Slashdot Mirror
New US Government Project To Monitor Electronic Communication
An anonymous reader writes "PRODIGAL (Proactive Discovery of Insider Threats Using Graph Analysis and Learning) is a recently uncovered U.S. government program created in partnership with the Georgia Tech School of Computational Science and Engineering, ostensibly to monitor IMs, texts, and emails on government networks, is feared to be turned on the U.S. population at large. From the article: 'Cherie Anderson runs a travel company in southern California, and she's convinced the federal government is reading her emails. But she's all right with that. "I assume it's part of the Patriot Act and I really don't mind," she says. "I figure I'm probably boring them to death."'"
First entry into PRODIGAL database!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Encrypt anything that goes "On Grid".
I interviewed for a major life insurance company. They already have the ability to monitor all that stuff (except for texts, but that seems trivial if you have access). I know for a fact a previous employer of mine had that capability and used it as well.
The only interesting thing about this is they asked Georgia Tech to help instead of a more traditional defense-type contractor.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Do you think they look up definitions of the the words they use as acronyms?
prodigal/prädigl/
Adjective:
Spending money or resources freely and recklessly; wastefully extravagant.
Wastefully extravagant and crossing the line of security and into the realm of invasion of privacy.
If the government really wanted to read your email, they've had a decade to freely do so. No, they still can't read pgp encrypted emails without some serious devotion. If you suspect the government is reading your emails, it's only to build a case against you and leaving the country might be smart. Otherwise you have little to worry about. Nobody is dumb enough to store all their personal stuff in their third party mailbox right? :)
"I figure I'm probably boring them to death."'
There's your problem.
People don't mind because they don't understand what is really going on. With this or any other privacy intrusion (ignoring if this particular one is real or not).
Cherie, no human being is reading your mails. Computers with natural language engines are, and they are searching for and generating patterns. Human beings come in long afterwards. They don't get to read your mails, what they get is a summary of your preferences, opinions, buying habits, and probably some kind of score indicating (depending on who is doing the spying) if you're a good customer, a potential terrorist, have the right political agenda, etc. etc.
The 1984 "Big Brother" concept is 1984 - in the 21st century, you will not be arrested because some office drone in the ministry of truth read through all your e-mails and decided you're a bad person. No, in the 21st century you get put on the No Fly List and nobody can friggin' explain to you why , because the reason, as far as the humans involved are concerned, is that some score in some automated system crossed a threshold value.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The NSA has been doing this since 2003, probably before. It's extra creepy that DARPA is now in on the act, but that's about it. http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/04/70619
People always get that bit confused. What it REALLY means is
"A person who spends money in a recklessly extravagant way."
Nice name for this program.
This is exactly the premise behind the mini-series "The Last Enemy" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0966151/) and it's giant database called TIA or Total Information Access. In the mini-series, a mathematician is hired to develop an algorithim to analyze the mountains of data. And now life is going to imitate art once again. . .!
being used on the population at large, look how popular Google is and Google is in bed with the NSA, which mean that your gmail account is snooped daily or even hourly and if your a person of interest probably copies of everything is continuously sent to the government spooks so they get copies of your email as fast as you do.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
What is new? The "US", the "government", or the "project"? The monitoring is part is not new i suppose...
The thing is, as crime goes, terrorism is rare and the threat hasn't change appreciably in 50 years ( no matter what the evening news says ). The type of criminal activity in the US and international finance industries, however, is unprecedented and capable of causing far more damage. Unfortunately, we don't bring as many resources to bear on the greater threat to the country.
The ghost of Plato offers you one of two pills. If you take the blue pill, from now on your government will precisely represent the will of its people. If you take the red pill, your country will be seized by an intelligent dictator whose political views are identical to yours. Which will it be?
It's almost a difficult choice until you read things like "I assume it's part of the Patriot Act and I really don't mind", and then you realize you'd grab the red pill so fast you'd yank Plato's arm off. Participatory government is dead.
Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
In the old days, the ATF would just make up some charges against you (meth, guns), keep the press/news 2 miles away from your compound (Waco) and charge in shooting and setting fires to a building with your family in it. Now they can say "we have a report from our security system" that you are a threat. They dont even need to make up anything as a cover story, you are on a list..'nuf said. Theres a saying ive seen on here, around the net goes like this "when they came for the Jews, I didnt say anything because i wasnt a jew. when they came for the gays, i didnt say anything because I wasnt gay. Now they are coming for me, and theres no one left to say anything". The point is, with a system in place like this it is too easy to abuse and we are one step closer the end. And we cant stop it now, without a lot of people getting really upset, the very thing this system will detect and prevent. We are at the point now where we decide the next step in our evolution. Up until now, evolution had a pretty decent set of "rules" where the species that evolved certain traits, stuck around longer. At this point a system like this will make sure someone's idea of the next generation, will be followed, circumventing natural selection, and probably guaranteeing the human race, as we know it, will cease to exist.
-KI
#include bier;
"I assume it's part of the Patriot Act and I really don't mind,"
I guess it's ok since it's only just part of the Patriot Act.
You act like this is something new. Here (the UK), we have had email/tele snooping since Day 1. If you don't want your government to read it, don't send it electronically.
Get used to it. It's been that way for everyone else for years.
We've had the ability to encrypt email for years, and we battled for PGP, yet no one uses it.
To use PGP to sign and encrypt webmail, users have to upload their private keys to the webmail server. Solve this and you might find more people using PGP.
Whenever you see "Graph Analysis and Learning" you know they are teaching an AI system to make judgments. This literally is a system designed to decide if a human is a threat. All it needs is the ability to make a sound when it finds someone guilty.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
I guess part of the reason for existence of EFF's HTTPS Everywhere initiative is to make encryption not look suspicious.
I've assumed that the US government has been intercepting all our communications since they first had the technical ability. Why? Because of the 911 commission. Goverment really reacts and overreacts to that kind of stinging criticism that they didn't protect us.
What should we expect from them today? I expect that as soon as they find a terrorism suspect, that they are able to review his/her communications retrospectively; and also those whom he/she had contact with and so on 3 plys deep. To do that, they need an archive of everyone's messages 100% of the time, because they can't know in advance whose they want to review in the future.
I too hate big brother and I hate invasions of my privacy. However, it is unrealistic to expect the feds to not fully exploit 21st century technology. If we were smart, we would give up on trying to restrict what data they gather and focus on restricting what they can do with gathered information.
From the article: 'Cherie Anderson runs a travel company in southern California, and she's convinced the federal government is reading her emails. But she's all right with that. "I assume it's part of the Patriot Act and I really don't mind," she says. "I figure I'm probably boring them to death."'"
What an idiot. The problem is not a boring civil servant reading her emails and at most noting "oh how interesting, someone ordered flowers for Charles Manson again". The problem is her competitor donating money to a politicians campaign and inadvertently getting a copy of her emailed sales plan. The problem is a subcontractor of a contractor getting a copy of all emailed credit card numbers, ID thefting them, and she must be to blame, after all, she is the "only" common link. The problem is the civil servant's drug addicted gang member brother getting a copy of her bank statements, and noticing she makes all her weekly cash deposits at 3 pm on wednesdays, and being california, he's heavily armed, and she is completely disarmed. The problem is she tries to negotiate a better contract with her flower supplier, but thru "national technical means" her flower supplier has a copy of all her emailed communication with her accountant, and knows exactly how much profit he can extract from her. The problem is her local political muscle noticing via emailed sales figures that she is not donating the "correct" percentage of gross revenue to the politicians re-election campaign. The problem is the police notice, and blame her, when recipients of her "welcome home" gift baskets have their houses broken into and ransacked after the basket is ordered and before the basket arrives. The problem is she dates a police officer, it doesn't work out, she gets stalked by a guy with total electronic access to her life. Or a disgruntled client happens to work at the station, and has access to all her future emailed delivery plans, and knows just the dark alley to drag her into, and via the emailed schedule, knows just the right time to grab her.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I and millions of others protest at the US governments shameful, illegal actions worldwide and increasingly what it is doing to it's own people. With this in place, there would effectively be no opposition, and you'll be in a police state quicker than you can say nazi.
FTFS:
"I figure I'm probably boring them to death."'
What a give away! Add her to "The List"! That should fire all analysis triggers!
I'm not really sure what they are planning with this new "boring" weapon, but it appears to be deadly.
Maybe it is an acronym: B.O.R.I.N.G . . . ? We'd better investigate . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
"From the article: 'Cherie Anderson runs a travel company in southern California, and she's convinced the federal government is reading her emails. But she's all right with that. "I assume it's part of the Patriot Act and I really don't mind," she says. "I figure I'm probably boring them to death."'
I recall reading something like this in the beginning of a book I recently finished reading. It was called "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich"
Very insightful book I must add.
This is a very slippery path we're walking down. There is a reason we have the fourth Amendment.
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
I'll take the orange pill: an intelligent dictator whose views are what's best for humankind.
Cherie Anderson:
Anderson, nordic last name: aryan flag, militia flag, christian flag, racial solidarity flag
Person match:
Slashdot, an open techno-social resistance site: knowledge flag, ideals flag, subversion flag, networking flag, anonymous flag, hacking flag, criticism flag, hub flag, unusual interests flag
Discovery, an unredacted popular science site: knowledge flag, inspiration flag, networking flag, science flag, news flag, hub flag, unusual interests flag
Travel agency AB7311C2, a "prime interest" industry: owner flag, subversion flag, knowledge flag, hub flag, transportation flag, capabilities flag, insider flag, resources flag, moneylaundering flag, financial flag, offensive category 111F flag, defensive category 02B3 flag
Quotations:
Flagged words: Patriot Act, death
Pattern counts: 2 "I"'s per sentence, narcissist flag
Location:
California: troublemaker flag, insolvency flag, social unrest flag, extremism flag
The purpose of ADAMS is to detect insider threats. The data is easy to collect because the organization doing the analysis also owns the computer systems that are being used.
While a government organization might be spying on the American public, that problem is orthogonal to this research effort. (Also, that government organization is probably not DARPA, SAIC, or Georgia Tech.) You'd be hard-pressed to even apply the algorithms they're developing to a such a large and varied population because of the high false positive rate.
My private communications should be kept between myself, my closest friends, and my sysadmin.
Have gnu, will travel.
Here is but a few worrying examples from this past couple of weeks alone! US wants to censor anything it doesnt like online, across the world: http://stopcensorship.org/ US wants to lock up US citizens without trial or charge: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8mPZlysCAm0 http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/11/congress-to-vote-next-week-on-explicitly-creating-a-police-state/ Wikileaks exposes secret spying industry: http://wikileaks.org/the-spyfiles.html Ron Paul tells it like it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XeCpLcjxOq4 Shameful actions of US military: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-CpCUOygqU&list=PLB9FE42FDCEFA73B8&feature=plpp_play_all Commercialisation of TROLLING?? http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/11/13/facebook-opens-doors-to-a-new-way-of-suppressing-information-activists-constantly-banned/
I'll take the orange and red striped pill: An intelligent dictator whose views are what's best for humankind, but whose actions are just different enough from optimum to ensure that me and mine get to live the good life.
You and yours are humankind.
Actually, the typical slashdotter's interest in the following topics would probably be regarded with suspicion and get them put on some list:
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
If you were a subscriber, Slashdot wouldn't be redirecting all pages except login to HTTP. I imagine that this is because Slashdot uses third-party advertising networks, which are historically less likely to offer pure HTTPS. Notice that the sites I mentioned either sell goods (e.g. Phil's Hobby Shop), make their money processing payment (PayPal, banks, and CUs), are run by non-profit organizations (Bugzilla, Wikipedia, and CUs), run their own ad network (Google), and the like.
From the article: 'Cherie Anderson runs a travel company in southern California, and she's convinced the federal government is reading her emails. But she's all right with that. "I assume it's part of the Patriot Act and I really don't mind," she says. "I figure I'm probably boring them to death."'"
When I went to college, one of my classmates was Latvian and that was back when Latvia was part of the old Soviet Union. When asked whether he was concerned about mail from the Old Country being read by government censors, he said almost those identical words about letters from his grandmother.
Land of the Free, Home of the Brave!
lattices to link communicating "SUSPECTS".
Yours In Osh,
K. Trout
Anyone who's okay with the federal government reading their email should likewise be okay with a random stranger reading their e-mail. The government doesn't have any more need-to-know than anyone else, *especially* if you're doing nothing wrong. The argument that they are ruling people out as non-threats is fallacious: if you were ruled out, there would be no need for further monitoring, which tells us what should be obvious: that people are never ruled out.
So if you're really okay with the government reading your email, go ahead and put your money where your mouth is, and post all of your sent and received messages somewhere that's publicly viewable. After all, there's a chance the government might miss something, and if it saves even one life, it's worth it, right? Right?!
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Wasn't the premise of that movie that some systems are becoming so complex that they are doing things nobody wished for and nobody knows about?
weinersmith
Clearly, the choice of the moniker "PRODIGAL" is a tongue-in-cheek nod to the fact that "TIA" was never cancelled, and is now back.
And as for the logo, I have to wonder if the more appropriate "all-seeing eye" wouldn't be the one ringed in flame.
Cheers,
Not that it's any big secret, who comes in first. When you sign on to a ...
workstation in the morning, it's not like the central computer doesn't
notice that fact. The central computer notices just about everything. Keeps
track of every key you hit on the keyboard, all day long, what time you hit
it, down to the microsecond, whether it was the right key or the wrong key,
how many mistakes you make and when you make them. You're only required to
be at your workstation from eight to five, with a half-hour lunch break and
two ten-minute coffee breaks, but if you stuck to that schedule it would
definitely be noticed, which is why Y.T.'s mom is sliding into the first
unoccupied workstation and signing on to her machine at quarter to seven.
Half a dozen other people are already here, signed on to workstations closer
to the entrance, but this isn't bad. She can look forward to a reasonably
stable career if she can keep up this sort of performance.
The Feds still operate in Flatland. None of this three-dimensional
stuff, no goggles, no stereo sound. The computers are all basic flat-screen
two-dimensional numbers. Windows appear on the desktop, with little text
documents inside. All part of the austerity program. Soon to reap major
benefits.
She signs on and checks her mail. No personal mail, just a couple of
mass-distributed pronouncements from Marietta.
Y.T.'s mom pulls up the new memo, checks the time, and starts reading
it. The estimated reading time is 15.62 minutes. Later, when Marietta does
her end-of-day statis-tical roundup, sitting in her private office at 9:00
P.M., she will see the name of each employee and next to it, the amount of
time spent reading this memo, and her reaction, based on the time spent,
will go something like this:
Less than 10 min. Time for an employee conference and possible attitude
counseling.
10-14 min. Keep an eye on this employee; may be developing
slipshod attitude.
14-15.61 min. Employee is an efficient worker, may sometimes miss
important details.
Exactly 15.62 min. Smartass. Needs attitude counseling.
15.63-16 min. Asswipe. Not to be trusted.
16-18 min. Employee is a methodical worker, may sometimes get hung
up on minor details.
More than 18 min. Check the security videotape, see just what this
employee was up to (e.g., possible unauthorized
restroom break).
Y.T.'s mom decides to spend between fourteen and fifteen minutes
reading the memo. It's better for younger workers to spend too long, to show
that they're careful, not cocky. It's better for older workers to go a
little fast, to show good management potential. She's pushing forty. She'
scans through the memo, hitting the Page Down button at reasonably regular
intervals, occasionally paging back up to pretend to reread some earlier
section. The computer is going to notice all this. It approves of rereading.
It's a small thing, but over a decade or so this stuff really shows up on
your work-habits summary.
I'll take the orange and red striped pill: An intelligent dictator whose views are what's best for humankind, but whose actions are just different enough from optimum to ensure that me and mine get to live the good life.
You and yours are humankind.
That's the problem with playing the long game -- too few others have the vision to see that what's in everyone's interest also benefits themselves.
Given the choice, most people seem to be happier seizing the whole pie, even if it's tiny, instead of helping to make a huge pie and taking one tiny sliver of that pie, even when that tiny sliver is bigger than their whole tiny pie by many times over. There's probably something instinctive going on here, which means we're probably better off working around it, since the developer has clearly abandoned this project and any bug fix is most unlikely.
Cheers,
There's another problem with that attitude. Lets say that you are only doing boring things but some computer, misinterprets your communications because you are using code words for terrorist communications. All of a sudden, you are wrongly put on a watch list and you have no way of knowing it. Whenever you go to the airport, you are subject to extreme security checks and you wonder why. The real problem is that you might not even know that you are on some watch list because of the secrecy allowed by some provisions of the Patriot Act.
being led to the slaughter.
Where is the checks and balances in this?
where are the checks and balances at in general?!?!
I wish I had mod points today. :(
The 1984 "Big Brother" concept is 1984
By pure coincidence, I just started reading 1984 this morning. Orwell's books can be read on-line. I guess they pre-date the Disnification (aka fuckupification) of copyright.
people on the terrorist-watch-list
Am I the only one who read that as "torrent-watch-list"? I'm sure it's the same thing to most selected, er, elected reps working in the Ministry of Progress (as Orwell might have called it).
Yes. Everyone should have an LLC according to this fellow.
something this lady deserves neither of.
So where we moving to? If enough of us pool our money together I bet we could buy the presidency of some small country and wait to get invaded by the states and/or have our populace killed off one by one with drones.
if anyone is interested in helping edit the wikipedia article on this program, please come join me.
anyone who doesn't match the 'code' will be ostracized.
Top Level Fed Gov managers have two clear and present dangers: ... First tier (Front Line) managers, ... the Grunts ... i.e. the rank-and-file Fed employees,
1. highest threat
who are the brainless ass wipes that if left unchecked could rise through the ranks and replace the Top Level managers.
2. next-to-highest threat
who for all reasons the Top Level managers hate and seek to attrit at a 85% per year exit rate.
So, the Fed Gov has a program to spy on the rank-and-file and First tier managers is no surprise.
In most modern countries you get a trial before you get punished for stuff. You get to face your accuser in court, with lawyers and a judge. The government should not have the power to punish you without going through that. I believe the U.S. constitution even mentions due process.
> PRODIGAL .. has been built to scan IMs, texts and emails .. "Every time someone logs on or off, sends an email or text, touches a file or plugs in a USB key, these records are collected within the organization,"
The only people 'protected` by such systems are the already law-abiding, the crooks will have moved on to other means of communication. After all - just who in his right mind used IM/email for anything confidential - lucky for the rest of us, PRODIGAL only runs under Windows .. :)
When they sniff your encryption they'll automatically red flag you. Next time you communicate with any Suspect Entity for Any Reason (ie donating to Unicef) you'll be on a black flight to Guantanamo with no notification to anyone that you've been taken, no right to a lawyer to defend you and all the other lovely security increasing powers from the Patriot Act(s).
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
There's probably something instinctive going on here
It comes from people listening to Satan, or ex-Agent Smith, or whatever name your religion might have for the bringer of selfishness. His lie is these ten words: "The developer does not want what is best for you."
the developer has clearly abandoned this project and any bug fix is most unlikely.
How so? I've got a book with about 1600 pages of notes from the architect and his coder son. The son warned that all governments are under control of selfishness, this selfishness will lead to World War V,* and the son will come back afterward and run a bug fix, tossing selfishness into a proverbial lake of fire.
* II was the Nazis, III was the Cold War that became hot in Korea and Vietnam, IV was the war against Wahhabi terrorists, and V has been called "Armageddon".
This sort of monitoring has been going on on domestic networks courtesy of the NSA for quite a while (using Narus devices tapped directly into fiber). The whole "grab all the info and admit to having it after we get a warrant" approach is unfortunately the status quo. Now they're going to publicly do the same for government networks... ha ha. Way to make this look new boys, well played.
This reminds me of this movie http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1059786/ ... an A.I. that does almost the same thing as this program suggests and goes rogue.