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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
...yes. It runs Linux.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
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. Espionage agencies are basically required to lie. It's in their job description. Quite literally, their job is to deceive people.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
They run themselves. They have a secret court where defendants are not allowed to attend, and are not even told they are on trial. They lie to congress. They lie to the president. They have an unlimited secret budget that nobody can check. They appear to be mostly controlled by the contractors and companies that sell them services. It's a giant graft. Private parties are helping themselves to public money, creating a surveillance state for unknown reasons under the guise fighting terrorism.
This is going to end badly. People with money and lots of power don't give up their toys easily. Expect to see the following soon: Lots of assassinations, or the NSA being raided by another enforcement branch of govt. Or maybe both.
Lovely bullet point:
* Show me all the VPN startups in country X, and give me the data so I can decrypt and discover the users.
Translation: not only do you have no privacy, doing what you think will make you hidden will just shine a spotlight on yourself.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
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!”
What part of PRISM didn't you get? The part where they hoover up data on everyone without a warrant or the part where they don't have to justify it to anyone?
Wikipedia has an entry on it: X-Keyscore
Good background story: Solving the mystery of PRISM
Spiegel Online covered it: 'Key Partners': Secret Links Between Germany and the NSA
Oddly enough it appears that news about intelligence programs used by America and its allies is reported in Persian. Go figure.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
It's shocking to discover that the government can actually accomplish anything, as opposed to wasting $800 million in taxpayer money with nothing to show for it.
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.
I heard the NSA has had trouble complying with a recent FOIA request, something about not being able to read their own emails. Someone should tell them about this "XKeyScore" thingamajig!
That the data is collected has already been established, by more than one whistleblower. That's old news.
The new revelation here is that a relatively low-level guy could easily search through the database looking for everything they want. That lapse in security is actually surprising, even if you have a low opinion of the NSA.
From a legal perspective, it seems they are allowed to collect the data, but they can only look at it if authorized (ie, crtain requirements are met). What Snowden is saying is that the authorization method wasn't very robust, which means that someone somewhere probably has actually abused this to check up on his girlfriend or something.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I wonder how much of an accident it is that Chrome's Incognito mode tells you:
Going incognito doesn't affect the behavior of other people, servers, or software. Be wary of:
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?
President Merkin Muffley: General Turgidson, I find this very difficult to understand. I was under the impression that I was the only one in authority to order the use of nuclear weapons.
General "Buck" Turgidson: That's right, sir, you are the only person authorized to do so. And although I, uh, hate to judge before all the facts are in, it's beginning to look like, uh, General Ripper exceeded his authority.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Sorry to inform you but it says so in the very document:
"Rolling Buffer" of ~3 days of ALL unfiltered data seen by XKEYSCORE:
- stores full-take data at the collection site - indexed by meta-data
- over 500 servers distributed around the world
Later:
- we can use this traffic to detect anomalies which can lead us to intelligence by itself
- E-mail Addresses, Extracted Files, Full Log, HTTP Parser, Phone Number, User Activity
It appears they take all data and then use that to detect anomalies. It includes data on everyone, and from all of the data they try to pinpoint targets.
Look for anomalous events
- Someone whose language is out of place for the region they are in
- Someone who is using encryption
- Someone searching the web for suspicious stuff
They have example tasks listed such as:
- Show me all the encrypted word documents from Iran
- Show me all PGP usage in Iran
- Swow me all the VPN startups in country X, and give me the data so I can decrypt and discover the users
- Show me all the Microsoft Excel spreadsheets containing MAC addresses coming out of Iraq so I can perform network mapping
- Show me all th exploitable machines in country X
- Show me all the word documents with references to IAEO [International Atomic Energy Organization?]
- Show me all documents that reference Osama Bin Laden