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Snowden Documents: CSE Tracks Millions of Downloads Daily
Advocatus Diaboli writes Canada's electronic spy agency sifts through millions of videos and documents downloaded online every day by people around the world, as part of a sweeping bid to find extremist plots and suspects, CBC News has learned. Details of the Communications Security Establishment project dubbed 'Levitation' are revealed in a document obtained by U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden and recently released to CBC News. Under Levitation, analysts with the electronic eavesdropping service can access information on about 10 to 15 million uploads and downloads of files from free websites each day, the document says.
as terrorists. I have accepted that. Just change the laws to reflect reality now so we don't have this silly mismatch.
... and they lied.
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms? Not in Harper's Canada.
How USA of them
Table-ized A.I.
... given the attack at Parliament in Ottawa.
How long until our favorite corporations the RIAA/MPAA try and subpoena the download records from the government on the grounds the government knows which IP addresses downloaded copywrong material and therefore should stop hiding the criminals?
You said:
Actually their target is further than that
...
To illustrate what I mean, let's look at what TFA says
Are they truly looking for "extremist plots and suspects"?
No
Then what they are looking for?
They are looking for potential targets that they deem "dangerous". No, not terrorists but those amongst the people who are NOT sheeples!
You see, those fascists (to put them in a milder term will be an injustice, they are fascists afterall) are not afraid of sheeples. In fact, they WANT all the people to become sheeples so that they can get absolute control over them
What the fascists are afraid, very afraid of, is those amongst us who steadfastly REFUSE to become a sheeple, who instead will use our own brain to think, rather than delegate the thinking to "somebody else", ie, the authority
That is what makes those fucking fascists antsy --- they can't have that, but current laws still do not allow them to pull out all the non-sheeples to the street and shoot them
So they do the next best ... to identify the non-sheeples so that, when it comes the day they can pull people out to the street and carry out summary execution, they would know who to shoot
That is ultimately WHAT they are doing today ... identifying us, closely monitoring us, categorizing us, ... and ultimately, know who they need to eliminate, and where to get those 'trouble makers'
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Dipshit. He turned over everything to journalists long ago. They're going through FSM only knows how many terrabytes of information and releasing stories as they put it together. Snowden isn't releasing anything anymore.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
He *did* release all of his documents at once - to the press. It is the press that has decided to trickle the documents out slowly
They keep the shrinking number of interested voting citizens involved in the political process, but set them at each other's throats in a no-win, us versus them bickering match.
Since both sides are evil, and the contestants takes turns winning every few years, the ruling class stays in power as you pretend your side is somehow different and better.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I think you're overthinking it. Look at what the FBI does. They find some dumb disillusioned guy down on his luck, maybe an ex-con or something but nothing serious, and try to ram bomb making components down his throat until he acquiesces and follows the plan they give him to fill a truck full of fertilizer to blow up city hall. The guy makes the purchase and parks the fake bomb, and when he gets out of the truck he's arrested and sent to prison... not because he would have blown up a building, but because he was so stupid that he didn't know not to trust the guys trying to set him up by badgering the hell out of him until he gives in. Counter-terrorism task force adds a notch to their belt, the President has a talking point about another averted attack, and the poor schmuck who was effectively harmless already because of his stupidity gets to die in prison
Really... do we need a billion $ spy agency when a simple google url scraper would work much better.
Do they actually FIND anyone this way? No. How do you find terrorists? The old fashioned way... You monitor a known terrorist and see who he talks to. You tap his phone, read his mail, etc. You do it the old fashioned way. You also get a warrant...
The press now has all the material.
The material shows that the privacy and anonymity of any net based services can be reduced and tracked.
Anything uploaded or downloaded can be tracked over time. A system to find what is going to be tracked and how to track the uploader and all downloaders. From a journalist under constant surveillance back to a contact who uploaded a file?
No data set is too large, network too difficult.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The very least you can do is support his legal council in their efforts to Grant him clemency.
Whistle blowers sacrifice a lot for the rest of us. We should stand up for them.
So when he made his appearance in Kim Dotcom's "Moment of Truth" thing he did last year it was all information he'd already released? They certainly gave the impression it was shocking new evidence.
The only thing that these 'revelations' have 'revealed', is that there are actually people who work in the government, that do their job.
SHOCKER!
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
Dear Sir,
I may have been thinking too much. In fact, you may even say that I am paranoid - but at the stage that we are in today, that the blanket snooping activities into almost everything that we do online and off, we do need to question why the authority's need to do it, rather than accept what they are telling us by default
Yes, they tell us they are 'looking for terrorists' but is that true?
I mean, if they are 'looking for terrorists' the obvious target for those 'terrorists' are those from a particular religion (that peaceful one, to boot)
But is the authority looking into that group only?
Far from that. They are snooping in on ALL OF US, on our email, on our surfing pattern, on the site we go to, on what we download, on our phone conversation, on everything everybody is doing
Then why are they doing it?
Surely the 'looking for terrorists' excuse ain't gonna cut it no more, there gotta be more than what they are telling us
Yes, I am paranoid, I admit it. But you can't blame me from being paranoid
I am from China, a country which is being ruled by some really despicable regime. At the point when I left China the entire society was in turmoil. People were being pulled out on to the street and beaten, sometimes killed, just because they were labeled as 'anti-revolutionary'
I have had that kind of experiences. Most of you do not. I know what the authority is capable of doing, and what they will do to maintain their control over us, the peons
The more I look at what's happening in the so-called "Western countries" the more it resembles that despicable regime that is controlling China
Yes, I am have been 'overthinking', as you put it, but I rather be paranoid and right and be well prepared (as well as knowing what preventive actions to take before the shit hits the fan), than be totally unprepared and suffered the consequences
But it's all up to you guys. What I am telling you is what I, and many millions of older generation of Chinese had gone through --- we do not trust the authority, we do not trust anyone but ourselves
If you guys insist that the authority is to be trusted, that they are doing what they are doing for 'the good of the people', then that's your right to do what ever you want to do
But when the shit hits the fan (which I fervently hope it will never come true) don't blame me for not forewarning you guys
It happened in China, it could happen, and I repeat, it could happen elsewhere, including the Western countries
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
to identify the non-sheeples so that, when it comes the day they can pull people out to the street and carry out summary execution, they would know who to shoot
Makes me glad I'm a sheeple.
And neither did the people who did the killing in China. The idea, inherited from Lenin, was to have a small vanguard of professional revolutionaries guarding the masses - in your terminology, "sheeples" - under absolute authority of the Party. Mao and Stalin then took this idea to its logical conclusion.
What I'm saying is that calling people "sheeples" is inherently anti-democratic. You can't trust sheeples, after all. Also, no society can survive unless the majority of its members stay put most of the time, which seems to be the going definition of "sheeple". And so you can at most let them play at ruling themselves when nothing's at stake - but as soon as there's trouble on the horizon, it's time for the shepherds to take control. Which they did in China, and are trying to do in the US. The results speak for themselves.
It's a fine example of how cultural memes perpetuate themselves, even when it'd be better they didn't. Much as you might hate the Chinese government, you still carry its - for a lack of better word - spirit with you. And there's no easy way to get rid of it.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
See also, for an old German example: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/... ..This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter. ... To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it -- please try to believe me -- unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, "regretted," that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these "little measure"â(TM) that no "patriotic German" could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head. ..."
"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security.
That said, every country is different, with different strengths and weaknesses in different situations. It is not clear how it all will play out in the USA. Like Howard Zinn wrote in 2004, on "The Optimism of Uncertainty":
http://www.commondreams.org/vi...
"In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy? I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning.
To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world. There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible. What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability. This confounds us, because we are talking about exactly the period when human beings became so ingenious technologically that they could plan and predict the exact time of someone landing on the moon, or walk down the street talking to someone halfway around the earth.
Let's go back a hundred years. A revolution to overthrow the tsar of Russia, in that most sluggish of semi-feudal empires, not only startled the most advanced imperial powers, but took Lenin himself by surprise and sent him rushing by train to Petrograd. Given the Russian Revolution, who could have predicted Stalin's deformation of it, or Khrushchev's astounding exposure of Stalin, or Gorbachev's succession of surprises? Who would have predicted the bizarre shifts of World War II-the Nazi-Soviet pact (those embarrassing photos of von Ribbentrop and Molotov shaking hands), and the German army rolling through Russia, apparently invincible, causing colossal casualties, being turned back at the gates of Leningrad, on the western edge of Moscow, in the streets of
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
The bodies at the Charlie Hebdo massacre were not even cool when phonies like you were already going ballistic about those poor non-violent Muslims that idiots were inevitably going to put in the same basket as terrorists. Not a word about the dead people.
You know what? Fuck you and your bigoted ass.
http://instamun.org/frances-ne...
And fuck you from Charlie Hebdo editors too. The great "march" of who's who of the anti-free-speech bigots. One of the editors told them that they are NOT Charlie, and that they should fuck off. Instead they use that criminal act, just like you did, to justify their own agenda and viewpoints.
Why didn't you bother bringing up the idiots and criminals that actually are a danger?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...
or dozens and dozens of incidents where someone non-muslim went on a rampage in some school, workplace or similar.
But oh no, let's easy gang up on one group because we can identify them more easily even if they have *nothing* to do with the criminals.
If you feel the need to be outraged, why don't you think of those women that are sold in the market in the Islamic State, or those 2-hour fake marriages just pronounced to let "freedom fighters" rape women legally? Why don't you defend people who are real victims?
Really? I put *ALL* bigots in the same box. Be that the ISIL bigots, or bigots like Jan Morgan.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015...
or Nazis in Greece and elsewhere, or "* liberation *" thugs in Africa or "settlers" extremists in Israel,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
and *you*. Hell, maybe you'll look at reality and change your views and go out of that box of bigotry and hatred. Who knows.
Anyway, the *real* victims of ISIL are people living in that area. Haven't you thought of that?? It's not *you* and your irrational fear of the "evil muslims" and general racism that is the victim of the ISIL biggots. It's the millions of regular people that got displaced or killed, who just happen to be muslim.
Sir,
I do agree with you that we do need hope, but we must *NOT* forget the fact that 'hoping' ain't gonna do us, or anybody else, any good, especially when what is happening now, from top down (well, the governments are *ON THE TOP* of the people, no matter which government, no matter which nation)
Nowadays governments treat their citizens with contemp
They suspect their citizens so much that they actually take steps to ensure that every single thing their own citizen does must be checked, categorized, and actions must be taken on whoever they suspect (for whatever reason)
Hope in itself is no longer sufficient to fight those fascist, my friend
We no longer live in the 1960's, Sir
We no longer live in a world where the government listens to the people
No man. We are living in the world where the governments DEMAND to be respected, or else
That's the reality all of us are living in, no matter if you live in Canada or China or Saudi Arabia or America or Great Britain, it's all the same --- you, a citizen, better be a sheeple, or we will mark you, we will follow you, we will watch your every single move
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
What I'm saying is that calling people "sheeples" is inherently anti-democratic
So what do you call them?
By any other name the sheeples are still acting like sheeps
They do not like to think, they do not like to think so much that they let others to do all the thinking for themselves
And when that happens, someone else do come out and does the thinking for them ... that someone is nothing but the authority
So the authority tells the sheeples that what they are doing --- that BLANKET SNOOPING THING is "good for them" because it will "protect them from the baddies", you know, them "terrorists", them "pedophiles", them with "bad intentions"
And the sheeples bought that shit wholesale --- with line and hook and barrel and everything in between
You want your democracy, so be it, but do not tell me that calling a spade a spade is undemocratic
We can call the "Sheeples" a "Rose", or a "Tulip", or even "Alfalfa", but that name change ain't gonna change their character, not even a bit, Sir !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Under Levitation, analysts with the electronic eavesdropping service can access information on about 10 to 15 million uploads and downloads of files from free websites each day, the document says.
Canadian officials know that all terrorists are freetards.
Your little brother just wants to play too, let him damnit!
If by "new" you mean not yet published by the media, then yes. If by "new" you mean not yet relinquished by Snowden, then no.
Not that hard to grasp. Even for you, I'd say. Or maybe it is...
Canadians keep telling us how morally and intellectually superior they are! So, this story can't be true!
Instead of the Canadians telling the world that they are morally / intellectually superior, it was the Americans who have done all that, for the past 5 decades, or so
Yeah, well, when that happens you right-wing fucks can go for your guns like you're always talking about. Frankly I can't wait to see you people go down. A lot of other people worldwide will be cheering on that day, too. Extremism needs to go away just like racism, sexism, and all of the other problems that you freaks create. Good ridance to you.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Yeah, well, when that happens you right-wing fucks can go for your guns like you're always talking about.
LOL, anyone who thinks that that isn't just a hypothetical argument to be keep dangerous toys from being regulated is pretty stupid.
You don't think it's ironic that the same kind of paranoia you have about the government, is the kind of paranoia fuelling these kind of sweeping 'nets' of privacy violations?
Since when does 'being the OP' deny attribution rights?
the TFS doesn't say "Snowden has uncovered new info" it says "New info found in Snowden documents". There's a difference
That's sort of how Ruby Ridge got started. The FBI and ATF badgered a guy to spy on skinheads around the bend from his house and in the process tried to get him to sell illegal arms to them.. he refused but eventualy did something with a shotgun and told s guy how to saw it shorter than the legal limits then they shot his family up trying yo arrest him gor illegal firearm sales.
Its actually a bit more complicated than that but the elements are sll there. Some of the other so called stand offs in the 90s started similar. Except i think those went beyond what the fed agencies were trying to do making it less obvious. Weaver was railroaded for sure though.
You don't think it's ironic that the same kind of paranoia you have about the government, is the kind of paranoia fuelling these kind of sweeping 'nets' of privacy violations?
Ah, but that's what they want you to think...!
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
If only I could mod you up.
What's happening in the USA and 5 eyes countries is a catastrophe for their democracies. All politicians in power now, in those countries has been vetted by the securities agencies as suitable.
Excluding 'radical' views, typically anti-war, pro-rights groups are labelled as possible domestic threats monitored, demonized.
So over time these countries will swing ever further out to Fascism. Each cycle shifting the politics to be more oppressive, each cycle eliminating more freedoms.
If they're looking for terrorists and looking at EVERYTHING like the article covers, why the hell are there still terrorists?
If the search is ineffective, why do they still do it? And want to spend more money doing even more?
If the search is working, why aren't all the terrorists gone?
FSM? Flying Spaghetti Monster?
My libertarian friend Max and I dealt with CSE in the early 1980s, before the election of Mr. Mulroney's Progressive Conservatives. They were a small group, very interested in the security of PC-class machines (this was the 286 era), and especially of machines sold to External Affairs and other customers who might be the subject of spying by foreign intelligence services.
At the time, TEMPEST was a huge concern, and they helped Max measure the emissions from his machines, and advised us on many other confidentiality concerns. This was understandable: we built ruggedized machines that External Affairs used in embassies around the world!
Looking at what they were concerned about, it was pretty obvious at that time that they didn't think we were living in a panopticon: the big bugbear was insiders, and they wanted to see the Orange Book used everywhere (:-))
Therefor: the rot started no earlier than Mr Mulroney's election in 1984, and probably much later. The budget is probably the best indicator. It was small and static until 2001, then doubled and redoubled in Mr Harper's era, from 2006 onwards.
davecb@spamcop.net
"Through counter-intelligence it should be possible to pinpoint potential trouble-makers...And neutralize them"
Not justifying the massive spying, but simply addressing the core logic presented here: Even if something is not 100% effective, does not mean it's useless:
Why have cops? Crime still happens. Why have diagnostic medical tests, yet people still get diseases. May as well stop chemotherapy too, I still have about 5% of the original cancer cells left that the first four treatments didn't kill. Many plots have been thwarted, particularly lately, and except in cases where a previously unknown informant steps forward out of the blue, the information comes from their spies and monitoring.
I'm only saying the objection to the spying should be based on privacy and personal freedom, not it's effectiveness; that's a different argument.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
http://www.theguardian.com/pol...
Now, you easily argue, tally up all those thwarted attacks, are they worth the cost to our liberties? Again, I'm not debating that. Clearly privacy is dead, between the data-mining corporations, and the governments.
We are product. We are potential suspects.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Snowden is a government spook, PRETENDING to be on the run. He is actually on assignment, convincing the world he is a whistle blower.
Snowden's job was to convince the world that government(s) have far more power and technical capability than they really do. They have most of the technology, but have been unable to implemement it anywhere near the levels boasted.
There is no way this agency is monitoring millions per day.
Yes, bad things are happening. But unless we remember and celebrate the past successes, we may more easily give way to despair.
Examples of problematical episodes from US history: The McCarthy era in the 1950s, the internment of Japanese-Americans in the 1940s, the US Eugenics movement in the 1930s and before -- where the Nazis got the idea, the lynching of black citizens in the South along with a US white supremacy movement (again, long before "Arianism" took hold in Germany), the tragic Civil War of the 1870s, and many more such things... Plus so much problematical foreign policy, including grabbing big parts of Mexico and invading Canada multiple times, not to mention the systematic genocide committed against the Native Americans to steal their land (the US Army's primary function in early years was taking part in all that). The USA may criticize China's "human rights" record, but the US past is filled with many horrors that may be far worse than things China is doing now (even in Tibet etc.).
Governments always demand to be respected in various ways. Those ways may change over time. Yes, there are bad trends, and bad episodes, some still ongoing and growing like you and others including me point to, but the USA has muddled through them in the past. Some wrongs have been righted decades later (even as "justice delayed is justice denied"); others have yet to be resolved. Generally, the successes are helped along by efforts from citizens, as in: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. (Margaret Mead)".
I can urge you to read "A People's History of the United States" to get a broader perspective on all this regarding the USA. It is a perspective not taught in the past in most US classrooms or probably still in most civics classes for immigrants. It is the history of US citizens struggling repeatedly to control a government and industry (the two being intertwined), to keep them accountable to human needs. It is full of examples both of successes and failures. Here is an online version, but it is probably available in any major book store:
http://www.historyisaweapon.co...
Another good book is John Gardner's 1971 book "Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society". Here I quote what he says and comment on it: ... Only the blind and complacent could fail to recognize the great tasks of renewal facing us -- in government, in education, ..." :-)
http://p2pfoundation.net/backu...
""As I was browsing in a university bookstore recently, I heard an apple-cheeked girl say to her companion, "The truth is that our society and everything in it is in a state of decay." I studied her carefully and I must report that she did not seem even slightly decayed. But what of the society as a whole? Decay is hardly the word for what is happening to us. We are witnessing changes so profound and far-reaching that the mind can hardly grasp all the implications.
John Gardner goes on to say that every generation faces the problem of renewing itself to meet new challenges emerging from the very success of the old ways of doing things. And he suggests that social values are not some drying up old reservoir, but rather a reservoir of variable capacity that must be recharged anew in every generation. [He also suggests every generation must re-learn for itself what the words carved on the stone monuments really mean.]
Democracy -- use it or lose it.
Free speech on the internet -- use it or lose it.
Social capital -- use it or lose it?
P2P -- use it or lose it?
Again, Gardner's book was written in 1971, so, about forty years ago. Although it's true the last thirty years in the USA has prett
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Dude thats a nice write up, bravo!