We don't need "backdoors". What we need is a clear acknowledgment that what increasingly exists essentially amounts to a virtual fortress impenetrable by the legal mechanisms of free society, that many of those systems are developed and employed by US companies, and that US adversaries use those systems against the US and our allies, and for a discussion to start from that point.
The US has a clear and compelling interest in strong encryption, and especially in protecting US encryption systems used by our government, our citizens, and people around the world from defeat. But the assumption that the only alternatives are either universal strong encryption, or wholesale and deliberate weakening of encryption systems and/or "backdoors", is a false dichotomy.
Guess what people the NSA isn't going after with something as close-held as the linked exploit?
"Hackers, Activists, and Journos"
I know that doesn't really seem to matter to people, and that it's easier to cherry-pick contextless, misunderstood, fringe examples that are believed to prove some "point", or isolated examples of outright abuse and extrapolating, without any proof whatever, that to mean it is obviously systemic and widespread, instead of realizing that NSA's chief mission, as a foreign intelligence agency, is foreign signals intelligence collection, and that US adversaries use the same phones, laptops, networks, systems, devices, services, and providers as you.
And, stunningly, we still develop ways to actually target and collect against them.
This post only demonstrates your misunderstanding of things (by talking about "home routers", for example, in this context). And yes, attribution in cyber is hard -- that's one of the most-discussed, fundamental problems of cyber.
You can also go down the Princess Bride-esque rabbit hole of saying that China knows that some people -- like yourself -- will make arguments that "it could be the US or UK making it look like it's China", and thus conduct an attack, or that we know that they know that we know that, and therefore the US did it, etc.
At some point, you have to apply Occam's Razor and ask: who benefits? And the most obvious, direct, and clear beneficiary of this kind of interference is China. Not the US, not the UK, not some imagined Western Illuminati cabal with China being innocent victims; no: China.
The Interceptâ(TM)s âoeDrone Papersâ leaker âoebelieves the public has a right to know how the U.S. government decides to assassinate people.â Maybe soâ"or maybe public safety and the need for secrecy trump the publicâ(TM)s curiosity. Unfortunately, the leaker has unilaterally decided for all of us. One person with a thumb drive again trumps the democratic process.
Tant pis; the âoeDrone Papersâ are out there (the name suggests a massive archive; in fact, there are only four documents, one of which is a shorter version of another). So what do they tell us about how the U.S. Government is targeting terrorist leaders in Somalia and Yemen for drone strikesâ"or, as The Intercept would have it, âoedecid[ing] how to assassinate peopleâ? Unsurprisingly, The Intercept is out to convict; its focus is on the âoeshortcomings and flawsâ of the program, as supposedly exemplified by its ingenuous account of the life and death of al Qaeda commander Bilal el-Berjawi.
But the documents themselves are hardly as damning as the breathless tone of the reporting suggests. In fact, for those concerned about oversight and accountability in the targeting process for AUMF-based strikes, the documents should reassure rather than unsettle. The overall impression is of thorough, individualized review, at the highest levels of government, that meaningfully constrains those developing and carrying out these operations.
The key documents, two DOD slide decks on âoeISR support to small footprint CT operationsâ in Somalia and Yemen (a full deck and an executive summary) include these details:
- The âoeaverage approval timeâ for a proposed strike under the AUMF process was 79 days. Even excluding the single longest approval, presumably an unrepresentative outlier, the average was 58 days. The fastest approval was 27 days.
- These approvals were preceded by lengthy periods of gathering and analyzing intelligence on the targetsâ"an average of six years.
- Four out of 24 proposed concepts of operations covered by the study were disapproved under the AUMF review process.
- Each proposed operation must be approved by a lengthy sequence of high-ranking officials, culminating in the President.
- The process for approving strikes under the AUMF âoerequires significant intel/ISR to justify (and maintain) approvals.â âoeRelatively few, high-level terrorists meet criteria for targetingâ under this process. (Note that this isnâ(TM)t a press release touting the programâ(TM)s robust oversight; itâ(TM)s an internal DOD assessment, written from the perspective of operators for whom a laborious approval process is an obstacle rather than a virtue.)
- These âoe[p]olitical constraintsâ make these operations âoechallengingâ and âoefundamentally different from what weâ(TM)ve experienced in Afghanistan and Iraq.â
These slides do not suggest operators run amok, âoeassassinat[ing]â targets with little forethought or oversight. To the contrary, the âoeDrone Papersâ suggest that these operations go forward only after a deliberate, individualized process. They confirm that senior political decisionmakers, including the President, review and approve each individual operation. And they reveal that operators view this review process as a significant constraintâ"a constraint that distinguishes these operations from the (presumably more liberal) operating environments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There may be other flaws in the program, as the accompanying articles urgeâ"unintended victims, truncated intelligence collecti
Smith v Maryland (1979) says that phone call records, as "business records" provided to a third party, do not have an expectation of privacy, and are not covered by the Fourth Amendment. And the only data within that haystack that we care about are the foreign intelligence needles. I know that's difficult to comprehend, but it's the law of the land, unless and until SCOTUS reverses that ruling. And they very well may.
Until that happens, "We're pretty aggressive within the law. As a professional, Iâ(TM)m troubled if I'm not using the full authority allowed by law." -- General Michael Hayden
Here's your mistake, and the mistake of everyone who thinks the way you do:
You cherry-pick examples of abuse -- and that's exactly what it is, illegal abuse -- and extrapolate it, in your mind, to being a systemic problem. You imagine it's happening all the time, and that people just sit around at their desks looking up their friends, girlfriends, neighbors, and ex-spouses for fun.
You then cherry-pick completely unrelated, long-ago-condemned examples of things that happened decades ago under the Hoover FBI, which is about 180 degrees opposite from what NSA does for foreign intelligence, and before there was any semblance of anything that could remotely be called intel oversight, and pretend it's exactly the same.
Your mistake is that you think isolated examples of abuse are not isolated, without proof; then you believe that any such examples indicate what, to you, is obviously a systemic, widespread problem. Abuse will ALWAYS happen, and it will never stop. This is true at all levels of government, and anywhere a human being exists. The answer to that is oversight (something you also think doesn't exist, but is actually so overbearing and restrictive that if you could actually witness it, you wouldn't believe it), not removing any authority that "could" be abused, because then we would necessarily have to remove them all.
Yes, intentional abuse, unintentional abuse, simple mistakes, human or machine error, and all manner of things happen in intelligence work. And those errors are such a vanishingly small proportion of what NSA does that it is nearly zero -- and they are still taken seriously. In fact, this is one of the single most important things drilled into anyone doing foreign SIGINT, military or civilian, every single day. It's not some kind of a joke.
I hate to break it to you, but how things actually work might disappoint you if you think there is rampant abuse everywhere.
And there you have it ladies and gentlemen... you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide.
No. That's not what I said, at all.
What I said was -- all arguments about crypto aside -- was precisely what I said:
If you're an American (or frankly, any innocent person) anywhere in the world who isn't an active member of a foreign terrorist organization or an agent of a foreign power, the Intelligence Community DOES NOT CARE ABOUT and actually DOES NOT WANT your data.
That is in no way, shape, or form akin to saying, "you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide." It is not making an argument that the government "should" have your data. It is saying that the Intelligence Community, in the form of the foreign intelligence agencies, does not want your data -- doesn't want to touch it, doesn't want to see it, doesn't want to read it, whether it's encrypted or not. And no, using crypto does not "make you a suspect". (And the FBI doesn't want the data of innocent people, either. What the FBI wishes for is a state of affairs where criminals for whom exist actual individualized warrants wouldn't be able to employ the digital equivalent of an impenetrable fortress, out of reach of the legitimate authority of enforcement mechanisms in a democratic society. But it may have to come to terms with that reality.)
If you believe you defend these things by undermining what they actually mean, then I'm afraid you don't deserve to have these things defended since you've already given up on them.
Talk about missing the point. You are basing your entire argument on a false premise, and false assumption of what you believe my argument to be; namely, that we should be giving up our rights in order to protect them. Not only am I not making that argument, I am making the precise opposite: that if you believe those rights are important, you need to understand that we can and do take steps to execute military and intelligence actions against our adversaries, whether they be terrorists or nation-states.
You crow about all these rights you think you and Americans, collectively, have "given up", when in reality, nothing substantive has actually changed (oh, I realize you think it's changed, and that you're living in a borderline police state). You believe your rights are being trampled, when you are, from a real and practical standpoint, more free while living in organized, civil society than any other people throughout history -- at least as free as is possible without living in a vacuum with no connection to humanity.
You hold out WWII codebreakers as heroes, practically idolizing them, and vilify the modern day equivalent, while ignoring the reality that US adversaries coexist in the same web of global digital communications as we do, utilizing the same devices, systems, services, networks, operating systems, encryption standards, and so on, and then act surprised when elements of the US government actually dare develop ways to exploit those systems, just because Americans also happen to use them -- totally misunderstanding the landscape.
This is exactly what I am talking about when I say people need to gain some perspective on history, or reality. Either would do.
So does ADM Rogers -- except that every interpretation of various US officials' arguments on encryption wildly conflate multiple issues (such as domestic law enforcement, which can and does sometimes have a foreign intelligence connection, and foreign signals intelligence purposes), or utterly misunderstand the purpose, function, and targets of foreign intelligence.
Yes, I know you (not OP, the "royal you") think you know it all, because you have taken things you think of as "proof" utterly out-of-context with zero understanding about things like foreign SIGINT actually works, and have seen 3-4 unrelated pieces of a 1000 piece puzzle, with some of those pieces actually parts of different puzzles, and believe you have the full picture.
People continually and willfully seem to want to forget or ignore that actual, no-shit foreign intelligence targets also -- gasp! -- use things like iPhones, Gmail, Hotmail, WhatsApp, and so on. And, when foreign intelligence targets use these modes of communication, amazingly, we actually want to target them.
If you're an American (or frankly, any innocent person) anywhere in the world who isn't an active member of a foreign terrorist organization or an agent of a foreign power, the Intelligence Community DOES NOT CARE ABOUT and actually DOES NOT WANT your data. Sounds crazy and bizarre for foreign intelligence agencies to care about things like foreign intelligence, I know, but it's true. Weird!
I guess it's easier to believe that functioning democracies* all are constantly looking for ways to illegally spy on their own citizens who have done nothing wrong, rather than to believe that intelligence work in the digital age where the only distinction is no longer the physical location or even the technology used, but simply the target -- the person at the other end, is actually extremely complicated, and not fun.
* If you don't think the Western liberal democracies of the world are worth a shit, or laugh at the term "functioning democracies" when used in reference to the US, warts and all, that simply means you have lost all perspective of reality, and are part of the problem. And it will be to our peril, because there actually are governments in the world who do spy on their own citizens, and wherein the people don't have anywhere NEAR the level of freedoms we have, no matter how terrible you think we are. And guess what? It's our national security and intelligence apparatus that we use to defend ourselves. If you're now so jaded that you don't actually believe the US and its allies, and their principles, are something worth defending and fighting for, then everything I have said here means nothing to you anyway. Just be advised that your perception of history and reality is fatally skewed.
None of which required that he be handcuffed, fingerprinted, suspended... etc... etc...
The police were called, and they are compelled and required to investigate once called. They don't just show up and say, "Eh, whatever," and leave. I don't think they police should have been called at all, but they were. And during the course of their investigation, they choose to transport him for questioning, and handcuffs are, rightly or wrongly, standard procedure nearly any time anyone is detained or transported for any reason, even if they didn't do anything wrong.
The issue isn't whether they thought it was a bomb or not - the issue is their overreaction and it's racist overtones.
The issue is exactly that. Even if race or religion was on the mind of one or more of the people involved, you can't know that. People are using the fact this happened to him and "wouldn't happen if he was white" as proof that it has to be racism. But white kids are arrested and suspended for similarly innocent, or even more innocent, things all the time. That fact alone dismantles the position that "because this happened, it must have had a racial element." It MAY indeed have had a racial element, but the facts of the situation aren't what demonstrates that. That would be only in peoples' minds.
(As for one of the cops ALLEGEDLY saying "it's who I thought it would be", we have no way of knowing 1. whether that was even actually said, or 2. IF it was said, whether it referred to Ahmed personally (i.e., did he have any brushes before because of his interests), or because he was "brown" and Muslim -- the conclusion that everyone who desperately wants to attribute this to racism wants to rush to. And, on that point, if that was the motivation, wouldn't that cop have already felt that upon seeing his name was "Ahmed Mohamed", instead of making an allegedly racist remark right to his face, and only upon seeing him? In short, that allegation doesn't stand up to scrutiny as definitive proof that there was anything racial involved on the part of police in this case, either.)
I am ignoring the rest of your fallacious attacks that don't speak to the facts of the situation, which I have shown that you have ignored. You're the corrosive one, here, because you have already decided that this simply must be racism when the facts and evidence don't support that conclusion, and ignore all other considerations.
Since no one ever actually thought it was a bomb, the fact that the school and police took no action as if it were a bomb does not somehow "prove" it's racism and/or Islamophobia. That isn't to say one or more of the people involved had something in that vein in their minds, but their lack of treating it as a bomb doesn't demonstrate it, since numerous accounts of this story indicate the school and police never thought it was an actual bomb.
Some people thought it "looked like" a bomb, and wondered why he would bring it to school, because they don't understand why kids who like things like science and electronics do what they do.
And there are laws dealing with what are called "hoax devices". Many people have gotten into trouble for such things before. Hoax device statutes have been around for many, many years, long before 9/11.
The only thing that matters in the hoax device statute is intent â" a feature that is not unique. For example, intent matters when someone is killed. Was it an accident? Was it negligence? Was it premeditated? That is the difference between someone having done nothing wrong, and murder. And it is interviews and investigations and evidence that determine intent.
Even in the original Dallas Morning News article that broke this story â" before it went viral and Ahmed got invited to the White House, JPL, MIT, got scholarships, and become the hero of Silicon Valley â" the only thing the police officials said was that they knew it wasn't a bomb, that Ahmed never claimed it was anything but a clock, and that they were trying to determine WHY he built and AND brought it to school. Once it was determined there was no intent to alarm, scare, or deceive, it was further determined there was no wrongdoing.
Steve Wozniak got in trouble for using a hoax device (with intent to scare), and was arrested and spent a night in jail. I got in trouble with authority figures â" school, police â" for things similar to what Ahmed did several times, when doing nothing wrong. Maybe a little borderline, maybe a little, "What on earth are you doing?" but not illegal. And frankly, some of those came down only to intent as well.
So this little trope misunderstands what happened. Could racism or Islamophobia been an element in anyone's mind? There is no way to know, as much as people desperately want to come to that conclusion. When people say, "What white kid would have gotten in trouble for doing nothing wrong?"
Plenty. Ignore the title, read the article (for those who haven't already):
His English teacher overreacted by getting the principal's office involved. The school overreacted by calling the police. The school bears almost all of the responsibility here â" not "post-9/11 America", racism, or police. If the police had not been called, none of this would ever have happened â" and Ahmed wouldn't be a celebrity, either.
When police are called for a situation where any of the parties involved are not in perfect agreement, and there is no controversy, even if nothing illegal occurred, I would submit that there are not many times that results in a more positive outcome. The police are there, in part, to investigate and to determine if there was any wrongdoing, which they did. I wish they would have simply handled it at the school, but what I really wish is that the school would not have called the police in the first place.
...and your comment represents the absolutely fundamental misunderstanding that pervades this discussion.
The truth no one wants to hear:
The distinction is no longer the technology or the place, but the person(s) using a capability: the target. In a free society based on the rule of law, it is not the technological capability to do a thing, but the law, that is paramount.
Gone are the days where the US targeted foreign communications on distant shores, or cracked codes used only by our enemies. No one would have questioned the legitimacy of the US and its allies breaking the German or Japanese codes or exploiting enemy communications equipment during WWII. The difference today is that US adversaries -- from terrorists to nation-states -- use many of the same systems, services, networks, operating systems, devices, software, hardware, cloud services, encryption standards, and so on, as Americans and much of the rest of the world. They use iPhones, Windows, Dell servers, Android tablets, Cisco routers, Netgear wireless access points, Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Gmail, and so on.
US adversaries now often use the very same technologies we use. The fact that Americans or others also use them does not suddenly or magically mean that no element of the US Intelligence Community should ever target them. When a terrorist in Somalia is using Hotmail or an iPhone instead of a walkie-talkie, that cannot mean we pack our bags and go home. That means that, within clear and specific legal authorities and duly authorized statutory missions of the Intelligence Community, we aggressively pursue any and all possible avenues, within the law, that allow us to intercept and exploit the communications of foreign intelligence targets.
If they are using hand couriers, we target them. If they are using walkie-talkies, we target them. If they are using their own custom methods for protecting their communications, we target them. If they are using HF radios, VSATs, satellite phones, or smoke signals, we target them. If they are using Gmail, Windows, OS X, Facebook, iPhone, Android, SSL, web forums running on Amazon Web Services, etc., we target them -- within clear and specific legal frameworks that govern the way our intelligence agencies operate, including with regard to US Persons.
That doesn't mean it's always perfect; that doesn't mean things are not up for debate; that doesn't mean everyone will agree with every possible legal interpretation; that doesn't mean that some may not fundamentally disagree with the US approach to, e.g., counterterrorism. But the intelligence agencies do not make the rules, and while they may inform issues, they do not define national policy or priorities.
Without the authorities granted by the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (FAA), the United States cannot target non-US Persons who are foreign intelligence targets if their communications enters, traverses, or otherwise touches the United States, a system within the United States, or, arguably, a system or network operated by a US corporation (i.e., a US Person) anywhere in the world. FAA in particular is almost exclusively focused on non-US Persons outside the US, who now exist in the same global web of digital communications as innocent Americans.
Without FAA, the very same Constitutional protections and warrant requirements reserved for US Persons would extend to foreign nations and foreign terrorists simply by using US networks and services â" whether intentionally or not. Without FAA, an individualized warrant would be required to collect on a foreign intelligence target using, say, Facebook, Gmail, or Yahoo!, or even exclusively foreign providers if their communications happens to enter the United States, as 70% of international internet traffic does. If you do not think there is a problem with this, there might be an even greater and more basic misunderstanding about how foreign SIGINT and cyber activities fundamentally must work.
A Russian geopolitical analyst says the best way to attack the United States is to detonate nuclear weapons to trigger a supervolcano at Yellowstone National Park or along the San Andreas fault line on California's coast.
The president of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems based in Moscow, Konstantin Sivkov said in an article for a Russian trade newspaper on Wednesday, VPK News, that Russia needed to increase its military weapons and strategies against the "West" which was "moving to the borders or Russia".
He has a conspiracy theory that NATO - a political and military alliance which counts the US, UK, Canada and many countries in western Europe as members - was amassing strength against Russia and the only way to combat that problem was to attack America's vulnerabilities to ensure a "complete destruction of the enemy".
"Geologists believe that the Yellowstone supervolcano could explode at any moment. There are signs of growing activity there. Therefore it suffices to push the relatively small, for example the impact of the munition megaton class to initiate an eruption. The consequences will be catastrophic for the United States - a country just disappears," he said.
"Another vulnerable area of the United States from the geophysical point of view, is the San Andreas fault - 1300 kilometers between the Pacific and North American plates... a detonation of a nuclear weapon there can trigger catastrophic events like a coast-scale tsunami which can completely destroy the infrastructure of the United States."
Your (and my, and any individual citizen's) personal interpretation of the Constitution is not the measure. It is the interpretation and implementation by our three branches of government. I realize that some reading this believe they have all been compromised, or that they think some particular thing is "obviously unconstitutional" (even though the judicial, legislative, and executive branches say otherwise), but the fact is we have the system of government we have. So how about you consider the alternative: one where you don't assume that everyone working at every/any level of government, e.g., NSA, doesn't have the worst motivations and is actually trying to do their best to honorably, legally, and Constitutionally, protect our nation and its people instead of the opposite. How about that?
If you would actually like to have a discussion, I am more than happy to engage. I have articulated these views (not on this specific topic, of course) long before I ever served in uniform, and they have nothing to do with a "paycheck" -- in fact, it's the inverse: the reason I chose to serve is because of my personal desire to do what I can to support things I believe in, and believe are important for our nation and my family and fellow citizens, not the other way around. Yes, our system of government is imperfect...grossly so -- but I choose to support it over any and all alternatives, warts and all. (And that is not to say that there are not things that cannot be improved.)
And again -- and I sincerely mean this -- if you are actually serious about engaging in a dialogue, I am happy to.
Do you realize that over 70% of FOREIGN internet traffic enters, traverses, or otherwise touches the US?
Do you understand that an individualized warrant is required to target, collect, store, analyze, or disseminate the communications content of a US Person anywhere on the globe, and that the current law on the issue is stronger and more restrictive with regard to US Persons than it has ever been?
Do you understand that the FOREIGN communications we are going after are now intermixed with the communications of the rest of the world, including that of Americans?
Do you understand that when terrorists use Gmail, Facebook, Yahoo, WhatsApp, Hotmail, Twitter, Skype, etc. etc. etc., or Windows, or Dell computers, or Android phones, or Cisco routers, and so on, that there is no technical distinction between your communications and theirs, yet -- surprise -- we still would like to access those communications, and have legal, policy, and technical frameworks to do so, even if you have not personally inspected them yourself?
If you are a US citizen, and not covered by any warrant, no one cares about your communications. And almost by definition, no foreign intelligence agency (NSA, CIA, DIA) remotely gives a shit about your communications, and would greatly prefer to avoid it altogether, unless you have some kind of connection with foreign intelligence targets -- in which case any collection or monitoring of your communications would require an individualized warrant from FISC or another court of competent jurisdiction. I realize you think this isn't the case, and that all of your communications are being mined and monitored (illegally, no less), and since proving a negative is impossible, I won't be able to help in that regard.
No. The trigger for this isn't that companies are holding data...it's that users have data, and the NSA wants to force the companies to keep/get access their users data even if the company doesn't want to, so that the NSA can access it also. This is a *very* different proposition. If Apple doesn't want to hold its user's data, why should the NSA force them to just so that the NSA can read it? That seems to be the NSA's problem, not Apple's.
And? NSA may "want" a lot of things. That doesn't mean they are going to get it. But if a US-based company is holding encrypted data to which they also have access, you had damned well better believe the government is going to seek access to that data if it is supported by law. If companies want to take the direction of removing themselves from the encryption picture altogether, that is their prerogative. And guess what? There are other technical ways to get that data, such as before it's encrypted in the first place.
Saying "encryption" does not make the data magical, but it also doesn't entitle the NSA to special treatment. If they can break it, fine. If they can't, there is no valid reason for me to make it easy for them.
No, there isn't. And I didn't say there is. I was stating a set of facts, as are you. See? We can talk like adults.
Do we really believe that the US is the only one who has the "right" to access any backdoor/golden-key/whatever? That's absolute nonsense. If the US forces Apple, Google, MS, etc to build key escrow into their devices so that the NSA can read the data on them, then that key will be used by every government on the earth. If you really believe that the NSA will manage to keep exclusive control of a master key for all encryption for a given major vendor, then I'm going to call you delusional.
No...you are completely misunderstanding my point. If you reread what I said, you will note that nowhere did I argue that anyone should build a backdoor for anything...but the fact is that some US-based companies DO have the ability to decrypt stored encrypted data, which they sometimes do for any variety of reasons, and, if when those services are storing the foreign communications of adversaries of the United States, which they are, then we should have a legal framework that allows access to said data. That is all.
Arguing for a master key -- which is what you THINK ADM Rogers is arguing for, but actually isn't -- is antithetical to the security interests of the United States, our people, our military, our intelligence community, and anyone else who requires secure communications in any form. But if you have already formed your conclusions, that is fine. What ADM Rogers is arguing for is a legal framework for data access of entities that operate within and under a US legal construct...and if there is encrypted data present that the data holder cannot access, that is just the way it goes. But as you know, there a number of ways to access the contents of what is ultimately encrypted data without breaking the encryption...ways that are as old as this decades-old discussion.
And we are going to seek those ways, and I will say something that is offensive to many slashdotters' sensibilities: if you support the principles that you claim to -- things like freedom, of speech, of choice, of anything else -- then you should support the abilities of one of the strongest powers in the world at actually, materially, and in reality (not in your little internet fantasy) of actually protecting and projecting those ideals. Actually judging the actions of the US Intelligence Community based on facts, to say nothing of having some perspective on history and reality beyond what self-styled internet tech-libertarians tell you, would be helpful also.
The point is the exact reverse of what you are saying.
This is not about whether the Germans or Japanese should have incorporated "backdoors" that any external entity would have required.
This is about the fact that US adversaries, today, as you and I speak, are using the EXACT SAME systems, networks, devices, services, OSes, and encryption standards and protocols, as you and I and innocent Americans and many others in the world. THAT is the issue...does this fact put those communications off limits?
Please. Your comment proves just how deep the misunderstanding of this situation actually is.
Good for you. And if you are a non-US person outside the US (which covers about 99.9% of the communications that foreign intelligence agencies -- key word being foreign -- actually care about) engaged in activity that is a national security threat to the US, as defined by the valid mechanisms (even if you personally disagree with those mechanisms) that democratic nations such as the US develop, then we will try to access your communications. I don't see how this is possibly shocking. Shocking, perhaps, if you are a US adversary, or someone who believes that it's all an overarching plot by the US and other free Western nations to illegally access everyone's communications, especially that of their own citizens to solidify power, or serve corporate/elite/shadowy overlords, but otherwise...yeah, no.
1. "Secret courts". The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is the very court whose sole purpose is protecting the rights of Americans under the law and the Constitution in the context of foreign intelligence collection. Secrecy is required for the conduct of foreign intelligence, even in free societies. That you may disagree with this does not invalidate this fact. That you may see 3-4 pieces of a 1000 piece puzzle and believe you have the full picture does not invalidate this fact.
2. "Spying on everyone". Not sure what you mean, but if you could possibly be referring to metadata collection, that has been affirmed by a Supreme Court ruling that is 35 years old.
And if even the US Supreme Court ultimately renders the phone metadata collection "unconstitutional", it won't mean that it was unconstitutional, or even is unconstitutional at this very moment. The program, to date, is factually lawful and constitutional as the law and existing case law stand -- even including Judge Leon's ruling, which he himself immediately stayed, and was countered by another federal ruling of the same standing.
What an unconstitutional finding would mean is that things aren't the same as they were in 1979: that, with the rise of digital communications and the ability to track not one, or dozens, but hundreds of millions of call records easily, and because large amounts of metadata can often reveal as much private information about a person as communications content, the balance now runs afoul of the reasonableness doctrine of the Fourth Amendment.
And that would be a perfectly valid finding...which does not in the least impugn NSA's purpose or motives. It is not NSA's job to second-guess the law, case law, both houses of Congress, two Presidents from opposite parties, the Attorneys General of said two Presidents, the courts, and the very court established explicitly to protect the rights of Americans under the law and the Constitution in the context of foreign intelligence collection.
It is NSA's job to conduct its missions as aggressively as possible within the law and its resource limitations. My personal prediction is that, because of the nature of modern digital communications, this kind of mass collection of metadata will be found to be unconstitutional. The interesting thing is that people who think it is "clearly" unconstitutional seem to think things are innately or inherently constitutional or unconstitutional, ignoring incredible and fantastic complexities that already exist in interpretations of the Fourth Amendment, to say nothing of the rest of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Things aren't magically constitutional or unconstitutional. They are so based on the application and interpretation of the law and the Constitution by the courts, even in the simplest of circumstances. Certainly basic rules applying to things like, say, vehicle or home searches are well-tested and the officials who implement them (e.g., local LEOs) are well-versed in these topics. But when there is a question, it is the courts that decide -- NOT individual peoples' whims, feelings, or opinions.
The current, indisputable fact is that phone call metadata, as a "business record" provided to a third party, does NOT have an expectation of privacy and is NOT covered by the Fourth Amendment. There is no gray area, and that case law, as embodied by Smith v. Maryland, applies just as easily to one phone call, as to 10, as to millions. Certainly in 1979 SCOTUS never imagined that this principle could be applied in a blanket fashion touching any American with a telephone; conversely, SCOTUS probably also never imagined that terrorists would plot devastating domestic attacks using our own communications systems within our own country.
In any event, it seems likely that bulk metadata collection will no longer be allowed, and NSA and the IC will simply figure out ways to do their jobs within the confines that our system of government prescribes. That's fine, and that is the way our system works. B
Slashdot Mirror
And the NYT has a new and extensive story that absolutely "mentions" crypto.
We don't need "backdoors". What we need is a clear acknowledgment that what increasingly exists essentially amounts to a virtual fortress impenetrable by the legal mechanisms of free society, that many of those systems are developed and employed by US companies, and that US adversaries use those systems against the US and our allies, and for a discussion to start from that point.
The US has a clear and compelling interest in strong encryption, and especially in protecting US encryption systems used by our government, our citizens, and people around the world from defeat. But the assumption that the only alternatives are either universal strong encryption, or wholesale and deliberate weakening of encryption systems and/or "backdoors", is a false dichotomy.
Guess what people the NSA isn't going after with something as close-held as the linked exploit?
"Hackers, Activists, and Journos"
I know that doesn't really seem to matter to people, and that it's easier to cherry-pick contextless, misunderstood, fringe examples that are believed to prove some "point", or isolated examples of outright abuse and extrapolating, without any proof whatever, that to mean it is obviously systemic and widespread, instead of realizing that NSA's chief mission, as a foreign intelligence agency, is foreign signals intelligence collection, and that US adversaries use the same phones, laptops, networks, systems, devices, services, and providers as you.
And, stunningly, we still develop ways to actually target and collect against them.
Mind-bending, I know.
This post only demonstrates your misunderstanding of things (by talking about "home routers", for example, in this context). And yes, attribution in cyber is hard -- that's one of the most-discussed, fundamental problems of cyber.
You can also go down the Princess Bride-esque rabbit hole of saying that China knows that some people -- like yourself -- will make arguments that "it could be the US or UK making it look like it's China", and thus conduct an attack, or that we know that they know that we know that, and therefore the US did it, etc.
At some point, you have to apply Occam's Razor and ask: who benefits? And the most obvious, direct, and clear beneficiary of this kind of interference is China. Not the US, not the UK, not some imagined Western Illuminati cabal with China being innocent victims; no: China.
A Response to the âoeDrone Papersâ: AUMF Targeting is a Deliberate Process with Robust Political Accountability
By Adam Klein Thursday, October 15, 2015, 5:40 PM
The Interceptâ(TM)s âoeDrone Papersâ leaker âoebelieves the public has a right to know how the U.S. government decides to assassinate people.â Maybe soâ"or maybe public safety and the need for secrecy trump the publicâ(TM)s curiosity. Unfortunately, the leaker has unilaterally decided for all of us. One person with a thumb drive again trumps the democratic process.
Tant pis; the âoeDrone Papersâ are out there (the name suggests a massive archive; in fact, there are only four documents, one of which is a shorter version of another). So what do they tell us about how the U.S. Government is targeting terrorist leaders in Somalia and Yemen for drone strikesâ"or, as The Intercept would have it, âoedecid[ing] how to assassinate peopleâ? Unsurprisingly, The Intercept is out to convict; its focus is on the âoeshortcomings and flawsâ of the program, as supposedly exemplified by its ingenuous account of the life and death of al Qaeda commander Bilal el-Berjawi.
But the documents themselves are hardly as damning as the breathless tone of the reporting suggests. In fact, for those concerned about oversight and accountability in the targeting process for AUMF-based strikes, the documents should reassure rather than unsettle. The overall impression is of thorough, individualized review, at the highest levels of government, that meaningfully constrains those developing and carrying out these operations.
The key documents, two DOD slide decks on âoeISR support to small footprint CT operationsâ in Somalia and Yemen (a full deck and an executive summary) include these details:
- The âoeaverage approval timeâ for a proposed strike under the AUMF process was 79 days. Even excluding the single longest approval, presumably an unrepresentative outlier, the average was 58 days. The fastest approval was 27 days.
- These approvals were preceded by lengthy periods of gathering and analyzing intelligence on the targetsâ"an average of six years.
- Four out of 24 proposed concepts of operations covered by the study were disapproved under the AUMF review process.
- Each proposed operation must be approved by a lengthy sequence of high-ranking officials, culminating in the President.
- The process for approving strikes under the AUMF âoerequires significant intel/ISR to justify (and maintain) approvals.â âoeRelatively few, high-level terrorists meet criteria for targetingâ under this process. (Note that this isnâ(TM)t a press release touting the programâ(TM)s robust oversight; itâ(TM)s an internal DOD assessment, written from the perspective of operators for whom a laborious approval process is an obstacle rather than a virtue.)
- These âoe[p]olitical constraintsâ make these operations âoechallengingâ and âoefundamentally different from what weâ(TM)ve experienced in Afghanistan and Iraq.â
These slides do not suggest operators run amok, âoeassassinat[ing]â targets with little forethought or oversight. To the contrary, the âoeDrone Papersâ suggest that these operations go forward only after a deliberate, individualized process. They confirm that senior political decisionmakers, including the President, review and approve each individual operation. And they reveal that operators view this review process as a significant constraintâ"a constraint that distinguishes these operations from the (presumably more liberal) operating environments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There may be other flaws in the program, as the accompanying articles urgeâ"unintended victims, truncated intelligence collecti
Yeah, and guess what?
Smith v Maryland (1979) says that phone call records, as "business records" provided to a third party, do not have an expectation of privacy, and are not covered by the Fourth Amendment. And the only data within that haystack that we care about are the foreign intelligence needles. I know that's difficult to comprehend, but it's the law of the land, unless and until SCOTUS reverses that ruling. And they very well may.
Until that happens, "We're pretty aggressive within the law. As a professional, Iâ(TM)m troubled if I'm not using the full authority allowed by law." -- General Michael Hayden
Here's your mistake, and the mistake of everyone who thinks the way you do:
You cherry-pick examples of abuse -- and that's exactly what it is, illegal abuse -- and extrapolate it, in your mind, to being a systemic problem. You imagine it's happening all the time, and that people just sit around at their desks looking up their friends, girlfriends, neighbors, and ex-spouses for fun.
You then cherry-pick completely unrelated, long-ago-condemned examples of things that happened decades ago under the Hoover FBI, which is about 180 degrees opposite from what NSA does for foreign intelligence, and before there was any semblance of anything that could remotely be called intel oversight, and pretend it's exactly the same.
Your mistake is that you think isolated examples of abuse are not isolated, without proof; then you believe that any such examples indicate what, to you, is obviously a systemic, widespread problem. Abuse will ALWAYS happen, and it will never stop. This is true at all levels of government, and anywhere a human being exists. The answer to that is oversight (something you also think doesn't exist, but is actually so overbearing and restrictive that if you could actually witness it, you wouldn't believe it), not removing any authority that "could" be abused, because then we would necessarily have to remove them all.
Yes, intentional abuse, unintentional abuse, simple mistakes, human or machine error, and all manner of things happen in intelligence work. And those errors are such a vanishingly small proportion of what NSA does that it is nearly zero -- and they are still taken seriously. In fact, this is one of the single most important things drilled into anyone doing foreign SIGINT, military or civilian, every single day. It's not some kind of a joke.
I hate to break it to you, but how things actually work might disappoint you if you think there is rampant abuse everywhere.
And there you have it ladies and gentlemen ... you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide.
No. That's not what I said, at all.
What I said was -- all arguments about crypto aside -- was precisely what I said:
If you're an American (or frankly, any innocent person) anywhere in the world who isn't an active member of a foreign terrorist organization or an agent of a foreign power, the Intelligence Community DOES NOT CARE ABOUT and actually DOES NOT WANT your data.
That is in no way, shape, or form akin to saying, "you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide." It is not making an argument that the government "should" have your data. It is saying that the Intelligence Community, in the form of the foreign intelligence agencies, does not want your data -- doesn't want to touch it, doesn't want to see it, doesn't want to read it, whether it's encrypted or not. And no, using crypto does not "make you a suspect". (And the FBI doesn't want the data of innocent people, either. What the FBI wishes for is a state of affairs where criminals for whom exist actual individualized warrants wouldn't be able to employ the digital equivalent of an impenetrable fortress, out of reach of the legitimate authority of enforcement mechanisms in a democratic society. But it may have to come to terms with that reality.)
If you believe you defend these things by undermining what they actually mean, then I'm afraid you don't deserve to have these things defended since you've already given up on them.
Talk about missing the point. You are basing your entire argument on a false premise, and false assumption of what you believe my argument to be; namely, that we should be giving up our rights in order to protect them. Not only am I not making that argument, I am making the precise opposite: that if you believe those rights are important, you need to understand that we can and do take steps to execute military and intelligence actions against our adversaries, whether they be terrorists or nation-states.
You crow about all these rights you think you and Americans, collectively, have "given up", when in reality, nothing substantive has actually changed (oh, I realize you think it's changed, and that you're living in a borderline police state). You believe your rights are being trampled, when you are, from a real and practical standpoint, more free while living in organized, civil society than any other people throughout history -- at least as free as is possible without living in a vacuum with no connection to humanity.
You hold out WWII codebreakers as heroes, practically idolizing them, and vilify the modern day equivalent, while ignoring the reality that US adversaries coexist in the same web of global digital communications as we do, utilizing the same devices, systems, services, networks, operating systems, encryption standards, and so on, and then act surprised when elements of the US government actually dare develop ways to exploit those systems, just because Americans also happen to use them -- totally misunderstanding the landscape.
This is exactly what I am talking about when I say people need to gain some perspective on history, or reality. Either would do.
And two former DIRNSAs agree.
So does ADM Rogers -- except that every interpretation of various US officials' arguments on encryption wildly conflate multiple issues (such as domestic law enforcement, which can and does sometimes have a foreign intelligence connection, and foreign signals intelligence purposes), or utterly misunderstand the purpose, function, and targets of foreign intelligence.
Yes, I know you (not OP, the "royal you") think you know it all, because you have taken things you think of as "proof" utterly out-of-context with zero understanding about things like foreign SIGINT actually works, and have seen 3-4 unrelated pieces of a 1000 piece puzzle, with some of those pieces actually parts of different puzzles, and believe you have the full picture.
People continually and willfully seem to want to forget or ignore that actual, no-shit foreign intelligence targets also -- gasp! -- use things like iPhones, Gmail, Hotmail, WhatsApp, and so on. And, when foreign intelligence targets use these modes of communication, amazingly, we actually want to target them.
If you're an American (or frankly, any innocent person) anywhere in the world who isn't an active member of a foreign terrorist organization or an agent of a foreign power, the Intelligence Community DOES NOT CARE ABOUT and actually DOES NOT WANT your data. Sounds crazy and bizarre for foreign intelligence agencies to care about things like foreign intelligence, I know, but it's true. Weird!
I guess it's easier to believe that functioning democracies* all are constantly looking for ways to illegally spy on their own citizens who have done nothing wrong, rather than to believe that intelligence work in the digital age where the only distinction is no longer the physical location or even the technology used, but simply the target -- the person at the other end, is actually extremely complicated, and not fun.
* If you don't think the Western liberal democracies of the world are worth a shit, or laugh at the term "functioning democracies" when used in reference to the US, warts and all, that simply means you have lost all perspective of reality, and are part of the problem. And it will be to our peril, because there actually are governments in the world who do spy on their own citizens, and wherein the people don't have anywhere NEAR the level of freedoms we have, no matter how terrible you think we are. And guess what? It's our national security and intelligence apparatus that we use to defend ourselves. If you're now so jaded that you don't actually believe the US and its allies, and their principles, are something worth defending and fighting for, then everything I have said here means nothing to you anyway. Just be advised that your perception of history and reality is fatally skewed.
Isn't every single possible state of affairs currently in existence, by definition, "for now"?
Why the unnecessary qualifier?
None of which required that he be handcuffed, fingerprinted, suspended... etc... etc...
The police were called, and they are compelled and required to investigate once called. They don't just show up and say, "Eh, whatever," and leave. I don't think they police should have been called at all, but they were. And during the course of their investigation, they choose to transport him for questioning, and handcuffs are, rightly or wrongly, standard procedure nearly any time anyone is detained or transported for any reason, even if they didn't do anything wrong.
The issue isn't whether they thought it was a bomb or not - the issue is their overreaction and it's racist overtones.
The issue is exactly that. Even if race or religion was on the mind of one or more of the people involved, you can't know that. People are using the fact this happened to him and "wouldn't happen if he was white" as proof that it has to be racism. But white kids are arrested and suspended for similarly innocent, or even more innocent, things all the time. That fact alone dismantles the position that "because this happened, it must have had a racial element." It MAY indeed have had a racial element, but the facts of the situation aren't what demonstrates that. That would be only in peoples' minds.
(As for one of the cops ALLEGEDLY saying "it's who I thought it would be", we have no way of knowing 1. whether that was even actually said, or 2. IF it was said, whether it referred to Ahmed personally (i.e., did he have any brushes before because of his interests), or because he was "brown" and Muslim -- the conclusion that everyone who desperately wants to attribute this to racism wants to rush to. And, on that point, if that was the motivation, wouldn't that cop have already felt that upon seeing his name was "Ahmed Mohamed", instead of making an allegedly racist remark right to his face, and only upon seeing him? In short, that allegation doesn't stand up to scrutiny as definitive proof that there was anything racial involved on the part of police in this case, either.)
I am ignoring the rest of your fallacious attacks that don't speak to the facts of the situation, which I have shown that you have ignored. You're the corrosive one, here, because you have already decided that this simply must be racism when the facts and evidence don't support that conclusion, and ignore all other considerations.
TL;DR: No one ever thought it was an actual bomb.
Long version:
Since no one ever actually thought it was a bomb, the fact that the school and police took no action as if it were a bomb does not somehow "prove" it's racism and/or Islamophobia. That isn't to say one or more of the people involved had something in that vein in their minds, but their lack of treating it as a bomb doesn't demonstrate it, since numerous accounts of this story indicate the school and police never thought it was an actual bomb.
Some people thought it "looked like" a bomb, and wondered why he would bring it to school, because they don't understand why kids who like things like science and electronics do what they do.
And there are laws dealing with what are called "hoax devices". Many people have gotten into trouble for such things before. Hoax device statutes have been around for many, many years, long before 9/11.
Here is the Texas statute:
http://www.statutes.legis.stat...
The only thing that matters in the hoax device statute is intent â" a feature that is not unique. For example, intent matters when someone is killed. Was it an accident? Was it negligence? Was it premeditated? That is the difference between someone having done nothing wrong, and murder. And it is interviews and investigations and evidence that determine intent.
Even in the original Dallas Morning News article that broke this story â" before it went viral and Ahmed got invited to the White House, JPL, MIT, got scholarships, and become the hero of Silicon Valley â" the only thing the police officials said was that they knew it wasn't a bomb, that Ahmed never claimed it was anything but a clock, and that they were trying to determine WHY he built and AND brought it to school. Once it was determined there was no intent to alarm, scare, or deceive, it was further determined there was no wrongdoing.
Steve Wozniak got in trouble for using a hoax device (with intent to scare), and was arrested and spent a night in jail. I got in trouble with authority figures â" school, police â" for things similar to what Ahmed did several times, when doing nothing wrong. Maybe a little borderline, maybe a little, "What on earth are you doing?" but not illegal. And frankly, some of those came down only to intent as well.
So this little trope misunderstands what happened. Could racism or Islamophobia been an element in anyone's mind? There is no way to know, as much as people desperately want to come to that conclusion. When people say, "What white kid would have gotten in trouble for doing nothing wrong?"
Plenty. Ignore the title, read the article (for those who haven't already):
https://reason.com/blog/2015/0...
His English teacher overreacted by getting the principal's office involved. The school overreacted by calling the police. The school bears almost all of the responsibility here â" not "post-9/11 America", racism, or police. If the police had not been called, none of this would ever have happened â" and Ahmed wouldn't be a celebrity, either.
When police are called for a situation where any of the parties involved are not in perfect agreement, and there is no controversy, even if nothing illegal occurred, I would submit that there are not many times that results in a more positive outcome. The police are there, in part, to investigate and to determine if there was any wrongdoing, which they did. I wish they would have simply handled it at the school, but what I really wish is that the school would not have called the police in the first place.
Nope, wrote it myself, asshole. But thanks!
...and your comment represents the absolutely fundamental misunderstanding that pervades this discussion.
The truth no one wants to hear:
The distinction is no longer the technology or the place, but the person(s) using a capability: the target. In a free society based on the rule of law, it is not the technological capability to do a thing, but the law, that is paramount.
Gone are the days where the US targeted foreign communications on distant shores, or cracked codes used only by our enemies. No one would have questioned the legitimacy of the US and its allies breaking the German or Japanese codes or exploiting enemy communications equipment during WWII. The difference today is that US adversaries -- from terrorists to nation-states -- use many of the same systems, services, networks, operating systems, devices, software, hardware, cloud services, encryption standards, and so on, as Americans and much of the rest of the world. They use iPhones, Windows, Dell servers, Android tablets, Cisco routers, Netgear wireless access points, Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Gmail, and so on.
US adversaries now often use the very same technologies we use. The fact that Americans or others also use them does not suddenly or magically mean that no element of the US Intelligence Community should ever target them. When a terrorist in Somalia is using Hotmail or an iPhone instead of a walkie-talkie, that cannot mean we pack our bags and go home. That means that, within clear and specific legal authorities and duly authorized statutory missions of the Intelligence Community, we aggressively pursue any and all possible avenues, within the law, that allow us to intercept and exploit the communications of foreign intelligence targets.
If they are using hand couriers, we target them. If they are using walkie-talkies, we target them. If they are using their own custom methods for protecting their communications, we target them. If they are using HF radios, VSATs, satellite phones, or smoke signals, we target them. If they are using Gmail, Windows, OS X, Facebook, iPhone, Android, SSL, web forums running on Amazon Web Services, etc., we target them -- within clear and specific legal frameworks that govern the way our intelligence agencies operate, including with regard to US Persons.
That doesn't mean it's always perfect; that doesn't mean things are not up for debate; that doesn't mean everyone will agree with every possible legal interpretation; that doesn't mean that some may not fundamentally disagree with the US approach to, e.g., counterterrorism. But the intelligence agencies do not make the rules, and while they may inform issues, they do not define national policy or priorities.
Without the authorities granted by the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (FAA), the United States cannot target non-US Persons who are foreign intelligence targets if their communications enters, traverses, or otherwise touches the United States, a system within the United States, or, arguably, a system or network operated by a US corporation (i.e., a US Person) anywhere in the world. FAA in particular is almost exclusively focused on non-US Persons outside the US, who now exist in the same global web of digital communications as innocent Americans.
Without FAA, the very same Constitutional protections and warrant requirements reserved for US Persons would extend to foreign nations and foreign terrorists simply by using US networks and services â" whether intentionally or not. Without FAA, an individualized warrant would be required to collect on a foreign intelligence target using, say, Facebook, Gmail, or Yahoo!, or even exclusively foreign providers if their communications happens to enter the United States, as 70% of international internet traffic does. If you do not think there is a problem with this, there might be an even greater and more basic misunderstanding about how foreign SIGINT and cyber activities fundamentally must work.
If you believe NSA should not have these capabi
Russian analyst urges nuclear attack on Yellowstone National Park and San Andreas fault line
A Russian geopolitical analyst says the best way to attack the United States is to detonate nuclear weapons to trigger a supervolcano at Yellowstone National Park or along the San Andreas fault line on California's coast.
The president of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems based in Moscow, Konstantin Sivkov said in an article for a Russian trade newspaper on Wednesday, VPK News, that Russia needed to increase its military weapons and strategies against the "West" which was "moving to the borders or Russia".
He has a conspiracy theory that NATO - a political and military alliance which counts the US, UK, Canada and many countries in western Europe as members - was amassing strength against Russia and the only way to combat that problem was to attack America's vulnerabilities to ensure a "complete destruction of the enemy".
"Geologists believe that the Yellowstone supervolcano could explode at any moment. There are signs of growing activity there. Therefore it suffices to push the relatively small, for example the impact of the munition megaton class to initiate an eruption. The consequences will be catastrophic for the United States - a country just disappears," he said.
"Another vulnerable area of the United States from the geophysical point of view, is the San Andreas fault - 1300 kilometers between the Pacific and North American plates ... a detonation of a nuclear weapon there can trigger catastrophic events like a coast-scale tsunami which can completely destroy the infrastructure of the United States."
Full story
Considering that nuclear power is the safest form of power the world has ever known, I'd say it's worthy of recognition for offsetting carbon more than anything else. To borrow a phrase, "It's the energy density, stupid."
There's a reason why China has 30 nuclear plants under construction, while the US just approved its first new plant in 30 years.
...but they get our shit to space.
Your (and my, and any individual citizen's) personal interpretation of the Constitution is not the measure. It is the interpretation and implementation by our three branches of government. I realize that some reading this believe they have all been compromised, or that they think some particular thing is "obviously unconstitutional" (even though the judicial, legislative, and executive branches say otherwise), but the fact is we have the system of government we have. So how about you consider the alternative: one where you don't assume that everyone working at every/any level of government, e.g., NSA, doesn't have the worst motivations and is actually trying to do their best to honorably, legally, and Constitutionally, protect our nation and its people instead of the opposite. How about that?
If you would actually like to have a discussion, I am more than happy to engage. I have articulated these views (not on this specific topic, of course) long before I ever served in uniform, and they have nothing to do with a "paycheck" -- in fact, it's the inverse: the reason I chose to serve is because of my personal desire to do what I can to support things I believe in, and believe are important for our nation and my family and fellow citizens, not the other way around. Yes, our system of government is imperfect...grossly so -- but I choose to support it over any and all alternatives, warts and all. (And that is not to say that there are not things that cannot be improved.)
And again -- and I sincerely mean this -- if you are actually serious about engaging in a dialogue, I am happy to.
Yes, where to even begin...
Do you realize that over 70% of FOREIGN internet traffic enters, traverses, or otherwise touches the US?
Do you understand that an individualized warrant is required to target, collect, store, analyze, or disseminate the communications content of a US Person anywhere on the globe, and that the current law on the issue is stronger and more restrictive with regard to US Persons than it has ever been?
Do you understand that the FOREIGN communications we are going after are now intermixed with the communications of the rest of the world, including that of Americans?
Do you understand that when terrorists use Gmail, Facebook, Yahoo, WhatsApp, Hotmail, Twitter, Skype, etc. etc. etc., or Windows, or Dell computers, or Android phones, or Cisco routers, and so on, that there is no technical distinction between your communications and theirs, yet -- surprise -- we still would like to access those communications, and have legal, policy, and technical frameworks to do so, even if you have not personally inspected them yourself?
If you are a US citizen, and not covered by any warrant, no one cares about your communications. And almost by definition, no foreign intelligence agency (NSA, CIA, DIA) remotely gives a shit about your communications, and would greatly prefer to avoid it altogether, unless you have some kind of connection with foreign intelligence targets -- in which case any collection or monitoring of your communications would require an individualized warrant from FISC or another court of competent jurisdiction. I realize you think this isn't the case, and that all of your communications are being mined and monitored (illegally, no less), and since proving a negative is impossible, I won't be able to help in that regard.
My motivation for commenting on these topics on slashdot may be informed by my position, but has nothing to do with it beyond that.
And? NSA may "want" a lot of things. That doesn't mean they are going to get it. But if a US-based company is holding encrypted data to which they also have access, you had damned well better believe the government is going to seek access to that data if it is supported by law. If companies want to take the direction of removing themselves from the encryption picture altogether, that is their prerogative. And guess what? There are other technical ways to get that data, such as before it's encrypted in the first place.
No, there isn't. And I didn't say there is. I was stating a set of facts, as are you. See? We can talk like adults.
No...you are completely misunderstanding my point. If you reread what I said, you will note that nowhere did I argue that anyone should build a backdoor for anything...but the fact is that some US-based companies DO have the ability to decrypt stored encrypted data, which they sometimes do for any variety of reasons, and, if when those services are storing the foreign communications of adversaries of the United States, which they are, then we should have a legal framework that allows access to said data. That is all.
Arguing for a master key -- which is what you THINK ADM Rogers is arguing for, but actually isn't -- is antithetical to the security interests of the United States, our people, our military, our intelligence community, and anyone else who requires secure communications in any form. But if you have already formed your conclusions, that is fine. What ADM Rogers is arguing for is a legal framework for data access of entities that operate within and under a US legal construct...and if there is encrypted data present that the data holder cannot access, that is just the way it goes. But as you know, there a number of ways to access the contents of what is ultimately encrypted data without breaking the encryption...ways that are as old as this decades-old discussion.
And we are going to seek those ways, and I will say something that is offensive to many slashdotters' sensibilities: if you support the principles that you claim to -- things like freedom, of speech, of choice, of anything else -- then you should support the abilities of one of the strongest powers in the world at actually, materially, and in reality (not in your little internet fantasy) of actually protecting and projecting those ideals. Actually judging the actions of the US Intelligence Community based on facts, to say nothing of having some perspective on history and reality beyond what self-styled internet tech-libertarians tell you, would be helpful also.
OMG, that must invalidate everything I have to say!
Sorry, been there, done that, been through all the logical fallacies you can lob my way.
The point is the exact reverse of what you are saying.
This is not about whether the Germans or Japanese should have incorporated "backdoors" that any external entity would have required.
This is about the fact that US adversaries, today, as you and I speak, are using the EXACT SAME systems, networks, devices, services, OSes, and encryption standards and protocols, as you and I and innocent Americans and many others in the world. THAT is the issue...does this fact put those communications off limits?
Please. Your comment proves just how deep the misunderstanding of this situation actually is.
Good for you. And if you are a non-US person outside the US (which covers about 99.9% of the communications that foreign intelligence agencies -- key word being foreign -- actually care about) engaged in activity that is a national security threat to the US, as defined by the valid mechanisms (even if you personally disagree with those mechanisms) that democratic nations such as the US develop, then we will try to access your communications. I don't see how this is possibly shocking. Shocking, perhaps, if you are a US adversary, or someone who believes that it's all an overarching plot by the US and other free Western nations to illegally access everyone's communications, especially that of their own citizens to solidify power, or serve corporate/elite/shadowy overlords, but otherwise...yeah, no.
1. "Secret courts". The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is the very court whose sole purpose is protecting the rights of Americans under the law and the Constitution in the context of foreign intelligence collection. Secrecy is required for the conduct of foreign intelligence, even in free societies. That you may disagree with this does not invalidate this fact. That you may see 3-4 pieces of a 1000 piece puzzle and believe you have the full picture does not invalidate this fact.
2. "Spying on everyone". Not sure what you mean, but if you could possibly be referring to metadata collection, that has been affirmed by a Supreme Court ruling that is 35 years old.
And if even the US Supreme Court ultimately renders the phone metadata collection "unconstitutional", it won't mean that it was unconstitutional, or even is unconstitutional at this very moment. The program, to date, is factually lawful and constitutional as the law and existing case law stand -- even including Judge Leon's ruling, which he himself immediately stayed, and was countered by another federal ruling of the same standing.
What an unconstitutional finding would mean is that things aren't the same as they were in 1979: that, with the rise of digital communications and the ability to track not one, or dozens, but hundreds of millions of call records easily, and because large amounts of metadata can often reveal as much private information about a person as communications content, the balance now runs afoul of the reasonableness doctrine of the Fourth Amendment.
And that would be a perfectly valid finding...which does not in the least impugn NSA's purpose or motives. It is not NSA's job to second-guess the law, case law, both houses of Congress, two Presidents from opposite parties, the Attorneys General of said two Presidents, the courts, and the very court established explicitly to protect the rights of Americans under the law and the Constitution in the context of foreign intelligence collection.
It is NSA's job to conduct its missions as aggressively as possible within the law and its resource limitations. My personal prediction is that, because of the nature of modern digital communications, this kind of mass collection of metadata will be found to be unconstitutional. The interesting thing is that people who think it is "clearly" unconstitutional seem to think things are innately or inherently constitutional or unconstitutional, ignoring incredible and fantastic complexities that already exist in interpretations of the Fourth Amendment, to say nothing of the rest of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Things aren't magically constitutional or unconstitutional. They are so based on the application and interpretation of the law and the Constitution by the courts, even in the simplest of circumstances. Certainly basic rules applying to things like, say, vehicle or home searches are well-tested and the officials who implement them (e.g., local LEOs) are well-versed in these topics. But when there is a question, it is the courts that decide -- NOT individual peoples' whims, feelings, or opinions.
The current, indisputable fact is that phone call metadata, as a "business record" provided to a third party, does NOT have an expectation of privacy and is NOT covered by the Fourth Amendment. There is no gray area, and that case law, as embodied by Smith v. Maryland, applies just as easily to one phone call, as to 10, as to millions. Certainly in 1979 SCOTUS never imagined that this principle could be applied in a blanket fashion touching any American with a telephone; conversely, SCOTUS probably also never imagined that terrorists would plot devastating domestic attacks using our own communications systems within our own country.
In any event, it seems likely that bulk metadata collection will no longer be allowed, and NSA and the IC will simply figure out ways to do their jobs within the confines that our system of government prescribes. That's fine, and that is the way our system works. B