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Obama Changed Rules Regarding Raw Intelligence, Allowing NSA To Share Raw Data With US's Other 16 Intelligence Agencies (schneier.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Schneier on Security: President Obama has changed the rules regarding raw intelligence, allowing the NSA to share raw data with the U.S.'s other 16 intelligence agencies. The new rules significantly relax longstanding limits on what the N.S.A. may do with the information gathered by its most powerful surveillance operations, which are largely unregulated by American wiretapping laws. These include collecting satellite transmissions, phone calls and emails that cross network switches abroad, and messages between people abroad that cross domestic network switches. The change means that far more officials will be searching through raw data. Essentially, the government is reducing the risk that the N.S.A. will fail to recognize that a piece of information would be valuable to another agency, but increasing the risk that officials will see private information about innocent people. Here are the new procedures. This rule change has been in the works for a while. Here are two blog posts from April discussing the then-proposed changes.
Most open and transparent president ever, just with your data, not his.
Ever hear of the Strategy of Tension? Operation Gladio? Do you really think this will decrease terror attacks? Has tearing the bill of rights to shreds been decreasing the number of terror attacks so far?
Convenient, they don't even need to go to the trouble of parallel construction anymore! And the old argument of "don't be so paranoid, the NSA doesn't care about you" goes right out the door. Now your local Sheriff gets to find out when you text your buddy about smoking a bowl, and unlike the NSA, he does care and might have decide to pay you a visit.
As if it wasn't time to encrypt every communication already, it's definitely time to start now.
This will continue to push people toward using technologies that protect their privacy and are not vulnerable to this kind of surveillance. If people want privacy, then they must demand it, and utilise software that ensures it. No one should have any expectation of privacy making e.g. an unencrypted call over the public phone network. It's just crazy anyone would ever think that was private in the first place. At least this will help in capturing the more inept criminals and terrorists.
I think the more salient point is whether or not terror attacks represent any significant risk at all. Now I'll admit when someone Jihadi drives a truck into a crowd of people, that certainly creates some casualties, and by consequence creates a significant amount of fear. But what are the real odds of any resident of a Western country dying in a terrorist attack. In reality, the odds are infinitesimal. Now dying from a heart attack or stroke, or hell, even choking or highway fatalities, those represent massive killers, with huge numbers of casualties with huge costs for society. And yet, here we are, with our stupid Savannah ape brains, unable to discern a meaningful and present threat to our person from a threat that's unlikely to harm you or anyone you know even to the second or third degree ever.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
So, remember how the FISA court is essentially a rubberstamp for surveillance warrants?
As in they have only refused 0.03% of warrant requests?
Well, guess what warrant the FISA court did refuse?
The Guardian has learned that the FBI applied for a warrant from the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court over the summer in order to monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials. The Fisa court turned down the application asking FBI counter-intelligence investigators to narrow its focus. According to one report, the FBI was finally granted a warrant in October, but that has not been confirmed, and it is not clear whether any warrant led to a full investigation.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/10/fbi-chief-given-dossier-by-john-mccain-alleging-secret-trump-russia-contacts
WTF?
Why must something be done?
We have limited financial resources, if spending those same resources on a different problem will save more lives, doesn't it make sense to put the money where it will do the most good? Fighting terrorism costs a fortune, and has a track record of being extremely ineffectual. There are many more places where many more lives could be saved for a fraction of the cost, and all without giving up all our civil liberties in the process.
The Republicans won't make noise about this because they want it just as much as the Democrats.
You seem to think there's an actual difference between the 2 parties on issues like this, there isn't. Both parties want a full on police state, politics is all about control, nobody in politics wants less control, they all want more.
Has tearing the bill of rights to shreds been decreasing the number of terror attacks so far?
The data is too sparse to reach a conclusion. The number of attacks was near zero both before and after 9/11, and the operations you mentioned were not the only variable. We have better security, more public awareness, etc. Either way, terrorism isn't a significant risk, and our government should be diverting resources to finding solutions to far bigger risks, like obesity and dementia.
Having a populace that aren't sheep will solve this. But no, we couldn't have that, otherwise they'd know they were being screwed in all kinds of ways.
But still something must be done.
Why?
The problem with that question is it leads politicians to the following:
1) Something must be done!
2) This is something! *
3) Let's do it!
* Where "something" usually has the (intended) consequences of spending more taxpayer money to increase some politician's or bureaucrats fiefdom, and the (unintended) consequences to the cure being far worse than the disease.
Quite the opposite.. he's trying to ensure that fascism DOESN'T come to America. ... by making it a surveillance state that would make the Geheime Staatspolizei (gestapo) or the later Stazi green with envy.
A surveillance state which, BTW, the next president will inherit in a week.
Why wasn't Obama impeached for spying on Americans?
Why wasn't Bush impeached for spying on Americans?
Why won't Trump be impeached for spying on Americans?
This sounds like a time bomb. With more people on the case it is increasingly difficult to vet them all making a fiasco like Snowden ever more likely.
Exactly. Treating terrorism like some great geopolitical threat is like a doctor saying he has to amputate your arm because you have a paper cut on your finger. I'm not saying we don't take measures to keep ourselves safe, but the insanity that terrorism creates among politicians and the general populace is completely out of proportion to the threat that it actually represents. Like the War on Drugs, the War on Terror seems to be more about creating the illusion of government action and keeping law enforcement agencies' budgets big and fat. You'd probably save more lives in a year doubling the number of speed traps on your average freeway than in all the anti-terror measures that have been put in place.
Treat terrorists like what they are, criminals. You don't have a fucking War on the Mafia, you have the FBI and other international, federal and state law enforcement agencies actively working to break them up. To my mind, the worst thing that the West has ever done is overestimate the threat of terrorism. It's given the terrorists what they want, an air of menace that far outstrips the actual threat. I wonder if there would even be an ISIS if the West hadn't spent so much energy making terrorism seem like the greatest threat against mankind.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Frankly, I'm amazed we've survived this long without more rights trampled.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
What rights exactly did Obama trample? I believe they were thrown under the bus by Cheney/Bush long before Obama got anywhere close to the white house.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
He just needed to get out of office.
Obama made the most pro-transparency move of his office time. By greatly increasing access to secret information, the odds of us knowing the lies and crimes of the future administration are also increased. Let's hope for new troves.