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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.'"
It just gets better and better..
More importantly the more that leaks the more it confirms the craziest ideas the most paranoid have had for years, even a few years ago when there was an allegation of the nsa/similar inserting a backdoor in some commonly used crypto. the debate in the media was "how credible is the guy saying this?" rather than "look at the code, it is available". but crypto is hard, its super strong math, super good coding knowledge is needed to see how much of the math is being used to obfuscate too. i have been thinking for years they know too much, but its beyond my wildest dreams. for the first wave of documents, then the rebuttals, then disproof of the rebuttals via further documents...we can all safely assume they know more than even our most paranoid believe (other than schizophrenics, who think peoples eyes are cameras).
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.
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.
Looks like Facebook could have competition.
If only the US Govenment would put a nice web interface on the front end.
He said Americans were not being spied upon by the NSA.
that's because they're weasel wording with the definition of spying... in their mind spying just a little bit to know if there's dirt that's useful to spy a little more isn't actually spying.
"but it's ok since we don't share it with other agencies unless there's a crime!" is such fucking stasi bullshit.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
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.
The NSA has logged your opposition to this idea, and they wish to notify you that this is going on your permanent record.
Well, to be fair, his surrogates do most of the direct lying for him, he mainly deals in platitudes and equivocations.
Yes.
It will surprise us when somebody actually does something about it.
Wait a minute, thanks to Google, people's eyes soon WILL be the NSA's cameras.
when you fear your government.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
It seems when they say the NSA doesn't look into what Americans do, they mean no human has access without proper authorization. From TFA, a quote from an NSA spokeswoman: “All data queries must include a foreign intelligence justification, period."
Now, that's nice. Let's assume for a moment that's true - that's not saying anything about automatic collection of data, about computer analysis of such data, about how long data can be kept etc. "No-one is listening to your calls" is a complete red herring. It would be better if their methodology were based on purely human-conducted surveillance. That kind of work is expensive, and therefore must have a limited scope. What is apparently being built now is much worse than having some person listening to people's calls.
Everything we're being told is going on now just reeks of the Total Information Awareness programs which were, to some extent, supposedly discontinued. The goal seems to be the same - make it cheap enough to have total surveillance capability of everything anyone does. You can't do that with humans, but if you manage to build a computer system broad and smart enough, you can do a whole lot more. Humans aren't being phased out of the process because they present a larger risk to the population being monitored - they're just too expensive.
Fortunately, automated intel data analysis is still a very tough problem, but it seems clear a lot of work is being done to "improve" things in that field. That's not good news, it's bad news. Less human involvement in this context means less legal oversight and greater overall capabilities. You can't jail a computer system.
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.
Difference in scale. The LE database tracks known criminals and those associated with a crime. The NSA database just tracks *everyone* on the grounds that they may possibly be a suspect at some point in the future.
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.
Burner phones are getting hard. You can buy a phone second-hand for cash easily enough, but getting it on the cell network is trickier - even prepaid SIMs usually require a bank card for initial activation. It's a result of deliberate government pressure to eliminate untraceable cellphones - not for reasons of terrorism, but to make identifying drug traffickers and sellers easier.
This isn't validation of crazy paranoia.
You're right. To be more precise, it's a validation that what many (most?) people thought was crazy paranoia, isn't, and wasn't. It's scary when people previously dismissed as tin foil hatters turned out to have been right. Other than the exact wording though, which I don't think matters that much since his intent was clear, the GP's point stands.
What surprises me is not that this is being done, but the massive scale on which it's being done. It's no secret that, for example, the FBI bugged the rooms and tapped the phones of MLK. It's revolting that that was done to someone who wasn't even the slightest threat to the United States (in fact I'd argue that he was, amongst other things, a true patriot for wanting to enforce the Constitution). But he was a high profile person, as were many of the others who were bugged. This is different though - it's everyone! That is a characteristic of a police state. Many people say "police state" is overused, but here it's appropriate. This is the kind of crap that the KGB and the Stasi did. During the Cold War we rightly considered the United States superior because it didn't do that. Even after the revelations by the Church Committee about the extensive bugging, it was still only a few high profile people. We didn't have an army of spooks looking up everyone's butt. Now we do, and the fact that it's in electronic form makes it worse, not better. Sometimes I miss the Cold War, because at least it gave us countries that we had to credibly claim we were better than. Now they don't give a damn.
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.
Sure it is. At least some of that information comes from the telephone metadata which isn't for sale.
If one person did this to another person, it would be stalking and would result in restraining orders and eventually a conviction. It looks like the NSA is up for about 300 million counts of stalking now. Assuming only one week of community service for each conviction, we should be looking forward to very clean roadways for the rest of our lives.
It's not a dichotomy. Romney would be a criminal; that is true. It doesn't make Obama any less a criminal.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Have you been paying attention at all? It is for neither purpose. It is about power; getting it, keeping it, and using it to control the citizenry.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Wait a minute, thanks to Google, people's eyes soon WILL be the NSA's cameras.
The weakest link in any security protocol is the human being and this should not be trusted, the strongest link is devoid of human interaction and that should not be tolerated.
If you have a computer, ipod, ipad, cellphone, digital camera; you already work (without pay) for the NSA.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
I'm trying to respond to your post with the proper gravity, but having a bit of a hard time.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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...
"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
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.
The NSA has logged your opposition to this idea, and they wish to notify you that this is going on your permanent record.
The NSA has also noted that Kevin Bacon is now a Person of Interest.
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.
This is the kind of crap that the KGB and the Stasi did. During the Cold War we rightly considered the United States superior because it didn't do that.
Indeed. Now, consider you fought for your country because of said superiority. Consider you took on the mantle of duty because you believed your country wasn't like the oppressive KGB and Stasi. Wouldn't it bring into question what you unquestionably fought for? Wouldn't it undermine the very honor bestowed upon you? Wouldn't it cheapen the sacrifice of any who fought "for our freedom" and were wounded or killed?
The NSA is dangerously harmful to the USA. It must be rooted out because it weakens us far more than it could ever hope to strengthen us. Trust in your neighbor and fellow man has been under attack by these intelligence agencies since the 50's, to better foist upon us their tools of oppression by way of fear-mongering. The common man is afraid to say things aloud or online, and thinks twice before exercising their "freedoms". If the threat is so great as to grant them such powers, then why isn't their message: Better arm yourselves to the teeth because your fellow man is dangerous. That isn't their message, that would be ridiculous and also empower citizens to defend themselves...
Is this surveillance state and national fear worth fighting for? Is that worth "freeing" another people so they may be subject to the same oppression after as before we have fought to free them? It takes bravery to fight against apparently overwhelming odds, and soldiers do this not because they will win, but because they believe in the ideals of our nation, core among them is freedom -- They do what they think is ultimately right and trust their government to direct them in the goal of honor; Even if the foot soldier's actions seem dishonorable they trust their government to have a clearer view of the big picture. Now we glimpse the big picture painted in secret, and what is revealed looks exactly like what we've been fighting against. This must not stand.
It is a disgusting thought to entertain, but there could be reasons such internal national conflict is desired by the elitists who will most certainly escape any conflict unscathed...
If it takes only bravery to fight against such systematic oppression making our land less free then how could it ever stand in the home of the brave? We must end paranoia of our fellow citizen's actions -- For we are great enough to thwart any who threaten us on our soil. We have the upper hand, we are so many and the terrorists so few that automobiles or fast food alone harms us more in a year than than they ever have in all of history. We are so great that we need not even be armed or even paranoid against the terrorists, even foiling their plots mid-air with bare hands once they've been discovered. Those that attack our citizens are pathetically feeble against us.
What of the power of the citizen in relation to our own government? In this regard the government has the upper hand. We trust them to have awesome weapons and machines of war far greater than we the people could have ever dreamed of when those words were first penned. Thus, the paranoia and fear of our government's actions against us must be ended, not by ignorance, but by ensuring there is nothing to be paranoid about. We trust our soldiers to fight for us, not against us because they will be ultimately accountable for their actions; If they fight against us then we would not have them as soldiers. Likewise, if their actions show they are against us then we must not trust our intelligence agencies to spy for us. They have betrayed our trust, and we must hold them accountable. Otherwise our honorable fight for nothing, we have no honor to bestow, and we are servants to bullies instead.
And there's historical precedent for this: The Amsterdam city archive had detailed information about all its citizens, including "religion". When the Netherlands were occupied by the Nazis in 1940, the new government had a new query they wanted to run on this database.
OK it was manual card search in that time, but still... not many Jews in Amsterdam survived, thanks to a previous government's careful information gathering on its own people (only for beneficial reasons, but that doesn't matter to the people who will have their claws on that dataset in 20 years time).
Once the tool exists, once the mechanism is in place, it would be a waste of government money to shut it down and destroy the data, wouldn't it?
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?