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Snowden Strikes Again: NSA Mapping Social Connections of US Citizens
McGruber writes "The New York Times is reporting on yet another NSA revelation: for the last three years, the National Security Agency has been exploiting its huge collections of data to create sophisticated graphs of some Americans' social connections that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information. 'The agency can augment the communications data with material from public, commercial and other sources, including bank codes, insurance information, Facebook profiles, passenger manifests, voter registration rolls and GPS location information, as well as property records and unspecified tax data, according to the documents. They do not indicate any restrictions on the use of such "enrichment" data, and several former senior Obama administration officials said the agency drew on it for both Americans and foreigners.' In a memorandum, NSA analysts were 'told that they could trace the contacts of Americans as long as they cited a foreign intelligence justification.' 'That could include anything from ties to terrorism, weapons proliferation or international drug smuggling to spying on conversations of foreign politicians, business figures or activists. Analysts were warned to follow existing "minimization rules," which prohibit the NSA from sharing with other agencies names and other details of Americans whose communications are collected, unless they are necessary to understand foreign intelligence reports or there is evidence of a crime. The agency is required to obtain a warrant from the intelligence court to target a "U.S. person" — a citizen or legal resident — for actual eavesdropping.'"
first
It just gets better and better..
He said Americans were not being spied upon by the NSA.
Unfortunately people just don't seem to care. They say "oh, that's terrible!" and that's the end of the discussion. While they may say it's terrible, they do absolutely nothing about it and just let it be and anyone that tries to do anything about it gets pushed as the enemy. The majority of American citizens voted for this behavior, and the majority of the American citizens support this behavior whether they willingly acknowledge this or not. If they don't support it then they should do something about it, even if it's just writing to their state representatives or something of the sort. Believe it or not, a lot of congress don't even believe this is going on or even know it's happening. They do whatever their advisers tell them to do and they learn about the things their advisers tell them about. Confronting them is the first step to changing the country into something better. You may not believe that congress will listen but this is politics and when people get angry they will listen.
Is there anything that can surprise us?
For the last several Snowden disclosures, there was barely a mention on many of the major outlets such as CNN, whereas the earlier announcements made the primary CNN site headlines. Similar for NPR. As I write this, I don't see a single mention on cnn.com of this story.
It seems that the public and the media has moved on, and no longer cares. It's the "new normal" that we are all spied on all the time. The chance for outrage and change has passed. No one will be held accountable, no government officials who stood up in front of the entire country and lied will be held responsible. Much like a lot of other tech issues, it has degenerated into one of those things that causes some nerd-rage but the general public doesn't really care about.
After the first few leaks by snowden, we thought "holy shit". but then we got some rebuttals by the nsa/us govt in general, and then more snowden leaks showing that in fact the rebuttals were false statements, etc. even the most paranoid among us were wrong. the scope is still bigger than non-schizophrenics thought possible. Remember a year or 2 ago when there was a claim that the NSA/USGovt had backdoored a widely used crypto? the response was "this guy is either a liar or crazy. how credible is he?" even though the spec for the crypto is public, rather than sling mud, look at the code. i know its hard, very complicated math, easy to obfuscate in code. etc. but if it was the same as the snowden leaks have pointed to, we could have known this back then if people didnt just be mudslingers and spent time investigating rather than whining about it.
Looks like Facebook could have competition.
If only the US Govenment would put a nice web interface on the front end.
Of course this is what the people of this country WANT. Wars over spending bills that threaten to shut the government down.
They are too stupid to overthrow the government by voting in commoners or with force.
I'm an American and I live in a pretty undeveloped Southern African nation. I wonder how much of a profile the NSA is capable of building on me?
Upon arriving in the USA very recently my wife was flagged going through the mettle detector at IAD (she was carrying our 3 month old daughter so the TSA told her they had to do some extra checks since she had a baby in a sling, dafuq?). She spent the next 45 minutes getting checked, rechecked, patted down (enhanced pat down; under the waistband, hand up the legs until it meets "resistance", hands swiping breasts, etc.), having her carry-on bags checked and rechecked for bomb residue, all in the name of "You were carrying a baby in a sling".
I'm trying to be as honest and non-paranoid as possible in all of this. But these leaks from Snowden really do give rise to questions about how large my NSA profile has grown, simply because I live overseas.
I think it would be useful for the American citizenry to have a copy of this data so that we can know exactly who the NSA employees are, who they know, what they're doing, and where they are at all times. Also the heads of JP Morgan, Citibank, Halliburton, etc, and all the shadowy 1% who are implementing this police state.
Oh, it's only for informational purposes, you know. Not like we would act on any of that information.
Seriously, do these people think these tools can't be turned on them? Americans have grown pretty fat and lazy but we are still a relatively heavily armed people, and you can't exactly go around ordering F-15s to drop napalm on suburban Cleveland. That is, the troubles the US Army has had suppressing IEDs and small arms fire in Afghanistan and Iraq multiply exponentially when you're turning your artillery on the friends and families of the very people you count on to manufacture your ammo, grow your food, and ship it to your butt.
So go ahead, totalitarian fantasists, keep turning the weaponry and spying machinery on the very people you count on to make your activities possible. See how that turns out. ***Spoilers ahead*** It ends with you swinging for lampposts or torn limb from limb by angry mobs.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Seems the title misses the mark.
nail, head, smack!
Joined Facebook ?? Tweet ?? YOU GIVE THIS SHIT AWAY and cannot stop doing it !! Yet you whine like a little pussy because those entrusted to save your asses when the going gets tough purloins a fraction of this, and from a fraction of the few, and from the results does it pretty well. No, the paranoid towelies next door with their cooktop bombs did not make it on their list but give it time. Now get back to Twitter, get back to Facebook, and tell everybody you know and do not know exactly what it is you are doing, when, and where, and with whom !!
Yeah, WHY DO YOU NOT go to Russia then if you think that is the way things should be !! Right !! I did not think so !! Pussies !!
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!
I liked the part where you blamed corporations and forgot to mention Obama who is the one ordering all of this. Its nice to see people wanting to give a pass to those in power actually doing this and using the "crisis" as an opportunity to punish people not involved because you don't like them.
For the rest of you, this is why it isn't fixed. As long as Obama and his buddies keep doing this, his political enemies get blamed for more and more of it. If I were him I would keep cranking it up until the general attitude switched to I was doing something wrong. As long as companies like JP Morgan get blamed, and I would be able to punish them and fine them for more government revenue, I would keep doing it more and more (there is a current "investigation" into JP Morgan and bad things they did, or better yet bad things banks that the government forced them to buy before they were bought because JP Morgan has money to take).
Congratulations, YOU are the problem and the reason it is still going on.
The ability to link records of named associates was standard in law enforcement records management and case analysis tools. After 9/11/2001, an initiative was strted where those records were then shared using data sharing systems. In some cases, directed graphs could be constructed showing the relationships. Cops collected info regarding criminal incidents and ALL parties were in the names database.
This information helped LE crack many cases as it provided a computerized way to link all those records - something that had to be done by hand and making phone calls. It improved LE capabilities tremendously. Yes, I worked on such systems.
What is new is the linkage to other repositories of information. Sort of like the Bourne Trilogy, I guess. That's the scary part.
Welcome to SkyNet.
Could you please rewrite your post so that it's at least coherent? I find it very hard to understand what you're saying, given that your unspoken assumptions are so non-standard that I can't be sure which ideas informed the thoughts that you tried to put to the forum..
when you fear your government.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
And terrorist in chief K.Alexander should be sent back to hell where it belongs, in a painful way.
I mean, isn't the Schwarzchild-radius of the paper-files stored at the VA-offices reaching a critical limit where they could be considered a national threat due to singularity-creation?
Every skilled person on earth right now should have the same one goal: breaching NSA's databases and spread a torrent of that shit over the interwebs for everyone to see. Cause outrage among people in power by getting them naked.
Why not start with a trip over to http://cryptome.org/ then look at http://cryptome.org/2013/09/senate-pk.htm http://cryptome.org/2013/09/nsa-pk.htm http://cryptome.org/2013/09/fbi-doj-pk.htm http://cryptome.org/2013/09/house-pk.htm http://cryptome.org/2013/09/uscourts-pk.htm and http://cryptome.org/2013/09/twitter-pk.htm and now seed both email content an headers with this publicly available information. Might well cause some names and addresses to be linked other names and addresses (be they two or three jumps away) that may raise a few eyebrows.
Avoid Faicebook
Avoid Twitter
Pay Cash for everything
Use a phone that does not have GPS.
Encrypt everything
Use Burner phones
No Sir I have nothing to hide apart from my privacy.
The majority of American citizens voted for this behavior, and the majority of the American citizens support this behavior whether they willingly acknowledge this or not.
You are so right! Mea Culpa!
I know it, during the last few Presidential elections and the debates, it was brought up in the debates - and each went at it about spying and NSA. They were so up front about what the government does and what they allow! And the Media was right there asking those tough questions and I just ignored them!
I tell you! The next Presidential election I'll put their feet to the fire! And I'm sure Fox News will be right there - after they get over the Benghazi outrage, Obama Care, the War on Christmas and all of those other really pressing issues!!
I don't think you really understand how totalitarian states come about. Having an armed citizenry has no influence AT ALL. And please don't cite the American Revolution as a counter example, because you know that revolution had nothing to do with liberty. It was merly a way for the colonists to MAINTAIN their privileges (that they had under british rule) only now without the british in the picture.
The second amendment WILL NOT PROTECT YOU either in a passive or active way against the government. The same way the constitution will not protect you. After all it is only a piece of paper. If the powers that be (Congress, the Supreme Court, the President) decide to ignore that paper you're fucked with or without your AK-47 by your side.
How do you plan to transfer the petabytes? What is the plan for storrage?
Obama isn't the one who started all this - he is just the one who is refusing to stop it. There's lots of blame to go around here, no need to pile it all on one person.
The other shoe is about to drop in the form of "Why didn't you save my little girl from that pedophile?"
People are realizing that the government corruption (ordinary type), violent gangs, racketteering gangs, people cheating on taxes with overseas accounts, drug runners, drug gangs and novice terrorists were all KNOWN ABOUT THE WHOLE TIME.
Recent uptick in the oddball "trading child porn" people has got to be them releasing data on the most heinous cases.
At some point, someone is going to articulate all the ways our own government was complicit and knowningly allowing all kinds of crime to go on, some of which with real heart breaking stories for the victims.
Those folks better fucking worry real hard about another Snoweden releasing the personal information of the guys who know, or should have known about all of it. They had better clean up a lot of fucking crime real fucking fast or we'll be hearing stories of "yet another government 'office worker' dragged to death behind some redneck's truck" because the file showed the now dead pile of meat knew about 15 pedophile cases.
These programs didn't start under Obama. Echelon has been going for decades. Cheney and Bush had the Total Information Awareness program. So the reason I don't blame Obama exclusively is because both Republicans and Democrats are doing it at the command of the same masters, the corporations and the .01% who run them. It's out in the open now--much of this spying that Snowden has revealed was industrial espionage. Focusing ire on the party(ies) in charge in DC is a dodge, a convenient lightening rod for the powers-that-be to draw the popular anger that has historically hung people like them from trees and beheaded them. Every once in a while you throw one of your cannon fodd...er, Congressmen and Presidents to the wolves, Joe Sixpack grunts with clueless satisfaction, cracks open another beer, and puts the game back on; and you can get back to the business of robbing his pension fund blind under the cover of law.
To stop being part of the problem and part of the solution, we all have to stop pretending that the political process makes any difference or that there's such a thing as the rule of law; they have been entirely subverted and the American people will have to get about the messy business of re-asserting popular sovereignity and bringing the criminals and sociopaths who brought this about to justice. It sucks and I don't want to have to do it either, but it's our duty to our children to not condemn them to live in slavery.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Oddly, they still have less capabilities than does foreign nations as well as Google, FaceBook, Linked-in, etc.
The dingaling pres has ushered in Big Bro like no other pres ever before. And to think America has to go to foreign countries to find tyrants and terrorist when they got their own elected.
Without attempt to excuse or justify the NSA, perhaps it should give us all pause to think about how many public sources are part of what they're doing. Just because it's a company we're giving all the information to doesn't mean it's private or well protected. Perhaps it's time for all of us to think about how we are willing to relate to the companies providing services to us.
Sadly, it's an unlikely thing to change (we all like "free" services after all, and privacy is a nebulous concern that's easy to waive away in each moment), but the fact that we are making all this information available means we shouldn't be surprised that people want to use it.
If you look at the roots of all of this it goes back to the 1979 Supreme Court Ruling in Smith vs. Maryland where:
“A person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties’’
The case centered around the installation of a pen register, which records phone numbers dialed in the phone company office. As all of the current press indicates the NSA and other Federal Agencies and Administrations to justify scooping up all of information they can. In 1979 it was difficult to trace phone calls because most of the local COs were analog and getting this kind of data meant installing devices, requiring court orders, anybody remember rotary dial? The 1979 ruling has therefore been applied now in our current era where this information is "at hand." Using this we can now see why the large Data Center in Utah is being built to collect the billions of Call Detail Records and other Internet IP data that the NSA can gobble up. Strangely enough the safeguards that protect a US citizen fall down suddenly if you have contact with a foreign country. Let's see, going on vacation to Europe this year? You're sucked into the system. Have friends or family members overseas? You're sucked into the system. Compound that over zealous approach to collection and the fact that they can save the data for up to 10 years for historical analysis and you have a huge storage problem. Now if you add it Network Graph Analysis, you'll be sucked in if your friends or family members have contacts with people in other countries. That means effectively everybody in US is on a graph somewhere and it's being used to create fake evidence chains against your fellow citizens. I'm not advocating crime or terrorism in any way but there has to be oversight of law enforcement in this nation, with the NSA scoping up everything they can you have a police state where evidence can be created out of thin air and you can't challenge it's authenticity.
The ramifications of this are staggering and I for one have been in touch with my congressman and written to both my Senators to voice my opposition to it but the only way to fix this is to end the two party stranglehold of our government that has allowed this to happen behind closed doors. The FISA court needs to be abolished and the NSA systems need to be dismantled. That won't happen when you have elected officials who don't fear the electorate and the only way that will change is to force our government to enact:
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Keep in mind that Facebook and countless other sites are already admittedly collecting the same (and more) information and behavior associations, oftentimes with as little publicly-released details, accountability, and oversight, and then using it actively and aggressively to manipulate every single person (American or otherwise) into altering their financial behaviors, public perceptions, political persuasions, social interactions, and much more.
This is obviously not the same as a government agency per se, but it is useful to reflect on the differences and (more so) the similarities between what is specifically unsettling about a government and a large corporation having this information. Throughout this series of revelations, I've found it useful to contemplate any concern that I feel regarding my government possessing this degree of intimate information in the context of the Facebooks, Googles, and LinkedIns of the world. They are (to a far wider degree) actively targeting you (and everyone you know) directly and collecting and using all of the same associations with no need for suspicion of terrorism, illegal associations, FISA courts, or any real oversight. They sell this information in troves to the highest bidder with loose terms and are willingly or unwillingly subject to their members' respective governments' information request laws. They and their associates and clients are applying that information actively to change you.
While I can't stress enough that the gravity of one's government's actions should not be grouped with likeminded corporations, I do worry that Internet corporations are collecting more information with less oversight and accountability and using it in far more objectionable ways against a far wider audience! It's a different kind of threat, but in many ways I fear them far more than the government.
I (personally) hope that the outcome of this series of revelations is a global reflection on privacy and information sharing and not just a narrow-minded focus on a particular agency's actions.
The bastards have stolen my thesis!!?! Aaarrggh!
So... is the NSA applying this data-mining to our representatives and public officials? If not, why aren't they? Imagine being able to know who has been lobbying whom. Imagine knowing who their paramours are. Imaging knowing what their shopping habits and travel patterns are.
Just imagine if we appointed an enlightened, benign head of the NSA. We would finally have a functional government. Granted it would be a tad autocratic, but hey, pros and cons.
Come on Americans, you have overthrown the yoke of oppression once already.
You have the arms, you easily outnumber the tyrants in power. Yes, a few of you will die in a truly honourble war, just as some died in your last war of independence against a lesser tyrant. But by routing these evil men who have co-opted decent government of your great nation you will ensure it remains great and free for your children.
As one of your own founding fathers has said: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." - Thomas Jefferson
Americans have grown pretty fat and lazy but we are still a relatively heavily armed people, and you can't exactly go around ordering F-15s to drop napalm on suburban Cleveland.
They're not going to drop bombs on suburban Cleveland; those are the people who will support the regime, just like the middle class in Syria support Assad. They will shell inner city Cleveland, where the people who have no jobs and no future are fighting, just like the Assad regime shells the poor farmer rebels with no future who have risen up against the government.
Snowden Strikes Back
That's what I want, to sell to all the non-USA people who think the USA is the only one doing this kind of surveillance. Count the number of countries on the planet and you have the number of governments doing this. Since forever in one form or another.
With six degrees of separation everybody is connected to everybody. Thus allowing the NSA to spy on everyone due to their foreign connections.
"Hmm, I see that you are connected to the second cousin of Ahmad Amadinejad. That is not good Mr Smith..."
I would really like to stand for Government in my country, with a mission to fight this - to fight the erosion of privacy and personal liberty.
The reason I feel so strongly about the topic, is that I have some 'none conventional' interests and past-times'.
The reason I won't stand is I honestly believe that either a) there'd not be enough public interest, or b) if we made progress, my none-conventional interests would be leaked out to the media.
So I think it's fair to say "the system works".
Heh - captcha: discord.
I am an old geek and one with both a long background in sec matters and a law degree (though I'm pleased to say I don't actually use the later). None of this should be surprising or, in most ways, particularly annoying. A great deal of 'this' falls under a rational extension of the Plain View Doctrine (e.g. if you place your pot plant in your front bay window facing the sidewalk, you can not reasonably expect a foot patrol cop to avert his eyes...or complain when there is a knock on your door). I and others have long said that what you do online is 'public' (unless you are using encryption and/or various various methods to make yourself anonymous)...unencrypted email, social networks, etc...all pass as data streams that can be 'seen' by any server they pass through. Unless you are encrypting your datastream, you simply can't reasonably expect people (governments, especially) to avert their eyes from the waves of data washing over them.
There are huge, important privacy/security issues in play...but getting wound around the axel in a dogmatic response of "OMG, the [insert favorite agency here] is aggregating openly flowing datastreams" is a waste of time and effort and decreases the signal to noise ratio as to the substantive issues in play.
Also and more broadly, read Brin's Transparent Society. Still the best foundational work on this subject area...
Seriously, this is news for nerds. A nerd's response should be more along the lines of "Wow, it's pretty amazing some of the innovative things they're doing with all this data." It really is, too. Being able to take this data and turn it into something useful in a completely different way is a technical wonder. This is a data mining masterpiece.
Slashdot is not a political news site. This is not a political news topic. Can we get back to the real reason we're all here?
That's great! Now we have an answer key.... and perhaps the code name of the project.
"I was talking to a senior government official of this government about that outcome and he said well you know we've come to realize that we need a robust social graph of the United States. That's how we're going to connect new information to old information. I said let's just talk about the constitutional implications of this for a moment. You're talking about taking us from the society we have always known, which we quaintly refer to as a free society, to a society in which the United States government keeps a list of everybody every American knows." —Eben Moglen, "Innovation Under Austerity"
Eben Moglen gave a talk where he warned us about a conversation he had with an American government official who wanted a "robust social graph" of Americans. And again at Moglen's re:publica talk as Nicole Brydson reminds us. Of course, I'd prefer to point to a copy of this talk in a format friendly to free software, but I don't know of one.
Moglen reminds us in his talks about how right Richard Stallman (RMS) is, and how we need to do the work of sharing what RMS teaches to others. RMS was right (as per usual) we need software freedom more than ever. Social action based on an ethical grounding (not mere technical convenience or speedy development) is exactly what this situation calls for. I hope everyone will take the time to read or listen to Moglen's insightful talks and take them seriously. They're deeply engrossing and filled with interesting history, so much so that they reward repeated listening and social action.
Digital Citizen
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/09/time-speak-against-nsas-mass-spying
October 26th, 2013
Remember all those paid Microsoft shills telling you that only tin-foil hat morons believed Microsoft's Xbox One was designed from the ground up to spy on citizens in their homes?
The Xbox One dedicates more than ONE EIGHTH of all its hardware resources to implementing NSA full surveillance projects. The Kinect sensor bar (that initially Microsoft mandated for ALL console use, along with 'always on' Internet connection) contains high resolution visible light and infra-red cameras, full body motion tracking systems, and a microphone array designed to track multiple conversations, and/or to hear conversations in adjoining rooms.
EVERY Xbox (with Kinect active) is ALWAYS monitoring each person that enters the room, and takes full facial photographs of each individual. Once a day at least, this information is uploaded to NSA servers in the cloud (disguised as encrypted data flow passed off as Microsoft data). Of course, the NSA know the location of the console, and thus have an existing list of probable residents, allowing their software to use face recognition methods to draw up 'circles of friends/associates' .
Now the usual shills will respond with tales about how this is 'impossible' now the console can be used without Kinect, or much internet connection time. However, they are playing on the stupidity of you, the Slashdot reader. It was ALREADY possible not to buy the console, so everyone already had the option to defeat this form of NSA spying. Bad publicity was threatening to make the Xbone a disaster, and the NSA gains nothing if the console doesn't sell. Allowing the possibility of deactivating the worst spying elements makes no difference, since market research by Microsoft and the NSA reassures them that 95%+ of Xbone customers will always leave the Kinect attached, and will have a permanent Internet connection. The 5% of Xbone users who defeat NSA spying are no different logically from those who refuse to buy the console in the first place, and thus do NOT alter the situation.
Every online Xbone reports itself to NSA master servers, and NSA agents can begin streaming video feeds from ANY console within 100 milliseconds. As I said, the NSA hardware is UNIQUE within the console, and such video streams (capture, compress, encrypt, and upload) have ZERO impact of the apparent performance of the console, even if the owner is currently engaged in AAA gaming with video feeds to their friends.
Why be a sheeple? Why find yourself in ten years time reading reports from a new 'Snowden' detailing Bill Gates' intimate partnership with the NSA. Gates is a proud eugenicist in the mould of those vile evil American eugenicists that created the depraved doctrines that Adolf Hitler so publicly adopted. Gates sees ordinary Americans as garbage to be monitored and controlled.
Your home is the final frontier for your masters. Once they persuade you that you have ZERO right to privacy there, the though police have won their final victory.
Smart people were warning us about this five years ago.
http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/2011/01/28/smoke-signals/
People don't care because most of them have already given all of this info to Facebook, Google, Visa/MC, and their local Grocery store, who have not just mapped all of your connections, but are selling them for fun and profit.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The US government has the resources and the ability to grab him (and anyone who helps him), they just need the bravery to defend this country. Or will it take private citizens, motivated by a strong sense of justice and patriotism, to do that job?
Of course that goes against the groupthink that betraying your country is OK.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The NSA dictatorship has arranged for you to have an "accident".
Obama isn't the one who started all this - he is just the one who is refusing to stop it. There's lots of blame to go around here, no need to pile it all on one person.
I think there's a lot of value in piling it all on the person who is currently in the best position to do something about it, but isn't. Accurate allocation of blame is a job for historians.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
In other words, NSA has built the ultimate cheating better half detector.
In a small town everyone knows what everyone else is doing. So if you hang out with the low life in town everyone will know what kind of friends you have. The only thing that's happened is that "small town" now includes the whole world. Everyone talks about how the Internet has shrunk the world, but somehow fail to grasp all the implications.
Pete Warden did Facebook relationship graphs for the entire US and posted some results several years ago. There was an interesting article on the regional relationships he uncovered. Unfortunately, hard to find now with all the other stuff on Facebook social graphs. This was all I could find.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/05/facebook-forces-entrepren_n_525837.html
google "facebook scraping" and you'll see lots of people are doing it. So hardly surprising that NSA is doing it too.
I see Facebook's stock going down the toilet..... again.
Obviously when they start to compile this kind of data there are going to be millions of criminals exposed to the light. One of the greatest will be tax evaders. Now comes the real issue. Being able to catch so many just what do we do with them? Obviously we can not afford to keep the convicts already in custody. That being said how do we afford the arrest and conviction of millions more? Essentially the government will be stuck in a terrible position. Do they allow criminals to continue being criminals or do they wipe them out secretly?
Think about what will surely happen. Even if we simply stop crime we would throw millions into abject poverty as many people keep above water with the occasional fraud, cheat or thievery or maybe selling dope or illegal guns. Those folks would end up on welfare along with their families. Or they would result to more blatant crimes of desperation. Either way the end result will most likely be covert, police murders or maybe full scale extermination camps. What's a criminal to do?
Why is any of this a surprise? If you didn't already know that everything was being tracked (or could be) then you aren't paying attention. I'm still waiting for something that is news.
If the CEOs were really interested in reporting on this they could make their own news with a sting operation. Plan to do a few "embarrassing" searches, document them ahead of time with a few high profile lawyers then do them. When the NSA acts, you reveal it all on your news programs.
If you are under surveillance and they know everything you do, everyone you talk to, and everything you say it might be a little difficult to surprise them.
I mean really:
1) share every piece of your life online - your friendships, your travel details, photos.
2) live an entirely-connected life for the convenience; use credit cards everywhere, let everything store your data for you "because it's easier than logging in each time", hell, even put your FINGERPRINTS in your phone
3) campaign for an all-encompassing nanny state that takes care of your every need, cradle to grave. If you stub your toe, Mommy USA will make sure you're ok. Make a stupid choice like have a baby at 16? No consequences, we'll make sure everything is fine for you.
4) Be totally surprised that 3 looks at 2 & 1.
Unbelievable, people. Really.
-Styopa
They love printing articles about the mentally insane (RMS), the kid who refuse to grow up (Linus), and this idiot who is too stupid to know how to publish information more than once a month.
Sweeping generalities and useless rhetoric. When people get angry Congress might listen, but as you said yourself, people don't seem to care. So what is the point of this post?
This is classic "preaching to the choir", and as karma-whoring and getting mod points go, you could hardly do better than state the obvious. But as AC, I don't see how this fits in to anything. People who talk for recognition usually use a named account, so that the mod points and recognition go to them personally. An unpopular viewpoint lends itself to AC, in case no one agrees.
Here's what is going to happen. Most people will continue to not care, and most of Congress will continue not reading the letters that the apathetic masses continue not sending. A few concerned citizens and groups will continue fighting for privacy, just as a few members of Congress will continue to ask questions. Other members of the same Congress, elected by different people for different reasons, will continue to dismiss the whole thing with "oversight is in place", "it's just metadata", and "it's what the people want to feel safe".
The important stuff has already been done - in the form of investigations into improper access, FISC opinions, and piles of documentation on just how bad this is, and why it is bad. These leaks have simply pushed the discussion into the open, so that people who don't care can continue not holding people accountable.
Here is something concrete that you could ask for: everyone who exceeded the bounds of authorized access, e.g. every LOVEINT violation, should be handed over as a full case file to the person whose rights were violated. Not one of them should get a demotion, suspension, or reduced pay. Or in the most egregious examples they simply quit before they could be punished. Every one of them should have a civil and/or criminal case from the person whose rights were violated, handed on a silver platter.
That is a solid, specific request intended to create a deterrent while following both the rule of law as well as the secret policy/interpretations own findings and procedures. And it throws everything these leaks have uncovered right in their faces.
Please, no more useless rhetoric. It is tiring. The entire point of discussion is to discuss the specifics of this information, and tie it into previous information and current events. Not hollow pep talk.
"Also the heads of JP Morgan, Citibank, Halliburton, etc, and all the shadowy 1% who are implementing this police state."
There is no evidence that those corporations are willing prticipants, much less "implementors". You're jumping into paranoia with this statement.
I am no friend of those corporations and believe the financial firms should be prosecuted; the NSA data could be used to do this or merely to blackmail them into supporting government policy. So I don't believe that JP Morgan is a willing friend of the NSA.
You completely mis-read that, and I cannot take you seriously now. The chains of evidence are called "parallel construction". This means taking a target where you *know* they are guilty, and what they are guilty of, but cannot lawfully prove it in a court of law. You get an "anonymous tip", or tail the person until they cross the yellow line on a sharp curve, or set up a sting, or any other way to kick off the part of the investigation that goes in the official file and goes to trial.
Then, using the fact that the person actually was found red-handed doing what you knew they would be doing, use that evidence chain to prosecute instead of the actual one that uncovered the illegal activities.
I've dumbed it down a bit, but you are still finding an prosecuting bad guys for doing illegal things. It is just done illegally. But they are not creating evidence out of thin air. It is still real evidence of real crimes. I was going to claim not taking sides on this so we wouldn't get mired in that argument again, so in case it's not clear I repeat - this method is not constitutional.
Go read more about parallel construction and come back with your suggestions when you are more informed, because otherwise you sound like a complete nutjob. Facts are important when contacting to your elected officials, and anyone who sounds like a conspiracy whacko will be dismissed, even if your point is valid.
This particular revelation is kind of a non-issue. When they have data, I would hope that they map it and crosslink it and use it in intelligent ways instead of keeping it in a file drawer for future blackmail or something. The scandal is that so much of the data has been illegally/illegitimately collected in the first place. Worrying that they're able to figure out that "SillyNickName" on Slashdot is the same guy as @sillynick on Twitter and "Nicholas Name" on Facebook and map out his social network connections is missing the forest for the trees; they shouldn't be looking at StupidNickName in the first place absent reasonable cause and a warrant.
I agree that the NSA and its new services provided under "obamacare"? are truly fantastic! Who needs lifelock identity theft protection or even carbonite online back when you have NSA(tm)!! Hard drive crash? No problem! Thanks NSA!
Magnetic tape clearly.
You're talking about taking us from the society we have always known, which we quaintly refer to as a free society, to a society in which the United States government keeps a list of everybody every American knows.
A huge change indeed! For example, in the quaintly referred to "free" society, I can buy a house, populate the garage of said house with a car, use said car (fueled by petrol or electricity) to drive to a shopping establishment, purchase any number of consumer goods, then return home to enjoy said goods.
In a society where the United States government keeps a list... ummm, I can do pretty much the same. Hmm, still waiting for that chill to run down my neck but it is steadfastly refusing to. :(
FINCH: "No photos online and nothing on the social networking sites."
REESE: "I've never understood why people put all their information on those sites. Used to make our job a lot easier in the C.I.A."
FINCH: "Of course, that's why I created them."
REESE: "You're telling me you invented online social networking, Finch?"
FINCH: "The Machine needed more information. People's social graph, their associations. The government have been trying to figure it out for years. Turns out most people were happy to volunteer it. Business wound up being quite profitable, too"
At this point I'm beginning to wonder if perhaps Person of Interest wasn't created by the NSA as a smoke-screen for their reconaissance activities. Is there any mention in Snowden's letters of a little man with a limp wearing glasses?
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
The flaw here is using the same infrastructure that they totally own, and believing they do not have countermeasures.
You can be sure the NSA had a clear roadmap for this chess game caused by the Snowden leaks... way before Snowden dreamed of being employed for them.
We are only an NSA freakout away from having them push some undisclosed tech, or at least poison the torrents like **AA does with movie / music torrents.
True, we haven't seen kill switches widely used in the US, but we're starting to get used to "[This video] is not available in your area" and "the US government has seized this domain," unexpected tracing of bitcoin transactions to specific people, as well as overpowering Tor with their own nodes and targeting encrypted services. We only know of the ones that closed down, and not the ones that said "Yes, ma'am"
That's because you're missing freedom of thought.
The NSA is literally turning into an Orwellian Ministry of Information.
The NSA is using the Thought Police handbook.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juQcZO_WnsI will auto-link a URL
What are you even going on about. You say you're a lawyer, ever hear of the terms probable suspicion or probable cause? The cop that sees what looks like a pot plant in a window has probable suspicion to investigate. The Secret Service that gets a tip that someone threatened the President on Facebook has probable suspicion to look up the post in question.
What the USG is doing, on the other hand, is trying to collect and data mine every piece of information from every person on the planet without probable suspicion or cause.
So, to fix your Not Scottish analogy: the cops break into every person's house in the city to search for pot plants. Still feeling so comfortable and unannoyed?
Were you wearing a brown shirt as you vomited out that other chunk of wisdom? You're talking as if this is about people having a conversation with megaphones in an FBI office and then wondering why it isn't private, rather than the USG snooping on literally every one it can in blatant violation of the 4th Amendment.
You say you don't practice, but I want to hire your services as an attorney just so I can file a complaint with your state bar.
I've seen this reasoning many times before and it seems a bit strange to me. The idea that American army members and police officers wouldn't follow orders and harm their fellow countrymen.
Civil wars happen, people on both sides believe they are doing the right thing. There's many historical examples of people turning against their own countrymen both oppressing and slaughtering each other. If the government descends into some kind of nightmarish entity (which some argue has already happened) it doesn't seem clear to me that the result would be a successful popular revolution and swift return to previous values.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Unless the crimes are trumped up bullshit, like threatening Swartz with 35 years in prison or prosecuting an 80 year old peace activist with terrorism charges when the most you could have hit her with was trespassing and graffiti. And how about those SWAT teams that might leave a few innocent people and family pets bleeding to death on your carpet when they come to arrest you for said trumped up BS.
Hmm. I tried to post a link to this to my Facebook account using Firefox, but couldn't. I block ads and trackers (and Flash) so all of this web interconnectedness just stops working. Safari hung so I was left running this though Goggle's grubby little, but not doing evil, fingers using Chrome. I use Little Snitch (Do you?) I connected to the NYTImes.com and Facebook only, but 51 servers were called. Why? What oversight do any of these extra servers have? Who are they? Why do I have to provide a unique bar code to get a sale price at Walgreen's? The Supermarket? How is this NSA graph different then Facebook Graph Search?
And still, all of these posters want me to freak out over this. Why? What is that obvious thing I am missing?
If the internet is a commons then what expectation for privacy do you have? If you walk around in the street you can be watched. Anyone can go though your garbage once it's off your property. Someone can glance over the mailman's shoulder and see what mail you are getting.
To Quote Steve Fankuchen of Oakland CA on the NYTImes web site (Am I allowed to do this, or is this the private property of the New York Times Inc and must be defended with my many guns?)
Why anyone ever thought any of what they did online was private has always been a mystery to me. But, then again, I am a dinosaur, veteran of earlier versions of the same sort of activity.
Unfortunately, what people, especially young ones, don't seem to get is that as odious and unconstitutional as government spying on Americans is, there is at least some accountability there. The reality is that individuals (whether you want to call them whistle blowers, hackers, traitors, or patriots) in the government have access to and can release information whenever they want. (Snowden is an excellent example.)
Worse, corporations have no real accountability for their actions regarding the amassing and release of data, and if you think Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg can be voted out of office, let alone go to jail, you have been doing way too much drugs. (Here one might consider the banks as a somewhat parallel example.)
I expect it will take a generation or two coming of age with this reality before people start changing their online behavior. Once the technology is there, laws are only effective at the margins.
A comic strip many years ago (it may have been Pogo) had two kids talking on tin can phones. A third has his off to the side, connected to their line. One of the two says to the other, "Who's he?" To which the other replies, "Oh, he works for the government."
Tin can phones? Yes, I am dating myself.
I think the people posting on and on and on about their privacy need to grow up a little and realize what he internet really is not. Private or Free. The fundamental deal of the internet is that you give away your privacy in exchange for free data.
I know it is a little harder to be paranoid about somebody who just want to sell you more twinkies, but how are the activities of the NSA considered a revelation, and really that much different from what a lot of what goes on these days in marketing and advertising?
"The agency is required to obtain a warrant from the intelligence court to target a "U.S. person" — a citizen or legal resident — for actual eavesdropping'."
..
Which is why the NSA gets GCHQ in Britain land to spy on Americans
old news. I remember from ~2003 when a "friend" that works for LexisNexis showed me and our security class some details on one of their emerging projects at the time that was geared for their business intelligence/insight group.. Note that the BI group also did work for the City and other private organizations. The project included a multi relational database that would get you information required by correlating links from various public and private databases that they had legal access to.. (they had full "legal" access to the DMV records, court records, tax records, even information from store discount cards, credit reporting agencies, myspace, and MANY other databases then had fields linked and analyzed)...
Oh... and they did not need to break the security of any of the source databases... They had full and legal access to the databases through legal agreements for the data. One of the loopholes used by some of the government agencies was that it was "LexisNexis" that was doing the data mining and analyzing and not them; they just paid for the results and supplied the source databases.
Note: He was able to prove to us the existence of the project and its capabilities through a "private" live demo.
If LexisNexis could amass that sort of detail, the NSA has much more computing power and clout than they do.
I sometimes think Snowden was sent by Ballmer and Ellison. Google was up to destroying them both. Now that seems a silly proposition.
See how that turns out. ***Spoilers ahead*** It ends with you swinging from lampposts by the balls with piano wire or torn limb from limb by angry mobs and beaten like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoP_etSzd0A
FTFY
Afraid of retribution? What will it take to get actual action?
With liberty... Ah, who are we kidding?
"Democracy." It's just a slogan.
If Obama isn't a lot better than Bush, then the US has just had two failed elections.
There are reasons not even the Republicans want Bush at their convention.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/how-to-build-a-secret-facebook
"Here is something concrete that you could ask for...." Not a bad idea, since it remains to be seem if the relevant prosecutors will, you know, do their jobs.
LOVEINT isn't quite the issue, tho it's part of it. Just how does mapping social connections of US citizens protect them from terrorist attack? Buehler? Buehler?
Dude testifying before Congress committee, saying all this data vacuuming has prevented 50 attacks, another time, 100 attacks. In my mind I keep remembering hearing McCarthy saying he's holding in his hand the names of commies and fellow-travellers in the government. At least Gunner Joe had some names - and provided them.
"These leaks have simply pushed the discussion into the open, so that people who don't care can continue not holding people accountable." Lovely turn of phrase, thank you, and a fair description as well, although I see few major news sites covering that discussion.
Your third para is, I fear, precisely the outcome.
If you have a foreign background and live in the USA, simply make a call to each senator/politician, and say you called wrong number. Now since you called they will be on a person of interest list and may be monitored by NSA.
Maybe this prompt them to change policy.
But I don't think Al-Zwahiri has a Facebook account. Neither did Bin Laden... :s
Exactly, and as they've spent the last 30 years demonizing poor and often colored folks as lazy drug users and career criminals (using the exact same mechanisms the national socialists did to undesirables in Germany), nobody will say much, probably.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
I've dumbed it down a bit, but you are still finding an prosecuting bad guys for doing illegal things. It is just done illegally.
I used the term fake evidence chains, I probably should have said "Fake Chains of Evidence" which is tantamount to tampering with evidence. I would argue that now we have a lot of convictions of Drug Pushers, Importers, Kingpins etc. that would have to be retried and with a fair judge, there may be motions to supress anything that was from a made-up chain of evidence that the DEA can't back up any other way. We may not have a perfect legal system but the fact that now you have prosecutions that could be called into question because of questionable evidence may mean that a lot of dangerous people get released or we spend millions of dollars on re-trials. The other question is that if the DEA is making shit up just to get a conviction, what other government agencies are getting spoon fed info from the NSA in order to convict people of crimes in the same way? If it's just a few clicks on a computer, a phone record here, a GPS location from a cell phone there you could probably convict somebody just for being in the same area at the same time something happened even though you had nothing to do with it. Let's see, you were in the Park last Saturday and a Kilo of Cocaine was sold. You were over by the swing set, they were over by the bike racks but your GPS is the same as theirs, and your phone records show that a friend of a friend of a cousin of a friend knows the seller, therefore you're in their social network graph.. Guess what! We can trump up evidence that you're involved and get you convicted as well. That may sound extreme but logically I think it can already happen and maybe already has.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
If you've been listening to Q/A from Snowden, Microsoft was given instructions to install a backdoor into their products. The backdoors already exist in Windows. NSA also requested Linus to activate a backdoor in Linux. Proof NSA pushing for backdoor. http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/09/19/0227238/linus-torvalds-admits-hes-been-asked-to-insert-backdoor-into-linux They have also requested other distros create backdoors FreeBSD, OpenBSD, etc
"If you wish to keep slaves, you must have all kinds of guards. The cheapest way to have guards is to have the slaves pay taxes to finance their own guards. To fool the slaves, you tell them that they are not slaves and that they have Freedom. You tell them they need Law and Order to protect them against bad slaves. Then you tell them to elect a Government. Give them Freedom to vote and they will vote for their own guards and pay their salary. They will then believe they are Free persons. Then give them money to earn, count and spend and they will be too busy to notice the slavery they are in." --Alexander Warbucks
Casteism
"Americans have grown pretty fat and lazy but we are still a relatively heavily armed people, and you can't exactly go around ordering F-15s to drop napalm on suburban Cleveland. "
LOL! Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it, as they say.
Don't remember the MOVE Movement? The govt dropped a military grade C4 bomb on a civilian townhouse complex in Philly...woo!
Obama isn't the one who started all this - he is just the one who is refusing to stop it. There's lots of blame to go around here, no need to pile it all on one person.
I think there's a lot of value in piling it all on the person who is currently in the best position to do something about it, but isn't. Accurate allocation of blame is a job for historians.
I think that just leads to the country voting in "the other side" every other election and thinking that things will change.