Hard News: A GCSB Roundup
102 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 2 3 4 5 Newer→ Last
-
BenWilson, in reply to
The GCSB blow-up seems to be a litmus test for how libertarian a libertarian really is.
ACT failed that one long ago. Immediately after 9/11, I remember Prebble carrying on at length in Parliament about how this was proof that the govt was being irresponsible scrapping the SkyHawks, which could have been used to shoot down the guy who dropped flour bombs on Eden Park during the Springbok Tour. He was so concerned about stopping a political expression that the idea of an unarmed plane being shot down over a densely populated area clearly didn't faze him.
-
Would it even be possible to spy effectively these days without in some way filtering all electronic communication? Given that filtering will always turn up entirely innocent communication "bycatch", doesn't that mean that it must now be a choice between no effective spying at all (which may be how you prefer it, and that's a valid position) or spying on everyone?
-
BenWilson, in reply to
doesn’t that mean that it must now be a choice between no effective spying at all (which may be how you prefer it, and that’s a valid position) or spying on everyone?
I guess it depends what one even means by "spying on". Is an automated scanner flagging some feature "spying"? What if the feature isn't even a human identifiable one, but something statistical that only an algorithm would even notice? Looking out for viruses, spam, and scams has been pretty routine for a long time, and involves algorithms pulling messages apart and "reading" them.
-
Chris Waugh, in reply to
Would it even be possible to spy effectively these days without in some way filtering all electronic communication?
I was under the impression that an awful lot of the USA's troubles in recent decades - perhaps even stretching as far back as Vietnam - were at least in part due to blind faith in technology and a lack of investment in good old fashioned human intelligence.
-
BenWilson, in reply to
That could be true without countering Lucy's question. Human intelligence could be applied to the electronic streams that make up so much of our communication, too. But yes, it's pretty clear you can easily avoid such scrying just by not doing your communication in that way, and is thus a highly appealing method to anyone actually doing anything really dodgy. So the question is actually "is such spying really effective?". It looks to me like it is a case of massively diminishing returns on something miserably small in the first case (genuine intel gleanable by intercepting electronic communications of unknown suspects).
-
Kumara Republic, in reply to
A close matching analogy would be an over-reliance on CCTV at the expense of duty cops on the beat.
-
"we live in a dangerous world"
Fear!
'nothing to hide, nothing to fear'
Don't fear!
So if I fear the dangers in the world (which the government recommends), does that mean I must be hiding something (which the government finds suspicious)?
-
I know Russell was concerned about the reporting of the Snowden leaks. That there was a lot of accusations of broad abuse without a lot of evidence. The stuff that keeps tumbling out does not look good.
E.g. early on USA admit to widespread snooping on "foreigners overseas"
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/us/nsa-verizon-calls.html
then we get this quote from Snowden
"Other agencies don't ask us where we got the information from and we don't ask them. That way they can protect their top politicians from the backlash in case it emerges how massively people's privacy is abused worldwide," he said."
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2013/07/07/world/europe/07reuters-usa-security-germany.html
Which pretty much sums up my problem. The politicians say "this is the law, it protects you, we do not break the law". But the law is so easy to circumvent, childishly so, and there is no oversight of the secret programs. You can pretty much guarantee this is being abused.
-
"chris", in reply to
it’s pretty clear you can easily avoid such spying just by not doing your communication in that way, and is thus a highly appealing method to anyone actually doing anything really dodgy
“22:22 (14 hours ago)
Dear Felix,
Erectile dysfunction medication has arrived, we are all systems go! See you on the day of Thor at the hornets nest ; )Yours
James”-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"05:23 (7 hours ago)
Dear James,
Glad to hear the WMDs have arrived. As previously discussed, I'd prefer you refrained from using these silly euphemisms, they are not cool!!! If per chance we are arrested and tried, I'd prefer there were no grounds for the prosecution to insinuate that I'm a homosexual.Sincerely
Felix" -
Coming in a little late. Thomas' presentation was masterful. John Key's constant attempts to misrepresent what submitters have been saying is dispicable.
I think he has been feed his line of questioning from the same idiot beaurocrats who equated copyright infringement with people trafficking, drug dealing and the illegal arms trade. It upsets me to think that senior civil servants in NZ can come up with that sort of shit.
-
David Hood, in reply to
Would it even be possible to spy effectively these days without in some way filtering all electronic communication?
I am going to say yes it would, as there are both a) Methods of passing messages that avoid the electronic filters (most of these are only really of use if you were actually engaging in a conspiracy as they are impractically difficult for day to day privacy) b) a track record that it is people on the ground noticing stuff (in the community) that have actually identified real plots.
It might be worth noting that the U.S. also gathers all the metadata (who is sending to who) of things sent through the postal system by photographing all the mail. So it is broader issues than just electronic communication. -
Stephen Judd, in reply to
ACT failed that one long ago.
This is because the ACT-style libertarians have a weird way of understanding liberty that bases everything on property rights.
-
BenWilson, in reply to
This is because the ACT-style libertarians have a weird way of understanding liberty that bases everything on property rights.
Yes, I'm all for liberty. The philosophical arguments for liberty itself are very sound. The idea that a primacy given to property rights maximizes liberty is a big leap, especially since property rights are in themselves a denial of liberty to everyone but the owner of the property.
-
In Stuff today, Johnkey says our spying is legal, and we've made no secret about how we've shared our data with our intelligence partners.
That makes me feel so much better.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/8895637/PM-Our-spying-is-legal
-
BenWilson, in reply to
I understood Lucy’s question to be asking “if you’re going to filter electronic communication, you really have to filter all of it, don’t you? And you do have to take account of electronic communication nowadays, surely?”. In other words, filtering all the traffic flows naturally from the idea that it is worthwhile to filter any of it, and surely it’s worth filtering some of it?
It’s a good framing to show the way that such reasoning works. Because it can be done, then it would actually be remiss not to do it.
Reminds me very much of extraordinary lengths that a stockbroking firm I worked at went to to cover it’s arse from accusations of insider trading. They had scanners that looked for stock codes in every message sent, and would tag any messages containing those codes with disclosures of stock interest by the board of directors. They kept tapes containing every telephone conversation that every stockbroker made. This was in the late 90s. And yet anyone wanting to engage in insider trading would just speak to their source via some unmonitored medium, like their own mobile phone, or they could always just meet the people off-premises for a beer or something.
For all those precautions, no one ever got busted for insider trading. It’s just too hard to detect like that, and a serious enough crime that anyone doing it would take precautions. Possibly the easiest way to avoid any kind of paper/binary trail for insider trading is simply via contra deals. If you have an friendly insider in some publicly traded stock, then instead of paying them for information, you just reward them with some of your own information. Then you can buy their stock for the easy quick money, and they can buy from your stock tip, and neither party can be detected as trading on the inside unless the communication itself is actually intercepted. How do you intercept a couple of old boys standing at a bar chatting in muted voices about what stocks to buy? These networks are as uncrackable as terrorist cells. Only a fucking idiot broker would tell someone some inside information over a recorded company telephone line, or even worse, in an e-mail, encrypted or otherwise.
-
Kumara Republic, in reply to
Yes, I’m all for liberty. The philosophical arguments for liberty itself are very sound. The idea that a primacy given to property rights maximizes liberty is a big leap, especially since property rights are in themselves a denial of liberty to everyone but the owner of the property.
And the usual suspects are prepared to support decidedly illiberal policies to maintain such “property rights”, despite their protestations to the contrary (“free markets equal free people!”). In America it was called the House Un-American Activities Committee. Singapore’s ruling PAP cranks it up a few notches (although it’s not as dominant as it used to be), and in Chile, Augusto Pinochet took it to its logical conclusion with death squads and military dictatorship.
The black-and-white world-view of civilised-versus-savage has traditionally caused a a rift between Objectivists and small-L libertarians, and such a world-view seems to have more in common with the neo-con crowd. Ayn Rand, the godmother of Objectivism, basically said that Native American “savages” should be grateful for the Manifest Destiny, on the grounds that they had no concept of property rights and did little or nothing to develop their land. Additionally, Rand supported an aggressive foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, under the belief that it would put “primitive” Arab “barbarism” in its place. We know how well that’s worked out to date.
The recent billboard hate propaganda of Pamela Geller – a disciple of Rand and a name that has me resisting the temptation to throw stuff at my screen – is just the latest manifestation of such monochrome pig-headedness.
-
Howard Edwards, in reply to
In Rodney's case, "nothing to Hide" seems uncannily accurate.
-
BenWilson, in reply to
LOL
-
BenWilson, in reply to
that has me resisting the temptation to throw stuff at my screen
Heh, I feel that way when Libertarians misuse Karl Popper. FFS, Hide, Popper believed in "Piecemeal Social Engineering" and said of NZ under the Savage Government welfare reforms that it was the best organized country on the planet. His fucking book that he wrote right here in NZ was The Open Society and It's Enemies . The idea of a society routinely reading every communication would have disgusted him, and he fled to NZ to escape just such a society. He opposed every kind of dogma. He even opposed his own dogma, believing that his own theories would be proved wrong and improved upon, which they have been. The fact that he disagreed with Marxism is no evidence that he would have agreed with Ayn Rand's works. I believe, on the contrary, he would have thought them dangerous and ridiculous.
-
Keir Leslie, in reply to
Done for you big boy...
-
Kumara Republic, in reply to
Heh, I feel that way when Libertarians misuse Karl Popper.
And Adam Smith took a dim view of monopolies and cartels: “People of the same trade seldom meet… ” Hell, he's even regarded as a raging Red by some of these same people.
With apologies to Ronnie Reagan, a Randroid reads Adam Smith, and a non-Randroid understands Adam Smith.
-
BenWilson, in reply to
I'd say a Randroid parses Adam Smith, but the parse tree just reflects the prejudice of the programmer.
-
ears looking at you kid…’
Waihopai rates a mention in this Age article.The US Australian Joint Defence Facility at Pine Gap near Alice Springs and three Australian Signals Directorate facilities: the Shoal Bay Receiving Station near Darwin, the Australian Defence Satellite Communications Facility at Geraldton and the naval communications station HMAS Harman outside Canberra are among contributors to the NSA’s collection program codenamed X-Keyscore.
The New Zealand Government Security Communications Bureau facility at Waihopai near Blenheim also contributes to the program.
X-Keyscore reportedly processes all signals before they are shunted off to various “production lines” that deal with specific issues and the exploitation of different data types for analysis – variously code-named Nucleon (voice), Pinwale (video), Mainway (call records) and Marina (internet records). US intelligence expert William Arkin describes X-Keyscore as a “national Intelligence collection mission system”.We have no idea what ‘intel’ we are gathering – bottom-dragging, drift-netting bagging it up and sending it on to the Company Store…
No better than ‘scientific whaling’ really…
and this sounds like John Key’s GCSB…Mr Snowden said that the other partners in the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance of the US, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand “sometimes go even further than the [National Security Agency] people themselves.”
as to “Human Intel’ – word seeems to have come down from ‘on high’ that there’ll be no reason brought to bear, no trying to understand other cultures – why else, at this point in time, would courses like Islamic studies be cut back or discontinued at universities like Canterbury…
-
ears looking at you kid…’
( This should be Tshirt and greeting cards I.D )
-
BenWilson, in reply to
"super-calculator capable of managing tens of millions of gigaoctets of information".
Love it. Them Frenchies refusing to use foreign words like "computer" and "byte".
Post your response…
This topic is closed.