Ask HN: Does the NSA profile HN readers?

[irixusr]

This forum gathers probably more technologically savvy and powerful people than any other public forum. And we're mostly social libertarian, worried about eroding digital rights.

Isn't it probable that this forum is a prime target for Big Brother to create detailed profiles of us based on our posts?

[nostrademons]

Probably. It's basically a certain bet that anything you post here, the NSA can read, given that anything you post here, the entire Internet can read.

But I think most people overestimate how interesting they are. Hacker News is one forum on the Internet among literally millions. There are millions of other people who are also social libertarians, and millions of people worried about eroding digital rights. These characteristics do not make you interesting. Hell, digital rights in general are not that interesting to people in Washington - for the most part, our legislators vote the way that whichever lobbyist who last had their ear wants them to, and the American public just gets caught in the crossfire.

The folks that the NSA cares about are those that advocate violent overthrow of governments, or who are a credible threat to U.S. interests abroad. Hacker News readers, by and large, are not a credible threat; we talk, but few of us will get off our butts and do. And so we're just not important enough for the NSA to care.

[ejcx → nostrademons]

This is exactly right. There are a lot of forums higher on the NSA's list to target. This forum is (no offense fellow HN'ers) mostly just a bunch of angry startup people and tech news.

I know for a fact many NSA employees read and enjoy participating on HN.

[remx → ejcx]

> I know for a fact many NSA employees read and enjoy participating on HN

There's a few Palantir[0] employees here too, Palantir being one of the many tentacles of the NSA. Infact any contractor who does work for the NSA can be found lurking moar on HackerNews. If you do enough digging around you will find them. Palantir being the more obvious example.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palantir_Technologies

[ejcx → remx]

Palantir is not a tentacle of the NSA. Not even close.

[remx → ejcx]

Well according to this Wikipedia piece[0] about the NSA and Palantir:

    A document leaked to TechCrunch revealed that
    Palantir's clients as of 2013 included at least
    twelve groups within the U.S. government,
    including the CIA, DHS, NSA, FBI, CDC

From: http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/11/leaked-palantir-doc-reveals...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palantir_Technologies#cite_not...

[eb0la → remx]

Please be reasonable. Having NSA and several US agencies as customers doesn't mean you are a tentacle of the NSA.

Even in the case of companies owned in part by In-Q-Tel I guess the point is to make their technology available to the US goverment. Maybe 20 years ago the goverment would fund that with DARPA or something similar, but now there is an open technology market and I guess they should be investing to get their opinion heard on the direction they need the technologies to evolve.

[stagbeetle → eb0la]

> Please be reasonable. Having NSA and several US agencies as customers doesn't mean you are a tentacle of the NSA.

You could argue that any company that actively works with the NSA to increase their coverage is a tentacle.

[dsacco → stagbeetle]

That's such a broad definition of "tentacle" it's meaningless. We all know what "tentacle" means in this context, and it's not satisfied just by being a government contractor or provider.

[tedunangst → remx]

So Palantir is actually twelve tentacles, no? A dodecapus?

[remx → tedunangst]

I was thinking of some sort of Lovecraftian nightmare monster with any arbitrary amount of tentacles

[rokhayakebe → nostrademons]

But I think most people overestimate how interesting they are.

Gosh, thank you. I feel people here feel professionally more important than they actually are. I mean I am sure a forum of Lawyers, Physicists, Surgeons, Truck Drivers would feel just about the same.

[schoen → nostrademons]

That's a good argument, although "credible threat to U.S. interests abroad" is too narrow considering the degree to which allies and foreign political parties get spied on.

A counterpoint: https://theintercept.com/document/2014/03/20/hunt-sys-admins... (if you have access to other people's communications, or the ability to protect them more or less effectively or cause them to be protected more or less effectively, governments might be interested to the extent that they want to spy on other people)

[espeed]

Just like recruiters track interesting people, so does the NSA. If you are doing advanced R&D and discuss it on a public forum, the NSA and Big Corps will notice, and if the technology is of interest to them, they will probably contact you to discuss. Have you ever received a random call from a company or some unknown party that wants to learn more about one of the projects you are working on?

NB: I know of at least one instance where a Big Social Network company contacted someone less than 24 hours after the person wrote a long technical private message to a collaborator. This doesn't mean the Big Social Network was directly reading their private messages -- the BSN may have just been mining messages for keywords -- but the net effect is the same, they notice and will contact you if what you are working on piques their interest. Not all Big Corps mine private messages in this manner -- Google does not do this AFAIK, beyond the algo that displays Gmail ads.

[Declanomous → espeed]

Today I learned a new reason to be disappointed in my projects.

Maybe the people who randomly message me about my projects months after I've posted them are secretly NSA.

[brudgers]

[Is NSA targeting HN readers?]

I'd suspect that the NSA would drink from bigger hoses to develop more comprehensive models. Those hoses would probably capture HN readership alongside everything else and like everything the firehose data would be mined and if HN correlated to something then the firehose data might be filtered.

As for detailed profiles, HN might be a data point but Facebook, Google+, Linkedin, etc. probably provide a more comprehensive picture (including pictures). In terms of browsing behavior, the NSA operates at the tapping the internet backbone scale.

[Related]

I suspect that a fair number of governmental and non-governmental agencies are interested in HN in terms of sentiment analysis and sentiment construction. Ignoring it would be unprofessional. Even amateurs will create sock puppet accounts to promote their business, personal, and political agendas. Small businesses from around the world will post material in their own interests. Mega-companies will post their blog updates here.

[nickpsecurity]

Not here. Almost definitely Schneier's blog since he had the Snowden files and visited Congress reps. The blog was overrun by trolls afterward that create side discussions distracting from privacy-enhancing tech regulars discussed there. Piles of noise to drown out the signal.

[crb002]

NSA's recruiting is woefully inept. They want 20 somethings with no experience, then wonder why they can't get people with SMT solver skills etc. The future of security is provably correct software, not reactionary network analysis.

[decasteve]

I worry more about being profiled for my donations to FSF, EFF, and the Tor Project.