Slashdot Mirror
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?"
At this revelation, it doesn't take a libertarian to point out that this isn't based on probable cause.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
I think whats clear is that despite the apologists claims to the contrary; be they from the NSA, Administration, or Congress there was no effective oversize of these programs. Feel good political firewalls are not a strategy. Its a universal truth just about any information gathered will be turned to unintended ends. All it will ever take is some SOB come along and make the right excuses and justifications, creatively define a few terms and suddenly the laws governing the use of the data are meaningless.
If we don't want our government to abuse this type of data the only solution bar them from getting it in the first place.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
On the internet, it's 4.74 degrees of separation.
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
If it's true that members of Congress are angry, that's favorable news! Maybe they can be persuaded to get off their butts and do something about this.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Foreign Policy had a fascinating article last month on how metadata analysis is used in terms of relationships between suspected "evil" people and known "evil" people. (The word "evil" in quotes to signify that for purposes of this topic, the definition of "evil" is unimportant.) The article talks about the challenges of fewer vs. more degrees of separation in link analysis; the new revelation that they go to 3 degrees throws it into even more perspective.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/17/evil_in_a_haystack_nsa_metadata
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
In a house hearing Wednesday the NSA admitted
What cause do we have to believe them? They've been lying to us about surveillance for at least 8 years, probably much, much longer.
Oh, right, we're just supposed to take their word for it, because they've been so goddamn trustworthy up to this point, haven't they?
Fuck these pieces of shit. Disband their organization, and charge every single employee and contractor with high treason. It's the only way to make things right.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
That's a lot of people. And they'll snoop on anyone who's "50% likely to be a foreigner". Given that more than 50% of Facebook's, Microsoft's and everyone else's users are foreigners, all their users automatically satisfy that criterion without any checks.
I think someone needs to step up to let the voters know what they can do if they disagree with this stuff. The ACLU and EFF might be good candidates.
How can we organize our votes to make this shit stop?
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
In North Korea, under the, "association system", up to three generations of a persons family can be taken permanently to, "a place to make a good person through reeducation", for that person's crimes.
I.e. if the connection is "read something that a suspect may have posted in a site", we should be all in that list, plus everyone 2 hops away from us.
Yes it is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-world_experiment
A great study was done in 1929 as well.
And the 6 degrees is getting smaller with the internet.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The owners of Slashdot once again resort to playing down the extent of NSA surveillance and abuse. So-called '3-hop' mining searches were used to prevent agents being swamped with far more 'connections' than they could ever think of processing. Actual NSA personnel were free to examine the details of ANY individual connected at any 'distance' to a named target, whether that meant '3-hops' or 30.
Here's something you sheeple should consider. You happen to be the neighbour of a target, and even though innocent, you have unwittingly learnt things of interest to the intelligence agencies. If the target becomes aware you have been interrogated or co-operated with the authorities, the mission against the target is compromised.
No problem to Team Obama. If the target is important enough, you will be secretly arrested, subject to 'enhanced' interrogation just in case you aren't quite 'innocent', and then disposed of (as in EXECUTED) so there is zero chance of the fact of your interrogation getting back to the target. You are the cattle, and if putting you down serves the interests of your masters, no-one is going to think twice about doing this.
Now true, dying this way is as unlikely as a major lottery win, but the point you sheeple should b aware of is that your life has no value whatsoever to those that rule over you. What they have done to millions of civilians in the Middle East, they'll do to you and your family just as easily if they deem it 'useful'.
Now the NSA track your vehicle movements almost perfectly with under-surface RFID readers (license plate reading cameras are only used to associate an actual vehicle with the fingerprint of the RFID chips embedded in your tires) - now the NSA tracks the locations of each citizen perfectly via their cell phones - now the NSA tracks your network of friends and associates almost perfectly via the social Internet services you use - now the NSA is focusing on plugging the last few holes in their total surveillance grid.
Google Glass, The Xbox One, and Bill Gates' child database service form a massive three-headed attack by the NSA against traditionally 'difficult' intelligence targets.
-Google Glass is designed to eliminate the idea of a 'private' conversation, and ensure that most people self-censor most of the time. Self-censorship means expressing views that toe-the-line promoted by authority, ensuring that everyone thinks that everyone else is a loyal supporter of the police-state.
-Xbox One gets the world's most sophisticated bugging system into the homes of millions of citizens. A bugging system so 'clever' it knows when people are having sex by tracking signature skeletal movements of the people in the same room as the console.
-Gates' database system that tracks every detail of every child's life in the most intimate detail is the most disturbing NSA project of all. Gates provides high-ranking sex offenders with the best possible intelligence for safely selecting victims. Then there are the pre-crime aspects, and also the ability to search for the most useful sociopaths for recruitment into command and control positions over the sheeple. Not least is the fact that when you control the kids, you control their parents.
Look, to the question "how bad are things in the USA today?", the answer is "as bad as they could possibly be, with the active intention of having the future very much worse if all the political plans of people like Gates pan out".
If you don't want to be treated as cattle, you had better learn how to stop behaving as cattle. Rejecting all propaganda emanating from the mainstream media is a very good start. No one in real power has you best interests at heart. They didn't 20,000 years ago. They didn't 4,000 years ago. They didn't 2000 years ago, or 1000, or 500, or 200. Whoever rules considers those that choose to live as sheep as beneath contempt. It isn't right, it isn't decent, but it is how it is.
You can't fight the NSA at a higher level, but you can fight them in your daily life. Reject all
Citizen A (is a constituent of) Barak Obama (represents) Citizen B
Viola, all US citizens are within two hops of each other.
Remember it's the government who gets to define what "hops" means.
“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,
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
That puts everyone on slashdot within the 3 hop limit.
Thanks a lot.
"His name was James Damore."
If it got to the point where it objectively, undeniably mattered, like if you got arrested after having a suspicious pattern of Facebook connections for instance, then they'd be a bit more careful with their online activity. But they still wouldn't stand up for anything, and they wouldn't stand up for you.
A few years ago I got arrested for something I didn't do, and several of my neighbors who knew I was innocent wouldn't help me with an affidavit. The police, prosecutor, and even my own lawyer didn't care if I was innocent or guilty either. It was really an eye opener, not at all like on Law and Order. Then when I left my DoD surveillance job for a 'worse' job elsewhere all I got crap from nearly everybody I knew too. Essentially, "it can't be wrong because everyone else is doing it." For the most part, the few people who expressed a little understanding in either situation were the same kind of people who would have agreed had I argued about NSA surveillance. But if the stakes were higher, I sense that most of them would disappear too. Morally, most Americans are not different from 1930's Germans. Not to say that the US government is fascist, just to say that people aren't the way they see themselves, and that after a half billion years of evolution people haven't changed much in 100 years.
They had direct, specific information regarding those two douchebags who bombed the marathon, AND they are surveying ALL of our communications, sexually assaulting us at airports, and they still didn't put 2+2 together to prevent the bombing? We're not even exchanging essential liberty for security; we are exchanging our essential liberties for security theater.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I have thousand of Facebook, Twitter, Media, and other friends.
You're all three hops from me. Every single person reading this.
Millions of American citizens who may or may not agree with me.
Three hops is unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment, unless you're a bunny.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Show me someone that only has 100 contacts and I'll show you someone that hasn't left the newborn recovery area.
I attended high school with over 100 people whom I knew by first and last name. Those people have scattered far and wide. In the meantime I spent two years livving at the opposite end of the country. Then I enlisted in the Military and traveled some more for six years. Then I got married and became associated with even more people who live all over the world. On Facebook I might have 60 "friends" but in reality I know hundreds if not thousands of people by name who are now or have been in the past scattered all over the world.
You are right that many of the people we know, know a lot of the same people. But it doesn't take a lot to escape out of that, one contact from a different geographic region, church, socio-economic group and you are off in another burst of completely new contacts.