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Comment by lawnchair_larry | Hacker News Reader

There has never been a documented case through leaks or otherwise that they do domestic hacking, including in all the links you are providing.

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"Reports that NSA taps into Google and Yahoo data hubs infuriate tech giants"

Files obtained from Edward Snowden suggest NSA can collect information sent by fibre optic cable between Google and Yahoo data hubs 'at will'...

Citing documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with officials, the Washington Post claimed the agency could collect information "at will" from among hundreds of millions of user accounts.

The documents suggest that the NSA, in partnership with its British counterpart GCHQ, is copying large amounts of data as it flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information between the worldwide data centers of the Silicon Valley giants. The intelligence activities of the NSA outside the US are subject to fewer legal constraints than its domestic actions.

31 October 2013

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/30/google-re...

What is domestic and what is not? Is a company with assets abroad domestic or fair game abroad? You are aware these agencies share most data across borders aren't you?

Tempora is domestic hacking, Stellar Wind is domestic hacking (sweeping up data from all Americans), and these agencies share data extensively, so domestic vs foreign has very little meaning to them at least.

No, interception and wiretapping (especially with permission of the service provider) are not the same thing as hacking a company to maintain persistent access and surreptitiously using their assets to exfiltrate data. These are very different things and the distinction matters.

I’m familiar with what kinds of things they do, and I don’t agree that they should be doing a lot of what they do. It’s just that rooting american assets isn’t one of those.

Also, you have the wrong country for Tempora.

The agencies extensively share data and routinely break domestic laws. They even use sharing as a way of getting around domestic restrictions.

If only the Snowden docs included all the nasty domestic spying that the agencies do, I'm sure we would have substantial proof.

There are leaked government slides about how they were monitoring Wikipedia traffic (illegally).

Like, why go through the effort to hack domestic companies when you can just subpoena them?

A reasonable question. There are many answers. My first one would be for leverage. E.g. To solve a crime, they want information from someone who is not under formal investigation. That someone may not voluntarily cooperate, so they use information for leverage. E.g. threaten to leak information about a pending business deal to others in the transaction. It's not very effective for Joe Sixpack, but it is for organized crime of all kinds.

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