NSA Secretly Collecting Phone Records Of All U.S. Verizon Calls

[Xiahou]

Have a Verizon phone? Talk to someone who has one? If so, the NSA likely knows who you are, who you were talking to, where you were when you did it and some other interesting tidbits (http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/05/report-nsa-secretly-collecting-phone-records-of-all-verizon-calls/). Pretty much the only thing they aren't doing is recording your conversation.

I'd love to hear their justification for this. As TechCrunch points out, thanks to the IRS scandal, formerly tinfoil hat theories are no longer out of bounds....

Late last year, I wrote about a few actual harms that citizens should be worried about from these types of big-data spying programs. Blackmailing citizens critical of the government seemed like a distant hypothetical, until we learned that the IRS was auditing Tea Party groups and journalists were being wiretapped. Nefarious actors inside the government like to abuse national security programs for political ends, and that should make us all (even more) suspect of government spying.

[Greyblades]

And even after this your ruling party is still the saner choice.

America scares me.

[Husar]

America #1, better get used to this if you don't want to lose to China. Everyone knows Chinese spies use Verizon.

Just like many people here know that privacy is not as far as US companies are concerned. The only surprise is that this surprises you after giving up all the privacy due to fear of terrorism.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

All cell calls are, by definition, broadcast. Anything beamed can be recorded.

The NSA has the most powerful computers and de-encryption algorithms available.

In short, given enough time to brute force it, they can read any message.

What do they read? Why? Under what circumstances or oversight?


Always the question boils down to "qui custodiat costodians?"

[Papewaio]

Can you get NSA to get your correct bills then? To help fix the network and to keep Telcos honest about download speeds.

That would get something practical out of this.

I do wonder what the big data crunching could get out of this.
=][=

So has the concept of privacy and warrants gone out the door? Shouldn't the telco track call usage and then the states officer apply for a warrant to see what you've done?

How secure is NSAs data? What happens if some of this leaks? What happens when polticians or their followers deside to use it for political gain?

There is far worse things then terrorism, a police state is one of them.

[Papewaio]

We talk about total war, Arab Spring, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, WW I & II, 911, Bali and Boston Bombings, pedophile priests and the babe thread.

Something is going to trigger some sort of algorithm. If not, then they ain't doing their job right.

[The Stranger]

And Fragony is ofcourse a wanted man all across the globe. He apparantly likes to shoot chambermaids with crossbows or m4's, or so ive heard :smg: :hair2: :hide:

[Xiahou]

And it keeps getting better (http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html):

The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track one target or trace a whole network of associates, according to a top-secret document obtained by The Washington Post.Boom. That was the 4th amendment imploding.

So who were the 9 companies?

Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple
Google surprised me... sorta. But then I realized they've been rolling over for other regimes around the world- so why not for the US? Google makes Android, Apples makes the iPhone. The NSA also collects your calling records. Seems the NSA could keep pretty good tabs on someone if they wanted to...

I'm particularly miffed that Dropbox was listed as "coming soon". I guess I better encrypt anything that I wouldn't want publicly available.... If the government is collecting it, then they're storing it. If they're storing it, it's only a matter of time before some incompetent/malicious bureaucrat leaks it.

Once again, the tinfoil hatters seem a little less crazy....

edit:Phew. The program isn't targeted at Americans. Fear not they have safeguards in place to protect us....
Analysts who use the system from a Web portal at Fort Meade key in “selectors,” or search terms, that are designed to produce at least 51 percent confidence in a target’s “foreignness.” That is not a very stringent test. Training materials obtained by the Post instruct new analysts to submit accidentally collected U.S. content for a quarterly report, “but it’s nothing to worry about.”So their standard is you have to be about as sure as tossing a coin that the data you're gathering is foreign, not domestic. And if you collect data on Americans "it's nothing to worry about". :wall:

[Papewaio]

51% is a very low standard. It meets some sort of by law "You must have thought it was foreign".

It's right up there with:
Hunter "The wild animal was charging me and I feared for my safety"
Wildlife officer "Sir, that's a squirrel."

[HopAlongBunny]

You can't even make conspiracy theories about the NSA, because... it is all true! :clown:

Slate gives a good summary: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/frame_game/2013/06/stop_the_nsa_surveillance_hysteria_the_government_s_scrutiny_of_verizon.html

[drone]

Regarding the Verizon bit, this has been going on for years, probably with all major carriers. Nice and legal according to the PATRIOT act (legal and constitutional are not the same thing). They are only allowed 90 days of collection per request, so they just submit a new request every 3 months and get the FISA rubberstamp. They aren't allowed content, but they can probably trace who called who, when, for how long, and from where, since at least 2006. Didn't stop the Boston attack though, so I would hardly call this effective. 4th amendment doesn't really apply, as the data they are taking isn't your data, it Verizon's collected for billing purposes. Now, if corporations really were people, Verizon could challenge this easily if they cared. ~:rolleyes:

When it comes to social media, it's important to remember that none of that belongs to you. You are using their service, their bandwidth, their drive space, they can pretty much do what they want with what you post. You are their product, not their customer. Read the terms of service. If you have stuff on facebook you don't want the government to know about, you shouldn't be putting out there in the first place.

[Papewaio]

I'm sure the parties think about the damage the NSA could do to them.

If Manning can do as much damage as he is claimed to have done. Imagine the spooks spook of NSA.

All your politicians calls to their mistress belong to us - Anonymous NSA lobbyist.

[Husar]

As a foreigner, this foreigners thing already makes me feel better about the whole thing and the US in general. :rolleyes:

[ICantSpellDawg]

Every amendment in our Constitution is under attack. We are being occupied by a government that has no respect for the rule of law, yet demands increasing observance of increasingly more onerous laws from its citizens. Americans had a revolution for less and created something great. We need to punish these people at the ballot box. Lifelong Republicans support the police state? Vote them out. Lifelong Democrats? Vote them out. Party means nothing if the person is a traitor.

I plan on voting against My State Senator, House Rep, even though they are Republicans. I also plan to campaign against them for anyone else who promises better

I want heavier duty arms in the hands of citizens. The government has to have a plausible fear of overthrow, otherwise it acts with impunity. This is a danger. If the government had minimal laws to obey and didn't punish citizens for minor harmless activity, privacy wouldn't be as big of an issue. Until this is no longer a government that ruins peoples lives over smoking harmless plants, privacy is still important.

[Papewaio]

A good rule of thumb is vote against the incumbent.

Unless you really know them, understand their voting record and agree with it. Vote against them.

Entrenched pollies get addicted to the trough.

[TinCow]

*As for the whole foreigners thing... Pretty flimsy indeed. 51%? That's not enough to hold up to scientific or legal scrutiny at all, so why are they allowed to arbitrarily say that such a figure is good enough?

Ironically, that's precisely the standard by which the VA legal process decides whether or not to grant or deny claims. 51% in favor, you win. 51% against, you lose. 50% even (almost never happens), you win. This standard itself was created by a Federal court so, yes, it could hold up to legal scrutiny.

[Xiahou]

Here's what is probably the money shot from the leaked slide show presentation:

https://imageshack.us/a/img855/3774/29381852.jpg

That's the non-comprehensive list of the data the PRISM program is gathering. Taken piecemeal, it shouldn't come as a total shock to anyone that all of this info is not truly private. However, a single government agency aggregating all of that data (combined with your telephone and credit card records), indexing it and searching thru it should be unsettling to anyone.

[Papewaio]

That is a permanent warrant less search.

I thought the USA Military was oath bound to fight all enemies of the Constitution both foreign and domestic... surely warrant less searches are breaking some sort of Constitutional right... yes NSA ya can read my posts... but you are also nodding your head in agreement to the logic... :flowers: with your mind don't it.

[Greyblades]

Every amendment in our Constitution is under attack. We are being occupied by a government that has no respect for the rule of law, yet demands increasing observance of increasingly more onerous laws from its citizens. Americans had a revolution for less and created something great. We need to punish these people at the ballot box. Lifelong Republicans support the police state? Vote them out. Lifelong Democrats? Vote them out. Party means nothing if the person is a traitor.

I plan on voting against My State Senator, House Rep, even though they are Republicans. I also plan to campaign against them for anyone else who promises better

I want heavier duty arms in the hands of citizens. The government has to have a plausible fear of overthrow, otherwise it acts with impunity. This is a danger. If the government had minimal laws to obey and didn't punish citizens for minor harmless activity, privacy wouldn't be as big of an issue. Until this is no longer a government that ruins peoples lives over smoking harmless plants, privacy is still important.

Where were you 6+ years ago.

[Lemur]

Where were you 6+ years ago.
The fact that this is an ongoing problem (spanning far more than a single administration, cf. Carnivore (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_(software)), NarusInsight (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NarusInsight#NarusInsight), etc.) does not obviate the fact that it's a problem.

Even if all the NSA has been collecting for the past decade is metadata (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/phone-call-metadata-information-authorities), it's still irritating and of questionable constitutionality.

Tu quoque (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque) is not a response, or even a coherent argument. And just because some of our Republican friends would have been okay with this level of invasive intel if it were performed by their guy doesn't make it okay, or their current objections meaningless.

And this is a bigger problem than a single agency gathering phone metadata. It's an inevitable result of the GWoT mindset (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Terror), which we need to change in a big way.

[TinCow]

Ok, it was one thing when Uncle Sam was the one monitoring what porn I watched, but now apparently the Queen is doing so as well:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/newspaper-british-government-has-access-to-internet-giants-data-via-us-spy-agency/2013/06/07/33217d60-cf7e-11e2-8573-3baeea6a2647_story.html


Britain’s Guardian newspaper says that the U.K. government has been secretly gathering communications data from American Internet giants through the medium of the U.S. National Security Agency.
The paper says that it has seen documents showing how the British eavesdropping agency GCHQ has had access to America’s “Prism” system since at least June 2010.
It says the program has generated 197 intelligence reports in the past year.

That's just rude. Will they try and convict me for taking a peek at those Kate pics?

[Greyblades]

Nah, they'd have to arrest half the western hemisphere for that.

Tu quoque is not a response, or even a coherent argument. And just because some of our Republican friends would have been okay with this level of invasive intel if it were performed by their guy doesn't make it okay, or their current objections meaningless.
Its not supposed to be an argument, I agree that stuff needs to be done (though, arming the populus is so stupid, I cant even... Ugh), I just cant miss an opportunity to call them out on it.

[Xiahou]

Nah, they'd have to arrest half the western hemisphere for that.

Its not supposed to be an argument, I agree that stuff needs to be done (though, arming the populus is so stupid, I cant even... Ugh), I just cant miss an opportunity to call them out on it.I think you'd be surprised. I ranged from cool towards to opposed to this sort of thing from the beginning. And many of the more hawkish on the right still support these programs even when it's Obama doing it.

The amount of Republicans flip flopping on this is probably equivalent the the amount of Democrats who were frothing at the mouth over the Patriot Act under Bush that are now dismissive of people's concerns now that Obama is at the helm.

[Lemur]

The president is answering questions (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/06/a-letter-to-verizon-customers.html) about this PRISM service! Yay!

-------------------------

Dear Verizon Customers,

Yesterday it came to light that the National Security Agency has been collecting millions of phone records from you each and every day. Since that news was released, many of you have called the White House with questions and concerns about this new program. To save my time and yours, here are answers to three of the F.A.Q.s (Frequently Asked Questions) we’ve been hearing from you:

1. Will I be charged extra for this service?

I’m happy to say that the answer is no. While the harvesting and surveillance of your domestic phone calls were not a part of your original Verizon service contract, the National Security Agency is providing this service entirely free of charge.

2. If I add a phone to my account, will those calls also be monitored?

Once again, the answer is good news. If you want to add a child or any other family member to your Verizon account, their phone calls—whom they called, when, and the duration of the call—will all be monitored by the United States government, at no additional cost.

3. Can the National Security Agency help me understand my Verizon bill?

Unfortunately, no. The National Security Agency has tried, but failed, to understand Verizon’s bills. Please call Verizon customer service and follow the series of electronic prompts.

I hope I’ve helped clear up some of the confusion about this exciting new program. But if you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to call the White House. Joe Biden is standing by.

God bless America,

President Obama

[a completely inoffensive name]

I have no sympathy for the American people for letting it get to this point. Keep watching garbage tv and blaming the other side. If people actually mobilize and do something, great. If not, we have only ourselves to blame (collectively).

[Xiahou]

I have no sympathy for the American people for letting it get to this point. Keep watching garbage tv and blaming the other side. If people actually mobilize and do something, great. If not, we have only ourselves to blame (collectively).So... are you including yourself in your lack of sympathy? Or have you mobilized/done something?

[a completely inoffensive name]

So... are you including yourself in your lack of sympathy? Or have you mobilized/done something?

Partly yes. But I have tried to do more.

1. I vote (which is more than a lot of people my age can say.)
2. I make the effort to talk about politics with friends because for some reason politics and religion seem to be complete taboos to talk about in a lot of social situations.
3. Back when I attended UCSC I tried to get people registered to vote and I printed out information for people living in the same dorms as me (they didn't read it).

But no one listens. Across the age spectrum. People my age either don't care or only want to make asses of themselves for a day in order to get some ass from the cute activist chicks. People older than me disregard anything I would have to say because obviously they know better. The only people who bother to talk either want the next words out of my mouth to be, "That damn Obama." or "Those damn Republicans." or they quickly learn I am not "one of them". I really don't care at this point.

To be honest, I became really disillusioned from my student gov. back at UCSC. Corruption, patting each other on the back and frivolous spending and these were the "idealists" who wanted to make the country a better place. I have kept track of it since I left and it actually has gotten a lot better, the right people are now in office which gives me hope.

But ultimately the problems I encountered from personal experience were propagated by internal cronyism, not the result of powerful external organizations meddling with their millions of dollars. With such self isolating people, is it any wonder that no one has any clue as to what the big picture looks like? When the American public realizes how much it has lost they will quickly realize that the only method of stopping and preventing such outcomes (a healthy public discourse) will be all but impossible under totalitarian surveillance.

[Montmorency]

So... are you including yourself in your lack of sympathy?

Perhaps he takes the sensible position of this policy being, at worst, no net detriment to himself or his highest supervenient state-unit.

:grin:

Edit: Crud.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Actively change society? Good luck with that. I may vote for third parties, but I'll never vote for a Democrat or a Republican again. An honest look at the political system tells a simple story: Our government can do whatever it wants. Its not evil, but it is powerful and it does own you. We may still have active and functional democratic institutions on a state and local level, but national politics is theater only one step above reality TV. I don't know who pulls the strings, and I don't care. What matters is that our government is not about ideals, or love of country, or looking out for the people, or anything like that. Its about sustaining the bureaucracy. The world's Empires come and go in cycles, in my opinion, and its not too hard to see where we're at. The future isn't all that dark, but its also not that democratic.

In short, I see no reason to be all that participatory in national politics. When people start to look at Congress like a dangerous liability instead of just an embarrassment is when things will really get wierd.

I have said this before in other threads, but in order for people to stop becoming so apathetic to the system, they have to stop expecting things to be done on the Federal level. At the end of the day, average joe in California is not going to help LGBT people in Georgia by fighting for gay marriage in Congress. It just won't happen. Things happen both a lot quicker and a lot easier when people decide to make their stand on more local levels. Which is why gay marriage now actually has momentum behind it.

[Fragony]

Interview with whistleblower http://www.geenstijl.nl/mt/archieven/2013/06/interview_klokkenluider_nsa_me.html#comments

[Xiahou]

Rand Paul said he wants to sue to stop the PRISM program in a class-action lawsuit (http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/304353-paul-weighs-supreme-court-challenge-to-nsa-surveillance-programs).

I realize he's probably positioning himself for a presidential bid, but so what? If he's going to try to do something to reign in our government, I'm for it.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I'm willing to stand in the streets if people are willing to actually go the to the ballot box afterwards.

[HopAlongBunny]

It is a little disingenuous of politicians to get up in arms about a policy they were aware of, approved of and participated in to suddenly be outraged. Where was their outrage at the briefings? the vote on the Patriot Act?
There ought to be clowns...

[Xiahou]

It is a little disingenuous of politicians to get up in arms about a policy they were aware of, approved of and participated in to suddenly be outraged. Where was their outrage at the briefings? the vote on the Patriot Act?
There ought to be clowns...
In fairness, I believe Paul has been consistently against the Patriot Act...

[Lemur]

A really good essay (http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/06/why-we-spy) that cuts to the core of why this is happening and how hard it will be to change:

Terrorism is basically a political communications strategy. The chief threat it poses is not to the lives of American citizens but to the direction of American policy and the electoral prospects of American politicians. A major strike in America by a jihadist terrorist group in 2012 would have done little damage to America, but it could have posed a serious problem for Barack Obama's re-election campaign. For the president the war on terror is what the Vietnam War was to Lyndon Johnson: a vast, tragic distraction in which he must be seen to be winning, lest the domestic agenda he really cares about (health-care, financial reform, climate-change mitigation, immigration reform, gun control, inequality) be derailed. It's no surprise that he has given the surveillance state whatever it says it needs to prevent a major terrorist attack. [...]

[W]e're not likely to get calmer about terrorism, because too many people are trying to keep us frantic. At least three parties stand to gain from exaggerating, rather than minimising, our reactions to terrorist strikes. The first is the media, which wins viewership by whipping up anxiety over terrorist strikes. The second is politicians seeking partisan advantage, since panic over foreign-backed terrorism tends to increase voter turnout. (In Israel terrorism shifts voter support to the right. In America throughout the early 2000s, anxiety over terrorism increased support for president George W. Bush, but by 2008 an attack would have increased support for Mr Obama. Similarly, Spanish voters punished the conservative government for the Madrid train bombings in 2004 because 80% of the public had opposed the government's participation in the invasion of Iraq. Either way, when terrorists attack, one party or the other is going to make political hay out of it.)

Finally, the third party trying to exacerbate our responses to terrorist attacks are the terrorists themselves, who have generally proven quite effective at choosing targets that provoke widespread media coverage. As hard as we may try to restrain our national responses to terrorism, there will be some pretty smart terrorists out there figuring out how to do things that get our attention again. Even the rather inept Tsarnaev brothers, who only managed to kill three people, did an excellent job of picking a target that dominated the news cycle. Had that attack occurred in mid-2012, it would have completely derailed the presidential campaign. Democrats would no doubt have tried fruitlessly to tamp down public reaction, while Republicans would have allied with the media in hyping it relentlessly.

Politicians do not want to have to deal with these sorts of surprises. They have very strong incentives to go along with intelligence organisations that say they need ever-more-powerful surveillance programmes to see what the terrorists are up to. For Mr Obama, this is a no-win situation. The only thing worse than missing a terrorist attack because an NSA surveillance programme had been blocked would be having the NSA leak that the terrorist attack was missed because you blocked their surveillance programme. Now, having given the NSA what it said it needed to prevent any nasty surprises, he finds himself dealing with a different nasty surprise: the leak of the NSA programmes themselves.

[Shaka_Khan]

We talk about ..............................

Something is going to trigger some sort of algorithm. If not, then they ain't doing their job right.
For those words, we should've used Shogun, Halal Spring, Persia, Babylonia, Khorasan, White Whale I, White Whale II, shortly after the start of the academic year in the Northern Hemisphere, barley, Bastan Bambings, silent robes and the bird thread respectively.

[Papewaio]

These programs and their predecessors have existed for some time. Carnivore for instance has been publically acknowledged since 1997. This situation is not the cause of a single President nor is it just the responsibility of the President for this situation. There are three parts to government, I'm pretty sure there is an intelligence committee within Congress who have a higher day to day responsibility with this. There is also a Supreme Court who have from an external laymans point of view failed in protecting Consitutional rights. Justice needs to be seen and done at a decent pace.

At least as a foreigner I know my emails will get read by the powers that be in government. I suppose that makes me better connected then most US citizens without a lobby group. Us dirty foreigners, us sub humans who cannot be trusted. Just remember that every diplomatic relationship is reciprocated. So China and Russia now are allowed to read every US email, VoIP call, screenshot, personal SMS etc because to them these are foreigners and they can't be trusted.

I do wonder if the trigger point is the email or other correspondence having gone overseas. Given that most routing is best effort and can go quite a few alternative routs it is possible for an email to a person sitting in the same city to have the email go around the country or even the world.

So all it would take is an enterprising agency to setup a POP outside the US. Then if they want to read a particular persons communications they do the following:
Wrap the traffic in a WAN protocol that will always go to the outside POP.
That point of presence being out of country makes the traffic to be communicating with a foreign entity therefore it can all be read by the letter of the law.

You might be able to figure out any weird routing by either its consistency or latency. Unfortunately you'd probably need the very metadata the NSA is using.

[Beskar]

I had an opportunity to work for GCHQ a couple years back, which dealt with analysing Internet content. However, the placement was in Portsmouth at a military installation and it wasn't that well paid (entry level), so the finances of the situation deterred me.

I could have probably worked on this data if I took that job.

[ICantSpellDawg]

A really good essay (http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/06/why-we-spy) that cuts to the core of why this is happening and how hard it will be to change:


Good article. Nuclear terrorism is the only type that we should be overly concerned with.
The point of the article is spot on and the civil rights impact of the surveillance culture that exists and is growing vastly outweighs the benefits of the programs themselves. The war on terror is now a greater threat to the lives and well-being of the American populace than terrorism ever was.

Start hammering every Federal legislator you can in any way you can; mail, phone, email, facebook, sky-writing. For them to call Snowden an oath-breaking traitor and ignore their own broken oath to defend the Constitution is worthy of contempt. Send them messages using every medium.

[Strike For The South]

Something is strange.

This guy doesn't scream "high level intelligence"

Don't get me wrong, The USA is a hollowed shell of the republic we claim to be. However, this guy doesn't sit right with me.

[Fragony]

At least I get to say Obama knows me at parties. And a big fat LOL at the Dutch leftist church who knew, for a fact, that there was change they could believe in. So sure but wrong as usual, and naturally united in silence when, once again, wrong. When will leftist 'intellectuals' understand that they simply don't get it? No there is no arab spring, no Obama isn't.... him

I am hesitating between Dronebama and oBBama, which is better

[Greyblades]

What are you wittering on about this time?

[Fragony]

What are you wittering on about this time?

Well the leftist church being Obamamaniacs and wrong as usual, it's right up there ^

[Papewaio]

Except this kind of spying has been happening before 9/11.

All that's happened is they've updated the scope of apps with the upgrade in aps available.

If you use TCP or UDP or SFTP they are listening. It's a continous tap on your communications which somehow has been allowed even when wire taps aren't. Why? because the protocols that make networking so easy to implement make it so easy for the holders to the keys of the infrastructure so easy to tap.

It's like an arguement for piracy in reverse. The authorities find it so easy to implement that it just too difficult to go through due process in comparison with how technically easy it is. So rather then keep the same liberties and safe guards, the authorities change the laws to make continous taps legal.

Most laws should be made to think about what they would do in he hands of a despot.

The threshold is no longer mass mudering terror cells. The threshold is journalists examining the government for corruption. If the watchers and whistle blowers are being tapped wih such an easy shrug of the shoulders who next?

[Lemur]

No there is no arab spring, no Obama isn't.... him

Well the leftist church being Obamamaniacs and wrong as usual, it's right up there ^
Not really sure how you can look at the facts, the history, the forces at work (esp. large-scale private data mining (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2058205,00.html)), and conclude that this is all about Obama. There are three branches of US government, all of which are equally culpable in the building of the surveillance state. Indiscriminate electronic eavesdropping dates back to at least 1997, when Carnivore was leaked. None of this lets the current admin off the hook, or excuses their behavior, but to read this with any thoughtfulness at all and conclude, "DAMN YOU OBAMA!" strikes me as radical reductionism.

If Obama vanished tomorrow, abducted by aliens, never to be seen again, this problem would not go away. In fact, if Obama were to decide today that he wants to change all of this and dismantle the broad eavesdropping programs, I can assure you he would not be able to accomplish his goal. No more than he has been able to close Guantanamo.

So why don't you take that 32-ounce Big Gulp of Obama Derangement Syndrome, put it down for a minute, and actually read up on this subject? And consider how we got to this point, and what steps might begin to move us away from Total Information Awareness (http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2013/06/07/u-s-never-really-ended-creepy-total-information-awareness-program/)?

[Fragony]

Not really sure how you can look at the facts, the history, the forces at work (esp. large-scale private data mining (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2058205,00.html)), and conclude that this is all about Obama. There are three branches of US government, all of which are equally culpable in the building of the surveillance state. Indiscriminate electronic eavesdropping dates back to at least 1997, when Carnivore was leaked. None of this lets the current admin off the hook, or excuses their behavior, but to read this with any thoughtfulness at all and conclude, "DAMN YOU OBAMA!" strikes me as radical reductionism.

If Obama vanished tomorrow, abducted by aliens, never to be seen again, this problem would not go away. In fact, if Obama were to decide today that he wants to change all of this and dismantle the broad eavesdropping programs, I can assure you he would not be able to accomplish his goal. No more than he has been able to close Guantanamo.

So why don't you take that 32-ounce Big Gulp of Obama Derangement Syndrome, put it down for a minute, and actually read up on this subject? And consider how we got to this point, and what steps might begin to move us away from Total Information Awareness (http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2013/06/07/u-s-never-really-ended-creepy-total-information-awareness-program/)?

Sorry I wasn't talking about American politics, I was just mocking the Dutch self-proclaimed intellectuals who appeared to be on better xtc than I ever had when Obama was elected. Not just in the Netherlands, take the nobleprice for peace he got in Norway. Scuzi for finding it a bit amusing and laughing them in the face, beliebers with a phd lol

[Lemur]

An interesting counter (http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/06/11/what-is-prism-exactly-ctd/) re big data mining. Pretty sure I don't agree, but it's one of the less-stupid counter-arguments I've read.

I am hoping people aren’t making the same mistake about PRISM that I once made about Gmail. When Gmail first came out, I was working in the California legislature, and a co-worker and I thought it was a terrible idea for Google to, in effect, “read” everyone’s mail and provide ads targeted to them. Our boss introduced a bill to prohibit Google from doing this.

I was assigned to defend the bill at a tech conference, and let’s say I had some misconceptions firmly and uniformly corrected.

No one at Google reads (or could read) anyone’s email. That would be (a) impossible, given the volume of email, and (b) a pretty stupid thing for a company to try to do. Google has pretty sophisticated algorithms that can scan millions of texts for words and phrases that advertisers believe would be relevant to a particular commercial purpose. Ads matching those terms are posted next to the email, and no human (except the recipient) has ever seen anything.
I’m not sure if any actual humans ever see any Facebook postings, but my guess is that the first pass of PRISM works like Gmail. Someone has developed algorithms for potentially dangerous words and phrases, and the millions or billions of Facebook posts are scanned for those. The algorithm’s bar would have to be fairly high, since the number of posts would be astronomical, I would imagine.

Posts that make it over the bar (still not having been viewed by any human being) would then be collected into some output that IS more closely examined, and this may be the stage where humans might be involved. Again, I don’t have any special knowledge here, but I honestly can’t imagine how this could work any other way. The only things that are ever actually seen by human eyes are those that have some markers of potential serious threats.

I can see how some people might still find little comfort in that, and I’m sure there would have to be many false positives in a system like this. But I think it’s far more consistent with your intuition about why this isn’t such a horrible invasion of privacy – an intuition that it seems a lot of us share.

That difference between technological review of data and human eyes viewing (and possibly abusing) communication is an important distinction. If PRISM is more like Gmail than like J. Edgar Hoover’s private FBI files, then this has less to do with privacy than some people might fear.

[Lemur]

True story: Two members of my family have been in the US intelligence business. One of them told me in that all overseas calls were monitored with word-recognition software. (This was 1990, so pretty Sci Fi stuff at the time.)

I lived in Madrid in the early 1990s, back when calling home was a big and expensive thing. (Yes, phone calls used to cost a lot of money, it was an old timey problem.)

Every time I called the states I would begin my conversations with a few random words, such as "thermonuclear device" and "dead drop," just for funsies. Over half of my (expensive) calls were cut off without warning.

I did this purely to amuse myself.

-edit-

Also, very depressing poll shows why large-scale surveillance is gonna be very hard to contain: Most of our fellow citizens are totally cool with it (http://www.businessinsider.com/america-to-nsa-read-my-emails-please-2013-6). Gah.

[Tellos Athenaios]

An interesting counter (http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/06/11/what-is-prism-exactly-ctd/) re big data mining. Pretty sure I don't agree, but it's one of the less-stupid counter-arguments I've read.

He's moved on from one specific set of mistakes to another. Although I find his assertion that no human ever sees any facebook posts positively plausible by comparison.

[Papewaio]

BTW the reason some foreigners are very worried is because they are part of the five eyes alliance. Which means their countries share intelligence.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement

That's UK, US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

I wonder where all the Stazi went when the Berlin Wall fell...

[Husar]

An interesting counter (http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/06/11/what-is-prism-exactly-ctd/) re big data mining. Pretty sure I don't agree, but it's one of the less-stupid counter-arguments I've read.

There's nothing new in that, but he leaves out that humans can simply change the keywords the machines are looking for and get results on different people that way. Just add "marihuana" or something similar to the words it's looking for and mail the results to local police departments on a daily basis. It's just a little extension to bring down crime rates and increase everyone's safety after all.

And where can I vote against this if I don't want it?

[Sasaki Kojiro]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=5yB3n9fu-rM#t=318s

Watch up to 6:04 and then click here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=-wFfDzxeHlw#t=29s)

[Strike For The South]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=5yB3n9fu-rM#t=318s

Watch up to 6:04 and then click here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=-wFfDzxeHlw#t=29s)

See this is the problem with this whole story, I can't tell whether your being pithy or serious.

I hope its pith, the internet has already been flooded with that.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

See this is the problem with this whole story, I can't tell whether your being pithy or serious.

I hope its pith, the internet has already been flooded with that.

If you think he's some kind of conspiracy nut then obviously you haven't seen enough movies. I recommend this one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT3kqKRs4mo), it's basically a documentary.

[Strike For The South]

KEEP HIM ON A LITTLE LONGER

[Beskar]

If you think he's some kind of conspiracy nut then obviously you haven't seen enough movies. I recommend this one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT3kqKRs4mo), it's basically a documentary.

I remember watching that and when this first broke out, I was thinking about this movie. Though, I guess knowing the Government was 'spying' wasn't groundbreaking. I would be more surprised if they didn't at all.

[ICantSpellDawg]

Also, very depressing poll shows why large-scale surveillance is gonna be very hard to contain: Most of our fellow citizens are totally cool with it (http://www.businessinsider.com/america-to-nsa-read-my-emails-please-2013-6). Gah.

The older generations who have been sheep to the slaughter will eventually die off, hopefully before ruining the entire earth for the rest of humanity. Anyone who has ever lost a job due to marijuana/drug consumption or has had someone tell them not to post photos of lawful activity on their private Facebook pages will recognize how petty government will be if we let it and ruinous to you if you make an error. I see the world changing before our eyes. 8 months ago, the idea that 100k people would pile up and go to battle with the AK party in Istanbul would not have sounded like a thing. Then it happened and it is going to spread and get worse and reasonable people from different religious, political, and cultural backgrounds are going to support it all over the world.

[Xiahou]

An interesting counter (http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/06/11/what-is-prism-exactly-ctd/) re big data mining. Pretty sure I don't agree, but it's one of the less-stupid counter-arguments I've read.I think it's plenty stupid. Obviously, there aren't millions of NSA agents reading everyone's mundane emails- they search them for keywords.... duh.

As long as their only keying on terrorism-type keywords, it really isn't a big deal. So, how do we know what keywords they're searching on?? We have no way of knowing. They have access to everything, and the government's response is basically "you can trust us not to abuse it". If anyone is gullible enough to accept that, I have some bridges to sell you.

[HopAlongBunny]

Apparently the EU is not amused. At least they are asking questions which make some basic sense.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22872884

[ICantSpellDawg]

Since it is so important for people to know what the majority of knuckle dragging buffoons who can't figure out how to use a credit card thing about intricate issues, here are 2 polls (http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/2013/0612/Actually-Americans-aren-t-shrugging-over-NSA-surveillance-video?nav=87-frontpage-entryNineItem) that dispute the pew findings and now show a majority of people are against this nonsense. Or it could show that the wind has blown and people have run to grab a beer in between the football game or Kim Kardashian show long enough to even know what day it is.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Since it is so important for people to know what the majority of knuckle dragging buffoons who can't figure out how to use a credit card thing about intricate issues, here are 2 polls (http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/2013/0612/Actually-Americans-aren-t-shrugging-over-NSA-surveillance-video?nav=87-frontpage-entryNineItem) that dispute the pew findings and now show a majority of people are against this nonsense. Or it could show that the wind has blown and people have run to grab a beer in between the football game or Kim Kardashian show long enough to even know what day it is.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=3gXOV_XWJck#t=41s

[Lemur]

More depressing polling (http://mischiefsoffaction.blogspot.com/2013/06/are-partisans-hypocrites.html). Approval of Total Information Awareness (or whatever you want to call it) up five points since 2006. So ... yeah. Good one, fellow citizens.

https://i.imgur.com/KkAOZgW.png

[Papewaio]

Collecting meta data for infrequent events.

Predictability of events increases with their frequency. For instance contact centres can predict how many phone calls come in to their various queues. The ones that have the highest volume have the highest accuracy.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Most people I talk to just don't care about the surveillance. The American public has failed, gonna have to wait 20 years before the next generation has the opportunity to do something.

[Greyblades]

Most people I talk to just don't care about the surveillance. The American public has failed, gonna have to wait 20 years before the next generation has the opportunity to do something.

Anyone give a reason?

[a completely inoffensive name]

Anyone give a reason?

1. I have nothing to hide.

2. No one is ever going to be looking at me specifically among 300 million people. AKA, anything I do will just "get lost" in the data.

[Greyblades]

Hard to argue with. The government doesnt have the time or the interest to go big brother on absolutely everyone.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Hard to argue with. The government doesnt have the time or the interest to go big brother on absolutely everyone.

Sure they do. You don't need a physical human to actually monitor everyone. As long as you have the data and organize it in a smart way, all it takes is a handful of programmers to write something that will allow the government to recall anything they want about you and use it to control you.

And besides that, even though there isn't a human behind every security camera, are you going to act otherwise?

[ICantSpellDawg]

Sure they do. You don't need a physical human to actually monitor everyone. As long as you have the data and organize it in a smart way, all it takes is a handful of programmers to write something that will allow the government to recall anything they want about you and use it to control you.

And besides that, even though there isn't a human behind every security camera, are you going to act otherwise?

My mom said "they can't possibly monitor everything". I then asked her how a computer works and she blacked out.

[Papewaio]

Most stock trades are done by bots not humans.

After the Boston bombing occurred a rumour went out and stated that the US President had been wounded in a terrorist attack. The stock market tanked when the bots reacted to that input. Human stock brockers did not on the whole over react and it was only the bots pushing the market down based on a rumour.

[Ironside]

Most stock trades are done by bots not humans.

After the Boston bombing occurred a rumour went out and stated that the US President had been wounded in a terrorist attack. The stock market tanked when the bots reacted to that input. Human stock brockers did not on the whole over react and it was only the bots pushing the market down based on a rumour.

Those are quite scary actually. You'll get random tanking of stocks for example. They can drop with 5-10% for a few seconds and then go back to normal. Or it can happen to the whole market (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Flash_Crash)

But yeah the information will probably be bot used and later on AI used. Sounds comfortable and perfectly safe doesn't it?

Interesting how polarised the opinions in the US are. When our guy does it, it's ok, when the opponent uses it, it's an outrage.

[Greyblades]

Sure they do. You don't need a physical human to actually monitor everyone. As long as you have the data and organize it in a smart way, all it takes is a handful of programmers to write something that will allow the government to recall anything they want about you and use it to control you.The government doesnt have the time or resources to have a person moniter each of the 300,000,000 people and a computer program will have to have quite specific conditions to have a person brought to the government's attention otherwise they would be overloaded with trillions of useless alerts. A despotic government will prioritize people with power and influence and only be alerted of blatant subversive behaviour, they will ignore the rest unless they do something to attract attention, and considering the majority of people think they wont be doing anything to attract said attention, the bystander effect kicks in "it's not my problem".

To qualify: I dont agree that a survelance state or anything should be allowed to continue, I'm just trying to understand how people can be fine with such happening.


And besides that, even though there isn't a human behind every security camera, are you going to act otherwise?We are nowhere near having computers sophisticated enough to effectively replace an attentive security guard at a camera. Unless you've attracted attention or are committing a crime so obvious even a computer can tell, a computerised security camera's footage will never be seen by anyone in the government.

'Pretty easy to assume that will happen to the majority of american's footage.

[Beskar]

We are nowhere near having computers sophisticated enough to effectively replace an attentive security guard at a camera. Unless you've attracted attention or are committing a crime so obvious even a computer can tell, a computerised security camera's footage will never be seen by anyone in the government.

We do have face-recognition software. So they could use computer to trace down some one specific movements. However, it is a case of resources, so they probably won't want to trace every nobody, just somebodies which just comes on their radar.

[Husar]

I take back everything I said, the great leader has spoken (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/06/13/vladimir-putin-defends-the-u-s-on-spying-programs-drones-and-occupy-wall-street/) and he says it's all fine.

He's a guy I trust deeply and if he says it's normal and civilized then I shall not protest it anymore.

[Montmorency]

Interesting how polarised the opinions in the US are. When our guy does it, it's ok, when the opponent uses it, it's an outrage.

Yes, while it's interesting that support among Repubs dropped by a third, and rose among Democrats by something like three-quarters, the rise of support (beyond any MOE) among Independents is more so.

[Strike For The South]

Remember kids the government is a bumbling mess of incompetence.

Unless they do something you don't like in which case they are highly capable jackbooted thugs.

[Husar]

Remember kids the government is a bumbling mess of incompetence.

Unless they do something you don't like in which case they are highly capable jackbooted thugs.

That's probably because they put more energy into controlling us from behind closed doors than they put into actually doing something useful. The whole lawmaking thing is just a distraction from what they're actually busy doing behind closed doors.


Also China raises a few good points:
http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/788734.shtml#.Ubz-tj75nAQ


Snowden's exposure has upgraded our understanding of cyberspace, especially cyber attacks from the US, which is probably a much sharper weapon than its traditional military force. This weapon has demonstrated the US' hypocrisy and arrogance. Besides Snowden's disclosure, it is still unknown what else the US, a country which once condemned China for cyber attacks, has done to China.

[a completely inoffensive name]

The government doesnt have the time or resources to have a person moniter each of the 300,000,000 people
Add a few more zeros and ask yourself how does China manages to do it.



To qualify: I dont agree that a survelance state or anything should be allowed to continue, I'm just trying to understand how people can be fine with such happening.
I perfectly understand, that's what I try to do 90% of the time when I converse with people about these kind of things. But one thing I have picked up on in my 21 years on this planet is that some times the one liners that people come up with to justify what they think can run circles around you simply because they no connection resembling anything logical but somehow is a verbal manifestation of pure apathy.


We are nowhere near having computers sophisticated enough to effectively replace an attentive security guard at a camera. Unless you've attracted attention or are committing a crime so obvious even a computer can tell, a computerised security camera's footage will never be seen by anyone in the government.
Heat flux, heart rate, other metabolic symptoms can all be built into a holistic program meant to send red flags.

Sci fi? Last I heard, the new Kinect coming out has the ability to tell you your heart rate while you wave your arms in your living room like an idiot.

[Greyblades]

Add a few more zeros and ask yourself how does China manages to do it.That's a good question because despite thier protests I highly doubt they do. A survelance state can keep track of you with cameras and email snooping, but to have someone watching all of it is physically impossible.

How something like this would work would be to have everything recorded and stored until the government has a reason to take an interest in a person. Then the person's data is pulled up and examined by people. However, with this method, most people's data will remain unwatched as most people will not attract government interest, and it's easy to accept the data being recorded with the understanding that if you dont do anything bad the data wont be viewed and used against you.


I perfectly understand, that's what I try to do 90% of the time when I converse with people about these kind of things. But one thing I have picked up on in my 21 years on this planet is that some times the one liners that people come up with to justify what they think can run circles around you simply because they no connection resembling anything logical but somehow is a verbal manifestation of pure apathy.

Yup. Disillusionment's a female dog.


Heat flux, heart rate, other metabolic symptoms can all be built into a holistic program meant to send red flags.

I doubt that a red flag system would work very well if they are using Heat flux, heart rate and other metabolic symptoms considering we dont really have a unique "I'm acting subversive against the government" behavior pattern, the amount of false alarms of a computerised system will probably be too much to be worth it.

Personally, I think the main threat of a 1984 scenario isnt the constant surveilance, it's the culture of informants where everyone is watching and reporting everyone else for disloyalty, where your neigbours are doing the government's job for it. Though, I think america is not in much danger of that developing any time this century.

I still dont want people having the power to listen in on my damn phone calls!


Sci fi? Last I heard, the new Kinect coming out has the ability to tell you your heart rate while you wave your arms in your living room like an idiot. I wonder if it actually tells you your heart rate or is it some sort of equation that the machine just fills in with the rate of wild flailing observed?

[Xiahou]

Senators skip classified briefing on NSA snooping to catch flights home (http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/305765-senators-skip-classified-briefing-on-nsa-snooping-to-catch-flights-home)

A recent briefing by senior intelligence officials on surveillance programs failed to attract even half of the Senate, showing the lack of enthusiasm in Congress for learning about classified security programs.
We can always count on our elected officials to keep their priorities straight, huh?

[Ironside]

Senators skip classified briefing on NSA snooping to catch flights home (http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/305765-senators-skip-classified-briefing-on-nsa-snooping-to-catch-flights-home)

We can always count on our elected officials to keep their priorities straight, huh?

None pointed out that they are the priority 1 target perhaps?

[Husar]

That's a good question because despite thier protests I highly doubt they do. A survelance state can keep track of you with cameras and email snooping, but to have someone watching all of it is physically impossible.

How something like this would work would be to have everything recorded and stored until the government has a reason to take an interest in a person. Then the person's data is pulled up and examined by people. However, with this method, most people's data will remain unwatched as most people will not attract government interest, and it's easy to accept the data being recorded with the understanding that if you dont do anything bad the data wont be viewed and used against you.

Technology is capable of a lot more than that. The computers can filter the data, sort the data, search for keywords, patterns and so on. Usually this doesn't just involve technology but also e.g. psychological research and results from research regarding human behavior. Companies already collect customer data because they can run powerful analyses on it. Basically the system will tell them who to have a closer look at and who not. If they want to expand on it, I suggest searching for small-time criminals and having the central system automatically distribute the info about crime and person to the local police departments based on where the suspect lives. That might require it becoming a bit more open but now that it's out there and noone cares, it's a logical next step to make America safer. And then include more cameras, you really need more camera feeds for the system. And open letters and packages sent via normal mail, currently that's a huge black box in criminal investigation, think of how many criminals get away with sending a letter instead of an e-mail!

[Papewaio]

People do realize that your voice is a finger print. That commerical systems can use your voice as a biometric key, that during a call the stress levels of a person can be measured and that a call can be diverted to a senior rep or tagged for QA.

Most of the top voice recording firms are Israeli.

Not only can your voice be fingerprinted. But voice to text allows tagging of keywords and phrases too.

That's just what a typical commerical contact centre can do.

"your call may be recorded for training and quality improvent"

[Papewaio]

Banks have already started replacing PIN with voice identification.

So not only will the like of NSA be able to figure out which numbers get called. If they have access to the recordings they would be able to get a transcript that can be sorted by machines, checked for stress levels in the voice and figure out who the people on either end are.

[Fisherking]

Do you think that is new?

In 1993 Pablo Escobar was identified from a 17 second phone call and a team was dispatched to liquidate him, which they did. This was at a time when NSA was only allowed to do such things outside the US.

I am sure they have progressed far beyond what is commercially available today.

Remember a week or so ago an NBC news team was talking about being able to track you in your home using WIFI

[Papewaio]

No, it's not new. What has increased is the speed and accuracy to do it.

For instance you can speak a four digit code over a phone. The commercial systems will ID you from the voice metrics with that phrase. So if an off the shelf system can do that for your banking, imagine what else they can do.

[a completely inoffensive name]

That's a good question because despite thier protests I highly doubt they do. A survelance state can keep track of you with cameras and email snooping, but to have someone watching all of it is physically impossible.

How something like this would work would be to have everything recorded and stored until the government has a reason to take an interest in a person. Then the person's data is pulled up and examined by people. However, with this method, most people's data will remain unwatched as most people will not attract government interest, and it's easy to accept the data being recorded with the understanding that if you dont do anything bad the data wont be viewed and used against you.

Ultimately, what is the difference if the people behave the same under either one?

[Greyblades]

I fear I fail to see how that is relevant to how people are able to rationalize accepting constant survelance.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I fear I fail to see how that is relevant to how people are able to rationalize accepting constant survelance.

Their rationalization is less of convincing themselves that there is no threat in the first place and more convincing themselves that this isn't the dystopia they should be afraid of.

But if either case renders them unto the same condition, their rationalizations are all moot to begin with.

[Montmorency]

Their rationalization is less of convincing themselves that there is no threat in the first place and more convincing themselves that this isn't the dystopia they should be afraid of.

Privacy is overrated. Srsly.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Privacy is overrated. Srsly.

And I am not being super cereal right now?

[Beskar]

Privacy is overrated. Srsly.

Peoples perception of what privacy is in their mind and reality are divorced. People think they have privacy in scenarios and situations they clearly do not have any and that is without any NSA or anti-privacy involvement.

For example, a female neighbour topless sunbathing in the back-garden might think she has privacy, but all the neighbours don't even have to actively look through their back window to end up catching a glimpse of what she has to offer. Whilst some people like myself have manners and respect their right to privacy, I had someone who had come around once and saw, they kept gawking out the window at the said female and I had to actively remove them away from the window and scold them. Then there were the protests of "I am not doing anything wrong, I am only at your window, not my fault she has her knockers out! She deserves to have them looked at".

Whilst it was very inconsiderate of said person, they had a point, the neighbour did not have the privacy they thought they had.

[Greyblades]

Coming from a brit, that's quite a statement. Even with the NSA doing their thing, and even assuming they're doing far more things, you're still more likely to be watched in London I'm sure.

It was less a statement of disagreement but an inability to understand what he was saying.

[Xiahou]

The NSA Guidelines (http://news.yahoo.com/nsa-guidelines-spying-looser-youve-told-200106610.html) for intelligence gathering have been leaked. Basically, it's completely up to their discretion....
On July 28, 2009, 189 days after Barack Obama became president, Attorney General Eric Holder (himself only six months into office) presented the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) with a list of ways in which the NSA and FBI would try and assure that the data it collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act came only from non-Americans. The delineation, released today by The Guardian, includes several ways in which collection of data from Americans is both likely — and allowed.

Here's a fun bit:
Retain and make use of "inadvertently acquired" domestic communications if they contain usable intelligence, information on criminal activity, threat of harm to people or property, are encrypted, or are believed to contain any information relevant to cybersecurity;As the article points out, encrypting your data is on the same level of criminal activity.

Also, that excerpt seems awfully Orwellian. If it's inadvertently collected, they obviously still troll thru it to determine if it meets their criteria. So they collect and read your data to determine if they're able to collect and read your data??? And encrypted data is fair game? Most people's Facebook traffic uses SSL- meaning it's encrypted. Virtually all online shopping and banking is encrypted- so they get to keep that too. Thanks Eric Holder.

[HopAlongBunny]

If you didn't have anything to hide you wouldn't need to encrypt your data! :inquisitive:

[Fisherking]

If you didn't have anything to hide you wouldn't need to encrypt your data! :inquisitive:

I take it you are making a joke.

The logic of, if you have nothing to hide, it is ok is. dumb. Do you think it is ok to spy on everyone to decide if they are doing anything wrong?

They can track everything you do on your computer in real time. With smart meters and smart appliances they can track what you eat, when you sleep. With grocery cards and debit cards they can track your brand preferences. They can see into your home using your own WIFI. They can track you with your cell phone. I would assume they can use the electronics in your car in the same way. They have complete access to your banking records and most everything else you do in life.

In other words they can track you until you do something wrong, or what may become wrong in the future.

How long before you start getting traffic fines in the mail for exceeding the speed limit or not coming to a complete stop at an intersection? Where is privacy? Where are 4th Amendment Rights? Forget the 5th, they have the data.

And they do this with secret laws and secret courts!

So tell me all about the Land of Liberty…

[Papewaio]

Well the car will drive itself, the people will have their bread and their games, who cares about privacy.

I am now fully behind this data gathering exercise. As long as it is reciprical and we see all the day for every elected official and judge. They shouldn't mind as they are in public office and they should have nothing to hide.

[Husar]

Peoples perception of what privacy is in their mind and reality are divorced. People think they have privacy in scenarios and situations they clearly do not have any and that is without any NSA or anti-privacy involvement.

For example, a female neighbour topless sunbathing in the back-garden might think she has privacy, but all the neighbours don't even have to actively look through their back window to end up catching a glimpse of what she has to offer. Whilst some people like myself have manners and respect their right to privacy, I had someone who had come around once and saw, they kept gawking out the window at the said female and I had to actively remove them away from the window and scold them. Then there were the protests of "I am not doing anything wrong, I am only at your window, not my fault she has her knockers out! She deserves to have them looked at".

Whilst it was very inconsiderate of said person, they had a point, the neighbour did not have the privacy they thought they had.

Should've offered her some ice cream.


It's the kind of logic you see thrown out of the court in every other Law & Order episode. Shows you how far the reality is from the ideal.

In Navy CIS and the new Hawaii Five-O the ideal is to hack into top secret government files and every camera around town to do 360° surveillance for glorious America and noone ever even raises any questions about privacy, they only joke about it being technically illegal. What to make of that? Oh wait, that's just the reality side I guess. ~D

[HopAlongBunny]

I find it ironic that "encrypting" your data; which most ppl would agree is a good thing to do; opens you to deeper scrutiny from the security arm.
I love the lose<=>lose situation you get painted into.

Further to Husar's observation; it makes sense when establishing new norms to habituate the subject(s) to the new behaviour through prime-time tele :)

[Husar]

I find it ironic that "encrypting" your data; which most ppl would agree is a good thing to do; opens you to deeper scrutiny from the security arm.
I love the lose<=>lose situation you get painted into.
If you encrypt it well enough they will either fail to decrypt it at all or it will use insane amount of processing power to decrypt. As such if more people were to start using encryption, it would be almost impossible to monitor. However, it is also in the hands of software developers to encrypt chat systems and so on. I could start using the most secure messenger tomorrow and have zero friends participate because they wouldn't know how to install and configure it or simply dislike the smileys. WhatsApp was completely unsecured for a long time but everyone used it anyway. Goes back to what I said in the other thread about the internet really being new territory for humanity.


Further to Husar's observation; it makes sense when establishing new norms to habituate the subject(s) to the new behaviour through prime-time tele :)
Yes, I noticed that while watching them. On one hand they have entertainment value, on the other the nonchalant use of complete surveillance is quite astounding at times. Also note how they all used to have iPhones and iPads and now they suddenly all use MS Surface tablets. I just hope Bond and his villains stay true to Sony.

It's not entirely new though, quite a few TV cops have broken the law and got away with it because they got the bad guy in the end. And let's not forget that most superheroes are vigilantes who often represent judge, jury and executive in one person, something that goes fundamentally against some of the most basic principles of a modern democracy. Not to forget mister Jack "torture" Bauer and his very busy days...

[ICantSpellDawg]

Everyone should encrypt with only file info that reads "sent by US citizen".

[Husar]

Yes, just click "Encrypt" before you click "Send", it's easy.
I do it before every sentence I send in Skype calls.

[Xiahou]

If you encrypt it well enough they will either fail to decrypt it at all or it will use insane amount of processing power to decrypt. As such if more people were to start using encryption, it would be almost impossible to monitor. However, it is also in the hands of software developers to encrypt chat systems and so on. I could start using the most secure messenger tomorrow and have zero friends participate because they wouldn't know how to install and configure it or simply dislike the smileys. WhatsApp was completely unsecured for a long time but everyone used it anyway. Goes back to what I said in the other thread about the internet really being new territory for humanity.I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that many proprietary encryption standards have backdoors builtin- keys to which are probably in the NSA's hands.

[ICantSpellDawg]

Government is the enemy and ours is full of traitors. Hold these people in contempt. Snowden, Manning, and Assange are heroes and the canaries in the Coal mine. Individuals have a moral obligation to demolish secret government everywhere that they find it.

If your company has a secret? Expose it. Your school, police department, post office? Expose them and let it be known. Massive organizations are constricting around our necks and we don't have much longer to resist them.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Government is the enemy and ours is full of traitors. Hold these people in contempt. Snowden, Manning, and Assange are heroes and the canaries in the Coal mine. Individuals have a moral obligation to demolish secret government everywhere that they find it.

If your company has a secret? Expose it. Your school, police department, post office? Expose them and let it be known. Massive organizations are constricting around our necks and we don't have much longer to resist them.

So what are the secrets of where you work Dawg?

[ICantSpellDawg]

So what are the secrets of where you work Dawg?

We have none. We don't work for our customers and don't actually appreciate their business or loyalty as we obviously have no loyalty to them. Try a mutual company, they technically work for their customers who are both the shareholders and customers at the same time, rather than cattle to be milked and then slaughtered. liability is ranged approx 10 points, so that when people make an offer you can ask for 10 more percentage points. The harder you might argue and more irritating you are the more you will get, just don't get discouraged when you hear "no", just keep calling back. When you have a car accident you are entitled to money for loss of use (in this state at least) even if you don't rent a car. File small claims suit any time anybody says "comparative negligence" or low balls your rental or repairs - in my state it costs 35 bucks to file suit without an attorney and you don't have to do anything - presto, the a-holes who hit you get slapped with a summons and the insurance company has to hire an attorney for a couple thousand - hey, maybe they should have just paid you that extra $500 bucks. Some companies pay nuisance money for injuries even if it is unlikely that you would collect just to go away - we are not one of them. Switch auto insurance every 5 years but don't move your homeowners - in our state at least

[Greyblades]

We have none. We don't work for our customers and don't actually appreciate their business or loyalty as we obviously have no loyalty to them, liability is ranged 10 points, so that when people make an offer you can ask for 10 more percentage points. The harder you might argue and more irritating you are the more you will get, just don't get discouraged when you hear "no", just keep calling back. When you have a car accident you are entitled to money for loss of use (in this state at least) even if you don't rent a car. File small claims suit any time anybody says "comparative negligence" or low balls your rental or repairs - in my state it costs 35 bucks to file suit without an attorney and you don't have to do anything - presto, the a-holes who hit you get slapped with a summons. Some companies pay nuisance money for injuries even if it is unlikely that you would collect just to go away - we are not one of them. Switch auto insurance every 5 years but don't move your homeowners - in our state at least

I knew not ignoring you would yield results. May I ask which state this is, for future reference should I move to the USA?

[ICantSpellDawg]

Please, if anyone else has any tips from another industry, let 'em rip

[Fragony]

Et tu, uk, et tu http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-cables-secret-world-communications-nsa

[Proletariat]

Nice, Frags. So when the NSA insists it doesn't watch US citizens it's likely true since they have the GCHQ doing it for them.

[Greyblades]

Good to know our decline into American level governance is ahead of schedule. First the conversion of the last credible left wing party into tory-lite, then the surging popularity of the ultra X5 right wing party, now the fear of constant surveillance is proved true. All we need now is our very own fox news and our devolution is complete. Just give us our new passports and call us the 51st state

[Papewaio]

UK is ready dominated by NEWS corp. it just has localized Branding.

[Fisherking]

Obama’s speech to put aside our fears of NSA spying was anything but reassuring.

For any not paying close attention, he revealed that besides ignoring the Constitution that Congress knows about it and secret courts with judges oversee it, after the fact.

It is not one political party, it is not one branch of the government, but all three, and the only people who didn’t know was the public at large.

To make it worse, all these private companies giving up information have high priced lawyers and none of them filed a case on behalf of their clients, even though the requirements clearly violate the bill of rights.

And yet, few people seem very upset about it. Do you really think they are keeping you safer this way? That the data the collect will never be misused? Do you think any of your rights matter to these people?

Get a clue! If they are not stopped now, then they never will be.

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/06/do-you-have-any-idea-how-widespread-government-spying-really-is/

It is not a matter of it being just one country either. Now everyone seems to think it is ok or they just share data while others gather it from their citizens.

Do you think it is good that the US or others share data on you so your country doesn’t need to?

Is this not an international governmental conspiracy to spy the populous? But such things don’t exist, right?

[Fisherking]

And what parts of that are you ok with?

I was not happy when Bush did it and I am not good with it now. Are you?

[Fisherking]

Too many people just react to what they get from the media. If TV news give it a soft soap then the sheep don’t see any point in being upset.

It is either that or they don’t report on how upset people are.

[ICantSpellDawg]

That was my point, I was agreeing with you. Everyone acts as though this is some new scandal, when it is really a continuation of something his predecessor did. Not only that, but a vast expansion. It ought to be sparking a thorough discussion in the mainstream about how neither party can be taken for their word, and how the system as a whole is clearly broken. Investigative journalism should be having a field day. Everyone should be really upset, and both parties should be imploding.

But nope. People are just gonna be chill about this. Wherever the line that denoted losing your democratic values was, we passed it long ago. Bummer. :shrug:

I'm not chill about this. I'm going to do my best to neutralize Pete King at the ballot box. I will do whatever I can to hurt his support in Conservative communities until he is deposed for a flaming progressive if necessary. If you fail to uphold or actively work to undermine the Constitution, you are a traitor. Pete King is a traitor.

[Lemur]

If this poll is accurate, then it's the first good news in a long time (on this subject).

Big Shift On Civil Liberties vs. Counter-Terrorism (http://www.quinnipiac.edu/institutes-and-centers/polling-institute/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=1919)

In a massive shift in attitudes, voters say 45 - 40 percent the government's anti-terrorism efforts go too far restricting civil liberties, a reversal from a January 14, 2010, survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University when voters said 63 - 25 percent that such activities didn't go far enough to adequately protect the country. [...]

There is a gender gap on counter-terrorism efforts as men say 54 - 34 percent they have gone too far and women say 47 - 36 percent they have not gone far enough. There is little difference among Democrats and Republicans who are about evenly divided. Independent voters say 49 - 36 percent that counter-terrorism measures have gone too far.

Some of the largest growth in those concerned about the threat to civil liberties is among men and Republicans, groups historically more likely to be supportive of governmental anti- terrorism efforts. [...]

"The change in public attitudes has been extraordinary, almost across the board and obviously not just related to the revelation of the phone-scanning program, given all that has transpired since 2010," said Brown. "Yet it would be naive to see these numbers as anything but evidence of a rethinking by the public about the tradeoffs between security and freedom."

While voters support the phone-scanning program 51 - 45 percent and say 54 - 40 percent that it "is necessary to keep Americans safe," they also say 53 - 44 percent that the program "is too much intrusion into Americans' personal privacy."

"Americans' views on anti-terrorism efforts are complicated," said Brown. "They see the threat from terrorism as real and worth defending against, but they have a sense that their privacy is being invaded and they are not happy about it at all."

[rvg]

While voters support the phone-scanning program 51 - 45 percent and say 54 - 40 percent that it "is necessary to keep Americans safe," they also say 53 - 44 percent that the program "is too much intrusion into Americans' personal privacy.

So, we think it's too intrusive but want it anyway. Alrighty then.

[Lemur]

So, we think it's too intrusive but want it anyway. Alrighty then.
Nobody ever accused the American voter of being consistent, logical, or principled.

I'm just glad to see public opinion shifting in aggregate toward a more balanced position.

[Fisherking]

I researched several polls on the subject. The reason for much of the contradictory opinions are the poll questions them selves.

There was a piece on NBC news web page earlier this week or late last week comparing two polls. One was a CNN poll, the other I don’t recall but they attributed to the way the questions were phrased also.

I would Google it for you but I know you can find it and don’t have to go through all the German language threads to find it.