Talk:National Security Agency

Relevance

I don't see how an article for a DoD federal agency is within the scope of the wiki, not deserving it's own page anyway. Government agency abusing their power is a civil issue, not a consumer one. Beanie Bo (talk) 20:32, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

(@User:Beanie Bo)I think the NSA definitely has issues that relate to consumer security and privacy, such as features that are put into consumer devices (e.g., clipper chip, backdoors in encrypted communications, phone communication aggregation, etc.) Even if most consumers aren't directly interacting with it, they may be affected by its policies and actions in ways that they do not realize. The NSA data slurping affects everyday people outside the US as well.

For the purposes of the wiki I think the question is not what issues this org may have outside of the wiki purpose (e.g., whether NSA abuses power), but what issues/relation does it have to the wiki purpose (e.g., does what it does affect consumers and new consumer things).

The divide between citizens/subjects of a government and consumers is at best a fuzzy one. The wiki has things like military right to repair, which I think is entirely appropriate, but not a classical consumer thing. Just as the "new consumer" view deals with issues that weren't part of old consumer. I think the new view should also encompass an updated conception of what a consumer is. About which, more later elsewhere.

My inclination would be to keep it for now. Can always delete it later. (I don't see that it does any harm.) Drakeula (talk) 21:17, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

Citizens and consumers is not a blurry line. We just happen to be victims of both private companies and our very own government. That's the only thing they have in common. You can best believe that every federal government agency and contractor in the US has purchased illegally obtained consumer data at some point.

This article is scope creep. Beanie Bo (talk) 14:58, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

honestly I'm ok with the page as it is but would be very wary of adding anything further, although it would need to be shown that the purchase of privately collected data was *lucrative enough to encourage the growth of the industry*.

@Drakeula do you know of any properly documented incidents when the NSA has actively interfered with consumer products? If, like the UK govt, they've been openly asking for backdoors into encrypted things and so on, I think that has a direct enough effect on the products consumers buy.

A bit like how the UK's online safety act requires companies to operate in a way that is an absolute nightmare for the data safety and privacy of UK consumers when they interact with a range of services (and we're happy to have a page on that), I think the NSA can have a page if and when they do things directly harmful to the conusmer.

I wouldn't count their direct intelligence collection in this, as that's just what they do, and to my knowledge they're not selling any of that. Whether they should be doing that or not is a civil rights issue. If they'd stepped in a few years back and said 'no, you're not allowed to use https://!, That would have had a major effect on consumers and would have been a consumer rights issue.

Right now, I think the page is at the appropriate level of detail. Any addition to this page would probably be overkill unless it directly made reference to consumer things. Keith (talk) 15:24, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

@Keith What about the clipper chip, all the publicity, furor about that? The development of PGP, etc. in response. That seems to me an obvious case where the NSA actively worked on/had impact on consumer goods. Developed by the NSA, using algorithms that they developed and kept secret. That would have put backdoor for law enforcement (and others) in telecom gear for consumers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip gives a brief summary, but there was a lot of news and advocacy (EFF, CPSR, ACLU, Privacy rights clearinghouse.)

Maybe you missed my mention of it above? If you don't think it qualifies for inclusion, I would like to understand why?

I haven't kept up with this area more recently, but tools and programs revealed by Snowden showed things like NSA malware programs (e.g. TURBINE), various products that infected and modified consumer devices (e.g., cell phones), using web bugs for tracking.

I don't understand this:

"I wouldn't count their direct intelligence collection in this, as that's just what they do, and to my knowledge they're not selling any of that."

Is selling information the only thing of concern here? I am sure they "share" it with other parties as part of their business operation. Whether they get payment, or quid pro quo, or trade. (I would be surprised if they don't sell some of it, that is just how people work.) Why is that important to purposes of the wiki.

How is this different than a big data company, like facebook? Collecting/creating profiles of people is "just what they do." Should we not talk about advertisers using web bugs to track people, just as we shouldn't talk about the NSA using the same technique to track people? Seems like a distinction without a difference.

(I am not especially interested in this area, so on a practical level, I don't plan to markedly expand coverage of the NSA. I have been struggling to understand the editorial stance here.) I am just not following what the important differences are. Drakeula (talk) 19:23, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

I think I did miss that, and yes, the clipper chip sounds like something which could be sensible to include.

When I mentioned that, I was thinking more about their tapping into undersea cables and the like. That stuff seems to fall pretty cleanly into the civil/human rights sphere, and is not really relevant to consumer rights. Personally I'm skeptical about assuming that they would sell data they collect in that way (for a government agency like that, as well as the buyers of the data, the risk/reward just seems way out of whack) unless evidence was presented. I suppose the main distinction here is whether their action is affecting a seller-consumer relationship in any way. The clipper chip works because it is a Govt program which directly affects the consumer-company relationship and consumer purchases in a negative way, by forcing a compromised and poorly designed 'encryption' device into consumer products. Keith (talk) 08:35, 18 October 2025 (UTC)