HN user
"It means stuff that teaches you about the world."
I guess you do not find the story is teaching you anything about the world?
"But if this... was a sign of some bigger, underlying trend, then perhaps it could be."
Maybe it is, but you just are not seeing it?
The tone of this article suggests Snowden is nothing more than a pawn in someone else's game.
Why should anyone care so much about him? We've heard repeatedly that what he has disclosed - a massive amount of spying on Americans and other nationals - was already known by everyone.
Who was that person who said: If you are worried about someone discovering your "secret" activities, then maybe you be doing those activities in the first place.
Maybe the sooner politicians accept that "frictionless sharing" is the future, the better off we'll all be? What do you think?
Other commenters have pointed out that most users outside HN do not care about data privacy. So why should politicians care? Are they a special case? I thought they represent the views of their constituents.
May I ask what convinced you they were a center of excellence in the 90's? I ask this sincerely, not in rebuttal.
What do you make of the comments of Binney that NSA was caught sleeping (for lack of a better phrase) by 9/11? Why the need to "transform" the agency? He said he headed a group that was responsible for instituting change in the organization. I believe they even had "change" in the name given to the group. It sure seems like they want(ed) to morph into something they were not previously.
I think this is the saddest aspect of these spying programs and the ensuing paranoia... it actually might discourage people from using encryption or anonymizing proxies... for fear it will get them on a watch list.
If you start using PGP for all your email, then you by inference "have something to hide". Brilliant logic.
What a mess.
The thought that your tax dollars are going to pay for some bloated overpriced inefficient software solution is unpleasant. For example, according to Binney and co. ThinThread was small, fast, efficient and cost-effective, but some outside contractors with connections inside the agency had other ideas. Where the NSA decision-makers are personally invested in these contractors, similar to how Carlyle Group with its politician clients owns most of Booz Allen, it's tempting to speculate on the motivations of the agency to go for the less efficient, less robust, more expensive solutions (more maintenance and support contracts... cha ching). But, who knows... it's all top secret.
It's like when people pointed out the financial ties between certain politicians and companies that produced expensive airport body scanners, which the government promptly purchased after the t`ism scare tactics had cast a spell over people making them accept that anything and everything was "necessary".
Have you stopped to think about the fact of enforcing the CFAA so harshly against private citizens (e.g. downloading too many JSTOR articles), while their government boasts about hacking into the critical network infrastructure of other countries? Something doesn't seem right. Wild west, but global, I guess.
No, but they need to ask HW mfrs like Cisco to put backdoors in for NSA's use... at least, that's what some Chinese newspaper was suggesting recently. Based on the talks I've been watching by the group of NSA whistleblowers who worked on what became PRISM, I'm not sure NSA was a "center of excellence" regarding computer networks back in the 90's, when the general public started connecting to the internet. There was (and maybe still is) a huge effort to "transform" the agency. Away from what? Just my opinion, but it seems they are spending a lot of money and effort to become a center of excellence. It's like an updated version of that old Uncle Sam poster: "We want you," addressed at BlackHat attendees.
Apple, Google and Facebook can store communications for evermore. And NSA can easily get a copy anytime, via a rubber stamp by a judge in the secret court.
Now, in light of this, are we all (the good guys) permitted to use strong encryption to protect our data in storage by these third parties... since we can't trust them to do so?
Unless we have a HIPAA-like law to cover all data, not just our medical records, then may we resort to self-help?