Why is this a political hit piece instead of an article? Thanks for the two facts about the agency, but were half dozen or so attacks on the POTUS really necessary? If anything, the previous POTUS, a constitutional scholar that campaigned on ending domestic surveillance, has recently relaxed the rules on espionage by allowing non-intelligence agencies to access surveillance data. Furthermore, I don't think it's fair to turn an article about a little-known government agency into bullshit click bait propaganda. Either title the post "look at what Trump can do with the nation's aerial and spatial espionage agency" or make it substantially about that. This is pure click bait garbage, and it is disguised as being of interest to this community to spread propaganda. I would be fine with an opinion or two thrown in there, but making the first two paragraphs about the agency and the rest of it an opinion and hit piece is just a waste of everyone's time. Thanks for the garbage post.
"...the previous POTUS, a constitutional scholar that campaigned on ending domestic surveillance..."
1) This line reminded me how fallible my memory is. I held a view of Obama as always toeing the line on government surveillance. Then senator Obama's 2008 vote in favor of the FISA Amendments Act and pro-surveillance actions as POTUS dominate my memory. I had completely forgotten his anti-surveillance rhetoric and actions from '04 - '07 [1][2].
2) How incredible would it be to candidly hear answers from Obama about what changed his mind?
3) I also wonder what it would be like to hear his candid thoughts now about handing over a surveillance state, that he directly entrenched as POTUS, to our current president.
Wishful thinking, I know, but it's something so few have any direct information about aside from conjecture.
> 2) How incredible would it be to candidly hear answers from Obama about what changed his mind?
It would be biased bullshit anyway. If they had any examples of real attacks being thwarted, they would have presented this evidence just to stop the criticisms. The surveillance is effective for political and economic reasons, and possibly for law enforcement's domestic use, which is borderline unconstitutional.
> The surveillance went as far as spying on members of Trump's campaign, which is eerily similar to Watergate.
Obvious hyperbole. They monitored everyone that communicated with foreign nationals, which Trump's aides were doing. They used the word "incidental collection" in that article for a reason.
Surveillance on foreign nationals that "inadvertently" intercepted communications from their political opponents.
> Nunes suggested this unmasking might have been done for political reasons, saying the evidence he had seen had been widely disseminated across the intelligence community and had "little or no apparent intelligence value."
We're rightfully worried about what Trump could do with such power; we should also be investigating what Obama actually did with it.
> It's ok to spy on your political enemies as long as you spy on everyone else too?
The real issue is whether it's ok to spy on everyone. Spying on everyone means spying on your political enemies too, and your specific focus on the political enemies is ignoring the important debate. You're effectively arguing that spying on everyone isn't important, as long as you don't spy on your political enemies.
> But you're right, I'm not interested in conspiracy theories. That's why I said we should investigate.
And waste time and resources on a completely stupid premise. Spend your political capital more wisely.
Spying on your political enemies is a serious threat to democracy.
Not many seem to care, frankly, that the government is spying on them. I have some hope that they might care about America turning into a dictatorship where elections are decided by abuse of power.
On the other hand, I also see many reasons to fear that they won't care, as long as "their side" wins.
Well, it focuses on him because he's President now.
Sure, Obama was an authoritarian bastard. But why do we think that Trump won't be one? Has he, for example, stopped assassinating random foreigners based on often iffy metadata?
> Has he, for example, stopped assassinating random foreigners based on often iffy metadata?
There is no way you or anyone else besides those within the agencies themselves would be able to qualify on what data and for what reasons the US assassinates anybody.
There are some things which fighting against is not worth the effort. Concentrating on things which can create significant positive change is much more fruitful.
Right after I invent cold fusion and stop sarcasm on the internet! (Besides which, I do not believe anyone can know why secretive agencies in governments assassinate people, if you had been reading...)
I agree with you, but I did think the article was still good. You can ignore the talking points in it and it stands on its own. It's possible that this was revised number of times, and the author was either more or less heavy handed on the political side. FP Magazine hates Trump, if you've read their publication, so this is no surprise. The biggest eye roll moment for me was Trump targeting "Black Lives Matter" like he would foreign terrorists.
I live in a small university town in Appalachia Ohio. A few months ago 70 people were arrested at a peaceful sit-in at the university student-center.
The State Highway Patrol, who had nothing to do with this, requested for its intel unit, information about everyone arrested so they could begin tracking them via social media.[1]
It does not seem far fetched to me that any president or really any person in a position of power would wield that power to target any group they view as dissidents. The FBI's surveillance and meddling with MLK is well-documented [2].
FTA:
Specifically, the day after the protest, the State Highway Patrol’s Athens Post commander, Lt. Virgil Conley, emailed OU Police Capt. Brian Kapple, asking him for details on the protesters.
“Can you advise how many were arrested last night? Also, I have a request from our intel unit if you were to provide their names and DOB, they can begin to track them through social media and open resources,” Conley wrote. “As we know, these folks tend to move around a little bit and are involved in other instances across the state, and that would assist other agencies in identifying those subjects and mitigate future issues.”
Well over half of the article is nothing but speculation designed for fearmongering among their audience (who are undoubtedly extremely liberal, judging from the other Trump articles on their site).
It depends on the author and subject, FP has some decent writing and some excellent geopolitical analysis.
Although I haven't been reading it as much since the election - maybe the editors are pushing the anti-Trump angle hard like NYTimes has been shamelessly doing recently. It's writers are very 'internationalist' and focused on geopolitical diplomacy so a lot of them are falling under the 'I'm appalled at Trump and must bring it up at every moment to show that America is still okay'.
It's tough being a news junkie and not being a typical foaming at the mouth US mainstream liberal these days (which to the surprise of many in that category does not make one a right wing Trump supporter, nor American for that matter).
Foreign Policy is a main media extension of the Council on Foreign Relations, an extension in the US of Chatham House and British Imperial cough sorry Commonwealth policy.
Relevant reading verifying they are part of a conspiracy against the US: Carroll Quigley.
Is that speculation the duty of these articles, though? It's clear they seem to think so, but the politicizing of otherwise informative articles grows tiresome to me. Why is providing facts so difficult these days?
I agree the post is overly politicized and biased towards Trump, but I think a strong argument could be made that Obama's reasons for and uses of expanded intelligence capabilities may turn out to be less concerning than Trump's. (Not to defend Obama's intelligence expansion.)
I suppose in some sense it amounts to that at a very fundamental level (though I wouldn't really say I "like" Obama).
But, worded more eloquently, I think that Trump's ego, insecurity, arrogance, and overall personality makes him more likely to abuse his power; especially for petty or vindictive reasons.
Not incredibly more likely. I don't think he's going to call the NSA director and ask him to spy on an ex-wife or something (probably...). I just think Obama respected the gravitas of his position more.
You don't become successful in a city like NYC by being a good guy, you do it by being cutthroat. I'm not saying successful people are always bad people, of course. I mean, he hasn't exactly lived out of the public eye up until this point.
As an aside, from what I can tell he seems to not realize the power of his words as President, or the consequences of certain actions in the realm of politics.
After taking credit for good things happening he had nothing to do with, I nautrally wonder how much credit he will take if things don't pan out as he plans.
The buck stops with him, I don't think that has fully sunk in during this past 90 days or so of his adminstration.
Well for one, Trump doesn't seem to understand how the law or even democracy functions. I mean, you can't bully the courts to get your way, and you run votes on legislation when you've secured the necessary votes through comprise.
Failing to understand such basic concepts would make me extremely concerned about giving the man access to anything.
It's not for lack of effort that NGA is not more widely known. In fact NGA has a pretty great portal for NGA specific consumer applications which leverage unclassified GEOINT capabilities:
Not all are great, but some of the apps are really useful and valuable.
It's a huge and hugely valuable organization that has started to become the analysis backbone for current intelligence - largely because decision makers want photos.
The AF and NRO run the satellite system, but pretty much everything valuable that is in Low Earth Orbit that takes "pictures" is processed and analyzed through the NGA - then fused and productized with all source data from CIA/DIA/NSA.
Truly invaluable organization - if bloated (like everything in the USG).
The NGA is up there with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in lack of public exposure. The NRO launches a lot of the satellites the NGA also uses for GEOINT and spying in general. NRO launches are part of the public record, but their missions are almost never revealed, and all clandestine in nature. The launch craft and missions are frequently given ... frankly villainous names and logos ... I wish I was jesting, but take a look for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_launches . I don't know how else to describe a mission with a motto like "Nothing Is Beyond Our Reach" with a Cthulu-entity as the figurehead - for a government agency mission no less.
People are always sort of disbelieving when I show them this sort of thing, in plain day. I can't figure out how the media has managed to never capitalize on this.
Actually it's very well known in terms of MASIN and GEOINT. I once even interviewed with them back in the day, and they don't do a lot to hide their presence. I think they're not in the news a lot because what NGIA does and what Google and a lot of private satellite imagery companies do, is really the same.
>With the capability to watch an area of 10 or even 15 square miles at a time, it would take just two drones hovering over Manhattan to continuously observe and follow all outdoor human activity, night and day.
This is not correct. Manhattan has tall buildings which are a great defense against arial surveillance. They also do not do active monitoring. So if you travel more than 10 - 15 miles, you would end up entering or exiting their surveillance radius, which means they couldn't link your entire set of actions together.
Further, the resolution is not very good. They can currently trace back cars and humans walking, but the features are not great. So if you were to board a bus and exit the bus, and you weren't wearing some very distinct color (or you took off your jacket), you would be lost to them.
The company that provides this service is called PSS. I do not like them very much. [1]
Shameless plug: We don't plan to do any surveillance, but at tensorflight.com we automatically detect a few object classes and our automatic human detector is almost ready. https://twitter.com/tensorflight/status/843606859399405568 , please get in touch at kozikow@tensorflight.com if you are interested in this space.
They can track your location by looking at the current cell id of you phone connection (also a much better way of identification) so what's the point of these drones?
Also there are lots of CCTV cameras at every corner for tracking people without a cell phone.
Page 60 of Coup d'État by Edward Luttwak describes a large number of US intelligence agencies, the nominal hierarchy, and (I think) the actual hierarchy.
The NGA is in there, interestingly, along with a bunch of others I never thought existed.
The first edition (1968) is timeless, but the revised edition (2016) is amazingly on-point and is updated to reflect the structural changes which have occurred in the half century since it's first printing. It's only 300-odd pages, highly recommended.
I'm pretty sure I did a ton of work for these folks. In about 1994 or 1995 was the boss a woman? If so, yeah, I know these people and have some stories that I can share because in spite of their desire to get me to get clearance, I didn't. Which was a good choice on my part but wasn't that clear at the time.
If these are the same people, in 1994 they could read 3 inch headlines from a satellite. That was the stuff I worked on.
Edit: in reading through the thread I wonder if the people I knew were the NRO.
Are journalists just going to do this with every agency in the IC now? FEW KNOW THAT THE TREASURY DEPARTMENT TRACKS MONEY LAUNDERING, COULD TRUMP COME AFTER YOUR WELLS FARGO ACCOUNT?
Actually it's the Secret Service that tracks money laundering. Contrary to popular belief, that is actually their main job -- protecting the currency of the United States. Protecting the President is just their side job.
You're partly right though -- up until 2003 they were part of the Treasury department, but they were re-orged into DHS when it was created.
You're partly right: Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is one of the lead agencies that combat money laundering. There's a huge amount of overlap though.
> In 1961, the CIA and the Air Force jointly formed a centralized administrative office to run the spy satellite program. This was the National Reconnaissance Office, an organisation so secret that even today [1982] its very name is considered classified information. (p.243)
I'm no fan of trump or his propensity to bend the rules. But this article is prophecizing doomsday scenarios with far too much gusto to be taken seriously.
Yes, I learned of a stealthily intelligence agency, but also learned that today's news outlets don't really have editorial integrity
>The NGA is to pictures what the NSA is to voices. Its principal function is to analyze the billions of images and miles of video captured by drones in the Middle East and spy satellites circling the globe.
Eh, what? What does the National Reconnaissance Office do, then? I thought that was their job.
Nah, its just that all those other groups have an SEO budget. If NGA does it is probably via a big prime contractor like LM and completely ineffectual.
"The NGA is to pictures what the NSA is to voices. Its principal function is to analyze the billions of images and miles of video captured by drones in the Middle East and spy satellites circling the globe. But because it has largely kept its ultra-high-resolution cameras pointed away from the United States, according to a variety of studies, the agency has never been involved in domestic spy scandals like its two far more famous siblings, the CIA and the NSA."
it's like saying that Netflix sends "one million terabytes per day"... if you are looking at the decompessed bitmaps
Gorgon Stare is the platform to which the ARGUS-IS system is basically a camera upgrade. It works by "tiering" the data so objects of tactical interest get downlinked quicker and more frequently. You're certainly not sending raw bitmaps over the air
I would imagine that you would effectively take a "keyframe" image and then record "P-frames" on top of that like any other compression system. Only instead of a psychovisual model you have a psycho-tactical model, where you want to throw lots of bandwidth at the objects of interest and not so much to everything else.
But yeah, 6 petabytes per day is the throughput of the camera system. Most of the data will be compressed away especially on the live downlinks, and they will probably only retrieve a high-quality copy of the full "historical" data (with high-quality data on objects that aren't designated "interesting") at the end of the mission when the Reaper lands.
After all, you just can't beat the bandwidth of a Reaper full of tapes hurtling down the runway...
Time for napkin math! If you figure they are putting out 6 petabytes (6000 terabytes) of raw data per day, and let's say they are flying 20 commodity hard drives at 10 TB per drive... that gives you 200 TB per day of video, and you'd need to hit a compression ratio of 30:1 over the uncompressed bitmaps.
Seems plausible, like I bet you could get that out of a standard H264 encoder with decent quality (assuming it supports the resolutions - or you start chunking the video up). Even a more reasonable figure like 5-10 hard drives per day (60-120x compression) would probably still be within the reach of standard encoders. H264 is pretty good especially when your baseline is "raw bitmaps".
Remember, the US military doesn't give a fuck about money. Flying out a couple C-17s of hard drives every month to support a whole combat theater is chump change, especially if it means other hardware/wetware isn't getting blown up. And at least with the Gorgon Stare system they only retained data for 30 days, so we're not even talking about a huge throughput in terms of hardware for permanent retention.
edit: here is a more serious technical analysis of it that I dug up
Note that the UK had had CCTV for years now, which is a lower tech version of the same thing. It's not all that hypothetical, and we can at least look to it for consequences.
Is this philosophically any different than London converting nearly every square meter with cameras? The technology is better but essentially it's an air camera system.
Read the article and it made me think about just how long the US hegemony will last, it's array of tools deployed against the rest of humanity is vast:
- It blackmails the rest of the globe with the biggest nuclear deterrence across land, sea, air and probably space.
- It ensures trading routes remain open by muscling American naval and air superiority. Not to benefit others or play fair, it's there to benefit American interests.
- It actively undermines and spies under 3 letter acronyms, including it's own citizens and allies to benefit American corporarchy [1]
- It consistently outspends the rest of the world combined on it's military upkeep which guarantees it's #1 postion.
Just how long on earth will such superficially-democratic superpower maintain it's hegemony? It's like holding everyone hostage and telling them to trade with each other by selling their own clothing or body with the US taking a cut on every transaction.
It's perfectly normal human behaviour to assume that one's own country's motivations and activities are benevolent and effective. However, the picture looks very different to folks living outside the magic circle of the national border.
Those of us on HN who are not Americans find the giant sprawling US intelligence-industrial complex to be potentially terrifying — especially in view of the USA's demonstrated ability to extradite or kidnap (via extraordinary rendition) people it assumes to be hostile, and in extremis to target people for assassination by flying killer robot. It's the sort of capability that, in the hands of a Doctor Doom figure, or just a corrupt megalomaniac -- as opposed to the erudite, contemplative, great-hearted, and scholarly President of the United States of America who we all know and love -- would be the making of a dystopian novel or a superhero comic. (But of course, that would never happen.)
I'm mortified by many things in my government, and I actively work to improve them. You may note I didn't disagree with him... or you may not, because you seem to be acting like I did.
The OP seemed genuinely upset that nobody wanted to engage him on the topic, and angry that he was getting downvoted, so I tried to help him understand why people might just downvote and move on.
As one of the other comments makes clear, it's a matter of perspective. The ones that benefit always see it in a pretty light, regardless of whether the rest of the world absolutely hates it. If you insist for someone's words to be tailored to be lovey-dovey or the kind you'd expect from the pretty-light side, then don't read criticism because it'll always sound "invective" to you.
Thanks for making an account to explain internet comments to me. This website is generally squarely centered on the silicon valley perspective. It's not irrational to expect people to react from that viewpoint. If you want to engage in productive dialogue, it helps to tailor your communications to the audience. It's possible to do so without compromising your values.
Since you seek to genuinely help the follow and now apparently me, I would reckon you take internet comments quite seriously, so you're welcome. Naturally, this particular topic is touchy for both sides here, so it's just as irrational to expect him to dress it up without feeling what a potential respondent would feel if the original poster had an invective tone. It's hard, and I don't blame him for delivering it like that.
Except they aren't facts, certainly not as presented.
Consider, you state:
"blackmails the rest of the globe with nuclear deterrence"
Blackmail is the threat to expose something the victim doesn't want to see exposed, in exchange for some price or service. Nuclear deterrence, is just that, deterrence. Meaning to mitigate (or deter) an adversary from attacking.
"it ensures trading routes remain open" -- all nations with navies protect legitimate trade from pirates, there are ships from at least a half dozen navies protecting cargo from Somali pirates for example.
The US uses its intelligence agencies to undermine the constitution in the service of corporate interests [paraphrased, if you don't agree feel free to correct my interpreatation] -- The US certainly doesn't do this as a matter of policy, if you know of a different policy it would help your case to actually include it as a citation.
"it outspends the rest of the world on defense" -- In terms of real dollars or in terms of percentage of GDP? The last time I checked as a percentage of GDP, Israel outspent everyone else but I haven't looked in a while. There is also an economic size effect here, the US spends more (in real dollars) than any other country on social programs as well (for example). You probably want to stick to per capita numbers though if you're doing nation-state comparisons.
There are lots of things you can say about the US that are both facts, and make the country look bad, but the choices you made aren't facts so they have a hard time persuading the reader of your 'hegemony' thesis.
I don't have the ability to downvote, so I'll chime in with my own view.
I think it's just the way the world works and if it wasn't the U.S being up there it would be another country (U.K, Russia, China) that do awful things because they could get away with it. Plus, add in the obligatory "absolute power corrupts absolutely."
It's a terrible situation, but what do you suppose an effective alternative is? Because cooperating and "compromise" have never been the most beneficial for both parties.
"It is a commonplace that the history of civilisation is largely the history of weapons. In particular, the connection between the discovery of gunpowder and the overthrow of feudalism by the bourgeoisie has been pointed out over and over again. And though I have no doubt exceptions can be brought forward, I think the following rule would be found generally true: that ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance. Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon — so long as there is no answer to it — gives claws to the weak."
I think you can look at the alleged Russian hacking of Podesta's emails and the subsequent releases as an example of that perhaps.
But I wouldn't hold out too much hope for an outpouring of democracy and more equitable relations between individuals and states in an age of total global electronic surveillance. That is a weapon that is extremely expensive, complex and singular.
Count me pessimistic, Orwell continues:
"We were once told that the aeroplane had ‘abolished frontiers’; actually it is only since the aeroplane became a serious weapon that frontiers have become definitely impassable. The radio was once expected to promote international understanding and co-operation; it has turned out to be a means of insulating one nation from another.
The atomic bomb may complete the process by robbing the exploited classes and peoples of all power to revolt, and at the same time putting the possessors of the bomb on a basis of military equality. Unable to conquer one another, they are likely to continue ruling the world between them, and it is difficult to see how the balance can be upset except by slow and unpredictable demographic changes.
For forty or fifty years past, Mr. H. G. Wells and others have been warning us that man is in danger of destroying himself with his own weapons, leaving the ants or some other gregarious species to take over. Anyone who has seen the ruined cities of Germany will find this notion at least thinkable.
Nevertheless, looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery. We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity. James Burnham's theory has been much discussed, but few people have yet considered its ideological implications — that is, the kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of ‘cold war’ with its neighbors."
"Information, as a source of national power, is now the most precious staple, resource, and commodity: information is not only a means of waging war, but the stakes of war...
"The lesson of the first Gulf War: ...military success would now depend on mastering the electro-magnetic spectrum and the information and telecommunications media it supports."
