[olefoo]

The fact that Clapper is still in office months after it was revealed that he had in point of fact lied to congress during sworn testimony should tell you everything you need to know.

The surveillance machinery formerly known as Total Information Awareness is being built and fielded with or without the consent of the governed and most definitely without the consent of those of us who don't happen to be "US Persons".

The only solution is for you to demand your correspondents use strong encryption and for all of us to help the less technically adept to reach the point where that is not an obstacle.

[grugq]

It is incredibly simple politics. He is in place to continue to soak up the bad publicity from the Snowden event. Once the bad publicity stops, he will step down. There is no point, politically, of taking him out right now. His replacement will end up tarnished with the bad PR as he starts his gig.

http://www.constitution.org/mac/prince00.htm

The NSA is unable to do a thorough damage assessment -- they don't know how which documents Snowden took.

Greenwald is drip feeding the world press "stories" which can go on for an indeterminate amount of time (see "no damage assessment").

Only viable option is to keep Clapper in place until Greenwald et al. have exhausted their supply of new scandals.

If, for example, Snowden had gone all Wikileaks and dumped the whole lot of files at once, Clapper would have been gone months ago.

[olefoo]

You are most likely correct.

It seems as though the Intelligence Community is being forced back to 'siloing' since the pooled resource approach seems to be so vulnerable to singleton conscience-ridden whistleblowers. In a way this plays right into Assange's analysis of the cognitive structure of rule by conspiracy in that an organization can know things, but cannot both discuss them internally and keep them secret at the same time. In effect an attack that requires internal barriers to communication to prevent; is also an attack on the organizations overall cognitive ability.

[mpyne]

> In effect an attack that requires internal barriers to communication to prevent; is also an attack on the organizations overall cognitive ability.

It is indeed. That was one of the issues noted by the 9/11 Commission formed by Congress, was that the institutional silos prevented the right people from acting on the available intelligence leading up to the 9/11 attack.

Of course NSA had hardly decompartmentalized; Snowden was able to sysadmin himself through many of the compartments, which is a hard enough problem to solve, but that may mean NSA might look and decide they don't need to retract from other IC agencies.

[joe_the_user]

It is incredibly simple politics. He is in place to continue to soak up the bad publicity from the Snowden event. Once the bad publicity stops, he will step down. There is no point, politically, of taking him out right now. His replacement will end up tarnished with the bad PR as he starts his gig.

That is the usual way this goes. But we don't yet have the data to determine whether this is what's happening.

The situation may just be an indication that the NSA has joined the old Ma Bell and Italy's Berlusconi in being able to say "we don't care, we don't have to"

[leokun]

That actually makes a lot of sense. At some point he just may get tired of it. How much abuse can one person take.

[rrich]

For me, this is probably the most worrisome evidence of the current state of the government. I know FDR said there is nothing to fear but fear itself, but I fear nothing more than the wizard of oz, and I fear the wizard and NSA are one and the same. Back to programming this stuff scares the crap out of me.

[rdtsc]

> this stuff scares the crap out of me.

I used to live in the ex Soviet Union. Yeah, it was a time when things were thawing out, and people had stopped disappearing. One thing that was still there, that I remember, was a persistent fear of the state. Not acute, but kind of like a dull pain -- in the background, you feel it, and are aware of it. Jokes in private were made about the party and government, inefficiency and corruption. One had to be careful not too say too much in public, or they might find themselves without a job, or maybe worse.

With the recent NSA revelation, I am feeling the same kind of fear. I don't think they'll knock on my door later tonight. But instead I think about "should I post this comment?". Does it mean I will be put an a no-fly list? What if they mis-interpret my joke and then I can't get a job on a project because they'll read this joke 15 years later to me taken out of context? I would got to a protest to DC, but hmm, facial recognition will probably shove my image another another black list. Does that mean constant IRS audits from then on? Stuff like that.

It is not a fake fear, it is there. People engage in self-censorship already. I do it.

[ihsw]

> I would got to a protest to DC, but hmm, facial recognition

The GPS radio/cellular radio are used to find and pinpoint protester identities, at least momentarily. It is an eventuality that local police departments get such devices for $30K, but right now they cost an order of magnitude higher and it's not quite plug-and-play.

[cinquemb]

That is a pretty interesting point. Though, this is DC we're talking about, so local PD probably has attachés from all sorts of 3 letter agencies and access to gear for limited times (with oversight, most likely). Protests that are organized, so far, seem to give ample notice (as far as broadcasting to people) as to when they will occur so coordination probably isn't that hard (and because events take place all the time in DC that probably require such efforts that aren't protests).

Though thinking about this makes me wonder: what types of things we'll see evolve to counteract this type of surveillance, and I'll extend, that are available now to some degree? I keep thinking back to ideas of generating noise, and I wonder what that could potentially look like, what the catalyst for demand for that type of hardware/software would be, and the incentives for the makers of it.

[rdtsc]

Taking the battery out of the phone should work. Anyone tested or tried a Faraday cage case for a phone? Would a nice copper mesh case work?

Also in DC it is not illegal to wear a mask. In Virginia it is a felony, though (not an Onion article):

http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?000+cod+18.2-422

[vinceguidry]

The good folks at ScotteVest will sell you one.

http://www.scottevest.com/v3_store/SHSK.shtml

[e12e]

To further fan the embers of your fear, please enjoy:

[edit: title of link "Logo of New NRO Spy Satellite: An Octopus Engulfing the World with the Words “Nothing is Beyond Our Reach” Underneath"] http://vigilantcitizen.com/latestnews/new-u-s-spy-satellite-...

and:

["Top 10 Most Sinister PSYOPS Mission Patches"] http://vigilantcitizen.com/vigilantreport/top-10-most-sinist...

I find it interesting (and sad) how the last few months have shifted my perspective on Bruce Sterling's "Zenith Angle" from leaning more towards satire, to leaning more towards hard sci-fi/telling the "truth" with fiction.

[pekk]

The thread about that patch discussed how typical it is to have crazy over-the-top patches, it's not new at all

[e12e]

I wasn't aware there was a tread on the satellite patch on hn, but seeing how it was featured on Ars Technica, I'm not surprised:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6880117

The second link is based on a book from 2007 that used FOIA requests to be able to study the patches, so part of the point is that it's nothing new...

Anyway, I don't fall into the camp that takes the patches very seriously -- in general, anything a covert organization/project projects about itself is bound to be either propaganda or misinformation.

[aagha]

Fully agreed. What's sadder is that Congress doesn't seem to have demanded anything be done to punish him.

[olefoo]

Not entirely true:

Sensenbrenner (R, author of PATRIOT act) http://foxnewsinsider.com/2013/12/09/sensenbrenner-clapper-s...

did come out on the side of prosecution.

So far he is the only one.

[res0nat0r]

Him lying to Congress actually isn't that black and white.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/intel-dir-james-clapper-lie-c...

[reginaldjcooper]

If you specifically choose definitions of words that don't agree with the typical usage and act like those were the definitions that were used when you were asked a question, you are, in fact, a big fat liar.

[jgg]

Clapper said, "No" and "not wittingly." That mind-rotting article you linked to is one guy speculating that he was put on the spot and had to say something in order to not confirm that they were openly spying on people...WHAT?

Everything we have seen makes it clear that they are spying on Americans and they obviously know they are doing it. Clapper's answer was thus a LIE. He was asked a question and gave an answer he knew was wrong. HE LIED. THIS IS THE DEFINITION OF LYING.

I wish someone around here would ante up and starting banning the shills.

[res0nat0r]

Stop saying shills, this isn't Reddit. Critical thinking about issues here is appreciated. Everything unfortunately related to the NSA isn't cut and dry, black or white.

You really must not have understood the article, as it mentions testifying about top secret programs is not a simple task.

[jcc80]

It may not be simple but it helps when you have the questions in advance.

"So that he would be prepared to answer, I sent the question to Director Clapper’s office a day in advance. After the hearing was over, my staff and I gave his office a chance to amend his answer," Wyden said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/06...

[jgg]

Reddit didn't invent the word "shill."

I understood the article just fine! Did you? I don't care what his job is - he still lied! The internal logic of that piece is, "if he didn't deny it, people would think it was true!" The NSA was doing it anyway, so that makes fuck-all difference, now doesn't it?

[res0nat0r]

I find it perfectly acceptable to lie during an open session hearing about top secret programs if those doing the questioning are doing it to be politically motivated, ie to embarrass the President.

If your hearing is actually looking for the truth and not looking to out top secret programs because you have an ideological reason against that, then fine do it in a closed door hearing, where I would think something like this should be done in the first place as to not harm national intelligence.

[kbenson]

We are then going down the rabbit hole of who gets to decide when it's appropriate to lie, and when not. IMHO, the only appropriate action to take in a case like this is to stop the open hearing as soon as possible, or refuse to answer any questions on the grounds that answering some and not others could be used to determine top secret information. At least then the public can decide whether they feel that is acceptable and lawmakers can decide what that means for them.

Instead, what we had was an official lie while under oath for political expediency.

[shard972]

> I find it perfectly acceptable to lie during an open session hearing about top secret programs if those doing the questioning are doing it to be politically motivated

As opposed to what other kind of motivation? The only kind of questions they ever get are political so it seems like you think that people at the NSA can just lie about just about anything and it's just fine.

[rosser]

...ie to embrace the President.

Yeah, because Wyden's motivation in asking the questions he asked was totally to buddy up to Obama.

[zw123456]

Just my intuition, but I just saw the 60 minutes piece on the NSA and the General Alexander scares the putties out of me. Something is very very wrong here.