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Other Agencies Clamor For Data NSA Compiles
schwit1 writes "The National Security Agency's dominant role as the nation's spy warehouse has spurred frequent tensions and turf fights with other federal intelligence agencies that want to use its surveillance tools for their own investigations, officials say. Agencies working to curb drug trafficking, cyberattacks, money laundering, counterfeiting and even copyright infringement complain that their attempts to exploit the security agency's vast resources have often been turned down because their own investigations are not considered a high enough priority, current and former government officials say. Intelligence officials say they have been careful to limit the use ... for fear they could be misused in ways that violate Americans' privacy rights."
So, it has come to this.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Give them all the data they want, with the single condition that any and all wrongdoing found must be prosecuted. Part of me just wants to watch the chaos.
It's only natural.
Otherwise it's just this:
http://xkcd.com/303/
1) " for fear they could be misused in ways that violate Americans' privacy rights"
The act of spying & collecting this data didn't already pass this threashold?
2) Every government agency takes the permitted rules and pushes them to the limit & a bit beyond. In no time at all, the Smallville dog catcher's dept will have access to NSA data. "Think of the children - we need to know which houses have mean dogs, and which ones have small children! For their own good!"
This should be no surprise.
Right across the free world we're told this these giant databases are there to keep us safe.
The question is more who is being kept safe who. Is the purpose of these databases to protect me or protect the politicians? Is to protect me or big business? Is it to protect my right to process or restrict it?
In my own country, William Hague said that it was unthinkable that GCHQ would be operating outside of the law. The problem is I don't believe you!
Practically every time the government has secrecy it abuses that power to its own ends. This is just the nature of power held in secret with a lack of transparency. The entire span of human history shows that kind of power is hugely destructive.
The cure is worse than the disease here. Honestly, I'd rather have more terrorist attacks that having my privacy systematically shredded for the greater good. All terrorists can ever do is kill people. It takes a government to kill a society.
One Compile To Rule Them and in the darkness bind them.
http://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-u-directs-agents-cover-program-used-investigate-091643729.html
for fear they could be misused in ways that violate Americans' privacy rights.
But..but.. the people asking are professionally trained law enforcement officials. What's the problem?
The DEA is getting the data and then falsifying the source of the data. And not telling the court or anyone about it. To protect national security is one thing, but to conduct non-national security operations using the data seems to me to be a blatant violation of the constitution.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Intelligence officials say they have been careful to limit the use ... for fear they could be misused in ways that violate Americans' privacy rights
The irony in this statement is just mindboggling.
I'm only here cuz I the article mentioned a squirrel.
First it's for national security, then it's revealed the DEA has it's own methods to spy on Americans sans warrant. The Constitution was put in place to limit the government...politicians can do whatever they want but they absolutely cannot decide not to comply with the Constitution. Don't they swear to uphold and defend it when they take office or are their fingers crossed?
Tony Bennet
As opposed to misused in ways that doesn't violate Americans' privacy rights?
Previously they might have been loath to allow access to their systems as their very existence was not "public" knowledge. Thanks to leaks that is no longer a hindrance...
The governments of the entire world need to unify and rise up against this illegal intrusion into the private lives of their citizens, which violates the Charter of Rights here in Canada and equivalent legislation around the globe. Contrary to their self-righteous beliefs, the US is not the world police.
Furthermore, we need to hold our own governments to task for allowing our intelligence agencies to use information collected by the US as a means of bypassing the rights legislation that is supposed to protect our own citizens. CSIS is complicit in this, relying on US feeds of intelligence that are based on this illegally collected data.
But give them an inch, and they have already taken a league.
Now the other "police" agencies want access to the information, again in clear violation of our civil rights.
This will not end on it's own. It will only end if the people of the world unite in condemnation of this illegal activity. It is not up to the US citizens alone to protest. We all have to.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
"We need to know who downloaded copies of 'The conjuring'. It's rated R, so imagine the horrors if a child were to download this! Do you hate children?!? THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!" -- RIAA
The founding fathers didn't write the fourth amendment to protect us from intrusion in our personal information unless the agencies claimed they wouldn't abuse it.
They wrote the fourth amendment because they knew that if the power weren't prohibited, the information would be abused.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Is the new Al Qaeda scare, U.S. still on edge in face of uncovered terror plot, just manipulation to scare people into accepting NSA and other "security" agencies doing anything they like?
They heard it as "uphold and DEFUND the constitution".
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
"careful to limit the use ... for fear they could be misused in ways that violate Americans' privacy rights."
Nonsense. The NSA restrict access for exactly the same reason as access to Ultra was restricted in Wrld War II. "If the enemy [the US public] knew we are reading their signals, they would take steps to prevent us continuing".
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
No, I told you so first! >:-(
In the late 90s, they passed anti-terrorism permissive powers, swearing up and down they would only use it against terrorists. Then proceeded to immediately use it against drugs.
They didn't even bother with the sophistry that drugs are akin to terrorism. They just bald facedly said the law didn't specify terrorists only, tough shit.
Actually, I tell a lie. The Founding Fathers said, "I told you so!" over 200 years ago. They knew history and the value of an absolutist constitution to prevent the inevitable slide to dictatorship. Forbid building the tools of dictatorship to begin with.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
We at the NSA mock the idea of tension and turf-fights with our sister agencies. There is not, and never has been any rivalry between us and the other three letter entities, who by the way can keep their damned dirty ape paws off of our databases.
"Agencies working to curb drug trafficking, cyberattacks, money laundering, counterfeiting and even copyright infringement complain that their attempts to exploit the security agency's vast resources have often been turned down because their own investigations are not considered a high enough priority..."
Excooooose meeeee, but is everyone freaking ignorant about the reason behind the recent firing of the acting head of the IRS?
About eight days or less, prior to his termination, the IRS announced, at their very web site, the largest tax investigation in history to be undertaken by them, in conjunction with the UK and Australia, into the skulduggery at those offshore tax havens (a k a Offshore Financial Centers)!
He wasn't fired for any bullcrap political "non-profits" targeting which they scammed from an old IG internal report from a year or so back!
I'm sure this wasn't just some bullshit to try and make Americans trust the NSA... "ohhh they are at least protecting our data from other agencies that want to farm it". No one is falling for it. Move along...
Would completely avoid the internet now. Even this has been recorded. Next government might not like me saying this and use this to come after me. You just never know what it might be even your political view.
"Agencies working to curb drug trafficking, cyberattacks, money laundering, counterfeiting and even copyright infringement complain that their attempts to exploit the security agency's vast resources have often been turned down because their own investigations are not considered a high enough priority"
...
I would suspect that anyone engaged in any of the above activities don't use the public Intertubes for communication. Besides which, where you do have such activity there's usually some nation state behind it. Yea, really, go look it up
AccountKiller
How can we poison the well? Is there a non-defeatable way to spoof enough false metadata to make the fedgov harvesting a broken exercise?
If they cannot trust their own data theft or "probable cause" can be denied, we might have a short-term win.
Can we DDOS the spies?
--
then I went back to sleep and had the same nightmare again