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Comment by pelagicAustral | Hacker News Reader

Because they are watching everything, or most of it anyway, it would be really funny to know what kind of stuff they *actually* care about... and all the massive long string of crap that is considered incredibly abhorrent but just doesn't make the mark...

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They actively care about (as in, act on in realtime) serious criminal activity. But I suspect they keep the legal yet embarrassing stuff in their back pocket for blackmail purposes.

Then why haven't they caught all of the obvious foreign fraud rings that people on youtube keep uncovering? It's egregious. You would think with their total data access, AI, and Utah datacenter they could at least create a target list for the FBI.

The FBI, and law-enforcement in general, isn't the main customer. Spies who are unafraid of and who take advantage of illegal activity are the ones consuming NSA products. Epstein for example.

Haha. Ok.

My opinion is that those crimes are not relevant to their mission. Are they serious financial crimes? Yes absolutely. But no one actually gets hurt, it’s just money.

For the amount of financial crime that is likely being committed, versus the reports of actual prosecution, it doesn't seem like a very good track record.

who is they? the NSA is a military organization headed by a general or admiral, which handles codebreaking and networks security.

the FBI acts on and handles cybercrime and/or regular crime.

the NSA can absolutely come up with tools that they then share with other parts of the USG, in the same way that the Army can develop the M-16 and allow police departments to use it, but ultimately it's law enforcement pulling the trigger.

Hoovering up as many informational secrets as they can is likely one of their biggest businesses. Why have some company being the only ones that hold the recepie for some super strong secret steel when you can have it in your back pocket too.

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