NSA Scraping Buddy Lists and Address Books From Live Internet Traffic

Charliemopps writes that the Washington Post reports "The NSA is collecting hundreds of millions of contact lists from all over the world, many of them belonging to Americans. The intercept them from instant messaging services as they move across global data links. The NSA is gathering contact lists in large numbers that amount to a sizable fraction of the world's e-mail and instant messaging accounts." According to the leaked document (original as a PDF), the NSA is intercepting some chat protocols and at least IMAP, and then analyzing the data for buddy list information and inbox contents.

Comments

Raspberry Pi to the rescue!

[Noryungi]

Host your own email server on a Pi. Encrypt everything. Go back to Fidonet or even to snail mail.

I am in the process of doing just that.

Re:Raspberry Pi to the rescue!

[rasmusbr]

Great idea, now all we need is to found a nation based on Raspberry Pi ownership and/or the ability to host your own servers for email and other communication, outlaw communication with foreigners, and then we should be all set!

The world could really use someone or some corporation with lots of resources and no ties to government to fund, and fund indefinitely, an effort at remaking the internet from the ground up. I just can't think of who or what that someone is.

Trying to do it yourself is pointless.

Foreigners

[Anonymous Coward]

I am so sick of hearing this idea that just because I am not a citizen of the USA then somehow I have less rights to privacy.

Re:Foreigners

[Noryungi]

Then do something about it and stop using US-based web services.

Re:Foreigners

[MickyTheIdiot]

You have *less* rights to privacy than a USA citizen? In this case of privacy is there a number less than zero?

The USA citizen that has no special associations is a peon, pal. We're in the same boat.

Re:Foreigners

[Noryungi]

I guess your privacy zero when the Secret Police comes up to your door to arrest you in the middle of the night.

This has happened before, in Europe and in many other countries around the globe.

Funny thing is, the Secret Police was often financed, equipped and trained by the CIA.

Re:Foreigners

[Anonymous Coward]

*cough* XKeyscore is a joint program with Australia and New Zealand.

*cough XKeyscore has been used extensively by the German intelligence agences BND and BfV (that's foreign AND domestic intelligence agencies).

But tell us again all about how big bad America is the only one doing this.

Re:Foreigners

[Aguazul2]

Then do something about it and stop using US-based web services.

Also European and Australian ones, in fact any web services that are in a country where there is an NSA-affiliated tap point, or where your traffic crosses one of those countries. In fact, if you are a 'foreigner' best disconnect completely and go live in a cave -- but not one dug by the CIA because then you're a terrorist and we will send drones.

Re:Foreigners

[Sockatume]

They're not snooping on one, specific service at a point in the US. They're looking at any appropriate traffic that happens to pass through the US. Any information that passes through the US must be considered compromised by the NSA.

Re:Isn't it ironic

[durin]

"I want the good guys to win."

And you think the NSA and the US government are the good guys?

Agh! The stupid! It burns!

Re:Isn't it ironic

[lightknight]

You seem to assume that the choices are mutually exclusive: Soviet KGB-style interrogations and intelligence, or total Anarchy.

I ask you, why did we even fight the Cold War, and win it, if we were just going to embrace everything at a later time?

Most transparent administration ever

[GoChickenFat]

I guess "most transparent" actually referred to us and not the government.

Oh, even belonging to AMERICANS!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that is an awful thing to do. It may violate the rights of the most important people in the world!
(News-overlay with rotating globe, North-America in full focus, all other continents shrunk down and barely recognizeable...)

Please do only spy on towelheads, frogeaters and sausage-lederhosen- people. And the mostly unknown tiny, untidy, yellow oder brown/black rest...the ones with the banana-skirts, y'know?

Re:Isn't it ironic

[jigawatt]

I'm a Canadian, but I support the NSA, and the job it does to protect American (and indirectly) Canadian interests.

"But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."

Snail mail won't help

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also well known that all metadata of all snail mail packages are recorded, logged, tracked, whatever. On top of that, the ability to open, check contents, and re-seal packages when so desired is there and you'd be hard pressed to detect it in most cases. Snail mail won't help.

It shouldn't matter, but it does.

[aclarke]

If this is the case, why is it that most of these articles use phrases like "many of them belonging to Americans"? If it doesn't matter, why is the point made? The answer, of course, is that it does matter. That is, it matters to American law. For reference, see https://www.aclu.org/nsa-surveillance-procedures and highlight the word "Americans".

Speaking as a non-American, I think it shouldn't matter whether I'm American, Austrian, or Azerbaijani. We're all human and we all have the same rights. I find it offensive when I read these articles and there's always the "including Americans" tagged onto the article headline, like somehow it's OK if it's done to non-Americans. I realize it wouldn't be much different if any other country had been caught with their pants down. It's just that in this case it's the US (again).