
Ask HN: Does the NSA profile HN readers? - irixusr
This forum gathers probably more technologically savvy and powerful people than any other public forum. And we&#x27;re mostly social libertarian, worried about eroding digital rights.<p>Isn&#x27;t it probable that this forum is a prime target for Big Brother to create detailed profiles of us based on our posts?
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nostrademons
Probably. It's basically a certain bet that anything you post here, the NSA
can read, given that anything you post here, _the entire Internet can read_.

But I think most people overestimate how interesting they are. Hacker News is
one forum on the Internet among literally millions. There are millions of
other people who are _also_ social libertarians, and millions of people
worried about eroding digital rights. These characteristics do not make you
interesting. Hell, digital rights in general are not that interesting to
people in Washington - for the most part, our legislators vote the way that
whichever lobbyist who last had their ear wants them to, and the American
public just gets caught in the crossfire.

The folks that the NSA cares about are those that advocate violent overthrow
of governments, or who are a credible threat to U.S. interests abroad. Hacker
News readers, by and large, are not a credible threat; we talk, but few of us
will get off our butts and do. And so we're just not important enough for the
NSA to care.

~~~
ejcx
This is exactly right. There are a lot of forums higher on the NSA's list to
target. This forum is (no offense fellow HN'ers) mostly just a bunch of angry
startup people and tech news.

I know for a fact many NSA employees read and enjoy participating on HN.

~~~
remx
> I know for a fact many NSA employees read and enjoy participating on HN

There's a few Palantir[0] employees here too, Palantir being one of the many
tentacles of the NSA. Infact any contractor who does work for the NSA can be
found _lurking moar_ on HackerNews. If you do enough digging around you will
find them. Palantir being the more obvious example.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palantir_Technologies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palantir_Technologies)

~~~
ejcx
Palantir is not a tentacle of the NSA. Not even close.

~~~
remx
Well according to this Wikipedia piece[0] about the NSA and Palantir:

    
    
        A document leaked to TechCrunch revealed that
        Palantir's clients as of 2013 included at least
        twelve groups within the U.S. government,
        including the CIA, DHS, NSA, FBI, CDC
    

From: [http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/11/leaked-palantir-doc-
reveals...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/11/leaked-palantir-doc-reveals-uses-
specific-functions-and-key-clients/)

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palantir_Technologies#cite_not...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palantir_Technologies#cite_note-
tebtecnchrun-27)

~~~
eb0la
Please be reasonable. Having NSA and several US agencies as customers doesn't
mean you are a tentacle of the NSA.

Even in the case of companies owned in part by In-Q-Tel I guess the point is
to make their technology available to the US goverment. Maybe 20 years ago the
goverment would fund that with DARPA or something similar, but now there is an
open technology market and I guess they should be investing to get their
opinion heard on the direction they need the technologies to evolve.

~~~
stagbeetle
> _Please be reasonable. Having NSA and several US agencies as customers doesn
> 't mean you are a tentacle of the NSA._

You _could_ argue that any company that actively works with the NSA to
increase their coverage is a tentacle.

~~~
dsacco
That's such a broad definition of "tentacle" it's meaningless. We all know
what "tentacle" means in this context, and it's not satisfied just by being a
government contractor or provider.

------
espeed
Just like recruiters track interesting people, so does the NSA. If you are
doing advanced R&D and discuss it on a public forum, the NSA and Big Corps
will notice, and if the technology is of interest to them, they will probably
contact you to discuss. Have you ever received a random call from a company or
some unknown party that wants to learn more about one of the projects you are
working on?

NB: I know of at least one instance where a Big Social Network company
contacted someone less than 24 hours after the person wrote a long technical
_private message_ to a collaborator. This doesn't mean the Big Social Network
was directly reading their private messages -- the BSN may have just been
mining messages for keywords -- but the net effect is the same, they notice
and will contact you if what you are working on piques their interest. Not all
Big Corps mine private messages in this manner -- Google does not do this
AFAIK, beyond the algo that displays Gmail ads.

~~~
Declanomous
Today I learned a new reason to be disappointed in my projects.

Maybe the people who randomly message me about my projects months after I've
posted them are secretly NSA.

------
brudgers
[Is NSA targeting HN readers?]

I'd suspect that the NSA would drink from bigger hoses to develop more
comprehensive models. Those hoses would probably capture HN readership
alongside everything else and like everything the firehose data would be mined
and if HN correlated to something then the firehose data might be filtered.

As for detailed profiles, HN might be a data point but Facebook, Google+,
Linkedin, etc. probably provide a more comprehensive picture (including
pictures). In terms of browsing behavior, the NSA operates at the tapping the
internet backbone scale.

[Related]

I suspect that a fair number of governmental and non-governmental agencies are
interested in HN in terms of sentiment analysis and sentiment construction.
Ignoring it would be unprofessional. Even amateurs will create sock puppet
accounts to promote their business, personal, and political agendas. Small
businesses from around the world will post material in their own interests.
Mega-companies will post their blog updates here.

------
nickpsecurity
Not here. Almost definitely Schneier's blog since he had the Snowden files and
visited Congress reps. The blog was overrun by trolls afterward that create
side discussions distracting from privacy-enhancing tech regulars discussed
there. Piles of noise to drown out the signal.

------
crb002
NSA's recruiting is woefully inept. They want 20 somethings with no
experience, then wonder why they can't get people with SMT solver skills etc.
The future of security is provably correct software, not reactionary network
analysis.

------
decasteve
I worry more about being profiled for my donations to FSF, EFF, and the Tor
Project.

