[jonknee]

The only mention of NSA seems to come from Kim... His logic appears to be that as a Five Eyes member the NSA and GCSB have some shared resources and that means the NSA used those resources to spy on him. That might be true, but he has no evidence that the NSA cares one bit about him. I seriously doubt the NSA was tasked with working a non-terrorism related piracy case, but that's me.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?objectid=11897719

> Dotcom, who should have been protected from GCSB surveillance as a New Zealand resident, said the GCSB did not know because its equipment was being used by the NSA, which was "directly involved".

> The GCSB documents do contain an admission of NSA involvement, although it was not made outright. In response to the accusation the GCSB had accessed NSA networks, the bureau refused to answer on national security grounds and acknowledged that under High Court rules that doing so would be seen by the court as an admission it had.

> Dotcom said the details showed some other party was using GCSB systems and he believed it would be the NSA."The US government has requested my extradition. The NSA is clearly the most interested party."

> "The NSA has unrestricted access to GCSB surveillance systems. In fact most of the technology the GCSB uses was supplied by the NSA."

[moomin]

Worth pointing out at this point that Kim is a heavily-documented liar.

If he told me the sky was blue, I'd go outside to check.

[peter422]

Don't worry, he has been meticulously collecting evidence and can prove everything! Unfortunately he can't post it just yet, but he'll definitely post it soon! Maybe next week! Or next month! But it's gonna be huge!!!

[ceejayoz]

(Right after he gives Hannity his other scoop: https://twitter.com/seanhannity/status/866016183815942144)

[b3lvedere]

Yep. He has been for years and years. http://attrition.org/errata/charlatan/kimble/

[mmjaa]

Mega-CAAAAR!

(One of the first times I realised that the web was going to be mis-used/abused by morons...)

[bgentry]

> I seriously doubt the NSA was tasked with working a non-terrorism related piracy case, but that's me.

There are many examples of NSA and Five Eyes spying that have absolutely nothing to do with terrorism (though afaik none specific to copyright infringement). I linked to a handful in this other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14907667

[dogma1138]

The GP is still somewhat correct.

All those cases fall within the domain of legitimate foreign intelligence targets of any organization.

Intelligence agencies perform political and economic intelligence all the time.

But Kim is just an irrelevant target he's way too of a small fish for them to bother.

[nl]

And of course the NSA "doesn't comment on intelligence matters" and so will neither confirm nor deny this.

That means he's entirely free to make up stuff like this knowing that anyone who attempts to call him on it will face the "well it could happen" argument.

[peterashford]

The GCSB had no reason at all to spy on Dotcom from a New Zealand perspective. The only case being brought against him is a copyright case from US claimants. Who do you think can request GCSB to do it's work for them? I don't think they would have spied on him and raided his home because a foreign business interest was concerned. Unless the request came from a 5-eyes level organisation, I'm pretty sure it would have been illegal for them to act against Dotcom.

[incompatible]

Whether or not the NSA spied on Kim in this instance, it would be interesting to know whether they have the capability of spying on NZ networks without assistance from the GCSB. It would be a classic case of shooting your own citizens in the feet: wire up your telecommunications network to allow unlimited spying on demand, then watch as foreign powers make use of it for whatever purposes of their own.

[mmjaa]

>the capability of spying on NZ networks without assistance from the GCSB

Of course they do. Read the Wikileaks! The NSA has given itself provenance over the entire planets' worth of digital content. They hack the origin.

[43gg43g32g]

> seriously doubt the NSA was tasked with working a non-terrorism related piracy case

They go after literally everything. Do people not remember the snowden leaks?

[jonknee]

Which Snowden leak showed that the NSA was being used to aid piracy investigations? I'm not disputing they had the technical ability to suck up various Kim Dotcom selectors, just that they have no public reason to do so and there is no evidence that they have.

[arca_vorago]

While I have had my tiffs with KDC (publicly on twitter usually), this entire thread that seems to ignore the five-eyes loopholes is extremely disingenuous. NSA wants everything, so that they or some other three letter can walk the cat back later from data in their massive data centers. Ever since the 90's and echelon days we knew the 47 UKUS core agreement of the "five-eyes" (which later expanded to more) was abused by letting foreign agencies surveil an allies citizens, bypassing their own domestic restrictions, and then when they handed the raw data over, since it came from another source, and they didn't do the "collection", it wasn't a violation.

As a matter of fact, those of us who were warning about the NSA et al before Snowden were heavily relying on these 90's revelations to extrapolate what they were doing given the same system and new technology in a super-connected world.

So, for all the people in this thread to act like it's absurd that NSA was spying on KDC is ridiculously intellectually dishonest. NSA might not care about KDC individually, because they are just backdooring all the equipment (core router/switch backdoors, fiber splitters, etc) at backbone node junctions and they are gobbling up as much as possible for sifting later. Hence the word games the NSA leaders were playing with congress about collection vs wiretaping etc.

It's the NSA sharing raw data with Israelis in reverse, and it's happening all over to the point that the data sharing agreements themselves seem to me to be more of a security risk than the individuals they might deem worthy of a selector.

What's even more amazing to me is that on hn in years past you would have already been called out on this. I think hn is quickly becoming a place for business-people pretending to be hackers instead of the other way around, and it's shameful, but a different discussion I suppose.

[willstrafach]

> bypassing their own domestic restrictions

This is often repeated, but I don't believe any evidence has been published to indicate this is happening.

[arca_vorago]

So in 7 years when a leaker finally leaks the documents that prove it ala Snowden, I wonder what thing we will be warning ya'll about that you will claim has "no evidence".

Look, as a fairly rational conspiracy theorist, I recognize the importance of evidence, but in cases like this, it's very unlikely unless a leak happens for you to ever get it, and hence instead of looking for deductive evidence you can never rely on getting, you have to use inductive logic instead, and the difference between the two logical methods (inductive/deductive) is an important distinction that isn't made enough.

Do we have hard evidence that KDC was spied on specifically? No. Do we have inductive reason to believe it's probable? Very much so.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/20/us-uk-secret-d...

[willstrafach]

What is the goal in discussing something if there is no proof? I just don't quite understand.

If there was evidence of such loopholes, people could demand change from their representatives. Without proof, I guess the only thing someone can do is repeat it in any IC-related thread on HN to get some easy karma points (Seens to work well!).

[jonknee]

I think it is completely possible the NSA was snooping on a non-US citizen running a largely criminal enterprise (especially if you count incidental collection). My point was that despite the headline there is no evidence that they were. The only person saying so is the known liar who ran the scam.

[drunkenmonkey]

it's time for honest people like you to stop interacting with the plebs directly, and to start to educate them through mass-spectacle more. You're of a different breed; remember it.

[arca_vorago]

What kind of mass spectacle do you have in mind?

[mmjaa]

The "spectacle of ignorance" on the part of the masses. The most horrific thing to come from all of this, is that we're all not at all interested in the knowledge that we have secret masters who have given themselves the right to inspect anything, alter anything - at all - in the digital world, and use that to maintain and continue to expand their power base.

None of that matters.

What matters is just how little any of us give a fuck.

When Snowden hit the wires, it was a digital apocalypse for a lot of people. The GCHQ "catalog of intercepts", such as it was, just hurt like hell. The details about Keyscore and the technology that out-Google's Google: horrific. I can't explain how depressing it is to know that there are hardware y-combinators out there, in the oceans, providing an elite class with advantages none of us will ever see, in their effort to project power in the new, digital, order.

It was absolutely disturbing.

What made it hard to wake up from the hangover was the realisation: 99.95% of the digital-using world just don't give a fuck, because they don't understand.

We cannot trust our computers any more. We never could, really, but now: we just can't.

How do we back out of this situation? It has to start with a local revolution: roll your own. Grow your own. And, unfortunately, that isn't happening. Technological centralism has enslaved us all - and there are only a few, elite, who can escape these bonds.

Are you one of them, "citizen"?

[bgentry]

While I don't recall any leaks specific to piracy investigations, there were numerous leaks proving NSA involvement in cases which could in no way be described as relating to terrorism.

Off the top of my head:

- NSA surveillance of the semi-public Brazilian oil company Petrobras: http://g1.globo.com/fantastico/noticia/2013/09/nsa-documents...

- NSA tapped the phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/merkel-calls-obama...

- NSA spying of Indian diplomats to uncover details about their nuclear and space programs: http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/india-among-top-target...

This article is a decent compilation of Snowden-related stories from the first year after his leaks: http://www.businessinsider.com/snowden-leaks-timeline-2016-9

[goatsi]

The US government has interests beyond preventing terrorism. Do you think it should be purposefully blind to facts such as the energy security of other countries, or the capabilities of their space programs? Space programs have a very clear military "dual use" as North Korea has been demonstrating recently.

[woodman]

> Which Snowden leak showed that the NSA was being used to aid piracy investigations?

I'm not aware of any assistance rendered to piracy investigations, but there is ample evidence of them sharing intel for the purpose of domestic law enforcement - which is way worse. So the call for direct evidence is nice (and silly considering the nature of the evidence), but the logic of "our boys would never" is pretty soundly blown out of the water. They have every reason to - and no reason not to, as there is no punitive action even after being caught.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/dea-and-nsa-team-intel...

[willstrafach]

It is fine to speculate, but I believe the "call" for direct evidence (versus unsubstantiated claims) makes sense given the headline stating the unsubstantiated claim as if it were a fact.

[Natsu]

I wish more people would call out all stories on this more often. Given the Snowden revelations, this story is very believable to me, but we should never slack in requesting proof.

[mmjaa]

You (and I) have been given very clear proof that the entirety of our digital technological world has been subverted by an ultra-elite class to serve their (secret) purposes.

The call for proof on individual cases is, of course, a valid one. But to overlook the fact that we have no way to put the genie back in the box - that, in fact, there are two computer worlds - one for us, and one for the elites - is to allow ourselves to be enslaved by secrets.

The secrets that Snowden gave us all have only really further served to enslave us all. We, the people, do not care. And now that we have demonstrated that we don't have the gumption to care about our own enslavement, the deal is sealed. Nobody is fighting back, because nobody is aware, because nobody wants to know the truth: the world has gone computer, and none of us have the keys. Only our masters do.

[throwawaymanbot]

The NSA dishes out intel it has collected to other agencies in the US, including to the IRS and DEA etc. There is no such thing as a person not being a big fish. Its the case being supported that matters.

So in this case, the NSA would have a perfectly good reason to have him under surveillance. Primarily, when you think about how Hollywood and the music industry was impacted economically (and culturally) by his company. The DOJ were justified in requesting technical help, and would expect get intel from the NSA (Who in turn would request assistance from the NZ Folks) to support their case.