<story><title>Why the NSA Dump Isn&apos;t from an Insider</title><url>https://medium.com/@thegrugq/completely-wrong-a300246ad316#.v112fv666</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>logicallee</author><text>&amp;gt;Nobody expects Russia to play nice,&lt;p&gt;I do!  I expect Russia, China, the US, the UK, Australia, and even places like the Middle East to play nice when it comes to their Intel services.&lt;p&gt;Why?  Because I expect them to be staffed by exactly (precisely) people like you and me and the people reading this forum, and I believe there is an incentive for the intelligentsia to completely ignore all political things and simply be awesome stewards of a safe world.  In fact, I think that there should be a secret conspiracy by every single intel worker worldwide to band together online in a meta-community.  I think they should state in this very forum (HN) if they are being asked to do evil - such as in reply to this comment - because they&amp;#x27;re part of this meta-conspiracy.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think this is hopelessly naive because I can say with certitude that there are people reading this from intelligence agencies all over the world.  Why wouldn&amp;#x27;t they?&lt;p&gt;I expect this to be viciously downvoted and I don&amp;#x27;t care.  I think I&amp;#x27;m on the right side of history and I think that the people who expect these geeks to wage war on each other are on the wrong side of world history.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s very black and white.  (The reach and extent of the activities of these respective services is a different matter entirely and not a subject of this comment.)</text></item><item><author>Bartweiss</author><text>There are plenty of reasons they might.&lt;p&gt;The (mainstream) Snowden narrative was one of disgruntled employees and treason.  The &lt;i&gt;contents&lt;/i&gt; of the leak drove some muttering about NSA regulation, but the &lt;i&gt;nature&lt;/i&gt; of the leak didn&amp;#x27;t.  It just led to a lot of calls for &amp;quot;internal whistleblowing&amp;quot;, which has been repeatedly proved useless.&lt;p&gt;Enemy action, by contrast, doesn&amp;#x27;t support a focus on the attacker.  Nobody expects Russia to play nice, and nobody can realistically suggest &amp;#x27;discouraging&amp;#x27; state powers from hacking and leaking.  The tools &lt;i&gt;will&lt;/i&gt; be misused (from a US government viewpoint) since the new owner has US-unaligned goals.  The only barrier left is security, which appears to have failed.&lt;p&gt;If insiders leak details, then it&amp;#x27;s just a conversation about what the NSA does with its tools.  If foreign powers get those details, then the &amp;quot;reveal and patch&amp;quot; crowd is bolstered by the knowledge that outsiders are using the same tools.</text></item><item><author>intherdfield</author><text>Would the NSA prefer to have these dumps be vaguely attributed to an insider?&lt;p&gt;I wonder if they would because any mistake in handling data calls into question their competence which calls into question their ability to keep that big database safe. The one with all our call records, etc.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>saint_fiasco</author><text>Many physicists didn&amp;#x27;t want to work on nuclear bombs but they were convinced to help develop it because they were afraid other scientists with even less ethics would build one first. It only takes one Leo Szilard to ruin it for the whole human race.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why the NSA Dump Isn&apos;t from an Insider</title><url>https://medium.com/@thegrugq/completely-wrong-a300246ad316#.v112fv666</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>logicallee</author><text>&amp;gt;Nobody expects Russia to play nice,&lt;p&gt;I do!  I expect Russia, China, the US, the UK, Australia, and even places like the Middle East to play nice when it comes to their Intel services.&lt;p&gt;Why?  Because I expect them to be staffed by exactly (precisely) people like you and me and the people reading this forum, and I believe there is an incentive for the intelligentsia to completely ignore all political things and simply be awesome stewards of a safe world.  In fact, I think that there should be a secret conspiracy by every single intel worker worldwide to band together online in a meta-community.  I think they should state in this very forum (HN) if they are being asked to do evil - such as in reply to this comment - because they&amp;#x27;re part of this meta-conspiracy.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think this is hopelessly naive because I can say with certitude that there are people reading this from intelligence agencies all over the world.  Why wouldn&amp;#x27;t they?&lt;p&gt;I expect this to be viciously downvoted and I don&amp;#x27;t care.  I think I&amp;#x27;m on the right side of history and I think that the people who expect these geeks to wage war on each other are on the wrong side of world history.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s very black and white.  (The reach and extent of the activities of these respective services is a different matter entirely and not a subject of this comment.)</text></item><item><author>Bartweiss</author><text>There are plenty of reasons they might.&lt;p&gt;The (mainstream) Snowden narrative was one of disgruntled employees and treason.  The &lt;i&gt;contents&lt;/i&gt; of the leak drove some muttering about NSA regulation, but the &lt;i&gt;nature&lt;/i&gt; of the leak didn&amp;#x27;t.  It just led to a lot of calls for &amp;quot;internal whistleblowing&amp;quot;, which has been repeatedly proved useless.&lt;p&gt;Enemy action, by contrast, doesn&amp;#x27;t support a focus on the attacker.  Nobody expects Russia to play nice, and nobody can realistically suggest &amp;#x27;discouraging&amp;#x27; state powers from hacking and leaking.  The tools &lt;i&gt;will&lt;/i&gt; be misused (from a US government viewpoint) since the new owner has US-unaligned goals.  The only barrier left is security, which appears to have failed.&lt;p&gt;If insiders leak details, then it&amp;#x27;s just a conversation about what the NSA does with its tools.  If foreign powers get those details, then the &amp;quot;reveal and patch&amp;quot; crowd is bolstered by the knowledge that outsiders are using the same tools.</text></item><item><author>intherdfield</author><text>Would the NSA prefer to have these dumps be vaguely attributed to an insider?&lt;p&gt;I wonder if they would because any mistake in handling data calls into question their competence which calls into question their ability to keep that big database safe. The one with all our call records, etc.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>exolymph</author><text>What you&amp;#x27;re missing is that people respond to incentives on a local scale, not a global scale. As in, people want to satisfy their managers in order to get paid more, not cure global warming or whatever other lofty goal that would benefit all humanity.</text></comment>