
Wikimedia Foundation v. NSA - madmax108
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/06/23/wikimedia-v-nsa-present-future/
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asher
Seems like it's trendy to hate the NSA. It gets conflated with an anti-
authoritarian mindset. I wish smart people would gain some perspective - I got
some by reading Bamford's books and a new one by Fred Kaplan - Dark
Territories, about NSAs painful move to cyber. Some key points:

* All the great powers have NSA equivalents. Meaning they play offence and defense in crypto, RF, and cyber. We (USA) can impose restrictions on our NSA but not on anyone else's. Our exploit-riddled networks are a playground for American, Russian and Chinese cyber warriors - and probably many others.

* In cyber, offense and defense become the same. Kaplan's book covers this. So a smart country seeks cyber-superiority. The more we hamper NSA, the more we empower foreign cyber-warriors.

* The focus has moved from RF to cyber. Giant antennas are far less important and giant datacenters are the new stars. Vacuuming up packets is less alarming when you understand we've been vacuuming up radio and telephone signals for decades. When comsats were important, NSA was vacuuming up their downlinks. When international telegrams were punched on paper tape, NSA's predecessors picked up the tape each day.

* The US has tried going "NSA-less". It happened in 1929 under the slogan "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail". That noble slogan led to the US operating at a disadvantage in the lead up to WWII. It doesn't pay to fly blind.

* Fear of an overreaching state is always justified; however we should focus that fear more on how NSA shares data than how it acquires it. For instance fusion centers: [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/04/why-fusion-centers-mat...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/04/why-fusion-centers-matter-faq)

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sametmax
It's like saying peace is trendy and we should not try to go weaponless.

That makes no sense.

We all want peace. We all know that peace is not there yet and that without
weapons the other countries would take advantage of it.

Yet we all know that the weapon oriented society the US has become is a major
issue.

It's not contradictory, just being honest with yourself.

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dom0
> We all want peace.

I don't think that's true, there are clearly many people bent on fueling
conflicts and wars, both in- and outside the US.

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sametmax
*In HN.

I don't think many people on this forum are war lords.

Anyway "we all" is always false, and is just another form of "most people".
You must be really lacking of ideas to nitpick on that.

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mowenz
I don't think he is nitpicking at all. The US has too many conflicts, incl
wars. 26,000 bombs dropped last year. Extremist fighters funded by the US
Gov't (Syria, Iran Contra, and who knows what else has yet to be proven). We
have 7 cities with higher murder rates than any country in Africa or the
Middle East, including Afghanistan. Largest prison population, a publicly
known torture camp... I could go on. But I think a lot on HN are obviously
absorbed in their comfortable occupations--they're challenging, interesting
and demanding, and also rewarding. It's easy to get lost in this and forget
what less fortunate are dealing with.

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dmurawsky
Great article, thanks for doing what you do ;)

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unityByFreedom
Given the current climate, with a foreign actor attempting to subvert our
democracy, I'm more inclined to support other more obvious victims of NSA
spying than Wikimedia.

This seems loosely held together - that said I do trust that our justice
system will investigate it properly.

Given the climate, my feeling is anyone attempting to say our justice system
is awful, or that the NSA doesn't provide any security, are witting or
unwitting supporters of a foreign adversary. Unless, of course, Russia
succeeds; then it's all kosher and the history books will be written as such.

If you think our justice system is terrible then please point to a country
that does it better. Note I'm not talking about laws- rather, the judiciary
itself.

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jokoon
I'm curious, can the government use surveillance on paper mail at the large
mail operators?

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boomboomsubban
Yes, a picture is taken of every piece of mail sent, tracking the "metadata."
Additionally, the Church committee found around 10,000 pieces of mail a year
were opened and photographed by the FBI without postal service knowledge.

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saghm
I'm interested; do you have a link to an article or something describing this?
I'm curious about how the FBI could get access to the mail without the post
office knowing.

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boomboomsubban
Some of the details are in the "Family Jewels," finally made public in 2007.
The CIA not the FBI, my mistake there, would either arrange the post to be
moved to a separate room or sneak mail out in briefcases or pockets.

[https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/collection/family-
je...](https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/collection/family-jewels)

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saghm
Wow, I'm also very amazed at the description of the document:

> [T]his document consists of almost 700 pages of responses from CIA employees
> to a 1973 directive from Director of Central Intelligence James Schlesinger
> asking them to report activities they thought might be inconsistent with the
> Agency's charter.

I love the concept of just asking your employees to tell you everything they
did that they're not supposed to, and they just write up a bunch of reports
and send them back.

Also, fun is the warning about the PDF size, which feels a bit quaint:

> this file is 28MB, so please be patient while it downloads

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yuhong
Thinking about it, it was in about 1971 that US left the gold standard, and
that was partly due to government spending. Watergate came not long
afterwards. This design of the economic system where the government prints
money still exists today.

