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NSA Chief Keith Alexander Takes His PRISM Pitch To YouTube
Daniel_Stuckey writes "There's definitely something strange about the video's attempt at looking/sounding like a NOVA episode. Alexander, who defended the agency at Black Hat this summer and recently announced his retirement next year, takes care to emphasize the agency's privacy compliance precautions and oversight. 'We have not had any willful or knowing violations in those programs,' he says referring to sections 215 and 702 of the Patriot Act, which relate to the telephone metadata and PRISM programs respectively. 'There have been [violations] in other programs, but not in those two.'"
All the lies and deceit that has come along from them so far means that WE. DO. NOT. TRUST. WHAT. YOU. SAY.
Your words are pointless, because you are almost certainly lying. "How do you know when an NSA spokesman is lying?" "His lips are moving"
when accused thieves an murderers are in the dock, they always assure us they are innocent too. "I may have done some minor thing, but not what I am accused of. Definitely not." And they generally believe it. Mental gymnastics should be an olympic sport.
So, just involuntary and ignorant violations, then.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
Have gnu, will travel.
It's nice that you say so. The problem is: I don't believe you. I cannot. There is no oversight whatsoever concerning your actions. You say that no transgressions happen, that's nice. But let's say I assert that I'm no terrorist, does that mean you stop spying on me? No. Why? Because you cannot verify that I'm not.
So why the hell should I believe you without any kind of evidence or any kind of ability to verify your claims?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A pathological liar telling lies. You should be scared shitless that slime like this have so much power.
Doesn't this amount to the Department of the Defense propagandizing directly to the U.S. public? What is acceptable and what is not?
I can see press conferences, announcements, and factual information, but when does it become an attempt to persuade the public?
Secret program approved by secret courts run by a guy who has no qualms about lying under oath. Sorry but your credibility will only return once you get rid of FISA courts and replace yourself with someone who doesn't consider people who disagree with mass surveillance as being filthy, disobedient children. Massive ass that you are. And yes, he did make that comparison.
How about that for starters? It's about time to end martial law after 9/11!
The patriot act is about as patriotic as the Federal reserve is federal...
Outlived his usefulness, and being allowed to hang himself in the court of public opinion.
Check the like vs dislike counts on youtube (157 vs 9,993 at the time of writing).
All your ghosts are just false positives.
When Comrade Alexander posts the full log of his phone calls and visited websites for the past year he might earn credibility amongst the proletariat. No harm done, because it's only metadata, right?
People are wringing their hands over an automated system that might see your super secret facebook Like of the latest Lil Bub video
Yeah! Who cares if they spy on everyone and blatantly violate the constitution? No big deal. No government has ever abused their powers or used information to their advantage. Also, laws are unchanging and always just, so what could possibly go wrong?
Ignorance is a choice
It's very nice of you to take the time and sit down and try to explain your actions. It's clear that you believe that the NSA has a set of duties and those duties require or even demand the sort of wide-spread surveillance that has, willfully or not, broached a very core aspect of your own self-worth. In trying to defend your actions, you make it patently clear that you know you've done something wrong. Unfortunately, the position you are in does not inherently give you the perspective on why so many people are upset with your actions. So, let me try to walk you through exactly why people take issue with the NSA and other members of the US Federal Government in their course of action against the people of the world.
To put in bluntly, the people of the world have various rights. One of those very core rights is the right to privacy. That is, a large part of the dignity, self-respect, and general humanity of a person comes from their ability to be alone and unique in their thoughts and beliefs and often even actions. Yet the very notion of the NSA and other such government bodies is to do away with privacy in the name of some higher purpose. The argument invariably degenerates into a black and white question of which right must be given up: a right to life or a right to privacy. The very fact that such a position is taken is the very problem.
You see, the world is not black and white. The world isn't even greyscale. It's a lush and beautiful world that expands well outside the visible spectrum. Yet as much as humans are blind to the ultraviolet and the infrared, you have set yourself up to believe in the most perverse of visions that leaves you nearly blind. You denigrate the people you are entrusted to protect and in doing so demonstrate that you are actually worse, in many ways, to the actual enemies of those people. For the enemies of the people actually see them as people. Your actions treat them as little more than sheep or fodder. The former may slaughter hundreds of people, but your actions pave the way in justifying the slaughter of millions.
Now, I say all the above with the hope that you don't take it the wrong way. I do think you started out with noble intentions. But the road to hell is paved with noble/good intentions. What you need to measure your actions by are what you actually are doing. You cannot turn to the ends to justify the means. You cannot argue that the violations that do occur are infrequent so are acceptable. In the end, as cliche as it may seem, you need to look at these words and really think behind the meaning behind them. And maybe, if you can muster a little privacy of your own, while you try to deny it to us, you can look upon your own life when you retire and how your actions will affect you once you are no longer the one in command of these forces that you have taken part in unleashing upon the world.
In the end, as much as I wish you well as a person, the question you should be asking in presenting such a statement to the public isn't "How can I live with myself?" but "How can the people of the world live with what I've done to them?". I don't really know the answer to that question. I do know that of all the people who do exist, you are the best position to be the forefront of actually fulfulling your actual duty and not merely the letters of the memos or reports presented to you that have been used to justify your actions. Instead of changing the American people, your time would be better spent in changing the Agency you're entrusted to be in charge of and are actually able to change.
PS - The sad fact is, thanks to the likes of Edward Snowden, I have a good deal of confidence that you, the NSA, will receive this comment even though it was never sent to you because you will not be certain with 51% accuracy that I'm American. That is, put simply, beyond distasteful and horribly disrespectful of the 95%+ of humanity that is not American that you treat with contempt in your actions.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Somebody seems to be lying here. Maybe the guy that thinks his agency is perfect, despite massive evidence to the contrary?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I did not notice this, for the simple reason that it hasn't happened. He has announced his intention to retire next year.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
At 16:17 in the video notice that Alexander says, "no content in the metadata program." He could have said, "no content" to the question of collecting phone content. Instead he had to add, "in the metadata program." This begs the question: Is there some other program under which the NSA is collecting the content of our phone calls?
Doesn't this amount to the Department of the Defense propagandizing directly to the U.S. public? What is acceptable and what is not?
I can see press conferences, announcements, and factual information, but when does it become an attempt to persuade the public?
Oh, you didn't hear? They repealed the law that forbade the US government from using it's (formerly) foreign propaganda tools and assets domestically against US citizens.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130715/11210223804/anti-propaganda-ban-repealed-freeing-state-dept-to-direct-its-broadcasting-arm-american-citizens.shtml
http://reason.com/24-7/2013/07/15/with-ban-repealed-us-aims-propaganda-mac
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/17/1224321/-U-S-Government-Repeals-Ban-Opens-Floodgate-to-Mass-Agitprop-Meant-for-Domestic-Consumption
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3043041/posts
What I find interesting is that we see publications as politically/ideologically diverse as Daily KOS and Free Republic both highly critical of this travesty.
If only people would stop looking at only what they differ on and unite on what they agree on. That's how the government and their lackeys plays people. They stir up wedge-issue shit, create a carefully-crafted narrative, and push it through the various communications medias to enrage and divide people and suck all of the oxygen out of the air for public discussion about actual meaningful oversight, reform, and accountability of government and the political class.
I guarantee that even as a white male in his mid-50s, I and a 16-YO black or Latino gang-banger in the 'hood STILL have far, far more in common and agree with each other's views far more across the board then either of us would with the average Washington D.C. politician or apparatchik, regardless of political party.
Instead of, for instance, arguing over "racism" over the Trayvon/Zimmerman incident, how about holding those responsible for the 35% black unemployment rate and the generally crap economy that had Trayvon and has many more like him out on the streets instead of working a job and raising a family, responsible for their actions or lack of, and craft some practical solutions instead of trying to start a race war.
Same thing with Chicago/Detroit gun violence...treat the cause not the symptoms. Hold the politicians responsible for the high poverty & unemployment in those cities and others around nation responsible for the crime, violence, and hopelessness it breeds instead of attempting to shift the blame to 2A rights and individual gun ownership.
Always watch the other hand. Do you really think any of those politicians and political apparatchiks give a single damn about gun deaths or racism? All any of them (outside of a couple of pariahs of the mainstream party-establishments) actually care about is securing and increasing their wealth & power by increasing and broadening every aspect of their control over YOU.
Welcome to "Serfdom, 21st-Century Style!".
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Umm... That is sort of the American left's mantra. The Constitution is a living document which meaning changes as society changes and holding it to strict interpretation is obsolete. Why would you think they would be concerned with protecting it or it's enforcement or the ramifications of it?
That is something the American right and/or people who actually give a fuck about this country simply do not understand. Hell, even many on the left who do care don't understand it but follow that ideology to some degree because it is convenient to their other goals. There are entities who care fuck all about the constitution, what limits it places on the government's abilities (unless they conveniently need them at the moment), as long as their version of whatever makes it through. Expecting them to care is simply foolish.
Seriously, we just had a law passed (PPACA) that couldn't survive on it's own merits constitutionally and the Supreme Court had to rewrite a penalty provision to become a tax penalty that completely bypasses the 5th amendment's due process of law clause in order to force it into compliance with the Constitution and the American Left are championing it as a great victory over the mean terrorist republicans. Despite 16 million people with insurance loosing that coverage due to the strict grandfather clause in the law, Despite massive increases in premiums for those who get to keep their insurance, despite companies dropping employee hours to avoid full time employees, despite companies dumping retirement coverage onto medicare and the exchanges, despite companies dumping spousal coverage if they work because they can get insurance elsewhere now, we have an administration that rewards it's political allies by giving unions and large companies waivers and delays but will not delay the mandate for the common man even though the exchanges are completely messed up right now. And you expect them to understand or care about anything other then their agenda.
Now stop bothering me, I gotta find out what Brittany is doing next.
All the lies and deceit that has come along from them so far means that WE. DO. NOT. TRUST. WHAT. YOU. SAY.
Don't you get it yet ?
They are using Youtube, a place where the sheeples congregate
They are NOT talking to the people like you and me --- they are talking AT the sheeples
As long as the sheeples in America ( and the world ) believe their lies, and the sheeples do believe them, NSA will get to continue their deceits without any hindrance
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
What makes you so sure?
That they are STILL trying to hide something BIG? Years in the telecom and ISP business, NSA-watching since the Internet went global and way before. I am one of those people who might have become a spook, though I am glad I did not. From its all-to-brief brief mention in David Kahn's The Codebreakers [1967] which I carried around as a kid like some overstuffed bible, my interest was piqued by James Bamford's Puzzle Palace [1982] which introduced the world to the topic of the 'piggyback slurp' and laid out directly NSA's intentions to tap the world. The whole world -- Charter be damned -- from the start.
A few anecdotes from good friends in the telecommunications trade who alluded to special cordoned-off spaces within AT&T's Magens Point cable terminus in St. Thomas US Virgin Islands, drunken conversation in bars with reminders not to speak of such things... a rather suspicious 'underwater landslide' fiber outage between St. Thomas and Puerto Rico c.1995, which I suspected at the time might involve a submarine because a telco friend noticed that after all his voice circuits were back there was an eyebrow-raising 'unusually long period' before the data circuits came up, even though they were physically interspersed and not supposed to be broken out at the carrier level... circumstantial stuff, sure. Pure speculation is as fascinating as the real thing.
Since then, revelations about Room 614A and Hepting vs. AT&T, the little mouse who could have roared all the way to the Supreme Court, had they not declined to hear the case.
I'm not talking about individual stakeouts or FISA warrants or occasional 'oopsies' of a few domestic intercepts. I'm discussing large scale Tier 1 total interception of data with selective routing and forwarding of target traffic onto side channels via 'dark' or leased fiber on a scale that is approaching 'total'. This includes voice too: terrestrially trunked cell calls and landline (there is practically no difference these days, it's all turkeyfart compressed).
Which is why I posted here back in June my theory that PRISM slides were made as part of a limited hang-out. I came to this conclusion because I found the allegation that Internet service providers named grant direct back-doors to NSA to be preposterous (and still do, too much risk of exposure by now). The purpose of the hang-out was for Google and company to discredit the allegations honesty to relegate it to 'hoax' status... and provide a topic that diverts attention away from the total-tap-slurp operation.
Steve Gibson of Gibson Research has come up with another theory that I find interesting, it may fit Occam's Razor better than my own. He presented it recently in Security Now #408: The State of Surveillance, audio and full transcript available. GOOD STUFF. His angle is that "direct access to their servers" means all unencrypted SMTP-mail and HTTP from tap points directly upstream. It is all about fiber and taps. Taps are about splitting light... and that is what prisms do.
If you have a good traffic tap and encrypted intercepts, add a bit of coercion for the providers to divulge their private SSL keys and they can replay the past SSL sessions they have gathered.
It is time for everyone to learn about and implement Perfect Forward Secrecy.
Thar be dragins in our midst. Slay them.
NSA and the Desolation of Smaug
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Wow - it's clear that YOU aren't partisan! Thank all that is holy for that!
And, with that my sarcasm detector is bitching about the OUTGOING sarcasm!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Just a reminder: Heart Disease and Accidents cause more deaths every single year than over four hundred 9/11's. It's been over a decade now... That's more than 4000 September 11th sized attacks. Are you scared to eat and/or drive now? That's how fucking pathetic the fear narrative is.
This is America. We drive fast cars to fast food restaurants without a second thought. You want me to continue to ALLOW an expensive totalitarian spying apparatus to protect us from 0.00025 the danger we face from cars and cheeseburgers? What the fuck can the ineffectual terrorists do? If the NSA wanted to protect us they'd be making tastier health food and building self driving cars or the Hyper-Loop.
Fucking "intelligence" bullshit; Protip: All government labels mean the opposite. "PATRIOT Act", yeaaah. "Intelligence?" hahah... oh man. No wonder the basement dwelling NSA stinks so bad. If they're afraid of terrorists, just imagine how they feel about the many times greater threat of falling down in the bathtub!
More specifically, the Constitution was meant as a framework, and as that it is relatively loose in its terminology and definitions, and doesn't really establish much law. The Bill of Rights (first 10 amendments that came about 15 years later) added most of that.
But we're talking NSA here, and their charter SPECIFICALLY forbids them from spying on Americans (with FISA/Patriot Act exception if they are talking with foreigners) intentionally or not, and they have been proven to be doing that. This is a felony in the US, and they should be held accountable.
I have serious problems with the illegal, warrantless spying as well as FISA being a secret supreme court that can, in fact, overrule the public supreme court. This is unacceptable. If it keeps going on, I feel I will have to rescind my citizenship and move elsewhere, because the US is moving toward being a police state. Having ancestors that were forcibly evicted (religious persecution) gives me options for a new homeland.