
NSA chief: ‘We’re the only ones not spying on the American people’ - tigger
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/06/06/nsa-chief-two-weeks-ago-were-the-only-ones-not-spying-on-the-american-people/
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johngalt
There's a discussion to be had here. If you're a foreign intelligence agency
looking to commit espionage, how hard would it be to get someone inside a
Verizon or AT&T? Imagine what type of pervasive data a potential adversary
could gather via these means?

Something any major business with foreign competitors should consider before
using cloud services or trusting telecom vendors.

~~~
tigger
I would be very surprised if at least one foreign agency at least has not
already hacked into both Verizon and AT&T ... one could argue that the US govt
has at least been trying to do it (semi) legitimately just to keep up.

~~~
suredo
maybe they should attack the perpetrators instead??

~~~
tigger
Maybe indeed, but what was easier?

~~~
suredo
they could label them as terrorists and it becomes alot easier...

~~~
tigger
They're doing that now... bit too late.. But who's going to believe they
needed a nuke to blast a few flies?

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andrewfong
One way of interpreting his comments: We suck up all the data and then apply
filters to remove domestic information. Although the NSA has access to
information on the American people, it does not specifically target Americans
and discards purely domestic information. As such, it is not "spying on the
American people" so much as inflicting collateral damage on the privacy of the
American people.

To a certain extent, this is understandable. The NSA may not trust Verizon's
judgment on who a foreign national is. And the nature of a more specific
request may reveal classified information -- e.g. if the NSA asked for "all
calls to Libya" just prior to the bombing campaign, that may have revealed
something was up.

That's not to say any of this is justified, or that the attempts to filter out
domestic information are effective. Apparently, you have to be 49% foreign or
less to be filtered out, whatever that means
([http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/06/bombsh...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/06/bombshell-
report-nsa-and-fbi-tapping-directly-into-tech-companies-servers/276633/)).

But it's the explanation I would give if I were him.

~~~
weland
I know this is reductio at hitlerum, but about 70 years ago, you had to be 49%
foreign or less _not_ to be filtered out...

~~~
eru
The standards were actually stricter.

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rhizome
There's two things here: a lie by omission if they are _receiving the data_
via other agencies; and he's also saying that every other agency is spying on
the American people. Someone might want to look into that last part, because
I'm fine for taking the flashlight off of the NSA if every other agency is
participating in this activity.

Sen. Feinstein, are you there?

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joshuaheard
The "everybody does it" defense? OMG.

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suredo
Keith Alexander, NSA Chief, once blamed his late arrival at a Washington event
to a DDoS (distributed denial of service) hacking attack on city street
lights.... Wow.

~~~
bluetooth
Got a source? That sounds so incredible I almost want it to be true.

~~~
nano111
[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/26/cybersecurity-
nsa-...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/26/cybersecurity-nsa-
alexander-idUSL2N0E506P20130526)

------
drivebyacct2
Hmmm. What's a juicier target than Apple, Google, Micrsoft? And _they've_ all
been compromised by Chinese hackers before.

I wonder how well they background check all the people working on their new
data facility in Utah.

------
kjackson2012
WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

~~~
mkr-hn
Ham-handed references are the text equivalent to meme images.

~~~
PavlovsCat
It's the wrong "meme", too, at least I don't see the doublespeak. I'm calling
Big Lie instead.

~~~
retrogradeorbit
Of course its doublespeak. Knowingly stating the exact opposite of what is
true as fact. The only way it would be more obviously doublespeak is to say
"Spying is privacy".

~~~
PavlovsCat
> _doublespeak. Knowingly stating the exact opposite of what is true as fact_

I don't think so. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak>

> _The only way it would be more obviously doublespeak is to say "Spying is
> privacy"._

That's where it would _begin_ to be doublespeak, at least as far as I
understand it.

Regardless of wether it's doublespeak, it surely is a Big Lie: Nobody spies
more on American citizens than American intelligence agencies. Let's just
assume that as fact. Now,

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie> : _"a lie so "colossal" that no one
would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so
infamously."_

To say "We’re the only ones not spying on the American people" when nobody
else does it more, that's oh so very clearly a Big Lie to me.

~~~
retrogradeorbit
When Winston Smith finds Goldstein's book, in that is written the principles
of doublethink (The term doublespeak is not actually used in the book). The
famous lines "Ignorance is Strength" etc. But the Ministry of Truth does not
broadcast these to the people. The Ministry of Peace does not broadcast "War
is peace". It broadcasts "We have always been at war with Eastasia." A big
lie.

My point is it doesn't have to be the principles of doublespeak as outlined in
Goldstein's book to be doublespeak. The Ministries application of the
principles of doublespeak appear to the populace as a big lie.

"But it means also the ability to BELIEVE that black is white, and more, to
KNOW that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the
contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by
the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known
in Newspeak as DOUBLETHINK." -- George Orwell

