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Comment by Zigurd | Hacker News Reader

Is this the best defense of the actions of NSA employees publicly available?

He spends a lot of time denying pervasive surveillance puts us in a panopticon where the FBI and other LEAs can observe everything we do. And never mentions parallel construction once.

He tries to justify a Cold War sized, and then some, security state by invoking North Korea.

This is a big bowl of very weak sauce.

The director's standard of candor is "least untruthful."

I really don't care what a mid ranking employee says about what the NSA will and won't do. EVERY revelation where people in this forum have given the NSA benefit of a doubt in the form of "they could, but they wouldn't" has max'ed out at "would do, did do, and trying hard to do it more" once more revelations have emerged.

The NSA can't be trusted with what it has.

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"Project MINARET was a sister project to Project SHAMROCK operated by the National Security Agency (NSA), which, after intercepting electronic communications that contained the names of predesignated US citizens, passed them to other government law enforcement and intelligence organizations." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MINARET

The NSA has a history of sharing intelligence with LE, to state that the NSA is not a LE agency is extremely misleading, if not an outright lie. Not only did the NSA do this in the past but the Snowden revelations show that they continue to do this.

There's also little analysis (here or elsewhere) of the consequences of widespread data warehousing. Why pay agents to listen to personal calls, when you can stockpile intel for the day you might need it, and analyze it via algorithm?

I foresee a day when every American has a dossier, a smear campaign, and a law enforcement attack plan on file, in case they decide to "make trouble" for the powerful. It's highly probable we're there already. Look at the history of harassment against MLK if you don't believe me. Even if they're not doing it now, sweeping up all the data in perpetuity guarantees that they'll do it later.

(I may disagree with this guy fervently about the NSA, but I'm extremely psyched to try his mayo. Good for him for transitioning into something useful.)

The dossier exists in the form of all the collected communications. Moores law and Gustafson's law will allow your entire life to sliced, diced and trolled for breaches of the law in seconds. Lazy, deferred evaluation of the police state.

It would be great to see a cheerful launch page for a satirical startup that automatically generated smear campaigns for governments against persons of interest. "We use of the expanded information capabilities of our client agencies to maximize the plausibility of our allegations!"

Pricing!

$8,000: General fear, uncertainty, and doubt (duration: 2 months)

$15,000: Complete discrediting (duration: 6 months -- best value!)

$50,000: Overturn their life with "Anonymous"-style harassment (e.g. triggered by c pornography "revelations" -- duration: two years)

if your customers are governments, I think your prices are missing one or more 0s

> I'm extremely psyched to try his mayo

Why. The only (vaguely) scientific argument the paleo diet has against legumes falls apart when you're just extracting the oils (which is not where the "toxins" are). Apart from that it'd just be an organic no-preservatives mayonnaise, and that's already widely available.

It's just another example that this guy will swallow anything you tell him with sufficient amount of authority.

On one hand, I completely buy his assertions about China's pervasive hacking attempts/successes and that the NSA is our best tool for stopping them.

On the other hand, you're right on the money about parallel construction. In my book, that's the one thing that sent the NSA "over the line." It's good to hear that many NSA employees take the police/military distinction seriously, but we know for a fact that some higher-ups don't and he didn't mention the most egregious case of this, not even once. Also, he invoked the "it only happened if they get caught" assumption while commenting on the frequency of abuses, which is highly suspicious.

Thanks for letting me know about parallel construction - I hadn't heard of it.

You're right, abuses probably have happened more often than those caught.

If you'd never heard of parallel construction before today, that seems to powerfully undermine your credibility. Why should we take you more seriously than someone who says "I was a secretary at the NSA for years and I never heard of anything bad happening, therefore nothing bad happened"?

"I was in the Computer Network Operations Development Program, and my office was S32X: Signals Intelligence Directorate (S) > Data Acquisition (S3) > Tailored Access Operations (S32) > Special Tactics and Techniques (S32X)."

I think it is reasonable to say that he is slightly more informed to speak on these issues than a secretary.

It's really not surprising he hasn't heard of parallel reconstruction, considering:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6911200

Also, there's no need to be so hostile. It's simply his point of view, and by the very nature of the restricted work environment at intelligence agencies, it's not reasonable to expect him to have a complete picture.

To quote the very post of his that you're replying to:

"You're right, abuses probably have happened more often than those caught."

He's hardly saying nothing bad ever happened, or that all abuses are known for that matter.

> by the very nature of the restricted work environment at intelligence agencies, it's not reasonable to expect him to have a complete picture.

How is that different from "he lacks credibility" ?

Credibility and scope are two different things. His claims can have limited scope and still be credible. I don't see any reason to doubt his character.

> I don't see any reason to doubt his character

His character is secondary to his veracity.

> His claims can have limited scope and still be credible.

His claims were about the NSA. That is the scope over which we all agree he is not a credible source on.

Come on, "left hand isn't aware what the right is doing" isn't just plausible, it's standard practice at any organization larger than a dozen or so people.

He never claimed to have more than anecdotal evidence regarding the NSA. He never asked to be taken more seriously than, as you so derisively put it, a well-placed secretary (actually, I suspect a secretary would have a much better high-level picture of what was going on, but I don't think you intended an actual comparison).

I'd like to thank him for adding his perspective to the discussion. Even though I'll be keeping my opinion, it is good to know that in some (most?) parts of the NSA, the culture of taking jurisdiction seriously still pervades. It could be a lot worse, and absent this admittedly anecdotal evidence it's difficult to know what to believe.

> Thanks for letting me know about parallel construction - I hadn't heard of it.

Seriously? Have you - as far as the NSA's activities goes - been living under a rock?

... oh.

Have you heard of COINTELPRO http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO and the Church Committee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee ?

Quiz, where did the FISA court come from?

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10262007/profile2.html

How can you defend a program in a public way like this without having the most basic understanding of what we know about it? Parallel construction is one of the basic story lines that has come out of the Snowden leaks.

They painted fascism with an American flag, and you ran it up the pole.

In a way its' embarrassing for the NSA to get a defence that is written by such a rube. But at the same time, the general public doesn't seem to be concerned, so perhaps it was unnecessary in the first place.

I could be wrong, but I think there is a bit of cognitive dissonance in your statement. I think you are slowly coming to realize that your actions were wrong; that you do need to defend them. The bad news is that you you fucked up, and you owe the Americans you pretend to care about an apology.

> Thanks for letting me know about parallel construction - I hadn't heard of it.

You should have heard of it. It was brought up the last time you posted your blog post to HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6882823

I agree this is a very weak justification.

But it plausibly is just what a purports to be - a portrait of the mentality of a rank and file NSA employee (I don't see any evidence that he's even "mid-ranking" if "mid" means middle management). That mentality seems to be a fusion of "surveillance doesn't matter if you have nothing to hide" and "America is under siege".

The thing is, it is good that the NSA has a lot of sincere employees are not now simply there for the power. It seems like this means instances of surveillance abuse are only period rather than constant. This puts them above the level of local police, who tend to have a fair of "ex-high school bullies and wanna be bullies". Yes, that's good but given the NSA's unchecked power, if an "institutional drift" towards the cynical use of power began in earnest, there isn't much people could do legally to stop that. And that is very bad.

Be careful what you wish for. The True Believers are the most dangerous. Cynics are more connected to reality.

The most dangerous are the Cynics who pretend to be True Believers, they are the prophets who know damn well that the eschaton isn't here but that there will be money to be made in the reconstruction. Some folk don't mind how small the pile is as long as they can stay near the top of it.

  EVERY revelation where people in this forum have given the
  NSA benefit of a doubt in the form of "they could, but they
  wouldn't" has max'ed out at "would do, did do, and trying
  hard to do it more" once more revelations have emerged.

I find it increasingly scary how people continue to defend the NSA's actions in the face of these escalating revelations. It almost feels like Stockholm Syndrome.

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