<story><title>US physically hacks 100,000 foreign computers</title><url>http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2014/01/us-physically-hacks-100000-foreign-computers-20141154313871671.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ForHackernews</author><text>&amp;gt; monitor units of the Chinese and Russian armies&lt;p&gt;Isn&amp;#x27;t this what they&amp;#x27;re supposed to be doing? I don&amp;#x27;t really have a problem with intelligence gathering against non-allied nation state actors.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cryMVK1PwuQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=cryMVK1PwuQ&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ihsw</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s not about spying anymore, it&amp;#x27;s about actively working to diminish the security of the everybody to make their job easier.&lt;p&gt;* Would you accept that the US Government pays tech companies to install secret backdoors in operating systems, hardware, and apps? Windows, Android, iOS are all insecure by default -- and nothing is stopping foreign governments and private agents from taking advantage of these backdoors other than simple secrecy.&lt;p&gt;* Would you accept that the US Government infiltrates tech companies to install secret backdoors? Don&amp;#x27;t users (and the tech companies themselves) deserve to know that their hardware&amp;#x2F;software is being sabotaged? Nothing is stopping foreign governments and private agents from taking advantage of these backdoors other than simple secrecy.&lt;p&gt;* Would you accept that the US Government infiltrates security standards organizations to install secret backdoors? These security standards are implemented and accepted as high-quality and reasonably free of defects, and they&amp;#x27;re utilized for all forms of communication on the planet -- but they&amp;#x27;re rendered insecure for the convenience of the US Government. Nothing is stopping foreign governments and private agents from taking advantage of these insecurities other than simple secrecy.&lt;p&gt;The US Government is destroying the padlocks on everybody&amp;#x27;s doors, paying padlock companies to manufacture shitty locks, and infiltrating padlock companies to make sure only shitty locks get manufactured. This isn&amp;#x27;t just spying, it&amp;#x27;s malicious.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not purely &amp;#x27;gov on gov&amp;#x27; anymore -- spying on your adversaries&amp;#x27; population gives great insight into the internal political structure of their government. Economic espionage is the norm now, and the US Government is using every advantage it can get now (regardless of the legality).</text></comment>
<story><title>US physically hacks 100,000 foreign computers</title><url>http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2014/01/us-physically-hacks-100000-foreign-computers-20141154313871671.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ForHackernews</author><text>&amp;gt; monitor units of the Chinese and Russian armies&lt;p&gt;Isn&amp;#x27;t this what they&amp;#x27;re supposed to be doing? I don&amp;#x27;t really have a problem with intelligence gathering against non-allied nation state actors.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cryMVK1PwuQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=cryMVK1PwuQ&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pvarangot</author><text> &amp;gt; Isn&amp;#x27;t this what they&amp;#x27;re supposed to be doing? I don&amp;#x27;t really have a problem with intelligence gathering against non-allied nation state actors.&lt;p&gt;Shouldn&amp;#x27;t you have a problem with them getting caught then?&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t understand this defense of the NSA, no, its not what they are supposed to be doing. At least not anymore.&lt;p&gt;If you are in favor of the US bullying and spying everyone they don&amp;#x27;t consider an ally then you should be outraged they can&amp;#x27;t do it efectively. They got outed by a lone contractor and your &amp;quot;potential enemies&amp;quot;, or however you get to call every single other country in the world to justify the spying, now have most of the technical details they need to thwart the NSA&amp;#x27;s efforts and hence make it spend lots of your taxpayer dollars in coming up with other forms of spying.</text></comment>