US Bans Kaspersky Software

Re:US Bans Kaspersky Software by somenameforme on Friday June 21, 2024 @07:03AM (#40748240)

Your argument seems to be basically coming down to "Ah, but we don't have indisputable proof of said claims!" while intentionally ignoring the fact that what evidence we do have makes it clear that the auditing and self investigating capabilities at the NSA are somewhere between nonexistent and abysmal. For things like an agent to be able to spy on numerous "girlfriends" over periods of half a decade, only to finally be outed because one of them suspected he was spying on her and reported him to the government? And even then, in such an extreme circumstance, for there to be basically no penalties whatsoever (besides him resigning)? This is strong evidence in support of the claims of widespread abuse that Snowden made, before these cases became publicly known.

Beyond this Snowden's revelations were not about abuse within the domestic surveillance apparatuses, but about the existence of those apparatuses themselves. Prior to Snowden the idea that the government was engaging in widespread surveillance, of essentially everything, was still just a "conspiracy theory." The entire system itself is likely illegal, as it pisses all over the 4th amendment, but cannot be legally challenged because of a simple problem - for one to prove standing, to enable them to sue, they need to not only prove they were spied on, but also harmed by spying. Each time this is tried, the NSA simply claims national security and refuses to cooperate. So we have a likely illegal surveillance system with no legal means of challenging it.

So people trading sex pics, spying on lovers, or whatever - these are all instances of abuse within a system that should not even exist.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:US Bans Kaspersky Software by mdhb on Friday June 21, 2024 @07:43AM (#40748539)

It’s not the absence of “indisputable proof” it’s the absence of ANY proof.

There are only a couple of possible scenarios here that I can think of:

1. Snowden is making a claim here that he suspects but doesn’t have proof of (I.e speculation).

2. He does have proof but isn’t willing to share it. Not with the public, not with investigators and for some reason he chose to never mention it internally beforehand.

3. He is intentionally making outlandish claims he knows are wrong.

I can’t see any universe where option 2 is likely. He is every possible motivation to do so if you go with his public story about why he did what he did.

I’m entirely open to options 1 and 3 however.

Also nobody is claiming that those incidents were anything other than abuse of the system. We are all in agreement on that. The question of is this more common than other threats they face from insiders such as spies for example is what we disagree on and so far I’ve not seen a single piece of compelling evidence to suggest it is.

Furthermore, I’ve explained how there are now new controls in place to prevent that from happening again and you don’t even have to ascribe any kind of altruistic motivation for it about protecting people’s privacy. You can entirely put it at the feet of they want to make sure they never have another Snowden incident again. This is why I’m saying that this just isn’t a realistic threat that people should be worrying about in 2024.

[ Parent | on HN ]