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NSA Claims It Would Violate Americans' Privacy To Say How Many of Us It Spied On
colinneagle writes "Would you believe the Inspector General from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said it would violate the privacy of Americans for the IG office to tell us how many people in the United States had their privacy violated via the NSA warrantless wiretap powers which were granted under the FISA Amendment Act of 2008? The Act is up for a five-year extension, but Senator Ron Wyden said he'd block FAA renewal until Congress received an answer from the NSA about how many 'people in the United States have their communications reviewed by the government' under FAA powers."
Violate their privacy, leak their documents.
This is classical 1984 stuff here. Newspeak excellence.
War is peace,
freedom is slavery,
Violation of privacy is protection of privacy.
Ron Wyden is my senator, and although we agree on very little, today he is my hero.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I'm guessing that the answer is "everyone except the following....." and that list would immediately put those few dozen people under a spotlight, destroying their privacy.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Okay, I remember reading (probably on Wired) that the NSA has an unusual definition of "intercept" when it came to domestic telephone calls... An "intercept" for them was going back and analyzing their recordings, not the actual "making" of the recording.
If, for instance, I merely record raw packet data on the network and do not interpret it... then I've "captured the firehose", but I don't know what I've got until I analyze it.
If I have the budget to "capture the firehose" for the entire US telephone network, but I only need to analyze 10-20K "intercepts" per year, then I probably wouldn't have the equipment or staff to evaluate the details of all the data I have.
If that's the situation, then I'd probably respond similarly to Wyden's request. In order to answer his questions I'd have to analyze ALL the data I have, which I don't have the resources or budget to do... and even if I did, it'd expose the details of all comunications on the network... which would be an invasion of privacy.
An "intercept" for them was going back and analyzing their recordings, not the actual "making" of the recording.
Combine that with a retroactive warrants and filtering software and it's basically a license to spy on everyone. I can make the recordings on everyone, filter them for keywords, and then read them--and, if I find something, I can get a retroactive warrant saying it was okay for me to listen to it.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Then why not simply say "That's a question that cannot be reasonably answered due to [reasons A, B, C, D etc]." like my ISP would, instead of saying "We cannot tell you because we value your privacy."? Besides, it's a moot point; the fact remains they're collecting data on us, but they won't (or can't) tell us what it is. The end result is the same in either case; an agency is collecting data on us with no accountability.
As for TFA's quote: the contradiction seems super-obvious to us, but for a high level official to make that statement without seeing the same contradiction we do is pretty scary. What it means is this particular NSA leader has never even considered where his agency would fit in a privacy/no privacy Venn diagram. It has never occurred to him that their data collection could be a violation of privacy in the first place; they're orders of magnitude above such simple concerns.
To the NSA, data is like fruit on a vine they already own. They can pick this fruit whenever they choose, but that fruit is theirs whether they pick it or not.
I agree with you to a point; the NSA probably does not believe this is malicious, but if the NSA thinks the way they appear to, this is still wrong and completely out of touch with the privacy concerns we really have.