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It's weird public discourse has gone from "Na, the NSA couldn't possibly be that widespread and invasive" to "Na, they're not doing anything bad with it..." It'

It's weird public discourse has gone from "Na, the NSA couldn't possibly be that widespread and invasive" to "Na, they're not doing anything bad with it..." It's like some collective denial of what the next step could be, apparently we have a lot more faith in government than a lot of people let on...

twoodfin 12y ago
I don't remember that Pollyanna public discourse. What would you consider the most shocking Snowden disclosure? None that I'm aware of were that surprising. It was an open secret at the phone companies that TLA folk of one sort or another have been (only sometimes with direct cooperation) plugging mysterious gear into the network for decades. Really astounding that their methods are now targeted at Gmail and Facebook?
- jgroszko 12y ago
  The firmware exploits that were being talked about a few weeks ago are probably the most surprising to me. But IIRC a lot of the stuff that Snowden revealed was previously considered the realm of tin foil hat conspiracy theory.
- A_COMPUTER 12y ago
  There is a huge difference between "carnivore", a box the FBI could put on a single network somewhere, and room 641A, six rooms hooked directly into AT&T backbones sniffing all data. There is also a huge difference between passive monitoring at specific points with some sort of criminal investigation, and actively infiltrating US companies and breaking their security to be able to monitor its traffic unimpeded. It's funny how I was a conspiracy nut when I told people this stuff was happening, and now I have people gaslighting me that everybody knew it was happening all along.
  - amyjess 12y ago
    Room 641A was well known, as fact, years before Snowden and nobody gave a shit. I remember people talking about it circa 2006. It was in the context of "if the government wanted to ban something and actively enforce it, they have the ability to do that because they've got a room where they grab a beam off all of AT&T's fiber optics" Everybody knew, nobody cared.
- njharman 12y ago
  Taping phones of foreign politicians Intercepting shipments to plant back doors Sabotaging cryptography efforts to so everyone has weak encryption. Lying to congress. Are a few shocking revelations from Snowden disclosure my bad memory recalls.
amyjess 12y ago
Oh, everyone assumed the government knows anything anyway, long before Snowden. I remember after the Boston Bombings, people were complaining, saying things like "How could the government be so incompetent as to not stop this before it happened? They monitor everything on the Internet, so they should have known!". This was before Snowden. Years before that, I remember people were casually talking about Room 641A. This would be about 2005 or so. Everyone assumed the government snarfs all Internet data long before Snowden, and almost nobody cared.
- jgroszko 12y ago
  Perhaps I'm conflating indifference with dismissal as conspiracy theory.
- cmdkeen 12y ago
  Hasn't the existence of Echelon been common knowledge for years? The concept was popularised in Enemy of the State in 1998. Before that you had Clinton and the Clipper chip which could easily lead the poorly technically informed to assume all their internet traffic was already capable of being monitored.
  - amyjess 12y ago
    Yeah, that too. And I heard about Carnivore in the '90s -- though most people vastly overstated what it was capable of (people tended to ascribe Echelon's capabilities to Carnivore).

twoodfin 12y ago

I don't remember that Pollyanna public discourse. What would you consider the most shocking Snowden disclosure? None that I'm aware of were that surprising. It was an open secret at the phone companies that TLA folk of one sort or another have been (only sometimes with direct cooperation) plugging mysterious gear into the network for decades. Really astounding that their methods are now targeted at Gmail and Facebook?

jgroszko 12y ago
The firmware exploits that were being talked about a few weeks ago are probably the most surprising to me. But IIRC a lot of the stuff that Snowden revealed was previously considered the realm of tin foil hat conspiracy theory.
A_COMPUTER 12y ago
There is a huge difference between "carnivore", a box the FBI could put on a single network somewhere, and room 641A, six rooms hooked directly into AT&T backbones sniffing all data. There is also a huge difference between passive monitoring at specific points with some sort of criminal investigation, and actively infiltrating US companies and breaking their security to be able to monitor its traffic unimpeded. It's funny how I was a conspiracy nut when I told people this stuff was happening, and now I have people gaslighting me that everybody knew it was happening all along.
- amyjess 12y ago
  Room 641A was well known, as fact, years before Snowden and nobody gave a shit. I remember people talking about it circa 2006. It was in the context of "if the government wanted to ban something and actively enforce it, they have the ability to do that because they've got a room where they grab a beam off all of AT&T's fiber optics" Everybody knew, nobody cared.
njharman 12y ago
Taping phones of foreign politicians Intercepting shipments to plant back doors Sabotaging cryptography efforts to so everyone has weak encryption. Lying to congress. Are a few shocking revelations from Snowden disclosure my bad memory recalls.

amyjess 12y ago

Oh, everyone assumed the government knows anything anyway, long before Snowden. I remember after the Boston Bombings, people were complaining, saying things like "How could the government be so incompetent as to not stop this before it happened? They monitor everything on the Internet, so they should have known!". This was before Snowden. Years before that, I remember people were casually talking about Room 641A. This would be about 2005 or so. Everyone assumed the government snarfs all Internet data long before Snowden, and almost nobody cared.

jgroszko 12y ago
Perhaps I'm conflating indifference with dismissal as conspiracy theory.
cmdkeen 12y ago
Hasn't the existence of Echelon been common knowledge for years? The concept was popularised in Enemy of the State in 1998. Before that you had Clinton and the Clipper chip which could easily lead the poorly technically informed to assume all their internet traffic was already capable of being monitored.
- amyjess 12y ago
  Yeah, that too. And I heard about Carnivore in the '90s -- though most people vastly overstated what it was capable of (people tended to ascribe Echelon's capabilities to Carnivore).