850 Billion NSA Surveillance Records Searchable By Domestic Law Enforcement

ICREACH? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-08-25 11:20 · Score: 5, Funny

I always knew Apple was involved in this.

Re:ICREACH? by Culture20 · 2014-08-25 12:01 · Score: 1, Insightful

ICyREACH. I predict it will have a chilling effect on free speech, etc
Re:ICREACH? by aralin · 2014-08-25 12:39 · Score: 5, Insightful

No, it won't. The US govt. figured out something that the Russians still didn't. Talk is cheap, actions are rare. You can let them talk and talk and talk, you just make up some excuse to arrest or harass the few who act. There won't be so many so you can usually hide it under drug arrests or something else innocent looking. With enough laws on the books, everyone is guilty of something and since you know what everyone is doing, you can arrest pretty much anyone for a legitimate on the books crime. And if you cannot arrest them, maybe their family or friends did something illegal. You can blackmail, bargain, ... That is the power of NSA.

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If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Re:ICREACH? by HermMunster · 2014-08-25 12:40 · Score: 1

When you hit that page the large graphic makes people believe they've been directed to a potentially malicious site. They need to shrink it a bit so people that follow the link curious about what's happening don't think that they have hit the site itself.

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You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Re:ICREACH? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-08-25 12:48 · Score: 4, Insightful

You don't seem to understand what a "chilling effect" is.
Simply knowing that your every word and every movement is recorded and available for inspection at any time is extremely chilling. When you constantly have to worry about how your words and actions might be misconstrued, either accidentally or deliberately, then by definition you can't speak freely anymore and you no longer have freedom of association.
Re:ICREACH? by aralin · 2014-08-25 13:10 · Score: 4, Informative

I lived through it in a socialist state on the other side of the iron curtain, so don't tell me I don't understand it. I've experienced "Chilling Effect" or "auto-censorship" as we used to call it first hand.
But I am telling you that this is not going to happen here, because the government is making extra sure that it doesn't. First amendment violations are simply sacrosanct, because the first amendment is the best tool of population control. There is an extremely powerful lullaby in effect: "We still have free press and if something really bad happened, the government would first have to stomp on the free press. As long as that is there, we are safe."
What I am telling you is that a total population control can be reached without affecting the free speech in any way whatsoever, which is so much worse than any chilling effect.

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If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Re:ICREACH? by Noah+Haders · 2014-08-25 16:04 · Score: 1

every time I come across a top secret NSA I memo I tweet it just for the lulz.
Re:ICREACH? by davester666 · 2014-08-25 16:47 · Score: 2

No, if Apple did it, it would be called 'iWatch'

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Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Re:ICREACH? by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2014-08-26 01:55 · Score: 1

It's not hidden - it's all over the place, if you are stupid enough to watch it. Family sites are right to censor or remove it.

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(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Re:ICREACH? by houghi · 2014-08-26 05:36 · Score: 1

The problem with the free press is that it is not an independent press. The press that matters is owned by companies that are often the cause of the problem.
Furthermore the press is a marketing tool for their customers. That are the companies who buy advertisement places or times. And those
The people are the product that is being sold.

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Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Re:ICREACH? by Sciath · 2014-08-26 08:15 · Score: 1

What you are describing may have been true of the America fifty years ago when we had a truly independent and professional press concerned with informing the populous in an objective way. That's no longer true. The media is as obtuse, slanted, bias, divided and misinformed and directed than ever before. News is very competitive and all the networks are more concerned about profit and promoting their own agendas than they are dedicated to uncovering the objective facts. Not only that but the world's viewing public will watch whatever re-enforces their preconceived notions and biases demonstrating that even the public don't care about facts, just entertainment.

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"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
Re:ICREACH? by aralin · 2014-08-26 10:49 · Score: 1

And why do they do that? Because they feel safe. They feel the safety of the first amendment. "If there was something truly wrong, someone would violate the constitution and we would know..." But as long as we have freedom of speech and no fraud in the voting process, we are fine. That is the lullaby. The fact that both candidates are picked by the same guys and they agree on 90% of the important stuff and just argue about fluff, the fact that press is actually controlled by the same people who pick the candidates for elections, those are things that are hidden. They are hard to understand, people who point them out look like lunatics, because they are not featured in any of the mainstream press and when they are, there is some talking head trashing their reputation to pieces. These things are hard to understand, but "fair elections", "democracy", "freedom of speech", those are simple concepts, easy to explain. We are the good guys after all, right? And that's why the first amendment is actually a population control tool.

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If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Re:ICREACH? by david_thornley · 2014-08-27 05:37 · Score: 1

Okay, I'm only sixty, but I don't actually remember a "truly independent and professional press concerned with informing the populous in an objective way". I was about fifteen when I was in a position to read about something in the paper and see it from the insiders' point of view (Mom was a teacher, and the negotiations between teachers and board got nasty), and compare the two. The media was presenting selective facts that were against the teachers, not even mentioning what the teachers considered the major points of dispute (like prep time for classes).
So, I haven't believed in that sort of press for forty-five years now.

--
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes

Told ya... by houstonbofh · 2014-08-25 11:23 · Score: 5, Insightful

So all that "slippery slope" shit from 10 years ago doesn't seem so stupid now, does it?

Re:Told ya... by redeIm · 2014-08-25 11:46 · Score: 4, Insightful

It never seemed stupid to anyone with even a tiny bit of knowledge about history.
Re:Told ya... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-08-25 11:51 · Score: 3, Insightful

You're not wrong. 850 billion records? The Stasi would have wet themselves. It took a lot less for the people of the GDR to storm buildings.
Re:Told ya... by Jane+Q.+Public · 2014-08-25 12:07 · Score: 3, Insightful

It sure was said to be stupid by a boatload of people on Slashdot when the rest of us tried to say it really was a slippery slope.

I have a feeling a lot of people will be looking back at what many of them call "crazy conspiracy theory" today when some of those things turn out to be real, too.

Of course many of them really are just crazy conspiracy theory. But not all of them. Real conspiracies can exist and have existed throughout history.

But there's another thing that some people don't account for: a lot of people, operating under the same (often but not always) erroneous assumptions or misinformation, can make it look like there is a conspiracy when it's really not conspiracy at all. Just a lot of people making the same mistakes.
Re:Told ya... by Charliemopps · 2014-08-25 12:22 · Score: 5, Insightful

It never seemed stupid to anyone with even a tiny bit of knowledge about history.
Oh come on. I know a guy with that same attitude at work. You're normalizing the situation with this nonsense fantasy that you knew all along. You didn't know all along... you worried about it, you feared for it, but you didn't know Now you do, and you should be surprised... shocked... outraged... But to sit back in your lazyboy, burp, and say "yea, I figured!" is freaking ridiculous. Write you God damned congressman. Get a picket sign. The house is on fire, just because you told the kids not to play with matches doesn't mean you don't need to grab a bucket now.
Re:Told ya... by redeIm · 2014-08-25 12:25 · Score: 1

You didn't know all along... you worried about it, you feared for it, but you didn't know Now you do
This isn't the first time the NSA has done something like this. When the Patriot Act came around, and even before that, anyone with a brain knew that they were at least spying on citizens. If you give the government the power to collect all this information on people, that's what it's going to do. Plus, there were news stories long before Snowden that dispelled all doubts. What I did not know was the details of the programs, and that was what information Snowden provided.
Re:Told ya... by redeIm · 2014-08-25 12:27 · Score: 1

The existence of the slippery slope was just too obvious. Again, we have all the government abuses throughout history to attest to that.
Re:Told ya... by aralin · 2014-08-25 12:32 · Score: 1

True that, I remember the stores at that time and they were pretty much empty... :)

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If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Re:Told ya... by ATMAvatar · 2014-08-25 12:51 · Score: 1

I wouldn't call it stupid, but it is a logical fallacy. Given what we knew 10 years ago, it was only logical to point out the fallacy of assuming that everything you said or did was monitored, because there was little/no public evidence of such. That it turned out to be true does not make the past arguments any less fallacious.

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"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Re:Told ya... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-08-25 12:58 · Score: 5, Interesting

But there's another thing that some people don't account for: a lot of people, operating under the same (often but not always) erroneous assumptions or misinformation, can make it look like there is a conspiracy when it's really not conspiracy at all. Just a lot of people making the same mistakes.
That is a very important fact. These things happen not because of deliberate malevolence - something that only exists in movies and fairy tales - they happen because "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." The people who create these systems are too ignorant of history and human nature, too focused on catching bad guys and take their own righteousness for granted.
There is a famous quotation from Friedrich Nietzsche that goes, "He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you." It took me many years to fully grasp the depths of that aphorism, but I see it at the heart of everything that is wrong with US government's response to 9/11.
Re:Told ya... by rtb61 · 2014-08-25 13:42 · Score: 4, Interesting

Of course no one would guess what the NSA is 'really' up to by providing this database. The NSA are creating another database, who searches what when. They are tracking every search, who did it, how it associates with other searches made by that person over time. Nothing like being able to extort the guys with guns in uniforms or which county mounties to feed to the feds, or which feds to gain control of. Using this NSA database would have to be a seriously dangerous thing, best left to an assigned clerical officer to conduct all the searches prepare a report and thus obfuscate the nature of the individual searches. The database is bait and also a means by which to attempt to legitimate criminal acts, the initial with out warrant invasion of privacy.
Just to remind people what privacy really is all about. Slaves have none, no privacy of person, all of their body was accessible to their master for what ever abuse their master was inclined too, the slave had no right to private property and the slave had no right to private thought or expression. Privacy is all about ceasing to be a slave, a right to privacy of person, privacy of possessions and privacy of thought. The more rights to privacy you lose the more you become a slave. The more they take, the more they will want to take, until you are fully enslaved. That is the real reason to fight for as much privacy as possible to keep the threat of slavery as distant as possible.

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Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Re:Told ya... by bill_mcgonigle · 2014-08-25 13:59 · Score: 4, Insightful

So all that "slippery slope" shit from 10 years ago doesn't seem so stupid now, does it?
The biggest lesson learned is that when Congress passes a law, to kill a program like Total Information Awareness, all NSA will do is change code-names and reassign the workers to a different team.
When NSA says "we have not done X in program Y", it means they have done X in program Z. When it says it has not conducted illegal activity under Authority Z, it has done it anyway, under some other contrived interpretation of a different authority.
To quote Robin Koerner on every new NSA disclosure: "Of course they did."
Now then, who thinks we still live in a functional Republic?

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My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Re:Told ya... by Cyberax · 2014-08-25 14:46 · Score: 1

Basically, she enjoyed inflicting pain on other people by denying access to painkillers. All while living quite a cushy life herself.
Re:Told ya... by cdrudge · 2014-08-25 14:47 · Score: 1

Write you God damned congressman. Get a picket sign. The house is on fire, just because you told the kids not to play with matches doesn't mean you don't need to grab a bucket now.
Grab a bucket and do what? Using your fire/bucket analogy, it's a multi-alarm raging inferno billed as a "fire fighter training exercise" to give them practice should a "real" fire happen in the future. The Congresscritters are the government officials that signed off on the approval to run the training opportunity. There's no amount of writing or picketing that's going to help.
Re:Told ya... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-08-25 16:22 · Score: 1

> Basically, she enjoyed inflicting pain on other people by denying access to painkillers. All while living quite a cushy life herself.

Wow, what a fucked up interpretation. It is just another example of making the perfect the enemy of the good. Sure, she could have done more and better given infinite resources and infinite knowledge. But that is not the same as enjoyment.

Different AC here. If she'd said "If I had more resources, I could have alleviated more suffering," you'd be right.
Instead, she said "I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people.", and (to a dying cancer patient) "You are suffering like Christ on the cross. So Jesus must be kissing you." (She freely related his reply, which she seemed not to realize was meant as a putdown: "Then please tell him to stop kissing me.")
Seeing religious virtue in withholding pain relief from cancer patients is not bedside manner; it is torture. Even Jesus wept when one of his buddies died.
Re:Told ya... by Cyberax · 2014-08-25 17:22 · Score: 1

Bull-fucking-shit. Painkillers are cheap, she could have easily afforded them for cancer patients. A fentanyl patch costs less than $3 and provides relief for a day. Morphine is even cheaper.

And others in this thread already gave you links to her exact words praising suffering.
Re:Told ya... by Jane+Q.+Public · 2014-08-25 18:03 · Score: 2

I highly recommend the Penn & Teller "Bullshit" episode "Holier Than Thou", which was partly about Mother Teresa.

I'm not sure if it's the whole episode but here's a link.
Re:Told ya... by Jack+Griffin · 2014-08-25 18:52 · Score: 1

At what point is there too much information? We all have TB of storage at home with shit we never watch or read again, yet we still keep it. I can only imagine the cost of all this data hording and question at what point is the cost of all the infrastructure to maintain it, no longer worth the effort?
Re:Told ya... by MildlyTangy · 2014-08-25 19:06 · Score: 1

It never seemed stupid to anyone with even a tiny bit of knowledge about history.
Write you God damned congressman. Get a picket sign. The house is on fire, just because you told the kids not to play with matches doesn't mean you don't need to grab a bucket now.
Why do people continue to perpetuate the myth that writing to* your Congressman will actually have any effect on their decisions? First off, if your letter is read by a human, it is most certainly not your Conressman who reads it, it is a staffer. Second, their decisions are negotiated and paid for by the system of Lobbying that is prevalent throughout the US government.
Even voting wont make a real difference, there are only two Parties to choose from, and they are not much different from each other at the end of the day.
* why do people continue to omit the word 'to' when talking about writing to a member of congress? wtf?
Re:Told ya... by redeIm · 2014-08-25 19:35 · Score: 1

The countless abuses of government power throughout history, and simple, observable human nature, should have made it plainly obvious that giving the government that much power was a awful idea. Furthermore, we're supposed to be "the land of the free and the home of the brave," and our country was founded on a distrust of government, which is another reason for all the limitations we place upon it. I cannot even fathom how anyone would not understand this.
It's not that they just shrugged it off; it's that throwing away fundamental freedoms and the constitution for security is inherently disgusting. You should take the critics seriously. The people who are trying to manipulate you after some disaster are the ones who should not be taken seriously.
Re:Told ya... by Cyberax · 2014-08-25 20:57 · Score: 2

Here's an excerpt:

On principle, strong painkillers are even in hard cases not given. According to Mother Teresa's bizarre philosophy, it is "the most beautiful gift for a person that he can participate in the sufferings of Christ". Once she tried to comfort a screaming sufferer: "You are suffering, that means Jesus is kissing you!" The man got furious and screamed back: "Then tell your Jesus to stop kissing."
Re:Told ya... by Cyberax · 2014-08-25 21:01 · Score: 2

You seem to cling to the illusion, don't you? Mother Theresa's charity got _billions_ in donations over its lifetime. More than enough to spend more than $50 million dollars on Mother Theresa's air travels alone. Which could have been enough to buy strong analgesics for those who really needed them (hint: not EVERYBODY in her Homes). And her organization also spent at least tens of millions on anti-abortion and anti-contraception propaganda.

Basically every study that tries to look into the matters in details comes to the same conclusion - she was a fraud and a fanatic. The most recent one: http://www.independent.co.uk/v...
Re:Told ya... by sillybilly · 2014-08-26 05:12 · Score: 1

I did not know she was that perverted. Geez, some of these white women need a good gang bang by a bunch of big black dicks to make them chill out, and satisfied, temporarily, lest they go and get off on really really sick and mental shit like this. Women by nature are psychologist controller button pushing freaks, all are perverts and fucked in the head beyond belief, but Mother Theresa gotta be the one who tops the cake.
Re:Told ya... by orgelspieler · 2014-08-26 05:26 · Score: 1

Except the Stasi would not have had the capability to sift through 8 billion records, much less 850B. That's what's even scarier, they can search through this stuff so fast. In all the shit I've written over the years, I'm sure there's something to indict me on. And I'm a pretty clean-cut guy.
Re:Told ya... by sillybilly · 2014-08-26 06:37 · Score: 1

Ok, nobody is perfect. But the overall picture is that Mother Theresa was a very good person, who dedicated her life to helping others. And judge for yourself from some of these quotes, how she thought most of the time, even if the dark feminine wild side did take over her once in a while, overall she was cool:
Intense love does not measure, it just gives.
Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but how much love we put in that action.
I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.(sick)
We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.
Peace begins with a smile.
We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.
Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.
We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.
Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.
If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.
There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in - that we do it to God, to Christ, and that's why we try to do it as beautifully as possible.
Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work. (sick)
The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it. (sick)
Love begins by taking care of the closest ones - the ones at home.
Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. (semi-sick)
The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between.. (I disagree with this quote - as in we don't have a problem flushing sperm and eggs down the toilet, neither an undifferentiated embryo, without a brain, nor even a sleeping baby. In fact if you eat meat, and you're willing to kill a cow with a conscience greater than a 4 months fetus, how do you justify that. If anything you should be willing to kill yourself before you go out and kill other beings in the world, and only proliferate as much, or only take as much as it's proper, as circumstances allow, and stay in harmony with nature. People like to fuck, or even masturbate. It's human nature and without that drive you would not be here. It's constantly on the mind, and if it's not ever on the mind, it's not healthy either. So you have teenager fuck, and her not realizing that she's pregnant, and be able to make the life and death decision until 4 months into it, you need time to weigh the issues and think it through, but each minute you waste is creating a smarter and more conscious and aware baby away from an mindless 1 cell or 4 cell or 1000 cell embryo contraption. The thing is you can always make more babies on demand, there is no problem with the ability to supply 15 babies per mother from age 22 to 45, so if she aborts at age 17, she can maintain her social environment of going to high school, college, and have a career and decent life, as opposed to a totally fucked up life because she made a mistake at age 17 and got pregnant by accident. It's a personal choice for everyone, and some mothers who did not abort, think they absolutely made the correct decision, and had a good life anyway, but there are a lot of sad stories of potential good life going down the drain, over a "mistake" of I just wanted to fuck and get off with an awesome big orgasm, I did not real
Re:Told ya... by Cyberax · 2014-08-26 07:48 · Score: 1

Yeah, really? How about Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/...
Re:Told ya... by Sciath · 2014-08-26 08:37 · Score: 1

You're wrong. Momo Theresa did in fact deny on purpose, people who were under her care medicinal aids including antibiotics and pain ameliorates. The "good news" about her was about as good one can find in the Old Testament. She was catholic and the catholic church and various affiliated church organizations have promoted her righteousness while engaging in a misinformation campaign to hide her horrific acts. She denied bedding to the sick, withheld medicines and personal care while promoting her organization. And it was not because of a lack of funds. It was because as a dedicated catholic nun she believes in the salvation found in the experience of "suffering". That suffering brings one closer to god and induces the sick and dying to reach for the salvation of god or Christ. To her suffering was an integral part of the faith experience which is one of the pillars of the catholic church. Which by coincidence is the exact opposite of Buddhism which promotes the elimination of suffering in this world.

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"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
Re:Told ya... by redeIm · 2014-08-26 08:44 · Score: 1

The government doesn't need to ban guns in order to oppress the populace, because the people with guns don't seem to be doing shit about all these constitutional violations anyway. Some (not all) even support this nonsense in the name of fighting "terrorism." I guess the 2nd amendment is the only thing that matters to some of them.
Re:Told ya... by Sciath · 2014-08-26 08:45 · Score: 1

You seem to ignore the fact that many of the needs her organization were met by donations, volunteers, etc. which cost her nothing. She professed a Spartan life but didn't emulate that personally. A majority of her "budget" could've been used to help the sick and dying but to her suffering was a saving grace. That was her sole (stated) objective, to bring people to god/Jesus. And evangelism via suffering was her intent. Period.

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"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
Re:Told ya... by bussdriver · 2014-08-26 15:36 · Score: 1

Slippery Slope is just something everybody should ban from use or simply learn what it is before bringing it up. Parent is correct to cite one when bringing it up. Skipping steps in the chain is invalid logic; however, people should be allowed to summarize and imply in an online posting and not create a long detailed formal syllogism every time they want to gloat... Besides:
As far as characterizations and predictions; that stuff is never logical. If you want to stick to deductive logic (real logic) then you can't do that much. A correctly diagnosed psychopath is likely to act like one and it is not wrong to say "I told you so" when the evidence bares out the prediction. What these people are doing is citing evidence of how accurate their past predictions are. Sure, that does not mean they arrived at it any better than random chance; that takes a track record, but you don't get one without by pointing out success. If you are psychic and that results in success, that is fine by me (it never will.) So, if you beat chance then it is skill and/or insight and SOME recognition is deserved. If only we kept records and referred to them so the talented people would be identified... but when we can, with pundits etc. we do not do this and so the same wrongheaded fools get the audience.

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Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news

Heads should roll by FoolishBluntman · 2014-08-25 11:23 · Score: 1

This shows how incredible out of control the CIA is.
I could almost accept that the CIA keeps this data to help with "foreign intelligence" in mind but if this data is available to both the FBI and DEA it is a clear violation of the CIA charter and should result with the director's head on the chopping block.

Re:Heads should roll by Indy1 · 2014-08-25 11:37 · Score: 2

Wrong agency - CIA and NSA are different agencies with (somewhat) different missions.
That said, the entire NSA, and along with anyone who enabled them, needs to fired / jailed / etc for blatant and unending violations of the Bill of Rights and federal law in general.

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Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
Re:Heads should roll by msauve · 2014-08-25 11:39 · Score: 1

Uh, NSA != CIA.

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"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Re:Heads should roll by redeIm · 2014-08-25 11:53 · Score: 3, Insightful

They're probably utterly ignorant of history, and can't come to simple conclusions on their own. Even someone who is ignorant of history should know that those with massive amounts of power will abuse it.
"Land of the free, home of the brave," huh? Not while most of the population is either apathetic or supports massive violations of the constitution and people's fundamental liberties.
Re:Heads should roll by Ultracrepidarian · 2014-08-25 18:13 · Score: 1

Yes. The CIA performs the "wet work".

Working backwards from a "known" result by rmdingler · 2014-08-25 11:24 · Score: 4, Insightful

I find it reassuring that there's no danger this can be abused. Ahem.

Our worst fears are now realized.

The Snowden revelations regarding ubiquitous data collection have caused so little civil turmoil that the information is now to be shared with every Sheriff's Department from Bangor to the Bay Area.

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Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

Ernest Hemingway

Re:Working backwards from a "known" result by Livius · 2014-08-25 12:00 · Score: 4, Insightful

The media has never been critical of a liberal administration.
Because there hasn't been one in living memory.
Re:Working backwards from a "known" result by AHuxley · 2014-08-25 12:06 · Score: 1

It gets and keeps the funding. Binney: 'The NSA's main motives: power and money' (19.08.2014)
http://www.dw.de/binney-the-ns...
"When you do the things that they do - dictionary select, like a Google query, you throw a bunch of words in and get a return. And if you do that for terrorism, you get everything in the haystack that has those words. So now you're buried - by orders of magnitude worse than you used to be. So you don't find them."
.... "Money. It takes a lot of money, you have to build up Bluffdale [the location of the NSA's data storage center, in Utah] to store all the data. If you collect all the data, you've got to store it, you have to hire more people to analyze it, you have to hire more contractors, managers to manage the flow. You have to start a big data initiative. It's an empire."
William Binney https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Its all about growing the NSA beyond its 1990's position in the US gov. No more just working to provide data to other mil and gov tasks.
The NSA seeks to run its own missions and be seen getting results, more funding and more political access.

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Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Re:Working backwards from a "known" result by mcrbids · 2014-08-25 12:24 · Score: 1

I find it interesting your choice of cities... you must be North Cal

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I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Re:Working backwards from a "known" result by rmdingler · 2014-08-25 12:31 · Score: 1

Interesting.
No. Vertexan.
From Ethan Allen to the oil field.

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Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Re:Working backwards from a "known" result by countach74 · 2014-08-25 12:55 · Score: 2

Far too few people know what "liberal" actually means.
Re:Working backwards from a "known" result by msauve · 2014-08-25 14:26 · Score: 1

Far too many people (at least in the US) think political opinion can only fall into "us" vs. "them."

Americans tend to think that "liberal" means "liberal, as in beer," and not "liberal, as in libre."

--
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law

Time for 850 billion FoI requests by Anonymous Coward · 2014-08-25 11:27 · Score: 1

I want to see every record that they have.

Re:Time for 850 billion FoI requests by Anonymous Coward · 2014-08-25 11:43 · Score: 1

I want to see every record that they have.
Sorry, National Security exemption.....

as i've said before.... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-08-25 11:28 · Score: 5, Insightful

If you have voted for a republican or a democrat in the last 30 years or so, this is your fault.

YOU.

The signs were all there, you ignored them, and kept voting the same jokers in, perpetuating the same power structures, letting the same people get away with gross violations of the law that would get any one of us thrown in prison.

Now, welcome to the surveillance state. I hope you're happy with the results. But it gets better. It doesn't end here. We've seen, in other societies, where this goes. It doesn't end well.

But you don't care about that, do you? Because Emmy Awards! Because Jellyfish stung 250 people in one day!

Re:as i've said before.... by HiThere · 2014-08-25 13:02 · Score: 1, Insightful

Do you really think voting for a third party, or refusing to vote, makes any difference?
If nothing you do makes any difference, is it really your fault? There might have been something that would have made a difference, but voting isn't on that list. That became quite clear when they refused to even count the votes for Pat Paulson. (I suspect he would have won, but there's no way to tell.)

--

I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Re:as i've said before.... by HiThere · 2014-08-26 07:37 · Score: 1

You've got it. The plurality wins system of voting is a near guarantee of only two parties, too. But those in power have no interest in reforming it.

--

I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.

Request: Do the math, please! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-08-25 11:30 · Score: 1

Every story I've seen like this, for the past couple of years, I always wonder about the cost. I don't work at the large-scale when it comes to IT, so I never know what those sorts of budgets and cost infrastructures ramp up to. Can someone who DOES do that, chime in here?!?

I'm genuinely curious, and interested. What would the math look like on this?

What requirements, from bare metal to user interface, JUST for this system, are we talking about here!
Figure every FBI, DEA and 'above' Federal enforcement/intelligence agency has access. Bandwidth needs for the site in question?
Are we talking multiple locations for the content? Duplicated sites, or more? 1 east coast, mid-America, 1 west coast?
Have to figure the database throughput is pretty high as well, given this is the Government we're talking about here. Why skimp, especially when 'potential terrorists' was put on the line item for the funding.
What about personnel? How many DBA's, front-end programmers, sys-admins and data center monkeys is this gonna take to support?

This can't be small. At least, it doesn't seem like it would be. So what would it really take to put this sort of thing together? I have no question that it's possible, and likely true, I'd just like to know how much money this thing is burning through!

Re:Request: Do the math, please! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-08-25 12:11 · Score: 1

Posting anon (I hope) But I work with data on sort of this scale.
I've got about 1 petabyte of data, 5 billion records, saved for 7 years.
It takes a team of 5 DBAs to keep the database working (patching, reorgs, dumping the 7 year +1 month data, idiot developers causing SQL deadlocks, etc)
About 50 people are required to deal with new feature requests, performance tuning, hardware failures, fuckups, etc,
850 billions records, if they were each 1 byte is 850 gb.
If they were on the size of my records, 170 petabytes. Team size scales pretty well, but I'd bet around 20 DBAs to keep the thing running, about 300 people total.
You could run it in a single data center, but most likely they have two or more to have physical redundancy
(and guaranteed at least one of them thinks russia will nuke both data centers, whether russia thinks so or not).
I'd bet the budget is 1 billion or so, talked about 20 million to run ours. (Salary, benefits, hardware, Accenture, IBM, etc)
Re:Request: Do the math, please! by AHuxley · 2014-08-25 12:19 · Score: 4, Informative

You saw the DEA do it with phone call records.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po... Sept 4 2013
".... to place its employees in drug-fighting units around the country. Those employees sit alongside Drug Enforcement Administration agents and local detectives and supply them with the phone data from as far back as 1987.""
Thats just one tiny project with once set of data.
Water news http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
Power news http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...
Thats just for one classic storage site thats in the news a lot.
Re So what would it really take to put this sort of thing together?
"The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control" 11 July 2014
http://www.theguardian.com/com...
"At least 80% of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the US, says whistleblower William Binney – that's a 'totalitarian mentality'"
Should give an average reader an idea of the US internal scale to store, track, index, search, voice print, call to, call from, other numbers, work back from hops surrounding people of interest.
ie well funded, all of the USA, over years, aspects of calls stored for years ready to be found in storage if seen at a protest, near a protest or near a person who was near a person at a protest.
ie you just need a lot of tame Room 641A like access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

--
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Re:Request: Do the math, please! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-08-25 13:00 · Score: 1

guestimate 1 trillion records, perhaps 10kb compressed each (lets say they're long wide records with textual info, etc.), that's 10k terabytes. Imagine a rack holding say 200 drives, each average 5T that's about 10 racks---or about the size of a small sized data center. With some hashing and/or partitioning scheme, the software to search all that in parallel isn't that complicated (or install something like Pivotal on it). Limitations would include non-equality joins.
the actual data center would likely be several times that, since... well, government moneh.
Re:Request: Do the math, please! by AHuxley · 2014-08-26 10:52 · Score: 1

Hi AC re "realistic hard number costs" would all be hidden over federal, gov and mil projects or just buying in bulk from the private sector.
Water and power usage at one site thats in the news is about all that can be worked back from.
"‘Black budget’ summary details U.S. spy network’s successes, failures and objectives" (August 29, 2013)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
hints at "$52.6 billion “black budget” for fiscal 2013" but that could be for very limited number for US internal consumption over a subset of mil/gov projects.
ie the US gov gets all domestic data thanks to tame telcos. The costs of storing aspects of every call would be small over decades as the above linked DEA news showed.

--
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"

It's not "parallel construction" by Anonymous Coward · 2014-08-25 11:35 · Score: 1

However, questions have been raised over its potential for abuse in what is known as "parallel construction," a process in which agencies use surveillance resources in domestic investigations, and then later cover it up by creating a different evidence trail to use in court.

In any legitimate court this is known as perjury. Unfortunately, most US courts look the other way if it is law enforcement or government officials doing the lying.

Re:It's not "parallel construction" by Anonymous Coward · 2014-08-25 17:04 · Score: 1

I thought there was an exemption for "inevitable discovery". Improperly collected evidence can be admissible if it would have been discovered anyway, by other means. Although I think the exemption only covers misdemeanor action, not perjury and so forth.
To a certain extent, this is true. However I believe (obligatory I am not a lawyer disclaimer) that inevitable discovery does not apply in cases of a "fishing" expedition, since there is no crime under investigation until AFTER incriminating data was discovered by trolling the NSA's "secret" database. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poison_tree

Who didn't see this coming? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-08-25 11:41 · Score: 1

This is how it always plays out with law enforcement, once the Data is there, it'll get in the hands of everyday officers. Thankful they can be trusted not to abuse the system, because it is rife for abuse.

Search for me but not for thee by jcrb · 2014-08-25 12:04 · Score: 5, Insightful

Oh sure they have a wonderful system for searching what they want to search and can't be troubled to search what they should be able to but don't want to..

http://www.judicialwatch.org/p...
"Department of Justice attorneys for the Internal Revenue Service told Judicial Watch on Friday that Lois Lerner’s emails, indeed all government computer records, are backed up by the federal government in case of a government-wide catastrophe. The Obama administration attorneys said that this back-up system would be too onerous to search. "

The saying "Laws are for the little people" used to be funny, now, not so much.

--
-jon

Re:Search for me but not for thee by HiThere · 2014-08-25 13:08 · Score: 2

The saying "Laws are for the little people" used to be funny, now, not so much.
Was only ever funny if you still had your eyes closed. OTOH, it *is* getting worse.

--

I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.

IPFREELY! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-08-25 12:07 · Score: 1

When it comes to subversion, it is more important to watch and monitor those in power, correct?

So, the government should be doing this too all their own damn employees, aka preventing and monitoring people like Snowden and Co.

So, I for one, call for the government Implant Program For Researching Eavesdropping on Employee Logistics for You, IPFREELY will revolutionize government because we the people will know which asswipe and asshole needs to have their butt kicked out of the government and put into prison.

IPFREELY! Give the each government employee a butt implant today! We need to track their asses better than they can track ours!

Those with more power need to be watched even more than those with less power...

Parallel BS by LessThanObvious · 2014-08-25 12:13 · Score: 5, Insightful

( "Parallel Construction" = Lying = Prosecutorial Malfeasance = A Crime ) It makes my skin crawl knowing that these guys are so out of control that we have an official term for lying to the judge and defense counsel about the source of evidence. If the NSA hears about a delivery of 500 Kilos of drugs and they intercept it, I'm fine with that, but unless the actual source of the information is disclosed it should be a crime to fake the investigation process to get it into court. If they can't prosecute, oh well, seize the drugs and call it a win.

Re:Parallel BS by redeIm · 2014-08-25 12:17 · Score: 3, Insightful

If the NSA hears about a delivery of 500 Kilos of drugs and they intercept it, I'm fine with that
I'm not. The NSA should have nothing to do with drugs, and shouldn't be collecting all this 'metadata' on people in the first place.
Re:Parallel BS by onproton · 2014-08-26 04:35 · Score: 1

I think the most frightening thing about parallel construction is how few shits the officers appear to give about it (from the article). "But two senior DEA officials defended the program, and said trying to "recreate" an investigative trail is not only legal but a technique that is used almost daily." or "Parallel construction is a law enforcement technique we use every day," one official said. "It's decades old, a bedrock concept." - since when is my question.
Re:Parallel BS by LessThanObvious · 2014-08-26 09:50 · Score: 1

...and I thought "Fruit of the Poisonous Tree" doctrine was a bedrock concept. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... If investigators can show that they would have arrived at the same conclusion or would have found the evidence through legal means they can get around it, but the judge has to know all the facts to determine if investigators discovery was truly inevitable.

writs of assistance by harvey+the+nerd · 2014-08-25 12:19 · Score: 2

NSA surveillience used by domestic LEOs function as writs of assistance, the traitorous general search warrants expressly forbidden by the Founders and a major cause of the American Revolution. No matter what title they have, some officials need to be tried then shot and/or hanged.

Re:writs of assistance by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2014-08-26 02:22 · Score: 1

Government, glomming on more power whenever it can, has long viewed your records and activities held by wire in companies as not private.
Yet as more and more of life is virtual, constitutional protections against search should travel along with you into cyberspace.
Why create a virtual world just to give government, hungry for power, a virtual world in which to establish a Panopticon?

--
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.

Re:But, but.. by AHuxley · 2014-08-25 12:21 · Score: 1

That local Fusion center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... will help move real world local private/public data up to the federal level :)

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Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"

admission of guilt? by ebonum · 2014-08-25 12:27 · Score: 3, Interesting

The NSA is supposed to only collect information on foreigners. Right? So how could their DB be of any use to domestic law enforcement? Or perhaps I'm a little naive.

Re:admission of guilt? by onproton · 2014-08-25 12:59 · Score: 2

There hasn't been much of an "admission" of anything from these agencies, let alone guilt or wrongdoing. The surveillance practices currently employed, as shown by documents leaked by Edward Snowden and others, take a "collect it all" kind of approach in which they assert that they must have the proverbial haystack before they can find the needle. In fact, data on innocents is far more abundant than even the data stored on targeted individuals, and this includes many, many American citizens.
Re:admission of guilt? by symbolic · 2014-08-25 14:07 · Score: 1

Why do we accept this argument that they must have and abuse the haystack so that they can find the needle? It was discredited the day that it became known. Now what we have is a completely corruption of our justice system.
Re:admission of guilt? by onproton · 2014-08-26 12:54 · Score: 1

My opinion? In short - because we as a society have completely lost touch with reality. Many either 1. don't care, 2. don't know, or 3. are complicit. The conversation is going on, but not everyone wants to get up off the couch to come to the table. It's a complex issue that requires more than 140 characters; it requires thought about consequences and compromise - I've found that not many people are really interested in thinking deeply about these things.

Google-like? by Walter+White · 2014-08-25 12:39 · Score: 4, Funny

A "Google-like" search engine? Does that mean they are serving ads to the law enforcement agencies that use it?

Re:Google-like? by Nyder · 2014-08-25 13:03 · Score: 2

A "Google-like" search engine? Does that mean they are serving ads to the law enforcement agencies that use it?
I don't know, but I wonder if they honor DMCA takedown requests....

--
Be seeing you...

They're all the same... by Grog6 · 2014-08-25 12:48 · Score: 3, Insightful

They are the modern Gestapo; Orwell just missed it by a few years.

The future will be the image from the book:

A Boot, Stamping on a Face, Forever.

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Truth isn't Truth - Guliani

We The People by Nyder · 2014-08-25 13:02 · Score: 4, Insightful

We The People need to take our government back. Our leaders have failed us, our politicians have failed up. Time for them to be removed and place. The NSA needs to be removed and dismantled in it's current form.

Our government is the terrorist problem, as it refuses to obey the constitution and puts corporations over the people.

I am not saying we need to do this violently, but we have to do this, no matter how it goes down. Our government won't fix itself, it's up to WE THE PEOPLE.

--
Be seeing you...

First Link in Article Bullshit by retroworks · 2014-08-25 13:26 · Score: 1

What's with the first link? BS? The second link is about DEA. We all know DEA is chasing marijuana crime because the legislative branch needs to pass better pot sale laws. Do I think the DEA is tracking my political opinions? No. Could they with this software? Yeah. But let's fix the marijuana laws before we freak out and tell the government to stop tracking "crime".

--
Gently reply

And here we go ... by gstoddart · 2014-08-25 13:58 · Score: 4, Insightful

When they start these things, they say "oh, this will only be used for this, under strict controls and nothing else".

People who say that they'll eventually abuse it are dismissed as ridiculous, but then eventually since they have all of this information they might as well use it for something.

And if they have to lie about how they did it to conceal what they have, so be it. Because, after, they're the good guys, right?

This is a complete and utter undermining of the fourth amendment and the notion that a just government doesn't spy on you "just in case".

The US has been transformed into a police state. Worse, they've helped turn the rest of the world into one too.

Congratulations, America, you've pretty much killed off free societies around the world, and brought in your own special kind of fascism.

Your spy agencies and law enforcement are truly living up to all of the scary imagery people have been decrying for years.

Papers please, comrade. If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear.

--
Lost at C:>. Found at C.

Re:And here we go ... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-08-25 16:08 · Score: 1

People who say that they'll eventually abuse it are dismissed as ridiculous, but then eventually since they have all of this information they might as well use it for something.
Whenever a controversial law is proposed, and its supporters, when confronted with an egregious abuse it would permit, use a phrase along the lines of 'Perhaps in theory, but the law would never be applied in that way' - they're lying. They intend to use the law that way as early and as often as possible.
- Meringuoid's Law, first formulated on Slashdot in 2005.
My take is that even Congress falls for it. They vote for the laws but don't read them, nor do they particularly care what they say, and they certainly don't care for the implications of the laws they pass, except insofar as their vote affects their polling numbers. The people who "intend to use the law that way as early and as often as possible" are the the back-office people drafting the legislation. And I'm not sure if that should make me even more depressed or sad than the alternative explanation that Congress knows what they're doing.

Re:The New America by Skidborg · 2014-08-25 15:56 · Score: 1

When it comes to that I'm sure they'll be just as careful as the IRS is with their records.

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Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.

Apologies from a former denier... by jopsen · 2014-08-25 17:02 · Score: 1

So all that "slippery slope" shit from 10 years ago doesn't seem so stupid now, does it?

As one of those sheep 10 years ago.. I would like to apologizes.

After Snowden my view of US intelligence efforts changed dramatically.

Yes we knew by SuperKendall · 2014-08-25 18:42 · Score: 1

You didn't know all along... you worried about it, you feared for it, but you didn't know

Only retarded idiots like yourself do not KNOW the inevitable will occur.

It affects all other choices you make, which is sad for you.

--
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley

Correction by Camael · 2014-08-25 20:35 · Score: 1

Basically, she enjoyed inflicting pain on other people by denying access to painkillers. All while living quite a cushy life herself.

That's pretty much a lie, and character assassination. There is no evidence anywhere that she "enjoyed inflicting pain on other people". The quotes attributed to her and the Slate article in particular (which is suspect, seeing that the article's author wrote a book "The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice" and obviously has a vested interest in drumming up sales and controversy) does not say this.

As for the part about "denying access to painkillers" - this is misleading. Context, my dear, context. As stated in her Wikipedia entry :-

the use of opioids in India for managing cancer pain remains—ten years after Mother Teresa's death—highly problematic for legal, regulatory, cultural, and other reasons (including supply interruptions, harsh punishments imposed for even minor infractions of the rules, and the fear of addiction by health workers). Despite the lack of sophisticated analgesic regimes, volunteers (including those with western medical qualifications and experience) reported that her Home for the Dying was a place of joy not sadness.

Apart from that, I do not understand why her failings seem to offend you so much. It seems almost personal.

Re:Correction by Cyberax · 2014-08-25 20:52 · Score: 2

There is a plenty of evidence ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... ). And she REPEATED that quote several times, it's not disputed.

As for fucking context, she could have worked towards making opiates access easier. She didn't. And read the actual memoirs of sisters in her Homes, where 'joy' meant people screaming their lungs out from pain.
Re:Correction by Cyberax · 2014-08-25 21:04 · Score: 2

Oh, and if Slate is not enough for you, here's Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/... It's even more damning.

What say the people on the inside? by Camael · 2014-08-25 20:46 · Score: 2

Have you worked in the MIC? I grew-up in it, served, and went on to do DoD contracting once I got out. Nothing crazy high level classification, run of the mill secret stuff and it has been obvious from the inside for a long, long time. Which is why I got out.

Which raises an interesting question- how do those people working for the NSA and other intel agencies reconcile their conscience with the work that they are doing? All these systems etc need operatives to run, to gather information, to decrypt and analyse etc. This kind of work I would imagine requires people with a more than average level of intelligence and education. Sure they must bear witness to the abuses being perpetrated on their own people. How do they sleep at night?

Even the Stasi operatives at the time when East Germany existed have the comfort of knowing that their cooperation was secured by state sanctioned penalties. These NSA people have no such excuse.

Re:What say the people on the inside? by Rakhar · 2014-08-25 21:08 · Score: 2

Decentralization. It's not like the people supplying the data get to directly see how it's used. I'm sure plenty of them aren't even aware of just who they're supplying data to. And the people compiling the data don't necessarily know where it comes from or what the output will be used for.
You can guess an awful lot, but hindsight is 20/20 and all that.
Re:What say the people on the inside? by AmiMoJo · 2014-08-25 23:29 · Score: 2

Thanks to Snowden's leaks we know that NSA employees do have concerns about what they are doing, but as ever the chain of command and "everyone else is doing it too" seems to be enough. Well, for everyone except Snowden and maybe a few others.

--
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC

I do not know how you can laugh ... by Taco+Cowboy · 2014-08-25 21:42 · Score: 4, Informative

America has turned into a police state and you guys are laughing

I, as an American, find it very hard to swallow the hard fact that my country is no longer the Land of the Free nor Home for the Brave

With 850 Billion (and growing) dossiers to search, anyone in any of the so-called law enforcement agencies get to pry open things that they are not supposed to know, maybe even things that have been erroneously included in the dossier

... and you are laughing !!

--
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !

Re:I do not know how you can laugh ... by flyneye · 2014-08-25 23:24 · Score: 4, Insightful

The part that has me giggling is; cops are so fucking ignorant, it's only a matter of seconds before one of their Log/Pass gets spread around long enough for anyone on the internet to D/L anyones details.
NSA is stupid for providing it
FBI is stupid for approving it
Local cops are just plain stupid.

--
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Re: I do not know how you can laugh ... by oodaloop · 2014-08-26 04:35 · Score: 1

Icreach user here. Records are not dossiers, but call metadata, as in this number called that other number. Or did you think there were 850 billion people alive? Also, congress mandated NSA share data after 9/11, and icreach was created to do that.

--
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Re:I do not know how you can laugh ... by orgelspieler · 2014-08-26 05:19 · Score: 1

'Sheriff flyneye, this is special agent Fredricks wanting to verify your login credentials for ICREACH. Our database shows that you still have the default password of "Password1" which should be changed immediately. ... Oh, OK. ... "kitty69"? ... Yes, that's acceptable. Sorry for the confusion.'
Re:I do not know how you can laugh ... by XLT_Frank · 2014-08-26 05:46 · Score: 1

America has turned into a police state and you guys are laughing
I, as an American, find it very hard to swallow the hard fact that my country is no longer the Land of the Free nor Home for the Brave
With 850 Billion (and growing) dossiers to search, anyone in any of the so-called law enforcement agencies get to pry open things that they are not supposed to know, maybe even things that have been erroneously included in the dossier ... and you are laughing !!
I have been watching a lot of Continuum lately and that show has been ringing true as of late. This article reminds me of ARC.... except that this probably doesn't work that well.
Re: I do not know how you can laugh ... by onproton · 2014-08-26 06:29 · Score: 1

Icreach user here. The records are not dossiers, but call metadata, as in this number called this other number. Or did you think there were 850 billion people on earth? Also, congress mandated NSA shared data after 9/11, and icreach was the answer.

Not sure if this is satire or not, but if you have actually used ICReach I am curious about how easy it is to get information on U.S. citizens through the databases with "minimization" etc
Re: I do not know how you can laugh ... by oodaloop · 2014-08-26 07:19 · Score: 1

Not satire. US person number will look like 703-XXX-XXXX or something like that. Lets you know the number is known and is associated with a US person. You can also label a number as US and it will then be masked. There are other safeguards as well.

--
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Re: I do not know how you can laugh ... by onproton · 2014-08-26 07:41 · Score: 1

So there are some that haven't been identified as US persons and floating around the database? Also how does searching for a minimized record work - ex. would it still come up in a search if you typed the name/number even if it is masked?

FTFA by BringsApples · 2014-08-26 01:10 · Score: 1

The unit of the DEA that distributes the information is called the Special Operations Division, or SOD. Two dozen partner agencies comprise the unit, including the FBI, CIA, NSA, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security. It was created in 1994 to combat Latin American drug cartels and has grown from several dozen employees to several hundred.

SO the FBI, CIA, NSA, IRS, and DHS all work together to stop drug trafficers. There's a conspiracy theory if I ever saw one...

--
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.

Re:Truth and Consequence by messymerry · 2014-08-26 05:34 · Score: 1

Except for one wee little problem: THE COURTS ARE IN ON IT!!!

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Dear Microlimp: I give you 2 valid product keys for win7 and you reject both of them. Piss off you wankers!!!

Re:Not much for critical thinking.. by redeIm · 2014-08-26 08:52 · Score: 1

It depends on the means.

And their means are evil. Way to miss the point.

Re:Not much for critical thinking.. by redeIm · 2014-08-26 08:53 · Score: 1

Also, this pursuit of power *over the populace* is evil.

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850 Billion NSA Surveillance Records Searchable By Domestic Law Enforcement

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