On 14/03/14 16:06, Robert J. Hansen wrote:
The NSA e.g. denies to archive content of us-american citizens mails.
It is
thus perfectly reasonable to assume it does so with all other ones.
They also deny being able to violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics:
is it thus perfectly reasonable to assume they can violate the other ones?
"Just because they deny X means it's reasonable to believe Y" is logic
that will get you in a whole lot of trouble. If you have evidence to
support your assertion I'm sure we'd all love to hear it -- but as I
don't believe such evidence exists, the most we can reasonably say is
"we don't know."
Besides, you believe their denials - are you kidding?
Let me tell you a story about Allan. Allan was a great guy, one of the
true heroes of American government. He never got the recognition he
deserved. Allan was a veteran FBI agent with a Ph.D. in criminal
justice, with a thesis that focused on police corruption. His life goal
was to someday get appointed as a federal judge. He authored part of
the FISA Act. Later in his life he was appointed by the Attorney
General to become the Department of Justice's gatekeeper to the FISA
Court. All warrant applications had to go through him.
He thus had two compelling reasons to be strict about the warrants he
presented to FISA. The first was that he hated corruption in a
deep-in-his-bones way. The second was he knew that if he allowed any
inadequate warrants to be presented to the FISA Court, those inadequate
warrants would come up in Senate confirmation hearings for the federal
judgeship he wanted. As a result, he had a reputation for being harder
to convince of a warrant than the FISA Court itself was!
-- Now, who told me about him first? My father, a federal judge who at
one time was tapped for FISA. (He refused for personal reasons: he was
approaching retirement and didn't want the additional
responsibilities.) Dad had a good laugh about it and thought that if
the American people ever knew it was harder to get Allan to bring a
warrant application to FISA than it was to actually get FISA to approve
a warrant, they'd be reassured. Dad would tell me all about how in all
the time Allan had been responsible for bringing warrant applications to
FISA, FISA had only ever denied three or four -- and that years later
Allan was still sore about those!
Nowadays, of course, the meme is "FISA has only rejected a handful of
warrants in all its time! Clearly, it must be a rubber stamp court!"
Nothing is further from the truth. For many years the reason why FISA
so rarely bounced an warrant application is because Allan refused to
bring inadequate ones to the Court.
The former General Counsel of the National Security Agency, Stewart
Baker, has written a fine book that I think everyone here should read:
_Skating on Stilts_. Baker has some harsh words for Allan, claiming
that he was such a hardass about warrant applications that he got in the
way of many national security investigations. I first read this shortly
after Allan's death and I almost bust a gut laughing. If he knew that
his major claim to fame was having GC-NSA call him an obstruction to
national security, I think he'd consider his place in posterity to be
well-established.
Allan died of cancer a few years ago -- but before he did, he achieved
his life goal of being appointed to the federal bench. I had the honor
of talking with him on several occasions from 2008 to 2010. Even dying
of cancer, he was still a partisan for integrity in government. His
commitment to it even in the face of imminent death impressed me as few
things in the world have.
Do I believe the NSA when they say that for U.S. persons only metadata
is collected? No.
But it was Allan's job to watch the NSA, and I trust that Allan didn't
lie to me.
I know that the common meme on this mailing list is, "ooh, government
*bad*, government *always* looking for ways to exploit us." But that's
an insulting and childish belief. It's about as grown-up and about as
mature as believing there are monsters under the bed or a bogeyman in
the closet.
Government *can be* bad, sure. Absolutely.
But government also has people like Allan, and when we forget that we
diminish ourselves.
Frankly, I think people on this list ought celebrate his birthday --
March 4 -- as some kind of holiday.
You know what? To hell with it. I /will/ celebrate his birthday, just
ten years late. I'm going to make a donation to GnuPG today, in the
memory of a government intelligence official who stood up for civil
liberties. They *do* exist. Werner, if the donation I make later today
could be credited as "In memory of the Honorable Allan N. Kornblum,"
that would be appreciated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Kornblum
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Totally off-topic. But that your father was a highly positioned judge,
would make you rather biased.
They do process any US email going in and out of the US, be it by US
citizens or not. Also, quite frankly, all of such assurances are totally
meaningless, as we in the UK (GCHQ), do that work for you and vice
versa. So, you see, the issue is not necessarily that the US government
is spying on the German government, or the UK government, and they doing
it on each other of course. The real issues are that they are a.
violating UK law or US law by sharing information or getting the other
party to use that information, which at least in the UK is so unlawful,
you would need 50 negative words to describe how unlawful that approach
is (according to a former Intelligence and Security Committee member).
b. By intercepting any messages, by tapping into POPs or undersea cables
you are by de-facto already obtaining communications content without
warrants. Because of course that would make it almost impossible for
them to gather information otherwise. They would be in court all day long.
Quite frankly though even Germany and many other European governments
co-operate in intelligence matters by sharing data on their citizens.
Mrs Merkel was only appalled that her Governments stuff was being spied
on, quite frankly I do not think she particularly cares about German
citizens or residents.
The fact is, now every citizen can communicate at will, with a lot of
people at once, broadcasting their views without having a media
organisation filter it, is scaring any executive in the world, be it
China, Germany, the Uk, Russia, the US or anyone other country you can
think of.
Of course, all terrorists and organised crime people know they are being
spied on. So, they already have changed heir tactics, even way before
Edward Snowden released the files. That is, not communicate via mobile
phones, email, or written letter. We had a prime example here in the UK,
where terror suspects, who later got convicted, met in a public park.
And that is where they would talk, now the only reason they got caught
is, because of the old traditional intelligence gathering methods aka
actually surveying the actual targets.
Every time you hear politicians say mass surveillance stops terrorism
without showing actual convictions, is rather laughable, especially if
that surveillance covers national borders too.
Anyway, enough of this. Pointless discussion really. Only thing you can
do is complain to your MP, Congressman/Woman, Member of the Bundestag or
maybe even Landtag(Bundesrat), or who/whatever is responsible in your
country. Or better yet, unlawfully spy on your politicians, by planting
bugs in their constituent offices, tap their mobiles send them malware,
tap into their phone lines. Then broadcast all you found on the
internet. Including their family affairs, potential conflicts of
interest and corruption, including secret deals. They will love that I
am sure. Note: This is a bit of sarcasm! We are world renown for that in
the UK.
Maybe then they will wise up to why mass interception is not only wrong,
but also yields very little real useful information.
Regards,
Tristan
--
Tristan Santore BSc MBCS
TS4523-RIPE
Network and Infrastructure Operations
InterNexusConnect
Mobile +44-78-55069812
tristan.sant...@internexusconnect.net
Former Thawte Notary
(Please note: Thawte has closed its WoT programme down,
and I am therefore no longer able to accredit trust)
For Fedora related issues, please email me at:
tsant...@fedoraproject.org
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