It's kind of remarkable that they kept the lid on this on long as they did. With so many local/loosely-related agencies involved, I'm surprised somebody didn't leak this much sooner.
It clearly says only a few intelligence officers from the different agencies had access. So it's not like any ol' police officer of FBI agent had access to this at all times.
Or maybe they did, and the search page had been rebranded so the officers didn't know it was operated by the NSA. Perhaps "Fusion Center Search 9000" or similar.
Yes, I find it VERY hard to believe that this went on and nobody mentioned it at all. Not one disgruntled employee, not anyone mentioning it to a friend at a bar? No way.
Uhm. Just because you didn't believe it doesn't mean that it wasn't known. The CCC was talking about this stuff years ago, some of it conjecture, some of it information from old sources/anonymous sources and the like.
Now we have proof. So that's that.
Also, given the strong "disincentivization" for whistleblowing that is going on at intelligence agencies, I am not at all surprised that it took a few years before somebody went public with it.
Hell, it used to take decades before this kind of stuff became public. Just this year we were made aware that the West German spy agencies opened _all_ cross-border inter-German mail. You know, the kind of thing that we in West Germany were told only the East Germans would do. That was kept secret for more than 20 years after it stopped being done, even though thousands of people were involved.
Well, it is easy to dismiss people saying kind of stuff as 'crackpots' or 'tin-foil-hatters'.
I personally keep to a simple rule. If something is technologically feasible[0], economically viable and someone has an incentive for it, it will happen, period. This rule of thumb successfully filters out weather control crackpottery while correctly identifying surveillance capabilities (and no, it's not hindsight bias; the only thing I was surprised about Snowden revelations was that it was underwhelming).
[0] - and keep in mind that pretty much anything is.
In what way were the revelations underwhelming? For me overwhelming is their ability to coerce companies and their willingness to do so, in spite of the potential for a loss of trust in US companies. Sometimes such maneuvers can have a big cost long term - I can imagine at least governments switching software, hardware or services to more local providers. I mean, think about backdoors - you may trust the NSA, but if backdoors exist, it is only a matter of time before they get discovered by other parties. Countries now also have the ultimate argument for the balkanization of the Internet. This can't be good and all of this distinction between US citizens and foreigners doesn't mean anything for foreigners.
The technological ones. I was expecting (and I still believe) that they're tapping much better into the Internet that it is revealed, and that there are many more hardware backdoors out there.
Countries now also have the ultimate argument for the balkanization of the Internet.
I agree. This is very bad. I didn't say I was underwhelmed with outcome (though I am with the reaction of public and of Internet companies), just with the revealed capabilities of the NSA.
I wouldn't be surprised if they talked about it but if it's rebranded it could be seen as "Yet Another Tool That IT Provides". People talk about their favourite consumer apps, but only ever complain about the shit they're forced to use at work. In this case, the tool is working fine so there's no need to sing its praises. If it was a shitty search engine, they'd be telling everyone "we collect all this data and for the life of me, we can't even search it! what's the point of violating the constitution at all?!"
When your livelihood is based entirely on your security clearance and your ability to keep working in the security industry you make it a very big point to not talk about this stuff outside of work. I had a friend who went to work for a 3-letter agency and started consistently avoiding bars/drinking because he was afraid he'd say something. This is exactly why whistleblowing is a problem in the intelligence community - they'll sue you to oblivion and/or imprison you for saying anything at all.
Comments
It's kind of remarkable that they kept the lid on this on long as they did. With so many local/loosely-related agencies involved, I'm surprised somebody didn't leak this much sooner.
It clearly says only a few intelligence officers from the different agencies had access. So it's not like any ol' police officer of FBI agent had access to this at all times.
Or maybe they did, and the search page had been rebranded so the officers didn't know it was operated by the NSA. Perhaps "Fusion Center Search 9000" or similar.
Yes, I find it VERY hard to believe that this went on and nobody mentioned it at all. Not one disgruntled employee, not anyone mentioning it to a friend at a bar? No way.
Uhm. Just because you didn't believe it doesn't mean that it wasn't known. The CCC was talking about this stuff years ago, some of it conjecture, some of it information from old sources/anonymous sources and the like.
Now we have proof. So that's that.
Also, given the strong "disincentivization" for whistleblowing that is going on at intelligence agencies, I am not at all surprised that it took a few years before somebody went public with it.
Hell, it used to take decades before this kind of stuff became public. Just this year we were made aware that the West German spy agencies opened _all_ cross-border inter-German mail. You know, the kind of thing that we in West Germany were told only the East Germans would do. That was kept secret for more than 20 years after it stopped being done, even though thousands of people were involved.
Well, it is easy to dismiss people saying kind of stuff as 'crackpots' or 'tin-foil-hatters'.
I personally keep to a simple rule. If something is technologically feasible[0], economically viable and someone has an incentive for it, it will happen, period. This rule of thumb successfully filters out weather control crackpottery while correctly identifying surveillance capabilities (and no, it's not hindsight bias; the only thing I was surprised about Snowden revelations was that it was underwhelming).
[0] - and keep in mind that pretty much anything is.
In what way were the revelations underwhelming? For me overwhelming is their ability to coerce companies and their willingness to do so, in spite of the potential for a loss of trust in US companies. Sometimes such maneuvers can have a big cost long term - I can imagine at least governments switching software, hardware or services to more local providers. I mean, think about backdoors - you may trust the NSA, but if backdoors exist, it is only a matter of time before they get discovered by other parties. Countries now also have the ultimate argument for the balkanization of the Internet. This can't be good and all of this distinction between US citizens and foreigners doesn't mean anything for foreigners.
The technological ones. I was expecting (and I still believe) that they're tapping much better into the Internet that it is revealed, and that there are many more hardware backdoors out there.
I agree. This is very bad. I didn't say I was underwhelmed with outcome (though I am with the reaction of public and of Internet companies), just with the revealed capabilities of the NSA.
I wouldn't be surprised if they talked about it but if it's rebranded it could be seen as "Yet Another Tool That IT Provides". People talk about their favourite consumer apps, but only ever complain about the shit they're forced to use at work. In this case, the tool is working fine so there's no need to sing its praises. If it was a shitty search engine, they'd be telling everyone "we collect all this data and for the life of me, we can't even search it! what's the point of violating the constitution at all?!"
When your livelihood is based entirely on your security clearance and your ability to keep working in the security industry you make it a very big point to not talk about this stuff outside of work. I had a friend who went to work for a 3-letter agency and started consistently avoiding bars/drinking because he was afraid he'd say something. This is exactly why whistleblowing is a problem in the intelligence community - they'll sue you to oblivion and/or imprison you for saying anything at all.
My guess is a lack of understanding.