The Thread just about the Leaks of the scale of NSA snooping

For that matter, it’s corrosive to things like US copyright claims.

Pillaging other nations intelectual property by state sponsored means would be … privateering?, we have international sea laws against that,but nothing like that in the internet.

How quaint to see people defending privaterring, this side of 1800.

But, of course, … anglosaxon countries always had this love for taking other nations gold by force. Celtics just don’t do that shit. I mean, we do, but we don’t rationalize it like something is “right” to do.

Nah, privateering would be if the government contracted out to do that. I believe this is just simple theft. Keep in mind nobody here is defending it, simply saying it makes sense for countries to do it.

This coming from a Spaniard is the definition of irony.

I wish Sid Meier would do a proper PC only update to Pirates! Evolve the depth a little (maybe borrow some from the game Cutthroats: Terror of the High Sea’s, which was an ashamed (not great) Pirates! rip off), add more of the historical accuracy to the games story etc.

Not something i’d ever expected to write in this thread, but ddtibbs did bring up the Spanish exploitation in the ‘Spanish Main’.

From the American Encyclopedia of the World:

SPANISH MAIN (spăn′ĭsh meɪn): Part of the American continent formerly owned by SPAIN (a country in Europe), now fragmented into nominally independent nation-states not currently under overt political control by the United States, which nonetheless has taken upon itself the task of spreading Freedom to the entire continent, whether these countries want it or not.

(Not to be confused, it must be remembered, with the U.S.S. MAINE, sunk in 1898 by a treacherous explosion caused by sabotage in the harbor of Havana, CUBA, at the time a possession of the aforementioned SPAIN, which led to the SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR.)

See also: MONROE DOCTRINE.

Suggested Readings:

McCullough, J., The Worst Thing the U.S. Has Ever Done?: Measuring the Benefits of American Expansionism, Austin, TX: The Broken Institute, 2013.

Who and how do you determine what industry and which companies in it benefit the state? Unless the rules are open and published, hahahaha. The logic of some undesirable activity (corruption) would exist without this one thing that can greatly enable it so … AH who cares! … Escapes me. Defeatism?

As a factory automation specialist as just one of my hats and being the IT guy that had to secure some of the corporate data, the politics and yes I do not speak from my ass when I say requirement to have a well funded PAC, are definite reasons against US sites. Add complacency of state-sponsored industrial espionage, and that’s, well lets just say its not a competitive advantage for the US anymore. When I mention the PAC stuff to some local politicians when I’m in that mode, they even immediately place one of the two companies. They were unusual in pushing back at first, before caving and making the PAC, so its one of the … oh yeah you must have worked for them, back when …

Short answer: cost of doing business, costs of offsetting risks. Like regulatory risk: regulations are fine and generally considered necessary. The legislative aid paid for my your competitor writing the next round with specific intent … is very, very bad, and yes it is a risk. At least most PAC activity is open and published (amount spent if not donors). So at least a company can gauge the risk and costs expected to offset such risk when deciding. What about state-sponsored or state-enabled domestic and international espionage? Hmmm. How much IT spending to offset the perceived risk? Risk tolerance of losing what may be lost. The perceived marginal cost of manufacturing inside the US has gone up. I have had to supply the numbers to upper management on how much would it take to provide X security and Y uptime for a factory installation. If the security requirements just went up, so do my numbers. This is just business.

A few comments on the question of using state intelligence resources on corporate espionage.

If we exclude the fact that trade delegations have always been a convenient excuse to send in a few spies, making those delegations a legitimate target, there’s nothing new about doing intelligence work for economic advantage. The French are allegedly notorious for it. Where this bothers me is that this is more or less doing private work on the public dime, with a tenuous connection to the well-being of the nation. And this tenuous connection is becoming more and more strained, because it implies that large businesses are somehow loyal to their country of origin, which in the past was true only insofar as it would have been a logistical nightmare to relocate, but which nowadays is bullshit. It’s not even limited to intelligence work; look up Canada’s eager embrace of so-called “dollar diplomacy”, where trade almighty has become the only purpose of diplomatic relations.

And of course, the problem specific to intelligence is that you don’t really know how much is going on in carrying out work for our corporations. To spy for them? Nope, that’s a waste of money for nothing in return. Much would it be for the state to spy on them. To know as much as possible what is going on in it at any given time, to be in a position, at any moment, for any reason, to nationalize it, freeze its assets, control its production or incarcerate its management. That’s how the state should treat the corporations operating on its soil.

I’m sure you must have had significant training and schooling to handle such work. However, you may wish to invest in a remedial reading course because your comprehension seems to be terribly lacking. My point was in fact supporting yours: corporate USA is rife with political corruption. It’s certainly “better” than many other countries, but far from pristine. However, holding up nationalized corporate espionage as this holy grail in the US is kind of laughable. And for a freaking second lay off the damn vitriol. We can all be asses every now and then, but no need to go all-in unless this is really the kind of exchange you look forward to on a routine basis. If so, I’d appreciate you letting me know so I can accommodate for it.

Short answer: cost of doing business, costs of offsetting risks. Like regulatory risk: regulations are fine and generally considered necessary. The legislative aid paid for my your competitor writing the next round with specific intent … is very, very bad, and yes it is a risk. At least most PAC activity is open and published (amount spent if not donors). So at least a company can gauge the risk and costs expected to offset such risk when deciding. What about state-sponsored or state-enabled domestic and international espionage? Hmmm. How much IT spending to offset the perceived risk? Risk tolerance of losing what may be lost. The perceived marginal cost of manufacturing inside the US has gone up. I have had to supply the numbers to upper management on how much would it take to provide X security and Y uptime for a factory installation. If the security requirements just went up, so do my numbers. This is just business.
So, that security cost is so much higher in the U.S. than it would be elsewhere? Really? You honestly believe that? In a world where most espionage is carried out in bytes? Fascinating.

What? “nationalized corporate espionage as this holy grail in the US is kind of laughable”. I’m doing nothing of the sort. It is a net negative for the US which:
a) increases corruption, which increases the cost of doing business due to needing higher PAC funding to make sure you can counter
b) increases marginal costs by increasing the IT counter-measure costs perceived needed to counter the risk

The second may be more of a concern to certain high-level bean counter types as, they understand corruption, and PACs being a legal way to ensure you have sufficient influence is less risky, just an expense. Though you could still get pilloried in public opinion/press for some donations ofc. But while these guys know corporate espionage exists, they usually don’t “get” IT. Also, when you add in government complicity, and the total secrecy there, grasping and gauging the risk and them then trying to evaluate these IT numbers, which they don’t understand, really can trigger the more risk averse ones.

The only beneficiary, really of the sort of set up in the US now is the specific companies that get info/help. Not the sector, as competitors don’t get the help and you get unequal competition, which is bad for consumers. Non-beneficiary companies don’t get help. Foreign policy and trade suffers, as it gives a political excuse for retaliatory protectionist measures. And the marginal coat of business, esp. manufacturing, in the US goes up, so that’s bad for the US economy and the US worker twice over (pressure against job growth, lower wages required to be competitive with higher marginal costs).

Sorry, you took my laughter as vitriol. But, well, it was funny. And yes, this was my job several times, at big companies whose names you’d recognize. I was considered good at it. Retirement is … nice. I mentioned this post to my brother, who works in a related job, but for a smaller company than the ones I worked for, and they already have all their manufacturing in China. He also laughed at the “no PAC needed to do business in the US” concept. I’m not trying to be mean, I’m really trying to explain this. Maybe I should stop.

Now it is, yes. It is not higher than in say, China. It is higher than placing manufacturing in parts of say, northern Europe, central Americas. Of course, some depends on the sector. Actually, the revelation (the reality was there) that the US uses government resources this way increases the marginal cost anywhere, as the perceived risk is now higher since US global reach in IT type spying is not weak. So its higher now than it was before Snowden made this public. Remember, its not just IT software security packages in the facility. What is needed to move data across US borders? Securely? Physically via say air travel by people to meetings? Digitally to other sites? And another expense, the training of people to use the systems, equipment and measures decided upon. The idiot that leaves his laptop at Starbucks is always the bigger problem. ;) You will want more training, as you will assume there are more entities now, than before, that are working to exploit any errors you and your employees make. Well only worry about protecting the important data! No, you need to take steps on all since taking the steps legally gives you more of a legal right to “expectation of privacy” under US law, and if you only encrypt one data stream (simplification, but if you only seem to “care” about one data channel …), you just told everyone what to grab. So …

A very interesting reveal about bulk webcam data collection (and they really wanted the Xbone to do this too!):

‘UK spy agency intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users’:

Britain’s surveillance agency GCHQ, with aid from the National Security Agency, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, secret documents reveal.

GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 explicitly state that a surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected still images of Yahoo webcam chats in bulk and saved them to agency databases, regardless of whether individual users were an intelligence target or not.

In one six-month period in 2008 alone, the agency collected webcam imagery – including substantial quantities of sexually explicit communications – from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts globally.

Yahoo reacted furiously to the webcam interception when approached by the Guardian. The company denied any prior knowledge of the program, accusing the agencies of “a whole new level of violation of our users’ privacy”.

GCHQ does not have the technical means to make sure no images of UK or US citizens are collected and stored by the system, and there are no restrictions under UK law to prevent Americans’ images being accessed by British analysts without an individual warrant.

I never use webcams myself, because of the potential for this type of thing (although it was more a concern of general hackers doing it, not the ‘state’ itself) and all my webcams are permanently taped over (sticky tape+a rectangle of card) once in the house.

I get the feeling that if you are a pedophile, you have to try to get employed in one of these spy agencies. Set for life and protected by the state!

And off course the USA is very interested in this story (as they should be!):

‘Senators to investigate NSA role in GCHQ ‘Optic Nerve’ webcam spying’:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/28/nsa-gchq-webcam-spy-program-senate-investigation

This sort of thing to me is the bottom-line why i can not fault what Snowden has done (or people like him). I don’t care on the specific issues exactly that might make one say “ok that is not right” etc. But just the worth of knowing this has been going on, and then our governmental systems being aware of it and deciding maybe it really should not have been happening (or not - the debate and scrutiny is King here). That is the whole value of the Whistle-Blower, and ultimately nearly always serves the greater good in a society.

As it is, it seems our intelligence agencies have had powers that could only be dreamed off by the Stasi and that is NOT ok in my book.

David Brin, The Transparent Society, 1998

There are two choices for who holds the tools;

a. Governments
b. Everyone

But in real life, it’s more like:

A. Government
B. Criminals
C. Everyone

Usually only when they piggyback on ill-conceived government programs, which manage to reduce security ><

Criminals usually try and harvest some kinds of data - financial data (or to subvert your PC into a botnet) - but they generally don’t give a crap about you personally.

‘Sir Tim Berners-Lee: World wide web needs bill of rights’:

The inventor of the world wide web has marked the 25th anniversary of his creation by calling for a ‘Magna Carta’ bill of rights to protect its users. Sir Tim Berners-Lee told BBC Breakfast the issue could be compared to the importance of human rights.

He has been an outspoken critic of government surveillance following a series of leaks from ex-US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden. Sir Tim called on people to take action and protest against surveillance.

He told BBC Breakfast the online community has now reached a crossroads.

“It’s time for us to make a big communal decision,” he said. "In front of us are two roads - which way are we going to go?

"Are we going to continue on the road and just allow the governments to do more and more and more control - more and more surveillance?

“Or are we going to set up a bunch of values? Are we going to set up something like a Magna Carta for the world wide web and say, actually, now it’s so important, so much part of our lives, that it becomes on a level with human rights?”

Sir Tim said the internet should be a “neutral” medium that can be used without feeling “somebody’s looking over our shoulder”.

He called for vigilance against surveillance by its users, adding: “The people of the world have to be constantly aware, constantly looking out for it - constantly making sure through action, protest, that it doesn’t happen.”

Sir Tim has previously warned that surveillance could threaten the democratic nature of the web.

He has also spoken out in support of Mr Snowden, saying his actions were “in the public interest”.

Latest winner of the Best “You just can’t (do something atrociously unacceptable); that’s my job” Joke Award: Mark Zuckerberg:

On Thursday Zuckerberg posted a statement on Facebook calling on the U.S. government to take more measures to respect users’ privacy and security. “The US government should be the champion for the internet, not a threat,” reads his statement. “I’ve called President Obama to express my frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future. Unfortunately, it seems like it will take a very long time for true full reform.”

“We work together to create this secure environment and make our shared space even better for the world,” Zuckerberg’s statement reads. “This is why I’ve been so confused and frustrated by the repeated reports of the behavior of the US government. When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we’re protecting you against criminals, not our own government.”

“Even better for the world”. It’s you, you technofucker, who’s destroying the world and making it possible and even justifiably reasonable for the intelligence community to spy on everyone, as you line your own pockets selling data to advertisers. All you’ve succeeded in doing in the end is leading the people to believe that maybe the tinfoil-hatters, the conspiracy theorists and the Kaczynskis of the world were on to something after all, and who wouldn’t want their intelligence service collecting all the information it can on the tinfoil-hatters, the conspiracy theorists and the Kaczynskis?

Silicon Valley imbecile.

Did you post that on FB? ;)

Well i agree with Vetarnias that it is extremely unlikely people like Zuckerberg didn’t know exactly what was going on, and maybe even more to the point that many of these ‘services’ (Facebook, email etc) were in part designed as spying tools for the state. But also it is obviously the right thing to shout foul play otherwise you might devalue your stock etc.