1) If you're counting investment, you should count it in dollars, not number of investors or corporate entity locations.
2) This is missing at least two extremely well-known CNE vendors, which makes me doubt its accuracy.
3) The takeaway from the graph on Mythical Beasts [1] should be that the industry is _very small_, not that it's very big.
4) Americans should be happy that the US government is the biggest player. Would you prefer to have China or Russia or the Middle East be the biggest player? Get a warrant -> own a phone is a very straightforward process that fits into existing models of civil liberties in the US.
"Would you prefer to have China or Russia or the Middle East be the biggest player?"
To be fair, an objective person might prefer to have _no_ "big players"
Whether a biased or self-interested commenter on the subject believes this is possible or not doesn't eliminate the possibilty of this preference
It is like asking whether a voter would prefer to have the "biggest players" giving funds to X candidate or Y candidate, ignoring whether the voter would actually prefer campaign finance reform instead
1vuio0pswjnm7 · 3m ago
Is it "idealistic" to phrase the choice as something like
"If investor-financed commercial spyware must exist, would you rather the biggest players be X, Y or Z"
IMHO, it is just common sense
While it might seem similar, this is not analgous to an arms race involving nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons do not rely on some particular behaviour by the target, e.g., use of particular software and hardware, in order to work
halJordan · 46m ago
You're not wrong, but youre showing an unserious idealism yourself. Your scenario is more akin to "i dont think there should be a biggest nuke owner, so we're going to pass laws banning nukes" While the USSR simply proceeds with making nukes.
dogleash · 3h ago
>Would you prefer to have China or Russia or the Middle East be the biggest player?
If the absolute value of China + Russia + ME was the same, but US went down? Yeah, probably. Doubly so if sales going down meant less R&D investment and therefore lower quality software.
tptacek · 1h ago
It also assumes we'd have records of investments outside the US/EU market to begin with.
lazyeye · 28m ago
We also dont know how much money China is investing in govt spyware either.
I dont really trust the intent of any information I read online. This article could well be part of a influence campaign by a foreign power.
"Because if you talk about something the most, this means you have it the most.." is how most people perceive things. Of course, the opposite is often true.
tptacek · 4h ago
This data set is missing even several pretty well-known CNE vendors.
The bigger question is: why would you expect the US not to be the largest investor? CNE vendors are tech companies. The US is the largest investor in tech companies.
bigyabai · 3h ago
> why would you expect the US not to be the largest investor?
Mostly because $FAV_TECH_COMPANY constantly tells me they love privacy. They fight backdoors in court, they rush out security patches and closely coordinate with the government to ensure I'm safe. Every advertisement seems to reinforce the idea that they cared about my security, I guess I put too much faith in the principles of private enterprise.
tptacek · 3h ago
What would that have to do with anything I just said?
simoncion · 2h ago
> What would that have to do with anything I just said?
It's a direct answer to the question you posed, which was email-quoted in the first line of the comment.
It relates the point of view of someone who's substantially tech-ignorant and -in part because they simply don't have time or energy to think much on the topic- entirely unaware of how the intelligence and infosec world works. People like that make up a somewhat-surprising fraction of the US population. Sometimes folks who work in computers are a member of this subset of the population!
bigyabai · 2h ago
It might help inform you, if you're unfamiliar with the sentiment Americans hold towards security?
Don't take my word for it, though. Scroll through the rest of the comments in this thread, I counted all of three unique users that took this article at face-value. The fact that we see this cognitive dissonance on HN should really reinforce how unimportant online security is to Silicon Valley.
The headline can't be taken at face value. "Largest" is based on the number of investing entities (including individuals), not something more objective like dollars invested. Also, the US is not making these decisions as the headline implies.
hparadiz · 4h ago
Aka enterprise security solutions
tptacek · 4h ago
Enterprises are generally not customers of serious CNE vendors.
It is why the employer contracts the hacking firm to do it all for them. Meanwhile, the employer has deniability. The employer receives reports of your data and activities as accessed by the firm. That is the whole point. It's a legal gray area. Being naive about it doesn't help.
dadrian · 3h ago
No, that is also illegal.
tptacek · 3h ago
Sounds made up.
bamboozled · 4h ago
“Freedomware”
Group_B · 4h ago
Gotta love the good old US of A. I feel like we have the worst of both worlds; dystopian surveillance, yet massive crime issues still. An amazing world we live in.
generalizations · 4h ago
I suspect that in the very near future, the latter will dramatically decrease and the former dramatically increase. I wonder how that tradeoff will be perceived.
bregma · 3h ago
As surveillance increases the definition of crime will expand.
Consider the incentives. Surveillance is costly. The only way to justify increasing surveillance costs is to demonstrate increasing intervention in criminal activity. If traditional crime is reduced, new crimes need to be introduced.
Once all the enemies of the state have been eliminated, it becomes mandatory to introduce new enemies of the state so they, too, can be rounded up. Eventually there will be no one left to come for and the surveillance technology will go unmonitored.
jrochkind1 · 4h ago
Don't worry, the crime wont' actually decrease either.
hansvm · 4h ago
Maybe. If we use our powers too capriciously then they'll deter behaviors other than criminal behaviors. Like that boat of alleged drug traffickers we recently blew up -- that looks more likely to discourage boating within 1000 miles of the US than any particular crime.
falcor84 · 4h ago
What do you mean? What would lead to government surveillance decreasing?
wil421 · 4h ago
No he means crime will dramatically decrease and surveillance will increase. I’d be inclined to agree.
corimaith · 2h ago
The increase in crime is purely political problem emerging from the demands of a certain segment of middle and upper middle classes, not the government or working class.
roughly · 4h ago
> I feel like we have the worst of both worlds; dystopian surveillance, yet massive crime issues still.
One might be tempted towards the conclusion that dystopian surveillance doesn't materially impact crime rates and that if we want to solve the latter, we need a different solution than the former.
mrtesthah · 4h ago
The problem is that when laws no longer apply to certain individuals in our government, we no longer have rule of law at all, because a law is inherently universal. The US is rotting from the head.
kubb · 4h ago
At least you have freedom… in some sense.
No comments yet
howmayiannoyyou · 3h ago
Good. I want my tax dollars allocated to penetrating every and any system my country's adversaries may use to undermine our interests or threaten our people. And, I want maximum penalties, civil and criminal, for any person or company who misuses these systems for personal or political gain. Also, I'd like to see mandatory statutory civil damages for any vendor creating and/or selling/providing these systems who does so in a negligent or malicious manner, same as we provide for other high risk products and services.
vkou · 3h ago
Well, you're definitely not going to get the latter two, and the only guarantee about the first one is that they will definitely be used against enemies of the state.
Whether there's any overlap between them and enemies of the people will heavily depend on the latter's ability to steer towards good governance. The track record for the past few decades hasn't been great.
ChainnChompp · 3h ago
Nailed it - well said. Going to take some serious work for the populace to start steering the ship again, unfortunately.
1) If you're counting investment, you should count it in dollars, not number of investors or corporate entity locations.
2) This is missing at least two extremely well-known CNE vendors, which makes me doubt its accuracy.
3) The takeaway from the graph on Mythical Beasts [1] should be that the industry is _very small_, not that it's very big.
4) Americans should be happy that the US government is the biggest player. Would you prefer to have China or Russia or the Middle East be the biggest player? Get a warrant -> own a phone is a very straightforward process that fits into existing models of civil liberties in the US.
[1]: https://mythicalbeasts.atlanticcouncil.org/
To be fair, an objective person might prefer to have _no_ "big players"
Whether a biased or self-interested commenter on the subject believes this is possible or not doesn't eliminate the possibilty of this preference
It is like asking whether a voter would prefer to have the "biggest players" giving funds to X candidate or Y candidate, ignoring whether the voter would actually prefer campaign finance reform instead
"If investor-financed commercial spyware must exist, would you rather the biggest players be X, Y or Z"
IMHO, it is just common sense
While it might seem similar, this is not analgous to an arms race involving nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons do not rely on some particular behaviour by the target, e.g., use of particular software and hardware, in order to work
If the absolute value of China + Russia + ME was the same, but US went down? Yeah, probably. Doubly so if sales going down meant less R&D investment and therefore lower quality software.
I dont really trust the intent of any information I read online. This article could well be part of a influence campaign by a foreign power.
"Because if you talk about something the most, this means you have it the most.." is how most people perceive things. Of course, the opposite is often true.
The bigger question is: why would you expect the US not to be the largest investor? CNE vendors are tech companies. The US is the largest investor in tech companies.
Mostly because $FAV_TECH_COMPANY constantly tells me they love privacy. They fight backdoors in court, they rush out security patches and closely coordinate with the government to ensure I'm safe. Every advertisement seems to reinforce the idea that they cared about my security, I guess I put too much faith in the principles of private enterprise.
It's a direct answer to the question you posed, which was email-quoted in the first line of the comment.
It relates the point of view of someone who's substantially tech-ignorant and -in part because they simply don't have time or energy to think much on the topic- entirely unaware of how the intelligence and infosec world works. People like that make up a somewhat-surprising fraction of the US population. Sometimes folks who work in computers are a member of this subset of the population!
Don't take my word for it, though. Scroll through the rest of the comments in this thread, I counted all of three unique users that took this article at face-value. The fact that we see this cognitive dissonance on HN should really reinforce how unimportant online security is to Silicon Valley.
The headline can't be taken at face value. "Largest" is based on the number of investing entities (including individuals), not something more objective like dollars invested. Also, the US is not making these decisions as the headline implies.
:-D
My home country does not have formal diplomatic ties with them, yet we purchased and deployed surveillance tech from this country.
We live in a truly dystopian nightmare.
Report: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/re...
Dataset: https://github.com/ac-csi/mythical-beasts
Consider the incentives. Surveillance is costly. The only way to justify increasing surveillance costs is to demonstrate increasing intervention in criminal activity. If traditional crime is reduced, new crimes need to be introduced.
Once all the enemies of the state have been eliminated, it becomes mandatory to introduce new enemies of the state so they, too, can be rounded up. Eventually there will be no one left to come for and the surveillance technology will go unmonitored.
One might be tempted towards the conclusion that dystopian surveillance doesn't materially impact crime rates and that if we want to solve the latter, we need a different solution than the former.
No comments yet
Whether there's any overlap between them and enemies of the people will heavily depend on the latter's ability to steer towards good governance. The track record for the past few decades hasn't been great.