Re: [LUG] Bit of a wave building

Hi Martijn

Mostly stayed out of this one, I've not followed this as closely as others and don't have much to add, but...

On 25 March 2014 20:30, Martijn Grooten <martijn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I agree that the NSA won't care about an Avaaz petition, but petitions
like this will help make the NSA an agency people won't want to work
for, unless they make significant changes. This will hurt them in the
end.

I think this is a fundamentally wrong assumption; that the NSA / Acme Spy Corporation - is like any other employer. It's not.

Consider what we might guess about how they choose the best and brightest minds to recruit, and there is strong evidence to suggest they have some /very/ clever people working for them. I'm not that clever but I can glimpse some possibilties open to them that are denied to others, not least because it would be illegal.

A hacker gets caught. He's offered a choice between jail time, or showing the government how they did something. Or even if it's known, ears get tuned, interest sparked, and pressure put "here" and "there" and the police charges disappear on the guarantee of cooperation. Suddenly your poacher is a gamekeeper. That threat would probably be in abeyance forever, it would be silly for the employer to drop it as soon as they'd hooked the fish; these people are in it for the long game.

And then there's the outright blackmail route. Joe looks useful, oh, if only we knew some way of finding uncomfortable information about Joe to encourage him to work for us, some secret of his - maybe his browsing habits, maybe an acquaintance or affaire or sexual preference. Oh, hang on! Bingo. Joe now works for the agency. His family, friends and current employer might not even know about this arrangement. If Joe works for a major software or hardware developer then it's not a major leap to assume he could be steered towards making a tweak or two.

This is mostly supposition. I would venture that it's probably happened many times, for many agencies in many countries. It's certainly how I'd approach the situation were I was in charge of recruitment...

(My fairly dark view is that it's inevitable this has happened, is happening, and will continue forever. I don't doubt for a second that the stuff Snowden has revealed is only a fraction of the morally dodgy mechanicals of this industry. I don't consider Snowden a hero, but he has raised the subject to a very wider audience.)