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Snowden Strikes Again: NSA Mapping Social Connections of US Citizens

Posted by Soulskill on from the raise-your-hand-if-you-are-surprised dept.

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.'"

20 of 513 comments (clear)

  1. Go Team.. by dubist · · Score: 5, Funny

    It just gets better and better..

  2. Re:yay by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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).

  3. People don't care because they're too stupid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:People don't care because they're too stupid by ObsessiveMathsFreak · · Score: 5, Interesting

      While I am a bit cynical myself, I'd have to disagree with the statement that no-one care about all of this. Despite the mainstream media's systemic attempts to bury this story, the NSA revelations are a sledgehammer slowly pounding at the complacent foundations of the free internet. This issue is simply too huge to go away.

      The NSA is literally turning into an Orwellian Ministry of Information. It has commandeered the internet, and is strong-arming American companies into doing its bidding, regardless of the effect on their or their customers rights or freedoms, and regardless of the effect on America's reputation for free speech and free enterprise.

      It might be easy to ignore each individual blow of revelation, but when a big pillar crumbles, it becomes a little difficult to look away or hide the growing sense of dread. The closure of Lavabit and Silent Circle was a body blow to the notion of free speech and free enterprise on the US internet.

      A lot of people probably felt that the likes of Facebook, Google, MS, would be locked down first, with the creep moving down the chain to email providers, independent sites, and finally, in extremis, to small independent secure email service providers. Instead this has been turned on its head; the independent man, in business for himself, was the first pin to fall. The message is clear: You cannot set up a website, email service, or any other internet business in the United States without the prior and/or post-facto approval of the National Security Agency.

      A dream is dying. People like yourself escape through cynicism. Others escape through denial, or fantasy. But the reality is we are living in a nightmare, surrounded by a growing sense of dread in a global spy and surveillance network that has spiralled out of all reasonable proportion and probably control.

      The NSA is turning the internet into at best a panopticon, and at worst a prison for our whole society. They have slowly built a fortress of concrete, wire, and guard-towers around the free web. Edward Snowden is outside, slowly pounding on the wall, hoping some of those inside will hear enough to notice that they need to find a way to break out, to stop the construction before it's too late.

      I think he's succeeding. As cynical as I am, I think that as the revelations continue, more people are starting to wake up to the reality of the nightmare that the NSA was trying to create while they slept. We need an internet that is encrypted, anonymous, and decentralised by default; And Mr. Snowden's sledgehammer may be inspiring a new generation of hackers to finally create it.

      --
      May the Maths Be with you!
    2. Re:People don't care because they're too stupid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, the reason for not going "full martial-law/internment camp/mass graves/brutal tyranny" is because it serves no point.

      And for the record, America did built internment camps in the 1940's for Japanese-American US citizens, has used mass graves for Native Americans during the Trail of Tears, and just recently held an entire major US city under lock down to catch 2 suspected bombers

      So much for the "lots of guns" joke.

    3. Re:People don't care because they're too stupid by ColdWetDog · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And exactly what do the tens of thousands of random fire arms do for you in an attempt to foil the powers that be?

      Planning on taking over the neighborhood Air Force base with a few of your friends and convincing the pilots to bomb DC? Overrun the National Guard Armory and steal some Vietnam era trucks and a few radios (oops, wrong frequency ..)

      The reason that Afghanistan is so fucked up and will remain a fucked up, neo feudal society is that they are stuck in small squad infantry tactics (along with a bizarre misogynist, xenophobic religion). Yes, then can fight a asymmetric war, but clean water and power, not so much. For better or worse, the standard of living in the US and similar countries is dependent on a complicated weave of people, business and law. You can break the system, but then you've bought it. How are all the disconnected angry people with guns going to rebuild a society?

      Is it really going to be better than what we have? Can you think of some, perhaps less violent ways of accomplishing something useful?

      I don't think that an armed citizenry is keeping the government from doing what it wants. Remember, the powers that be don't want any drastic change - it's how they make their money. We still need to role back the intrusiveness of government in the world, but it's a slow, messy process.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    4. Re:People don't care because they're too stupid by felrom · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As another "tell," keep in mind that California's own Diane Feinstein is both the largest pusher of gun control and the biggest cheerleader for the NSA's spying in the Senate. It's no coincidence.

      California should be ashamed.

  4. news media has lost interest? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:news media has lost interest? by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 5, Informative

      Well, seeing that the U.S. media is totally in the bag for Obama, it's not too much of a surprise.

      Seymour Hersh himself - a man who would know and who spent his entire life rooting out government crimes - just said in The Guardian: "There are some people - the New York Times still has investigative journalists but they do much more of carrying water for the president than I ever thought they would ... it's like you don't dare be an outsider any more."

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    2. Re:news media has lost interest? by Charliemopps · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The media does what they're told. Do you think that the NSA has the ability to force Google ($292B), Apple ($438B) and Microsoft ($277B) but they don't have any control over turner broadcasting ($60B) or NPR who is partially funded by the government?

      All they have to do is monitor a couple of CEOs internet connections and wait for them to look up something embarrassing. Tada! The NSA controls the news.

    3. Re:news media has lost interest? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      As a foreigner, I have to tell you that the US media isn't in the bag for Obama. It is, actually, in the bag of the US ruling aristocracy, whose current public figurehead is Obama. They've routinely pulled the exact same shenanigans whether the US aristocracy's public figurehead comes from either party.

      In fact, I don't really know if it's even possible to claim that the US even has two political parties, because in spite of the public nitpicking between some controversial issues, which when you really look at it are really minor in the business of ruling a state, they actually don't diverge much in policy.

      Until the average US citizen figures that, in spite of having to vote once every few years, their regime is far from democratic and isn't very different from totalitariam regimes such as those in place in fascist states such as China, this problem won't go away.

  5. Re:So Obama lied again by gl4ss · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  6. Living Overseas? by x_IamSpartacus_x · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  7. Great! Can we have a copy? by Phoenix666 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  8. Re:yay by tripleevenfall · · Score: 5, Funny

    The NSA has logged your opposition to this idea, and they wish to notify you that this is going on your permanent record.

  9. Re:yay by ebno-10db · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  10. Eben Moglen warned about "a robust social graph". by jbn-o · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "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
  11. 10-26-2013 Rally Against Surveillance by cookYourDog · · Score: 5, Informative

    https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/09/time-speak-against-nsas-mass-spying

    October 26th, 2013

  12. it is hard to bluff when they can see your cards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  13. Re:yay by VortexCortex · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.