The NSA watches you poop.

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Big Phoenix

Big Phoenix

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Qhue_sl said:
The Great SIM Heist: How Spies Stole the Keys to the Encryption Castle

Fascinating notion, bypass warrants and the carriers entirely and just decrypt from intercepts of raw signal
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And theyve stopped so many terrorist attacks because of it!

The truly rustling part is all the tens probably hundreds of billions spent on all this bullshit and it doesnt do a damn thing, stops nothing. Just more corporate welfare and fulfilling a few psychopaths mad delusions and desires.
 
Mist

Mist

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It does something. It most likely makes all of our data less safe, because I'm sure those keys leak out.
 
chaos

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Really we don't know what they have stopped, partly because they don't give us a full picture for obvious reasons. Also partly because it is probably a hard thing to quantify. If you take out Shitbag X due to some intel you lifted off of Google or Amazon's traffic, and he was working on operations A through who the fuck knows what, or liasing between different factions, or whatever, it becomes hard to say specifically what has been stopped. It isn't like they are waiting for these guys to plan some major shit before taking action in all cases, in a lot of cases I bet they are just identifying known associates and using this kind of intel to locate them and then droning the fuck out of them. But that goes back to "We don't know because they are liars who lie" so who knows.
 
Mario Speedwagon

Mario Speedwagon

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chaos_sl said:
Really we don't know what they have stopped, partly because they don't give us a full picture for obvious reasons. Also partly because it is probably a hard thing to quantify. If you take out Shitbag X due to some intel you lifted off of Google or Amazon's traffic, and he was working on operations A through who the fuck knows what, or liasing between different factions, or whatever, it becomes hard to say specifically what has been stopped. It isn't like they are waiting for these guys to plan some major shit before taking action in all cases, in a lot of cases I bet they are just identifying known associates and using this kind of intel to locate them and then droning the fuck out of them. But that goes back to "We don't know because they are liars who lie" so who knows.
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Who cares? Even if they stop every terrorist ever using it, it still isnt worth it.
 
Big Phoenix

Big Phoenix

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chaos_sl said:
Really we don't know what they have stopped, partly because they don't give us a full picture for obvious reasons. Also partly because it is probably a hard thing to quantify. If you take out Shitbag X due to some intel you lifted off of Google or Amazon's traffic, and he was working on operations A through who the fuck knows what, or liasing between different factions, or whatever, it becomes hard to say specifically what has been stopped. It isn't like they are waiting for these guys to plan some major shit before taking action in all cases, in a lot of cases I bet they are just identifying known associates and using this kind of intel to locate them and then droning the fuck out of them. But that goes back to "We don't know because they are liars who lie" so who knows.
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All I have to do is see how shitty a state the world is in to know their actual capabilities is nothing. You think the guys who planned the charlie hobo or whatever attack used one time pads and dead drops to communicate? We spend how many tens of billions of dollars and have our own privacy violated to what extent and the most brain dead and basic of attacks can still be carried out?

At the end of the day I guess thats the saving grace, sure they have back doors into every line of communication and storage platform, but they are so inept they cant do anything with it.
 
chaos

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I don't know what their goals and strategies are. Maybe they wanted to allow the Charlie Hebdo thing to happen so they could do the sweep they did afterwards and to further discredit the group, or god knows whatever purpose they could have. Or maybe the intel didn't point to a specific action in time for them to intervene. Or maybe the enemy is adapting and using other forms of communication to avoid the NSA dragnet. So many possibilities.

I'm not saying it is worth it or a good thing, just that it is inaccurate to say it "doesn't stop anything" because you have no way of knowing that. They could be stopping attacks every day, or never once. None of us know.
 
TomServo

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chaos_sl said:
I don't know what their goals and strategies are.Maybe they wanted to allow the Charlie Hebdo thing to happen so they could do the sweep they did afterwards and to further discredit the group, or god knows whatever purpose they could have. Or maybe the intel didn't point to a specific action in time for them to intervene. Or maybe the enemy is adapting and using other forms of communication to avoid the NSA dragnet. So many possibilities.

I'm not saying it is worth it or a good thing, just that it is inaccurate to say it "doesn't stop anything" because you have no way of knowing that. They could be stopping attacks every day, or never once. None of us know.
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That's some grade A stupidity right there.
 
Mist

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Considering these assholes couldn't even stop the Tsarnaev brothers, one of whom was back and forth from Russia many times, had tons of phonecalls with Russia, and generally wasn't quiet at all, and was already on a watchlist, I think this whole blanket surveillance does more harm than good. Why don't they just do really GOOD surveillance on the people who've set off red flags and leave everyone else alone? Seems like a better use of time, money and resources that would ultimately make us safer.
 
Mist

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The real thing that bothers me in all of this is really the hundreds of independent intelligence 'contractor' companies that just bilk the government for billions and don't really do anything.
 
Palum

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Mist_sl said:
Considering these assholes couldn't even stop the Tsarnaev brothers, one of whom was back and forth from Russia many times, had tons of phonecalls with Russia, and generally wasn't quiet at all, and was already on a watchlist, I think this whole blanket surveillance does more harm than good. Why don't they just do really GOOD surveillance on the people who've set off red flags and leave everyone else alone? Seems like a better use of time, money and resources that would ultimately make us safer.
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The purpose is to identify the foreign entity after the attack and sell the government on more hardware to defeat the nebulous foe. Or another variant of the F35.
 
Big Phoenix

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Mist_sl said:
Considering these assholes couldn't even stop the Tsarnaev brothers, one of whom was back and forth from Russia many times, had tons of phonecalls with Russia, and generally wasn't quiet at all, and was already on a watchlist, I think this whole blanket surveillance does more harm than good. Why don't they just do really GOOD surveillance on the people who've set off red flags and leave everyone else alone? Seems like a better use of time, money and resources that would ultimately make us safer.
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Theres no benefit to the people/institutions in power to solving the problem. Really a rather fatal flaw of power, you do everything possible to preserve it and when possible, expand it.

Think the war on drugs; you think the people who run prisons, work at the dea or police agencies want to see drugs legalized? Doing so would render them useless.
 
fanaskin

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Big Phoenix_sl said:
Think the war on drugs; you think the people who run prisons, work at the dea or police agencies want to see drugs legalized? Doing so would render them useless.
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The most perverse situation i've seen with unions had to do with prison guard unions essentially paying politicians to keep certain laws on the books.
 
chaos

chaos

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Wired be all like "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!"

We knew about a potential exploit with hard drive firmware years ago, and the Bad USB thing actually happened, it isn't true to say this is like nothing we've ever seen before. This is real world implementation of something we already had a proof of concept of and had already seen a similar exploit in the wild with the USB. It is awesome, but let's not go crazy.
 
chaos

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Sorry bro I just kind of try and look at it from a more grounded pov. People were theorizing about hd firmware hacks 10+ years ago and doing it, at the very least, a few years ago. So the world isn't ending. But it is still cool to hear about these crazy things that people thought were theoretical/lab based at best and here the NSA has been using it the field for years. "Cool" being a relative term.
 
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