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NSA's Novel Claim: Our Systems Are Too Complex To Obey the Law
Reader Bruce66423 (1678196) points out skeptical-sounding coverage at the Washington Post of the NSA's claim that it can't hold onto information it collects about users' online activity long enough for it to be useful as evidence in lawsuits about the very practice of that collection. From the article: 'The agency is facing a slew of lawsuits over its surveillance programs, many launched after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked information on the agency's efforts last year. One suit that pre-dates the Snowden leaks, Jewel v. NSA, challenges the constitutionality of programs that the suit allege collect information about Americans' telephone and Internet activities.
In a hearing Friday, U.S. District for the Northern District of California Judge Jeffrey S. White reversed an emergency order he had issued earlier the same week barring the government from destroying data that the Electronic Frontier Foundation had asked be preserved for that case. The data is collected under Section 702 of the Amendments Act to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
But the NSA argued that holding onto the data would be too burdensome. "A requirement to preserve all data acquired under section 702 presents significant operational problems, only one of which is that the NSA may have to shut down all systems and databases that contain Section 702 information," wrote NSA Deputy Director Richard Ledgett in a court filing submitted to the court.
The complexity of the NSA systems meant preservation efforts might not work, he argued, but would have "an immediate, specific, and harmful impact on the national security of the United States.'
Adds Bruce66423: "This of course implies that they have no backup system — or at least that the backup are not held for long."
The computer version.
If you can't have your data available to demonstrate what you're doing it lawful, and you are going to delete it, then only reasonable conclusion is what you are doing cannot be proven lawful.
Therefore, the program is not lawful, and you need to stop.
Problem solved.
This amounts to "your honor, we collect so damned much information we couldn't possibly hold onto it long enough to be subject to legal oversight. Trust us."
What crap.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I guess they really are making Skynet... Seriously though, everything the NSA has said since this whole scandal started reeks of "The end justifies the means." They're basically a cartoon villain at this point.
So wait, the NSA's argument as to why their program is legal.. is that they're too incompetent to design a system that can follow the law. Shouldn't this be grounds to fire everyone at the NSA for incompetence, if this is the argument they're using?
Since it would mean that they don't routinely hold onto this information for further analysis, future blackmail, etc. However, it seems far more likely that they are simply lying when they say they can't do this.
"This of course implies that they have no backup system — or at least that the backup are not held for long."
It implies nothing other than the NSA continues to lie whenever an order to turnover data is presented.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Then it's time to stop what you're doing. People's rights are more important hiding politicians' (and their benefactors') dirty laundry. What you're doing is undermining the fundamental principles that separate western democracy from the dark ages.
My biology is so complex it's not understood yet either!
Woohoo! Behold the new lawless me!!!!!
Mostly random stuff.
Just give everyone the finger, it's faster.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Everything concerning the NSA has "an immediate, specific, and harmful impact on the national security of the United States."
Releasing any information has "an immediate, specific, and harmful impact on the national security of the United States."
Saving any information has "an immediate, specific, and harmful impact on the national security of the United States."
Any whistle blowers have "an immediate, specific, and harmful impact on the national security of the United States."
Disagreeing with any official has "an immediate, specific, and harmful impact on the national security of the United States."
Giving out the legal reasoning behing their operations has "an immediate, specific, and harmful impact on the national security of the United States."
Why have more people not clued in that the NSA is "an immediate, specific, and harmful impact on the national security of the United States."
they have damaged the reputation of their agencies simply by believing that none of their secrets would get out. My mom always told me that once more than one person knows something it is no longer a secret and will not be kept that way.
NSA is lying.
The NSA, The CIA, the FBI and the Justice department have already been caught in BOLD FACED LIES in regards to their activities on dozens of occasions. The Presidents (both Obama and Bush) have gone on National Television and lied directly to the American people regarding this programs over and over and over again. Several NSA directors have gone in front of congress and lied while under oath. They were then called back and admitted that they're lied. You cannot trust anything they say at all. The only solution to this is to shut down the agency. They are willing to violate the law, the constitution, court order and even the will of the president. No regulatory reform or court order will be effective against an agency that thinks its charter is more important than obeying the law or will of the people. They fundamentally believe that your physical safety is more important than our individual rights. That is totalitarianism. It is not a belief that is compatible with democracy.
It's the biggest system there is. There's nothing to 'back it up to', for various reasons. The letter of the (original) order can't be complied with, without shutting it off, and saving the current contents for the upcoming hearing (or trial). In the meantime, we have nothing as far as NSA protection goes. I get that.
That doesn't mean the the spirit of the order can't be complied with. Snapshots of sections, randomly chosen database blocks from among representative groups, a sampling of the most called routines; something. If it's a freaking computer, then there is some way that evidence can be gotten without bringing the system down, assuming cooperation on the part of the admins. I hope they are not getting off the hook.
Out of one side they will argue that they can't possibly store all this massive data they are collecting. And then they will turn around and blame the courts for needing more storage to store all this data they are collecting. See we can't stop spying on the American people... the courts are making us.
If the data cannot be saved, then speed up the trial! It's been going on for a while now.
Data goes back over 30 years...
A basic legal principle is that ignorance of the law is no excuse.
It may be a factor in applying penalties, but it does not affect the finding of fact re guilty or not guilty.
If the NSA has historically used perceived complexity of operation as a reason for turning a blind eye to their legal obligations, they may be guilty of massed conspiracy.
So if their system is too complex to obey the law....the short version of what they said is "We built a system without regard to the law" and "We broke the law". Thank you for the confession. Now its time to start dismantling and prosecuting thanks.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Yes, a downside to dragnet collections is you get a whole lot of data.
Keeping it indefinitely when there is no intel value in not feasible because there was no reason to set up the system to do that.
But if the NSA can't respond to a lawsuit request for evidence that would put them in a bad light,
and there are other indications that the evidence would likely put them in that light,
then perhaps the presumption should be that they is already in that bad light.
A skeptic might say that if the evidence would put them in a good light,
they would be a lot more 'able' to produce it.
The argument that one can't sue because one has no evidence that the secret bad thing happened seems bogus.
I'm not so sure about an argument that there was no harm from the 'bad' thing if you don't know for sure it even happened.
So far, thankfully, this NSA stuff (unlike the IRS, TSA, etc stuff) isn't about the bad stuff they actually did.
So far, there is no evidence that they abused their information rich position.
It's about the wisdom of providing the unchecked opportunity and temptation for abuse in the future.
Next one will be "proper process is too complex, so we just directly jail anyone that our trusty staff think that deserves it"
This reminds me of the story of the kid who murdered his parents, then threw himself on the mercy of the court because he was an orphan.
We have (or at least had) a Constitution to protect citizens from governmental abuses of this nature.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
When the government is above the law, the government needs to be changed
so the new government respects the law.
End of story.
Maybe we don't need all of their information, maybe we just need metadata about that information. Surely there's no harm in that!
and if they're collecting too damn much information to hold it, let alone process it, then it's almost all GIGO. dump the assumptions and Orwell on your desk for reference, and narrow your search. the FBI never caught a bootlegger chasing the history of every barefoot kid on the street, either.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Do you think "The tax code is too complex for me to figure out, so I don't really have to pay, do I?" would work?
Aww, poor NSA, their systems are too complex for them to control according to the law? What a terrible 1st world problem to have! Fear not NSA, I have a solution that will take this horrible burden off your shoulders, and make the rest of us happy at the same time: simplify your goddamn systems to the point where you can 'control' them and be in accordance with the law. Either that or maybe we need to take a chainsaw to your 'systems' and just chop them down to a reasonable size. Here, here's an abacus, that's about all I'd trust you motherfuckers with at this point.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
That's what I will tell my clients after delivery.
They don't actually mean that the system is too complex to obey the law.
They merely mean that it is too complex for "journalists" to tell whether they are obeying the law or not.
The tax code is too complex for me to obey it.
I think that I'll stop, citing their logic.
The IRS has tried a similar tactic in the past, saying their systems don't allow them to be audited. So I can go to jail for not being 100% up-front with the IRS, but they can't be held to the same standard.
Land of the Free my ass.
All they would have needed to do is mark the plaintiffs as court-indicted terrorists (which they most likely have done anyway) and the cleansing would stop.
What they are saying is that their machinery does not accommodate searches based on a warrant. We are not talking about dealing with a special situation here. We are talking about the only legal way of doing searches according to the Fourth Amendment.
What they are saying is that their whole machinery was not designed to work legally, so they want to continue operating it illegally. And the judge says "oh, of course, please do, how silly of me".
I say we EMP the whole site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure!
"Sorry. My financial transactions are far too complex for me to maintain tax compliance records."
Have gnu, will travel.
My big ass hairy guess is the systems algorithms automatically controls what is stored and what is dropped without human intervention, and any real attempt to permanantly store any particular thing would mean basically shutting down the collection system. The size of the system the NSA is using would have to be mind-boggling, the amount of data coming in is staggering; new stuff has to be incoming faster than any backup could ever keep up with. It's highly likely that new stuff would over-write old stuff, making it impossible to secure particular records reliably.
I'm sure that there has to be some metadata system that ranks how long and in what detail data is to be retained, and what most of us boring normal people is downgraded faster than people that keep tripping the filters, the NSA has to be bumping up against the limits of what is possible to do on a regular basis; I'm amazed they actually can do what they are doing.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Adds Bruce66423: "This of course implies that they have no backup system — or at least that the backup are not held for long."
American citizens should not have to pay to be spied on by an Unconstitutional organization.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
...got no one out of a ticket ever.
"an immediate, specific, and harmful impact on the national security of the United States."
Yes, and see, they measured it out to be on the order of .0000000000000001% of a mission obstacle lasting all of 6 seconds. But by strict definition, it qualifies to trigger the "let us do anything we want without conditions" mechanism they love so much.
"This of course implies that they have no backup system — or at least that the backup are not held for long."
Unfortunately, it proves nothing. The recording systems capture EVERY byte coming along the cables and can be used to REPLAY exactly what data went between two points at any time. This means they can go back and re-examine traffic to find hidden transmissions they overlooked before. They don't throw anything out (specifically stating that they keep anything encrypted forever) and longevity is reported as anywhere from 4 days to several years of 100% of the Internet's activity. Reports vary due to being what the system was capable of at the time, probably. The UT center probably won't be full until your kids are out of diapers and graduating high school.
She should sell it; then she can afford to give you a proper education in sentence structures, spelling, grammar and hyperlinking.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
It's the biggest system there is. There's nothing to 'back it up to', for various reasons. The letter of the (original) order can't be complied with, without shutting it off, and saving the current contents for the upcoming hearing (or trial). In the meantime, we have nothing as far as NSA protection goes. I get that.
That sounds an awful lot like temporary safety in exchange for essential liberty.
Brains (i.e. Human brains) are even more complex than all of the NSA's systems combined.
Thus I proved that the human brain is too complex to obey the law, therefore no human being with a brain (which, depending on the definition, is all of us) can be expected to follow any laws.
Gotta love flawless logic...
I don't know about stupid and incompetent, but you're entirely wrong as to the fundamentals of the 2008 financial crisis.
It's nice to make this about individual responsibility, but that's just not what happened. You probably heard the terms "credit default swap" and "mortgage derivatives" but didn't understand them. Essentially what was happening was major financial companies found that they could package up a bunch of low-rated mortgage-backed securities, hide the information about the individual loans, and turn a bunch of shitty loans into an AAA-rated security, and then trade the risk to someone else. Moody's and S&P were getting their cut from rating these things, and did not even have the information to be able to rate them properly. Then we have the credit default swaps, which were a little-understood and unregulated market, but essentially a way for companies to trade debt as if it were an asset, specifically all of the risk they were exposed to as part of these MBS deals. The concept of trading debt as an asset is not new, but it really only works when you have a good idea of how risky the debt is. There was a booming market[1] in these credit default swaps right up until the first wave of foreclosures hit and the MBS market started crumbling, and then whoever was left holding the bag got screwed.
Banks generally don't do stupid things, even when the government wants them to. They sure as shit don't advertise things that are going to lose money. There were a lot of people with a vested interest in pinning this on the individual consumer and the government, but the seeds were sown with the repeal of Glass-Steagal. The federal loan program ticked along quietly for over a decade, but the mortgage market exploded due to the derivatives market. Taking a shitty subprime mortgage and packing it into an AAA-rated security was like printing money. There was no governmental obligation to offer NINJA loans, for example, and yet Wikipedia has a lovely advertisement offering free money to essentially anyone with a pulse. The loans peaked in 2006; 2008 marked the first round of foreclosures.
Wikipedia has a good but lengthy article on the subprime mortgage crisis, and "The Big Short" is a good read that covers the origins and fallout of the crisis. You can also read the Financial Crisis Inquiriy Commission report. In point of fact, reading anything about the subject would be an improvement in your understanding; your specific theory has been destroyed in any number of sources. It's a complicated subject, and to be honest the exact details of a lot of these things escape me, but you have seized upon a simple answer that suits your preexisting beliefs. Start from the evidence and work backwards instead -- why did Bear Stearns collapse? It wasn't because they were issuing mortgages. This will save you from looking like an ignorant Wall Street stooge in the future.
[1] "The volume of CDS outstanding increased 100-fold from 1998 to 2008, with estimates of the debt covered by CDS contracts, as of November 2008, ranging from US$33 to $47 trillion"
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
NSA systems too complex to obey law.. That is an extremely sad and worrisome state of governmental affairs at any date in its history.
What would they do for anyone else? They'd just seize the servers for investigation and be done with it. Not let you give some wimpy cry about your retention policies--hard to enforce retention when your server is sitting in some FBI storeroom waiting to have its hard drives combed over.
They admit to breaking the law.
And they are now offering excuses why they should be allowed to do that...
That seems irrevelant. Off with their heads!
All the NSA servers should be placed in the computer version of prison for egregious violations of federal law - into the Faraday Cage with them all!
above the law
I think they know their excuse is crap. They've been caught red-handed and eventually their house-of-cards defences will fall.
Until then though. They have the budget of a large government agency and will fight any effort to curtail their activities. For all sorts of reasons:
Bureaucratic: We got our budget and program, and we'll fight like hell to defend it.
Security: We spy and that's our core mandate. Spying is good and these people want us to do less of it. Therefore they are our enemy.
Patriotic: We defend against terrorism. Our department is the sole bulwark against chaos and madness. Who can be against that??
Command and Control: We take our marching orders from the President. We spy at their pleasure and request. To do otherwise defies the chain of command.
What this means is that the NSA will throw up a blizzard of B.S. and hopes that some of it will stick. Most likely they know it won't, so mainly this is a holding pattern, to protect the illegal and unconstitutional spying programs as long as possible. Their lawyers almost certainly realize this. However they are paid a great deal to fight the good fight and defend the indefensible. This could be a long fight.
So far, it appears that they collect something on the order of 6 orders of magnitude more data then they can possible save. They don't appear to buy a lot of tape, and there's just not that volume of hard drive production in the world.
"My accounts are too complex to audit, so I shouldn't pay tax."
See how far that flies.
So if they wanted to use the vast amount of data they collect to, you know, actually pursue a target of interest, which is the alleged reason they exist in the first place, they would have to conclude their investigation quickly, because otherwise all the relevant information would be lost. Somehow I find this hard to believe. If it's actually true, the program should be shut down for sheer incompetence.
If thats the Case then we dont have much to fear, it'll be as effective as Raytheon building a Washing machine for a laundry mat in a bad part of town
does it work on PCs too????
NSA: Not Safe for Americans.
NSA: No Sales for America. The NSA is a powerful advertisement that nothing complicated made by a U.S. manufacturer is safe.
NSA: Not Sensible for America.
The headline implies that the systems are too large to meet some statutory obligation. This is not the case; the truth is that they are saying their systems are too large to comply with this new, not-previously-existing requirement.
I'm not saying I believe them, but it's certainly a plausible argument. It's perfectly normal for the subject of a subpeona or other court order to object to it on the grounds that compliance would prevent the ordinary course of business. I can certainly conceive of a system that takes in huge amount of data and discards 99.99 percent of it; it's par for the course in Business Intelligence systems in the private sector. Wal-Mart, for instance, does not need to retain indefinitely which transactions at particular times contain particular sets of items. After a year or so, the data is far less useful, and ever-larger datasets are harder to search and process. It makes perfect sense to completely discard the data after a certain period of time and have no provisions in the system to archive it on a long-term basis. (This whole concept is referred to as Information Lifecycle Management.)
A court order saying "Wal-Mart, keep all transaction data indefinitely, starting Right Now" is certainly going to result in Wal-Mart objecting on the grounds that it cannot do so without completely destroying it's business.
Tungsten rods from said altitudes directly onto their compounds will greatly reduce loss of life.
Well, innocent life anyways.
Or some random accumulation of phone numbers, work locations, what car you drive, your preferred flavor of coffee, names of people known by friends of your coworkers at a coffee shop when you were in college, and data from the weather channel decides that you're today going to be one of the big red terrorist flags of the dangerously high false-positives ratio variety.
In fact, stopping attacks would mean you don't need to expand the program as much or as quickly anymore, so catching real terrorists is probably a big no-no in the NSA accounting department memos.
http://motherboard.vice.com/re...
The government appeared to want it both ways, Andrew Crocker, a legal fellow at the EFF, told Motherboard. "They said [the Internet data collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] is not relevant to our case, but they've also made statements, in asserting state secrets, that we touch on issues under the guidance of the FISC."
So I guess they bought into their own secure "cloud" and have the same issues regular customers do.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
It's as if the NSA believes that physical reality must be upheld over following the law. We both know that if the Supreme Court orders water to flow uphill, it will do so, or face imprisonment. Ask the IRS.
The long term damage from the exposing what the NSA has been doing for years are: damage to international relations and disproving the myths that the US is a free country and that the US constitution protects the people from the government...
Ahahaha ... this is not surprising at all: They have no idea what they're doing, they contracted someone to do all the work on the project, and they probably forgot to build in law compliance as well, b/c their contractor told them it's too complicated, b/c their developers can only code in VB6 ... :D -- then guys like Snowden can come in and copy everything of interest, b/c everything uses some default password ("password" probably), and then in the end, no-one wants to be responsible for that crap. Have seen it all before ... business as usual ...
Too bad, so sad.
If they have to shut down Section 702 to comply with the judges request then just do it! If not, I hope the contempt of court drops on them so that the courts are finally in line with the rest of us who hold NSA in contempt.
If they are outside the law, then in my mind they are not on our side. Our side is all the law abiding citizens; the non-law abiding citizens would be the rogue states, criminals, and terrorist organisations of the world. As enemies and terrorists I then propose we stick the lot of them in git-mo for 10 years. That should cool their disregard for the law sufficiently so they can come back and join the rest of civilised society.