

NSA reportedly intercepting laptops purchased online to install spy malware - southflorida
http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/29/5253226/nsa-cia-fbi-laptop-usb-plant-spy
NSA reportedly intercepting laptops purchased online to install spy malware
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DonGateley
If there was the shared use of all this intelligence that everyone believes
there is then the War On some Drugs would be over and done with overnight. But
then maybe that's still in the staging phase.

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venomsnake
I don't like these types of disclosures. I don't think that they further the
debate. It is perfectly ok for a security agency to have this kinds of
targeted capabilities.

It would have been better if they also reported a case of abuses of these
capabilities.

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rosser
So you'd be ok, hypothetically, with having _your_ laptop "interdicted" en
route to you, and keyloggers or whatever installed on it?

Or is it just ok when it happens to the "bad guys"?

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venomsnake
I don't use laptops. Always have self assembled my rigs. I think there are
subtle differences between "NSA has the ability to rig someone's laptop when
he is a legitimate target with proven national interest" and "NSA is
intercepting and rigging laptops en masse" or "NSA laptop intercepting program
is yielding a lot of false positives".

The problem is that NSA is abusing its powers, taken its mission too far etc
...

But yeah - I am totally ok with NSA intercepting specific shipment after
having credible HUMINT about some highly probable treat to national security.
I am not ok with NSA subverting the whole infrastructure of the world just so
they can snoop on their loved ones.

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malandrew
The problem with "national security" is that it is too easy to use that term
for the sake of industrial espionage as well.

The Petrobras hacking is one prime example. Is oil a national security
interest? Yes. The opinions of many people in the US government justify these
actions on national security grounds. Is hacking every single oil company in
the world justifiable because its done in the name of national security?

They like to claim acts like those don't constitute industrial espionage, but
that couldn't be farther from reality. Just because there are tenuous national
securities justifications doesn't mean those acts cease to be economic
espionage as well.

Is hacking the Saab Group and Dassault fair game because those companies
produce fighter jets? What about hacking Airbus and Embraer? Rolls Royce? We
like to think that there is a line where it's still a legitimate national
security issue and where it starts to become plain vanilla industrial
espionage, but that's just a fantasy. It's often both.

Hostile sovereign states are not made overnight. Countries like Germany,
France and Brazil are not inclined to be hostile to the US. For the last 40
years or so, pretty much every enemy this country has had has been the fault
of our failed foreign policy.

We should only start hacking sovereign states once this start on the part to
hostility towards us. While they are still allies, we should trust them and
use diplomacy.

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southflorida
seems a little far fetched... but i'll stick to building my own machine from
now on thanks :/

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venomsnake
Just use hard drive that is not manufactured by Maxtor, Seagate, Toshiba or
Western Digital. Oh wait ...

