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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?
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Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
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.
Reforge the Fourth International! Workers to power!
I will give you $100 if you can provide instructions on implementing this that can be understood by all my friends and family ... and that includes my elderly relatives and my "but this is how it come when I bought the computer" friends.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
That's precisely the problem. Low signal-to-noise ratio implies a high false-positive rate. They are not likely to find any terrorists, but are probably invasively "profiling" plenty of innocent civilians.
"Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns" -Journal of Political Econom
You're kidding right?
A x.509 certificate will only slow the NSA down a few seconds (if that).
/whisper/ Thanks for the candy!
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.
If you fear freedom so much, why don't you move to Iran?
Because in Iran they'd be facing street protests.
I am officially gone from
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.
Ahhh, a page from the book of "it's funny because it's true."
I used to be "that guy" ... giving advice, offering to help people configure things, recommending hardware and software, etc. Then I slowly came to realize a few things:
- People don't value the time you spend helping them
- The more dire the warning being delivered, the more people resent hearing your advice
- Nothing ever sinks in. By constantly offering to help people, all that happens is they develop a mindset of dependence. They sort of slide into the belief that computers are so hopelessly complex they will never be able to figure anything out.
I now just quietly accept the notion that most of my friends and family are riddled with trojans, and I assume that anything I send to them is also being sent to a criminal syndicate in Bulgaria.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
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.
Wow! One of the most eloquent Slashdot posts in defense of the Republic that I've read in a while.
However one of your assumptions is fading fast. When you state:
> This country is for people who love freedom. Who are willing to risk their lives for it.
This assumes that:
(a) people understand "freedom" as the founding fathers understood it and not merely freedom to consume whatever the talking heads tell us.
(b) people are actually willing to risk their lives for it.
Unfortunately, I think that the transformation of the enlightened Republic to the Idiocracy portrayed in film is well underway. In addition I believe that even those that still value true freedom are increasingly less willing to risk their lives for it. Hell, most aren't even willing to risk their comfort for it. A society that is too comfortable with itself is perfectly setup for golden handcuffs.
Ironically, in Iran right now, people actually ARE putting themselves in harms way to protest apparent fraud on the part of the executive.
I sympathise 100% with what you've written but sadly I'm convinced that its almost too late for the republic to be saved without "refreshing the tree of liberty". The sad part is that a lot of people would read your post and wonder why you're over-reacting. They think of "Democracy" and "Freedom" as mere trademarks associated with the US of A. Meanwhile, every pillar of the constitution is under attack and while some are noticing, very few are standing up.
Wake up people! Look at what's happening in Iran - the lesson is this: no matter how powerless you think you are, governments of all persuasions fear nothing more than a populace aroused to anger. To quote Jefferson: "What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?"
Please explain how the NSA has full access to my SMIME private key when the only thing that Thawte ever saw and signed was my SMIME public key?
Let me expand on this old soldier's excellent model of the sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. We know that the sheep live in denial, which is what makes them sheep. They do not want to believe that there is evil in the world.
The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog. He looks a lot like the wolf. He has fangs and the capacity for violence. The difference, though, is that the sheepdog must not, cannot and will not ever harm the sheep. Any sheepdog who intentionally harms the lowliest little lamb will be punished and removed. The world cannot work any other way, at least not in a representative democracy or a republic such as ours.
Still, the sheepdog disturbs the sheep. He is a constant reminder that there are wolves in the land. They would prefer that he didn't tell them where to go, or give them traffic tickets, or stand at the ready in our airports in camouflage fatigues holding an M-16. The sheep would much rather have the sheepdog cash in his fangs, spray paint himself white, and go, "Baa."
Then there are the sheep that not only refuse to accept a certain inevitability of violence but go so far as to blame the existence of the wolf upon the sheepdog. In their minds and in their desperation to extend a sort of courtesy to the wolves, they believe that the wolves were actually sheep just like them BUT, were somehow forced to become wolves because of the sheepdog.
Anyway, enough obsolete 20th century American agricultural metaphors. I'm sure if someone rewrote this to say player-killers and roleplayers, it would be on the front page of boingboing (and slashdot) tomorrow morning.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
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.
That just isn't a practical answer to passive scanning, because usually you'll never know it happened.
If someone breaks into your house and steals your computer, you know that something happened ("hey, where's my computer?!") and can investigate, call the cops, etc. The law might end up getting enforced.
If you live in a glass house and someone with a telescope is peeking through your walls, you will never know. It might be against the law for people to look through glass walls, but it's mostly unenforceable. It makes a lot more sense (and it's really just as easy) to simply build walls out of an opaque material instead.
Ok, so you have a noble opinion of government, or ideals for how it should be. Fine. We don't have to debate that, though, because your government isn't the only entity that may want to spy on you. There are other bad guys out there, too. Since you have to encrypt anyway, then take the protection from government as a totally unnecessary side-benefit, and go on laughing at us paranoid loons. While we're telling stories about how our tinfoil hats keep the NSA out, you can roll your eyes, knowing that your encryption is keeping the foreign governments, the insurance companies, the neighborhood burglar, your ex-SO, the people who don't like your bumper-stickers, and just plain-nosy-people, etc out.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
For web servers, I've always generated my own key pair and submitted the only the public key for a certificate signing request. If the email key pair is generated by a third party, the whole procedure is bogus. Last time I looked at SMIME, the sign up processed caused the browser to generate the key pair so the private key was never sent. If this is no longer the case, the whole concept needs to be redone and the "trusted third parties" should be ashamed.