Edward Snowden Says NSA Engages In Industrial Espionage 212
Maow writes "Edward Snowden has been interviewed by a German TV network and stated that the NSA is involved in industrial espionage, which is outside the range of national security. He claims that Siemens is a prime example of a target for the data collection. I doubt this would surprise AirBus or other companies, but it shall remain to be seen what measures global industries take (if any) to prevent their internal secrets from falling into NSA's — and presumably American competitors' — hands." AirBus is a good example of a company that has experienced spying from both sides.
A symbiotic relationship (Score:5, Insightful)
There has existed a perception that large corporate compilers of information reluctantly acquiesced to the full might of national security orders and subpoenas..
What's in it for me? is a sweet, sweet incentivizer, too.
Re:A symbiotic relationship (Score:5, Insightful)
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You have to admit that the civilian market for rail guns, field artillery, and radar jammers is pretty small.
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Only 'coz we aren't allowed to have 'em.
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Americans can own artillery, it is just both expensive and hard to come by. The license costs also make them expensive to shoot, but it can be done.
Probably sold by now: Bofors L60 40mm Machine Gun for Sale [youtube.com]
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Citizens (and even non-citizens) are allowed to own artillery in US. It's expensive because the market is limited (as no new items can be introduced to it), and you have to get a tax stamp for your "destructive device" (and then separately for every shell). But if you're willing to jump through all the hoops, you can totally own, say, an operational mortar or howitzer with a stash of ammo for it. Here [youtube.com] is an example of a privately owned piece being shot, all legal.
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This actually makes perfect sense.
There has existed a perception that large corporate compilers of information reluctantly acquiesced to the full might of national security orders and subpoenas..
What's in it for me? is a sweet, sweet incentivizer, too.
So, did Snowden release any documents as proof? I don't recall seeing any. If the data isn't passed to corporations that wouldn't seem to be very useful.
Outside the range? (Score:1, Funny)
Assuming the espionage is purely separate from any military programs, American companies get the ability to build products Americans rely on, rather than having American life be dependent on foreign companies which might not be able or willing to export during World War 3. And somehow that's not a part of national security?
Re:Outside the range? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you accept that argument, then all economic activity falls under the umbrella of national security, and the Constitution goes out the window.
Oh, I see what you did there.
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Cute, but no [c2.com].
Spying on one uncooperative American company to help a favored American competitor wouldn't really help national security as much. The balance of economic power between nations would be unchanged.
Offhand, I don't know of any section of the Constitution that would be affected here. The Constitution doesn't actually afford any protection for foreign nations, but I'm sure the hordes of wishful thinkers will insist otherwise.
Re:Outside the range? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think he's trying to make the argument that if corporate espionage counts as "national security" then so does any NSA interference in "commerce," which due to the absurdly broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause means that the NSA can do literally anything at all.
It's not actually that big a leap, I think.
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I think it's a pretty big leap to go from foreign espionage to unlimited interference anywhere. That's a lot of conditions removed. A much smaller leap is to say that espionage against a foreign government for the benefit of our own government is also suitable for and against government contractors.
The Commerce Clause gives Congress power over interstate Congress, so that would be allow Congress to authorize any domestic interference, not the NSA (though Congress could probably charge the NSA with such a ta
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If you accept that argument, then all economic activity falls under the umbrella of national security, and the Constitution goes out the window.
Only if you accept that it's okay to toss the Constitution out the window any time "national security" is invoked. Granted that that is the position of the current (and last several) administrations, but that doesn't mean it's true.
However, I think it clearly is true that all economic activity of sufficient scope and scale is relevant to national security. And, actually, I think the NSA even has a legitimate role in assuring the security of large-scale US economic activities.
I once worked on a project w
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Right, though I'd add it's not only the administration that takes that position. Congress and the courts have been willing accomplices, and an alarming number of ordinary citizens think "national security" is more important than "civil liberties." What should and should not be
I don't care for your vision of America (Score:2, Insightful)
If America with all our resources can't work out some cheap knock-off without resorting to industrial espionage, we deserve to fail.
Let's be honest though, the NSA serves only a small portion of our population and sees the rest of us as their adversary.
Re:I don't care for your vision of America (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's be honest though, the NSA serves only a small portion of our population and sees the rest of us as their adversary.
The NSA serves nobody but itself. It's in its self-interest to siphon off as much tax payer money as possible but the control structures that need to be greased for that are deliberately removed from the control and oversight of the tax payer.
That's not all too different from how secret services in other countries operate and partly hard to avoid if the "secret" is supposed to make some kind of sense.
What's different in the U.S.A., however, is that the amount of money the secret services burn through without basic oversight is a significant portion of the nation's income, to a degree where it endangers the national finances as well as international relations.
The NSA is out of control by design, but it is taking down the whole nation, and that's causing more damage than good to its ulterior justification of providing a net benefit to the U.S.A.
Re:Outside the range? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well that depends, if you got a situation where America is artificially taking work away from other nations by simply stealing their knowledge, product designs and so forth then that might mean those nations become less stable and more likely to want to hurt America when they find out the only reason they're poor and unemployed is because America stole from them.
Not to mention the harm this does for it's ability to partake in international politics, how silly will it look telling China off for manipulating it's currency to it's benefit when America has similarly been artificially propping it's economy up simply by stealing from everyone else? It's a dangerous game as if America wants to get in a race to the bottom it's going to lose hard because countries like India and China will be able to cope with reduced living standards far more than Americans will be able to without rising up and rioting. Those countries also have far less scruples about stealing from the US. You think China will now have any reservations about hacking US companies? It was supposedly doing so before but now it doesn't even need to care if it gets caught as it can just say it's fair play whilst America if it wants to be taken seriously still needs to retain some semblance of decency.
Or in other words, engaging in this sort of subversive manner against foreign states might be exactly the sort of thing that starts World War 3 creating such instability and such threat to the US in the first place.
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Re:Outside the range? (Score:4, Insightful)
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With the sanctions on Iran being softened, how likely do you think it is that Siemens is them parts that would work in centrifuges? As I recall there were many European firms that helped Saddam in his day.
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There were many American firms too. There were also many American firms that helped Iran, it's whole air forces is still equipped with the likes of Tomcats and Phantoms to this day. There were also Russian firms involved too, and Chinese firms.
I'm not really sure what your point is though exactly. That companies are free to do trade with nations not deemed to be under embargo? Why yes! you're right, and all of them do.
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"The difference being the American armaments were received before the revolution, and when it was legal."
But that's what you're talking about now? You talked about Siemens selling to them once sanctions are lifted. There's no difference.
"The point being that intelligence agencies can have a legitimate interest in commercial activity besides theft of trade secrets."
Of course they can, but that's not what espionage is, and espionage is the accusation here.
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I'm not sure how you got this wrong, but lets take it from the beginning.
In the past Iran was an ally of the West. It was legal to sell arms and other goods to it. That is how it acquired American arms like the F-14. After the revolution the Iranian government become hostile, and eventually was sanctioned. There were various companies that violated those sanctions, including European companies. Knowing about those violations is a legitimate question for intelligence agencies to investigate.
The sanction
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That's an astute observation. What a pity the NSA decided to jeopardize that legitimate national security interest.
If their real mission is national security, they're providing negative value.
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Well that depends, if you got a situation where America is artificially taking work away from other nations by simply stealing their knowledge, product designs and so forth then that might mean those nations become less stable and more likely to want to hurt America when they find out the only reason they're poor and unemployed is because America stole from them.
What have we done to China so far?
Developing countries are known for bootstrapping themselves by stealing IP from more developed nations. (The US did it when it was a developing nation: look at the history of textiles.) China has been doing it to the US for years, and our response has not been WWIII, but rather to work on gradually improving IP protections.
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"What have we done to China so far?"
http://www.wired.com/wiredente... [wired.com]
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ke... [forbes.com]
Given that China has the second largest output for research papers nowadays I'd imagine there's quite a lot for the US to learn from them even if they are stereotyped as a backwater state which the US could learn nothing of value from.
Re:Outside the range? (Score:5, Insightful)
Regarding China, the most useful information probably relates to contract negotiation. Stemming the tide of Chinese corporate purchases and Chinese oil company investment in Africa and so forth, but also allowing companies like Apple to better negotiate terms with their manufacturers.
But in general there have been a lot of military deals that European firms for example were set to win because they'd put in the best bid (objectively so) only for the deal to be cancelled last minute, sometimes after being signed citing "corruption" only for American firms to be handed the deal on a platter without restarting the tender process (which is what would happen if corruption was a real concern).
If during take over and purchase negotiations and so forth America is able to get e-mails saying things like "We'll take $250,000 for the company but let's push for $500,000" then the American firms know they can hold out until that minimum and not risk losing the deal giving them an artificial advantage in negotiations.
There are many examples, and I don't pretend it is just America doing it, I think the UK and France at minimum do a lot of it too, but it's not really a good idea long term as you're just legitimising the practice and it's simply then just a race of who does it best, until someone loses, then when someone loses a race that shouldn't even have been happening in the first place they'll get angry, and get their own back another way.
It's just not a good idea building global distrust like this.
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Except I'm not American.
Re:Outside the range? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's not what the stolen information is used for. It just saves US companies from having to spend money on R&D to develop their own solutions, or helps them win contracts overseas.
Besides which the NSA made sure that American products are compromised by weakening security protocols and not notifying companies about backdoors. Worse still since Snowden was able to gain access to all this information relatively easily it is probably safe to assume that foreign agencies have their own spies collecting it too, so know all about the NSA backdoors and vulnerabilities they discovered.
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It just saves US companies from having to spend money on R&D to develop their own solutions, or helps them win contracts overseas.
...making the American companies more economically powerful, so other countries have more reason to ally with the US, while the US remains more economically independent. That's kinda the point, no?
so know all about the NSA backdoors and vulnerabilities they discovered.
Perhaps they do, but as long as remaining undetected is more important than using the information they have, they can't change their behavior. I seem to recall similar incidents in WWII, where the only way Americans were warned about German movements was through cracked Enigma messages. The Allies couldn't counter
Re:Outside the range? (Score:4, Interesting)
Almost, more accurately it passed from the NSA to select insiders who individually claim the technology and screw profits out of other Americans with stolen patents. Industrial espionage, criminal act and extortion espionage, business insider trading espionage all having nothing at all to make any country safer and everything to do with enriching select political insiders. Should it trigger cyber warfare the only question is will it be profitable for the select few.
Once you accept that sort of espionage then fuck it, only one small step to consider foreign banks your piggy bank and start embezzling money straight out of them. Three cheers for the good old USA for working so hard to trigger global economic warfare.
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It's kind of disappointing to see you stop short like that. As long as you're freeing inventing things you should claim that they are a conspiracy to form a world government for the .000001% that will then collect the sweat of the poor to form an artificial lake to float their boats for their yacht parties where endangered species will be served for dinner.
Re:Outside the range? (Score:4, Informative)
a world government for the .000001%
hmmm,
85 people own as much as the bottom 350000000 people on earth combined - supposedly - (not half the planets wealth as reported because of course the bottom 350000000 people don't own that much) but still a metric fuck ton of planetary resources control. :)
85 divided by 7 billion =~ 0.00000121%, i think you over estimate the size of the world government there.
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not half the planets wealth as reported because of course the bottom 350000000 people don't own that much
Maybe it can be refactored as
(half the planet)'s wealth.
Half (the planet's wealth) is wrong, as you rightly mention.
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You might want to be careful with that line of thinking. One of the few things the US really exports is intellectual property. That's why the US government is so obsessed with bullying the rest of the world into enacting repressive copyright and patent laws. If the US makes a habit of stealing information there's no reason the rest of the world should respect their IP.
German transcript (Score:5, Informative)
Can be found here http://www.tagesschau.de/snowden-interview-deutsch100.pdf
Ever heard of Locust Funds? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Ever heard of Locust Funds? (Score:4, Informative)
Privacy (Score:2, Funny)
Even friends and allies do it among each other (Score:5, Funny)
I once worked for one of the companies involved in the JSF project. As soon as we knew that Lockheed Martin had a web app for performing a certain task, I was asked by my boss to get the entire web app's jar files, reverse engineer it, and tell him how good or bad LM's implementation was. The company for which I worked then went on to steal LM's implementation and incorporate it into its own commercial product.
Which, and this is the best part, they then sold. To Lockheed Martin.
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Which, and this is the best part, they then sold. To Lockheed Martin.
Happens all the time, in many companies. And I'm pretty sure that many people at Lockheed Martin knew exactly what was going on. Except management, who didn't want to believe it...
Note: I'm not posting this as an AC either. So here's a note to my managers: I specifically didn't say that this was going on in our company too, nor did I outline any irony of this comment appearing in a thread about industrial espionage by the NSA...
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Keep the love coming! (Score:5, Interesting)
I am very happy Snowden is choosing to release this material one drop at a time. It is like Chinese water torture against the intelligence apparatus. Please, keep the love coming!
I think after the Murrah bombing, 9/11, and the marathon bombing, we have established that the security agencies are not capable of stopping actual terrorist activity against American citizens. Not when every supposed thwarting is really just an FBI set-up. So it is time for us to really consider what these agencies are actually doing, since they are apparently not stopping terrorism.
Re:Keep the love coming! (Score:5, Insightful)
Because we have expectations of privacy (in the absence of wrongdoing) and that expectation applies to corporations as well?
Because industrial espionage is the motherlode of data in the age of the Internet...can you imagine the damage if Snowden were corrupted by Chinese intelligence services? Or Russian? Indeed, what if that is the case with other NSA personnel already?
Because an intelligence agency willing to engage in corporate profiteering is showing a callous disrespect for law, privacy, and ethics?
If an intelligence agency has freed itself from the bonds of law and public oversight, how far will it go? Will it be used against a populist target such as the "1%" or against a political target such as Occupy? Indeed, is it already being used for such? (Michael Hastings!)
Stop being an apologist, recognize the cancer for what it is.
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Translation: if it doesn't affect me, why should I care?
Re:Keep the love coming! (Score:4, Informative)
Once again, what does this have to do with ordinary citizens? Yes, agreed that Snowden's disclosure of PRISM was relevant, but he's just grasping at straws with this one.
That's pretty extreme myopia to decide that it doesn't matter because 'ordinary citizens' aren't affected... it doesn't have to directly immediately target normal people to affect them.
But to answer your question, ordinary citizens *are* directly affected, they have jobs in these companies. Ordinary citizens are shareholders of these companies (Even non-explicit shareholders, of you have a pension then you have shares one way or another).
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As for context, who are you to determine what is or is not proper context?
This Snowden leak is clearly aimed at securing corporate opposition to the NSA. Yet the danger of an intelligence agency broken free from the bonds of law and oversight applies not just to corporations, but to every one of us.
Snowden interview in english (Score:5, Informative)
Link in OV on Youtube is here (Score:2)
magnet link here (Score:2)
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U.S stealing trade and tech (Score:5, Insightful)
It's funny to hear U.S gov and confused Americans say the Chinese are stealing technology, a discussion and argument that bears no logic whatsoever, but at the same time they're doing everything they can to get information and secrets on trade, technology etc. while saying it's to protect the U.S. Hilarious.
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> the Chinese are stealing technology, a discussion and argument that bears no logic whatsoever
Indeed, they never steal stuff, they just request the files so they can build and test it.
And falling labor costs looks good for the next couple quarterly reports.
Why would they steal, when we're greedy?
Been happening for years (Score:3)
I recall Canadian Echelon operators spying on their US counterparts to win a grain trade deal with China in the 1970s.
It's easy to 'justify' (Score:2)
It is probably pretty easy to 'justify' this type of national security corporate espionage in the name of national security. This type of corporate espionage was probably able to help us create the Stuxnet virus as that used vulnerabilities in some pretty specific hardware to do it's job and the companies themselves are not always going to help out the US Government, especially if they are a foreign entity. So they could easily say there is a national security need for this type of information collection
IP treaties (Score:3)
Enabling industrial espionage. (Score:3)
I remember reading a story, which may well have been apocryphal, about organized crime and foreign agencies exploiting the old FBI carnivore e-mail intercept system to use for extortion and industrial espionage.
It seems to reason that if the NSA is compromising telecommunications protocols, having routers forward copies of data, stuffing radio transmitters in computer equipment, etc., then some enterprising third parties are going to piggy back on it for their own purposes. That, and the NSA can't possibly be the only players in town undermining the integrity of the system. It seems to me that we've enabled a new class of criminal information enterprise, not just by or for the NSA.
airbus is NOT a good example. (Score:2)
And... (Score:2)
This is a surprise? Why?
All nations with the resources do it for their National security - especially, if it means the difference between another nation gaining a technological edge or being able to cripple your own ability to defend yourself.
One of the best known examples? Read up on how the Soviets copied the B-29 to create the TU-4 - rivet for rivet. Very interesting how it was done.
The French have made it illegal to encrypt communications by companies operating within their borders. Makes the collec
After the cold war ended (Score:2)
A possible for reason for spying (Score:2)
TPP Death (Score:3)
"Edward Snowden Says NSA Engages In Industrial .." (Score:2)
No really?
This is just another example of how Edward Snowden, alleged "traitor" is leaking information that everyone already knew for the past 20 years.
The guy is a traitor, because the government and its cronies breaks their own laws at will, and they are upset he laid it out so explicitly and documented.
What I think makes him a hero is that the level of corruption is so gigantic, it threatens the human race with final war and now it can be stopped by prosecuting Bush, Obama, Cheny and all of these congres
America Inc. (Score:3, Interesting)
The French was epic in industrial espionage until the Chinese caught up.
Never to be left behind, the United States jumped on the wagon - and applied the lesson learned from both the French and the Chinese, the United States of America has perfected the art of industrial espionage to such degree that no one, not even the Chinese, can ever dream of matching their success.
But unfortunately, 99% of the American corporations don't get to enjoy the fruit of the industrial espionage. Only HUGE industrial complexes
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Only HUGE industrial complexes (such as Boeing, Google, Corning, Citibank) get to benefit from the gems NSA manage to gather.
I'm sure you must have some proof of that. Care to share it?
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Do you really hope we mere mortals would have hard information about this ?
But really, if the NSA is doing industrial espionage on Petrobras, do you think the little American Oil companies would get that data ?
The affirmation that only the large corporations that are in bed with govt would get some of that data is essentially a given, no proof needed. It's too obvious. But more focus with being in bed with govt than being big.
Re:America Inc. (Score:4, Insightful)
no proof needed. It's too obvious.
It's "obvious" in much the same way that other false things have been "obvious" over the years on Slashdot.
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If ever anyone wonders how anyone can take the likes of Glenn Beck seriously, or the studies about how how introducing people who are wrong on evolution to actual facts makes them hate evolution even more, think back on your own behavior regarding the NSA. Many claims about what the NSA is doing are clearly computationally impossible, but don't you dare point this out lest you be down-voted to oblivion, especially on sites like Reddit.
Basically a large number of people simply believe what they want to belie
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no proof needed. It's too obvious.
It's "obvious" in much the same way that other false things have been "obvious" over the years on Slashdot.
You're confusing psychic "knowledge" with psychotic conflating an emotional investment in their own "gut instincts" "confirmed" by a cherry-picked version of reality and calling it "obvious". A common mistake I blame on education and logical deduction.
My intiution is that psychic ability is, um, bullshit....
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All it takes is digesting all the data from Wikileaks and Snowden and applying it to the rest of the issues.
It's no psychic anything. Its called deduction.
You are right that my logic wouldn't stand in court... Obviously.
You probably believe the White House knew nothing about 9/11 before 9/11 happened, and they honestly expected the Iraq war to lead to US friendly democracy in the middle east.
The head terrorist (Mohammed Atta) of 9/11 did a lot of stunts while learning to fly, including busting the Cape Cana
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All it takes is digesting all the data from Wikileaks and Snowden and applying it to the rest of the issues. It's no psychic anything. Its called deduction. You are right that my logic wouldn't stand in court... Obviously. You probably believe the White House knew nothing about 9/11 before 9/11 happened,
I differentiate between "believe", "suspect", and "know".
I suspect a lot of things. I "know" their is no entity called the "White House" - it's a building occupied by a bunch of partially informed people with different agendas. So, no, I don't "believe" the "White House" "knew" about 9/11 in advance. I do "believe" that when people talk of "them" and "they" in the context you use them - that they subscribe to unified conspiracy theories, an over-simplification of reality. I don't believe in nationalist
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Until we can have full access to all of that classified data, I'll keep drawing my conclusions.
NSA people are far more concerned with protecting sources and methods than they will ever care about transparency. It's the law of the land in the spy game.
If your enemy knows how you will gather the information, he can avoid using that medium.
So I'll never trust the NSA, CIA, KGB, FSB, MI6, GCHQ, and I certainly don't trust my domestic ABIN (Brazil's feeble attempt at an NSA).
The military is just about the same,
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Do you really hope we mere mortals would have hard information about this ?
But really, if the NSA is doing industrial espionage on Petrobras, do you think the little American Oil companies would get that data ?
The affirmation that only the large corporations that are in bed with govt would get some of that data is essentially a given, no proof needed. It's too obvious. But more focus with being in bed with govt than being big.
And if they are doing industrial espionage, do you not think that they are using the political data they amass to influence elections here at home too. Please understand that the NSA reports directly to the Executive branch and the big boss is the President of The United States. I find it hard to believe that the NSA is not feeding the Prez private emails from the Congress and the Judges. The NSA also now has all the contact information from all journalists so all sources are know also. Of course the Presid
Re:America Inc. (Score:4, Interesting)
Precisely what we don't know. If the NSA were throwing useful business intelligence to every American company that could benefit, news would have leaked by now - enough people would know that someone would inevitably talk. So any business spying they do perform must be tightly controlled, and the intelligence given only to the most trusted companies, like defense contractors.
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I wonder if you even understand that this is a threat of political assassination rather than a statement about someone being a nerd in today's world?
It's a free market ! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a free market all right, it's a free "to spy on everybody and steal their secret" market !!
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There is certainly plenty of free innuendo.
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& still no one really cares? spiritual bankruptcy proceedings are ongoing..... going on....
If the United States files for spiritual bankruptcy how will it influence our long term spiritual credit rating? Will we be allowed to retain our dignity through the proceedings or will that be auctioned off?
Re:*Not* news -- no kidding it's TIMOTHY (Score:3, Insightful)
But only Timothy engages in systematic linkbaiting & selection of the summaries that try to sensationalize what everyone already knows.
Re:*Not* news -- no kidding it's TIMOTHY (Score:4, Insightful)
I find that there is no shortage of false things that "everyone already knows" on Slashdot.
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Fair enough, but you can't get upset the next time China is caught spying on U.S. companies.
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Sure we can, that's what makes this politics.
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'All the professional bicycle racers in the Tour de France cheat.'
-Lance Armstrong (after he said a *million* times he didn't cheat, and after he got caught)
Enjoy your legacy Lance for the rest of your life and then some.
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"We already knew it all anyway!"
So why weren't your news channels reporting this outrageous stuff before? And why do many members of your political establishment want to kill or lock up Snowden if he's not releasing any new info?
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No they don't, but you can keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better.
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Re:why the soap opera ? (Score:5, Informative)
The idea is that if everything is released at once then the story will ruffle some feathers for only a few weeks/months and die out quickly.
By releasing their dirty secrets one at a time and once a month, the story can be kept in the media for years (or so Snowden says). This ensures the pressure is kept on the NSA and government to do something. Though, so far the crooks are trying to justify everything they do and are quite defiant in defending their practices.
Re:why the soap opera ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention further revelations exposes the lies of excuses from each previous round of revelation.
This, here, is the real trick.
There has been a lot of this:
1) Assert 'A' ...and so on...
2) Government denies 'A'
3) Prove 'A'. Assert 'B'.
4) Government admits to needing to do 'A', but says it would never do 'B'.
5) Prove 'B'. Assert 'C'.
The fact that the government FELL FOR IT for so very long this summer and fall says a lot about their arrogance. Well that and how little they know about what he actually took.
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We are not getting anew news from Mr Snowden. He dumped everything onto a bunch of journalists before going into hiding (to remind, the condition of his stay in Russia is "no further leaks"). It's the journalists that carefully dose the information - and once you understand that, it should be obvious as to why.
Re:What's next? (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is probably nothing that should surprise or alert the average US citizen.
I have a vivid memory of watching congressional testimony by top Boeing executives over 20 years ago where they swore up and down that they did not want any help from american spy agencies. I'm sure they were talking about Airbus. I don't remember exactly what prompted congress to get involved, maybe it was the outing of some french industrial espionage that had recently come to light.
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This is probably nothing that should surprise or alert the average US citizen.
I have a vivid memory of watching congressional testimony by top Boeing executives over 20 years ago where they swore up and down that they did not want any help from american spy agencies.
I know I'm cynical, but I always sigh when I see testimony from business leaders or politicians. We all know they are pathological liars, so why do we have to put ourselves through this charade where we summon them simply to have them look us in the eyes and lie to us?
It's... masochistic.
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