US and UK spy agencies defeat privacy and security on the internet.
• NSA and GCHQ unlock encryption used to protect emails, banking and medical records
• $250m-a-year US program works covertly with tech companies to insert weaknesses into products
• Security experts say programs 'undermine the fabric of the internet'
US and British intelligence agencies have successfully cracked much of the online encryption relied upon by hundreds of millions of people to protect the privacy of their personal data, online transactions and emails, according to top-secret documents revealed by former contractor Edward Snowden.
this misses the point
"The NSA isn't to blame for this culture of surveillance, it was there long before, in the commercial spying by Google, Facebook, and others; in the nefarious activities of hacker groups; and on occasions, from friends and families."
This is something of an exhibition of the tendency of people to believe important trends in history began on/about the date of their own birth. This problem began long, long ago.
The NSA has long been a secret organization acquiring secret information excused by an alleged necessity of public security. This goes back at least as far as Eisenhower and likely originated with other deceptive and unlawful powers snatched by FDR and his henchment.
In 1975, Senator Frank Church and his committee investigated NSA in depth. Quiting from the Wiki:
Church was stunned by what the Church Committee learned about the immense operations and electronic monitoring capabilities of the National Security Agency (NSA), an agency whose existence was unknown to most Americans at the time. Church stated in 1975: "That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide."[34] He is widely quoted as also stating regarding the NSA: "I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge... I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Church#Warning_about_the_NSA
...this misses the point
I wish they would stop the NSA crap, i mean how much data do you have to dig up to quote "protect the US from Terrorists". The NSA data sure as heck didn't protect against the Boston Bombers.
So what now, let the country become a total communism? I mean why call it the land of the free if everything about you and everyone else is going to be monitored for your entire life?
1966
I remember back in 1970 learning about the existence of the NSA from other intelligence types. I'm sure it was around many years before that.
The Blackbird was flying before the U2 got shot down. There is a lot of very secret stuff out there.
Balance is also a key element; balancing between the ideal and the pragmatic, balancing cost and functionality, balancing analysis with action, etc.
Which is why secrets will always find the light of day no matter how powerful the technologies used to keep them in the dark.
