Thanks to Snowden (who keeps on giving, even 5 years more or less to the day after his escape to Hong Kong), we can assume that Japan too conducts dragnet surveillance. It is the state of current affairs that it hardly raises more than a yawn.<p>Still an interesting article, since it reveals that the Japanese take their secrecy really, really seriously, and so we may not assume much of what they are up to, really.<p>The problem with secret government agencies is otherwise generally that they are notoriously difficult to reign in. They are governed by law, but are likely to develop their own agendas, and since lawmakers are kept in the dark they can end up meddling in policy, using all the means at their disposal.<p>Our ultimate line of defense against such, and only hope are the brave whistleblowers. Edward Snowden needs to be pardoned.
>In 2012, the country’s police investigators were repeatedly thwarted by a hacker known as the “Demon Killer,” who posted a series of death threats online. The hacker used Tor to successfully evade detection for seven months, which was a major source of embarrassment for Japanese police — and likely fueled demand for new surveillance capabilities.<p>yes.. it was a bad bad hacker who fueled demand for more money thrown at the defense industry and not someone acting on purpose.
The Intercept is the most impressive free press initiative of the last 50 years. We thought that the Internet would democratize the free flow of information, that we could be free of a handful media conglomerates and what we got was Facebook.<p>Snowden whistle blower greatest consequence was the initiative to create The Intercept.
Clearly they can keep things secret unlike NSA and co. Whole article is random guesses, names of building and not much of anything else, that is kind of impressive. In fact the only real stuff is from a power point shared with NSA..
I have basically always assumed that all governments are conducting the maximum amount of espionage on their citizens and adversaries as they are able to within the constraints of their technology and budget.
I'll just leave this here...<p><a href="https://theintercept.com/feed/?lang=en" rel="nofollow">https://theintercept.com/feed/?lang=en</a>