
It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it? - _pius
http://pandodaily.com/2013/10/31/its-time-for-silicon-valley-to-ask-is-it-worth-it/
======
sharkweek
I have an honest and serious question -- who are the developers and designers
who put these systems into place for the NSA? Are they aware of what they're
doing or is it all classified and contracted out? Are they proud of their
work? Is it just a paycheck? Surely someone with such a high aptitude could
easily get a job elsewhere -- I guess I'm just unable to make the connection
on who willingly builds this kind of stuff.

I'm not trying to be intentionally obtuse, I just legitimately am curious

~~~
mikeyouse
Everyone on HN acts like there's no possible reason for people to support
these types of activities, but there could be very legitimate reasons these
engineers choose to do what they do.

It could just be a challenge for them. Where else can you not only get away
with, but be rewarded with a good salary and a pension for hacking into the
most secure systems on earth? It must be thrilling to be 'Competing' against
the best security engineers, best practices, with a massive budget to support
your activities.

It could be that with their security clearances, they know things about
threats that make their decision to work for the NSA a moral imperative. It's
entirely possible that there are some really horrific classified things that
were stopped via similar spying activities, so intercepting some Gmail
messages seems like a much less evil alternative.

They could just be 'blindly' patriotic, have faith that the faults of the
government are outweighed by the need to keep the US on top of the world.

There are many possible reasons.

~~~
nashequilibrium
1 Reason:
[http://willyloman.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/boston-9.jpg](http://willyloman.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/boston-9.jpg)
(NSFW) Sometimes you need try and understand both points of view.

~~~
Phlarp
This is a terrible reason. These men were the definition of the type of thing
a system like this should catch. intelligence agencies had been warned about
one of them multiple times and they were both using the internet to self
radicalize.

The fact that the Boston bombings still happened should be proof enough that
these systems either A) Do not work or B) are not being used against this type
of threat.

If it isn't in defense of incidents of domestic terror, what the fuck is it
for?

~~~
derefr
_Or..._ the system catches things like this all the time, this is just one
that slipped through, and if the system wasn't in place, there would be many,
many more incidents of this type.

Maybe. (This is normally "bear-repellent amulet" type thinking, but I _think_
there's a specific exemption in this case, in that there are good reasons why
you'd see no evidence of the system's effectiveness: the government doesn't
like to get the public riled up by terrorist threats--terrorism is entirely
about riling-up, after all--and so, when the terrorism is caught ahead of
time, you'd imagine they'd sweep it under the rug. I might be wrong, though;
this still might be a bad justification!)

~~~
jscn
> the government doesn't like to get the public riled up by terrorist threats

I'm quite sure that's exactly what the government likes to do. That's the very
reason that "terrorism" is in the headlines as much as it is: it serves the
government by allowing them to extend their powers and budgets enormously.
Feed scary stories about "terrorism" to an uncritical public and they'll beg
you to take away their "freedom" in exchange for greater "security".

~~~
hox
The government is not the media. Terrorism headlines are sensational and grab
attention, thus advertising dollars. Don't confuse the two.

------
spenvo
The NSA has reveled in the joy of invading our privacy, has undermined our
ability to hold a secret (by intentionally weakening/undermining
cryptography), paid its employees outrageous salaries, and is a caricature of
George Orwell's "Big Brother"[1] - surpassing even the Stasi of Soviet Russia
in its pervasiveness. The Patriot Act (among others) needs to be repealed.
Period.

But that will never happen, because bureaucracy doesn't shrink. Period.

This explains my libertarian-leanings --> laws aren't written by the people,
they are written by those who stand to benefit most directly from their
passing. And the devil of a bill is always in its details, which laymen
(sometimes even the congressman presenting the bill) can't
understand/decipher. Read the Pulitzer-prize winning biography "The
Powerbroker" if you want a lesson in how to abuse the public's ignorance
through the cunning drafting of legislation. There is no CTRL-Z in DC.

There are movements, gaining traction, to introduce state-sponsored
"internets" \- because this is the path we have prescribed to the world. Yet
such a profound outcome was not mindfully chosen by the people, it was
incidental to the law.

We therefore have forfeited the greatest invention of our time through our
collective lack of understanding and/or vulnerable&reactionary mindsets.

I'll be spending the rest of my life ruminating on this simple fact: the
internet is sick, and my government is the disease.

[1] - And now that caricature-metaphor has a literal face, drawn by one of
NSA's own--if you ever wanted to know what Big Brother "looked like."

~~~
volkadav
Minor nitpick: Stasi was East Germany, not the Soviet Union.

------
sandstrom
One thing I find interesting is that it's somehow okay as long as it's
directed at 'the foreigners'. Who are these foreigners?

Is it Sergey Brin or Larry Page, before they moved to the US? Elon Musk? Peter
Thiel?

Many Americans need not look further than their grandparents to see a
'foreigner' (and, excluding a few natives, the entire nation has been built by
foreigners). Would it not makes sense to show the same courtesy for peoples
privacy to people who weren't necessarily born here.

~~~
JimboOmega
It's not _okay_ ; it's still morally questionable at _best_.

But it is infinitely more legal. The government has all sorts of restrictions
on what it can do (e.g., the 4th amendment), that apply to citizens, but not
foreign nationals.

If they are not even bothering to respect the distinction, it's the case that
they violate both the spirit and the letter of the law without a care; it's a
much more dangerous position of disrespect for regulation.

~~~
npsimons
_The government has all sorts of restrictions on what it can do (e.g., the 4th
amendment), that apply to citizens, but not foreign nationals._

Are you sure about that? IANAL, and I've not kept up with more recent laws,
but the forth doesn't say anything about "citizens", it says "people".

~~~
coffeemug
The distinction comes from the SCOTUS interpretation of the constitution, not
the constitution itself. They've been quite consistent in limiting the
constitutional rights to American citizens/soil/etc.

------
jcampbell1
Google needs to fight back. The first thing Google should do is encourage
HTTPS everywhere.

Google should change the algorithm to prefer sites that support HTTPS
everywhere. Matt Cutts should make some video like: "Google uses over 200
different signals to determine page relevancy. Our users value privacy, so one
of the signals we use is whether the site uses HTTPS. We tend to prefer to
send search users to secure sites... blah blah blah ... Enabling HTTPS with
PFS will increase your search rank. HTTPS will slow page load times, but the
privacy boost exceeds the speed penalty for 99% of sites."

The only reason I don't use HTTPS always is because it slows down page loads,
and page speed is huge for PPC performance, and big for SEO. Google needs to
hardcode a "privacy" boost into the rankings and make that public.

Within a year, 80% of the web would be HTTPS.

~~~
ateeqs
Wait guys, let me get this straight: You guys are not okay with the US
government accessing your data that Google has, but you are somehow okay with
sharing your data with Google?

I just see big "evil" vs small "evil." I'm not seeing much of a difference.

Also, would you be okay if another government had access to your data in
Google's cloud?

You guys are probably not seeing the futility of it all.

~~~
aeturnum
Shockingly, most people are happier when their data is shared only with the
party/(ies) they agreed to share it with. That doesn't mean we're all 100% ok
with sharing our data with Google, but as long as we're informed about who
gets our data we can think about it. If the data is going to the NSA (and who
knows where else), that decision is a lot more complex.

If you think it's futile, I suggest you leave us to our, 'lost cause,' and get
on with living in a world where things can't get better at all.

~~~
ateeqs
Also, realize that the -entire- ecosystem that we have now is probably
insecure and will probably be insecure for the foreseeable future.

------
notahacker
I'm a bit confused by the whole "liberty needs a lobbyist" argument. Lobbying
for what exactly? Intelligence agencies to _pretend_ to stop spying on you? I
think that's as much as you can reasonably hope for lobbying to achieve.

The wider implications are earlier in the article. Wearable recording devices
and biometric security devices shared in the cloud? Probably better to assume
the government _will_ compromise them if it wants to, and might well do
anyway, just in case, with or without the blessing of Silicon Valley. That's
something to take into account when deciding if you actually want them. It's
not an entirely new phenomenon though; the same was true of brick-sized mobile
phones a couple of decades back.[1]

Your chances of having your life seriously affected by PRISM may or may not be
higher than your chances of having your life seriously affected by terrorism
[2] but it's a stone cold certainty that public criticism isn't putting the
spooks to bed. Intelligence agencies have never really depended on being in
tune with public sentiment or in line with the law.

[1]There's a well-publicised trial going on at the moment in the UK over
"phone hacking" in the 1990s, where the organizations snooping on people's
voicemails were newspapers. In a _beautifully_ ironic touch, one of the major
revelations of the trial so far is that two of the media moguls in question
were having an affair. They were incriminated by a Word document; a love
letter that may never even have been sent, and certainly wouldn't have come to
light if they hadn't had to hand over their computers to prosecutors.

[2]both are higher than the article's "1 in 20 million", but not high enough
to be likely if you're not a major public figure

~~~
XorNot
I'm constantly amazed that its like everyone has suddenly forgotten that
during Occupy Wall St, protests before and since, and the entire Arab Spring
revolution, it was portable and mobile recording devices widely dispersed
amongst the populace that _enabled_ successful revolution against government
and evidence and checks of the abuses of power of police and other
authorities.

~~~
notahacker
To an extent, yes. Whether open communication aids or harms you depends on
whose misdemeanours you're communicating, and to whom.

Two years on from Arab Spring, there are grainy new videos posted of abuses of
power in Egypt every day. Whereas on the 27th January 2011, Mubarak's
government was so disconcerted by the volume of criticism it was getting it
actually largely succeeded in switching the internet off...

~~~
XorNot
Which is kind of my point. Unless you're distributing devices which the users
can't get their own images out of, but someone else can, then your
fundamentally decentralizing the power structure.

The government is bigger then you, it has more resources then you and its been
able to monopolize surveillance more effectively then you. But the pushback
against that is not what I would argue we'd expect - you don't try and
eliminate surveillance, you democratize it.

------
freshhawk
I find it strange that the assumption is made that "Silicon Valley" is clearly
going to be on the side of the general public in this. Why?

Isn't the smart money going to side with the real power? If those well
connected enough to attempt to predict things see the odds of the US rolling
back the surveillance state to be low and the odds of the levels of
surveillance growing then certainly brokering user data and developing better
surveillance tech and more popular services that produce personal data is a
growth industry?

I personally think it would be insane to bet on a significant overhaul of the
american defense and security industry. Everyone understands why the giants
didn't pull a Lavabit and just helped cover things up, and carefully prepared
inaccurate statements when it came out. The exact same reasons are why it's a
much better business decision to go along with this, to step on your
competitors to help further the surveillance state rather than fight it.

I only see two arguments for this: That they will lose customers because
people demand privacy and will stop using their services if they cooperate.
This hasn't happened yet and, if history repeats itself, would just take a big
marketing spend to stop anyway. The user experience of any company taking a
stand would probably be worse than a cooperating company, so people would have
to make a sacrifice to secure their privacy. Also something that is clearly
not what people do right now. This is clearly going to be the free market
ideologue's argument. Fair warning: I'm going to ignore "people will boycott
Google because they are self interested rational actors and it would be
irrational to sacrifice privacy for convenience" like I would ignore other
naive religious arguments.

The other argument seems to boil down to just: "But that's my team/tribe and
they're the _good guys_ " or that it's felt that rich and powerful people in
the tech industry are fundamentally different kinds of people and will readily
risk their money and power for reasons that obviously don't motivate most
other rich and powerful people.

Neither is particularly convincing.

~~~
zaroth
> That they will lose customers because people demand privacy and will stop
> using their services if they cooperate. This hasn't happened yet...

Apparently it's already decimating IBM hardware sales in China.
[http://www.testosteronepit.com/home/2013/10/17/nsa-
revelatio...](http://www.testosteronepit.com/home/2013/10/17/nsa-revelations-
kill-ibm-hardware-sales-in-china.html)

~~~
freshhawk
That's a good point, companies selling to governments and large organizations
will probably see a drop in business. Makes sense that those types of
decisions will be affected.

------
JimboOmega
"Now, Silicon Valley needs to join them." \- because we otherwise approve of
the snooping, but for this latest outrage?

I'm honestly wondering - what's the other side of this? Who's defending and
explaining this? I have not seen an article that "takes the other side" in
some time, and that might be a result of the echo chamber that is the bay
area...

Or it might be the result of an "intelligence community" that really IS in its
own world; intentionally blocked from any outside observation and judgment,
taking actions that, honestly, really don't have many if any supporters.

~~~
salgernon
I periodically check out websites that traditionally have a bias other than my
own and ran across this:

[http://www.redstate.com/2013/10/30/tech-at-night-even-
dianne...](http://www.redstate.com/2013/10/30/tech-at-night-even-dianne-
feinstein-tells-it-like-it-is-about-edward-snowden-we-have-two-new-fcc-
commissioners/)

Whats ironic is that these folks call Snowden a traitor, putting them in the
same camp as a Democratic Senator from the other side of the isle.

I also find it funny that many of the ads on that site are for perpetual
motion / free energy machines...

~~~
hackula1
I find this similar to the endless push to buy gold from people who are
supposed to be the exemplars of common sense economics.

------
pvnick
I read the article and at the end muttered "abso-fucking-lutely"

------
kghose
I don't know. If some one charged me with gathering intel I would be drawing
up all sorts of battle plans, including weakness analyses like these. Hell, I
would even try them out in the field. I would consider this my JOB.

~~~
marvin
The relevant questions here would be _who_ tasked you to do this and _why_.
Working on technology to be used for indiscriminate surveilance is simply
outside of my ethics. I would resign rather than do this job. Obviously not
everyone agrees, but there are plenty of tech people who have a strong moral
compass which prevents them from doing this kind of work.

~~~
DanBC
What if your task was to find weaknesses in operating systems?

You join the organisation, and are told that "the enemy" is using a particular
OS, and it is your job to get as many exploits for that OS as possible. Those
exploits are passed along to someone else to actually deploy.

So far, you have no idea that your organisation is spying on citizens of its
own country.

------
amag
I find it ironic that the reason for all this surveillance and data-gathering
is to protect people from terrorists. Terrorism isn't about killing people,
it's about making us all afraid (terrified). That fear will then lead us to
limit our personal freedom.

We say: "Please Mr. Government, protect us from the evil terrorists" and with
that we give the government the mandate to introduce massive surveillance.

As the magnitude of the surveillance starts to dawn on us, we start censuring
ourselves online, not to risk a visit from the men in black. Even if what we
do online today isn't illegal, laws will change and it's not unheard of people
being persecuted for their political/religious alignment, even in western
countries, even today.

So we shrivel and crawl back into the hole we crawled out of and wait for
change.

All this is perfectly aligned with what the terrorists want. So they won. We
killed them, but they won. As long as we are guided by our fear of terrorism,
as long as we let our countries be guided by our fear of terrorism, the
terrorists have won.

------
kudu
There seems to be a misunderstanding that a "debate" on the merits and
disadvantages of authoritarian surveillance needs to be had. These inexistent
pros and numerous cons were already weighed when the 4th Amendment was passed,
so unless they want a constitutional amendment, there is no need to have a
debate, they should simply respect the supreme law of the land.

------
denzil_correa
>American tech companies, in other words, are now the Huaweis of everywhere
else.

This can only stop IF the companies proactively make an attempt to get out of
bed from the organizations which hold a gun over their head. Currently, the
companies want to "spy" (for marketing, advertisements etc.) on their
customers as much as governments.

~~~
rhizome
Given the existence and current legality of NSLs and other tools, they likely
cannot get out of bed without a legal repudiation of the third-party doctrine.
Until then, they can be compelled to stay in bed whether they want to or not.

~~~
McPants
Could the companies that are under threat of legal action work together and
risk the threat all at once?

What I am saying is that if one company such as Google was to breach their gag
order from the government regarding these things then they would be in a
pretty bad situation which could result in a major loss of money to the
company. However a lot of these tech companies are American and for them to
all breach the gag order at once would have a large impact on the already
struggling economy. Could they not use this potential economic disaster as a
get out of jail token?

I mean it's kinda what the banks did with the too big to fail stuff. Putting a
lot of companies in jeopardy at once could force the government to not act on
prosecuting them.

I could also be talking out of my butt.

------
mingmecca
To answer the question in the title: I'd rather be dead than live my life in a
fishbowl and watched most of the time. I'd rather live with the reality of a
dangerous world instead of suspecting that some CPU or agent is analyzing my
calls & emails.

To the defenders of the NSA, this sentiment is abhorrent, I'm sure.

~~~
johnpowell
Do you still use Google? Or any of the companies mentioned in the PRISM leaks?

------
jbpadgett
Perhaps a solution to this problem is for the NSA to provide "opt-in" well-
known collection points for everyone. If only a small amount of metadata is
what they use, then the massive copy everything on the wires approach is not
needed. Private companies and even individuals could choose to submit some
activities that comprise useful metadata for storage and analysis. Those they
choose to not opt-in would simply not have a data-stream piped to the well-
known collection points. Maybe some variant of this approach? If we still
don't trust them (and likely won't for some time), we work collectively to do
what the PandoDaily piece suggested which is use valley power to push for more
effective oversight. In lieu of that, perhaps we have a collective checkbook
pay for a counter-surveillance org to watch the watchers.

------
brianberns
Serious question: What exactly is objectionable about the "smiley face"
diagram? Except for that tiny face, it seems to be a totally innocent network
diagram that shows how Google's private network connects to the public
internet. I understand the implication is that the NSA is tapping connections
between Google's data centers, but there's nothing in the diagram itself that
supports this claim. I'd like to know what about it made those two Google-
related engineers "explode in profanity".

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_404h/2010-2019/Washin...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_404h/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2013/10/30/Local/Images/GOOGLE-
CLOUD-EXPLOITATION1383148810.jpg)

------
south11235
Maybe it is time to start considering:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_resistance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_resistance)

------
keithpeter
That smiley slide will enter history in the same way as the fatuous comments
made by agents when they forced the Guardian to destroy computers that had
been used to process Snowden's files in London.

Utter contempt for 'little people' isn't viable long term. The 'little people'
eventually realise what is going on. Then the politicians have to change their
approach.

------
smkelly
Today HHS announced that Google, Oracle, Microsoft, and Red Hat will be
helping fix HealthCare.gov. Now would be a good time for all four companies to
issue press releases stating "We are very happy to lend our support to the
Obama administration in exchange for their scaling back of domestic and
corporate spying efforts."

------
csears
Not to make light of the situation, but that sketched smiley face does work
well as a meme/icon for the NSA's hubris in all this.

Also makes for a subtly humorous t-shirt...
[http://teespring.com/nsaface](http://teespring.com/nsaface)

Happy to share the vector source if anyone's interested.

------
MakeUsersWant
Everybody is protesting.

But there must be huge business opportunities in mass surveillance. The
biggest obstacle is politics, i.e. how to weasel your way to the data. Maybe
an inexpensive stockpile of skill/personality/mental health profiles could
make hiring/outsourcing more convenient? Better ideas, anybody?

------
njharman
> The US government says the surveillance is necessary to thwart terrorists.

Even if it is necessary, that does not mean it should automatically be
allowed. Liberty is not "free". People have died for it and people will die
for it in the future. __And Liberty is worth that cost. __

------
ForHackernews
I had trouble taking this article seriously because it kept referring to David
Foster Wallace as "Foster Wallace". His last name is just Wallace. It's not a
compound, hyphenated last name or anything strange like that.

------
nyan_sandwich
Less Voice, more Exit. The solution is not more democracy; everyone'e been
pretty consistently complaining about Washington's power for years and it's
only gotten worse. The solution is "Google Republic".

------
genecavanaugh
Eventually the data will be sold by <someone> (more likely a bunch of
<someones> to support, say, addictions, etc., if we don't stop it. That will
severely (and unpredictably) impact everyone's bottom line.

------
Wishbeen
Reform is needed all over the place... it's just dismaying to see so many
public institutions simply ignoring morals in favor of exploiting the letter
of the law to the fullest extent.

------
louischatriot
I really dislike the line drawn between "collecting data on American people"
vs non-American people. So it would be ok to spy on Europe but not the US?
Come on ...

------
dreamdu5t
Surprise! An institution created to spy on people spies on them! I'm trying to
wrap my head around this discussion where people seem to both want a
government that spies on people but is also mad that said government spies on
people.

How about this? The government and the NSA are criminal organizations that
have no more of a right to trespass on my private communication than Coca-
Cola. They are terrorists. That's all there really is to it. They will spy on
us as long as we continue to accept the legitimacy of such an organization.

They will continue to spy on us after this media circle-jerk about it is
over.. that's for sure.

------
SurfScore
Ironically enough, when I first saw this title I thought it was going to be a
piece about the astronomical cost of living. Oh well...

------
justinhj
Not really directly related to the article but it is filled with spelling
mistakes. I couldn't read past the fifth one

------
aet
Why don't the journalists release everything they have?

------
kbar13
can someone explain what the big deal is with the smiley face?

------
usefulcat
potential_for_abuse = power / accountability

------
csandreasen
I think this is less a story of the NSA/GCHQ getting caught with their pants
down than it is Google and Yahoo getting caught. According to yesterday's
leaks, Google and Yahoo were (and continue to in Yahoo's case) sending
customer data between disparate locations across the globe _unencrypted_. That
means that not only could NSA/GCHQ have been pulling data from it - so could
China, Russia, Iran, any other nation with a reasonably developed intelligence
service, organized crime syndicates, etc. We know that they collect
unencrypted data against their targets. Every intelligence service does using
whatever means legally available to them. That's the nature of collecting
intelligence. The NSA isn't going to hurt their bottom line, but failing to
take proper security measures to secure their customers' data might.

The outrage that's been pervasive throughout the tech community is based on
the idea that the NSA is collecting data on _everyone_. This article bases a
good deal of its argument on that assumption. All of the leaks have dealt with
their sources and methods, though - not their targeting. I've mentioned it in
previous comments, but the media does a huge disservice by not giving us any
insight into who they're targeting. If the NSA/GCHQ is targeting regular
people/business executives/members of their own country's government, show the
evidence and let them face judgment for it. Telling people that they _could_
be conducting surveillance on everyone does nothing but generate fear and
hype, tip off legitimate intelligence targets, and now possibly cause
financial damage to major internet companies.

Some problems from the article that I'd also like to address, since I see them
so often:

* The NSA claims that it targets only foreigners, but it needs only 51 percent certainty that those targets are actually outside the US. That’s pretty much a coin toss.*

The whole 51 percent thing came from the Washington Post's original writeup on
the PRISM slides, The quote was:

 _The supervisor must endorse the analyst 's "reasonable belief," defined as
51 percent confidence, that the specified target is a foreign national who is
overseas at the time of collection._

The NSA's wording quoted by WaPo is "reasonable belief"; WaPo's wording is "51
percent confidence". Nowhere in any of the leaked documents does anyone ever
mention "51 percent", nor is it mentioned in any Congressional hearing to
date. The phrases "reasonable belief" and "reasonable articulable suspicion"
do come up. In the Congressional hearing from earlier this week they discuss
the differences between that and "probable cause", which is a much higher
standard, but to say that an NSA analyst could flip a slightly weighted coin
to meet the legal criteria for targeting under FAA 702 authorities is
disingenuous.

 _Meanwhile, the odds of an American being killed in a terrorist attack,
including overseas, are about 1 in 20 million. “Your odds of dying in a
terrorist attack are still far, far lower than dying from just about anything
else,” the Post noted._

It's interesting that the author specifically mentions overseas locations -
the author forgot about the military in doing so. It's worth noting that the
NSA is an organization subordinate to the Department of Defense, and one its
primary responsibilities is to provide signals intelligence to military. The
same military which has employed quite a few Americans in hostile areas
overseas, Since there are fewer than 20 million Americans serving in the
military, one could use that figure to conclude that no serviceman has been
killed during the past decade by anyone affiliated with a known terrorist
organization. I recently visited a family member being treated at a military
hospital. It was a bit shocking seeing the number of people moving past me in
their wheelchairs using their 1-3 remaining limbs for propulsion and thinking
to myself that these were the lucky ones. You can debate the merits of war and
whether or not they should have been over there in the first place, but
claiming that today Americans aren't getting killed by people working for the
same organization that killed three thousand Americans back in 2001 is just
wrong.

 _But in 2011, when the surveillance program was firmly in place and the anti-
terrorism laws long since passed, there were nine recorded attacks in the US
deemed as terrorism._

The NSA doesn't have the authority to target people on US soil. This is
written in the law, rehashed at every Congressional hearing, and even
confirmed by Snowden's own leaks [1]. If an international terrorist group like
Al-Qaeda struck the US again, it would be fair to call out the NSA for failing
to protect US citizens. You can't fault them for failing to prevent a
terrorist attack hatched entirely on US soil by US persons, which is why
Congress call the FBI director to answer for Boston bombings, not the NSA
director.

[1]
[http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/758651-1qcy12-violati...](http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/758651-1qcy12-violations.html)
(see page 6 - the section on "roamers")

------
einehexe
The elephant it the room that everyone is wants to ignore is that Google's
data was intercepted by the British. It is quite interesting how that is
conveniently overlooked to push a certain narrative.

~~~
prawn
I think at some level (e.g., international power and security to maintain
that), US/UK/CA/AU/NZ are the same thing.

------
michaelochurch
_Liberty needs a lobbyist, and that lobbyist has to be Silicon Valley._

So, liberty's lobbyist is to be a bunch of out-of-touch, arrogant billionaires
who collect peoples' data and sell it to advertisers, and who can't even make
a small city (San Francisco is not nearly the size or complexity of New York)
a decent place to live?

There are (stating the obvious warning) major issues with governments,
including ours, but I don't think for a second that the current SV elite would
do a better or even adequately comparable job.

Also, is it just me, or is it _hilarious_ that these one-big-hit-makes-wisdom
billionaires who whine about government-- except, of course, when they're
exploiting tax loopholes and using NIMBY regulations to keep Bay Area real
estate expensive-- and talk about how wonderful the world would be if they
were running it, then go ahead and get pwn3d by that supposedly inefficient,
antiquated institution? The poetic justice here is powerful.

------
humannature
where is the technical proof that they actually hacked into google's fiber?
Put some diagrams on a piece of paper and at the top it says TOP
SECRET//SI//NOFORN and everyone automatically believes it?

although I'm not totally doubting it, just want to see some proof.

