NSA Spies On International Payments

jones_supa writes "The National Security Agency (NSA) widely monitors international payments, banking and credit card transactions, according to documents seen by SPIEGEL. Information acquired by the former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden, show that the spying is conducted by a branch called Follow the Money (FTM). The collected information then flows into the NSA's own financial databank, called Tracfin, which in 2011 contained 180 million records. Some 84 percent of the data is from credit card transactions."

Comments

American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I do! I find it quite amusing that America was schooled by Putin on exceptionalism.

For a country one who claims to boast its own national exceptionalism and moral superiority. Yet, forgets to mention they are the holders of the largest national debt known to man. If you ask me. I find this fact hardly exceptional or superior ... heck it's not even moral!

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Mitchell314]

Large country with large economy has large national debt. News at 11.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you mean reasonably sized country, over inflated economy, and massive national debt?

Oh wait! you must be American and have no clue what's past your own borders.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-sdO6pwVHQ

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[thaylin]

The 3rd largest country in the world is not a large sized country? I am an American and apparently know what is outside my own boarders better than you do.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Mitchell314]

You are right. I am completely unaware of other examples around the world, like Europe's debt crisis, China gargantuan housing bubble, or Dubai's great model economy of sitting on flare without matching substance. I am also completely ignorant to the fact that the US does *not* have the highest debt to gdp ratio. Good thing too, because in this simple black and white world we live in, if I knew these facts then I must not care about or acknowledge our debt or economy issues. Either I must think everything is fine or dandy, or that our economy is the worst and we're evil for it. Some how.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[king neckbeard]

Relatively speaking, our national debt isn't too bad compared to our GDP. Many European countries have considerably higher ratios. That's not to say it isn't a concern, but there are many in much worse states than we are.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently not. There are 300 million of you and 7 billion people on the planet. So no, you don't. May I suggest that you go back to being home-schooled by granny where you can learn all about creationism and on the weekend you can go to church and dance with snakes in the hope that you'll get closer to god. Because, there is only one fucked up place on this planet that considers that shit the "social norm".

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Cryacin]

May I suggest that you go back to being home-schooled by granny where you can learn all about creationism and on the weekend you can go to church and dance with snakes in the hope that you'll get closer to god. Because, there is only one fucked up place on this planet that considers that shit the "social norm".

Hmmm, sounds more like some parts of India or Africa to me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_worship

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Anonymous Coward]

You're wrong. Because things like the European debt crisis was fed by the GFC which was originally fueled by fuckups caused in the US market.

Don't allude yourself. The US is no shining pillar because any of this. The US is an international loan shark fed by its military muscle. Take Syria for example. Your president has shown weakness to the world for not indiscriminately bombing the shit out of it. As a result the USD has fallen. Now why is that? Is that because you guys know how to run a successful economy and offer true value to the world? Or is it because of the international perception of the US and how it bullies the middle east and other nations?

Unless you show me a clear example of the former. I'll stick to believing the latter thank you very much!

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Salgak1]

You have an unusual view of the states, to consider minority religious practices as the norm.

And I'll note, that WE home-schooled, due to the totally inadequate results of the local elementary and middle schools.

Hell, **I** had a larger and more varied library than the local elementary and middle schools combined.

As for homeschooling results, both daughers passed their GED at 15, the earliest age allowed at the time, and both are 3.5 GPAs or better in college. Both can code, know history (American and World), and speak several languages (English, Spanish, French, German, and smatterings of Russian and Japanese. . . ),

And as for religion: I'm agnostic, wife is a Spiritualist, and the daughters are Pagan and Atheist, respectively.

So, you were saying ???

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[thaylin]

So according to your logic if there was 7m countries on the planet, each having 1000 people average, but one of them having 2000, it would not be a large country because your lose grasp on relative terms only allows you one option? When we deal with relatives there are many different things you can be relative to. Relative to all the other countries on the planet (except India and China) the USoA is a Very large country, with 50% more people than number 4

Also I will stick with my math and science. Also as to your last sentence, there are logs of fucked up places on the earth where that is considered the social norm, most of them are in the middle east, but there are plenty elsewhere.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[ciderbrew]

I'm saying well done.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Anonymous Coward]

So according to your logic if there was 7m countries on the planet, each having 1000 people average, but one of them having 2000, it would not be a large country because your lose grasp on relative terms only allows you one option? When we deal with relatives there are many different things you can be relative to. Relative to all the other countries on the planet (except India and China) the USoA is a Very large country, with 50% more people than number 4

Split hairs in whatever way makes you feel better. Reasonable is not small but saying that you have a large population compared to other nations is bullshit. You even named the two countries that boast countries exponentially larger than the US population wise.

Also I will stick with my math and science. Also as to your last sentence, there are logs of fucked up places on the earth where that is considered the social norm, most of them are in the middle east, but there are plenty elsewhere.

Yes the middle east I was hoping you'd bring that up. You might want to ponder that comparison for a while ...

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Aryden]

Firstly, the dollar, like any other currency, rises and falls for whatever reason the markets see fit.

It's "Don't delude yourself" not "Don't allude yourself" as allude means to indirectly refer to.

Don't delude yourself by thinking that the market crisis of the last 5 years was the U.S. fault in entirety. It was the fault of banks around the world who sucked at the teet of bad debts. Look at what the international banks did to Greece and Spain.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm saying that the fact you felt the need to home school due to the "totally inadequate results of the local elementary and middle schools" says how fucked up your country is.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[thaylin]

Um it is not splitting hairs. the country is large, the only person trying to split hairs is you

So not only do you have a loose grasp on relatives, but exponential as well, or can you tell me which of those 2 countries boast more than 90,000,000,000,000,000? That would be tough since that would be much larger than the population of earth, Or do you mean exponential as in it is larger than that of the US, but does not really reach a square or larger? A more apt statement would be by a factor, of about 4 really.

Yes, what about the middle east statement was factually inaccurate? a lot of those countries require worship of specific religions or you can be killed, or are you disputing that most of the countries that do what you state are in the middle east? Or are you make an idiotic assertion that I dislike the middle east for some reason?

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[king neckbeard]

"Exponentially larger" isn't a sensible phrase. What you would probably look for here would generally be 'order(s) of magnitude' larger. However, the largest country is China, with ~1.25 billion, which is not even a single order of magnitude larger than the US and it's ~300 Million.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[thaylin]

Wait, do you want us to show our military muscle or not? Most countries including our own dont like war.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Anonymous Coward]

So you've come on to /. to discuss violations of the US constitution enacted by the NSA, which is really at the end of the day, a government agency. And you're leaning on figures released by a government agency as your point to a discussion?

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[moteyalpha]

From a technical standpoint this is interesting and if what someone else said is true that serial numbers of bills are tracked going out and in the bank it is a type of graph. Since I was recently reviewing courses at MIT on algorithms and matrix math and neural networks it clicked.
It is another point of association that allows a person to be connected to others. I don't know about them, but it would seem that with the right memory and compute power it would be possible to model the entire society like weather. It would be a simpler task than weather as it is very granular. I could even imagine some type of Navier Stokes / finite element analysis that would tell you what might happen tomorrow.
It is only worrisome if the people who do it are crooked and politicians are known for their honesty and commitment to people's interest above all possibility of personal gain. Just look at , um, okay I will think of an example, give me a minute.
And that made me think of something that would be excluded and that seems wrong. If I am tracking money and I find that a large amount of money flows from company "A" through a dozen twisty little passages and ends up in a politicians pocket and that next day they vote to give them a specific contract, that would be an indicator of graft and I would bet that it would be excluded as a matter of course as those same people decide how much money the NSA will get to play with. Sounds like a great tool. Senator, we need another trillion, and by the way, nobody will ever pick up on how you paid for your secretary's abortion, who really owns her condo or where she bought that whip, without the type of technology we have.
What are the odds that the amount of money flowing from the banks to congress would be made public. I did a quick Markov matrix of it and it came up with NaN. Who is Nan? Perhaps it is too small and fails, because it couldn't be too big and fail.

Large country with large economy has large national debt. News at 11.

My neighbor is up to his knees in debt, and thus it is okay for me to do the same. I am sure there is something about "if your friends jump off a cliff", that my mother used to say, but I don't recall.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Anonymous Coward]

the market crisis of the last 5 years was the U.S. fault in entirety. It was the fault of banks around the world who sucked at the teet of bad debts. Look at what the international banks did to Greece and Spain.

Please read the following Wikipedia articles ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Banking_Facility
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehman_Brothers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehman_Brothers#Collapse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_International_Group#Financial_crisis

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Mitchell314]

You replied to the wrong person.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[thaylin]

So a local issue, as in local elementary and middle school, shows how fucked up the entire country is? Do you even understand logic?

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Joce640k]

.... the totally inadequate results of the local elementary and middle schools.

So, you were saying ???

I was think you agree with us, then: The social norms place the USA in the middle of the list (not near the top as most of the residents like to believe).

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Anonymous Coward]

Just read the GP's post in the voice of The Girl You Wish You Hadn't Started A Conversation With At A Party.

"Don't allude yourself, Seth!"

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[AJH16]

Lets see... 7 billion people / 206 countries is an average of 33 million people per country, so YES, 300+ million people is in fact a large country. Nobody said we are a majority of the worlds population, just a large country. You should perhaps work on your basic math skills and reading comprehension prior to speaking in public.

Re: American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to say tho, but the US debt is an issue cause the US GDP is dominated by high income entities, rather than the middle class. As such there's no tax-able base to repay.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[moteyalpha]

You replied to the wrong person.

No, I am pretty sure this is the right windmill and it was tilting at me.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Anonymous Coward]

[Citation Needed] So far, the US debt, just like the number of people in jail per capita are still #1 by a factor of 10. Don't forget health care costs per capita too.

Bonus points if one can spell "flair" properly.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Anonymous Coward]

Has little to do with logic, more to do with statistics. Maybe the local elementary school is a good statistical predictor for the country as a whole. Thus it predicts the fucked upness.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[thaylin]

No, the US debt is not, the UK has more than half the debt the US has. In fact to get to factor of 10 we would have to go all the way doen to number 11, as Luxembourg, Spain, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Japan, Germany, France, and the UK all are within that factor.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[shentino]

Freedom of the press to expose this crap means little if the corporate overlords owning the media get to play the very same role we the people fear the government itself taking.

Whether it's from the government or the corporate elite, censorship is censorship.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[shentino]

Just like an overcooked steak.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[thaylin]

My stats teacher would fail me for even asserting such nonsense. with over 67000 elementary schools in the US 1 school by itself would be the worst kind of sample used for a statistical analysis. Even still your arguments problem has everything to do with logic. You made the claim that something messed up locally was indicative of a national issue , without any supporting base for such an argument.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Mitchell314]

You can google debt gdp, and it will usually be in the top results. But put together, here you go: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703789104576272891515344726.html . As you can easily see, we *are* not #1. Up there, yes, but still close to much of the western world. We have a very big economy compared to the average country. Obviously our raw national debt is going to be higher. Basic math. It's like complaining that your friend takes out a bigger loan than you, but you neglect to mention that he also has a bigger salary. Now if said friend takes on a bigger loan relative to his salary than you, then that's another story.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Mitchell314]

Also, I used flare correctly.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[noh8rz10]

Come on people, don't fall for NSA shills who try to derail the conversation. They don't want us to talk about their domestic and international spying. Actually, before this story even broke I had resolved to pay with cash as much as possible. I'm thinking of getting one of those visa prepaid cards and occasionally putting $$$ on it (using cash, of course). It's one of the few privacy things I can do.

What sucks major donkey balls is my medical records are now electronic, which means they're now in nsa's HealthInt db, I can only presume.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[ciderbrew]

You don't cook steak. You show it a candle and listen for the MOOOOO.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[thaylin]

if it was "It was the fault of banks around the world who sucked at the teet of bad debts" than you cannot also make the claim that it was the US' fault in entirely, since those 2 statements would be contradicting.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Salgak1]

And, in reality, it was due to several rather f-ed up teachers who couldn't be fired due to union rules.

Example: 8th Grade Earth Science: Homework for one entire week: a word-search puzzle.

Example: 2nd Grade Science: Animal-rights indoctrination with "guest speakers" from PETA. No countering opinions,

That was ONE week. Another was an English teacher who told my oldest that "Tom Sawyer" was an inappropriate choice for a book report, said book report assignment was "Write a book report on a classic piece of American Literature". When I pressed for examples of "appropriate" books, none were given, but my suggested alternatives of "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" and "The Wizard of Oz" were "too anglo-centric". . . /boggle.

About three months of similar experiences, and we decided we could do better ourselves. I cannot speak for others, just relating why WE did it. I will note that MOST of the parents in the local homeschooling group were NOT Evangelical Christians, but generally college-educated techies and professionals. Your mileage may, of course, vary. . .

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[jalopezp]

Yeah, come on. Look at some real stats. The US is solidly mid-table of the OECD in education rankings.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[mcgrew]

Don't allude yourself.

Did you mean "don't indirectly suggest or call attention to yourself" or did your spell checker incorrectly "repair" a misspelling of "delude"?

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[funkify]

Also, I used flare correctly.

... Dubai's great model economy of sitting on flare without matching substance ...

Uh, no. The word you were looking for is FLAIR.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Anonymous Coward]

You really didn't use "flare" correctly. Next time you make a special post about how you have used language correctly, consider checking your facts on Google first.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[ColdWetDog]

And this is important, how? Are you harboring thoughts of overthrowing the regime?

While I think the NSA has totally blown it's wad and the current effort at security-through-haystack-searching will turn out to be a failure on multiple levels, being part of the statistical noise is likely the best way of being ignored. Jumping up and doing something different is likely to get the magnetometer ramped up on your little spot of Paradise.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[ColdWetDog]

Well, sucks to be you then.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the first wiki article and continue to read the lunatic levels of logic portrayed in subsequent paragraphs within that article.

The US is the lender for the rest of the world (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVO39NZgAEU please ignore the crazy doomsday stuff look at the content rather). Who cares if you put the words "international" in front of the word "bank".

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Mitchell314]

I checked the bloody dictionary, it's even used similarly in one of the bloody examples. Stop being pedantic when you're factually wrong.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[phantomfive]

And that made me think of something that would be excluded and that seems wrong. If I am tracking money and I find that a large amount of money flows from company "A" through a dozen twisty little passages and ends up in a politicians pocket and that next day they vote to give them a specific contract, that would be an indicator of graft

Modern politicians are sneakier than that, it's hard to find direct examples of deposits from donors. Usually you will have something more subtle, like giving them insider information so they can trade on the stock market.

Another example is Rick Perry, who somehow managed to know exactly where Dell wanted to buy property next, and bought it before Dell could and sold it to them at a markup.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[mrchaotica]

In Soviet Russia, windmills tilt at you?

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Anonymous Coward]

Basic math. It's like complaining that your friend takes out a bigger loan than you, but you neglect to mention that he also has a bigger salary.

No it's not basic math. It's deficit economy spending on an over inflated fiat currency system. It doesn't work. It never has worked historically and we are headed for the same repetitive bullshit because of idiot/delusional thinkers working on the same vein of semantics which have dreamed up this fantastic kaizen system which (like many) you've bought into.

Here is a little graph to wrap your head around.

http://thumbnails.visually.netdna-cdn.com/purchasing-power-of-the-us-dollar-1913-to-2013_517962b78ea3c.jpg

Your debt has a little thing called interest which augments the overall value and preserves it's debasement. Your income DOES NOT you must rely on the things like CPI to keep your overall value on par with the debasement of the value of the dollar.

You do remember what a bank note actually means don't you? It's supposed to represent an IOU. Now it represents an IOU with a "shelf life" of value.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[PRMan]

Yeah. Funny that this guy is saying Americans can't do math or geography when he can't even figure out what the 3rd largest country in the world is...

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[PRMan]

Maybe he should have home schooled. He might have gotten a better education. And with the "loving others" message taught by Evangelical Christianity, he might have presented it in a nicer way as well.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[PRMan]

Yes. The European debt crisis is CLEARLY more related to the USA than to Greece, Spain and Cyprus... :rolleyes:

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[morgauxo]

I don't believe that one bad school district can entirely explain why you homeschooled your children. I'm not arguing with your assesment of your local school, nor am I putting down your abilities to teach your kids yourself. If what you say is true you did an excelent job! However, educating your children must have been years of hard work. Surely it would be easier to move to a different district! Even if you or your spouse had the perfect job and wouldn't leave it, lot's of people commute to work.

I suspect you must have also enjoyed it and/or the time with them and/or wanted more control over what your children are taught and/or some other combination of reasons.

Good for you!

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[bdwebb]

I like this:

...please ignore the crazy doomsday stuff look at the content rather

Ignore all the crazy stuff that is irrational and doesn't make any sense and this video tells the truth!! Pfft.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[slash.jit]

Speaking of India, NSA must be going crazy with transactions when Indian Rupee weakens.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[morgauxo]

Are you kidding, what failure?

No doubt it has made a lot of politically well connected contractors a lot of money. Even if it ended today (fat chance) the money is never going back.

Meanwhile, having access to everybody's personal lives has made a lot of penile size challenged people at the NSA feel much bigger and more powerful.

The only failure is in the other government organizations that don't get to control their own (obviously compensating for something) domestic peeping tom programs and have to kiss up to the NSA to get their fix.

Oh.. you thought this BS was ever actually about security... ha ha

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[morgauxo]

Whose the bigger fool, the fool or the fool that follows?

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[bdwebb]

or Dubai's great model economy of sitting on flare without matching substance.

No. You did not use the word correctly. Again, the word you were looking for was FLAIR. If you meant to say that Dubai's great model economy would be a "flare-up", you would have been correct. You said that Dubai's model economy sits upon its' flare value without an equivalent amount of substance...read below since your dictionary is apparently broken.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/flare
flare
noun \fler\
: a light that shines brightly and briefly
: a very bright light that is used to give a signal, to light up something, or to attract attention; also : a device that produces such a light
: a sudden expression of anger

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/flair
flair
noun \fler\
: a natural ability to do something
: an unusual and appealing quality or style

You were looking for the second version of flair - Dubai's economic model relies on its unusual/appealing quality/style instead of the actual substance behind it.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless they're sitting with a torch up their ass (either US or UK definition works for this, though in the UK it'd be up their arse) or their pants are splitting open (stretching it), they are not "sitting on flare". The transitive verb form has a definition that could be related, but I'm pretty sure you can't sit on it.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[morgauxo]

What, if my friend takes out a bigger loan then I do get to complain about it? Actually, I think that either way it is none of my F#$%ing business!

Feel free to insert a uck or an app in there as your own culture prefers. See, Americans aren't all ignorant of the rest of the world!

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[AJH16]

I would point out that if Evangelical Christians are simply teaching a message of "loving others" they are missing the most important commandment that preceded it to love God, but yes, a part of a valid Christian world view should be loving others and seeing that they have no more issues than we do.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[cbiltcliffe]

the perfect job and wouldn't leave it, lot's of people commute to work.

Maybe the next school district over taught punctuation like that....

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[cbiltcliffe]

GP didn't say that it was the US' fault entirely. You cut out his "Don't delude yourself by thinking that.." at the beginning of the sentence, which turned the meaning of the sentence into the opposite of what was originally posted.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm alluding to the fact that this AC is ignorant eurotrash. Oh, no, I'm not... I'm stating it explicitly.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Salgak1]

Actually, we started THINKING about it when we started asking the girls what they learned today, and got replies of "Nothing much". Investigating, we found that it pretty much was the case: about half the teachers were just drilling kids on the answers to standardized tests.

We complained. We got nowhere. About that time, being a "Web Designer" started to go away, and the wife decided to work from home, doing free-lance computer graphics. 3 or so months into that, we talked about maybe home-schooling on tech, as the schools weren't teaching it. (BTW, Hacker High School and Python for Kids FTW. . . . )

Full-time home-schooling started several months after that. . . .

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Mitchell314]

Looks like somebody's upset about failing that basic math class . . .

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Mitchell314]

It was just an analogy. Calm down.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Mitchell314]

I'm not going to be distracted by derailing trolls anymore. Don't like my word usage? Tough.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Anonymous Coward]

My favorites were coloring leafs and molecules in highschool science.

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXlxBeAvsB8 feel better now?

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Anonymous Coward]

Or

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njW-6rUdCHE

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[rastos1]

Can you provide a counterexample?

Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority

[Aryden]

I didn't say the U.S wasn't at fault, I said that the entire banking industry throughout Europe and the Americas was as fault.

Remember that blow up doll in discrete package?

[Anonymous Coward]

NSA knows what you are up to with your credit card

Re:Remember that blow up doll in discrete package?

[mcgrew]

Of course they do, I'm sure they did even before the internet.

Re:Remember that blow up doll in discrete package?

[AmiMoJo]

Since PayPal transactions don't show the item, only the seller and maybe "eBay", I think it's probably safe to assume that the NSA has a server in their datacentre.

Re:Remember that blow up doll in discrete package?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are assuming that no company gets hassled to open up that kind of data. You would be amazed at the "Justice" systems... or "Police Investigation" systems each company is obliged to comply.

Re:Remember that blow up doll in discrete package?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a tiny fraction of total number of transactions.

Given that 10000 credit card transaction occur every second and that the NSA only has 180 Million records (of which only 84% are credit cards, or 151 Million) after 5+ years?... they only have 15,120 seconds of data or about 4.2 hours. Basically the tiny size of their data confirms that they only have data on specific people.

The US alone has over 22 Billion credit card transactions a year.

Re:Remember that blow up doll in discrete package?

[xclr8r]

They are going to be sorely nonplussed when they find out my payments to a Reykjavik account have nothing to do with wiki-leaks but instead deal with spreadsheets in space (aka Eve Online)

Pay cash !!!!

[Chatterton]

And my wife ask me why I don't like to pay with any plastic cards (credit and/or debit)... I always pay cash whenever i can. Even if all my transactions are legal, some could be frowned upon but not illegal (not yet), I don't like my bank or any other private corporation to know what I do and what i like.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Cash is fully tracked. When you get bills from an ATM, the serial numbers are noted. When it arrives back at a bank, the serial numbers are noted and the account correlated. So they know where you get your cash, and where you spend it.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

This isnt the case in the UK (yet..)

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

So they know where you get your cash, and where you spend it.

does not follow from

When you get bills from an ATM, the serial numbers are noted. When it arrives back at a bank, the serial numbers are noted and the account correlated.

How do they know where you get your cash? How do they know where you spend it? Withdraw -> transact -> deposit is the ONLY case where you can trace cash in such a manner, but there's no way of knowing when that is the case, and most of the time it isn't the case at all.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[thaylin]

so then I go to the cash only place and buy something, they take the money and buy something, the person they bought from buys something, all without hitting a bank. How would they correlate all those hops?

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The cash that I spend at the grocery store might end up at the bank. It also might stay in the till to be handed out as change for the next cash paying or cash back wanting customer.

The cash that I spend at my dealer's place, my bookie's place, my local brothel, and favorite speakeasy never make it to the bank.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[RotateLeftByte]

How to you reconcile the many, many intermediate transactions that one banknote could go through between its exit from a bank/atm and its re-entry once more?

You can't. Pure and simple.

Are you saying that if I pay in $50.00 at a bank the teller scans each note so that the S/N is read before the next person in line can receive any of the notes I deposited?

One can't wonder if you have been drinking a little too much of the conspiracy theory cool-aid over the weekend.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[Sique]

As soon as you get change, this tracking is void. Normal cash registers at supermarkets don't register the serial numbers and don't connect them to accounts.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[Cryacin]

You know the little eye on the pyramid? It's really a tiny camera to spy who's getting paid with that dollar bill. Hey, man, just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean no-one following you!

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you get cash from an ATM? People pay me in cash or if it's a check, I charge more to cover the processing fee at a checking cashing place, which incidentally doesn't require identification.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[nedlohs]

Aside from the obvious point that when I pay for something with cash the entity I paid doesn't instantly return it to the bank. In fact when I bought an ice cream yesterday they gave the next guy in line the note I used to pay them amongst his change.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem is that the government has people following you any watching what you're buying. Either that or you're a tinfoil hat wearing loon. My money is on the latter.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[ozbon]

They don't/can't.

However, this means potentially you'd be linked with what the last purchase was before the cash was returned "to the system". Which could be interesting...

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Astigmatism. You haz it.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[Charliemopps]

The patriot act made buying anything overseas without a credit card that's registered in your name very difficult. Yes, you can mail cash in an envelope but our crooked postal workers often just steal it. The best defense against this sort of thing is: Vote for someone that's not in the D/R parties. Anyone... I don't care if you vote for the fucking Nazis just get the current Reich out of office asap. There are plenty of alternative parties out there... Libertarian, Green, even the communist party. I'd rather not be governed by most of them but if we can get enough disagreement into congress things may change. It's basically our only hope short of an insurrection and I'm personally moving to Canada if that happens.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

'twas a Pratchett reference, fool

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[i kan reed]

Bayesian analysis of ATMs out versus store register in gives a pretty good model. They don't need to know for sure; they just need a good guess.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[mcgrew]

I've said for a long time that if you're liberal you should vote Green, if you're conservative vote Libertarian. Both are on enough ballots to get elected (but the Ds and Rs are financed by corporations, who own the mass media).

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[mcgrew]

That makes no sense, you can't trace cash. When I hand you a twenty that twenty has no information about me whatever, nor does it have information on who handed it to me.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[meta-monkey]

True. Correlation does not mean causation, but it does mean you're gonna get spied on.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[return 42]

Consider: in the US, you generally get only $20 bills from the ATM. You go and spend these with retailers who usually get nothing larger than $20 bills. The $20 bill you spent thus is not recycled as change, and it gets deposited at the end of the day. That makes a nice short loop that's easy to analyze.

So if you want to buy something and not make it too easy to track the bills, use denominations under $20.

Now, as for things like making a drug buy, where you really wouldn't want the gov't to track it, that's probably less of a problem because those people tend not to use banks so much...

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Only small bills are given out as change to other customers. If you give the cashier a $20 or higher, odds are good that it's staying in the register until it gets to the cash deposit box of the bank that the store uses. Odds go up for $50s, and of course $100s are never returned as change.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[ColdWetDog]

Man, that's got to be the most boring job on the planet. Watching the insides of butt cheeks for weeks until you open the wallet, stuff the bill in the pop machine and then watching the inside of the machine for another week. Maybe a tiny glimpse of the hot bank teller for a sec until - back in the box.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[myowntrueself]

That makes no sense, you can't trace cash. When I hand you a twenty that twenty has no information about me whatever, nor does it have information on who handed it to me.

Probably got some of your DNA on it. Just sayin'

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[bill_mcgonigle]

Anyone... I don't care if you vote for the fucking Nazis just get the current Reich out of office asap.

Don't waste your time until Duverger's Law is repealed. Since it's math, it's unlikely.

If you want to see change, push for Approval Voting at your local/State level.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[phantomfive]

Elliot Spitzer was caught by his unusual cash withdrawals, so even that won't save you. It might even draw more attention to you.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[tlhIngan]

The patriot act made buying anything overseas without a credit card that's registered in your name very difficult. Yes, you can mail cash in an envelope but our crooked postal workers often just steal it.

That has always been the case - pre 9/11 or post.

It's why credit cards, despite being so "nasty" are generally popular because they make it EASY.

Sending cash overseas has always been iffy - hell, sending cash in general has been iffy. If not postal workers (who may need to examine envelope contents if it gets ripped up by the machines to see if there's an address), then the recipient may just pocket the cash.

Another way is a cheque, which was the most common way to send money through the mail, but in the internet age waiting 10=12 days for it to clear is a bore.

There are also money orders and such, but they generally involve lining up at the bank or post office to obtain, but they clear instantly. Or Western Union.

but none beat the speed and convenience of credit - just a few numbers gets payment sent instantaneously. It's also why Paypal grew to where it is today - because sending random joes money is a lot easier with credit cards.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Then bitcoins came along and made international payments secure and easy again, and there was much rejoicing.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[mcgrew]

Along with a million other people whose hands it passed through.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[davester666]

They trace it by analyzing the different types of cocaine to figure out who had each bill.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[wmac1]

- Cash may change several hands before returning to ATM.
- You may receive some of that cash from someone and not from ATM.
- The list of the things you obtained cannot easily be tracked back to you.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[Bender Unit 22]

And a 90% of cocaine traces.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, I'm a libertarian and I still vote Green. At this point things have gotten so bad that I'll settle for "not evil/corrupt" even if their economic policies are inefficient. Who cares about death taxes while they're spying on all of us?

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't waste your time until Duverger's Law is repealed. Since it's math, it's unlikely.

If you want to see change, push for Approval Voting at your local/State level.K

You're laboring under a false assumption.

When an (R) loses - or almost loses - there are two thoughts that might cross his mind

1) if only I had more (D) votes!
2) if only I had more (L) votes!

We want him wishing for more (L) votes, not (D)/one-party votes.

Likewise when a (D) loses - or almost loses. You want him to think either

1) if only I had more (R) votes!
2) if only I had more (G) votes!

The principle is to push (R) to (L) and (D) to (G). And hopefully (L) & (G) will at least agree to not waste money (L) or oil (G) on these neverending foreign wars.

Winning may be the point of the person running, but as a voter, it is not their interests which concern me. Why you would presuppose the opposite....

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[Darinbob]

To be honest here, I thought they had been monitoring all foriegn transactions for decades, it's essential as part of monitoring the flow of US dollars to track money laundering and tax evasion (corporate tax evasion too). And using a credit card without your own name has always been a difficult option. Banking checks have been used in the past but people today are too cool and hip for these low tech solutions and want to do all purchasing online instead.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[Ralph Wiggam]

I like the Green Party's platform. I hate the Green Party's nominees.

I lived in Atlanta when Cynthia McKinney was my Representative. She was an embarrassment to Liberals everywhere.

The last elected office Jill Stein held was on the Lexington, MA Town Meeting Board in 2008. She's done very little since besides losing elections. I get being an "outsider". But she's woefully unqualified to be President.

Voting for someone just because they *don't* have a D or R next to their name is just as stupid as voting for someone because they do.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[GodfatherofSoul]

The problem is both the Green and Libertarian parties ignore practical needs to compromise on strict ideology. And, those compromises are where corruption creep in.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[gregor-e]

How long do you suppose it will be before the serial number of currency is bar-coded and scanned for every transaction? Faster to just wave the cash over the POS laser than it is to key in the amount, and, combined with ATM withdrawal records, it helps close the gap of knowing your customer when they unhelpfully pay in cash without using a store loyalty card. On the other hand, they keep predicting that biometrics will soon be good enough that we won't need cash or credit cards - just load up the cart and walk out the door and your purchases will automatically be debited from your bank account.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[swillden]

The problem is both the Green and Libertarian parties ignore practical needs to compromise on strict ideology. And, those compromises are where corruption creep in.

It's not like enough of them are going to get into office to be able to implement their policies. The point isn't to put a, say, Libertarian government in place, the point is to make the Ds and Rs realize that they've got to change.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[swillden]

If adherents of both parties defected to Green/Libertarian in roughly equal numbers, Duverger's law would be irrelevant. Also, the law really only impacts individual races. There's plenty of room in a representational government to, say, hand a few Democrat seats over to Greens and a few Republican seats over to Libertarians. It doesn't work with the office of the president, but that's hardly all that matters.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[antdude]

Cash can still be traced. It is just a lot harder.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

My dentist thinks this is suspicious. Last time I paid cash they made copies of the front side.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[L4t3r4lu5]

I don't care if you vote for the fucking Nazis just get the current Reich out of office asap.

You'll regret that opinion if the Nazis get into power.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[mcgrew]

A vote for one of them is a vote for "none of the above". If you stay home because all of the candidates suck you're counted as being OK with the status quo.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[mcgrew]

It's a vote for "none of the above." You don't vote for them expecting them to actually win. It's a protest.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[kmoser]

Paying in cash is considered more suspicious than paying with plastic, precisely because cash is not (easily) traceable. Good luck removing your image from security camera footage.

Re:Pay cash !!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not 'Beyond Reasonable Doubt' then. Oh wait, the agencies ending in 'A' don't need any evidence to lock you up for a very long time now do they?

News?

[zeronitro]

Is it really news that a spy agency is spying? "oh look at them doing their job!"

Re:News?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it really news that a spy agency is spying? "oh look at them doing their job!"

"oh look at them shitting on the US Constitution." FTFY

Re:News?

[buck-yar]

Yeah, look how they caught the boston bomber before he struck, after the KGB told us he was a danger.

Re:News?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but it is certainly 'news' to the general public that the scope of spying has increased to include the common man.

Re:News?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you of the opinion that the recent revelations of NSA activities have not uncovered any activities that were illegal, arguably illegal or at the very least immoral or unethical?

Stasi spied as well. They did what they were charged to do by the government. Are you arguing that NSA and Stasi are morally equivalent agencies engaging in unproblematic behavior. If not, why not? Is it the intent or suspected intent of the agencies you have an issue with?

Re:News?

[Aerokii]

For once I actually sort of agree here. This one's something they SHOULD be monitoring and can legally do so since it's international. If it comes out later that they monitor non-international usage as well... hm. Well, then we've got a problem. For now though this is just business as usual.

Not to say I really like it or approve. I'm still upset about the whole metadata thing to be honest.

Re:News?

[darrellg1]

This isn't them "doing their job". It's an extension of "anything you say can and will be used against you" to include all data. The giant information grab is going to start being used against innocent citizens. Remember, Googling certain items results in a visit from the FBI.

Re:News?

[Sique]

This one's something they SHOULD be monitoring and can legally do so since it's international.

This might be true according to U.S. law, but for instance not according to European law. In Europe, the NSA is still a law breaker. But on the other hand, most European secret services seem to be complicit with the NSA (which makes them law breakers too).

Re:News?

[Big Hairy Ian]

Anybody who's even remotely surprised at this is a gullible fucktard!! Aside from the fact that "Don't use your credit cards the Gubment can trace them" has been the cornerstone cliché of every Hollywood spy thriller for nearly twenty years!

Re:News?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please show us where in the constitution it's forbidden to monitor international monetary transactions.

No seriously, I'll wait.

Re:News?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly my reaction. In fact, none of the revelations about the NSA have been especially surprising to me, except that their own security was weak enough to let a contractor like Snowden walk off with top secret documents.

This is supposed to be a tech site.

Re:News?

[Anonymous Coward]

It probably went contrary to their diversity and sensitivity training.

Re:News?

[mcgrew]

Googling certain items results in a visit from the FBI.

The one time I read of that happening it was on a work computer, the IT staff saw it and called the FBI. He googled for a backpack for hiking, his wife googled for a pressure cooker for cooking, and as it was right after the Boston bombing. It wasn't the NSA, it was his employer spying on him.

Re:News?

[meta-monkey]

If you're talking about the family that got visited as reported on /. like 2 months ago, they were reported as 'suspicious' by an employer. Weird as it was, this wasn't a case of gub'ment spying, but a valid response to a tip from a citizen.

Re:News?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is immoral not to grant rights to the rest of the people of the world that you grant yourself.

Morals is what guides the law. Looking at the law for morality is backwards.

Re:News?

[Anonymous Coward]

yup, all perfectly legal. nothing to see here. Don't mind that man watching your every move, 24/7. He'll only use the things he sees if he thinks you're doing something wrong.

Re:News?

[Error27]

That same logic could be applied to anything. "You were mugged on the way to work? That's what muggers do. Boring."

This is interesting because it shows:
1) How the internet changes spy craft.
2) How dangerous it is to aggregate data.

It raises interesting questions:
1) Have other countries infiltrated VISA as well?
2) Has VISA been infiltrated by organized crime as well? Would that be profitable?
3) What personal information is there?
4) Has the private data been used for black mail people in interesting ways?

This revalation requires some actions in response:
1) VISA can't just allow their private data to leak.
2) Other countries where this is illegal might consider a response.
3) The IT industry must take more action to prevent this kind of attack.

There are also legal issues:
1) If this hurts VISA, then can the NSA be sued for the loss in business?

The timeline from now looks like:
1) Next six months: More NSA activity will be uncovered. NSA front companies will be exposed. Techniques will be analyzed.
2) Next few years: Changes to the IT industry such as updated encryption. Finding fixes/replacement for SSL since it has failed completely.
3) Next decade: Countries and corporations will have to update their IT budgets and what tech they buy.

This assumes that Snowden does not leak the 400Gb of data in his insurance file. If that happens then much of the web will have to be shut down for a couple weeks. The stock market will collapse. Government officials in many countries will have to step down as we learn more about their private life.

Re:News?

[IamTheRealMike]

You think they don't monitor US transactions too? What about transactions that have one end in the USA? Or which are executed by banks which are active in the USA but technically headquartered in London? What about the data feeds they get from GCHQ?

Anyway, the constitution doesn't mention any such thing because it was inconceivable back then. There is plenty of language in the constitution that states the government should get a warrant for things that are like financial transaction data:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized

Note "the people". Not "US citizens" or "US persons" or "people who are geographically within the USA at the time a paper is made" but "the people". The constitution uses that language quite carefully because the authors were highly familiar with the ways governments wriggle out of rules using artificial reclassifications or redefinitions of common concepts.

Anyway, who cares? Everyone outside the USA doesn't want the NSA to watch their financial transactions, or any other foreign intelligence agency. Saying it's allowed by the law just tells everyone else that the law is inadequate. And yes that applies to the UK and other places that have industrial-scale programs that spy on ordinary citizens of other countries.

Re:News?

[return 42]

True. This is actually one of the more legitimate things the feds are doing. It has a clear connection to anti-terrorism efforts, and I really don't think people who are using banks to transfer money have much expectation of privacy, as they do when talking on the phone, emailing, etc.

Re:News?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

The above is the 4th amendment to the US constitution, on which these arguments are based. It is, of course, open to interpretation and SCOTUS has basically found that it doesn't apply at the border, which is essentially a civil-rights-free zone.

Re:News?

[return 42]

And which of those would cover sending money overseas? If they were grabbing your own books, that would be your papers and effects, but that's not what they're doing.

If a US citizen was suspected of espionage during the War of 1812, and part of the evidence was that he had been receiving money from the UK, do you think SCOTUS would have ruled that evidence inadmissible? I don't think so.

Re:News?

[Anonymous Coward]

You think they don't monitor US transactions too?

Yes, because they have lawyers who get on their ass if they ever get close to monitoring US residents without a warrant. In fact, that is the chief revelation of the Snowden documents: the lawyers are all over this situation, they have been for years, and there's really not much to worry about. Pay closer attention and you'll see how many of these Snowden documents about illegal NSA activity are the records of the NSA lawyers catching and stopping the illegal activity.

For comparison with the pre-Snowden past, here is what we used to know about NSA abuses:

* The NSA was founded to conduct illegal activities. That is why they were a covert organization whose existence was not recognized.
* The Echelon and Five Eyes systems allowed allied countries to spy on each other and trade intelligence to get around laws against domestic espionage.
* The NSA was caught tapping MAE-WEST and recording everything.

Now from the Snowden documents, we have learned:

* The lawyers put a stop to all this shit years ago and are actively squashing bad activity as it comes up.
* The NSA has a glorified RSS reader called PRISM for collecting lawfully obtained data from multiple REST sources.

We also have have this strange fear and hate campaign against the NSA where people make the Snowden documents out to be more than they are, they make PRISM out to be something more than it is, and they cite their own lack of evidence of nefarious activity as proof that the NSA must be doing something evil because it does secret things that they don't know about, and these are the posts that get +5 insightful. All of the coordinated lying and FUD raises the question of what the hell is really going on.

Re:News?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please show us where in the constitution it's forbidden to monitor international monetary transactions.

The constitution doesn't work like that. You need to point out where in the constitution the federal government is granted the power to do this.

Re:News?

[Aerokii]

You raise a good point, of course- I suppose it depends on how they're obtaining the data and if it's being tracked from within the USA (since I imagine they're (IDEALLY) only tracking transactions between the USA and other nations, rather than (sadly, likely) transactions between completely separate nations with no US party involved.

If I've misunderstood and they're tracking, say, transactions between the UK and Germany, then yes, everything about this is illegal and they should feel bad.

Re:News?

[X.25]

Is it really news that a spy agency is spying? "oh look at them doing their job!"

It probably wouldn't be news, if NSA was not doing (to countries all over the world) what US governments itself considers "acts of war".

Besides breaking all known computer/hacking laws, NSA and US government have also made amazing breakthrough in means of spreading *corruption* through all spheres of society.

And yet, they somehow dare show up in front of reporters and claim some moral high ground.

Re:News?

[Anonymous Coward]

They mentioned that the TAO (Tailored Access Office, i.e. the guys who break into servers and networks to spy and/or sabotage) is heavily involved with this meaning that their access into financial networks is itself a crime.

The access to transaction data, were it done through court order, may not be a crime itself, although that could be debated.

Re:News?

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't the NSA, it was his employer spying on him.

Oh, I am sure NSA was also spying on him. NSA just doesn't respond to anything, their job is simply to collect data.

Re:News?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the rest of us will just wait for you to grow a brain.

Re:News?

[Anonymous Coward]

The US Constitution says "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized" 4th Amendment.

What about being secure in your effects is not obvious here?! It didn't say citizens it said people.

Does your car become property of the dealer because you leave it for service at the dealer?
NO!
Does your property stop being yours because it is not in your house physically?
NO1
Then Shut this crap up. You have been told off!

Re:News?

[msc.buff]

If you want to interpret the Constitution as a document/contract which has to spell out everything the Government CAN'T do then you have a serious problem...

The biggest flaw with the Constitution is that it spelled out CAN as well as CAN'T and after 200+ years of lawyers arguing one way and then another it is just about useless now. You don't take your car in for service and tell the mechanic what they CAN'T do just like you don't tell your dentist what she CAN'T do. You tell him to change your oil and rotate your tires...you tell her to just clean your teeth.

Anything beyond the enumerated powers spelled out in black and white is against the Constitution, illegal, and needs to stop.

Re:News?

[Anonymous Coward]

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

---4th Amendment to the US Constitution.

Re:News?

[Ralph Wiggam]

Pay closer attention and you'll see how many of these Snowden documents about illegal NSA activity are the records of the NSA lawyers catching and stopping the illegal activity

Your basic knowledge of the situation combined with simple logic has no place here.

Re:News?

[Anonymous Coward]

[T]he ways governments wriggle out of rules using artificial reclassifications or redefinitions of common concepts.

Ah yes, like enemy combatants.

Re:News?

[cbiltcliffe]

Googling certain items results in a visit from the FBI.

The one time I read of that happening it was on a work computer, the IT staff saw it and called the FBI. He googled for a backpack for hiking, his wife googled for a pressure cooker for cooking, and as it was right after the Boston bombing. It wasn't the NSA, it was his employer spying on him.

That doesn't seem likely to me. It would mean that the man and his wife both worked at the same location, and probably would have had to have used the same computer. After all, it's unlikely that the IT dept would be cross referencing searches between various employees based on their relationship with each other.

"Hey! This guy Googled for backpacks! Let's go see what his wife has been searching for!"

Sounds more like: We, the NSA, were monitoring this guy, but we don't want anybody to know, so lets make up some shit about his employer's IT dept....

Re:News?

[Ralph Wiggam]

The FBI interviewed that guy and found no connections to extremist groups. He didn't use any electronic communications to plan the attack.

Please tell what the NSA or FBI should have done to prevent that bombing.

Re:News?

[AlphaWoIf_HK]

You don't need to be a cheerleader for the government, you know. It's perfectly possible to have a mind of your own.

I'd love to see the NSA completely destroyed.

Re:News?

[Darinbob]

All monetary transactions are being monitored, by everyone. It's part of keeping tracks on organized crime, drug cartels, tax evasion, and so forth. Wtihout this then you wouldn't have the "follow the money" phrase from "All the President's Men" anymore.

This is one of the big pushes for using less cash in the economy, as well as eliminating the larger denominations of bills. And we're actually a lot better as far as a cashless economy goes, compared to other countries where just about all transactions can be monitored. Ie, some places in Europe you can't even pay for mass transit with cash.

But none of this is new. All of this started before most of us were born, so not sure why this is such a big surprise today.

Re:News?

[swillden]

Go look up the story rather than randomly guessing.

The fact is that his wife's searches had nothing to do with it, and it's likely his didn't either. Something on his computer at work (we don't know what) made his boss suspicious, who called the cops. The cops went and talked to them. The couple assumed it was because of their web searches and made a big scene out of it all for publicity... which they have done before, though never with so much success.

The original story was all their viewpoint and they were intentionally sensationalizing it and capitalizing on our paranoia. Later stories cleared it up, but of course didn't get nearly as much press (though /. did cover them).

Re:News?

[Anonymous Coward]

The parts that say "effects" and "unless supported by probable cause, oath, or affirmation". Unless you're arguing that they have a witness to testify that every single credit card holder is personally responsible for acts of terrorist violence.

The US didn't suspect the entire fucking nation of espionage during the war of 1812, and they don't suspect the entire citizenry of terrorism today. It's a power-grab, plain and simple. (Cheers NSA!)

Re:News?

[AHuxley]

Re: "The NSA has a glorified RSS reader called PRISM for collecting lawfully obtained data from multiple REST sources."
"not much to worry about"
"make the Snowden documents out to be more than they are"
So we are back to "it legal in a domestic setting" and "nothing to see here"
The aspect that is legal is the foreign part. For the "lawfully obtained" domestic part you still need a US warrant.
If the "illegal activity" or 'bad activity" is been found that would point to it be authorized and we are back to needing a real US warrant again.....

Re:News?

[infinitelink]

Amendment IV: The one that the current reporting requirements of the IRS (among other legislation, policy, etc.) violate, to which the courts are complicit (an "open conspiracy"--Washingtonites' own phrase).

Re:News?

[timere969]

The Constitution is a document to give the right to do something, not to forbid something. There is nothing in the Constitution that gives the government the right to monitor anything.

Re:News?

[cbiltcliffe]

Go look up the story rather than randomly guessing.

I wasn't randomly guessing. I was basing my comments on the coverage of the story that I remember reading. I don't remember reading anything clearing up the original claims of "backpack and pressure cooker searches" coverage, but I do have stretches that I don't get onto /. for a while, because I have to, you know, work. It's entirely possible that I missed the clarification coverage.

PCI Compliance

[oztiks]

Does this mean that the NSA is PCI Compliant?

Re:PCI Compliance

[dkf]

Does this mean that the NSA is PCI Compliant?

Of course. Admittedly it is by definition, and the part where it says they are is secret so you're not allowed to know about what it exactly involves...

Re:PCI Compliance

[EmperorArthur]

Does this mean that the NSA is PCI Compliant?

No, they haven't had the required audit.
Which, given the revelations about how bad their data security is, they would have failed anyways.

They still don't know what Snowden took. Forget secrets or blackmailing politicians, if he wanted to Snowden could just use the data to steal a ridiculous amount of money. Thank goodness he seems to be a good person. The scary thing is somebody else might have done just that, and no one knows about it.

Re:PCI Compliance

[Anonymous Coward]

They still don't know what Snowden took.

We know, but we won't tell you.

Re:PCI Compliance

[game kid]

I dunno, but it would be nice if they were 404 Compliant.

Re:PCI Compliance

[xelah]

PCI DSS is a contractual requirement and not a regulatory requirement or a law. Card data thieves of all kinds aren't under any legal obligation to follow it because they haven't signed any contracts requiring it. Unless, of course, you think the NSA has a merchant account.

Re:PCI Compliance

[oztiks]

I know what PCI is you daffy duck! I was trying to make a nerd joke and i didn't even get 1 mod point for it *frown*

Re:PCI Compliance

[Anonymous Coward]

Snowden won't blackmail... but you bet your booties his handlers (and their version of "enhanced interrogation" techniques) over in Russia and China are using every bit from his laptop to their advantage, politically, economically, and militarily. Anyone who thinks differently is plain naive.

Re:PCI Compliance

[return 42]

If you think Snowden is intentionally cooperating with those governments, you have the burden of explaining why he went public, instead of just moving into his dacha and enjoying his ill-gotten gains.

If you think those governments have tried to get the data without his knowledge, bear in mind that he's technically sophisticated and it's inconceivable that he didn't encrypt his drive.

If you think the Russians are employing rubber hose cryptanalysis, bear in mind that he is still in contact with several western journalists, and it's very likely that they have prearranged codes to let him communicate such a message.

Re:PCI Compliance

[AmiMoJo]

Does this mean that people like Snowden who work for the NSA could steal CC info on a massive scale?

Re:PCI Compliance

[myowntrueself]

If you think Snowden is intentionally cooperating with those governments, you have the burden of explaining why he went public, instead of just moving into his dacha and enjoying his ill-gotten gains.

If you think those governments have tried to get the data without his knowledge, bear in mind that he's technically sophisticated and it's inconceivable that he didn't encrypt his drive.

If you think the Russians are employing rubber hose cryptanalysis, bear in mind that he is still in contact with several western journalists, and it's very likely that they have prearranged codes to let him communicate such a message.

He'd have all kinds of duress codes. eg "If I ask after your nephew, somethings wrong. If I don't ask after your niece somethings wrong. If I mention anything about X somethings wrong. If I don't mention anything about Y somethings wrong." etc.

Re:PCI Compliance

[swillden]

Snowden won't blackmail... but you bet your booties his handlers (and their version of "enhanced interrogation" techniques) over in Russia and China are using every bit from his laptop to their advantage, politically, economically, and militarily. Anyone who thinks differently is plain naive.

AFAIK Snowden never even took any of the data with him to Russia and China. He said he'd turned it all over to the Guardian before he fled.

Backdoors in VPN boxes?

[Camembert]

Since, to my knowledge, the financial networks use multiple levels of encryption, I wonder if the VPN boxes used have NSA-prescribed backdoors in them. Is it in fact possible to buy a VPN box without backdoor?

Re:Backdoors in VPN boxes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just buy it with the back door and wham, for your cheap flea market, ebay purchase, you got a NSA grade backdoor to bank info.

Re:Backdoors in VPN boxes?

[drakaan]

Probably not, but you could build one pretty easily...

Re:Backdoors in VPN boxes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most VPN boxes used by most companies (banks, small, and large businesses alike) are just Cisco boxes running IPsec. And we know Cisco's track record with secrecy. Cisco = closed source = evil.

Re:Backdoors in VPN boxes?

[gl4ss]

Since, to my knowledge, the financial networks use multiple levels of encryption, I wonder if the VPN boxes used have NSA-prescribed backdoors in them. Is it in fact possible to buy a VPN box without backdoor?

they get them directly from banks. for the american banks they can just tell them to give them and they had contracts made up to get the data from EU post 9/11. that is one of the major points of discussion post snowden.. since we can't exactly trust USA to not use the data for economical gain over EU since the fuckers obviously can't be trust to just use it for tracking terrorists.

Re:Backdoors in VPN boxes?

[Anonymous Coward]

likely not but the feds can easily get access to federal reserve data (who still handles a lot of payments); and many of the worlds largest banks, payment processors, and credit card companies/issuers are headquartered in the u.s... they're all apparently obligated to bend over on behalf of their customers and clients at the government's request. plus they can always pull the global-jurisdiction card and say any bank with u.s. customer or u.s. assets or any payment processor that processes a payment on behalf of a u.s. buyer, merchant or bank, falls under u.s. jurisdiction and serve them up a nice secret order to provide access to their data and to keep their traps shut about it... hell, they could stretch that even thinner like their buddies at other three letter agencies and say any of those that even uses a u.s. based domain registrar or registry is fair game for illegal spying.... and of course, this is on top of the numerous newish anti-terrorist/anti-laundering/anti-privacy reporting laws all these types of businesses have to comply with anyway.

Re:Backdoors in VPN boxes?

[TyFoN]

Probably not the banks, they would have to get involved with tons of small companies offering credit cards.
It is much easier to hit visa or mastercard directly as all the transactions pass through them.

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please tell us instead what websites/activities are NOT monitored by NSA, thank you!

Re:Huh?

[flayzernax]

Those before 1776.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that like 1776 days after 1970?

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because, at that time, it was only GCHQ.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

127.0.0.1 is generally not monitored, but no guarantee

Re:Huh?

[flayzernax]

Lol )

Re:Huh?

[TechnoJoe]

Please tell us instead what websites/activities are NOT monitored by NSA, thank you!

NSA internal operations. When the NSA can commit over 3,000 privacy violations in one year, the NSA is obviously not monitoring its own activities.

Bitcoin FTW

[fireballrus]

Another reason why Bitcoin and services accepting it rock.

Re:Bitcoin FTW

[Mitchell314]

I'm going to take a wild guess that just visiting bitcoin-related sites automatically bumps you up a couple notches on the NSA's 'things to watch list'.

Re:Bitcoin FTW

[TWiTfan]

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the NSA has a whole office that does nothing but spy on Bitcoin sales, Bitcoin trading, infiltrating Bitcoin exchanges, etc. With 35,000 employees and God-like computing muscle, I imagine they've devoted no small amount of resources to monitoring (and perhaps sabotaging) Bitcoin and other grey market currencies.

Re:Bitcoin FTW

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't be surprised if a percentage of their computing power is dedicated to mining their own bitcoin.  Not that they need extra money, but I think we can assume they do a fair amount of research into the market itself.

Re:Bitcoin FTW

[TeknoHog]

It's NSA that created Bitcoin in the first place. This is obviously true from the pseudonym, which in Japan would be written in the order Nakamoto SAtoshi.

Re:Bitcoin FTW

[Darinbob]

But I think the most monitoring of bitcoin is in other government offices, like the treasury department.

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sick of these NSA stories. They're doing their job. I'm pretty sure terrorists and spies used credit cards so it is probably important for the President and other national security personnel to know what they are buying.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sick of these NSA stories. They're breaking the law, but Obama doesn't have the balls to send their ass to prison.

FTFY.

Re:Who cares?

[Sique]

I am pretty sure, terrorists and spies have sex too, so additionally, lets monitor all bedrooms.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure the sexual relations of terrorists or spies has nothing to do with national security so your analogy is stupid. Also monitoring all bedrooms implies that you think they're monitoring all financial transactions. I'm confident if they were monitoring all transactions there would be a lot more than 180 million records.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then fuck off. CNN has a story on the front page about Hilary running in 2016. Maybe you should go show your support over there instead.

Re:Who cares?

[Sique]

It's the SWIFT data, and that means all transnational transactions cleared by SWIFT.

And yes, spies having sexual relationships is a common way for them to get access classified data, so you just didn't get my analogy. Who is stupid now?

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it does, it's one way they make more terrorists!

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever watch a James Bond movie? That territory is extremely well traveled.

Re:Who cares?

[ColdWetDog]

I'm sick of these NSA stories. They're doing their job. I'm pretty sure terrorists and spies used credit cards so it is probably important for the President and other national security personnel to know what they are buying.

What? You want Slashdot to put up another Apple story? This is refreshing (and all tingly scary like).

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Done already - all those internet cam sites are really honey pots...

The irony is too much

[Anonymous Coward]

"Follow the money" is exactly what one should do if one wants to know the true motives of those who run the spying business. It's ultimately nothing but a justification for billions in spending -- and billions in profit for the elite few at the top. As usual, power is merely a stepping stone to the real goal: money.

wouldn't it be easier

[Anonymous Coward]

to report on the two or three things the feds DON'T have their noses in (legally or otherwise)?

extra credit points: name those things..

Re:wouldn't it be easier

[SuricouRaven]

Ordinary crimes against non-wealthy victims.

Re:wouldn't it be easier

[meta-monkey]

Well it's their own fault. If they don't want to be victims of crimes, they should stop being so poor.

Where do we draw the line?

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

"The human eye is a wonderful device. With a little effort, it can fail to see even the most glaring injustice."

This is a quote, not mine, but a quote nonetheless that holds relevance. When do we tear down the walls and regain our country?

Re:Where do we draw the line?

[infinitelink]

When you start exposing the fake Constitutionalists in Texas and the rest of the faux-Constitutional Republican party, and doing so using their own gosh-darn buzzwords about Federalism, States' Rights, The People's Rights, Right to Privacy, Security of Papers and Effects--not of the military industrial complex or of favored local businesses and the politicians they support. Essentially though, a smart president could deem all participants in these acts as enemies of the Constitution of the United States and throw them into gitmo forever: even get the Congressmen who created that jacked-up system into there, and perhaps the Supreme Court for being complicit...but then we might have a dictators. The libs hate the fourth because of tax implications though--the amendment that guarantees private un-intruded societies can exist in the US out of reach of their legislative, bureaucratic, and policy interference cannot be tolerated and will be nullified to the fullest extent that threats of force, penalties, and violence that they can muster so fat chance you'll ever EVER get either major party to uphold it without being forced themselves...or the apathetic asshats we're surrounded by to force the issue.

Write a test for control

[Anonymous Coward]

If a nation were like a computer programming project, we would write tests to continually ensure its correct operation. One test would be to ensure that voters, not the government, are in control of their own nation.

What kind of test would make sure it is so? Maybe successfully voting a new party in power, one that has never before been on top?

Re:Write a test for control

[rvw]

If a nation were like a computer programming project, we would write tests to continually ensure its correct operation. One test would be to ensure that voters, not the government, are in control of their own nation.

What kind of test would make sure it is so? Maybe successfully voting a new party in power, one that has never before been on top?

Maybe this is the test. It has just started to run. Wait and see what comes out.

Re:Write a test for control

[dmbasso]

Please, don't "wait and see". Do something. Right now you are not the programmer, you are the code.

Re:Write a test for control

[meta-monkey]

There is an easy way to edit the code without leaving your couch.

1) Download your local laws.

2) Write better versions. (i.e., defund the tax breaks for the golf course where the city council gets free memberships and use that money to fix potholes in the streets. Replace outdated textbooks in your schools with cheap e-readers, etc).

3) Post these online.

4) Get friends to run for city council with you (or, if you're worried about character assassination, select from a random pool of qualified candidates, and the candidates say nothing while all the campaigning is done on their behalf).

5) Campaign via social media, or crowd fund a few old media ads. Remember, you're running on the strength of the already decided content of the new laws, not the personality or experience of the candidate, nor any particular ideology. The only question is, "Do you, voter, like these specific laws better than the vague promises of the men running against them?"

6) Get in office, rubber stamp in new laws.

7) Obtain tax money, local militarized police force. Use police and tax money to help citizens. Also, promote values and systems that perpetuate online democracy, like municipal high-speed internet, and guaranteed access for all citizens.

8) This is a distributed effort with no leaders and no party line to toe, so everyone is responsible for enacting this system in their own city and county.

9) Then get the state governments, and re-gerrymander the congressional districts.

10) Then take congress.

11) Then the white house.

12) Then Rage Against the Machine headlines huge party on the whitehouse lawn.

Re:Write a test for control

[PhxBlue]

What kind of test would make sure it is so? Maybe successfully voting a new party in power, one that has never before been on top?

Maybe allocate government positions the way we currently allocate jurors: randomly. A random person off the street is more likely to take his job seriously than a good chunk of the yahoos currently in office.

Re:Write a test for control

[Anonymous Coward]

...if you wait, nothing good will come out of this test. Act. Act now. Don't wait for others.

Of course, what needs to be done varies greatly depending on the person, so don't take this as a call to (fire)arms more of a call to proverbial arms.

Re:Write a test for control

[Anonymous Coward]

He wasn't asking for improvement suggestions (there are many), he was asking how to test if a populace is still in charge of its government.

Re:Write a test for control

[PhxBlue]

There are too many politically appointed positions for me to believe the population has a serious measure of control over the government. So that seems like a foregone conclusion.

Re:Write a test for control

[cbiltcliffe]

While you'll possibly get to #6, well before you get to #10 some news report will come out about how the girl you might not have dated, but definitely hung out with in high school (according to "anonymous sources"), may have briefly turned to stripping for a 3 month period 4 years after high school (according to more "anonymous sources") when you'd lost contact with her, and the only coverage there will be in the mass media will be "Aspiring congressman dated stripper!" Consequently, every media conference will be full of questions about your past relationship with the stripper, whether you encouraged her to be a stripper, how many other strippers you dated, if you're currently dating a stripper, whether you've ever dated a prostitute, etc.etc. Nothing will be asked at all about your political platform, proposed laws, etc, because this kind of thing doesn't sell papers, and it's boring. Sex scandals are a guaranteed sell, with the bonus that trashing your election chances doesn't upset the political apple cart, and the media can maintain its position of information control.

Something like that might even happen before you get to #6, depending on how vicious the local politics are in your municipality.

Re:Write a test for control

[meta-monkey]

See part 4. Use randomly selected candidates to avoid character assassination. The platform/laws are written by a collaborative effort ala free/open source software or Wikipedia so there's no personality to attack. The candidates are as bland and anonymous as possible in the current system.

The entire idea is to remove personality politics and money from governance.

Suspicious number of t-shirts

[Anonymous Coward]

sent to my work address ... now will look even more suspicious.

So!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be VERY worried if the only powerful multicultural country on Earth wasn't watching what racist groups the Chinese and Japs are supporting financially. I'd give them more funding!

Re:So!

[cbiltcliffe]

You think the Chinese government uses credit cards to pay their national hackers? WTF?

And that's why

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

I may for things as much as I can in CASH. Cash is anonymous and won't snitch on you.

Re:And that's why

[wbr1]

But the person/company on the other end of the transaction very well may.

Re:And that's why

[cbiltcliffe]

How do they know who you are for sure if you're paying cash?

Perhaps they can tell Amazon to hurry up

[shocking]

I have a bunch of CDs that I've ordered, and the arrival rate is rather spotty over here in Oz....

Damn

[Anonymous Coward]

Now they know I bought keys to open dominion lockboxes in Star Trek Online.

Cancel Paperless Billing

[Tokolosh]

Many companies with which I do business (insurance, bank, utilities, medical, credit card, etc.) asked me to switch to paperless billing and notifications. In the spirit of progress I did so.

But now, with all the government snooping, I am changing back, forcing all these companies to snail mail all their paperwork. And I mail them paper checks. It my small protest against their collusion with the NSA.

If they can assure me that they are not willing to share my data with the government, and that my https interactions are not being hacked, I might relent.

Also, I have noticed that they want to send you all legal communications over the internet, but will not reciprocate and allow you to do the same with them.

Re:Cancel Paperless Billing

[Anonymous Coward]

But now, with all the government snooping, I am changing back, forcing all these companies to snail mail all their paperwork. And I mail them paper checks. It my small protest against their collusion with the NSA.

Yeah man, that'll teach them. Fight the power bro!

Re:Cancel Paperless Billing

[Aryden]

Changes nothing. The bank and the company you sent the check to still tracks the transaction. The company deposits the check, the bank scans it in and processes. It all goes into their records which they can and do turn over to the government(s) as required by law.

Re:Cancel Paperless Billing

[SuricouRaven]

Those checks are equally traceable. They are nothing more than an instruction to initiate a bank transfer. The only way to pay anonymously is via hard cash. But this presents logistical and security problems - the same problems that make companies use electronic billing in the first place. Most utilities now won't even accept cash.

Re:Cancel Paperless Billing

[Tokolosh]

I am well aware that paper checks are easily traceable. In fact, all transactions are, even cash when it hits the system. I am also aware that my obtuseness is but a pinprick in the hide of mega-corporations.

My aim is just to demonstrate that lack of trust is bad for the system. Maybe if everyone else did the same thing, business would stand up for their paying customers, instead of rolling over for faceless spies.

Terrorist culture-jamming has exceeded all expectations, now it is my turn.

Re:Cancel Paperless Billing

[Anonymous Coward]

It's possible to still be traced even with cash... If, say, you pay cash for some items at a convenience store, you're caught on camera, the video is stored digitally (possibly to networked storage) and can be recovered. Or you paid cash for gasoline but your license plate was recorded driving up to the pump. And your fingerprints may be all over that $20 bill... Etc.

Always Was

[shawnhcorey]

NSA was set up from the start to spy on foreign transactions. Its purpose was to provide inside information to Wall Street from its beginning. Spying on people is just a sideline.

Just a FYI

[Anonymous Coward]

Going on a rant where random words are in bold or italics is a shortcut to having everyone quickly dismiss you as another random crazy person ! It's just one of those heuristics that people develop to weed out bullshit on the Internet.

Re:Just a FYI

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet you did that too.  Congrats.

180 Million?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the scale of credit card transactions, 180 million, the number of records referenced in the article, is not a large number. Does this imply that there is very specific targeting going on? If so, FTM is doing some filtering before passing on the data.

And, yes, I'm pretty sure that the NSA's Tracfin would pass a PCI audit. It does, however, mean that a lot of QSRs have not been considering if companies' and processors' environments are vulnerable to government agencies as part of their audits.

Re:180 Million?

[cbiltcliffe]

Why is everyone assuming that the 180 million record count is accurate? Did this number come from the NSA? I can't see that it would have come from anywhere else, as nobody else has access to this database to count records.

The NSA has lied to the public, and they've lied to congress. This 180 million could easily be 180 billion, and when it comes out that they lied, then "Well...it was just a typo. Sorry."

NSA Spies on EVERYTHING

[TWiTfan]

Why not just get it over with and use that headline instead? Let's face it, they're either Big Brother at this point, or they're trying VERY HARD to be.

Re:NSA Spies on EVERYTHING

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, apparently Obama was unable to find his comfortable picket line walking shoes and instead put on some boots with which to stomp our faces, forever.

SEPA too

[Anonymous Coward]

"The NSA's Tracfin data bank also contained data from the Brussels-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a network used by thousands of banks to send transaction information securely. "

EU Commission GAVE them Europe's Swift data, on promise they wouldn't misuse it. I suspected NSA had political leverage over the EU Commission because the EU Commission can enforce the privacy right but has not right to *waive* the privacy right. Yet that was exactly what they did. They decided it was proportionate to hand the EU Bank data to the US on condition they pretended not to misuse it. You are unlikely to see a reversal of this policy, despite the new revelations because there is something wrong with the EU Commissioners, I suspect political leverage.

Watch SEPA, the European bank transfer system, this was largely driven by Germany to replace SWIFT. Just as its due to become mandatory in Europe, we have marketing for data exchange among G20 countries. I bet you'll see the EU Commission find a way to hand that SEPA data to the UK, which in turn hands it to the NSA, or perhaps they'll have the balls to hand it directly to NSA.

That data will contain all Europes commercial transactions, every euro cent spent by companies to employees, suppliers, every sale, every order. That's just the commercially sensitive data.

It means they have a track record of every card purchase on every potential political candidate, campaigner, reporter, politician, civil servant, judge, jury member, lawyer, teacher, everyone. If you donate to a political party or a cause the NSA doesn't like, they have record of that donation. I bet US transactions are in there too, they're the easiest to grab. It will be like the phone meta data, all grabbed, all data mined.

Tracfin ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tracfin (Traitement du renseignement et action contre les circuits financiers clandestins) is a service of the French Ministry of Finances. It fights money laundering. Tracfin is a unit of French Ministry for Economy, Finance and Industry and the Ministry for the Budget, Public Accounts, the Civil Service and State Reform with a state-wide reach. Since its foundation in 1990 its aim is to fight against illegal financial operations, money laundering and terrorism financing. Annual report 2010 brings an interesting overview of the Tracfins activities.

Re:Tracfin ?

[AHuxley]

Yes, other parts of the world have lower domestic protections than US law. You do anything in their part of the world and the gov gets a look and its all very, very legal.

Phasing out non-digital transactions

[peter.kingsbury]

Here in Canada, we've phased out the penny, and are in the process of phasing out printed cheques for government payments. Curious to see how long it will take for physical cash in its entirety to make its way into obsolescence, thus opening the gates for controlled/monitored transactions...

Re:Phasing out non-digital transactions

[mcgrew]

Considering that most things cost ten times as much as they did fifty years ago (a new VW bug was $900 in 1964, a McBurger, fries, and small coke was thirty two cents, a gallon of gas was a quarter, a candy bar was a nickle) a dime is now equivalent to what a penny was then.

The government doesn't issue checks down here, either. I still pay my bills with checks, almost everything else is cash.

Re:Phasing out non-digital transactions

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why we need to support BitCoin as much as possible.

Belgacom hacked by the NSA

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.deredactie.be/cm/vrtnieuws.english/News/130916_Belgacom

Belgium's federal public prosecutors have said that the bugging of the Belgian telecom giant was probably the work of 'international state-sponsored cyber espionage'. Earlier it emerged that Belgacom's internal systems had been hacked for a period of two years.

The former state telecom monopoly and Belgium's largest telecommunications operator has confirmed the news of the hacking. The daily De Standaard believes that the US intelligence service NSA is behind the espionage.

The hacking came to light after Belgacom enlisted the services of a specialised Dutch firm to check its operations. It emerged that the company's communications infrastructure had been infected with sophisticated malware. As a result outsiders have been able to listen in to Belgacom's systems.

Wht? WHY? WHY!!????!!!!???

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is "spying" continually on /. front pages???? We know. We knew this. This has been known for decades. This is not new behavior for the NSA, CIA, FBI, and other foreign and domestic intelligence and law enforcement agencies. I don't see them stopping any time soon.

How about some REAL news fro a change /.? Ah, here's one. NEWSFLASH - America IS NOT the only country spying! OMG! What do we do? Wait, most people already knew that. How about going back to nerd news instead of naive activist brain candy?

Re:Wht? WHY? WHY!!????!!!!???

[SuricouRaven]

Because now it's gone from being an open secret to properly documented, which allows a lot more discussion over the exact methods of spying being used.

Re:Wht? WHY? WHY!!????!!!!???

[AHuxley]

In the past you could have written citation needed and gotten a nice mod point bounce.
The domestic intelligence aspect is making many in the US legal/tech press and profession produce a lot of new and insightful news.

You Know The Funny Thing Is

[Greyfox]

This all came about because their head guy is an internet addict and couldn't get enough cat videos on youtube.

I'm sure they'll bring this post up when they have me in a dark room with jumper cables hooked up to my testicles."Not so funny now, is it, bitch?"

Those crazy muslims

[Anonymous Coward]

The Muslims have been right all this time, America IS the prime evil on the planet today.

Bitcoin is not enough

[gox]

Bitcoin, by itself, allows freedom of transaction, but not necessarily privacy. It is attainable, but not in a fool-proof way.

We need to get used to separating our different trading identities, just like we do for communicating identities. We also need to get used to obfuscating our location, either constantly, or again by exiting from different IP's for different identities.

All this is easily attainable with a few scripts on modern operating systems, Bitcoin, TOR and maybe some VPN accounts. What we don't have is systems that do this out of the box, so that we have different GPG keys, Bitcoin wallets, IP's, e-mail accounts, etc. for our different identities as a basic operating principle. I would love to see such a system implemented; it should be fairly straightforward to do as a Linux distro.

Re:Bitcoin is not enough

[rjstanford]

All this is easily attainable with a few scripts on modern operating systems, Bitcoin, TOR and maybe some VPN accounts

If I had the resources and was really interested, I'd just make sure to run a large Bitcoin exchange and a ton of TOR endpoints. Just saying. Why try to hack it in code when you can set something up really simply and have malefactors come to you?

Re:Bitcoin is not enough

[gox]

True, but trading on exchanges is not anonymous anyway, since NSA and other agencies already have access to all the personal data of customers' fiat money transfers. Not only that, but we should assume that they have access to all delivery information on all businesses, and all e-mail communication, etc.

I'm rather interested in creating enough disconnects to make profiling ordinary citizens practically impossible. Sure, they may be able to track transactions to determine with 35% probability that you bought a pair of shoes with the bitcoins you've bought from exchange X and automatically associate it with your Skype conversation about shoe sizes. But if you don't let information leak between your identities, it won't be possible for them to associate your ID number with the VPN account you purchased with the money that was donated to your anti-government blog. That's why I think a user-friendly but identity-aware system can help.

Speaking about honeypots, similar to what you said, it is possible to run underground businesses yourself and collect information about clients. At that point, it's obviously the responsibility of the user to reason about the risks. If I'm a dissident, I may not want to donate to whistle blowers the money that can be traced back to me through the banking system, but I may be OK with redirecting the money I got from a face to face anonymous transaction, or an anonymous investment.

We are talking about monetary transactions here, but such an OS can help with privacy and privacy awareness in general.

Re:Bitcoin is not enough

[meta-monkey]

Which is the big problem. If it were my full-time job to spy on people online, and I had the resources of the NSA, that's exactly what I'd do. I'd just make everything a honeypot.

Bitcoin exchange? Honeypot.
VPN? Honeypot.
TOR exit nodes? Honeypots.

It wouldn't be tough. And what pisses me off? Before the NSA shit came out, I never used any of these things, because I never thought I had any reason to. I don't need to hide, because I generally don't do things I feel the need to hide. I am a good and conscientious citizen who cares about his family, his community, his country and his world. I'm a pacifist with no ill-will towards anyone. There is absolutely no reason to spy on me, because I have no desire to hurt anyone. I don't even have the ability. I'm a Catholic who tries to follow the biblical example of Jesus (that is, the "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" part, not all the terrible atrocities that have been committed in his name for the past 2000 years), so I don't even have a moral framework whereby I'm allowed to hurt someone, even in defense of my own life or that of an innocent.

And yet I'm being spied on, because I'm on the internet. Ugh, so fine, I'll use a VPN, Tor, and bitcoins. And whereas before I was being spied on, despite there being no reason to spy on me, I'm now going to be scrutinized, simply because I don't want to be spied on.

It'll drive you crazy if you let it...

Re:Bitcoin is not enough

[ColdWetDog]

You guys are confusing the NSA and the FBI.

They're on a different mail stop.

Re:Bitcoin is not enough

[PRMan]

And when the government accuses you loudly in the media about running a child porn network because of all your Bitcoins and TOR endpoints, do you think that even your defense lawyer will take your side?

Re:Bitcoin is not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

And whereas before I was being spied on, despite there being no reason to spy on me, I'm now going to be scrutinized, simply because I don't want to be spied on.

It'll drive you crazy if you let it...

If it makes you feel any better, you're part of the solution - in order for this to really work, we all have to start using it all the time even when not breaking the law.

Re:Bitcoin is not enough

[meta-monkey]

To be honest, AC, yes, it does make me feel a little better. Thanks.

Re:Bitcoin is not enough

[Sabriel]

I'm a Catholic who tries to follow the biblical example of Jesus (that is, the "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" part, not all the terrible atrocities that have been committed in his name for the past 2000 years), so I don't even have a moral framework whereby I'm allowed to hurt someone, even in defense of my own life or that of an innocent.

Matthew 7:12, "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets."
Luke 6:31, "And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise."

It's not what men do, it's what men should do. If you found yourself doing harm to another, you should want someone to stop you.

Re:Bitcoin is not enough

[meta-monkey]

Good point. Thanks for that insight.

Oooh, wait, do-over!

[Greyfox]

Well if they're monitoring all that shit, maybe you should just complain to THEM when Paypal freezes your account! "Hey guys, you have my entire payment history! Tell those guys to cough up my cash!"

Yup, pretty sure I'm going to end up in a dark room somewhere with *cough* Freedom cables hooked up to my testicles.

Re:Oooh, wait, do-over!

[Lumpy]

Freedom cable connect to your nipples, Patriot cables are the ones that go to your testicles.

Re:Oooh, wait, do-over!

[Greyfox]

Schlake? Is that you?

OH NOES NOT THE NSA

[GameboyRMH]

Many more three-letter agencies are known to monitor international payments. I would have been surprised if the NSA wasn't monitoring them.

The company my dad works at has a very generic, uninspired name and it happens to be the same as one of the front companies used by the Iranian nuclear programme. Equipment purchases are often blocked and won't be allowed through until someone has a chat with US authorities to remind them that they're still not smuggling parts for Iran's reactors.

Re:OH NOES NOT THE NSA

[Darinbob]

Agree, if the news had been that the NSA was not monitoring financial transactions, the same area that many other government branches have monitored for many decades, then it would make the NSA look incompetent and inept.

List of shit NSA doesn't spy on

[Anonymous Coward]

My taint.

That I know of.

Hey NSA....

[Lumpy]

65033 54423 98954 12195 66564 14332 76775 48442

If you can crack that, I'll give you a cookie. (60 year old encryption that the NSA's best can never crack.)

Re:Hey NSA....

[splutty]

Obviously a WoW gametime key written down by Nostradamus.

Re:Hey NSA....

[mcgrew]

There's a coded inscription outside CIA HQ that they haven't been able to crack, that may be the inscription. You can't crack this, either:

jkskJJou jn 7yF!0 GGorbmal

It's uncrackable because it's gibberish. Here's an easy one:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 30 (3)20-31

That actually says "IF TIME WERE SUDDENLY TO TURN back to 1919, you would hardly know that you are not in the nineteen-thirties"

All you need to know to crack it is the title and chapter of a book.

Re:Hey NSA....

[Anonymous Coward]

That fragment is too short to do any analysis on that.
But let me give it a try:

\o/ I was successful; the key for this cyphertext is:
3 11278 24472 67692 00027 33481 35799 70899 42526

Both your cypher text and my key is a single integer with spacing for better readability.
I convert both to a string of bytes which I xor with each other. Then interpret the result
as an UTF-8 string.

Example python code:

>>> cypher_text = bytearray.fromhex("%x" % 6503354423989541219566564143327677548442)
>>> key = bytearray.fromhex("%x" % 31127824472676920002733481357997089942526)
>>> plain_text = bytearray(a ^ b for a, b in zip(cypher_text, key))
>>> print(plain_text.decode("UTF-8"))
Hello cruel world

Re:Hey NSA....

[Lumpy]

Nope. a simple 1 time pad using the same word encoding technique that numbers stations use.

Re:Hey NSA....

[Anonymous Coward]

Not even close.

HLPWCDNPWBSPZQ

Re:Hey NSA....

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm.. if I take your 164 bit key and "decrypt" it with itself(*), I get an anagram of your text:

RICHELIEU HANGS U

That's pretty damning evidence, citizen!


(*) You can't prove I'm lying or that there's something wrong with the anagram, because that would be forbidden by the DMCA law.

Re:Hey NSA....

[Darinbob]

I don't understand why you want the NSA to drink their Ovaltine.

Come on!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's really trivial!

All those data are already in electronic format, possibly a standard format, along with all the users' details.

Amounts of money and timestamps, transaction IDs, shop and ATM codes (with GIS data)...

It's just like the call metadata the telcos are providing to them.

I would have be puzzled in case the NSA was not colecting them ...

I'm still waiting.......

[Anonymous Coward]

...to hear how HSBC managed to launder money for drug cartels and transfer money to Iranian banks without the NSA knowing about it. And how about that LIBOR-rigging scandal? Must've slipped under the radar, I guess.

Re:I'm still waiting.......

[AHuxley]

It makes the press http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangs

LOL!

[Anonymous Coward]

They know it when the tax and purchase records are sent from stores to government.

It doesn't matter what you do - the whole community is monitored.

And their operations are solely funded by you American citizens.

Dangerous Credit Cards

[Anonymous Coward]

NSA should be monitoring their use. When sharpened they could cause a death by million cuts at any time, any place.

Lest we be taken over by "NSA Spies On" headlines

[Anonymous Coward]

Please only inform me when it's something NSA doesn't spy on!

Not only International

[houghi]

They spy on national money transfers as well.
Or do you think they draw the line just when things don't end up in the same country?

SWIFT does a LOT of transactions between banks.

When you do a payment in Belgium to a company, it takes 2 to three days (even at the same bank) because they need that much time to prevent terrorism.

It would be great if the people reading those messages would work on the weekend as well, because it takes 2 to 3 WORKING days. No transactions on the weekend.

And in Europe when they say 'because of terrorism' they mean 'We hand it over to the USofA.' (Insert joke about the USA being the real terrorists.)

Interesting part at the end

Re:Not only International

[Anonymous Coward]

No it is just because it is profitable to hold on to your money for a couple of days.
Banks are able to transfer the money in hours. They just don't want to.

Sounds invasive, effective, often isn't

[quietwalker]

I used to write finance software for a living, so I've actually been responsible for putting the hooks into systems that alert and in some cases silently block these transactions. There are actual federal regulations stating we need to do this, and this isn't a new thing - this predates modern banking. The difference is that more and more international names are landing on the list.

The funny thing is that most of this tracking is astoundingly, mind numbingly bad.

I have the most experience with banking (as opposed to credit card transactions), so here's a quick explanation that works:
1) The feds provide us a list, occasionally updated. Format is a plain text file with names of suspects, 1 per line, all caps.
2) We have to do an exact match - if the name of the sender or recipient exactly equals one of the lines, then we tag it, and it's up to the bank manager to deal with it from there. They authorize or not the transaction during the end of day clearing house, or alert the feds or whomever.

That's it. It's sort of like setting up a spam blocker for an explicit email address. It's hilariously trivial.

Now, once transactions go over a certain size, those are independently reported right to the federal reserve, so those may be subject to much more analysis, but evasion is as simple as keeping transfer size low and adding an extra letter to the recipient's name.

There are some caveats; transaction often have to bounce through many entities, but tracking this way is often very difficult since there's no guarantee which ACH a given transaction is bouncing through - each bank uses it's own set based on contracts and legal agreements between countries. Reconciling source and target becomes painful, to say the least.

To recap: 1) they've always done this, 2) they don't seem to be very good at real time tracking

Re:Sounds invasive, effective, often isn't

[Anonymous Coward]

They seem to have improved slightly. I bought records from London, and was contacted by cardholder services within the hour. I bought furniture in the States, and was allowed to spend five times as much with no questions asked. The mattress salesman is more likely to rip me off than the record store, but this is not the focus of investigation.

Re:Sounds invasive, effective, often isn't

[St.Creed]

You confuse fraud detection, willingly installed and lovingly maintained as "core business" by any serious bank - with the official blacklist, not well maintained and quite useless for stopping serious fraud.

The fact you were called is because the fraud detection software kicked in - and "less than one hour" means the calldesk was quite busy, you're usually flagged in seconds. Banks employ all kinds of software for this, from rule-based detection (not very good) to neural networks trained on all the cases they see in the entire world (very very good at detecting fraud, much better than human rules even), ranging in price from 100K to millions.

The blacklist is implemented by the trainee in a lazy afternoon and it dates back to the Dark Ages. Only the really stupid get caught by it.

Re:Sounds invasive, effective, often isn't

[Darinbob]

These foreign purchases often trigger alerts about credit card theft or identity theft. Basically it's an unusual pattern that does not match your past history of purchases.

I had a roommate who had to be hospitalized while on vacation in Italy and his phone card was cancelled because it had seen an unusual amount of activity (and because I wasn't him, my word wasn't good enough to convince the telephone representative who called that this was legitimate).

Re:Sounds invasive, effective, often isn't

[Anonymous Coward]

What you're describing sounds like a legal thing, but what they're doing is just collecting everything via a network attack.

"Tracfin"

[harvestsun]

Is it just me or does that name seem inspired by 1984?
Shall we start calling the NSA "Minipriv" (Ministry of Privacy)?

Harry said it best

[Hoi Polloi]

"Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix." - Harry Truman

Re:Harry said it best

[Anonymous Coward]

out of points. mod parent up plz.

I'm OK with this!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see a problem with the NSA monitoring International payments. How else will they track money transfers for illegal arms sales? At least, for those who use the banking network...

What I would have a problem with, is if they set the lower boundary for their monitoring too low. For example, if they're monitoring anything lower than say, $5.000, they're wasting their fucking time.

The other problem I have with this is economic modeling they are likely doing, and using that for active and changing foreign policy. I'm betting some real-time economic trade forecasting based on geopolitics is in play, and there are a good many people who are getting rich off that data.

What I would really like to see, is someone to run the math on just how much computing, network, and storage it would take to monitor, collect and analyze all the data the NSA appear to be slurping up. I want some hard numbers on this, both domestically and internationally. I'm well aware of the massive data sites they have domestically, but with the volume they are doing overseas, they must have equivalent size, or larger, sites stashed somewhere. Which in turns means Government cooperation on fairly large scale. Or, they bought off said Gov. officials which isn't out of the question.

Why do the bad guys still have any money?

[Anonymous Coward]

Given what we know about the extent of NSA data gathering, it seems reasonable to presume that they do have the ability to track financial transactions and transfers of all types across the globe.

They can watch transfers in and out of accounts in countries which refuse to provide information to international police agencies; they can follow the money trail from origin to destination; they know who has the millions and billions of dollars (or whatever) derived from illegal activities.

They know who the bad banks are. They know who the bad countries are. They know who they bad people are. They've untangled and mapped the web of interconnected banks, countries, corporations, and individuals who provide financial services for drug lords, dictators and tax evaders.

Sharing that information with international law enforcement should make it possible to use existing laws to make massive seizures of ill-gotten wealth.

So, the questions is: why do the bad guys still have any money?

Discuss among yourselves.

Re:Why do the bad guys still have any money?

[AHuxley]

Re Todays bad guys still have any money?
The drug cash has to fill a real bank at some point. The bad guys know some banks are safe and keep using them. That huge influx of real cash makes the bank seem very 'big' and doing really 'great'.
That attracts more investors and more drug cash. Everybody in that network is happy. Real savings up, fees up, share price up, ability to make huge loans based on huge influx of cash, even gov taxes.
With drug cash comes arms sales and support for 'good' freedom fighters. Small wars and interventions in civil wars need weapons, global heavy lift transport, perfect id papers, bribes, local cash and payments that cannot be tracked back. Drug cash provide a nice 'international' block to any reporter or low gov agent from getting to near the truth.
The clandestine war efforts are totally funded, banks are doing well, stock prices are up, the bad countries are locked into huge loans they can never ever repay.

Live Free or Die Hard

[Anonymous Coward]

If there's a power outage on the east coast, the NSA can download this information for safekeeping.

Prevent Terrorism

[PPH]

Yeah, right.

Another 9/11 could easily be funded by a rich Saudi prince 'losing' a bunch of money in Las Vegas over a weekend. And they still can't find what happened to much of Bernie Madoff's take?

This isn't about crime or terrorism, its about conducting commercial and industrial espionage to benefit US corporations.

Not the NSA

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong intelligence agency.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Crimes_Enforcement_Network

It doesn't need to... but it does anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

The constitution grants limited powers to the government; it's not intended to be an exhaustive list of all of the things the government is not allowed to do. Those powers not explicitly granted to the government belong to US citizens. The constitution would never say it's forbidden for the government to monitor international monetary transactions -- if the founders had intended to allow the government to be arbiter of all financial transaction data, they would have expressly listed that as a power granted to government. They didn't.

Plus I'm pretty sure the Bill of Rights (you know, those ten amendments to the constitution that were included out of fear that the constitution was too silent on privacy and civil liberty issues) says something like "no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause", and "The right of the people to be secure in their .. papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated".

So, in summary: It doesn't need to say it, but it does anyway. It's not a power granted to the government by the constitution, and it's explicitly clarified as forbidden by the 4th amendment to the US constitution.

That's mind boggling bad

[aepervius]

I come from a public school in France, msot of my friends and colleague also do come from public school in France and germany. I never , ever, heard of such a bad teaching in any public school. But then again the program (books) and what needs to be learned is decided on the national level. You can't really do bad stuff as you mention, because then you would be kicked in the butt rapidely and thrown out. The reverse of the medail, is that you can't do great stuff either, youa re constrained by the program. All in all it sounds to me the public school system in the US is so bad, because it is neither directed nor united on the fed level, making it a crapshot on what you will get taught.

Re-read the first sentence

[Anonymous Coward]

"The National Security Agency (NSA) widely monitors international payments, banking and credit card transactions"

This could be interpreted to mean that the NSA monitors international payments and ALL (international + domestic) banking and credit card transactions.

Zone file information

[NewYork]

http://www.verisigninc.com/en_US/products-and-services/domain-name-services/registry-products/tld-zone-access/index.xhtml?loc=en_US sites are ALWAYS monitored by NSA.