Tech talk, cold comfort.

**Steven W**, 2014-05-12 23:14 »

Steven W wrote:I've also noticed that all of the "Boo-hoo China's spying on us" articles seemed to have dried up in the media. Wonder why?

Leave it to Mr. Greenwald to find a good example:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/m ... rs-snowden

But while American companies were being warned away from supposedly untrustworthy Chinese routers, foreign organisations would have been well advised to beware of American-made ones. A June 2010 report from the head of the NSA's Access and Target Development department is shockingly explicit. The NSA routinely receives - or intercepts - routers, servers, and other computer network devices being exported from the US before they are delivered to the international customers.

The agency then implants backdoor surveillance tools, repackages the devices with a factory seal, and sends them on. The NSA thus gains access to entire networks and all their users. The document gleefully observes that some "SIGINT tradecraft . is very hands-on (literally!)".

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Do as I say, not as I do.

**Steven W**, 2014-03-30 10:04 »

Correction "and edge" --> an edge.

**Steven W**, 2014-03-30 10:03 »

http://www.spiegel.de/international/ger ... 61444.html

Monitoring companies and their employees along with the theft of customer lists are classic acts of economic espionage. Indeed, such revelations ought be a case for the German federal public prosecutors' office, which in the past has initiated investigations into comparable cases involving Russia or China.

So far, however, German Federal Public Prosecutor Harald Range has been struggling with the NSA issue....

Assuming "ought be" was meant to be "ought to be". No worries here, you've been told that the NSA doesn't use information collected from private companies to give American companies and edge. I'm sure that is the "least untruthful" statement they can make for now. Nothing to see here, move along.

**Steven W**, 2014-03-22 21:13 »

Yeah, quoting myself again:

I've also noticed that all of the "Boo-hoo China's spying on us" articles seemed to have dried up in the media. Wonder why?

http://gigaom.com/2014/03/22/nsa-thorou ... documents/

The Huawei hackery, which netted the company's source code for multiple products, is a bit awkward when you consider how Huawei has been blackballed in the U.S. due to its supposed links to the Chinese military. According to the weekend reports, there's no indication of whether the NSA found any Chinese backdoors in Huawei's gear, but the U.S. agency was itself trying to find out how it could exploit the equipment to spy on end users.

Is there any high ground for the U.S government to stand on in debate on any topic anymore? Just asking.

**Steven W**, 2014-02-09 21:45 »

My hypocrisy meter is about to explode:

http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/l ... 0684.story

Apparently a conversation between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt was recorded and uploaded to Youtube.

At one point, Nuland expresses pointed frustration with the European Union, using a blunt expletive.

But Psaki and other U.S. officials strongly suggested that Russia was the source of the embarrassing leak, which was notable for its clear, high-quality audio.

So? Given all that has been revealed about the U.S's behavior, we're going to pretend this is a big deal, even if we assume that it's true? Tapping Angela Merkel's phone was not? I don't think I could take enough Yoga classes to bend over backwards far enough to get my head far enough up my own ass to take this shit seriously. Honestly! I've also noticed that all of the "Boo-hoo China's spying on us" articles seemed to have dried up in the media. Wonder why?

Here's the youtube page mentioned:

**Steven W**, 2014-01-29 22:52 »

My apologies "!", I obviously misunderstood you. And you're absolutely right all this shit is little more than a power trip.

**I, user.**, 2014-01-29 10:55 »

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I like that movie.

You know, those german soldiers also "only followed orders" burning the jews. People should pay attention to what kinds of orders they are actually following and not just blindly follow. To blindly follow, that's the job of the lemmings not human beings.

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!, 2014-01-29 10:48 »

No, what I meant was that since they have strayed away from their original purpose, people should use their votes to remove these agencies. I just don't get the drama of it all. I mean, all "big" anything, be it government agencies or corporations with a lot of power, eventually get high on that power.

Steven W wrote:...No offense intended toward you personally.

What? No offense intended? I feel offended by that! :lol:

**Steven W**, 2014-01-29 00:52 »

Oh, come now. Nobody voted for spying to cover everything and everyone. Monitoring Youtube in real time? I suppose the sexual orientation thing is used for nothing more than harassment. Do we really want to go back to the McCarthy era? I'd like to think that in the twenty-first century we would be beyond this sort of shit.

No offense intended toward you personally.

!, 2014-01-28 09:05 »

US and UK spy agencies piggyback on commercial data
Details can include age, location and sexual orientation
Documents also reveal targeted tools against individual phones

I don't see the problem here. These are spy agencies and their task is to spy. People voted to create these agencies. If people dislike it, they can vote to close these agencies. 8-)

Creepy, nevertheless.