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Comment by p-e-w | Hacker News Reader

That's tinfoil hat nonsense. The NSA aren't gods, wizards, or aliens. They don't have the best people (those are mostly at FAANG), and their total budget is a fraction of Big Tech's.

If you ever find yourself assuming that the NSA/CIA/etc. have magical knowledge that's decades ahead of everyone else, or have "assets" in every village on Earth, you know you've been watching too much TV.

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Are you familiar with PRISM or the information Edward Snowden disclosed? The NSA doesn't need "magical" knowledge from the future, they have back doors and exploits in hardware, data collection methods directly arranged with ISPs and FAANGs, and free legal reign. The "best people" at FAANGs readily cooperated with the NSA and FBI, doing everything they could to assist them. If you've never looked into PRISM, I highly recommend going down the rabbit hole.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM?wprov=sfti1

> the NSA/CIA/etc. have magical knowledge that's decades ahead of everyone else

Exactly what the hell kind of magical knowledge does it take to compromise a VPN? They could own the thing completely.

If you ever find yourself thinking that massive intelligence agencies with budgets in the tens or hundreds of billions of dollars aren't doing anything and have no function, you've been watching too much TV news. If you think that governments require the magical knowledge of gods, wizards and aliens to compromise a VPN service, you've completely retreated into fantasy.

Perhaps for some indication on how much "they're not gods" is, its worth looking at the things the CIA did to try and assassinate Castro (as well as any of the shenanigans they did during the cold war, including trying to train cats with spy sensors in them to wander into a Soviet embassy - that one failed because it took too long to train and their one successful cat was driven over by a taxi when set loose on the street across the embassy).[0]

Its less "super top secret spy agency hires a hitman to take out Castro" and more "we're just going to throw whatever we can at the wall and see what works". Plans included literally mailing him exploding cigars (on the assumption that Castro liked smoking so mailing him one might just work), hiring his ex to try and kill him on a plane ride (which just resulted in the ex rebounding with Castro) and some campaigns to try and make him look weak that can only be described as "hilarious" like flying a plane over the country and dropping leaflets with a bounty of 0.02$ on his head with the idea that he was so weak that the bounty wasn't worth anything (although this one was rejected, they also attempted to make him look foolish by lacing a radio broadcast room with LSD).[1]

To pull a quote from Alan Moore: "If you are on a list targeted by the CIA, you really have nothing to worry about. If however, you have a name similar to somebody on a list targeted by the CIA, then you are dead."

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_Kitty

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_assassination_attempts_o...

> That's tinfoil hat nonsense.

Understand that direct contradiction is not terribly helpful, but this seems important so: no it isn't. (supported by years of public evidence, and also some personal experiences that I can't go into due to <reasons>).

> their total budget is a fraction of Big Tech's

The NSA was getting $10.5bn to spend in 2013[0]. I can only imagine it's gone up since then year on year. That's not a bad fraction when your whole goal is signals intelligence.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/black...

Volkswagen's research budget was $21 billion in 2022. $10.5bn is nothing in the big picture, and certainly not enough to "control the world" or whatever grand claims are commonly made about the NSA.

No one said control the world. Just that a VPN provider is probably compromised by the NSA.

Do you think Volkswagen could compromise or secretly own a VPN service?

You're the one making grand claims about the NSA controlling the world. It's a lot easier to argue with claims you made up.

...and that amounts to a lot of drivespace.

(Based on the available data, not spending their budget on FT talent; they apparently get that with their logo.)

It's not about the NSA so much in my view, it's about the west simply most likely going completely along with America as long as it doesn't involve going to war (e.g. Iraq) which could cost them an election. And a number of European countries are clamoring for draconian surveillance themselves.

And the Best People aren't at FAANG. They are at hedge firms.

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