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Snowden: NSA Spied On Human Rights Workers
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: "The Guardian reports that according to Edward Snowden, the NSA has spied on the staff of prominent human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. 'The NSA has specifically targeted either leaders or staff members in a number of civil and non-governmental organizations including domestically within the borders of the United States.' Snowden, addressing the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, said he did not believe the NSA was engaged in 'nightmare scenarios,' such as the active compilation of a list of homosexuals 'to round them up and send them into camps.' But he did say that the infrastructure allowing this to happen had been built.
Snowden made clear that he believed in legitimate intelligence operations but said the NSA should abandon its electronic surveillance of entire civilian populations. Instead, Snowden said, it should go back to the traditional model of eavesdropping against specific targets, such as 'North Korea, terrorists, cyber-actors, or anyone else.' Snowden also urged members of the Council of Europe to encrypt their personal communications and said that encryption, used properly, could still withstand 'brute force attacks' from powerful spy agencies and others. 'Properly implemented algorithms backed up by truly random keys of significant length all require more energy to decrypt than exists in the universe.'"
Snowden made clear that he believed in legitimate intelligence operations but said the NSA should abandon its electronic surveillance of entire civilian populations. Instead, Snowden said, it should go back to the traditional model of eavesdropping against specific targets, such as 'North Korea, terrorists, cyber-actors, or anyone else.' Snowden also urged members of the Council of Europe to encrypt their personal communications and said that encryption, used properly, could still withstand 'brute force attacks' from powerful spy agencies and others. 'Properly implemented algorithms backed up by truly random keys of significant length all require more energy to decrypt than exists in the universe.'"
Do you think that the reason barricades have not been stormed and every congressperson is not running scared from all responsibility, knowledge etc is because it's another thing with a computer in it so the brain has dropped out of the ear? Same thing as public service spending billions on a solution that boils down to a 286 with a whole lot of workarounds. People stop thinking as soon as "with a computer" is in the sentence? I don't know, I can't fathom it I'm wildly advancing theories to explain how the USA achieved the USSR's wet dream of surveillance and it has less impact on policy than if a pop star got naked on prime time television.
Snowden says NSA spied on everyone.
Even if he doesn't say it, assume so.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Does that dickhead talk as if he is forgiven for being a spy himself and the worst kind of spy at that? The kind that turns in his comrades and runs like hell to America's enemies for asylum..
Snowden, addressing the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, said he did not believe the NSA was engaged in 'nightmare scenarios,' such as the active compilation of a list of homosexuals 'to round them up and send them into camps.
They're not camps, they're called festivals.
But he did say that the infrastructure allowing this to happen had been built
By IBM! /insert ww2 corporate references
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
Future generations will scarcely believe that we were here now, watching the footing for their prison be poured, and we did nothing.
Scientists are a bit naive
Physics has been doing that kind of thing back during the big bang.
The fact that it's coming out now doesn't change that basic fact.
We're humans, not gods.
We were doing this kind of thing back during Reagan.
Actually, long before Reagan.
We're serfs, not citizens.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
I can't really speak to the period before Reagan, I'm only aware of the stuff during Reagan myself.
My point, though, is that we've never actually abided by the US Constitution, but that we should.
And if that involves jail terms for those in charge, so be it.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
" Instead, Snowden said, it should go back to the traditional model of eavesdropping against specific targets"
They never just did that. sheesh.
SIGINT.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"We're serfs, not citizens."
said byt people who have no clue what a serf was, or it's class order.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
And French intelligence bombed the Rainbow Warrior. Precisely what is so surprising about the NSA spying on political radicals? It's not like every nation state with even a half-baked intelligence apparatus hasn't been doing that for at least 60 years now. God help Snowden if this is the best dirt he has left on the NSA because it's only a matter of time before US intelligence loses all fear of killing him or the Russians grow bored with him and classify him as a loose end.
At this point it might be easier to find the few people/groups/companies/governments the NSA is not spying on.
The sun rose in the east, the sun set in the west, and a whiny-pants fugitive hiding out in Putin-land continues to cry for attention. There will be no film at 11.
I fall into that category. In fact, I'm quite proud to be part of the white noise NSA has to filter out to get at the good stuff - as long as my only foibles are those which NSA doesn't really care about, that is...
Okay, Slashdot. Pop quiz time. Today's topic is... security! Three questions; no time limit.
First question: If you are a party interested in having operatives harm another nation, what is the best way to travel between your countries? Your choices are a local grocer, a privately-owned yacht, or an airline flight that someone else has paid for?
Second question: Once your operative arrives in your target country, how will you maintain control over them and support their mission? Will you have them set up a clandestine infrastructure, or use a pre-existing organization?
Third question: What kind of association would arouse the least suspicion when traveling to and from your home country? A large corporation, a religious faction, or an international charity?
And a bonus round, for extra credit: Of the associations in the third question, which would spur the most outrage if your target country's government were to investigate your activities?
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
They're the guys on the beaches, right? With those boards?
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
never owned a phone, or used one for that matter. No electronic traces whatsoever, outside of geneology sites (even then, doubtful).
The chair for this guy when he's caught.
He handed over all he had in one swoop, a long time ago: It's been out of his hands last summer, you ignorant motherfucker.
Also, while you're imagining, also imagine how much work it is to sift through all that material, and that even if it wasn't, publishing everything at once means most of it would get next to no importance. Also notice how there is much more money in apathy/compliance than tinfoil hats, and that NOT reporting on this stuff, or misrepresenting it, is often enough also agenda driven. You act as if the infrastructure for mass surveillance on civilians didn't buy a private jet or ten? Hah.
It's not just people who want power who would care: it's also anyone interested in resisting power instead of being an accomplice. Ever heard of The White Rose? Sure they didn't last long, but it was still better than being arrested by their own typewriters. And that you personally cannot imagine that money is not the single most important factor to anyone says a lot more about you than about the state of the world, or the people in it. Stop projecting, and stop trolling a discussion you don't know the first fucking thing about.
First, future generations may find of historical interest all those NSA records. Just think of all the data historians in 100 years (if humanity still exists) will be able to use for PhDs! And I'm only half joking about that.
The deeper issue relating to "prison" is more, is what we are doing effective? With a huge relative-to-population real prison and parole population in the USA, with vast numbers of people living in relative poverty, with thousands of nukes ready to destroy the world as we know it in a few minutes and related anxiety, with schools increasingly like prisons, and so on, one might argue the USA has already become its own anxiety-provoking prison for all too much of its population. Perhaps that's one reason for the US drug war -- while the Soviet Union had to guard its borders from escapees, the USA has to guard its medicine cabinets from escapees? (See also Wikpedia on "Rat Park".) There used to be a time when people in the USA aspired to more than that, and in that sense the USA is rapidly heading into a "Dark Age". From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
"Dark Age Ahead is a 2004 book by Jane Jacobs describing what she sees as the decay of five key "pillars" in North America: community and family, higher education, science and technology, taxes and government responsive to citizen's needs, and self-policing by the learned professions. She argues that this decay threatens to create a dark age unless the trends are reversed. Jacobs characterizes a dark age as a "mass amnesia" where even the memory of what was lost is lost."
I agree that pervasive one-way surveillance in a society shifts the balance of power, which is the reasons for US constitutional protections relating to search and seizure of documents. One can contrast that with David Brin's two-way "Transparent Society" idea, or Marshall Brain's similar suggestions in "Manna". Historically humans living in tight-knit tribal villages may have not had much privacy from each other in many ways, so our very conception of privacy via anonymity and hidden transactions or hidden records may be a new thing. In any case, these are somewhat different times from 100,000 BC or 1776 AD given cheap storage, cheap sensing, and cheap search. There also the unreliability of cryptographic systems in practice (OpenSSL bugs, spear phishing, MITM, key loggers, evil upgrades, provider compromise, and so on), so depending on encryption seems problematical, assuming hiding information really had social value in general in social movements. I'm not saying privacy is evil; I'm just suggesting that depending on privacy in a social movement is probably foolish at the very least for practical reasons. Beyond practicalities, I feel the way forward has more to do with popularizing good ideas (like about the potential for abundance for all such as by a "basic income") rather than trying to hide plans of whatever sorts from prying eyes. In the USA and many other countries we have hard-won democratic freedoms like freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. I feel it is best to use those freedoms to build something better, even knowing such efforts for change will be under constant public scrutiny. The problem is of course that building something better is hard work filled with a lot of uncertainty, including from resistance put up by those with a powerful position in the status quo or those who aspire to such a position. See also, on "Security: Crypto Imagination vs. Reality":
http://xkcd.com/538/
There is a scene near the end of James P. Hogan's "Voyage From Yesteryear" where a soldier makes a silent plea for sanity with another soldier at a command post by how the soldier moves and carries his equipment, and that is something to think about. What signals do we send others when we focus on encryption as a way to security rather than focusing on broad social and material uplift? I'm not saying there is not conflict there, just that we can look to a parallel ar
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
And we now have a pretty good idea of who it believes its enemy to be.
By "radical", you mean "anyone to the left of Dick Cheney", right? Were you an FBI sniper all hot and bothered that he didn't get to go around shooting OWS protestors in the head, or something?
More to the point, if anyone had said that the NSA had a "full take" surveillance dragnet on every network on the planet it had access to BEFORE Snowden came along, you would have been sneering at them to sit next to the 911 Truthers.
They are for human rights. Duh.
It's an intelligence agency, it spies on people. The only thing to discuss is whether it is allowed to spy on American citizens. Everyone else is fair game AFAIC
did you forget to take your meds?
Where's the morons that are going to spout, "That's their job! They are supposed to spy on the enemies of the US! And clearly gays are terrorists!"
It's the NSA's fucking job to spy on those people. Let me give you a hint; "human rights workers" are all there for a specific reason, and it's generally regime change. Ours, theirs, everyone's. It's the NSA's fucking job to spy on them.
I fall into that category. In fact, I'm quite proud to be part of the white noise NSA has to filter out to get at the good stuff - as long as my only foibles are those which NSA doesn't really care about, that is...
... and as long as that never changes in the future, and nothing you do today that is considered harmless enough is later perceived to be suspicious.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Snowden has been "saying" a lot of stuff lately, but I haven't seen many new reams of documents being posted. I find it hard to believe, even if such things have been discussed at a high governmental level, that there is any official documentation of the NSA planning to round up and imprison homosexuals. That's the kind of shit you just don't make record of.
Look, we know Snowden is a liar -- he publicly admitted that he falsified his employment data to get access to classified information, fully intending to release said information, the contents of which he could not have, at the time, known. He's since shopped that information amongst such bastions of freedom as Cuba, Venezuela, China, and Russia. His credibility is pretty much bunk to anyone with even an ounce of honesty and perspective... so, why are so many people still listening to him?
I'm not taking a side on the greater question, but it is **typical** for successful criminal operations to use non-profits as front organizations
Investigating a non-profit **could** be justified, given a proper warrant with evidence of course.
Thank you Dave Raggett
X = any government agency with spy operations
Y = any entity or group that uses technology to communicate
I'm not trying to start discussions on all aspects of Snowden...but I do definitely see a streeeetching of this story for maximum clicks by the likes of The Guardian.
Maybe that's the reason for "outrage fatigue" mentioned by another poster above....the media has commercialized the information now
Thank you Dave Raggett
and we, us who vote, can change it
we can vote for politicians who favor accountability and if none are running we can organize and lobby to make it an issue
you use the same faulty logic as the "privacy is dead" people use and it kills our industry.
you're abdicating your power, agency, and responsibilty then claiming that **your** choices represent "how things are"
i'm not a serf...and neither is anyone reading this...at least we can **choose** to work to change
Thank you Dave Raggett
Let's see what he brings home.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
PS: Even if he was tried and found guilty of every charge leveled against him, since we are not legally in a state of war, not having a set of articles of war signed by the president, and ratified by congress, there is no death penalty available for purported acts of treason.
PPS: Federal executions are carried out by lethal injection. Of the 3 federal executions carried out since 1963, all three - Timothy McVeigh, Juan Raul Garza, and Louis Jones, Jr., were all killed by lethal injection.
The above poster probably already knows that but is trying to build up some fiction to convince people that Snowden is out there doing a new act of treason every day and must be stopped. Meanwhile the people that are betraying the people for the sake of some of their leaders but not others (see the example of lying to congress) are doing treason daily. They are supporting the tradition of King George while Snowden is acting in a way that would make George Washington proud.
Have you seen Terry Gilliam's "Brazil"?
Now we know where all the 'Dark Energy' in the universe went, the NSA is using it to break encryption.
They don't cherry pick, they vacuum up every bit of data they can find, on every single human being they can find. This is their job.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
The depth and breadth of the criminality at the heart of the US regime is quite breathtaking.
It is difficult for outsiders to understand why there don't seem to be mass arrests and trials of those responsible, and particularly those members of the ruling regime, who authorised these crimes.
I would ask for an American viewpoint on the subject, but given that many Americans seem to spend their life in an insular world of corporate/state propaganda, it is not really worth the effort.
While it is quite clear that US democracy ceased to function a long time ago, even the corporate totalitarian regime of today, still appears to be subject to the occasional reactionary jerk in favour of the ordinary worker.
NSA does not even have to tap on those "human rights" activists, they are more than often willingly contributing to NSA's arsenal of knowledge ...
In fact, it was the "Human Right Watch" which published Mr. Snowden's secret email address, leading into the shut down of the operator which offered the totally encrypted email service.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Snowden made clear that he believed in legitimate intelligence operations
Yes, but he also believes that he should divulge the details of those operations to foreign governments as well. Or maybe it's just the Russians and others who run "legitimate" operations?
The horse is a little too far out of the barn to try to recast himself, but I'm sure there are plenty of tools here who will have some half-baked explanation as to how this is all consistent.
One of the tools of the psychohistory discipline is a 'fantasy analysis' where you take out positive and negative adjectives and simply rely on verbs and nouns to reveal the thoughscape of the writer/speaker.
When someone says 'We're not going to war, we are not killing women and children' it means that they are actually thinking about war and killing women and children.
When I see 'We're not making up Nightmare Scenarios' I get REALLY scared because now I think the NSA also has a list of every type of minority and a scenario to eliminate them.
Who didn't the NSA spy on?
Just to list whom the NSA hasn't spied on, the list would be much shorter.
Human rights workers are pretty evil. Have you ever dealt with food stamp workers?