> Given that a lot of people in intelligence communities believe they are working for the good side, I have no troubles believing your hypothesis.

A truckload of people in the security and intelligence communities have issues with domestic surveillance and were against the Patriot Act from the very begining. It's far from a minority opinion.

I've work extensively with NERC CIP v3 - there's a BUTTLOAD of blind spots in the standard, but it's also true for PCI and others, and it will also be true for NERC CIP v5.

These regulations generally aim for basic security controls, in industries that have little to no information security culture, so they start with some basic stuff. And even this basic stuff is hard to sell and implement.

Oh yeah, you got me there Sherlock. It's impossible that some people just think that i'm making sense, and are happy to see someone calling your bullshit for once. No. It MUST be a conspiracy. By "shills". We are legion, we are everywhere. The NSA pays us to troll a website nobody cares about anymore.

ON DEMAND is different than SYSTEMATICALLY. Especially when the "on demand" is "in 1% of the cases".

> Great explanation, the collect information about everybody, about who called who. How can this not be systematically storing files on everyone. Or is it that it isn't a physical file, so its different.

It's just not the same thing at all. If I have a security camera outside my building and I record people passing by, I'm recording a lot of information from a lot of persons, the vast majority who are innocent. But there's a difference between this and creating a file of every one of these person, and then associating each record to each files. THAT would be creepy.

> Neither do you, it is speculation based, the response of the government, when the NSA goes against the constitution, do the get forced to stop, no, the government goes after the whistle blower. I know its not isn't proof, but to me it strongly implies a lot of political influence.

You're the one saying that NSA is so good at doing something that they don't appear to be doing it. Note that such claim could be said about anything: NASA sends people to Mars everyday, but they are so good at hiding it that it looks like they aren't. That's speculation. You're the one making a claim here.

As for the rest, I fail to see how this has anything to do with what I said.

> FUD. Pure and unstrained. You might consider that if we didn't shoot/bomb/torture so many people and left them the fuck alone, they might not hijack a plane and crash it into our buildings.

Those two things are not mutually exclusive, so I don't really know what's your point.

> Why have it in-house? What do you call an organization that prepares material for the Commander-In-Chief and supplies data to lawenforcement agencies? Do you imagine the the NSA operates in a magical box, all alone, cut off from the rest of the US government, and the US government has no desire to use their information?

I never said that they were completely isolated. But there clearly was a willingness to enforce a separation of dutie on this matter (which makes a lot of sense), this separation of duties has clearly influenced the relationships between these organisations, and this is also clearly a difference between the NSA and the Stasi (and I'm kind of surprise to see people jump on THIS difference in particular).

> Fucking jackboot licking shill

Three persons called me shill on this thread; the three were AC. Now, I'm sure it must feel very edgy from your POV, but trust me, you guys don't sound edgy at all. You guys sounds like excited dicks who would say anything for a reaction, and can't handle a real discussion when faced with someone calling your ignorance.

> Isn't that what gathering "meta data" is all about.
Hum... no?

>I would be very surprised if the didn't, the basically force companies like google to hand over information. They hire people to put back doors int encryption algorithms. Why do you think they are are above doing the same with the general public. The only reason I can see, is it maybe less efficient, than monitoring all electronic communication.

The Stasi hired your neighbors to spy on you. At one point, one in 20 or one in 30 East german citizen (can't remember the exact ratio) was an informant on Stasi payroll. If you have any shred of begining of hint of evidence that the NSA is doing anything remotely close to that, please share it.

>or crazy good at it, so good at it that you don't even know they are doing it, the USA is a democracy, well compared to East Germany, so they have to be a little more subtle about it.

Again, do you have any evidence whatsoever? Because it really sounds like speculation.

Well, that's the theory. In actual reality, the relationship between the NSA, the FBI and the CIA is far from easy. In fact, lack of collaboration between them is one of the biggest reason why 9/11 happened. They roles and responsibilities sometime overlap. For example, the NSA isn't the only signal intelligence organisation in the US. The military has their own. Historically, the CIA had their own too. But the NSA never had any enforcement branch, while a shitload of US organisations have (did you know NASA has its own law enforcement division?)

Obviously, if you see the US government (or any other government) as some kind of monolithic entity that always goes the same direction in unity, you won't care about the distinctions between all these organisations. In reality, it's far, far from being that simple. Politics is everywhere, even in the intelligence community.

None of these organisations are enforcement arms of the NSA. They are separate organisations with separate mandates, and in practice, who aren't even especially friendly or helpful among each others.

The NSA cannot arrests anyone the way the Stasi could without having to tell anybody.

And the fact that the NSA is, on pro rata of the population, 20 times smaller than the Stasi. And the fact that they don't have any enforcement arm, while the Stasi had the power to arrest anyone at will. And that they don't systematically create files on their citizens, you know, what the Stasi job was by design. Nor to they hire informant among the public. And they don't seem to be politically active (or if they are, they are crazy bad at it), while the Stasi was closely tied to East Germany and almost took over the country at some point, the way Poutine (ex KGB, remember) did in Russia. So yeah, exactly the same. Especially if you have no idea of what you are talking about.

In 30 years, the most profitable company in the world will be General Bitcoin. They will have developed their own nuclear reactors and designed their own computing technologies in order to be the very last organisation able to generate bitcoins, slowly but surely, one at a time. Huge amount of resources, beyond those available to most countries, will be spend in order to slowly grow the amount of bitcoins available. What a fantastic utopia we have here.

While what the NSA did with Dual_EC_DRBG is shit, no, it's not the only way they support civilian infrastructure. NSA provide all kind information security expertise, not just with encryption.

People go to these conferences for the networking opportunities, not necessarily because they care about the flagship product of the main sponsor.

The NSA does both. Beyond their SIGINT operations, they also support industries in various security initiatives.

Not only that, but *obviously* they have the ability to associate a number with someone at some point - if not, then what is the point in collecting and analysing anything? Metadata doesn't allow you to see the *content* of a call, but obviously it has to give you some information or you wouldn't bother with it.