“To the full extent of their capabilities”

Took me a while to clear up time and read Dave Aitel’s post on his experience with the NSA as compared to the interview that Edward Snowden did with James Bamford of Wired. Make sure you do too, and then come back here for a quick reality adjustment.

So, just to set things straight: I agree with the first point that talk about how working at the NSA consists of abiding with a metric ton of rules, regulations and bureaucratic nightmares. It’s also true for most modern western intelligence agencies (your mileage may vary of course, and this is based on personal subjective observations of course).

However, the NSA (and other agencies in other countries) know very well how to bypass these restrictions, and are very happy to use 3rd party resources to do the dirty work for them. That’s exactly how shady (again – my opinion) companies work in the market of intelligence collections, “lawful interception”, exploit research and development, etc.

This also enables overcoming the difficulties posed by the second point in the article, which pertains to the US’s ability to spy on China (and other countries). In order to provide a more cohesive intelligence landscape, you can’t just focus collection efforts on military and government, as civilian infrastructure is always part of the play for both sides (hey – we just talked about using 3rd parties for intelligence. Guess what? The same thing happens with other countries). As such, “crossing the line” is a needed practice that is often outsourced in terms of liability, legality and ethics, to entities that are willing to take said liability/legality/ethics upon themselves.

And just to steal the closing soundbite: “Every country in the world is engaged in cyber espionage to the full extent of its capabilities. The US just happens to be the one that got caught. This time.


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