| > Seems like it's trendy to hate the NSA. It gets conflated with an anti-authoritarian mindset. I wish smart people would gain some perspective - I got some by reading Bamford's books and a new one by Fred Kaplan - Dark Territories, about NSAs painful move to cyber. Some key points: > * All the great powers have NSA equivalents. Meaning they play offence and defense in crypto, RF, and cyber. We (USA) can impose restrictions on our NSA but not on anyone else's. Our exploit-riddled networks are a playground for American, Russian and Chinese cyber warriors - and probably many others. > * In cyber, offense and defense become the same. Kaplan's book covers this. So a smart country seeks cyber-superiority. The more we hamper NSA, the more we empower foreign cyber-warriors. Reducing domestic surveillance doesn't substantially impact that mission. > * Fear of an overreaching state is always justified; however we should focus that fear more on how NSA shares data than how it acquires it. For instance fusion centers: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/04/why-fusion-centers-mat.... The CIA/NSA can't hold onto its intelligence as shown by various security breaches, whistleblowers, etc. Not gathering domestic surveillance data in the first place avoids that problem. The NSA can keep an eye on China, Russia, etc. all they want. |