Technology changes the nature of both of these collapses. Take guard labor: mass surveillance and technological controls make it cheaper than at any time in history to isolate and neutralize political threats to elite rule. How much cheaper? Well, in 1989, the Stasi employed one in sixty East Germans to spy on the whole nation. Today, the NSA spies on the whole world, at a spy:subject ratio that's more like 1:10,000 – two orders of magnitude more efficient than the spies of a generation ago. That's a huge productivity gain, and it's all thanks to digital technology.

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In at least one instance, a foreign adversary was able to take advantage of a back door invented by U.S. intelligence, according to Juniper Networks Inc, which said in 2015 its equipment had been compromised. In a previously unreported statement to members of Congress in July seen by Reuters, Juniper said an unnamed national government had converted the mechanism first created by the NSA.

Messaging platforms are either secure or they’re not. NSA, it would seem, tends to agree.

“End-to-end encryption,” NSA says, “is encrypted all the way from sender to recipient(s) without being intelligible to servers or other services along the way... Only the originator of the message and the intended recipients should be able to see the unencrypted content. Strong end-to-end encryption is dependent on keys being distributed carefully.” So, no backdoors then.

On April 24, the U.S. National Security Agency published an advisory document on the security of popular messaging and video conferencing platforms. The NSA document “provides a snapshot of best practices,” it says, “coordinated with the Department of Homeland Security.” The NSA goes on to say that it “provides simple, actionable, considerations for individual government users—allowing its workforce to operate remotely using personal devices when deemed to be in the best interests of the health and welfare of its workforce and the nation.” Again somewhat awkwardly, the NSA awarded top marks to WhatsApp, Wickr and Signal, the three platforms that are the strongest advocates of end-to-end message encryption. Just to emphasize the point, the first criteria against which NSA marked the various platforms was, you guessed it, end-to-end encryption.

Überwachung

Überwachungs

The report also noted a 27 percent increase in the number of foreigners whose communications were targeted by the NSA during the year. In total, an estimated 164,770 foreign individuals or groups were targeted with search terms used by the NSA to monitor their communications, up from 129,080 on the year prior.

The data, published Tuesday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), revealed a 28 percent rise in the number of targeted search terms used to query massive databases of collected Americans’ communications.

LastPass is run by LogMeIn, Inc. which is based in United States. So let’s say the NSA knocks on their door: “Hey, we need your data on XYZ so we can check their terrorism connections!” As we know by now, NSA does these things and it happens to random people as well, despite not having any ties to terrorism. LastPass data on the server is worthless on its own, but NSA might be able to pressure the company into sending a breach notification to this user.

The military superiority of states did not guarantee vic-tory over the much weaker NSAs and many have gone down in defeat. Van Creveld arguesthat twentieth- and twentieth-first-century armed forces“are helpless infighting off smallgroups of often ill trained, ill funded, ill equipped terrorists.

Hahn: Welche BND-Selektoren hat NSA geprüft? W.O.: Alle, die in Bad Aibling waren und gesteuert werden sollen. Hahn: Wird ja Geheimnis um Auftragsprofil des BND (APB) gemacht. Aber USA können das ja aus BND-Selektoren ablesen? W.O.: USA wissen, wonach BND in Bad Aibling sucht, ja. Hahn: Aber es wird nicht alles eingespeist in Bad Aibling? W.O.: Nein, gibt Sperrvermerke. Darf ist das sagen? Wolff: Ja, grob. W.O.: Es gibt Sperrvermerke für Selektoren gegenüber bestimmten AND. (!)

Notz: IP-Datenbank war nur US-Selektoren, BND hat ja eigene. W.O.: Ja. Notz: Hatte NSA Zugriff darauf? W.O.: Ja, bis 2012.

The World Says No to Surveillance

a never-used program to monitor potential "lone wolf" suspects who haven't been tied to terrorist groups

After 2004, I believed the story that the protesters in Ukraine and elsewhere were mobilized through text messaging and blogs.

We were supposed to be saving the world by helping to promote democracy, but it seemed clear to me that many people, even in countries like Belarus or Moldova, or in the Caucasus, who could have been working on interesting projects with new media on their own, would eventually be spoiled by us.

Wir mussten lernen, dass das Netz inzwischen eine Überwachungsmaschinerie ist, und zwar nicht nur für sich selbst, sondern für die gesamte Welt. Dieser Missbrauch des Internets war in dieser Intensität neu für mich.

glenn greenwald’s piece yesterday in the guardian