passing sensitive information of its own citizens to Israel. Interesting. Even more interesting is that the bulk of the comments are on somewhere else whether this is a witch hunt or not, if it resembles to what Mr. Hoover did or did not do, if the committee in the past succeeded or not.

BugBrother 12y ago

A discussion of Unit 8200 I read today: http://strategypage.com/htmw/htintel/articles/20140923.aspx http://strategypage.com/htmw/htintel/articles/20140923.aspx (I read other sources because my Swedish media is like some inverse of Fox News. Stories like that Hamas had admitted murdering the three teens that started the last war is not... emphasized. The biggest morning newspaper didn't even mention that the accused murders of those teens died in a firefight today. Pallywood was never mentioned. Neither torture between Palestinian groups. Etc.)

ronreiter 12y ago

The US is a close ally of Israel for obvious reasons. Israel wants to better defend itself, so it co-operates with the N.S.A. This is what Israel needs to defend itself, and Israel probably does the same thing to help defend the US. There will always be a conflict between privacy and security, you can stick to one on expense of the other, but you will never be able to "fix" things.

bjourne 12y ago
Wait a minute. What are those "obvious reasons" you speak of?
- justin66 12y ago
  We're allied with Israel so we can get valuable intelligence from Israel on all the people who want to blow us up because we're allied with Israel.
colordrops 12y ago
How is Israel any different from any other country? What's so obvious about why they are a close ally?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

bengrunfeld 12y ago

Israel's Arab civilian's regularly attempt to blow themselves up in public places (believe me, I've stopped a few on them myself). Meanwhile the Palestinians gleefully lob rockets at populated cities in Israel. Of course Israel would want to monitor them as much as possible, and corroborate with the NSA to get as much data as possible. If that monitoring saved YOUR child from getting blown up on a bus, wouldn't you support it, or would you prefer your kid gets blown to smithereens so that social justice can be upheld? There's a big difference between America's domestic surveillance program and Israel's. Last time I checked, the central USA hadn't just recently been shelled.

conover 12y ago
So if you object to this type of surveillance then you prefer your children to be blown up by suicide bombers?
- BugBrother 12y ago
  Most every democracy with serious and continuing problems with terrorism throw out the law book and human rights. Afaik, this goes for USA, Britain, Israel, Germany, Spain and Italy. And probably more cases. (Note "continuing problems". e.g. Breivik was a lone crazy.) The reason is shown by the grandparent comment; terrorism is optimized to scare voters. And politicians are scared of hysterical voters, they need to fix that to keep their jobs.
  - bengrunfeld 12y ago
    I've went through 9 terrorist attacks in Israel before I joined the military - I lived in downtown Jerusalem during the Second Intifada. In the other countries, you're right - there is no excuse for getting rid of personal rights and freedoms, but in Israel the sheer number of terrorist attacks cause the reality to be different. If we didn't have the intel, we could never stop the terrorists, and that is simply unacceptable.
    - BugBrother 12y ago

rrggrr 12y ago

This was not a one-sided trade. You can be sure the NSA received similar feeds from Israel on targets of great interest to US national interests. The inherent problem in these NSA debates is the inability of the NSA or policy makers to give the American people believable metrics that describe the value received for the effort. Could it be the US received important intel in return for its feeds? Yes. By not articulating a believable ROI on collection or sharing its looks increasingly like there wasn't one.

GameOfTrolls 12y ago

B-But why does errbody hate Israel??? This. this is why. Amongst other things.

cyphunk 12y ago

Over 10 years ago I had a friend who confided that he left his unit, Israels unit 8200, that he had wanted for years to get in because he was disturbed by the type of intelligence they gathered. He explained they would go into the west bank in the middle of the night and monitor valleys waiting in hopes that a Palestinian would masturbate or better take part in some bestiality that they could photograph to use as blackmail. He clarified that these were not targets in some terrorist organization, remotely connected to one. They were just random people. He spent almost a year in intense training learning how to be a covert scout and a sniper. I remember he was beaming for that period of time. But no more than a month after training ended he quit the unit (started his exit from it at least) and told me what was happening.