
The NSA is Commandeering the Internet - dllthomas
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/08/the_nsa_is_comm.html
======
api
You know, I thought of another fallacy behind all this stuff.

We're told this is to prevent the next 9/11, but there's a problem with that.
It's very unlikely -- for basic political reasons -- that this will be used to
investigate the rich and powerful.

Huh? I thought people in caves in Afghanistan attacked us cause they hated our
freedom?

The cave dweller thing is probably the biggest lie about 9/11\. Bin Laden was
rich, from an even richer family, was financed by some of the richest people
on Earth, and had state support.

The next Osama bin Laden probably owns stock in the companies that are acting
as contractors for the NSA right now. Or if he doesn't, his supporters and
financiers probably do.

Case in point:

So now the DEA is using it to bust drug dealers. Why isn't the SEC using it to
bust criminals on Wall St.? Think about it. Who's richer? Who's more
_connected_? Who's gonna lawyer up and bust your chops hard if you come after
them? Who's got friends and family members who might actually sit on
committees in Washington that oversee your project?

Edit:

Given the above, I also consider it a good possibility that systems like this
could be used against us. Recall 9/11 again. They were _our planes_ that were
flown into our buildings, not someone else's. What's the probability that a
well-connected rich state-linked international terrorist will use systems like
this to gather intel against the United States itself in preparation for a
terrorist attack.

Want to smuggle in a nuke? Wouldn't it be helpful to pull _all_ the personal
information and movement schedules for all the people who work security at the
Port of Long Beach...? to give just one example. That could be made to look
like a routine investigation quite easily, and if Snowden can exfiltrate so
much data so can someone else-- especially someone with a higher level of
expertise and sponsorship.

How many NSA analysts have access to these systems? How much does that job
pay?

And do any of _them_ have dangerous personality traits or ideological
affiliations? Guerilla domestic terrorism from within is also a possibility.
Remember this?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks)

~~~
ferdo
"I can have no other notion of all the other governments that I see or know,
than that they are a conspiracy of the rich, who, on pretence of managing the
public, only pursue their private ends, and devise all the ways and arts they
can find out; first, that they may, without danger, preserve all that they
have so ill-acquired, and then, that they may engage the poor to toil and
labour for them at as low rates as possible, and oppress them as much as they
please; and if they can but prevail to get these contrivances established by
the show of public authority, which is considered as the representative of the
whole people, then they are accounted laws."

-Sir Thomas More, "Utopia", 1517

~~~
tokenizer
And that my friend is why Anarchy or Libertarian Socialism is the only choice
for proper governance.

~~~
api
As a fellow left-libertarian, thanks for mentioning libertarian socialism.

My thought for a long time has been that the most _practical_ (as in
achievable today in the real world) and best government for actual human
beings who want to be free would be a very minimal non-invasive and efficient
government with a negative income tax and possibly some kind of non-profit
health cost sharing system. Other than the rest of the standard stuff, it
would be minimal and stay out of things.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax)

~~~
dmix
Rather than gambling on one political idea, why not open certain smaller
states to experimentation of new political structures, and stop trying to make
one massive old machine work better (ala startups vs mega-corporations).

There is zero competition of ideas in political science. Mostly variations of
the same thing happening in every country (big powerful state, mixed
social/capitalist economies).

~~~
throwit1979
_Rather than gambling on one political idea, why not open certain smaller
states to experimentation of new political structures, and stop trying to make
one massive old machine work better_

This was tried. It was called The United States of America. The 9th and 10th
amendments to the constitution delegated an enormous amount of powers to the
states to try their own experiments, with the federal government standing by
to adjudicate interstate disputes and maintain standards of currency and
commerce.

Then Lincoln came along.

~~~
IanDrake
>Then Lincoln came along.

If only our public schools taught kids the real meaning of the war of northern
aggression.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
Can you elaborate? I'd be glad to hear your thoughts on this. (I am a
foreigner and certain things can escape the little I know about US).

~~~
IanDrake
I'll attempt to be brief:

1: The civil war was not, by definition, a civil war. The south never fought
for control of the north. The definition of a civil war is both side fighting
for control of the whole.

2: The states joined the union of their own volition, they weren't conquered.
The "Civil War" changed the notion of free states. Now the states are
subservient by force to the federal government.

3: Lincoln didn't free the slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation decreed that
slaves in rebel states were free. Slave states loyal to the north got to keep
their slaves. So, Lincoln freed slaves in lands he had no control over.

4: Lincoln oversaw the first national conscription law in which the government
is allowed enslave citizens to war. You can't be a free country AND force
people to their death.

Lincoln is popularly considered the angel of liberty to an enslaved people,
but in reality he did more to enslave all of us to an all powerful federal
government.

~~~
dmix
I'm curious to learn more about this era of history.

Are there any good books/films about the civil war that are recommended?

~~~
IanDrake
Most books and films about Lincoln are meant to celebrate the popular
understanding of presidency. His humble beginnings, awkward appearance, rise
to power, difficult choices, freer of slaves, and untimely death.

Some books have a different angle. Many books written generally about the
history of liberty in the US will specifically cite the "Civil War" and it's
negative consequences.

There's also a book called "The Real Lincoln". I haven't read it, but it might
be one of the few books that casts a critical eye on the precedents Lincoln
set.

Sorry, there's nothing specific that I've read, just a bunch of sources
combined.

------
pvnick
>Commandeering is a practice we're used to in wartime, where commercial ships
are taken for military use, or production lines are converted to military
production. But now it's happening in peacetime.

No it's not. We are technically in "wartime." Congress passed a law in late
September 2001 that declared war with "those nations, organizations, or
persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided
the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such
organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international
terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons"
[1]. The mass-surveillance of the internet is being touted as one of the
weapons in the fight against those entities [2]. As long as the AUMF is still
law, the fight against terrorists, and all actions taken to prevent "any
future acts of international terrorism against the United States," are
governed by the rules of war.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Milita...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Military_Force_Against_Terrorists#Section_2_-_Authorization_For_Use_of_United_States_Armed_Forces)

[2] [http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/07/31/nsa-director-keith-
ale...](http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/07/31/nsa-director-keith-alexander-
insists-mass-surveillance-programs-respect-privacy/)

~~~
gcr
2011? I'm curious; why was this done ten years after the original event?

And why is the declaration so vague?

~~~
alan_cx
I would cynically guess that it is because the original event is irrelevant,
and now used as an emotional patriotic excuse.

------
nohuck13
"It's time we called the government's actions what they really are:
commandeering. Commandeering is a practice we're used to in wartime, where
commercial ships are taken for military use, or production lines are converted
to military production. But now it's happening in peacetime. Vast swaths of
the Internet are being commandeered to support this surveillance state."

This is an exceedingly well-framed point. Just because it's information and
not "stuff" doesn't make it not commandeering. If you're a communications
company, reputational damage and other indirect costs have real value, i.e.
indirectly intercheangable with money, beyond just the costs of directly
complying. It's commandeering.

------
joshuahedlund
Schneier had this posted on The Atlantic two days ago, previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6199706](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6199706)

~~~
wslh
Yes.... but it didn't catch my attention because the domain was atlantic.com
but now... is schneier.com so the context changed, at least for me.

 _I have one message to the executives of those companies: fight._

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Honestly curious: why do some commentators seem to hold The Atlantic in
disdain?

~~~
DanBC
Well, they were caught in a vote ring.

EDIT: All the Reddit ban is easy to find. here's some discussion on HN:

([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108929](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108929))
mattobrien submits the same article twice, deliberately evading the
dupefilter. The article was written by someone called Matthew O'Brien. Most of
his submissions are to the Atlantic.

~~~
leephillips
That, and the Scientology advertisement scandal:

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-
wemple/wp/2013/01/1...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-
wemple/wp/2013/01/15/the-atlantics-scientology-problem-start-to-finish/)

------
uptown
In light of some of the revelations about companies being coerced into
providing access to user data, it's made me wonder about other potential
targets. Has anyone inquired whether GoToMeeting, TeamViewer, Carbonite,
CrashPlan, Mozy, etc. have anything to say about government access to their
systems? All of these companies protect vast amounts of what's thought to be
private data, and seem like they'd be prime targets for the "collect it all"
philosophy.

~~~
api
Smaller companies are mostly hosted on the "cloud." Hell even bigger ones like
Netflix are.

They don't need to cooperate. All their data is already there at the data
center. Only the cloud provider needs to cooperate. So the question really to
ask is: is Amazon, Linode, Digital Ocean, RackSpace, etc. cooperating?

~~~
wslh
I was thinking to migrate my email to Rackspace but now I am looking to
another provider with similar quality outside US.

~~~
api
If it's owned by a U.S. company or if the country in question has intel-
sharing agreements with the U.S., that won't help you. Also if the data is
coming in or going out to a foreign server, it falls under the "foreign
intelligence" umbrella so it better be encrypted.

~~~
wslh
Yes, that's why it's difficult to find one! If you have any recommendation...

I use encryption for sensitive information but I want to also minimize the
probability of interception and storage of my messages for unencrypted ones.

------
6cxs2hd6
Bill Gates, having done well, reached a point in life where he wanted to do
good. His philanthropy has been exceptional, and he's motivated others to do
likewise.

Today's crop of well-off tech execs now have a unique opportunity to do good
-- take Schneier's challenge.

Although few could match Gates on financial scale, they have an opportunity to
equal or exceed him on social impact.

I hope for the sake of the rest of us they do.

~~~
jes
Bill Gates did good long before he retired. He, with others, built a company
that made low cost computing available to millions of people. People who
willingly paid the prices Microsoft asked for their goods because those
individuals decided that it was in their self-interest to do so.

~~~
ledge
_People who willingly paid the prices Microsoft asked for their goods because
those individuals decided that it was in their self-interest to do so._

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_of_Microsoft_Windows](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_of_Microsoft_Windows)

"The Findings of Fact in the United States Microsoft antitrust case of 1998
established that "One of the ways Microsoft combats piracy is by advising OEMs
that they will be charged a higher price for Windows unless they drastically
limit the number of PCs that they sell without an operating system pre-
installed. In 1998, all major OEMs agreed to this restriction."[5]"

------
pivnicek
This deserves discussion. The parallels are striking and all but undeniable.

<edited for clarity>

I suppose the question business owners have to ask themselves is, do they feel
that their country is at war in dire enough straights that they feel the need
to surrender control of their businesses for the war effort?

~~~
api
When the state comes and asks you to help fight its war, this is not a
_request_. It's an order. If you do not cooperate, there's quite a bit that
can be done to you. A lot of it is in the category of "soft power" \-- your
stock price falls, your shareholders vote you off, your offshore accounts will
be investigated, you might get anti-trust scrutiny...

Google wins massive points to me for asking questions at all. Granted it was a
timid little hand raised in the classroom of a psychotic nun with a ruler in
her hand, but it's something.

------
lifeisstillgood
>> Do you have employees with security clearances who can't tell you what
they're doing? Cut off all automatic lines of communication with them, and
make sure that only specific, required, authorized acts are being taken on
behalf of government.

Is this Bruce saying "if one of your employees cannot tell you why he did X,
then you should effectively seal them off from the company?"

------
pasbesoin
If you care about this, you will focus on the physical layer. Once that is
owned, you are a tenant.

You may also focus on the meaning and privileges -- and responsibilities -- of
our current "ownership". However, that is invariable a social endeavour;
worthwhile, but also subject to the desires -- and inattention -- of others.
It presents sometimes great convenience, but no guarantees.

------
wslh
Probably the next freedom revolutionary will be an user in HN?

------
blisterpeanuts
Why did Google stand up boldly to China but meekly capitulate here in the
U.S.? I thought Sergei Brin took this stuff to heart.

------
panacea
That 'trusted' privacy policy link in the footer of nearly all commercial
websites? That's backed up by legislation that makes it about 'privacy'
protection, yeah?

