NSA Admits Searching "3 Hops" From Suspects

New submitter cpitman writes "In a house hearing Wednesday the NSA admitted that it could query not only a suspect's records, but also perform up to a 'three hop query'. Considering that most people in the world are separated by under 6 degrees of separation, the NSA essentially claims that any single suspect gives them rights to investigate a large chunk of the world's population. With the terror watch list having over 700,000 names, just how many times has Kevin Bacon been investigated?"

Comments

It's 4.74, not 6

[cultiv8]

On the internet, it's 4.74 degrees of separation.

Re:It's 4.74, not 6

[Anonymous Coward]

From the Wikipedia article linked in the summary, in the Mathematics section:

Mathematicians use an analogous notion of collaboration distance:[33] two persons are linked if they are coauthors of an article. The collaboration distance with mathematician Paul Erds is called the Erds number. Erds-Bacon numbers are a further extension of the same thinking. Watts and Strogatz showed that the average path length between two nodes in a random network is equal to ln N / ln K, where N = total nodes and K = acquaintances per node. Thus if N = 300,000,000 (90% of the US population) and K = 30 then Degrees of Separation = 19.5 / 3.4 = 5.7 and if N = 6,000,000,000 (90% of the World population) and K = 30 then Degrees of Separation = 22.5 / 3.4 = 6.6. (Assume 10% of population is too young to participate.)

From the Guardian:

"Hops" refers to a technical term indicating connections between people. A three-hop query means that the NSA can look at data not only from a suspected terrorist, but from everyone that suspect communicated with, and then from everyone those people communicated with, and then from everyone all of those people communicated with.

Inglis did not elaborate, nor did the members of the House panel – many of whom expressed concern and even anger at the NSA – explore the legal and privacy implications of the breadth of "three-hop" analysis.

If each hop is broad enough to average 700 people, the entire US is covered by a single case. If you expand that to around 1700, you've got the entire world. That sounds like a lot, but consider:

- Anyone you've ever associated with on any social media site.
- Anyone you've ever been in contact with through email or phone contacts, even if it was accidental or one-sided.
- Your entire family.
- Neighbors.
- Coworkers, maybe the entire company you work for.

Who knows what the limit is and what else might qualify as a "hop".

Re:Can we discuss the fourth amendment now?

[sexconker]

No, they shouldn't. And they don't, because that would take 4 hops.

Suspect
Real Estate Agent
Daughter
Mechanic
You

Re:Can we discuss the fourth amendment now?

[vux984]

Nope. The real estate agent is 1 hop. They pull all his records. The daughter is 2 hops. They pull all her records. The mechanic is 3 hops. They pull all his records.

3 hops. The fact that the mechanic serviced your car will be captured, even though they never made the 4th hop to pull your records directly.

Re:A precision

[c0lo]

Facebook

“We found that six degrees actually overstates the number of links between typical pairs of users: While 99.6% of all pairs of users are connected by paths with 5 degrees (6 hops), 92% are connected by only four degrees (5 hops),” the Facebook Data team said.
...
The average distance between all people on the site in 2008 was 5.28 degrees, while now [Nov 2012] it is 4.74.

Twitter

Our optimal algorithm finds an average degree of separation of 3.43 between two random Twitter users,

Re:Can we discuss the fourth amendment now?

[cold fjord]

You seem to have skipped over some key data.

Terror watch list grows to 875,000

As of December 2012, a factsheet from the center states, TIDE contained over 875,000 entries. Each one represents a known or suspected terrorist and includes all their known aliases and spelling variations on their name, the official said.

Less than one percent, or fewer than 9,000, were Americans, including both citizens and legal permanent residents, he said, adding the center does not release exact numbers.

That is a pretty small portion of both the US and world populations.

Re:Can we discuss the fourth amendment now?

[ldobehardcore]

Mod this guy up. The NSA may not be looking for you specifically, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be mad as hell that they're violating everyone's rights. They aren't torturing you at a black site now, but they could if they wanted to, because they have conspired to make themselves above the law.