Slashdot Mirror
NSA Hack of N. Korea Convinced Obama NK Was Behind Sony Hack
Mike Lape links to a NYTimes piece which says "The evidence gathered by the 'early warning radar' of software painstakingly hidden to monitor North Korea's activities proved critical in persuading President Obama to accuse the government of Kim Jong-un of ordering the Sony attack, according to the officials and experts, who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the classified N.S.A. operation." From the linked article:
For about a decade, the United States has implanted “beacons,” which can map a computer network, along with surveillance software and occasionally even destructive malware in the computer systems of foreign adversaries. The government spends billions of dollars on the technology, which was crucial to the American and Israeli attacks on Iran’s nuclear program, and documents previously disclosed by Edward J. Snowden, the former security agency contractor, demonstrated how widely they have been deployed against China. ... The extensive American penetration of the North Korean system also raises questions about why the United States was not able to alert Sony as the attacks took shape last fall, even though the North had warned, as early as June, that the release of the movie “The Interview,” a crude comedy about a C.I.A. plot to assassinate the North’s leader, would be “an act of war.”
So, the US says North Korea attacked Sony. And the US knows this because it attacked North Korea years ago ...
Thank god people know now that the threat is North Korea hacking a movie company. This way, they can be freedom fighters just by watching a mildly funny movie with Mr. Rogen and Mr. Franco, which is both fun and easy.
Otherwise, they would have to assume that the threat to their freedom is more like a court approving a single warrant on the telecomm data of more than a million people. Or the CIA spying on the institution that is supposed to supervise them. Fighting these would be much less fun and easy, maybe even dangerous.
There's nothing they could do or say that would convince the Slashdot crowd that it really was North Korea behind the attack. North Korea could reveal exactly how it did it and Slashdot would still tinfoil hat this into a conspiracy.
...
Cue the "false flags" bullshit comments or talk about how one of the DPRK's 1024 IP addresses was hacked by someone else to use as an attack vector from the United States. This whole readership should really just cough up its computer networks card right about now
1. This is another "45 minute" claim of the sort that provided pretext for the Iraq war, isn't it? It might be true, or it might be misleading but have an element of truth, or it might be utter fiction. An intelligence agency is an agency of state security, and "state security" means working on behalf of state interests, and state interests tend not to coincide with the people's interests.
2. It might then be in the interests of the state to let the attack happen, so it can be used as an excuse to further state interests.
3. I don't know why people are getting their panties twisted about NK's typically sabre-rattling reaction, which we all know is 1 part "I'm a maniacal dictator" and 1 part "goad the Americans into reacting so we can use their reaction as internal propaganda proving them to be an on-going threat that necessitates our regime". How would the West feel about the release of a popular film in which the assassination of a living head of state is planned? How would your government behave toward you if YOU wrote a book / published a film / performed a play about this?
This isn't even about convincing the American public to support the NSA. It's about giving politicians talking points to justify the support they intend to continue to give.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
I will never believe anything a US government ever says, because they showed in the past that they can not be trusted and that this does not change with whatever party is in charge right now. It is just lies that come out of every official PR persons mouth. Without hard facts to back it up everything they say must be considered not true.
Snowden warns us that we're being spied on and that the grip the NSA has on the whole Internet goes far beyond what even the most paranoid had imagined and the US government answer is: espionage prosecution, international warrant etc.
Compare with: Unnamed NSA official, no doubt with the blessing of his bosses, anonymously reveals the same kind of information about NSA spying - but this time because it is convenient for the administration and it fits into their political agenda, there won't be any legal consequences, prosecutions etc., absolutely nothing will happen, we all know it - and even worse - we all passively accept it.
Laws are being selectively enforced by the government; there are no actually classified documents. There are "things the government wants you to know", those can be leaked and released on demand by "unnamed officials" - screw the legality of it - and there are "things the government doesn't want you to know", and anyone revealing those things will be spied on, harassed and prosecuted (James Risen? Laura Poitras?), it doesn’t matter that the people writing about those are journalists who have no duty of any kind towards the US government, they’re just doing their job.
If the administration has proof of North Korean involvement, they can present it to try to convince the American public... but wait, no they can’t. They can't do that because the evidence they have comes from the NSA exploiting and hacking systems all over the internet. "Yes, your honor, I saw it all, it was the North Koreans who painted that graffiti. How do I know? I was there that night, burying a few bodies in the empty lot next door".
The NSA giving actual proof of NK involvement is equivalent to them coming forward and admitting what they are: a threat far more dangerous for the security of the Internet than anything North Korea will ever be capable of.