Thanks to Snowden (who keeps on giving, even 5 years more or less to the day after his escape to Hong Kong), we can assume that Japan too conducts dragnet surveillance. It is the state of current affairs that it hardly raises more than a yawn.

Still an interesting article, since it reveals that the Japanese take their secrecy really, really seriously, and so we may not assume much of what they are up to, really.

The problem with secret government agencies is otherwise generally that they are notoriously difficult to reign in. They are governed by law, but are likely to develop their own agendas, and since lawmakers are kept in the dark they can end up meddling in policy, using all the means at their disposal.

Our ultimate line of defense against such, and only hope are the brave whistleblowers. Edward Snowden needs to be pardoned.

> Still an interesting article, since it reveals that the Japanese take their secrecy really, really seriously, and so we may not assume much of what they are up to, really.

Pretty much all SIGINT agencies do. Maybe 1 in 20 Canadians even knows that CSE exists or what it does. It keeps a pretty low profile, within the limitations that it can, considering that the gross figures for its budget are public and other public info available from outside of classification.

(For the Americans: CSE is the exact equivalent of the NSA, it's been around for a long time and is one of the five eyes partners).

It's important to remember that while the NSA is now a household name, it hasn't always been that name. I think until 1975 the existence of the agency was still secret, and even after that it was mostly shrouded in secrecy until the 90s or so.

The joke used to be that NSA stood for "No Such Agency".

Are they governed by law? I'm starting to feel that no one follows the law, or spirit of it at least, unless they have to or can write the laws themselves.

Corporations write their own laws through lobbyists and circumvent it when they can. Top secret agents don't really have anyone they are accountable to since they're so top secrete there isn't any public oversight.

For some reason the secret courts convened to check them (FISA) are just rubber stamp mills too because hey, those don't really have any oversight either.

It really doesn't seem like this stuff will get any better without a ton more oversight. It'll be interesting to see if the Japanese people are more appalled by this and more willing to stand up.

It's worth reading Beyond Snowden which is written by Timothy Edgar, a former ACLU lawyer who got hired into the Obama administration as a PCL advisor and eventually worked at the NSA.

He gives a lot of insight into how things actually work with a deep understanding of the issues and the difficulty around these policy tradeoffs. The organizations do take oversight seriously, but there's still a risk of 'turn key tyranny' and there are improvements that can be made.

It's possible to have security and civil liberties, but you need effective policy and it can't happen in secret.

According to the recent update of the Japanese Telecommunications act, its illegal to record the packet payloads without a court order. However recording the headers, e.g. TCP headers if fair game.

So its perfectly legal for ISPs and agencies to record the metadata. Then again Japan dosent have freedom of the press and many other things you might expect.

Seeing as how the Japanese are so complacent, I doubt anything will change. From the moment you set foot in a public education system here you are taught to fit in, be quiet and don’t question the elders aka authority.

> It is the state of current affairs that it hardly raises more than a yawn.

Do you mean here (roughly US, given posting time and time zones), internationally or domestically?

Certainly, internationally, I would think it should not be a great revelation. We all know / should have known, long before Snowden, that all countries with a decent GDP are doing international spying. Those with a poor GDP still spend great sums to do domestic spying. I don't think the [non]-novelty of it is a fair criticism.

Because, like you say, it is an interesting article. Kudos to The Intercept for a good piece. They could have taken a trivial approach but they didn't.

My criticism is, I wonder how the Japanese feel about it. It's too bad The Intercept didn't gauge that for us. Certainly the Japanese have a different standard for privacy than we (US) do, and different consideration of government.

What’s horrifying is that it seems there’s little anyone can do about anything being disclosed by whistleblowers. Things go on business as usual. I wonder if this will ever make it to the Japanese mainstream media or if the state tv kills this fast.

Clearly they value secrecy over efficient cooperation of the branches, and I'm not sure this is particularly bad for their net contribution to society.

I can't forgive a government agency that waterboards and performs rectal examinations with intentional "excessive force" as a psychological technique. I don't know how it can be said that's a healthy culture, especially when they destroyed evidence about it and spied on the Senators that were investigating it.

I think the CIA lost its way during the Bush II administration. (More precisely, I think they were led astray by the Bush administration and then used as a scapegoat.) But Snowden's leaks concerned NSA and related agencies work on signals intelligence. He wasn't fighting against torture, so please don't give him credit for it.

Then you never read about Nixon and Bush I. This was the most criminal era.

In terms of criminality, my feeling is that the CIA was always a bit of a loose cannon. In the WWII era with "Wild Bill" Donovan, there were all sorts of hijinks that wouldn't fly today, ranging from assassinations to downright silly operations leaving agents exposed to unnecessary danger. In the Eisenhower era, I don't think there was anything as bad as torture, but Allen Dulles and his cronies authorized assassinations behind Eisenhower's back (the criticism is that Eisenhower did not institute strong enough oversight of CIA back then).

Similar to the Military Industrial Complex, the intelligence community has morphed into a bureaucracy all its own, with a tendency to hide its own agenda from oversight.

> hijinks that wouldn't fly today, ranging from assassinations

I'm afraid assassination is literally flying today...

Your comment is a non-sequitur. Are you trying to communicate something? Or just trying to change topics?

The comment makes sense to me. It's saying that the CIA didn't "los[e] its way during the Bush II administration", since it did similar things in the Bush I and Nixon administrations (whether or not that's true I don't know).

But the Bush I administration isn't notable for CIA misbehavior. The criminal period which I think the parent comment refers to occurred in the 60s and 70s, under Johnson & Nixon. Bush Sr was director of the CIA, but under Ford, not Nixon. He was part of the post Church Committee era. Throwing him in to the mix is what makes rurban's comment read as nonsensical.

Are you missing the Iran-Contra affair? The whole drug operations exposed by Gary Webb? This was all Bush Sr. Yes, this was post Church, under Bush Sr (as head of CIA, then vice, then pres) it became the worst.

Under Obama the formerly illegal assassinations were made legal, Habeas Corpus was abandoned, but it didn't reach the volume of the pre-Church and Bush Sr years. The military drone program took over those numbers.

So you missed the Intecept's piece from the day before this one, going into detail about how the man suspected of "spying" on Trump definitely spied on Carter for Bush?

I think cowmoo728's comment were a reply to your remark about the TLA's (i.e. including the CIA), and rurban's comments a reply to your comment about when the CIA lost its way.

> The TLAs have fairly healthy cultures

Weren't the CIA caught red handed spying on congress?

we have no recollection of this fact, Senator.

Thomas Drake showed us (and Snowden) that whistleblowers are the only way to change the illegal dealings of the TLAs.

What evidence do you have that Snowden is a Russian agent? Why is it suspicious that both Assange and Snowden happen to support Catalonian independence? It's not exactly a fringe or necessarily right-wing position.

It's certainly possible that Snowden was pressured into the Russian government into tweeting his support for it (since he is at their mercy), but even if it's true he's now compromised, how does that at all affect the NSA disclosures?

Russia doesn’t need Snowden to do anything more than

A) make the US look like a failed democracy

B) seem to be living happily and freely in Russia

I would suggest without any qualification, that Putin probably protects Snowden quite astonishingly well from influence or persuasion by any faction inside or outside the country. They need him to feel safe and protected; the rest of his behavior can then be the natural result of this.

That's also quite possible, but how could we ever know if it's true? If he's being coerced or influenced in some way, he wouldn't be allowed to say anything about it.

I do get the impression he's probably allowed to speak freely (as long as he's not too publicly critical of Russia or Russian interests), but it's impossible to know. Considering he's a potentially amazing propaganda asset for the Russian government, it's not hard to think they might want to put him up to some things.

re 3: My perception & guess is that he was offered a deal after he dumped the docs: Come to Russia and we'll ask you to use your platform to talk on issues we care about. Snowden has a lot of cred with the Left and libertarians/anarchists, so he is an excellent agent for division.

I'm sure the current US gov will pardon him! /s

>In 2012, the country’s police investigators were repeatedly thwarted by a hacker known as the “Demon Killer,” who posted a series of death threats online. The hacker used Tor to successfully evade detection for seven months, which was a major source of embarrassment for Japanese police — and likely fueled demand for new surveillance capabilities.

yes.. it was a bad bad hacker who fueled demand for more money thrown at the defense industry and not someone acting on purpose.

It is most unlikely that the Demon Killer was a false flag funding exercise. Imagine the problems if a whistleblower exposed that!

It is much more likely that the Military-Industrial Complex used the opportunity to push for more powers and funding. As all Military-Industrial Complexes do all around the world at every opportunity.

Does every traffic light or change to traffic that occurs after a fatality at long time known about dangerous intersection mean that traffic light manufacturers and traffic engineers collude to further their influence over shaping of our traffic? Or are people merely responding to issues as they impact society? You're presenting this with evil overtures. Sure the military industrial complex drains a lot of money from the budget. But they are responding to services needed by the government. The unfortunate squandering of money, spending money on unneeded equipment (that the Pentagon says they don't want or need) by Congress, or the lack of oversight on costs billed to the government, are other issues.

"imagine the PR problems if X" worked prior to snowden, but now it seems no one cares.

If we don't care that they're spying on us all, why would we care about the reason behind the spying?

Your argument is very logical and plausible, but we live in illogical and implausible times.

If no-one cares there's no need to false flag a justification, is there?

Devil's advocate: What's the harm in keeping your hands "clean"? The public zeitgeist can change, after all, and someday the public may care. Better be prepared for that, etc.

Extra cost and complication now versus potential costs in the future.

Small up-front cost now versus having your lives threatened in the future.

>It is most unlikely that [a US agency would violate the constitution by conducting mass surveillance of US citizens]. Imagine the problems if a whistleblower exposed that!

I imagine minimal problems even if it was a false flag. These surveillance systems are too attractive for governments to willingly give up, no matter how flawed the justification for their creation is.

It seems pretty plausible to me that a bad bad hacker could do such things and a reaction from the Japanese government would be to try to break Tor. Do you think it's a lie? If Tor doesn't actually help hackers against the Japanese, then what is their motivation for lying? Do you think the Japanese government just want an excuse to spy on their people? (genuinely asking)

> Do you think the Japanese government just want an excuse to spy on their people?

I could go into a long discussion of Japanese culture and the relationship of Japanese society with the government, but... Really, you can't expect any large organisation to act rationally. All such organisations are made up of many, many people all of which have their own agenda. The action that is expressed at any given moment depends entirely on the ebb and flow of internal power struggles. You can't really predict it or reason about it in the same way you might for a single person. It could be anything.

>Do you think the Japanese government just want an excuse to spy on their people?

I'm not OP, but I would be very surprised if the attack was the root cause for strengthening their spy agencies. In the United States we have seen time and again that laws for a stricter surveillance are passed with the pretext of anti-terrorism or anti-child pornography; Japan could very well be using such a case to justify their surveillance needs.

You think it's not reasonable to think it was a real person acting maliciously? Would you like to explain further?

The Intercept is the most impressive free press initiative of the last 50 years. We thought that the Internet would democratize the free flow of information, that we could be free of a handful media conglomerates and what we got was Facebook.

Snowden whistle blower greatest consequence was the initiative to create The Intercept.

I agree. They do a great job with investigative journalism. I highly recommend them as well.

They have a donation page if anyone is interested in helping https://theintercept.com/donate/

I would hold the intercept in higher regard had they not outed reality winner as a source. given the nature of the work they do, one would think they'd be better at that sort of thing.

I have such mixed feelings about The Intercept. They break extremely important news but mix in too many opinionated blog posts.

Read some of their articles about animal cruelty. The topics and information are great but the writing is littered with opinion and assumption instead of objective journalism.

I couldn't even take two podcast episodes before I stopped listening. They had skits mocking Trump. That's not journalism. That just makes people who like Trump shut down and call your site fake news. Stick to the facts and leave the BS to the bloggers.

>That just makes people who like Trump shut down and call your site fake news.

... good riddance?

Why good riddance? If a person who disagreed with my ideologies was looking for a news source, should I point them to an echo chamber that reinforces their beliefs, or a place that I believe to do good journalism (not necessarily The Intercept, per se)?

If a person is willing to dismiss the credibility of a news source because they mock Trump, then that person doesn't seem very open to questioning their ideology to begin with.

It's like arguing with a conspiracy theorist - you can't get anywhere near a real conversation as long as they're trapped in a feedback loop of defensiveness that makes critical self-examination impossible.

This argument does not hold up. Flip this around and you are the one to dismiss the credibility of a news source because it puts trump on a pedestal. Are you not open to questioning your ideology if someone presents some very compelling arguments despite how much you can’t stand Trump?

>Are you not open to questioning your ideology if someone presents some very compelling arguments despite how much you can’t stand Trump?

I am open to it - as long as there are compelling arguments made, it shouldn't matter either way. I'll admit I would have a bias against it, since I don't find much praiseworthy about Trump personally or politically, but I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand. But if I did, I would be guilty of the same thing.

If you flip my argument around and apply it to me, then you seem to be admitting that it does hold up, in general terms.

Clearly they can keep things secret unlike NSA and co. Whole article is random guesses, names of building and not much of anything else, that is kind of impressive. In fact the only real stuff is from a power point shared with NSA..

Looking at source materials, it is not hard to see what they are doing. They have radome’s to obfuscate where their dishes are pointed, and use them to collect signals that pass through the Chinese and other satellites they can see.

They appear to request processing assistance from NSA, so the most educated guess would be that they know the right satellites to collect from, but are not quite there yet in terms of normalizing and analyzing most of the data.

You can scroll to the bottom of linked article to view the source documents.

Funny you put it that way because it sounds very Japanese to me.

Japan always focuses heavily on the physical infrastructure. They meticulously build amazing machines, bridges and grid systems, but don't know what to do with them.

> No internal documents from Japan’s surveillance agency have ever been publicly disclosed before.

It makes me kinda sad that somewhere in a nondescript office building someone has to wipe the "No documents leaked since 67 years" counter off some whiteboard.

Wait, it's not called Public Security, Section 9?

When you have a long-established culture of unaccountable organizations with nearly unlimited budgets and nothing else to do, you eventually will get something like Section 9.

I wish... Section 9 is outrageously competent.

You mean section 6

Wasted opportunity.

I bet someone is getting disciplined for leaving the blinds open in that first picture...

No sensitive work should ever be done in a place with glass windows. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_microphone

SCIFs don't have windows.

Laser microphones can be mitigated by vibrating the glass at the frequency of human speech. https://www.shomer-tec.com/laser-surveillance-defeater.html

Mitigating it seems like a last resort when there's no other option.

With researchers like Mordechai Guri out there, I'd say the GP comment is solid general advice.

https://cyber.bgu.ac.il//advanced-cyber/airgap

https://youtu.be/4vIu8ld68fc

Id imagine that rigging the windows with piezoelectric transducers, and vibrating them with FAKE office chatter, would be an even more effective solution.

Or you just pump rock music in between the panes of glass.

Take the same music, invert phase, add to original: sound recovered. Very loud white noise would be a lot more effective.

Take rock music, played by a $0.20 shitty chinese speaker. Indistinguishable from white noise.

Actually a shitty speaker makes it even easier to filter out by producing a smaller spectrum.

You need real white noise - not very loud, but it has to be random as in not predictable.

You don't actually:

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=956894...

"And to prevent sophisticated laser devices from capturing the telltale vibration of his voice on the glass, music played between the panes."

But then they can film your plants/crisp packets instead to pickup audio - https://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/VisualMic/

I can only imagine the lens required to do this from a distance. They'd need a telescope.

Then you'd have to account for stuff like building sway.

Has anyone tried to make passive listening device based on laser reading?

Take small microphone element that captures human speaking range vibrators and connect it to equally small retroreflector. Then you can read the sound from any angle using laser/sensor next to each other. There would be no electrical or radio frequency transmissions at all.

Is this practical? I'd expect that temperature gradients and moisture in the air have an effect on the distance the laser light has to travel; are the changes caused by vibration significantly larger?

I guess the primary reason it works is because the factors you mention vary significantly slower than the vibrations from speech.

Do those work with modern multi-pane windows?

Not a chance. I worked at an intelligence agency for nearly a decade and it was impossible to get people to follow the rules of "keep the blinds closed".

I have basically always assumed that all governments are conducting the maximum amount of espionage on their citizens and adversaries as they are able to within the constraints of their technology and budget.

Can someone please link me street view near those gigantic balls? Thanks!

Here you go! This is the location of the second arial photo in the article. https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4416085,130.6032298,3a,60y,2...

You might enjoy this: https://www.google.com/maps/@50.102203,19.5471605,203m/data=...

Not sure if they are the same green balls, but I found the location of the first screenshot:

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.858905,141.7240164,913m/data...

Thanks everyone!

I'll just leave this here...

https://theintercept.com/feed/?lang=en

What’s the point of this?

RSS link to free full-length reports from the Intercept.

Looks a lot like the NHK (national broadcaster) got the word in order to prepare the public for a constitutional change..