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.
"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.
That's the two criteria for a government technology project. This one is pure gold as far as they're concerned.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
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;
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.
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.
Art imitiates life. "Total Information Access" was a real DARPA program. It was "cancelled", but of course that just means they changed the name. Perhaps to "PRODIGAL". As I recall, the symbol for TIA was the all-seeing eye (the one on the back of the dollar bill), which was probably DARPA trolling the paranoids.
Actually, no, that's art imitating life.
In 2003, a program called "Total Information Awareness" was created to intercept all Internet traffic and try to process it looking for phrases the NSA and others in government might find interesting. In 2007, the newly elected Congress defunded it (mostly Democrats, with the support of a few libertarians like Ron Paul). The NSA responded by shifting the efforts into different programs that they didn't have to explain to Congress.
I am officially gone from
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.
what about https://www.slashdot.org?
Oh wait...
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.
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
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
Sound of drone firing?