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.'"

Comments

NSA line eater

[davidwr]

Time to bring back the NSA line eater?

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bomb assassinate washington north korea iraq spy poison

Oh, quit whining

[rbrander]

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.

Re:Oh, quit whining

[L4t3r4lu5]

You make a lot of people aware of the issues with that particular congressman, then they all contact their government representative regarding the issues with that congressman, and they in turn bring up the issues in congress. One congressman says "Hey, I heard that Billy Blogs has been doing some nasty stuff with this interception malarky! I don't know exactly what it is, but it sounds like he's been listening in on domestic American citizens' communications!" Another congressman says "Awww hell yeah, I hurd that too!" and pretty soon the guy is out on his ass.

Unless he has Haliburton as a sponsor.

Re:Oh, quit whining

[kenp2002]

Stop voting for them.

That is no more effective then trying to stop drug crime by say "Stop Buying Drugs" or stopping poor education by saying "Stop Failing Tests".

Even if 1/2 the people stopped voting for democrats or republicans those same democrats and republicans would still win, by a larger magin in fact due to fragmentation between Libitarians, Consitutional, Socialist, Communists, Green, and Independent canidates.

The way to stop it is to PARTICIPATE in the political system rather then just voting or not voting which is the last, and minor step in a long political process.

Voting is just crossing the finish line in the marathon of politics. You wouldn't say that someone who drove to the finish line, got out, and crossed the finish line "participated" in the marathon, no more then someone voting participates in an election.

Get into a party, be active in it, and:

"Be the change you demand rather then hoping for change in others."

Re:Oh, quit whining

[Tanktalus]

It's a dangerous thing to contemplate "fixing" politics. You have to be careful that the fix results in a full net benefit over the current system. And I fully realise that the current system is as corrupt as hades.

For starters, you need to try to imagine what type of people you're going to attract to public service with your change. Is it the people you want to have running the country, or will it further exclude them, leaving public service only for the power hungry?

I ask this of people who oppose politicians (whether municipal, state/provincial, or federal) getting raises. Or tax-free allowances (which, let's face it, merely means they're getting paid more than it looks). If you pay your councillor such a small pittance than only the independently wealthy or the power-hungry will pursue it, how do you expect to attract those who are well-educated and would do a good job? Those people would rather work for the private sector (whether big corps, startups, or entrepreneurially) where they could make double or triple the money, and not have to reapply for their jobs (often at great personal expense, at least for municipal politicians) every few years (every year or so, it seems, for federal politicians in Canada *sigh*). If, and I'm not saying this is necessarily a good idea, we paid our politicians at a rate that the caliber of leader we wanted would get if they were in the private sector, do we not think we'd get more good candidates "applying" for the job? Sure, we'd get more power-hungry people, too, but we'd at least have SOME decent candidates, possibly. Whining about their pay rate right now, when we also complain about how stupid our representatives are, seems counterproductive to me.

Similarly, what type of people would we get with term limits on house/senate members? We'd get a lot more people who don't know what they're doing, that much is obvious. That would definitely impede activity in government - though if you're of the opinion that this is a good thing, I'm not going to argue with you (not really my topic here anyway). But, beyond that, who would you get? You'd only get people who think that the pay and the benefits (POWER!) are worth giving up your career for that term limit (everyone assumes they'll not only win, but be re-elected as many times as the law allows). Let's say it's 12 years. Would you give up your career for 12 years to "serve" in government? Would the type of smart, wise person who you'd want to represent you in government be willing to give up his/her career for 12 years? Would they want to take the risk of getting back into their old career? What types of careers would be easy to give up for 12 years and re-enter? Is that the type of person you want in government? (I'd think lawyers would be one such career, as might MBA's... other careers, like IT or research or Engineers or Medical Doctors or the such might not be so easy to get back to, especially when recertification is required.) Think about it. Who would you get? Is that an improvement? If it's merely a wash, it's not worth the turmoil to make the change. I suspect it'd be worse than what we have now. Don't get me wrong - on the face, I like the idea of limiting politicians' careers. But I'm not sure that such a limit would improve government, or make the corruption worse.

Solution: PGP

[headhot]

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.

Re:What about spam?

[sshir]

And not just "profiling".

What happens is that they (NSA) DoS-ing investigative resources. FBI and such have only so many men in the field to check the facts. As a result, the ability (probability) to identify true threats goes way down.

The same goes for other after 9/11 security "improvements" like, for example, indiscriminate "deep background investigation" of immigrants - the queue became so long, that it takes years now (not shitting) to get men from "interesting" countries checked! And I'm not talking about nutcases holed up somewhere in Pakistan mountains - I'm talking about people who already walk the streets of the US!

Too bad we don't know how to imitate free market's ability to optimally allocate resources in rigid government setups...