

Ask HN: Spying in a time of spies - dmschulman

As we all have seen in the last few months, the NSA leverages a great deal of technology and sneaky tricks for the purposes of gathering intelligence in the name of defending the United States of America.<p>There are moral and ethical arguments to be discussed with every facet of these discoveries, from the mass collection of metadata to spying on this country&#x27;s closest allies to intercepting and modifying hardware for the purposes of espionage, but going beyond the tactics that implicate the average American citizen, I wonder about the competitive advantage we&#x27;re putting in to jeopardy regarding the NSA&#x27;s ability to carry out their mission.<p>Yes we&#x27;ve observed shocking and negligent behavior in many of these leaks, but I&#x27;m not interested in rehashing those emotional arguments. I&#x27;m interested in relating what the NSA has been doing (what they probably will have to stop doing, at least publicly) to the spying and espionage apparatuses of countries like China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, Iran and others and how those operations will continue undeterred while the NSA stays mired in controversy.<p>In terms of business, doesn&#x27;t this put the NSA, and their parent company The United States of America, at a competitive disadvantage in a world where all major industrialized nations use dirty tricks to get an edge on the competition or to harvest something valuable? I completely acknowledge the outrage over domestic and international programs, but don&#x27;t think for a minute the NSA is a unique case of abuse of power.<p>Do you predict the intelligence gathering capabilities of the NSA will now fall behind America&#x27;s international competition or will these leaks and the president&#x27;s announcement tomorrow do little to seriously deter the organization&#x27;s mission?
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w_t_payne
The events of the past year have resulted in political pressure to curtail the
activities of GCHQ and the NSA.

I expect that this political pressure will be transient, and any legislative
measures that are enacted will be either temporary or ineffective. The scope
of their activities will probably expand rather than contract over the coming
decade, even if this growth is driven by a further expansion in the reach of
consumer technologies rather than legislative or procedural changes in the
agencies themselves.

On the other hand, the media focus on the NSA and GCHQ has undermined the
ability of the State department and the FCO to promote freedom and privacy
around the world.

The impact of this can already be seen, as other nations (India, Russia,
Nigeria) start to increase the aggressiveness with which they collect and
monitor our personal data. This is a bad thing, and a genuine cause for
sadness and concern - although it represents a mere acceleration in a race
that was already heading towards tyranny, rather than a change in direction
per se. The intelligence bonanza offered by the remarkable penetration of
mobile and internet technologies into private life was always going to be a
prize too juicy to resist; for state intelligence agencies and criminals
alike.

In this sense, I expect to see the five-eyes alliance become less exceptional
in it's exploitation of signals and electronically gathered intelligence more
quickly than might otherwise have been the case, as other states as well as
criminal organisations begin to realize the scope of the opportunities at
hand. Again, this is the acceleration of an already existing trend, not a
change in quality or direction.

If this were a matter of traditional "kinetic" military force, then this
change in the nominal "balance-of-power" between states might be a particular
cause for concern, but the analysis is inappropriate. The primary and most
vulnerable target of mass surveillance is the private individual, not the
nation-state. The balance of power we need to be concerned about is not
between one state and another, but between states-in-general and individuals-
in-general, a balance that was always one-sided and is growing more so at a
rapidly increasing rate.

In addition to looking at this problem through the lens of military might, we
might also worry about economic and industrial espionage. Again, the
distinction between nation-states is a moot point, because any advantage
provided by state-sponsored espionage is only ever offered to the largest
"national champion" businesses, an activity that disadvantages the majority of
individuals and smaller businesses, regardless of their country of origin. In
this instance, the conflict is not between different nation states, but
between a privileged state-industry compact and everybody else. What is good
for Goldman Sachs is not necessarily good for Main Street. Dirty tricks are
harmful to the free market, harmful to consumer choice, and bad news no matter
which nation state is sponsoring the dirt.

It does not really matter if we blame Snowden for his revelations, or the
overreach of the security services themselves, the events of the past year
have accelerated some harmful trends that pose a grave threat to us all.

The only positive note to come out of this whole sorry situation is this: Over
the coming two to three years, I expect to see an acceleration in the
development of privacy-oriented technologies and in the adoption of practices
which may eventually (somewhat) blunt the capabilities of GCHQ, the NSA, and
other agencies, organisations and groups around the world with an interest in
infiltration, surveillance, subversion, manipulation and tyranny.

It is clear that we cannot rely on our government(s) and institutions to
protect us. The individuals making the decisions seem to be too far to the
right of the APSD spectrum to fully understand the consequences of their
actions.

We must, by necessity, defend ourselves.

~~~
dmschulman
Very well said.

I believe the bottom line for any nation regardless of their intelligence
apparatus is to act on their own self interest in preserving the state. Every
nation with a vested interest is involved in spying internationally, and
although all these nations also have vast domestic intelligence operations, I
believe that some nations are more actively focused on gathering information
on their own citizens for specific purposes than others.

I can only speak from my opinions and what I've read, but it is my belief that
the NSA is more of the former, interested more in international affairs while
still maintaining a catch-all domestic program with the intention of gathering
as many intelligence signals as possible, though not actively pursuing 98% of
what's been gathered. Granted, if they wanted to take action against an
individual they damn well have the capacity, but I don't think this is their
primary objective. I do believe genuinely that "preventing terrorism" is one
of their aims (or at least giving the state the resources to do so), but
obviously the tools that are being used to fulfill these goal are taken to
their logical extent and ping everyone instead of "the bad guys".

When I look at other nations and see very obvious programs of state-sponsored
espionage (China's Unit 61398, for example) I wonder how far the United States
would eventually fall behind in the game if they don't keep pace with other
nations. The NSA's operations have less to do with corporate espionage (as far
as anyone can tell) or political dissent (somewhat), but cyber warfare is a
very real threat and having the capacity to monitor that threat and actively
work against it is a power I hope the agency doesn't lose.

I hear and accept the argument of intelligence powers being used to ultimately
instill tyranny, and I grapple with reasoning defense of the state's interests
vs. living under tyranny (not to mention protecting my own self interests),
but I don't know if we are realistically at that point yet and I still would
argue that there is an importance to letting the state manage its own affairs.
That is a flawed argument obviously but that is one of the reason I wanted to
hash out the topics in my initial question.

I agree that the next few years will present a privacy arms race in the
private sector and I hope those technologies would be able to combat the over-
reach of any agency with intelligence gathering capabilities but I hesitate to
believe it will hamper these agencies abilities to monitor and track
individuals. I hope I'm wrong, but the cat and mouse game of technological
advancement will continue unabated, and as long as the USA continues to spend
more than half a trillion dollars annually on defense the resources will
always be available to break or hinder those advancements. We can only hope
the individuals at the helm of these new technologies can stand against
encroaching influence and money.

~~~
w_t_payne
Don't confuse the nation with the state - the two are very different things.

The nation is a body of people bound together by tribalistic xenophobia. The
state: a heap of parasitic machinery hitching a ride.

Nations seldom possess anything more consistent than a sort of diffuse
Zeitgeist, and maybe (sometimes) something approaching a sense of shared
interest.

States are bureaucratic machines, dedicated to self-preservation, operating
under the pretence of service to the nation; in actuality extracting as great
a toll in human blood, misery and suffering as the nation can bear without
collapsing.

Both entities are evil, brutish and disorganised, but of the two only the
state is capable of operating with a (distant) semblance of directed,
intentional action, so if you _must_ anthropomorphise, do it to the _state_ ,
not to the _nation_.

------
mindslight
You're a couple indirections from the reality. It seems that you've fallen for
the democracy delusion, assuming that your individual opinion should be
congruent to governmental framework while hoping for vice-versa.

1\. The scope of the NSA is what it is because yes, every government spies to
the extent they can fund and get away with it diplomatically.

2\. The reason you're seeing this turn into such a publicized political issue
is that the reality of the digital panopticon is a mortal threat to the
business model of Google, Facebook, et al (aka the datamining _companies_ ).
This business model would have never become popular if people exercised a
modicum of forethought about which technologies to adopt, but knowledgeable
techies ignored their reservations when they saw a chance for social
acceptance by making software easy for "normal people". So the datamining
companies really wish to promote the idea that the NSA has transgressed rather
than let people realize their business foundations are fundamentally anti-
user.

3\. Governmentally, nothing is going to actually change. Perhaps we'll get
some resignations, specific named-program decommissioning, more laws to be
skirted by individual analysts, and other such feel-good surface changes. But
the critters deciding anything know that this is just the ugly business of how
spying has worked and will continue to work, and that the NSA was just
unluckily exposed.

4\. The only avenue of meaningful change is for people to take their
electronic destiny into their own hands. If you aren't in control of the
software running on your "computer", then it is no longer yours (I've
elaborated here -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6607303](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6607303)).
Yes, many CPUs probably have bugs that lead to root exploits and crypto
sidechannels. But how can there be any demand and focus for solutions to this
when the tech zeitgeist is to freely give up control of your computational
device by regressing it into a dumb terminal?

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onion2k
" _I 'm not interested in rehashing those emotional arguments_"

A nice attempt to inoculate your argument against reasons you don't like, but
not relevant - the argument against what the NSA has done _is_ emotional,
specifically ethical, and you can't just dismiss that offhand by saying you're
not interested.

Quite possibly limitations on further actions from the NSA, and GCHQ in my
country, will put our respective nations at a disadvantage economically,
strategically, and industrially, but that disadvantage is considerably less
important than the freedom of citizens to live without oppression.

To wander freely down the argument ad absurdum road: should a government
decide to enslave its entire population in forced labour camps so they could
proudly say they're a global economic superpower, that would be _wrong_ , even
if other nations did it as well.

~~~
dmschulman
I think we'd all agree that the information we've learned since June is
"upsetting". I make that distinction in my thread because I want to have a
rational conversation about the NSA as a tool of the state and not devolve
into the simplistic responses: "NSA bad!"

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gmuslera
Should we forgive the local thief because there are (maybe bigger, who knows)
other thieves elsewhere?

Don't forget the leverage that the NSA have, forcing (in the case they aren't
willing to) main operating systems manufacturers, core internet infrastructure
and services, and even hardware makers (as several countries and major
companies from elsewhere are in line with this) to give the information they
want, or insert backdoors in their own products.

Whatever does china, russia, india, iran and so on is child's play compared
with what US does, is just several orders below. And the damage of that on
internet is also orders higher. There is no great difference between a russian
hacker wanting to hack my servers and the russian country, but for US every
chip, every router, every service I need to use can already have a backdoor
for them, and usable not just by them.

------
anigbrowl
_parent company_

ಠ_ರೃ

Business or no, I don't consider this a particular disadvantage for the US.
Think of it as track II diplomacy; what looks like leaks to the general public
are equally an advertisement for our capabilities and a warning to our enemies
about the reach of our intelligence apparatus.

