Slashdot Mirror
Schneier: Break Up the NSA
New submitter BrianPRabbit writes "Bruce Schneier proposes 'breaking up' the NSA. He suggests assigning the targeted hardware/software surveillance of enemy operations to U.S. Cyber Command. Further, the NSA's surveillance of Americans needs to be scaled back and placed under the control of the FBI. Finally, he says, is 'the deliberate sabotaging of security. The primary example we have of this is the NSA's BULLRUN program, which tries to "insert vulnerabilities into commercial encryption systems, IT systems, networks and endpoint communication devices." This is the worst of the NSA's excesses, because it destroys our trust in the Internet, weakens the security all of us rely on and makes us more vulnerable to attackers worldwide. .... [T]he remainder of the NSA needs to be rebalanced so COMSEC (communications security) has priority over SIGINT (signals intelligence). Instead of working to deliberately weaken security for everyone, the NSA should work to improve security for everyone.'"
Bruce Schneier can break the NSA
the FBI is a federal police force, not a spy agency that collects intelligence
takes out the contempt & violence features. hope to not be judged as harshly as we must administer?
Security expert Bruce Schneier was found dead in his home. The cause of death is unknown but police are investigating possible foul play.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
... once you have them, you can never get rid of them.
That is, I think it would be more likely to corrupt the FBI than to clean up the NSA's investigation of Americans.
The real problem is priorities more than anything else.
The events of September 11th panicked us Americans, and we decided to overspend and over-allow security.
We need to realize that the number of terrorism related attacks are relatively SMALL and to cut funding for all things that invade our privacy - starting with the TSA.
When you limit their funds, they spend their money wisely on clear and present dangers.
When you give them unlimited funding, as we have been doing, they spend it on any wild-ass crazy possibility, which means they investigate people and cases that are clearly and obviously not terrorism related.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
FBI dropped "law enforcement" as one of their primary duties not long ago. They consider themselves a national security organ now:
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/01/05/fbi_drops_law_enforcement_as_primary_mission
I'm sure they are happy to break up into as many parts as you think they need. /business as usual behind the curtain.
I'm sure they are happy to keep people as misdirected as possible.
I'm sure they are happy to be closed down 100% no one at this address not more...
Tron is dead..
Master Control Program: End of line!
CyberCommand, a command I'm very familiar with as prior-Air Force, doesn't have a reason to take over what the NSA does. The author of this article really doesn't know what he's talking about.
CYBERCOM and NSA have the same director, so...
Maybe he meant to add (haven't read TFA, obvs) that CYBERCOM should have its director as well.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
> That is, I think it would be more likely to corrupt the FBI than to clean up the NSA's investigation of
> Americans.
Corrupt the FBI? The FBI are as incorruptible as the proverbial satan. We are talking about the people who have so precious little to really do that they go around creating criminals to arrest. These are the people who go after little shit online troublemakers and find mentally unstable people who they can shove a bomb in the hands of.
Corrupt them?
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Good job. We need more sheep like you, citizen. Keep it up.
Well, let's elaborate, shall we. I think the number of possible satisfactory solutions to the NSA problem are infinite. This plan, like every other one that would work all fall on unshakable premise. Congress needs to pass legislation removing previously granted powers(then do something else, apparently, to mollify those who are actually scared of terrorists, in this case move those powers to law enforcement).
This one premise, though, has shown zero chance of happening. Those in congress critical of the NSA's behavior mostly seem interested in using it as an attack chip for the republican party in the next couple elections, and so leaving the power in the executive plays to their needs. The executive, for their part, have either bought, or are willing to attempt to sell, the pragmatism line, and the laws passed by congress say it's legal, so they don't see a need to change anything by fiat.
The US federal government should sell NSA, piece by piece. Interested bidders might be Google, Amazon, Microsoft, China, Russia, Switzerland, Israel, Comcast, Verizon, Cisco, MIT, Harvard, Stanford, the Vatican, New Jersey, Texas, Qatar, the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, the US Senate...
> This one premise, though, has shown zero chance of happening. Those in congress critical of the NSA's behavior mostly seem interested in using it as an attack chip for the republican party in the next couple elections, and so leaving the power in the executive plays to their needs.
I would support Beta 100% if they gave me the ability to moderate posts "+1 Depressing".
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
I like it, assuming that their funding and capabilities get scaled way back. Splitting it into separate arms of the FBI and military could assign actual reasons and purpose to their operations; as opposed to one independent data-addicted behemoth whose sole mission is to hork down all the information it can get it's paws on, regardless of cost or actual usefulness to security. Too bad this is extremely unlikely to happen.
I thought it said break up the USA
DO NOT break up the NSA. Do away with it and replace it with nothing. The CIA too.
For those of you treasonous traitors that like to yell "national security" to cover up for your crimes, consider this: Before the CIA and NSA were founded, the US was 8-0 in war. Since those organizations were founded, the US is 0-5 in war.
You treasonous traitors that like the NSA and CIA (I'm looking at you cold fjord) are the national security risks.
Breaking up the NSA is pointless when warrant-less actions are allowed.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
Not really. Modern justice is one of those concepts that came about as a way to stop the cycles of violence fed by vigilante justice. As such it needs to be violent and ugly enough to sate the victim's desire for revenge well enough that they don't feel the need to take things into their own hands. At the extreme, why do you suppose executions are so brutal? We know perfectly well how to kill people completely painlessly - a gas chamber filled with pure nitrogen will knock somebody unconscious in under a minute, usually without them ever noticing anything is wrong (we're not wired to detect oxygen deprivation), and they'll be dead a few minutes later. But somebody dieing peacefully in their sleep doesn't provide any catharsis for the victims. So we use techniques that induce plenty of twitching and whimpering to sate our bloodthirsty consciences.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
He suggests assigning the targeted hardware/software surveillance of enemy operations... [T]he remainder of the NSA needs to be rebalanced so COMSEC (communications security) has priority over SIGINT
Schneier's proposals make no sense. NSA's charter is to collect and analyze electronic communications worldwide. They're not a tactical operation nor are they responsible for COMSEC.
Most likely, the NSA would be split along the lines of their three core missions:
- Spy on and sabotage information systems of enemies of the United States to disrupt their operations.
- Spy on and sabotage information systems of friendly foreign nations to maintain and enhance US hegemony.
- Spy on and sabotage information systems of US citizens, to chill free speech that might threaten the NSA with budget cuts.
Then the first could be downsized as not an essential contributor to their primary goal of maintaining the power of the NSA.
Use the freed resources to step up the last, as obviously they've gotten too lax there and it is starting to threaten the primary goal.
The NSA does not necessarily want you to be insecure. As a matter of fact, I have downloaded documents from their web site with tips on how to configure my OSes to be more secure (and I don't recall any of the tips requiring me to install any additional software, which definitely would have raised a red flag). It is in the best interest of the NSA that the computers that protect sensitive data in all public and private sectors be secure from outside threats. With that said, it is also in the NSA's interest to be able to access as much data from these same machines as they can possibly gather. Therefore, they walk a tight line where it's best when everyone's security is loose enough that the NSA can get in, but tight enough to keep less sophisticated groups out. Based on systems such as BULLRUN, it seems that the NSA has become more concerned with gaining access for themselves over encouraging tight security.
Part of the problem is that the FBI & DHS have a sort of dual role. On the one hand, they're a law enforcement, with a need for evidence chain of custody, constitutional restrictions, and the need to be able to "prove a case" in a court of law.
On the other hand, they're more an intelligence agency, where fuzzy data goes to analysts who can proactively identify threats that can be mitigated. For this kind of application, you don't worry about evidence rules, and the going-in assumption is that the data has inaccuracies.
The problem comes up when data collected for the latter winds up being used for the former. what might be (barely) acceptable from a constitutional standpoint in an "intelligence gathering" situation is totally unacceptable as search and seizure for criminal prosecution.
It used to be that intelligence agencies NEVER shared their data with law enforcement, but post 9/11 (especially) the quite palpable fear that another attack was imminent led to a "lets do everything we can to prevent it" sort of modus operandi. And therein lay the problem.
And that's how we get bizarre "parallel construction" kinds of things.. find out something in an extralegal way, and that cues you on what evidence you need to collect by legal means. Which I think is skating pretty close to, if not over, the edge of constitutionality.
I've worked with people on all sides of this issue over the years, and the vast majority of them are working with best intentions. The surveillance folks are genuinely concerned with propriety, constitutionality, etc, but there are these forces pushing them close to and over the line. Nobody wants to see another 3000 people die spectacularly, because of something they did not do, that they were capable of doing.
And there's also the whole technologist problem that has existed for centuries. People get caught up in their rapidly increasing ability to do things, and don't always stop to think that the question is not "can we do X?", but "should we do X?" That's a non-trivial problem to solve. The atomic bomb development is a fine example. A lot of the scientists and engineers were morally conflicted about their work and set aside their concerns during the war, but had serious misgivings afterwards, particularly during the cold war era. The rapidly improving technology for communications intercept, storage, and searching is in the same area, but without the convenience of a world war to frame their thoughts.
I think the point is that giving anyone (including the NSA) the NSA's current "duties" is a bad idea, but if the government still needs to spy on particular communications within the US as part of a criminal investigation, then it should be done using the government's police powers under a constitutionally valid warrant.
Only if there was an ongoing shooting war (not periodic acts of terrorism) should the government be using its war fighting authority to monitor domestic communications, which is essentially what it is doing now long after 9-11 and where we have been fighting wars overseas and not on US soil.
The fact that people in government cling to emergency powers long after the emergency is nothing new or novel in history. It just needs to be stopped no matter what label or acronym you put on the agency doing it.
But think of how awkward it would be when the N runs into S or A at the spy conventions. They'd reminisce about the old times of spying on millions of Americans. They'd probably laugh about some guy on deviantart drawing naked women and crying while masturbating. Then N would be like "So, you guys want to get out of here" and the A would be like "N, look, we can't. S and I have a good thing going, you're just too crazy for us, lets just be friends," and N would be like "Sure yeah, no you're right, it's cool." But it won't be cool. N will finish his drink and then leave, all three of them will feel bad. A and S will go home and start getting intimate, but S won't be able to get it up, thinking about how bad N must feel.
You really want to do that to N, S, and A?
Only if there was an ongoing shooting war (not periodic acts of terrorism) should the government be using its war fighting authority to monitor domestic communications
But only if they have a warrant. Can't spy on innocent people.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Maybe when this was all just one big nod and a wink secret. But now that we are aware of a complete violation of the US constitution, you can't put that genie back in the bottle and live in ignorant bliss.
This is akin to finding out that your wife is poisoning your meals. It might have tasted great when you didn't know any better, but now do you just keep eating whatever she puts in front of you?
You have to understand that many people posting and moderating here don't care about your life at all. They literally don't care how many of their fellow citizens are killed by any means as long as it doesn't affect them and they think it makes them more free. You can decide for yourself as to the reasons why that is. Some possibilities are unsound philosophy, ahistorical views (including of the Founders), narcissism, fatuous legal views, distorted thinking, uncritical acceptance of claims of oppression or deprivation of civil rights, or others. One of my favorites is when they try to claim that "America is supposed to be the land of the free and brave" and therefore Americans should "bravely" die by massacres or bombs in shopping malls for our "freedom." Haven't massacres of your civil population in any war been one of the tests of your personal liberty? The more massacres of your countrymen the freer you are?
Another thing to keep in mind that people from all over the world both post and moderate. There are many of them that don't care what happens to Americans, including death by the thousands, as long as they think a particular policy or event either weakens the US or limits the ability of the US to conduct intelligence or military operations. The US population is more or less evenly split about Snowden, but he is wildly popular in various overseas countries - including ones that have been victimized by his leaks. Of course what they often fail to reflect on is the fact that the US is a partner with many countries around the world and helps to protect them by sharing intelligence information. There are terrorists in jail in Europe now because of intelligence gathered by the US. Of course some of them do know that but would accept the trade-off of a lot more dead Europeans (or country X) as long as it meant a weaker US.
Dollars to donuts this ends up at -1.... for our freedom .... because part of freedom is that we all have to believe the same thing or be moderated down.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
That it stupid, short sighed and unworkable. You can't un-see goat.se.
Instead, make them SHARE and just learn what you can.
We will have different uses for the data, but its just data, that WE unknowingly paid for.
The last time that happened we got Google Maps. The time before we got the internet.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Talking to yourself again?
Another good example is the political unpopularity of rehabilitation programs for prisoners. They may help to prevent repeat offending, but they also insult people's sense of justice. They want to see the criminals made to suffer - doing anything to help them just feels wrong.
And what good is life if you are not free?
And there hasn't been a police state in history that has remained "innocuous" for very long. As it stands now US Citizens are getting assassinated overseas by presidential order based in large part on signals intelligence. If you buy into the idea that this is a war and these are combatants and the battlefield is the US, then there is no other reason to not do the same on US soil. What about the next president and the one after that? And the one after that? Are they going to be so deliberative and selective about who they decide to kill? Or are they just going to use all this information the good old fashioned way in order to control people? And forget the "elected" leaders... Mid-level bureaucrats usually long outlast the leaders and don't get the cushy university appointments and honorarium that keep the wealthy leaders "honest".
Can we do so physically? With big bulldozers?
Killdozer may still be in a evidence locker somewhere, maybe we can rent out time on it. I know more than a few guys that would love to drive big construction equipment for fun.
Heck we may even be able to recoup some of our national debt. You know, do our part to support Hope and Change!
m
In the immortal words of Socrates, who said; 'I drank what?'
Seriously, what good are freedoms when you're dead?
Yeah, so I guess the army that people worship so much should stop 'fighting for our freedom.' Why do you even live in "the land of the free" if you don't even understand that freedom is more important than security?
If you die while being free, at least you weren't a coward.
Can we seriously not tolerate some innocuous, invisible surveillance that has ZERO EFFECT ON OUR LIVES if it helps our government carry out its constitutional duty to provide for the national defense?
No, intelligent people will not tolerate government thugs spying on their communications and violating their rights, the constitution, and privacy.
What you advocate for is the ability of government to be able to do as it pleases. The hundreds of millions dead throughout history thanks to governments disproves your fantasy view that the people in the government are perfect angels.
And since when do you care about the constitution? Clearly, you don't. You're an unprincipled piece of trash.
Thank you Dave Raggett
> Just make sure they're following the laws, which as the disclosures indicate, they are.
The disclosures indicate that they are NOT following the law. Searches REQUIRE a warrant, per the 4th amendment, and before you say that the Patriot Act changed that, you are going to need to show me where 2/3 of the states ratified the Patriot Act. The NSA surveillance of American Citizens without a warrant obtained by providing probable cause is unconstitutional and should never have been allowed.
> the only people complaining about the NSA are whiny libertarians, such as all the 12-year olds that infest this site ...and the only people who are supporting the NSA surveillance programs are communists...welcome to the U.S.S.A.
Which is really sad since the concept of rehabilitation was really pioneered by American groups, but then the people who helped start the movement were generally voted out of office in favor of 'make them suffer' candidates. So now other countries have learned from what we were doing AND observed the negative impact of moving away from that model and thus produced systems that, from an actual 'reducing crime' perspective are much more effective but which have less emotional satisfaction to them.
Which of course becomes a vicious cycle since an ineffective justice system results in more crime, which means more political pressure to make things worse from victims and scared people.
The perfect solution: Implement NSA Beta. Then they will find themselves unable to do jack shit, and our privacy rights will be safe from them. Problem solved!
LOL
Congress needs to pass legislation removing previously granted powers(then do something else, apparently, to mollify those who are actually scared of terrorists, in this case move those powers to law enforcement).
So to use your terms, Congress needs to pass something to mollify the people scared of NSA?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
The common (arguably flawed) rebuttal to this is that "everyone" includes "people who want to do us harm". That is to say if the NSA were to succeed in making security stronger for "everyone" it would have made security stronger for the bad guys too, potentially allowing the existence of secure communication channels that would empower the "bad guys" to do more harm than they would be able to otherwise.
I just love the thought of the FSB, Mossad, MI5, and just about every other foreign intelligence network on Earth (and those are merely the legal ones) running rampant throughout our country and society without the CIA to check them. Gosh, that'd be so much fun to just lower our guard and take punches! Oh hey, maybe those other nations would be so friendly towards us once we dismantled our intelligence apparatus that they'd willingly leave us alone! And forswear corporate espionage to boot! Dismantle the NSA, yes. Spread it out amongst the other agencies, yes. But don't disarm us completely. The CIA has screwed up a lot, so has the FBI--but they're still good ideas to have in place. We as a society have to reassume the responsibility, and the maturity of overseeing the operations of those two agencies on an appropriate basis.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
The NSA must be completely dismantled and its operations not handed over to any other government department or public/private organisation. The NSA has proven itself and the governmental oversight (cough, cough) to be ineffectual and an abomination to freedom and privacy much less presumed innocence. A dozen hell-fire missiles impacting all NSA facilities in the only solution.
But think of how awkward it would be when the N runs into S or A at the spy conventions. They'd reminisce about the old times of spying on millions of Americans. They'd probably laugh about some guy on deviantart drawing naked women and crying while masturbating. Then N would be like "So, you guys want to get out of here" and the A would be like "N, look, we can't. S and I have a good thing going, you're just too crazy for us, lets just be friends," and N would be like "Sure yeah, no you're right, it's cool." But it won't be cool. N will finish his drink and then leave, all three of them will feel bad. A and S will go home and start getting intimate, but S won't be able to get it up, thinking about how bad N must feel.
You really want to do that to N, S, and A?
Think of the trauma this will cause children when the letters A, N, and S can no longer appear together on Sesame Street.
... I think you've forgotten your schtick. You're the one who's supposed to be like "national security is super important dog". Let's start again:
Well, let's elaborate, shall we...
The you come in and say "But the NSA needs to do this because anyone else wouldn't be able to widely classify and hide their behavior"
In the early 1980's AT&T was broken up into little pieces but the separate parts eventually merged back together again to reform AT&T.
It's like that shape-shifting liquid-metal T-1000 Terminator.
more fragmentation in the government. Taxes will go up and there will be more agencies with various NSA-like powers.
FBI utilizes all the same surveillance tools as the NSA. They hack phones remotely, using the microphone even when the phone is powered off. They use the NSA to access digital communications from all sources from the past. The FBI has SIGINT of its own, including satellites for tracking heart rate, breathe, human movement and brainwaves from space.
Links to all this:
http://www.washingtonsblog.com...
http://www.washingtonsblog.com...
FBI Tim Clemente says they utilize both foreign and domestic tools to access all digital communications, anything from the past, and that no communication is secure, and everything is saved.
Look up FBIs COINTELPRO, the FBI is fucking nuts and doesn't care about our rights any more than the NSA.
http://www.oregonstatehospital...
...how would any of this benefit the global fascist agenda?
No, don't break them up. Redefine their purpose.
The NSA should do what it has been doing, collecting data, both foreign and domestic. But their job should be only to collect it and keep it safe and organized. Make them the gatekeepers of the data. Make them answer to the judicial branch as a data escrow lockbox.
Then, when the FBI wants to hunt down some data, the NSA already has it, and the FBI can query it... with judicial approval (a warrant). When the CIA wants to hunt down data, they can query it... with FISA approval (again, a warrant). And if either the FBI or the CIA wants to run a continuous monitor on the data, then they would need some kind of a "super-warrant".
Beyond the lockbox system, the NSA's other task would be to audit and secure all federal government networks. The network breach at the Navy? The NSA's ass would've been on the line for something like that. And while breaches happen, they should be properly identified, contained, investigated, and fixed. The investigation stage should be in partnership with either the FBI or the CIA (or both), depending on the source(s) of the attack that caused the security breach.
Going further, the ATFE (formerly ATF), DEA, Secret Service, and US Marshals should be part of the FBI, and should not be separate agencies. They just do specific parts of what the FBI does anyway, so make them un-named enforcement divisions within the FBI. Do the same with the remaining DHS minion-agencies (TSA, ICE).
This leaves four enforcement agencies with four distinct and non-overlapping purposes. NSA for data collection, but not any use of that data. FBI for intra-US investigations. CIA for extra-US investigations. And DHS as "Federal Police", doing the spatula-squad thing at the federal level and generally just being enforcer grunts. (Renaming DHS to RSHA is optional, but hilarious. Bonus points if you rename them The Keystone RSHA. Extra bonus points if you can come up with an English-language backronym for RSHA.)
I guess when you get trounced you revert to debating yourself because you have a hard time debating what other people actually say.
While at it, could you point to where Congress authorized the NSA to spy on domestic calls? It isn't in the Patriot Act. From what I can tell its direction from Obama and no where else. Not sure why you think the Republicans will be blamed for what he does, but then again when you are having to debate yourself to make points I guess reality is right out the window.
is to replace obama. If he didn't know what is wrong with choosing clapper to form a panel to reform NSA, then I don't see how he can use any good suggestion from anyone to make any type of changes to the NSA. It would be like re-label NSA instead of changes. It would only end up being like having an annual vulnerability assessment instead of reform.
Sad but nobody will listen to this, there's too much money and political glad handing going on in DC to keep the current status quo in place.
The only way to get rid of the corruption and spying in DC is to get rid of the current bunch of clowns we have in office and to pass meaningful campaign finance reform legislation to eliminate the flow of money from special interests into politics. That goes for both parties.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kelly_%28weapons_expert%29
Death
On the morning of 17 July 2003, Kelly was working as usual at home in Oxfordshire. Media coverage of his public appearance two days before had led many of his friends to send him supportive emails, to which he was responding. One of the emails he sent that day was to New York Times journalist Judith Miller,[20] who had used Kelly as a source in a book on bioterrorism and to whom Kelly had mentioned "many dark actors playing games."[21][22] He also received an email from his superiors at the Ministry of Defence asking for more details of his contacts with journalists.
At about 15:00, Kelly told his wife that he was going for a walk as he did every day. He appears to have gone directly to an area of woodlands known as Harrowdown Hill about a mile away from his home where he ingested up to 29 tablets of painkillers, co-proxamol, an analgesic drug and to have then cut his left wrist with a knife he had owned since his youth.[23] His wife reported him missing shortly after midnight that night, and he was found early the next morning.[24] Questioned on a flight to Hong Kong that day, Blair denied that anyone had been authorised to leak Kelly's identity.[25]
The NSA should do what it has been doing, collecting data, both foreign and domestic. But their job should be only to collect it and keep it safe and organized. Make them the gatekeepers of the data. Make them answer to the judicial branch as a data escrow lockbox.
Having all the data in one place is what invites abuse in the first place.
Trounced by a joke that wasn't really contradictory to my point? Do you not know Cold Fjord's deal?
Shut up you fool.
You have to understand that many people posting and moderating here don't care about your life at all.
There's a difference between not caring about someone's life and not wanting to run screaming and crying into a hermetically-sealed shelter.
Life is dangerous. EVERYONE you know is going to die. Many of them in extremely unpleasant ways. Less pleasant, in fact than what a suicide attack would likely have done to them. You not only cannot be truly safe, you cannot even be sure that an airplane won't crash into your house before you get up tomorrow morning.
Some possibilities are unsound philosophy, ahistorical views (including of the Founders), narcissism, fatuous legal views, ...
Somehow I think that it's not a stretch of the imagination that when we have flags embroidered with "Live Free or Die", records of people saying "Give me Liberty or give me Death", "We must all hang together or we surely must all hang seperately", so forth, and so on that the Founding Fathers did, in fact value freedom more life itself. Otherwise they would have elected to remain vassals of England with the English Army as their protectors. And permitted them to move in and take over any domicile they wanted, interrogate anyone anywhere however they deemed appropriate, and punish in whatever manner their distant lords permitted.
I would not die bravely. I'm a coward and I admit that. But I'm not so much a coward that I want to give up essential liberty for the illusion that I might not die horribly tomorrow or that, for that matter those near and dear to me would not, even as some have already. So while I'm a confessed coward, I still consider myself less a coward than you are.
Breaking up the NSA will force the issues of what data on Americans may be gathered by whom. Prior to the Patriot Act(s), no data on American citizens could be gathered unless authorization was requested through a search warrant. The FISA court has been a clumsy blunt force attempt to circumvent this, and it has relied on _temporary_ wartime provisions from the Patriot Acts. If the Constitution is to survive, the Pat Acts must be rewritten (or better yet, repealed whole). Only then can these lacerations in law heal, and official abuses of intel will end.
Until the Supremes act and Pat Acts "meet their makers", the only way to minimize this abuse of data is rigorous formal legal oversight either at the agency level, where the FBI has to defend WHY it has gathered this data.
Failing that, we have tio rely on oversight where it matters most but is hardest to apply consistenly -- the evidentiary discovery process in each court case where this data or products of its analysis is used. Unflinching feedback like this is necessary since the interior of agencies like the NSA are black.
Like the souls of lazy pols and bureaucrats...
CF seems to not be living up to your stereotype of him. Uh...
The primary example we have of this is the NSA's BULLRUN program, which tries to "insert vulnerabilities into commercial encryption systems, IT systems, networks and endpoint communication devices." This is the worst of the NSA's excesses, because it destroys our trust in the Internet, weakens the security all of us rely on and makes us more vulnerable to attackers worldwide. .... [T]he remainder of the NSA needs to be rebalanced so COMSEC (communications security) has priority over SIGINT (signals intelligence). Instead of working to deliberately weaken security for everyone, the NSA should work to improve security for everyone.'"
In an actual war - which is what the whole DoD is there for - SIGINT is incredibly powerful. Imagine WWII again without cracking the Enigma machines, what would have happened without it is anyone's guess but an oft quoted assessment says it shortened the war by two years. For all we know a more effective sea blockade of the UK could have led to their surrender or the Russians invading all of Europe with the UK/US on the sidelines. If the Germans had known the plans for D-day it would have been a massacre.
Of course their primary target is military communications, but if you couldn't penetrate civilian communcations then really all you'd have to do is to use off-the-shelf components and you'd be secure. Duh. Which is often the poor man's military network anyway, not everybody can afford to design everything new from scratch. China can I guess, but to most it's a huge and costly effort and you could always end up doing some newbie blunders.
Besides, they as most other three letter agencies now seem equally busy trying to find terrorists who obviously aren't running around with military communications gear. And COMSEC is all but useless against terrorists, they don't care what we talk about as long as they can plan how to blow us up in private. Which is why I believe that no matter how much bullshit they feed to the press behind the scenes it's going to be "Carry on, but don't get caught again!"
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
everywhere. i see why everyone hates the beta
Why the heck would anyone trust the FBI more than the NSA? The FBI has some ugly and illegal activities in its history. Not to mention that Hoover was a serious nut case. We are talking about an agency that had a fat, old, gay man, in the closet while married, who liked to dress as a female ballarina and spin about. And Hoover did not mind having a hand in certain assassinations either.
This is where the Free and Open source community can assist.
1. By having free (as in GPL licensed) cryptographically secure psudorandom number generators that all can use to help secure their communications.
2. Also having Free and Open source encryption algorithms (like twofish) get both global deployments and acceptance will help.
3. Lastly, and this is the hardest part, having Users become comfortable with securing their communications by using the above 1 and 2 on all their sensitive communications, including phones.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
You do not want the FBI having the power to warrentless wiretap. It may sound like its making jurisdictions match, but now the mission doesn't! NSA is all about national security. Not law enforcement. This is fundamentally why you shouldn't care that the NSA might be listening. They aern't using it to see if you're a chronic speeder, mafia member, or worse. No, they're interested in one thing and one thing only. Are you potentially a terrorist. Nope? Then you are ignored for sure. Get the FBI involved in this though, and suddenly you may find them building a list of all the medical marijuana users (Which I wouldn't be opposed to since I don't believe in that, but many do) because the fed still hasn't legalized such, even if you're in california, colorado, washington, etc, you are still breaking a federal law using that substance. Still want the FBI to have the surveilance capabilities? No, DOD is where that particular aspect belongs, and makes sense. Its precisely why it is NOT a police state issue. The DOD has no ability to prosecute you for anything. DOJ/FBI on the other hand does.
Scale it back if you will, break it up if you will, but in this case, and I realize its a very limited case, Schneir is wrong, and would make htings much much worse.
Are you sure that it's got nothing to do with the fact that about half of US nitrogen is imported, and that using nitrogen for execution might prevent certain trade partners from being able to continue legally exporting nitrogen to us, which could have catastrophic consequences for US agriculture?
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Pardon me, but I'm going to go with the man who is well-known for his integrity, intellect, guts to write under his own real name, Johnny.
Even if you did actually serve, I'm still not convinced to defer to you over the right-honorable Mister Schneier.
Proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free^H^H^H^H^H our prisoners are tortured and our robber-barons run free.
Why doesn't slashdot support any of the strikeout tags?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Which we hope one day will require a warrant.
There is probably no possibility that the NSA would be required to have a warrant, but I like to think the law enforcement aspect of the FBI makes it least somewhat plausible that a future court will start demanding it of them.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Which organization should have the top priority to protect the US from future terrorist attacks?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Look, sometimes you have to realize a rogue agency is actively destroying the US economy and destroying our Constitutional Freedoms and just plain get rid of it.
That time is now.
Kill it with Fire.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Why do we need the CIA, NSA, and the FBI? There must be some overlap there.
"The NSA should work to improve security for everyone"
I'm pretty sure, we know a long list of people whose security shouldn't be a goal.
Lets see: pedophiles, terrorists, drug dealers...
On the other hand, i agree that NSA should rather work on strengthening the security of "good people" instead of breaking it for everyone.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
(And it's perfectly fine for the NSA to wiretap foreigners, because fuck-em.)
The great thing is it also OK for my country to wiretap foreigners such as Americans (who were nice enough to give lots of help and advice from their intelligence agencies) and now we can trade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Well there is a secret patriot act, and the NARUS system is public knowledge due to the Room 641a debacle.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroo...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
And Narus partners had some major funding from InQtel who is the CIA...LOLz...obvious much ???
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
This all makes sense if you brush up on your kissinger quotes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K...
Alot of ppl don't realize this has been going on for a long while even to the
point of puppeteering the media.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...
Orwell,Quigley, and Huxley were prophets...
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Yes. Thank you. I know.
Not completely, but I suspect not. I really doubt the US imports much gaseous nitrogen, and it would be hard to argue that theoretical potential feedstock for the process should be restricted - we don't have bans on the chemical precursors for the drugs used in lethal injections after all, much less on things that could potentialy be used as precursors but aren't. And gaseous nitrogen is already ubiquitous, there's absolutely no reason to involve any imported materials when all we need to do is remove the highly reactive oxygen already present. It might not be quite as cheap, but if it avoids
Besides, it's not like the nitrogen is being used to kill them, it's completely harmless. It's just a merciful addition that allows them to continue to breathe comfortably while they suffocate, making the process much faster and less unpleasant. Any other inert gas would do the same. Hell, since we presumably don't care about long-term health effects it doesn't even need to be inert, just non-oxygenated and otherwise as pleasant to breathe as we desire.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Think Terrance Yeakey, Michael Hastings, Ken Saro Wiwa...
http://www.okcbombing.net/News...
http://nymag.com/news/features...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I could put a MUCH longer list here, but if ppl REALLY cared something
would have been done years ago...
We like to whine, but that is about it.
In the meantime Orwell's nightmare is on schedule.
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
U.S. nitrogen and potash supplies largely depend on imports. More than 50 percent of nitrogen (N) and 85 percent of potash (K2O) supply was from imports in the U.S. in fertilizer year (July 1 to June 30) 2011 (the latest full year of production data available).
Citation
Now, I realize that this is in the context of fertilizers, but that's all I could find, and I'd imagine that we use nitrogen for fertilizer more than anything else. Anyway, I was only suggesting this because of the recent story on slashdot about propofol and sodium thiopental and the EU's restrictions on exporting stuff that's used to kill humans. Presumably, sodium thiopental, a sedative, isn't actually what kills you, yet the EU won't send us any more because it's involved in lethal injections. Who knows how they'd see asphyxiation via nitrogen. Who knows if we even import nitrogen from EU. Just some food for thought.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Spoken like a paid government blogger.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroo...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11...
Its ok, its the same reason the puppets on the potomac do what they are told.
you guys are just getting a little obvious now.
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
I disagree.
I think this is a slippery slope issue.
After all, we'd all be perfectly safe if locked in boxes.
So, I'm willing to accept casualties in the name of freedom. Specifically, myself.
I truly to believe, long term, this sort of freedom would server to minimize the ability of terrorists.
So we disagree.
Yeah, but gaseous nitrogen is useless as a fertilizer, it needs to be "fixed" into some other biologically accessible, nitrogen-rich compound that will remain in the soil. And such compounds are not really suitable for breathing, and a rather inefficient way to get gaseous nitrogen considering it's already ubiquitous.
As for the sedatives - actually as a rule an overdose of sedatives (such as given in lethal injections or "putting down" animals) will in fact kill you. That's why anesthesiologists need to be specially trained - too much sedative, you die. Too little sedative you wake up, start thrashing around in agony on the operating table, and probably die. It's a balancing act where you suppress the nervous system far enough that the patient loses consciousness without pushing things so far that they die or spend the rest of their life in a coma.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
You know that most of the atmosphere is N2, right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth
Am I missing a joke here?
I think breaking up the USA would be better....
And to bypass all your nifty security they decided to hack the firmware.
http://www.extremetech.com/com...
Don't blame the chinese, they were just paid to put it there...by you can guess who...
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Yeah. Exactly. This.
Tit for tat.
That's what I thought, but they specifically said "nitrogen (N)", suggesting that we're importing monatomic nitrogen somehow, not a nitrogen-bearing compound. I'm no chemist.
Also, if the sodium thiopental was the thing in lethal injections that kills you, I'd have to wonder why there's all sorts of other crap thrown in the mix. I was under the impression that they only gave you enough sodium thiopental to knock you out, followed by the truly nasty shit that kills you dead (without you being awake enough to scream in pain).
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
See citation provided in thread.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Schnier is so obsessed with his own ego and trying to convince the world he is relevant. Shut the fuck up about things you truly don't know the first thing about. Goddamn idiot
ALL wholesale surveillance programs (including Echelon, cellphone monitoring, SMS monitoring, email monitoring and anything else) should be ended. Only people and organizations who are considered threats should be able to be spied on and only after showing an independent judge why that person or organization is a threat.
ALL attempts to gain access to computers or networks belonging to people who aren't threats (e.g. access to Google systems) should cease and any data required should only be available after going to the judge mentioned in #1
ALL attempts to insert backdoors into software, weaken cryptography, keep vulnerabilities secret or otherwise weaken computer security should cease. And all previous efforts along those lines should be disclosed so people can switch away from systems that are globally vulnerable. This also includes any instances where the NSA has asked for/obtained encryption keys or other global things that would let them target more than just the one individual of interest.
The only acceptable methods of intelligence gathering should be A.Going to an entity (cellphone provider, internet company, email provider or whatever) with a warrant and asking for data on specific targeted individuals or organizations or B.Using targeted attacks (again with a warrant) to target a specific individual or organization (e.g. all of the targeted programs Bruce has been talking about on his blog)
Attacks that involve compromising security more generally in order to get at the specific individual of interest should be prohibited (e.g. attacks that involve using fake SSL certificates)
Film at 11
Well, we're definitely not importing monoatomic nitrogen - it would rapidly become diatomic nitrogen gas and produce a potentially explosive amount of heat in the process. Plus transporting gasses is horribly inefficient - the pressure tanks tend to weigh far more than their contents. When discussing fertilizers, as with pharmaceuticals, it's common to only mention the "active ingredients", even if they only account for a small percentage of the mass. There's lots of different nitrogen fertilizers, from guano to ammonia to various synthetics. You mostly don't care how the nitrogen so fixed, so long as it stays put until plants absorb it, and doesn't cause other soil issues (for example ammonia, IIRC, can only be used in very low concentrations before it starts killing important soil biota.)
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Traditionally, spies did their job at their own risk. If they were discovered, well, smiert spionam!
davecb@spamcop.net
I was curious and asked the linux bios folks, who noted that they made sure they could checksum their eproms, and that the chromebooks had hardware that made it easy. It's harder on very constrained devices like phones.
davecb@spamcop.net
Dang a month ago I made a submission related to Bruce meeting with Congress and asking if Bruce Schneier will save us from the NSA - not one person on /. bit on it.
http://beta.slashdot.org/submi...
Now at least I can answer my own question... YES!!!!
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
The NSA can notify whoever they want to as long as there is a public process for it. However, they should stay the hell away from that for the most part because they are a branch of the United States military and it's fucking retarded and treasonous to use military force against its own society.
This is the whole reason we have rules of evidence. We intentionally restrain the investigative branches of our civil justice system, because few citizen can entirely avoid lawbreaking, even aside from cases of civil disobedience. We also restrain these bodies because their consequences are often swift and terrible, and the mere association with crime, the suspicion only of guilt, can be enough to end a man's reputation and career. Laxity in evidentiary procedure is not really a problem we need to have. You also have a right to all the evidence used against you, specifically so that you can challenge it. Secret evidence is a hallmark of the Star Chamber, not the US Justice System.
The bigger issue though is the military nature of this investigative body. I'm sure that to some degree we are justly hoist on our own petard for our treatment of our allies, but freedom from military action is a right of all citizens. Where concerns our martial foes, we have far fewer legal restrictions on actions. War is not civil. War is Hell. We do not bring Hell home, and we do not visit arms against the shores that bore them. If we are not to raise arms ourselves against this treason, then let justice come swiftly.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Actually, it has its roots in the Patriot Act - Congress allowed the NSA to spy on foreign to domestic calls, whereas before the Patriot Act they were not allowed to operate at all on US soil and had to defer all domestic spying to the FBI (as it should be).
The problem is, they took a 1970s court case where the FBI used call metadata (i.e. a list of phone numbers) called by a known criminal who had repeatedly been convicted of threatening young women and making terroristic threats to get a warrant to tap the criminal's phone line when he was making terroristic threats to yet another young woman. The FBI then got a warrant and tapped his line and he was busted calling and threatening this young woman. He then sued the FBI because they hadn't gotten a warrant to get the metadata in the first place, but the court threw it out, so the NSA uses that as justification that they can collect all phone metadata from all US citizens. The tiny problem is the NSA isn't supposed to spy on Americans by law, they're supposed to defer that to the FBI. If I recall correctly, the FBI usually requires a warrant to even collect metadata, but that case was an exception since a person's life was in danger and they had a suspect.
Xenophobic as ever. It couldn't possibly be that the people with mod points find the level of spying excessive, could it? Just like many find the tenacity with which you defend everything the NSA does excessive. Seriously man, why do you even bother after butting heads with /. on this issue for so many months?
"Xenophobic"? Hardly. But I'm interested as to why you think so. Is it because I notice the people on Slashdot that state that they hope the US is brought down, or destroyed, or otherwise weakened?
I don't recall that -1 Disagree was an option. Are you sure you understand the role of the moderator? In the past far too much negative moderation has been based on facts contradicting political ideology, with the facts losing the contest.
I don't defend everything the NSA does, I simply point out the facts. Many people make false claims about the law, current events, terrorism, national security, the founding of the country, and the role of intelligence in defending a free society. That something legal is also disagreeable seldom changes its legality. Denying the existence of a fact does not change it. Intelligence agencies can pose a potential danger to a free society, but that is not the same as genuine current oppression.
The truth is the truth, the facts are the facts. They don't change based on their popularity. Do even 10,000 people claiming a lie is true change it from a lie to the truth?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Do even 10,000 people claiming a lie is true change it from a lie to the truth?
The good folks at Fox News seem to think so.
Those are seriously out of order. We can live with a bit of crime. Our economy pretty much fails if China diverts all our trade secrets to Chinese companies.
To the extent that "cyber-based attacks" is espionage, it moves up as well.
Civilanize the NSA. There is no good reason for security&intelligence to be connected directly with the military which should be a client not a driver. Put a civilian in charge of it with a legal and non-political background. Have a permanent appointed civilian oversight board. No generals, no politicians and no police commissioners.
So militarizing and converting the responsibilities of a responsible code-breaking organization into investigative police work? No. You need oversight in the form of an agency that does not also have within its capability the power to also act in a justice or military capacity on the information it collects.
Nitrogen constitutes over 70% of the air (even in the United States!) and is not difficult to separate from oxygen.
Experience has shown that cell division is just a precursor to further growth.
How about we go back to having an unambiguously named War Department which is in recess whenever there is not war (which should be most of the time), and abolish the rest of the agencies that are determined to make enemies of everyone possible? Policing the people should be a matter for the states anyway.
Pirates are driven by profit, and as a rule they do not attack military vessels, nor do they attempt to destroy their target except in self defense. There's very rarely any profit in such actions unless they have been commissioned by a government, in which case they are acting as privateers, not pirates. Attacks against military targets are pretty self-evidently military attacks intended to damage military capability, regardless of whether they are carried out by soldiers or privateers. Attacks against civilians are acts of terror intended to cow the populace. The difference in target and intent is what distinguishes an act of terrorism from an act of war, not the uniform worn by the attacker.
Come to think of it, that paints a lot of our soldiers actions in the middle east and elsewhere in a *really* bad light. I can see why some interests would be *very* motivated to define terrorists by the uniform they (don't) wear.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.