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Officials: NSA's PRISM Targets Email Addresses, Not Keywords
wiredmikey writes "The US government's PRISM Internet spying program exposed by Edward Snowden targets suspect email addresses and phone numbers but does not search for keywords like terrorism, officials said Wednesday. Top lawyers of the country's intelligence apparatus including the NSA and FBI participated Wednesday in a public hearing on the controversial US data-mining operations that intercept emails and other Internet communications including on social media networks like Facebook, Google or Skype. 'We figure out what we want and we get that specifically, that's why it's targeted collection rather than bulk collection,' Robert Litt, general counsel at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, told the hearing. Under authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the NSA asks Internet service providers to hand over messages sent from or received by certain accounts such as terrorist@google.com, the Justice Department's Brad Wiegmann said, using a hypothetical example."
Or is this like Clapper said: we only call it "collected" when we look at it. It's not collected yet when we save it in our datacenter with everything else.
Why, that just happens to be the sort of thing that various Senators and Congressmen have said is exactly what the NSA would need to be doing for things like PRISM not to be illegal. And after 12 months, it finally turns out that's exactly what the NSA have been doing all along!
Oh we were such fools, how could we have been lead astray by that horrible Edward Snowden, lying to us about what the NSA was doing all this time?!
Only *now* do they come up with yet another bogus excuse for their spying network? Why wasn't this brought up IMMEDIATELY upon Snowden's Prism revelation? I guess the spin doctors were on vacation that week or something.
to the public, when the Snowden documents show they've been lying for years.
spying program exposed by Edward Snowden targets suspect email addresses and phone numbers but does not search for keywords like terrorism
Liars. It targets everything ever.
Because I doubt the real "terrorists" would send out emails like:
"OMG I can't wait until we commit our terrorist act in NYC on 9-11! It's such an exciting time to be a jihadi terrorist! GG TERRORISM!"
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
"that's why it's targeted collection rather than bulk collection"
I suspect this is the special NSA version of the word "collect", the version they use without telling people, so those listening think something else is meant; they mean to say, in our language, they collect EVERYTHING, but they only LOOK at some of what they collect (rather than all of it).
Thing is, I don't - I can't - trust a damn word they say. Not a word. There's nothing they say I can trust. All this stuff from them about "we do this", "we do that" - there's zero communication occurring, because I have absolutely zero faith in what they say - let alone the fact it could change at any time and I know for a fact they wouldn't say.
>but does not search for keywords like terrorism
Mail from Bob:
>Hey Alice, wanna go do some terroism next monday?
I can't I'm busy, how about we terrorism on tuesday?
Take care,
Alice
does the US have ANY program besides PRISM that targets email keywords?
We totally believe you. Why would you lie to us?
I just sent a message to the terrorist and I got a reply saying the terrorist no longer exists! How awesome is that?!? NSA! NSA! NSA!
"certain accounts such as terrorist@google.com"
I wish i'd thought of registering that! Not that i'd use it for my primary account, but it would be fun to use on occasion, and i'm sure some really weird stuff gets sent there.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Seriously, why is this posted as news? Surely it is no secret that the NSA will lie whenever it wants. I would rather that Slashdot stick to news that has a reasonable probability of being true.
Snowden is the gift that keeps on giving... if you want to turn rational people into a stupid mob
Making the people stupid is what every government in the world is busy doing, including the government of the United States of America.
And NSA, being a part of the government of the United States of America, knows that the more stupid the Americans are, the more easier their job will become.
But NSA is soooooooooooo unlucky, for there are _still_ a portion of the Americans who prefer to use their brains, yes, the ones in between their ears, rather than believe in everything that came down from the White House and the Congress.
With Snowden's revelation, at the very least, we have proofs that our government, the government of the United States of America, has turned rogue.
Our Constitution, the Constitution of the United States of America, have been violated.
Our rights, as defined by the Bill of Rights, have been purposely ignored.
And luckily for America, we, whom still manage to keep our rationality (unlike those who soak in everything Obama / Feinstein said) know that we not only have the right, but it is *OUR DUTY" as Citizens of the United States of America, to stand up against this goddamn rogue regime.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
As has been portrayed to all of us, lying to the congress, even under oath, is not a crime, as long as you can proof that you are part of the spook network, and/or in charge of the "security" of the nation.
We have become a country where the laws no longer apply to certain *special privileged* people.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Are we really supposed to believe that they put in a system that can scan emails at major email providers and even scan emails on the fly at internet exchange points, yet they didn't design the system to allow keyword scanning?
If they are really targeting specific email addresses, then why do they need the system at all? Just get warrants and get the data from the user's ISP.
They've lied to congress before, plenty of times, who can say they're not doing the same now. Whatever they're full of sh1t and not to be trusted, they'll be back next year talking about how here they were talking about PRISM, but bulk collection, etc or whatever is another program called XYZ which was not the topic of discussion.
They are from the Government and are here to help us.
What a relief! At least they know the target is guilty before they start surveillance.
Seriously? If that's the case, then why was the NSA secretly screening everything passing between google and other company's servers?
Maybe what they *ask* for from companies is indeed carefully targeted, but there's plenty of evidence that they slurp up loads of other data without asking a relevant company at all. They get blanket "warrants" to collect *everything* that passes along the pipes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
In GOD we trust, all others we monitor.
Obviously the project that does keyword searches is called something else, like The PATRIOT or TRUE AMERICAN
with an '@' in them.
They don't give a crap about their targeting anyway. Just look at the slide from WaPo - and remember, this is their own training material. Do you see the fail? No? Look closely at their selector and what it actually matched.
Their selector is XXXXXXX@gmail.com, while it matched YYYYYYYYYY.XXXXXXX@gmail.com, which is an entirely different address. They don't anchor their matches. This means all you need is for <joe@gmail.com> to be in their database to match every single gmail address that ends in joe.
These guys clearly have no intention of improving their filtering - if they happen to grab stuff from someone who they didn't intend to target, they couldn't care less. They filters aren't worth the bits they're stored on.
Official: "The US government's PRISM Internet spying program exposed by Edward Snowden targets suspect email addresses and phone numbers but does not search for keywords like terrorism."
Public: "So, how many email addresses and phone numbers are suspect?"
Official: "Er... Well, all of them..."
THERE you have it! This news IS the BOMB. It is PLANE and simple what happened.
I've been monitoring this submission/ story for a few hours now. The pro Snowden comments get modded up, then quickly de-modded, much like what I've seen done with anti-Microsft comments in other accepted submissions. Very interesting....
The NSA has taps on the backbone, and they want us to believe that they are only searching for specific email addresses? Give me a break. Email addresses are way too easy to setup and discard. Any spy / terrorist with any modicum of trade craft training is going to go through email addresses like a fat girl goes through ice cream.
If people are really using email to coordinate attacks against the United States, then by all means go after them. But please, stop treating us like we are stupid. Do not piss on my leg and tell me it is raining. The NSA got caught, at least man up to it. What is the line the cops use? "Just tell me the truth, and I will get the DA to take it easy on you." ???
The agencies have lost all credibility.
Their employees have lost all credibility.
I would be embarrassed to tell people I work for any of them.
Nothing like being laughed at for my job by nearly the entire population of the planet.
They target specific email addresses without a warrant. And this is better?
The primary purpose of laws is protection the privileged people: The original purpose of the Magna Carta was protecting the rich from the King. The problem is self-righteous ideology such as "When the President does it, is legal." and "I am not a crook." These are both 'The law does not apply to me' rationalizations. As more privileged people adopt these ideals, the benefit of a social contract rapidly declines for the working class. The middle portion of the working class must force a revolt at precise time during this decline; while productivity is the lowest but before it robs the working class of the strength to force accountability upon those privileged people.
Hey Steve,
You wanna go out this weekend and do some terrorism?
Jeff
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
They specifically only collect emails from:
*@gmail.com
*@hotmail.com
and finally *@*.com, just incase that bad guy is doing anything bad...
Snowden even published the keyword list. To lazy to search for it know, but it was a big honor for the CCC, when it found itself on the list ;).
The blogger Empty Wheel had a pretty good running account of this. Naturally, most of the time was taken up pinning the weasels down on their florid and disingenuous definitions of terms such as 'search' and 'query' and even 'bulk', FFS.
..when they don't grab 100% of traffic between data centers they go for specific addresses such as
john.doesnotlikewar.against.iran@gmail.com
Don't hold your breath for first option to be no longer in use.
If all they are collecting are email addresses and phone numbers, why do they need such a ginormous new data center in Utah?
Proverbs 21:19
PRISM doesn't 'collect' keywords.
That is left to a different program.