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Training Materials for NSA Spying Tool "XKeyScore" Revealed
dryriver writes with news of the latest document release on NSA spying programs. Quoting The Guardian: "A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats, social media activities and the internet browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its 'widest-reaching' system for developing intelligence from the Internet. The latest revelations will add to the intense public and congressional debate around the extent of NSA surveillance programs. They come as senior intelligence officials testify to the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, releasing classified documents in response to the Guardian's earlier stories on bulk collection of phone records and Fisa surveillance court oversight. The files shed light on one of Snowden's most controversial statements, made in his first video interview published by the Guardian on June 10. 'I, sitting at my desk,' said Snowden, could 'wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email.' U.S. officials vehemently denied this specific claim. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said of Snowden's assertion: 'He's lying. It's impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do.'"
The slides in question. Looks like it was Mike Rogers that was lying and not Snowden. So much for the NSA's attempt at quieting public fear by releasing information on the Verizon phone data collection program before Congressional hearings today.
"They don't want the voice of reason spoken, folks, 'cause otherwise we'd be free. Otherwise we wouldn't believe their fucking horseshit lies, nor the fucking propaganda machine, the mainstream media, and buy their horseshit products that we don't fucking need, and become a third world consumer fucking plantation, which is what we're becoming. Fuck them! They're liars and murders. All governments are liars and murderers, and I am now Jesus. Now. And this is my compound."
- Bill Hicks, Live at Laff Stop in Austin
Why would anyone assume the database includes only suspects that they're authorized to track? Given the track record of the NSA it is less likely that that is the case and it is more likely that they have anyone they want in it.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Bogus! It's a congressional coverup designed to rationalize all this bullshit, with people like Pelosi on her knees before the NSA. Of course what makes it worse is the idiot public who believes all this crap and reelects these bums. How do we stop them from voting away our rights?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
They've already cop'd to mapping networks out to (n>2) degrees of contact. It's the "implicit authorization to track people networked to a suspect" that makes this all so dangerous.
I'm not the first to refer to the lame "Kevin Bacon" jest.
Every public statement they make is a fucking lie. If they tell you it's sunny outside, you can bet that it's raining. They lie to Congress, they lie to the public, they lie to the President. When they go home at night, they lie to their wives and kids. They tell their dying grandmothers that they're fine and don't need chemo. They take down "Road Closed" signs and laugh when people wreck their cars as a result. They will climb a tree to lie when they could stand on the ground and tell the truth.
They always lie. They always WILL lie.
Not true. When you assume that they're always lying, they'll tell the truth, under the secure knowledge that you won't believe them.
For them it's not about truth/falsehood, it's about manipulation of people to achieve the desired ends. People who always assume they lie are much easier to manipulate than those who continually think critically.
If you tell a kid that it should not steal cookies and when it does you do nothing about it, it will assume that it is allowed to take the cookies. The longer you allow it, the harder it will be to enforce the rule.
The defense of the parent could be anything from "Because I said so." to "My house, my rules."
So who has told the NSA to stop it and what actions have been taken to punish them? If I were the NSA, I would assume that all I do is authorized, until somebody stops me.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
A database containing only suspects they are authorized to track would be worthless to them in the context they're trying to sell it. Every argument they have made makes it clear that they see it as searching for a needle in the haystack, and all of us, all of us, are the hay.
That is, until someone in some government somewhere decides you look more like a needle.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Found a little comment in the Austin,TX paper that is very appropriate to the NSA actions: "If we are to accept that the executive branch of the U.S. government is operating within the bounds of the Constitution in its implementation of the recently disclosed domestic spy program. i.e., having approval through the FISA court and tacit congressional consent, then per the 4th amendment, “no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,” the only valid probable cause to surveil the entire domestic population is to declare them likely criminals. The question to answer then becomes, what do the citizens of this land do when their government has wholesale declared them all criminals?" So I put it to you, what is the correct course of action when we citizens of these United States of America are now all criminals in the eyes of the government?
First off, almost anything "publicly" done on the Internet or through a third party server is suspect. Second, the idea that the NSA isn't doing this is patently absurd. Third, if you believe the NSA when they deny doing things like this, you are an idiot.
The FBI has the capability to bust down my door at any time. Pretty much anybody with a boot can bust through my door. The capability isn't a problem. I'm comfortable with the capability existing, because I don't know where I can buy an unkickdownable door. That's why instead I have this piece of paper that says nobody can kick down my door without being a legitimate executive of a warrant signed by a judge who agreed there is probable cause I've violated a law passed by representatives I had a say in electing. The capability to kick down doors doesn't scare me. However, the kicking down of doors without following the rules on that piece of paper terrifies me.
I've been on these internets for awhile now. BBSes long before that, playing Legend of the Red Dragon at 1200 baud on the Crunchy Booger. And there were plenty of jokes in IRC about there being No Such Agency that reads your e-mail. And I long suspected they had the capability to do these things. And after the room 641A disclosure, I knew they had the capability to do this.
Hell, I demand they have the capability to do these things. After all, you can't execute a warrant to tap a phone without having the capability to tap a phone.
But the idea that the NSA is sucking up and storing forever my emails, my phone records, my financial records, hell, the logs of every time and location my 13-year old niece has called for pizza...that is what was absurd. Completely, bonkers insane and absurd.
And they're doing it. That's the craziest thing.
You want to know what the banality of evil looks like? Not the kind of monstrous evil of murder or slavery or genocide. Just the simple, mechanical, banality of evil? That they're fucking doing it. To me, to you, to my wife, to my mom, to my sister, to my brother, to my nieces and nephews. My son's 10 months old, and as soon as he's old enough to have a thought in his head they'll start trying to pry it out.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
The real elephant in the room here is how this is really very dangerous for democracy.
I have yet to hear any politician discuss the REAL threat here, in the long run...the threat to American Democracy itself.
Imagine the following scenario: A guy like Snowden, hired by a Republican/Democratic senator, gets a job with Booz Allen, and proceeds to use these tools to spy on the political campaign of either their direct opponent in a campaign, or the opposing candidate in an election campaign. They are able to make up an excuse and take this information out, and pass it on to their candidate.
And then one day this information gets out, that someone was spying, ala Nixon-style on everything the opponent was doing. If you think the sh** is hitting the fan now, just you wait until THAT happens. Hell hath no fury like a politician who has been spied upon.
Even with what he did, he'd have got away with it today. What Nixon did is basically nothing at all compared to today's political espionage between our factions.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!