House votes to continue NSA spying on citizens

[Sir Moody]

You think that's impossible? Tell that to Google.

Google is only dealing with pages + social media - no emails, no instant messaging and no data transfers

And it doesn't even try to look at the "dark" net.

Add to this Google isn't "Live" - if you put a page up now it takes several days to appear in Google (actually better now than it used to be because the Google spider crawls sites more often now)

The shear volume of data acquired in a minute would take even the fastest machines a few hours to index and sort - this created a massive "lag" in the data being acquired and when it can be consumed.

It is the legal framework and oversight we should be railing against here not the actual data acquisition.

[Fisherking]

Google is only dealing with pages + social media - no emails, no instant messaging and no data transfers

And it doesn't even try to look at the "dark" net.

Add to this Google isn't "Live" - if you put a page up now it takes several days to appear in Google (actually better now than it used to be because the Google spider crawls sites more often now)

The shear volume of data acquired in a minute would take even the fastest machines a few hours to index and sort - this created a massive "lag" in the data being acquired and when it can be consumed.

It is the legal framework and oversight we should be railing against here not the actual data acquisition.

What? What is Google Mail, or Gmail? Google Glass: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Glass

Google Earth, pay services give you real time pictures too.

Some of the developments are pretty depressing. Some recent Apple patens for example. Sensing vibrations of their device to detect your mode of travel, switching on microphone and camera to determine your surroundings. Also remote access for key holders, not owners of devices, to turn off or on cell phones and their various components, you know, cameras and microphones, or access your data remotely. They said it was for venues like movies but said it had law enforcement applications too.

You know, like not being able to photograph or film cops, or for government, turn off all phones in a geographic area.

University of Washington has figured out how to read gps locations for phones without batteries in them just by using background RF and electromagnetic energies.

Remotely accessing home WIFI or Smart Meters, for that matter can allow someone to determine where in a home you are and how many people are there and to an extent what they are doing.

I don’t know what others think but having electronic devices with abilities I don’t want them to have, even though we have to pay for them, without being able to disable these functions is just wrong. There is no opt out for any of them, from home computers to RFID chips.

Which reminds me of a Google-Motorola Division paten for RFID vitamins. Your stomach acid works as a battery with them.

[Fisherking]

Also this from the court: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...-surveillance/

[HopAlongBunny]

Gee whiz guys
Mistakes happen:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americ...357335966.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...97K14Y20130822

Canada has a similar problem with oversight:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/stor...canadians.html
Actually, I would go so far as to speculate all members of the "Five Eyes" engage in overreach and shoddy oversight. Seems to be the nature of the beast.

[Xiahou]

I guess this could also go under the topic about the government forcing you to provide services....

Last month, Levison reportedly received an order -- probably a National Security Letter -- to allow the NSA to eavesdrop on everyone's e-mail accounts on Lavabit. Rather than "become complicit in crimes against the American people," he turned the service off. Note that we don't know for sure that he received a NSL -- that's the order authorized by the Patriot Act that doesn't require a judge's signature and prohibits the recipient from talking about it -- or what it covered, but Levison has said that he had complied with requests for individual e-mail access in the past, but this was very different.

So far, we just have an extreme moral act in the face of government pressure. It's what happened next that is the most chilling. The government threatened him with arrest, arguing that shutting down this e-mail service was a violation of the order.

There it is. If you run a business, and the FBI or NSA want to turn it into a mass surveillance tool, they believe they can do so, solely on their own initiative. They can force you to modify your system. They can do it all in secret and then force your business to keep that secret. Once they do that, you no longer control that part of your business. You can't shut it down. You can't terminate part of your service. In a very real sense, it is not your business anymore. It is an arm of the vast U.S. surveillance apparatus, and if your interest conflicts with theirs then they win. Your business has been commandeered.

[Fisherking]

Yes, I saw the article but looked for other sources and couldn’t find much at the time.

It is shameful, abusive, and someone would have to explain in great depth how they think it is remotely constitutional.

But it would seem that all of out government agencies, from federal to local are taking an equally heavy hand in dealing with people who do not wish to comply or surrender their rights.

http://elkodaily.com/news/state-and-...9bb2963f4.html

This may already be in the Police Abuse thread but to me it all ties together. Government vs. Citizens.

[Xiahou]

NYT via Snowden confirms what we already suspected.... N.S.A. Foils Much Internet Encryption

The N.S.A. hacked into target computers to snare messages before they were encrypted. In some cases, companies say they were coerced by the government into handing over their master encryption keys or building in a back door. And the agency used its influence as the world’s most experienced code maker to covertly introduce weaknesses into the encryption standards followed by hardware and software developers around the world.

Some of the agency’s most intensive efforts have focused on the encryption in universal use in the United States, including Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL; virtual private networks, or VPNs; and the protection used on fourth-generation, or 4G, smartphones. Many Americans, often without realizing it, rely on such protection every time they send an e-mail, buy something online, consult with colleagues via their company’s computer network, or use a phone or a tablet on a 4G network.

Simultaneously, the N.S.A. has been deliberately weakening the international encryption standards adopted by developers. One goal in the agency’s 2013 budget request was to “influence policies, standards and specifications for commercial public key technologies,” the most common encryption method.

The very organizations that the NSA set up to help companies design robust encryption have actually been used to do the opposite- introduce weakness. It's doubly upsetting to know not only can the NSA decrypt pretty much everything, but they do so by introducing security flaws that others could also exploit.