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Spooky: How NSA's Surveillance Algorithms See Into Your Life

Posted by timothy on from the spitzer's-the-expert-on-personal-intrusion dept.

SmartAboutThings writes "A quite scary talk show with former NSA employees — now whistle blowers — Thomas Drake, Kirk Wiebe, and William Binney reveals that the NSA has algorithms that go through data gathered about us and they can basically 'see into our lives.' And this seems to be going on especially since the Patriot Act has removed the statutory requirement that the government prove a surveillance target under FISA is a non-U.S. citizen and agent of a foreign power." Binney's HOPE keynote has more detail on how the NSA watches people.

4 of 211 comments (clear)

  1. What if we started encrypting more by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Back in the 90s pgp and widespread up public key crypto were going to be the next thing. Never caught on . But I am sure even the NSA doesn't have to power to decrypt the volume of a fraction of the populations communication if they were to use crypto regularly and even mundane communications

  2. Aurora suspect. by Albert+Schueller · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The Aurora shooting suspect left a digital path a mile wide indicating he was up to something nefarious. NSA didn't see that coming. I don't thing their reach is as pervasive as people fear.

  3. Re:I wish Gore had won. by houstonbofh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You mean like Obama ended war? How about how he vetoed unlimited detention? When will people get that there is no substantive difference between the two parties? The slogans may be different, but the actions are the same.

  4. COINTELRPO tecniqueused on JUST NOW on THIS thread by EnergyScholar · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you take a quick look at The Gentleperson's Guide To Forum Spies you can observe that Technique #1, Forum Sliding, was just used on the Slashdot front page to obscure this NSA-related discussion thread. Note how lots and lots of semi-bogus new stories quickly appeared, causing this [mildly objectionable] story to slide off the front page.