| Oh nobody thinks they are saints. I hope not. > they use their technical abilities to suppress dissent in frightening ways I'm just going to mention so called "Fusion Centers", which have been used to investigate and disrupt the organization of The Tea Party movement and Occupy Wall Street but spare my usual rant. No it does not compare to Russia or China. Oh and I'm also going to link this: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/14/manipulating-o... And this: http://minerva.dtic.mil/ > NSA threatening domestic jobs, companies, individuals, and most of all innocents, that leads to an upset. The NSA's view, and in fact several of the last presidential offices, is that these programs and capabilities are important for the country because they give American companies and domestic jobs a leg up. "The National Security Agency/Central Security Service (NSA/CSS) leads the U.S. Government in cryptology that encompasses both Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) and Information Assurance (IA) products and services, and enables Computer Network Operations (CNO) in order to gain a decision advantage for the Nation and our allies under all circumstances." - NSA Mission Statement A good example is the hacking of Brazilian PETROBOL (PETROBRAS?). Or actually, here's a firstlook link: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/05/us-governments... > While there's definitely a cyber war going on, you have to ask, why isn't the NSA actively disseminating knowledge to Americans on how to secure themselves? Because it is essentially impossible to secure yourself on the internet. This isn't a fine point. It's a blanket fact. > Why are they instead actively weakening encryption standards? They have a concept called "NOBUS" which means that the weaknesses they introduce should only be exploitable by them. DUAL_EC_DRBG, the goto example of an NSA backdoor, is a perfect example of NOBUS. > In summary, the NSA should participate in the global cyber intelligence war by educating the American public, instead of weakening them. Oh I agree. Actually if you look back Clinton and first term Bush era they kept proclaiming that there was a cyber intelligence war but it never really caught on. So they made it about 'cyber terrorists'. Nobody caught on. They made it about actual terrorists. Now we listen. I do hope that investments are made in defensive capabilities rather than offensive. The Obama administration released a series of strategic documents funding longer term research into the protection of domestic computer networks, programs and technologies. But right now you can't play the game of cyber intelligence war without attacking. When it comes to hacking, the attacker always wins. Just playing defense is a losing game. > The NSA's actions since 9/11 have been more consistent with a power grab than any authentic desire to empower & protect Americans. This has been going on much longer than since 9/11. PREDATOR and MAINWAY are examples of programs that existed years before the 9/11 attacks. |
> Oh I agree. Actually if you look back Clinton and first term Bush era they kept proclaiming that there was a cyber intelligence war but it never really caught on.
Interesting point. Now, in the 90s, wasn't the government trying to prevent encryption from being used by the public though?
> When it comes to hacking, the attacker always wins. Just playing defense is a losing game.
Still, there are a lot of defensive measures the public can take from hackers. For instance, using OTR, Tor/VPNs, and moving sites to HTTPS whenever possible.
Bruce Schneier has an interesting metaphor for this period in human evolution. He compares the information revolution to the industrial revolution. At first, people didn't realize how bad pollution could be, amongst other things like food safety. Books like "The Jungle" helped prompt people to stand up for themselves and demand better, and healthier ways of conduct. Overall, humanity evolved to handle the new technologies and their side effects. Snowden's revelations are like "The Jungle" of our time.