Senate Diplomatic Firestorm

1. I don't claim it's new information, I claim the evidence for it is new. Before there was no evidence and it wasn't an admissible point in any debate because there was no information.

2. How do we know the government is following its own rules?

 

It would nice to have a more public debate about the costs vs. the benefits and the prioritization of public risk. We're first in the world in anti-terrorism spending, but 28th in the world in how low our infant mortality rate is. More infants died in the first quarter of 2001 than were killed in the 9/11 attack.

If the goal is to save lives, then spend the money in a way that maximizes lives saved. If the goal is preventing property damage then shifting to infrastructure spending for example that would improve flood control, would be more effective. Preventing terrorism for its own sake is a giant waste of money.

 

By that measure, you advocate little to zero spending on sky scanning for asteroids and prevention?

 

I advocate a level of spending appropriate to a rational analysis of risk. Our level of spending on anti-terrorism efforts is irrational. We all know that the NSA surveillance efforts are largely about protecting the existence of the NSA.

 

That's one thing. But it's worse: your government is spying on over a billion people worldwide.

Incorrect. I am rarely surprised.

Not in general, but in this case, yes. The information divulged by Snowden shouldn't have been classified to begin with. It's too intrusive and all-encompassing to be kept secret.

Correct...

Aww! No, man! Unless my anti-americanocentrism on this forum annoys them? As I said: it's not about me. I have no money to speak of. Some of them - half a million people! - must have malign intentions towards those with money.



If you have top clearance - and ES can need-to-know all he likes, but even Snowden had top clearance, and he was an IT guy with no education to speak of, with no intelligence background - you can check out LinkedIn for the names of the mergers and acquisitions advisors at Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, anywhere. You sift through their e-mails, region by region, sector by sector, until you discover that BT will announce a big deal in twenty days. You use LinkedIn to check the analysts that follow BT for large banks, so you can read what they think of rumors about such a deal, which models they use, and whether this acquisition has implications for their recommendations to investors. Then you let someone purchase BT stock, or take a position in the bond market. Ka-ching...

But that's not realistic, Watto! I hear you say. Because looking up names on LinkedIn is cumbersome. You just hack the email of the HR guy at JPMorgan.

I would hazard a guess that adventures like these are available to other people than just the NSA. Even if it's not Snowden himself, if hundreds of thousands of people are privy to this information, there's gotta be a few Russian and Chinese moles among them. Who's to say Al-Qaeda or Hezbollah haven't already infiltrated, and finance their operations with some insider trading? A good reason to go snooping in the emails of bankers with Muslim surnames, in any case. Who knows what you'll find "accidentally". In the past, Hezbollah has taken positions on the Israeli financial markets through intermediaries. Throw some bombs on it, and the money pours in. Bombs financing themselves.

Or think of the Cyprus bail-out negotiations, and what a hedge fund with a mole in the NSA could do. Just access the e-mails of the EU negotiators, infer the outcome, and again: payday.
The financial world, troubled as it may be, can in its current state only function on trust, and on the assumption that what's secret is really secret. The scope of the NSA intrusion puts those secrets at serious risk. For everybody.

 

Maybe Snowden and Roman Polanski will start hanging out now, and then Polanski will make a movie about Snowden's life? I mean, stranger things have happened right?

But seriously, all of this regarding government surveillance has been known by the public for quite some time. I don't see Snowden as a whistle-blower or a traitor. I see him as an egotistical idiot who wanted to make a name for himself, and sadly, he has.

 

If you're an idiot who wants to make a name for yourself, you audition for American Idol, not for American Assassination.

I don't doubt that this was a principled action, regardless as to whether it was correct.

 

Well I wanted to say another word besides "idiot" but it's not exactly TOS appropriate.

 

"Rational" to whose basis though? Re-election campaigns or true spending?

The issue is, and these are things that drive me nuts as a probability guy, there are just some things you can't accurately measure with imperfect information. All of the models in the world need to be based on some inferred data. And if you scan 3% of the sky, you miss an asteroid that can wipe out life in the other 97%. Similarly, let's say you have an NSA program that can sift through millions and millions of terabytes of data fairly rapidly and search for keywords, but it's a nebulous gray area in the law. Sure, you may need warrants for deep dives, but just collecting and collating data, looking for bad patterns... technically, sorta, maybe allowed under the Patriot Act.

If another terrorist attack comes and the NSA says "We have this and it probably would have caught it, but we were worried about the legality so we were ordered to stop by the government..."

Think it would go over well?

I don't disagree that the spending may be irrational to you or I, and that the implications of the program may be troubling... but we keep voting for these people and we keep tacitly endorsing this behavior. So... I can't get worked up or outraged...

 

Watto, your casual dismissal of your own ignorance of the matter that is the most grating. Nevermind that you have no idea what you're talking about (and a decent human being would acknowledge this and be humble), you plow on with a typical leftist's convictions that because they care about people so, so much (has to be public caring or nobody knows you're progressive and I mean, pfft, what's the point if you can't join the other cool kids in Caringville?) they must be onto something.

Watto, need to know is actual. I promise you. My remit was Asia, so I couldn't just read S/TS REFTELs from, say, Iran or Afghanistan. When Burma blew up in 2006 or 2007, there was daily briefings on the situation at Foreign Affairs and most of us would have to leave the room when the topic of our assets in country was discussed, because beyond the squirrels, the diplobrats and Defence, nobody else - including the security service - needed to know.

You can disagree all you want but it's akin to putting a dog in a suit. Adorable but nobody takes it seriously.

All intelligence gathering is compartmentalised as a form of counterintelligence protection. It's just a fact, and if you don't know this I don't know what to tell you. People working cybersecurity only work cybersecurity unless they change divisions or roles. People working Asian or MidEast crime stick to that area. People working CT stick to that area. Working groups of senior analysts and managers may convene to share findings based on a common remit but until you get to the rarified atmosphere of the top decision makers most agencies don't promote the casual sharing of sensitive information.

To go one further, since you insist on sharing an opinion you've spared no effort researching - in Commonwealth countries, at least, all hard copy Secret material is kept in combination locked safes and is only kept with other like for like material (so you won't find material on the Syrian uprising mixed in with info on key Islamic terrorists in SE Asia). Access to the safe is regulated and usually you sign out documents to read and return. We had secure reading rooms, with no phone, computer, or internet for that material and you locked your mobile phone away before entering.

All TS stuff is usually never printed because of the risk, and is on secure networks like our SATIN. SATIN can only be accessed by individual users with their logins, so an audit trail of their time and data access is kept and reviewed by security. If a need to know cannot be demonstrated in material you access, then you face revocation of your clearance and suspension of duties pending further investigation.

So not only are you faced with the reality that of the X S/TS cleared employees in the US govt, a tiny slew will ever know about the parameters for the data searches you're so "concerned" about. You realise that it's likely that not just CIA, FBI, Military and Homeland Security have clearances right? Transport will. FEMA will. Some people at the CDC will. Coastguard will. Hell, even people at the Treasury or Agriculture might, when you talk food security for example.

So tell me Watto, do you still hold your factually incorrect views?

 

I didn't relize that airports are some kind of safe no man's land.

 

Speak intelligibly and respectfully and I'll reply in kind.

 

OK, fine:

Why is it that when you have had precisely no exposure to any of this in practical terms you insist upon speaking as if you do?

Why do you dismiss entire core concepts, such as need to know, out of hand when someone has experienced it first hand?

You don't know what you're on about but you seem to think the more confidently you present your opinion, the more you'll compensate the factual difference.

 

I'll admit that I've found it surprising that there's such a contradiction between what you say and what this Snowden guy says. Do you claim that the graph I posted above is incorrect?

 

What's wrong with the graph? Seems like 1% of the US population (and, spoiler alert, not all of those people will be American) have access to secret and much less than that have access to top-secret. Also, bear in mind, not all of these are military -- some will be diplomatic, economic, agricultural, etc.

 

What? No. The NSA even acknowledged the process shouldn't have allowed Snowden to do what he did.

My suggestion, from experience, is that the the US is generally terrible at espionage, intelligence and secrecy in general but they tend to get offended at the suggestion. The Brits are exponentially better at it.

 

Correct.

 

Terrorism is not just about body count. Again, just imagine the economic/psychological effect a coordinated attack on the public transit systems of a half-dozen cities would have. It would arguably be worse than 9/11, because the peace of mind one could have about the lack of proximity to an international symbol of America would no longer exist.

But, hey, someone might be snooping your grandma's secret recipe for peppered yams. We can't be having that.

 

I think you mean the "evildoers"! Heeheheehee. To combat the evildoers. Evildoers. Say it a hundred times. And nuklar real fast.

 

Well, guys, if the fact that over a million people have the clearance for any of the scenarios I posted doesn't scare you, I don't know what to say. You probably have more faith in humanity than I do.

 

Who says you need to know?

 

I do.

 

It depends on what your definition of "top secret" is. Let's take some hypothetical examples, Ender can hip-check me if I overstate some.

1) Embassy evacuation and defense plans. How many embassies times how many people in security who would know that?
2) 1,300 uniformed USSS agents.
3) Army logistics officers handling legal arms sales and delivery to allies.
4) Foreign-land military base defense plans.
5) People working in specific areas of the CDC.
6) Tariff and import/export plans for US beef.
7) The location of the secret bunker where they keep Dick Cheney's 8 backup hearts. (Just kidding! As far as you know...)
8) Active intelligence operatives working on national security cases (e.g. tracking Bin Laden, back in the day).
9) Active FBI investigations on domestic terrorism.

I mean, there are legitimately probably a dozen more I can come up with off the top of my head for a varying source of really, quite top secret things that have nothing to do with the NSA's domestic data sniffing...

 

Bebebecuzz, izz Obamasz

 

That's "nucular".