Snowdon is a dummy

@JPB,

oh, still, we are trying combat terrorism by tracking down terrorism and this one seem to me a legitimate tool to use. I don't see it as a privacy issue.

2 Replies

@JPB,

JPB wrote:

Why, because it's based in the Middle East? They're capturing civilian communications within the ME and claiming that it's necessary to prevent subversive attacks. That's the same thing the NSA says about American communications.

And that's how the NSA gets most of our German (and other continental) data as well, it is thought.

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@revelette,

revelette wrote:

oh, still, we are trying combat terrorism by tracking down terrorism and this one seem to me a legitimate tool to use. I don't see it as a privacy issue.

Well, that's the modern kind of spying: no need to bribe someone at the telephone exchange, no need of bringing own personal in life-threatening danger etc etc

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@revelette,

Quote:

Now that I think is just plain irresponsible to publish and for Snowden to have leaked.

Why do you think that the terrorists were not assuming that the western governments are not monitoring internet traffic before those leaks?

It would however be nice that the very people paying for these programs to know the degree that their own government are spying on them for reasons that seems to have little connection to fighting terrorism.

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@revelette,

revelette wrote:

I don't see it as a privacy issue.

You've lost me. How is capturing the private communications of everyone in the Middle East not a privacy issue?

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@revelette,

revelette wrote:

Now that I think is just plain irresponsible to publish and for Snowden to have leaked.

I can imagine that it really is from the patriotic US-American viewpoint.

I remember that I had got a book in 70's, where (nearly) all missile stations in Germany were listed - something, the US didn't like then either.

Those (possible) points where the USA (NSA) gets the data from German cables have been published as well as there has been a discussion about it since years.

It might not be an US-privacy which is harmed, but outside the USA and for non-US-citizens, there's privacy as well!

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@Walter Hinteler,

So all spying should just be done away with because in the process of it, we might be spying on innocent people? That might seem hyperbolic but it seems to me the end of the matter to what you all are saying.

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@Walter Hinteler,

Quote:

It might not be an US-privacy which is harmed, but outside the USA and for non-US-citizens, there's privacy as well!

With the internet you can never predict how your traffic will be routed and even when the two points are within the US the packets could end up touring the planet including underwater cables.

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@revelette,

revelette wrote:

Now that I think is just plain irresponsible to publish and for Snowden to have leaked.

But apparently he didn't. Snowden has denied that he ever released any information to the Independent and that the story's claims that this is from his leaks is false.

1 Reply

@revelette,

Quote:

So all spying should just be done away with because in the process of it, we might be spying on innocent people?

So the bulk of the billions of people on earth that used the net should be spy on in the hope that a few terrorists are sending useful information in the clear?

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@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

I remember that I had got a book in 70's, where (nearly) all missile stations in Germany were listed - something, the US didn't like then either.

For a long time GCHQ wasn't on the map. Even today there's no road signs for Aldershot until you're about a mile out.

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@engineer,

No telling by now who has all that information and who leaked what to whom.

1 Reply

@revelette,

Quite a lot has been speculated since years, e.g. all those submarine cables are known http://www.submarinecablemap.com/ as are no confirmed details about the USS Jimmy Carter. Wink

From a 2005 report in defense.org:

Quote:

The rumors are that the Navy’s newest nuclear sub, the USS Jimmy Carter, has been designed for spywork, with a “special capability… to tap undersea cables and eavesdrop on the communications passing through them,” according to the AP.The rumors are right, Military.com’s undersea warfare experts believe.

1 Reply

@JPB,

I remember right after 9/11 everyone was saying how we didn't connect the dots. I also remember the Iraq war debate and everyone was saying that instead of wars we should track down terrorist. If we don't use surveillance tools, how are we supposed to do that logistically?

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@revelette,

It's not that we didn't have the dots, we didn't connect them. More dots doesn't mean we've got a better chance of connecting the dots we have, it simply means we have more dots. We supposedly had sufficient surveillance tools without capturing all of the private communications of everyone on the planet. How does creating more dots (noise) do a better job? We've committed TREMENDOUS resources to fighting "terrorism". I have a very difficult time believing those resources couldn't have been better applied to connecting existing dots.

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@revelette,

revelette wrote:

I remember right after 9/11 everyone was saying how we didn't connect the dots. I also remember the Iraq war debate and everyone was saying that instead of wars we should track down terrorist. If we don't use surveillance tools, how are we supposed to do that logistically?

Of course, when you monitor every foreigner, you'll certainly catch terrorists and possible terrorists.

That could be done with US-citizens as well - to avoid murder and other serious crimes.

1 Reply

@JPB,

JPB wrote:

You've lost me. How is capturing the private communications of everyone in the Middle East not a privacy issue?

Because America's Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to foreigners living outside the United States, and the United States construes that as a license to ignore their privacy interests. I first noticed the idea spreading among Bush-administration officials, when it seemed like a weasel-lawyer argument. Now that Obama does the same, disregard of human rights outside America seems to become an ethic among American 'progressives' in general. It's pretty depressing to watch.

1 Reply

@revelette,

revelette wrote:

So all spying should just be done away with because in the process of it, we might be spying on innocent people? That might seem hyperbolic but it seems to me the end of the matter to what you all are saying.

No, no one is say that at all. And, yes, that's an hyperbolic reaction to what we are saying. Targeted spying has always been part of government. We're headed to a global McCarthyism/Hooverism/Stazism/etc and that's not a place we need to go.

I disagree with Frank's assertion that it's too late to do anything about it. It wasn't too late to stop the nuclear arms race and it wasn't too late to stop other instances where the desire to protect ourselves from whatever enemy (i.e., boogie man) we were being terrorized by.

1 Reply

@revelette,

revelette wrote:

I remember right after 9/11 everyone was saying how we didn't connect the dots. I also remember the Iraq war debate and everyone was saying that instead of wars we should track down terrorist. If we don't use surveillance tools, how are we supposed to do that logistically?

Maybe you shouldn't. Maybe Americans should have just gotten over 9/11. After all, it was a fraction of annual American casualties in traffic accidents, and an even smaller fraction of the casualties America inflicts on other countries. In Iraq alone, a war America started for fictitious reasons, America killed about thirty 9/11s worth of Iraqi's. (And Iraq is a far smaller country, so it's even worse if you go by percentage of population.) Americans don't get what a little deal 9/11 really was. The rest is hysteria.

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@Walter Hinteler,

It's already being done in the US. We already have heard that the DEA gets intelligence about where to stop certain vehicles for drug busts and then is told to launder its source. The IRS as well gets intelligence from mass surveillance and then creates an "alternative narrative" as to how they came about their information. There's also a copyright infringement issue that's in the buzz, but I honestly haven't looked into that at all.

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Snowdon is a dummy

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