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  • Posted by $ Thoritsu 7 years ago
    I am totally ok with the CIA hacking other countries; however, not the US. Like a gun, which the CIA has too, having a tool, does not mean they use it against me.
    I am totally opposed to the CIA/NSA or any other agency spying on US peoples without a warrant.

    This leak is a little unfortunate, because it inspires our enemies to know the art of the possible.
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    • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years ago
      " it inspires our enemies to know the art of the possible."
      I am not really knowledgeable about this, but intuitively I suspect serious criminals are aware their phones have cameras and microphones that could be used to spy on them. I suspect the reason for keeping it a secret is the public had a say, they might not want the gov't to have these tools. People working at the CIA are good people who honestly think they're the good guys. If there's a way to keep it secret from the American public, even with the questionable argument that foreign targets aren't aware of this their methods, they'll take it because it makes their job of protecting Americans from criminals easier. They believe in the Fourth Amendment in principle to protect people from gov't abuse, but they're the good guys who would never abuse it, they think, so it's hard to say no to it. This is the unfortunate path that leads to someone somewhere down the line abusing the power for political or personal gain.
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      • Posted by ewv 7 years ago
        What government of any kind doesn't have a self-righteous attitude about itself and its 'mission'? That isn't the standard for judging whether the political philosophy and policies of government are valid or not and whether or not its bureaucrats are 'good people'.
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      • Posted by $ Thoritsu 7 years ago
        I didn't mean criminals. I meant it inspires other countries to know that certain things are hacks le, and therefore they can do it as well, when they might have given up in some areas or expended considerable energies in error otherwise.

        If you show me that a motor can reach 5 hp per pound, I will be much more inspired to try to achieve it that I would without that certainty.
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        • Posted by ewv 7 years ago
          If the documentation if leaking out of the CIA why wouldn't the rest of it, including software and samples of hardware? And who else is getting it now that we have been made vulnerable to it?
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          • Posted by $ Thoritsu 7 years ago
            Probably true, but I suspect (without evidence) that the leaks are spotty in volume, and this one was significant in volume.
            My point was simply that it is not necessary to tell this community or many others how to do something. Telling them that it is possible is adequate to allow them to use their own resources to do it as well.
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            • Posted by ewv 7 years ago
              The Snowden documents are enormous in volume. It was nearly everything he could get, less documents that would have been improperly damaging and which would have done nothing to expose the illegal spying. Others anonymously leaked more under cover of the Snowden PR and which has been popularly attributed to him erroneously. The CIA leak (so far) updates it through 2016.

              Any information is also of use to hackers and foreign enemies, but if so many insiders can leak that much documentation there is no reason to expect that tools have not also already been smuggled out. That is in addition to how many anti-privacy weapons have already been developed to steal and destroy by expert hackers and governments, such as in Russia, quite independently of US agencies and knowledge of what they are doing.

              Most people have no idea how insecure the internet is by nature of its design, and the staggering scope and intensity of 'tools' routinely used to exploit that from all over the world.
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  • Posted by ISank 7 years ago
    A legacy of ashes, the CIA is archaic, has gotten thousands of innocent people killed, and now we find how little they respect our privacy rights and how incompetent they are to protect their own damn secrets.
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  • Posted by $ AJAshinoff 7 years ago
    I'm split on this. Yes, there is much being exposed that the government does that shouldn't be done to Americans. Even so, there is much being done that shouldn't be known to our enemies who know better see our methods.

    Intelligence is a dirty and necessary job.That said, its focus should always be away from the American people unless its led back to specific people and parties in the US.
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    • Posted by starznbarz 7 years ago
      This is the result of two basic problems, govt. officials that are dirty have not been punished at all, let alone to a higher degree, which would be justified by the use of public granted power to commit the crime. We do not fight our enemies as we would in a personal life or death situation, if we did, we would soon be out of enemies - there is no profit, or power for politicians without national enemies.
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    • Posted by Temlakos 7 years ago
      Except in this case we have an intelligence agency running their own agenda for the domination of the people.

      The best defense against our enemies is for the people to arm themselves. The CIA works on the premise that the people do not arm themselves.
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      • Posted by $ AJAshinoff 7 years ago
        Yes, the best defense. But we're talking about intelligence gathering to know what external threats need to be defended for or thwarted.

        There's no denying that government intelligence agencies turned their microscopic devices inward and violated the public trust for nefarious purposes; they should be punished, reigned in, and scrutinized.

        Even so, those agencies and their microscopic devices and stealthy skullduggery that goes along with it has its place on the global scene for national preparedness purposes.

        this is a lose-lose situation.
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  • Posted by 7 years ago
    One of the more worrisome things is that the agency lost control over much of the malware they got others to create.
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    • Posted by ewv 7 years ago
      They have also been keeping vulnerabilities that are discovered secret so they can use them themselves instead of notifying the producers of software and hardware so the problems can be fixed. It is part of the mentality that wants government to enforce "trapdoors", prohibit encryption or strong encryption, and otherwise exploit and cause as a matter of policy deliberate weaknesses that make security impossible and illegal.
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    • Posted by freedomforall 7 years ago
      Thanks for posting this article, Solver;^)
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      • Posted by 7 years ago
        Watch out for those Samsung smart TVs. They may be spying on you.
        (Not kidding!)
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        • Posted by $ CBJ 7 years ago
          I own a Samsung, but have never connected it to the Internet. I imagine many other owners will be disconnecting.
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          • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years ago
            "have never connected it to the Internet."
            This will be increasingly harder, assuming you want use it as a voice phone, because voice phone calls are almost entirely VoIP. Soon all calls will be VoIP, and there won't be an option to have a dialing connection that doesn't send Internet packets.
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            • Posted by $ Snezzy 7 years ago
              There are always ways to encrypt small amounts of data within a close community.

              During WWII my father sent this message: "I saw Sylvia's brother, and he said he might be in Baltimore in late July," or something like that.

              As a Merchant Marine shipmaster he could not reveal his itinerary, because it was a military secret. The censors would have prevented any such message from going through. Only our family would put 2 and 2 together and know that he, himself, was Sylvia's brother.

              When doing our pony rides my wife and I speak German privately. "Hast Du das Geld noch gekriegt?" (Have you gotten the money yet?) It makes a good secret language, unless there are Germans about.
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              • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years ago
                "As a Merchant Marine shipmaster he could not reveal his itinerary, because it was a military secret."
                I read about this recently in For Crew and Country by John Wukovitks. :)

                "Hast Du das Geld noch gekriegt?"
                I might have understood it from Dutch Heb je het geld nog gekregen?
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  • Posted by $ Stormi 7 years ago
    One wonders how much this started with Hillary's hackable system. They did not use high security, so they could send data out over the Internet, and what, thought no one would notice. I think the CIA, from whence we go Obama, since grandpappy worked there, needs that swamp drained. Between that and the IRS using XP operating systems throughout Obama years, it is a wonder we are not all hacked.
    If it can be hacked, someone will try, so why all the government stupidity and surprise?
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    • Posted by ewv 7 years ago
      NSA, FBI, CIA and several other agencies have been developing and using spying methods for pcs, smart phones, and appliances on the "internet of things" for many years. Whistleblowers were exposing this and being persecuted for it long before Snowden's expose' and long before the incompetent and evil Clinton used an insecure private server.

      No one should be surprised by the latest revelations about the CIA. They are simply an update to previous leaks, including the comprehensive expose' of NSA by Snowden a few years ago. A lot of attention was focused on NSA because of Snowden, but to the extent the public paid much attention at all there was a public misperception that it was only about NSA. In fact, it was revealed in the Snowden documents that NSA was developing and sharing tools with multiple agencies, including foreign countries, which are used to spy on all kinds of people and that the agencies have been hiding and lying about all of it.
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      • Posted by $ Stormi 7 years ago
        Yes, Clinton and his Echelon phone spying. We used to use the forbidden trigger words, just to mess them up.
        Amazing what all they can do, yet were completely unable to find out Obama,s birith certificate was false, that he once dabbled in prostitution with gay men for cocaine money, ignored his ties to domestic terrorists, ignored he misdirect $5 million as an Ill. legislator meant for a park in Chicago poor area, which he put in the hands of campaign workers instead. Does anyone think he was unaware of Bill and Hillary's deal of selling uranium to Russia? Amazing what these people who can tap anything, can miss when they are motivated, by money?
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  • Posted by $ allosaur 7 years ago
    Well, here we go again with Wikileaks and the Russians exposing revelations about
    O the Great and Powerful and the Evil Hag so Trump can be elected, uh, uh, whoa cough! cough! . . . never mind.
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 7 years ago
    Several times over the last couple of years, I have awakened, and within seconds, my television prompts me to press any key to keep the TV on. Obviously, my TV must be spying on me. Kind of spooky!
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    • Posted by ewv 7 years ago
      "Smart tvs" are supposed to know what you are watching, what you want to do, and now use voice and apparently motion tracking. Several brands have been caught spying on customers to report back information that is sold to marketeers, and the "internet of things" is notorious for wireless insecurity. That is what makes it possible for hackers and government spies to exploit your own appliances to spy on you.
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