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NSA Email Surveillance Pervasive and Ongoing
dkleinsc writes "The NY Times has a piece about work being done by Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ) and others to curb NSA efforts to read email and Internet traffic. Here's an excerpt: 'Since April, when it was disclosed that the intercepts of some private communications of Americans went beyond legal limits in late 2008 and early 2009, several Congressional committees have been investigating. Those inquiries have led to concerns in Congress about the agency's ability to collect and read domestic e-mail messages of Americans on a widespread basis, officials said. Supporting that conclusion is the account of a former NSA analyst who, in a series of interviews, described being trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans' e-mail messages without court warrants. Two intelligence officials confirmed that the program was still in operation.'"
Time to bring back the NSA line eater?
--
bomb assassinate washington north korea iraq spy poison
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
the NSA might read my comments.
Please don't dominate the rap, Jack, if you got nothin' new to say.
You got the government you deserve, just like your founders promised. The Executive won't stop this, you know that now - the most "transformational" figure you could have possibly elected got in, and he's down with all of the new executive powers. The Congress won't stop this, because you NEGLECTED TO FIRE MOST OF THEM for ignoring such things for years.
Start firing congressmen and senators in significant numbers, and things will change. Otherwise, quit the damn whining.
Anyone else remember Carnivore? What makes you think that with the general consensus being "Warrants are for pussies" in the federal community that the NSA would act differently?
You don't have to wait for government action to keep the NSA from reading you personal email. Get your friends and family a Freemail x.509 cert from Thawte (no cost, a Verisign cert costs $30/yr) and use S/MIME.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Just start your e-mails with "I found your address on that site..." and the NSA spam filters will drop it.
Seriously... I can't even read ALL my mail. And if I tried, I would probably be infected with 10 Trojans.
Reforge the Fourth International! Workers to power!
Choose from NSA http://www.eff.org/issues/nsa-spying, privacy http://www.eff.org/issues/privacy and a whole load of other stuff http://www.eff.org/about.
Here.
Four NSA domestic surveillance programs.
Best Slashdot Co
"Never Say Anything" can do anything they like, because there's no effective oversight. They, and the CIA, are secret organizations, you don't even know who works for them. You can't have oversight of a secret organization.
Congress can bluster all the want, but all that really going to happen in the end is the TLA in question will say. "We promise not to get caught again"
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
That's what she said.
Yeah, whenever the Government is investigating the Government nothing will happen.
Oh wait, someone is knocking at the door...
My Dearest NSA,
Allow me to use, for the first time in my life, a turn of a phrase that I generally find to be rather repugnant:
If you fear freedom so much, why don't you move to Iran?
This country is for people who love freedom. Who are willing to risk their lives for it. You scared, little, cowards -- shivering in your pajamas at night wetting your bed because you don't know everything I am thinking, all the time -- have no right place in this, the Founding Fathers' most extraordinary experiment.
You think you are more trustworthy than The Constitution? I do not trust you as much as the average crazy screaming panhandler on the corner, let alone as much as the average free American Citizen. You are too scared to be trusted. Scared people act unpredictably. And certainly I do not trust you as much as what is perhaps the most inspired legal document in history.
You are the threat to the American way of life. Not us. Your cowardice eats away at us, and our great society, like a disease. If you can't handle freedom, move to a master planned community with big gates, or even one of the many authoritarian regimes around the world. But don't shit all over what makes this country great just because you can't handle freedom.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
sure the NSA can probably crack PGP, but if every one used it, the NSA would not have the capacity to crack every message, forcing them to target communication, which is what they should be doing in the first place.
We've actually done a pretty good job of firing the bad congressmen. There's still work to be done, but a lot of the corrupt folks who were elected in the years following 9/11 are out.
The President is apparently not completely "down with" executive powers, since he has voluntarily given up a lot of power already. That's quite an accomplishment; don't understate it. Some people would rather see him force enormous changes immediately, but isn't that the sort of thinking that got us into trouble in the first place? Maybe a calm, thoughtful process is for the best.
I think it's pretty absurd that people are complaining about the U.S. government scanning emails.
emails are sent in the clear. If you really cared, you'd encrypt it all. Lots more people than the government have been and will be looking at your email, it's inherent in the nature of the system.
The truth is that almost nothing anyone sends via email is worthy of this furor. Again, anything that you don't want others to see you should have encrypted or sent by other means (we still have a postal system you know).
I wasn't going to throw a post into the sea of frothing anger, but after reading the other responses I realized someone has to be the voice of sanity at Slashdot, no matter how they are flamed or hated for it.
So why should you not be upset about this? What is the harm?
The harm comes from noise about things that don't matter, drowning out things that do. Complaining about government intrusion into an inherently public protocol makes it harder to notice instances of true abuse of privacy. By crying at every shadow you doom real issues to remain in obscurity.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I do not understand why major OS vendors don't make an effort to seamlessly integrate PGP into their email clients.
Big brother will always be watching what you do; the only thing you can do is vote for someone you hoped would monitor and blow the whistle on activity such as these to keep it down to a somewhat manageable discomfort.
Since the beginning of (internet) time sending an email has been like sending a postcard. Everybody along the way handling your message can read it if they so choose. You know it, they know it. If you expect privacy, then you cannot be helped. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act is not much worth here ...
I'd rather have people make sure that the NSA is not listening to my phone calls - and you know that this is happening too, at least when you have communications going beyond the borders of the US.
Do your own thing. And overdo it!
Which of our former classmates and colleagues (and/or professors) work on these kinds of systems? Thirty-something years ago I never would have imagined my peers working to undermine our freedoms by writing such code. I just don't get it. We were taught in classes such as "Computers in Society" things like ethics. This was before the year 1984, and most of us had read (or were aware of the premise of) Orwell's "1984." This would never happen, we thought.
Unfortunately this, and other data mining crap has been created and 1984 is alive and well and it can't be undone. All because some people - some programmers - thought that getting paid was better than doing what is moral and ethical in a free state. We are no longer free, ladies and gentlemen.
My user name was a mistake. Input wasn't restricted, my bad.
dirty suitcase nuke anthrax bomb jihad the great satan yellowcake plutonium ricin nerve gas flesh eating plague bring on the virgins fuck you NSA
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
...my furry yiffing, I say let them!
They're in it for money, not the greater good. Most people don't even know you can, there's a lack of demand.
Any American who complains that they can't change things ought to be totally ashamed of themselves. Despite all of my criticisms of this country, I do keep in mind that it is one of the freest and most open societies that has ever existed. The biggest problem is overcoming propaganda that tells you that you can't do anything.
And no, voting for someone doesn't count. It's just the least you can do. A real democracy is when a bunch of people from a community get together, decide what they would like done, and then elect someone from their group to go do it.
To all the centers of power, this is known as the "crisis of democracy" - when people actually start running their own country. It's their nightmare scenario, and a goal we should all be dedicated to achieving.
Remember, email is sent in cleartext, unless it's encrypted, which most of us don't actually do.
I have a bad feeling about this...
Work for 30 years. Have your wife leave you and take the kids because you work too much as a programmer. You'll suddenly stop caring so much about ethics, and the steady work/pay is enough to make you ignore it, anyway.
For those of us who don't have NYTimes accounts, remember bugmenot
> SMASH IMPERIALISM WITH WORKERS REVOLUTION!
> Workers to power!
OK, I'll bite. "Workers to power!" And then what?
It's been tried before. Didn't work out too well as I recall.
I offer these comments in the spirit of participating in a robust public discussion about a current issue of public concern: privacy before goverment secrecy. Don't blame me for being an American. Further, no insight is based on inside information, of which I have none.
NSA might be (probably is) archiving the outside of every piece of mail being processed through the United States Postal Service today. This would NOT be done by the USPS, which legitimately uses the info to route mail, then discards it normally. The data would be siphoned off and stored elsewhere in my opinion. The only place with the desire and the capacity would be the NSA. This may be legal under current law as law enforcement already can record the cover of your mail. But I'm not a lawyer. Imagine, storing two-hundred billion images a year in grayscale! Imagine if they could data mine that massive database! It could be worth billions to commercial interests nationwide. Imagine if they could kick in your door in the middle of the night because of a pattern in your received mail.
"The arbitrated result is sent back to DIOSS 1 . If the image was read successfully and a ZIP+4 delivery point identified, DIOSS 1 sends a signal to image server 8 instructing it to discard or archive the grayscale image saved for that mail piece. Information obtained from the image data, typically a header including destination information and a copy of the binary image data, is transmitted to a storage and transfer processor (STP) 4 . In the majority of cases, image data for mail pieces will be resolved and a sorting decision made at DIOSS 1 , and a POSTNET bar code label will be printed on the mail piece in DIOSS 1 in real time. The ability to archive the grayscale image may become increasingly important for forensic reasons in the event of a bio-terrorist attack. According to a further aspect of the invention, all of the sorter machines used by the USPS forward their archived image data (binary, grayscale/color, or both) to a central database which stores the image for a period of time, along with identifying information (destination address or ID number), the date and time of processing, and the identity and location of the sorting machine that handled the mail piece. This data, extremely large in volume, would be saved for a period of time before being discarded, anywhere from several days, a month, or a year or more depending on storage capacity available. Law enforcement officials working on a case wherein contaminated letters were sent through the mail could thereby determine accurately where the mail piece was processed so that decontamination can be carried out and any patterns of mailing used by the perpetrator can be analyzed.(my emphasis)
From here: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7145093.html
E Proelio Veritas.
This open source email encryption gateway can issue S/MIME certificates for free for internal and external recipients.
http://www.djigzo.com/
If the NSA is reading my e-mail, they will quickly discover that I "ne3d t0 lern to satisfy my w0man" and that my "pen!s is 2 small" and I need to buy some "v!agra for cheep!". I hate that. An invasion of my most intimate privacy.
The summary isn't clear about if the warantless bulk surveillance covers content or metadata
Warrantless examination of email headers and other non-content information (IPs, From, To, Subj, relaying hosts) is legal without a warrant, as it is analogous to examining the envelope of a letter without opening it.
Same deal for call records, which are also examined in bulk.
"Uhhh.. Most of the illegal stuff was setup by Bush appointed neo-cons who were in government before Nixon got caught being a crook."
If you think electronic surveillance of the population is the result of "Bush's Neo-Cons", or even a recent phenomena, you really need to pick up some history books. Electronic surveillance has been around since there have been electronics. The government has always the ability to listen in on phone conversations, and was given broad authority and easy access to do so fairly early, by our own court system.
And Nixon? He was an amateur compared to some of his predecessors. When FDR ordered J. Edgar Hoover to tap the phones of a cabinet member he suspected was leaking to the press, Hoover refused. When FDR said "But I'm ordering you to!", Hoover replied "No sir, I won't do it. I'll tap the other fellow's phone". FDR simply laughed and said "Mr. Hoover, I'll never tell you your business again".
Government surveillance of electronic communications didn't start in the last eight years... it started as soon as electronic communication did.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
"The President is apparently not completely "down with" executive powers, since he has voluntarily given up a lot of power already."
Name one power President Obama has "willingly given up".
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
FTA: "Since April, when it was disclosed that the intercepts of some private communications of Americans went beyond legal limits in late 2008 and early 2009, several Congressional committees have been investigating."
Doesn't that mean they broke the law? What else can operating beyond legal limits mean?
Also FTA: "In an interview, Mr. Holt disputed assertions by Justice Department and national security officials that the overcollection was inadvertent."
What does inadvertency have to do with anything?!?
"Officer, I realize I was speeding, but it was inadvertent." Uh huh.
If the agents and agency breaking the law are allowed to get off with a warning, at least give them the warning. Don't hide that they broke the law behind a wall of doublespeak.
One of the fist provision of anti-government snooping was aimed at traditional mail services. As other means of communication came into being, similar law and prohibitions were put into place, you know like no wire-tapping without a warrant? How can email be treated any differently? (Some would say it's not... it's that communications of all sorts are under attack and I would have to agree with that point)
We need to restore the sanity of a government with limits.
and get on the street and use that shoe leather.
If you want to effect true change you have to put the time and effort in. Politicians rely on APATHY. They know most people will buy whichever person is more effectively packaged and presented to them.
and don't forget the other problem, Congress sucks but my Congressman is one of the few good ones.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
wait a minute...
Hi, let me tell you about the research lunch I was at yesterday. A whole bunch of us undergrad researchers were presenting the beginnings of our research for the summer. One guy got up and told us about using cameras, microphones, and sophisticated software to monitor the behavior of old people so that danger could be detected by computer and they could stay in their own home. At the end I said, "So... Big Brother,", and he replied "Yeah". Nobody wants to create tyranny, but people find so-called "ethical" applications that become excuses for developing the mechanisms of tyranny.
Because programmer A who cares writes the data collection and mining code, and is told it's used to keep a lid on the bad guys. It is, but then Manager B says, let's start collecting internal to external stuff. Programmer C says, "Ok". Then Someone D says, "But we need to watch just these two internal bad guys, "Think of the Children!!". Then, the head of the NSA just says, "Might as well watch everything now."
"Any tool's usefulness as a tool, is proportional to it's usefulness as a weapon"
- Niven's Law
Should we stop developing Linux because it might be running the NSA's computers?
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
let alone your freedom or your life, you will be unable to change your government.
No matter HOW well armed you are.
Right to bare arms notwithstanding. Why? Because to use them you risk your life in the struggle.
...all my friends have gmail accounts. It's not easily accessible to the government (assuming google's internal traffic is not tapped)
Don't be ridiculous. Every single gmail account is fully accessible to NSA, and to any other part of the government that wants it. So is every other kind of user account provided by every ISP and every web site. All they need is a warrant, or an NSL, or just to ask nicely and pay the cost.
Reading other peoples email is not any great technical feat. It is actually very easy for the administrators of any ISP to see just about anything in their own system. And, it is just as easy for just about any kind of law enforcement to get the same level of access.
There are two things that keep most administrators from peeking: they just don't have time to waste on that nonsense; and most companies have an ethics policy that says not to peek without an actual business reason. In reality, administrators that do spend time peeking at users files end up not getting their own work done, and then get fired.
damn!
Yes, come get me NSA!
I would love to see the breakdown on costs for checking all these emails. How much did my email yesterday to my wife about my homework grade cost? I remember back when the whole tapping cell phone calls came out, when I called my mom I would randomly insert words like "terorist" "bombs" "nuclear plans" and other nonsense. I'm so dull the most dangerous thing I do is burn dinner, unless watching "Evil Dead 2" drives me insane and I become a terrorist with nuclear bomb plans! :)
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
This was before the year 1984, and most of us had read (or were aware of the premise of) Orwell's "1984." This would never happen, we thought. Unfortunately this, and other data mining crap has been created and 1984 is alive and well and it can't be undone. All because some people - some programmers - thought that getting paid was better than doing what is moral and ethical in a free state. We are no longer free, ladies and gentlemen.
There was a dispute in my school district growing up whether or not 1984 should be allowed to be taught in school. The same went for Fahrenheit 451. In the end, both books were allowed, but all teachers opted not to teach them for fear of doing something too controversial. You ask who could write code that does this sort of thing? Who isn't aware of the implications of being spied on by your government? I can tell you right now that the generation that I am a part of, and those following me (I am 23 btw) will be part of that group. So many of my peers and so many kids younger than me that I know are so willing to accept mindless consumerism and cliche generalities regarding safety and patriotism that they wouldn't even think twice about this government, our government, doing something like this. We are now being trained at a young age to accept things like this. This has been going on for years.
/End_Lament
And before anyone decides to take that anecdote to mean that my generation and those just before and just after me will be the end of the world, ask yourselves which generation is allowing those kinds of decisions to be made today.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
No, we're damned expensive.
Look, I was a bit overly optimistic 20 years ago myself. I thought the new technologies would bring a new era of freedom of expression and communication. I rejoiced over the fact that I could send email, and read and post to USENET at work, using company equipment—and my boss had no clue what was going on. I was so naive that I actually reveled in the illusion that people like me, people who understood the new technologies, had power.
The extent of my naivete has become completely clear to me in the intervening years, of course. The process of clarification probably started when I got that phone call from the BATF about a posting I'd made in rec.guns. (Yes, like most people, I was using my real name. Imagine that.) Then came the Endless Fall, and, of course, the spammers. (I was still getting spam to that same email address I'd been using in 1988 when I finally quit in 2003).
And of course the government had been busily hiring smart young programmers back before I had even heard of the internet. Remember, the government—specifically, DARPA—really did invent the Internet. (Though I doubt ALGOR ever worked for DARPA.)
I'm surprised you're surprised that your "former classmates and colleagues" would work for the government or Evil Corporations. Heck, if scientists are willing to make hydrogen bombs, what makes you think computer programmers won't write data mining programs for the NSA, if paid sufficiently big bucks?
Technology may have changed a lot over the past century, but nothing ever changes human nature. You can always depend on others, especially your classmates and colleagues, to screw you over for money.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
Guy knew his emails were being read by the NSA.
So every email he sent, started with the text:
FUCK THE NSA!
Hi, I'd like to inquire about the.....
Mr. Holt added that few lawmakers could challenge the agency's statements because so few understood the technical complexities of its surveillance operations. "The people making the policy," he said, "don't understand the technicalities." Jesus H. Fucking Christ - Not only are you boobs so incompetent that you don't read legislation you vote for, but now you can't even hire aides to tell you what the fuck this all means???!!!???? Tree of liberty, blood of tyrants, and all that jazz indeed!
This story seems to have attracted lots of people on /. that work in the intelligence community, whereas this current article about domestic surveillance attracts none. I find that interesting.
I stated this a couple of years ago: ALL electronic communication is intercepted.
Over and out.
Seditiously As Always,
Kilgore Trout
...like moveon.org?
NSA can't guarantee that they're collecting American citizens' email, even if they try.
Anyone want to propose a solution?
Thirty-something years ago I never would have imagined my peers working to undermine our freedoms by writing such code. I just don't get it.
Hi there! Allow me to introduce you to the concept of money.
Short version:
Even if PGP was foolproof, easy, and everywhere, this doesn't solve the issue of meta-data mining. If you're government is determined to invade your privacy, and you're not determined to stand up for your rights, no technical solution will save you for long.
Longer version:
From TFA and other articles, the US government is apparently tracking who-calls-who and who-emails-who. (And probably also who-goes-where-when using cell-phone location tracking.) Also it's apparent that they dragnet everyone's communications, and minimizing this tracking to only suspected terrorists and non-US persons is at best a fig leaf of privacy for the innocent.
PGP doesn't hide *who* you communicate with, or *when* (the un-encrypted meta-data as opposed to the encrypted contents). And you might think that using cash pre-paid cellphones and throw-away email accounts would give you anonymity, but analysis of who-contacts-who would break that anonymity in short order for most people.
[You can bet calls/emails to UBL's grandma are scrutinized, even if they come PGP'd from anon-e-mouse@hotmail.com. Knowing who else anon-e-mouse talks to, and what IP address his email came from might be helpful unless he's really really careful. Consider lessons from the AOL's "anonymous" search data fiasco.]
This kind of dossier on every citizen used to be considered the very example of un-American government, all too easily used to enable tyranny. Technology and a newly fearful but long complacent public has made these implementing these communications dragnets dangerously easy.
The NSA isn't doing anything illegal.
Viewing internet traffic isn't illegal in the USA. If you want anything traversing the internet to be private, it is up to each of us individually to encrypt the data stream between the 2 points. Don't trust any service provider.
Internet data isn't legally protected in the same way that old land line telephone networks are.
Echelon? I know it was not for domestic, but it was said to be structured in that say, the brits could scan our stuff, and we could scan theirs... saving on all that red tape.
Please do not use "over and out", it's the most ridiculous attempt at radio speak and it makes you look stupid.
As for 'Over and out,' you would be shot out of the water if you used the phrase on marine radio. 'Over' means 'I have finished speaking and am awaiting a reply.' 'Out' means 'I have finished the communication.' 'Over' and 'Out' should NEVER be used together in serious radio communication.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
Regardless of who is in power, illegal wiretapping of our private conservations is exactly why I have joined other people who have chosen to OPT-OUT of purchasing large ticket items.
No one in their right mind would commit to hustling money to pay for things like a new car knowing our federal government, w/o probable cause, is listening-in on business deals communicated over the phone/internet. Moreover, an eavesdropping federal employee hiding behind the âoePatriot Actâ is likely to throw a behind-the-scene wrench in someone's confidential business deal(s) simply b/c he/she does not like that person's political take-on things.
I urge anyone who wants to put a stop to illegal surveillance to stop spending money on big-ticket items altogether. Such action will let POTUS know the current severe recession will only get worse as long as he continues to allow federal employees to engage in illegal wiretaps/surveillance on Americans.