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Theguardian is calling out David Cameron for thinly veiled threats made against the media and the guardian specifically They're claiming Snowden has ruined the party line and all the terrorists have 'gone silent' oooooo
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Oct 28, 2013 20:16
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Tezzor posted:Obama is claiming that he had No Idea that the NSA was spying on 35 allied world leaders. There are only three interpretations of this fact, none of them terribly nice. Option one is that Obama is lying. This option is worse than usual because it would demonstrate the sheer arrogance and stupidity of the administration to still keep lying after being humiliated by leaked documents calling them on it half a dozen times so far. Option two is that Obama really did not know, because he is incompetent. Option three is that Obama really did not know, because his knowledge and approval was deliberately suppressed by an NSA that largely considers him irrelevant or under control. The problem is that his failure to fire the head of the NSA for this major diplomatic scandal that he knew nothing about could be seen as evidence of any of the three options. Or scared shitless? Maybe conspiracy theorists were the proverbial squirrel that got a blind nut this time, if they're spying all the world leaders, it's not out of the possibility that they have lots of intel on our own leaders that might be compromising.
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Oct 28, 2013 22:45
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Hey, something Feinstein isn't unconditionally defending, wow:quote:Feinstein: Senate intelligence panel in dark on surveillance of allies
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Oct 28, 2013 22:54
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" While Occupy was a gigantic trainwreck all on its own I would not have been surprised to hear about monitoring of key figures and network analysis to disrupt what little organizational structure existed. Like what happened last year on the anniversary: quote:According to multiple people who have been involved with planning and executing Occupy Wall Street protests the New York City Police Department targeted key organizers for arrests in advance of Monday’s Occupy anniversary demonstrations. These arrests may have prevented the movement from, for the first time, presenting a focused, single message at the center of the protests. "Identifying key ringleaders in advance of a protest" is exactly the kind of network analysis stuff that seems to be up the NSA's alley these days. Obama in particular I find doubtful as a blackmail target. He's as young as you can get, and he's had Republicans poring over his entire life for the past 7 years. If there was something to find, it would have been found by now. I see no reason to postulate NSA blackmail as a reason for his policy shortcomings. It's much more reasonable to hypothesize that he makes lovely neoliberal decisions because he's a lovely neoliberal politician surrounded by lovely neoliberal advisors in a town that's trapped inside a lovely neoliberal bubble.
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Oct 28, 2013 23:03
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quote:Feinstein said the White House had informed her "that collection on our allies will not continue." However, she said her committee will conduct "a total review of all intelligence programs" in order to make sure panel members "are fully informed as to what is actually being carried out by the intelligence community." That's it. I'm calling it. She's gone full senile.
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Oct 28, 2013 23:07
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Jacobin posted:Not all relations, just in favour of worse relations. The point started when it started acting non-nonchalantly about it when they got caught, i.e. just recently, if you really are that keen on being a REALISM macho about foreign affairs. Oh dear lord. You don't see what possible value could come from having direct knowledge of the unfiltered communications between a local superpower and her ministers/other nations? I can get why you might object to it, but you don't even understand why someone might see that as valuable? Every embassy in every single nation is a forward operating base for espionage. This is the way it's always been. It's a diplomatic discomfort, and the Germans have a reason to be annoyed, but they're doing the exact same thing to us. We got caught, so we'll probably have to concede something in order for this to blow over. But this is simply another instance of the game being played.
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Oct 28, 2013 23:07
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Once again, no, I really don't think the Germans have been tapping Obama's phone for the last decade. Yeah, everyone has some low level tabs on everyone else just to be sure. That's worlds apart from wiretapping the leader one of our closest allies. Siphoning high-level state secrets from an "ally" for a decade is a huge deal. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Oct 28, 2013 |
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Oct 28, 2013 23:11
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It's pretty strange to see people here and elsewhere defending pervasive spying on allied leaders when even Obama and Feinstein won't stand behind the programs. There's more Catholic than the Pope and then there's more Feinstein than Feinstein. The reaction of all these leaders is notable. When it was thought that the NSA was just spying on a couple hundred million worthless normal people, the reaction from US officials ranged from apologetic defense to unapologetic defense and the reaction from most mainstream political officials in Europe ranged from apologetic defense to annoyance. Now that they know that themselves and their friends are under the spotlight, though, now it's an outrage and US leaders are denying responsibility. Reminds me of how nobody gave a gently caress about Nixon spying on god knows how many blacks, leftists, immigrants, intellectuals, etc, but as soon as he tried it on somebody who mattered he was in deep poo poo. Tezzor fucked around with this message at 23:36 on Oct 28, 2013 |
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Oct 28, 2013 23:27
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Tezzor posted:It's pretty strange to see people here and elsewhere defending pervasive spying on allied leaders when even Obama and Feinstein won't stand behind the programs. There's more Catholic than the Pope and then there's more Feinstein than Feinstein. On top of that, even if all of the US decided that this is nothing to be upset about, we're not really the important arbiters in this case. The international reaction, especially among US allies, is what really counts, and at this point all indications are that this is going to be a really big deal.
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Oct 28, 2013 23:36
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Paul MaudDib posted:Once again, no, I really don't think the Germans have been tapping Obama's phone for the last decade. I liked the GCHQ story too how they setup lots of honeypot traps during the G20 conference to harvest intel from allied countries such as Turkey and France.
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Oct 28, 2013 23:40
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Paul MaudDib posted:Once again, no, I really don't think the Germans have been tapping Obama's phone for the last decade. How could you possibly even have an educated guess about this?
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Oct 28, 2013 23:56
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StarMagician posted:How could you possibly even have an educated guess about this?
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Oct 29, 2013 00:07
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Aurubin posted:Hey, something Feinstein isn't unconditionally defending, wow:
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Oct 29, 2013 01:03
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Feinstein doesn't like it because she and her committee were left out of the game.
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Oct 29, 2013 02:25
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ANIME AKBAR posted:Feinstein doesn't like it because she and her committee were left out of the game. Either that, or she ran out too far ahead of things when all this started and is using this incident to throw the NSA under the bus. I'd like to believe in naked populism, but I suspect your answer is closer to the truth.
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Oct 29, 2013 04:11
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Nah, she's just pushing the 'Obama didn't know' narrative and making token statements to quell anger. She's still the same ol NSA Feinstein.
Sancho fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Oct 29, 2013 |
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Oct 29, 2013 05:52
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Fojar38 posted:While I doubt that D&D will accept that definition of national security, I will point out that "national security" goes beyond just military threats, it includes assessing diplomatic, economic, political, and ideological threats as well. Could you explain what would constitute economic or ideological threats?
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Oct 29, 2013 05:53
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Which country will be the first to publish their version of the Mandiant APT 1 report on the NSA?
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Oct 29, 2013 13:01
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more friedman units posted:Could you explain what would constitute economic or ideological threats? Not blindly following US economic and political hegemony is a obvious threat. Also sneaky Euros steal US business through bribes and other tricks in order to sell their inferior products: http://cryptome.org/echelon-cia.htm
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Oct 29, 2013 14:57
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Greenwald linked this, it's Dana Perino, the prototype of the snide Aryan Republican Fox News lady, defending Obama and the NSA. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/28/shep-smith-nsa-dana-perino_n_4171384.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003 Greenwald uses this to demonstrate that insider status is more important than ideology as to the opinions of the media class, but that isn't even the interesting part, to me. The more interesting part is the top comment, from David Kronmiller, one of HuffPo's paid pundits: quote:Come on - spies spy - they have since the American Revolution. So here we have a rapid-fire Gish Gallop of the most hackneyed and idiotic pro-NSA cliches imaginable, and it's the top comment on the most liberal precinct of the liberal media. I think that really makes the point better than some hack like Perino defending the MIC. Kronmiller is hardly an insider.
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Oct 29, 2013 15:09
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Tezzor posted:Greenwald linked this, it's Dana Perino, the prototype of the snide Aryan Republican Fox News lady, defending Obama and the NSA. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/28/shep-smith-nsa-dana-perino_n_4171384.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003 Oh boy it was a great goodman's law meltdown especially breaking the whole "Don't mention the war" rule, because of Hitler it's ok to spy on the germans.
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Oct 29, 2013 15:13
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quote:And anyone curious who Germany spies on? No? Not one drat bit. The German government can't do poo poo to me. My own government sure can tho!
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Oct 29, 2013 15:49
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Sancho posted:No? Not one drat bit. The German government can't do poo poo to me. My own government sure can tho! You don't think the Germans are (were?  ) engaged in mutual intelligence sharing with your government? 
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Oct 29, 2013 16:32
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I recommend this Guardian op-ed by the former US ambassador to Croatia during the Clinton years, it sums up my position on this succinctly. I was never outraged by the fact that US Intelligence services were monitoring, it was Keith Alexander's "Collect it All" paradigm that I thought was a profoundly bad investigative strategy.
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Oct 29, 2013 16:58
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Aurubin posted:I recommend this Guardian op-ed by the former US ambassador to Croatia during the Clinton years, it sums up my position on this succinctly. I was never outraged by the fact that US Intelligence services were monitoring, it was Keith Alexander's "Collect it All" paradigm that I thought was a profoundly bad investigative strategy. I like this part with the typical Snowden character assassination quote:In the field of intelligence, more is not necessarily better. In order to collect, analyze and use the vast quantities of data, the US government provides security clearances to hundreds of thousands of government employees and contractors. I think the administration is in a mess for another reason, maybe letting the intelligence complex grow without proper oversight or even worrying what would happen if all the secrets were brought to light?
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Oct 29, 2013 17:01
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etalian posted:I like this part with the typical Snowden character assassination Ha, my ideological blinders must be great because I don't remember reading that part. There was an extended Washington Post stor over the summer that investigated the metastasis of the intelligence community after 9/11 that was really telling. They interviewed an analyst who said how he was overwhelmed and everything was held together with string and hope while former NSA Director Dennis Blair was swimming through the piles of SIGINT Scrooge McDuck style.
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Oct 29, 2013 17:14
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etalian posted:I think the administration is in a mess for another reason, maybe letting the intelligence complex grow without proper oversight or even worrying what would happen if all the secrets were brought to light? Yeah, that's kind of the underlying problem. We have a vast array of technological spying solutions, and we're still trapped in the RAND game-theory mindset where we assume that everyone is trying to gently caress us all the time so if we don't use a tool then we're losing because it's probably being used on us. I can't find a link right now, but I remember an interesting interview on the topic. Basically it boils down to the concept that all people are rational and rational people would try to dominate the world, and so the proper way to act is to balance that at all times (domino theory/mutual assured destruction). When RAND Corp first set this up in the early post-war environment, their first studies on the topic were done using their secretaries. The problem was that the secretaries weren't "rational" in the game - rather than trying to better their own outcomes, they would help the opposing players, which was totally mystifying to the RAND brains. The model didn't fit reality. But at the same time people needed a "mathematically provable" system they could understand that would guarantee that we never had a nuclear war, so at that point they set about shaping reality to the model. They modified the problems to make cooperation more damaging and obstinate more rewarding. And later on, after people had been steeped in red scares, MAD, and game theory, they started behaving "rationally". They started acting paranoid and malicious towards the other players. That's really the same mindset we see right now. If we can place a camera in Merkel's bathroom, we absolutely have to place it because you know those sneaky huns would do it if they had the chance, and we cannot allow a bathroom-camera gap (it would be the end of our republic as we know it). We have a huge fetish for tech-based solutions to compensate for our total inadequacy in the HUMINT areas. And finally we're totally insulated from any of the consequences of this because we live oceans away from any serious blowback. e: I'm pretty sure this is Adam Curtis' The Trap quote:1. "F**k You Buddy" (11 March 2007)[edit] Much of the modern American mindset and public policy can probably be traced directly back to a literal paranoid schizophrenic nut. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 01:09 on Oct 30, 2013 |
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Oct 29, 2013 17:26
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The most interesting thing about the kind of thinking that game theory induces is that it allows you, the aggressor, to believe that you're acting in self-defense. Look at the most recent crop of apologists. We have to spy on allied nations, because if not they would spy on us. There's not a shred of available evidence anywhere that any nation aside from Russia or China has even thought about any collection system of this magnitude directed against us, and we've certainly never been the victim of it, but we're just defending ourselves against their sinister plans which we have imagined into existence. Maybe this logic was somewhat defensible when what was riding on the line was the collapse of human civilization and the death of billions, but now? What happens now if we act sub-optimally? Some dirty foreigners might get a bit of an unfair advantage in some business deals and diplomatic arrangements until such time as we find them out. Not really the same game.
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Oct 29, 2013 19:19
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The main thing that worries me is the attitude of the intelligence community that this is only being done for our "protection". The funny thing is that is what countries say when they are turning towards totalitarian governments. I understand that with the advent of the Internet there is no privacy anymore and there are some things a country's citizens should not know about. This however...is just too far. This is like J. Edgar Hoover bullshit and it isn't too far of a logical leap to think that data on these people's personal secrets are being kept somewhere for "in case of emergency, break glass" moments. I just find the whole thing extremely distasteful and worrisome for the future of the world.
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Oct 29, 2013 19:50
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Tezzor posted:The most interesting thing about the kind of thinking that game theory induces is that it allows you, the aggressor, to believe that you're acting in self-defense. Look at the most recent crop of apologists. We have to spy on allied nations, because if not they would spy on us. There's not a shred of available evidence anywhere that any nation aside from Russia or China has even thought about any collection system of this magnitude directed against us, and we've certainly never been the victim of it, but we're just defending ourselves against their sinister plans which we have imagined into existence. Maybe this logic was somewhat defensible when what was riding on the line was the collapse of human civilization and the death of billions, but now? What happens now if we act sub-optimally? Some dirty foreigners might get a bit of an unfair advantage in some business deals and diplomatic arrangements until such time as we find them out. Not really the same game. At the end of the day it is naked imperialism. "Economic interests" and "political interests" are just another way of asserting that our status as a superpower is an end in itself, one that justifies any means whatsoever. And as with all imperialism, we're now we're seeing the first signs of blowback. Elotana fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Oct 29, 2013 |
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Oct 29, 2013 20:00
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There is a huge difference between trying to put stuff back into pandora's box, and actively collecting information about the citizenry then keeping all that information secret. One is a fairly benign, but ultimately futile endeavor, the other is the stuff dystopian nightmares are composed of, nothing is worth that.
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Oct 29, 2013 20:03
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Aurubin posted:Ha, my ideological blinders must be great because I don't remember reading that part. There was an extended Washington Post stor over the summer that investigated the metastasis of the intelligence community after 9/11 that was really telling. They interviewed an analyst who said how he was overwhelmed and everything was held together with string and hope while former NSA Director Dennis Blair was swimming through the piles of SIGINT Scrooge McDuck style. Yeah it's somewhat amusing to see the NSA buy the whole quantity vacuum up the whole haystack argument, even though the insane amounts of data ended up overwhelming analysts as shown by being caught flatfooted by things such as the Syrian sarin attacks. On a side note the NSA denies it was bulk collecting Eurozone phone calls: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...2dbc_story.html Also USA is best in the world at providing intel apparatus oversight: quote:In reply to questions from Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), the committee chairman, Clapper said flatly that U.S. allies, including members of the European Union, have engaged in espionage targeted at the United States. He said European policymakers and legislators often are not aware of everything their own intelligence agencies are up to and “may not have familiarity with exactly how their intelligence operations work.” etalian fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Oct 29, 2013 |
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Oct 29, 2013 21:04
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I've read that the EU wants to put trade restrictions on the US over all this, what would this imply for the world economy if it goes ahead? Do you guys think it'll just be a minor annoyance to both sides or a major set-back? Also how can relations possibly be repaired from this? Yes everyone spies but it's the US that has been caught with it's pants down so is it just going to be a case of forgive and forget?
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Oct 29, 2013 22:07
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Thrasophius posted:I've read that the EU wants to put trade restrictions on the US over all this, what would this imply for the world economy if it goes ahead? Do you guys think it'll just be a minor annoyance to both sides or a major set-back? It won't ever happen. The EU is just as bad and is complicit with the USA in spying. They're just spouting off for youtube clips and other election fodder.
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Oct 29, 2013 22:09
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What was really funny about today's House Intel Committee hearing was Schiff arguing directly with Rogers about whether the members of the Committee were informed about the espionage on foreign leaders, Merkel in particular. Rogers said everyone knew, Schiff directly rebutted him in a protracted exchange. Rogers reclaimed his time from Schiff in response, which is Congressional code for "gently caress you". EDIT: Leahy and Sensenbrenner introduced their bill yesterday on NSA reform, with a joint POLITICO op-ed. ACLU endorsed the bill. Scuttlebutt is that if Feinstein's bill went to the House it'd be DOA. Guess the Tea Party is good for something. Aurubin fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Oct 29, 2013 |
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Oct 29, 2013 22:55
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Aurubin posted:What was really funny about today's House Intel Committee hearing was Schiff arguing directly with Rogers about whether the members of the Committee were informed about the espionage on foreign leaders, Merkel in particular. Rogers said everyone knew, Schiff directly rebutted him in a protracted exchange. Rogers reclaimed his time from Schiff in response, which is Congressional code for "gently caress you". Haha, hadn't heard of this, incredible techdirt posted:Rogers focused on tossing out a bunch of softball questions to the panel to get them to say that they had clearly informed the House Intelligence Committee about spying on foreign leaders. After the softballs were hit back, Rogers would add a stage-whispered "Hmm," followed by an angry attack on reporters for buying into the story that the NSA hadn't informed Congress.
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Oct 30, 2013 00:09
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Alexander denied that it was the NSA directly spying on European countries, saying they got the info from their European counterparts. Quite frankly, I believe Alexander, at least partially. I don't know where to parse out where he's obfuscating, but I believe the foundations of his side.
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Oct 30, 2013 01:09
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Aurubin posted:Alexander denied that it was the NSA directly spying on European countries, saying they got the info from their European counterparts. Quite frankly, I believe Alexander, at least partially. I don't know where to parse out where he's obfuscating, but I believe the foundations of his side. I'm sure the old ECHELON system is just gathering dust after the Cold War and the NSA would never abuse its brick&mortar presence in the Eurozone to get some intel. The sneaky jounralists can't read powerpoint slides quote:Apparently referring to a slide outlining the information, Alexander said the leaker and reporters “did not understand what they were looking at.” Poor Alexander he puts so much effort into selling a certain talking point, only for it to get demolished by the next batch of leak articles. etalian fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Oct 30, 2013 |
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Oct 30, 2013 01:24
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etalian posted:I'm sure the old ECHELON system is just gathering dust after the Cold War and the NSA would never abuse its brick&mortar presence in the Eurozone to get some intel. Well eventually they have to run out of impartial docs to publish. Dunno what's left, but we'll see.
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Oct 30, 2013 02:59
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I liked this quote from the end of the House hearingMike Rogers posted:Your privacy cannot be violated if you do not know your privacy has been violated. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMQ4EN3Rh30&feature=share
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Oct 30, 2013 04:58
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