Reflections on Internet Surveillance

Abstract

Six years ago Edward Snowden leaked a massive trove of internal NSA documents detailing the operation of the US government’s electronic surveillance system. The overall systems described a wide-ranging approach of remarkably banal systems: primarily a combination of repurposed network intrusion detection, big data, malicious code, bribery, a veritable army of lawyers, and more money than god. Overall the systems are abusive but remarkably not generally abused. They are also mostly build-able with relatively low effort by others. In fact, building a hobby “NSA inna box” was remarkably instructive at understanding both how the systems work and the remarkably low barrier to entry.