* 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.

* Would you accept that the US Government infiltrates tech companies to install secret backdoors? Don't users (and the tech companies themselves) deserve to know that their hardware/software is being sabotaged? Nothing is stopping foreign governments and private agents from taking advantage of these backdoors other than simple secrecy.

* 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're utilized for all forms of communication on the planet -- but they'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.

The US Government is destroying the padlocks on everybody's doors, paying padlock companies to manufacture shitty locks, and infiltrating padlock companies to make sure only shitty locks get manufactured. This isn't just spying, it's malicious.

It's not purely 'gov on gov' anymore -- spying on your adversaries' 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).

Shouldn't you have a problem with them getting caught then?

I don't understand this defense of the NSA, no, its not what they are supposed to be doing. At least not anymore.

If you are in favor of the US bullying and spying everyone they don't consider an ally then you should be outraged they can't do it efectively. They got outed by a lone contractor and your "potential enemies", 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's efforts and hence make it spend lots of your taxpayer dollars in coming up with other forms of spying.

What are they supposed to be doing, then? Should the US just not have any spy agencies? Should it shift away from signals intelligence and focus on human intelligence like Israel does?

Absolutely. The US should interact with foreign governments via the diplomatic process, pull up all its foreign bases, and stop playing "world policeman."

Not sure why this is so hard to understand. The justifications for actions like these either fall into "but we can't be world's policeman without these intel programs" or "the other guy does it" which are both morally bankrupt.

Being a citizen of a nation state does not require me to approve of that nation's foreign policy or military actions. In fact, I'm compelled to be extra critical of these things as they are often abused and cause not only domestic issues (large tax load, dead soldiers, blowback, etc) but worldwide issues as well.

We have yet to see any evidence that these dangerous and provocative technical programs have actually resulted in anything used to thwart attacks or other justifications from the usual defenders of the status quo. If anything, from a dollars per result perspective its a major tax dollar waste and a massive opportunity cost. If we had a Russian-like military budget my tax load would be lower and arguably allow me and others to invest and do things that can actually help domestic life, instead of watching my dollars get burned up in spy games and the slaughtering of completely innocent Iraqi and Afghani civilians over the last 10 years.

So the US should be the only major nation with no spy agency?

> We have yet to see any evidence that these dangerous and provocative technical programs have actually resulted in anything used to thwart attacks or other justifications from the usual defenders of the status quo.

It may have accomplished nothing. It also may have accomplish something that is still undisclosed.

I'm partially playing devil's advocate here. I do agree with the sentiment that the US should stop behaving like the World Police. However, the idea that the US should have no spy agency in 2014 is ridiculous. All the major nations are spying on each other..

Because diplomats demonstrably don't always cut it when you are dealing with bad-faith actors, and the world is not so full of love and sunshine as to have eliminated all the bad-faith nation-states.

Reliable sources are hard to come by (for obvious reasons), but just as an example, see: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/world/middleeast/iran-inte...

> For its spying efforts, Israel relies in part on an Iranian exile group that is labeled a terrorist organization by the United States, the Mujahedeen Khalq, or M.E.K., which is based in Iraq. The Israelis have also developed close ties in the semiautonomous region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq, and they are believed to use Kurdish agents who can move back and forth across the border into Iran.

vs.

> While the National Security Agency eavesdrops on telephone conversations of Iranian officials and conducts other forms of electronic surveillance, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency analyzes radar imagery and digital images of nuclear sites. Outside analysts believe high-tech drones prowl overhead; one came down late last year deep inside Iranian territory, though American officials said they lost control of it in Afghanistan.

> Meanwhile, clandestine ground sensors, which can detect electromagnetic signals or radioactive emissions that could be linked to covert nuclear activity, are placed near suspect Iranian facilities. The United States also relies heavily on information gathered by inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency who visit some of Iran’s nuclear-related facilities.

> But collecting independent human intelligence — recruiting spies — has been by far the most difficult task for American intelligence. Some operational lapses — and the lack of an embassy as a base of operations ever since the hostage crisis three decades ago — have frequently left the C.I.A. virtually blind on the ground in Iran, according to former intelligence officials.

With human int, you can get more understand of what the thinking and intentions are.

Oh come on man. This is plain old Appeal to Emotion.

Let me know when you find a powerful country that does not engage in spying.

Why not "anymore"? What has changed?

Yes, I'm sure NSA does some of that work, too - their original work - but the problem is they've surpassed their boundaries way too much, and much of what they're doing today is spying on everyone - including innocent citizens and on companies and allies, too. Let's not forget that so easily.

This story seemed like a well planted one to NYT, where they mention the attacks but only to the "worst of the worst" countries, to make people like you believe that "hey, this is what they're supposed to be doing - so I guess everything is fine, then".

I think they've started improving their PR relations for this year. That article had way too many quotes from the NSA for a story about a "leak", and the responses seem well prepared, too.

This is a new year, and now we believe what NSA says about its activities? Read more carefully what the article says:

> The NSA said the technology has not been used in computers in the US.

The NSA! The NSA says. And yet I bet a lot of people read that as if the "leak says" or something along those lines, and they probably believed it.

> "NSA's activities are focused and specifically deployed against - and only against - valid foreign intelligence targets in response to intelligence requirements,'' Vanee Vines, an agency spokeswoman, said in a statement to the Times.

Again, the NSA says. Come on people. Don't be fooled so easily. Oh, and by the way - this is not a Snowden leak, if you didn't figure that out already. It actually seems like a controlled leak by NSA that shows "they are doing their job". The article itself was half-press release for the NSA.

A leak is, if verified, is both allegation and proof. The leak would be an actual NSA document, which the NSA didn't want made public. If they did, its wouldnt be a leak, it would be public record. If the leak was not true, it would not be a leak, it would be a lie, a fiction. The NSA don't even claim that. So, yes, we believe the leak.

A statement by the NSA is simply what they want to say. It cant be proven or verified, you have to take their word for it. Now, if the NSA were to release verifiable documented proof, then we would have to consider that. But it still is not as powerful as a real leak. It can't be because a NSA release has potential for manipulation since they are the source of the release.

Yes, real leaks from a given source are much more believable than statements from that source. Which is why, time to time, governments like to release information in the form of a leak. So, we do have to be very careful about where leaks come from. In the case of Snowden's leaks, I believe we can be sure that they are real and not a very clever manipulation by the NSA or US government.

So, yes, a lot of people would believe the "leak says" over "the NSA says". Rightly too.

But you better believe Russia, China, Iran, etc. are actively hacking (or attempting to hack) US assets.

And yes, I think this story is way too positive toward the NSA. The NYT is part of the mainstream establishment and generally kowtows to Washington.

Bugging a hundred thousand computers? That's a lot of resources thrown at a problem and the results are terrible. Maybe a single attack averted since 9/11. We know why: too many false positives waste resources - and you don't have that much humint to start with.

That they're doing that much surveillance is a sign that they're either incompetent or the official justification is a smoke screen. They're also spying on allies. Was it really necessary to bug Merkel's cell phone?

Spying on allies and passing off trade secrets only results in backlash - and when that many computers are bugged it's only a matter of time before it's discovered.

While you're growing sigint budgets, you're not spending enough on humint.

Do you really feel safer with the government conducting spycraft so incompetently?

It's not that they are hacking. It's that they are not accountable to the system that feeds them.