PRISM
In case you haven't heard...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story_1.html
... the US government is (allegedly) doing massive (allegedly) illegal data mining through some of the biggest internet companies (allegedly) including google, facebook and apple.
Well, when I signed up for Gmail, I just assumed that Uncle Sam would be snooping through the data one way or another, and always treated it accordingly.
It's one of those things I always assumed they were doing, but to see it confirmed is pretty shocking.
Always plan your terror excursions using Cellar private messaging. They haven't asked me for access yet.
I can't say whether the government is doing all that .... but if it is, PRISM has saved all our lives from multiple terrorist attacks. It's the most important anti-terror tool we have, I mean if it exists, it would be the
most important anti-terror tool we have.
And how could something initiated by the Bush administration be bad?
Always plan your terror excursions using Cellar private messaging. They haven't asked me for access yet.
Unless they have another secret program that does.
I plan all my terror activities by snail mail and in person.
They couldn't read the Cellar PMs without me knowing. That's why they should just intercept data at key exchange points. I don't know why they would even have to talk to Yahoo to get information on their servers, when they could just read your Yahoo Mail at the router.
The Washington Post had an exclusive article yesterday (6/6/13)
of a PowerPoint presentation of theNSA's PRISM program...
here
There is a related Post article
hereIn case you haven't heard...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story_1.html
... the US government is (allegedly) doing massive (allegedly) illegal data mining through some of the biggest internet companies (allegedly) including google, facebook and apple.
Well, when I signed up for Gmail, I just assumed that Uncle Sam would be snooping through the data one way or another, and always treated it accordingly.
I think you can drop the (allegedly).
"Horror at Their Capabilities" Drove Leak of NSA Spying Program
He's going to get the Bradley Manning treatment.
What do Google and Allied Waste have in common ?
We give them our raw materials for free, they claim absolute ownership, sort it, and sell it for profit.
Bloomberg
Christopher Flavelle
Jun 8, 2013
Does Google Have an Ethical Obligation Not to Spy?
Many Americans are outraged at the government for mining
user data from Apple, Google, Facebook and other Silicon Valley giants.
What about the actions of the companies themselves
-- have they met their ethical obligations to their customers and society as a whole?
Do they even have any?
The Washington Post reported that the National Security Agency collects data
"directly from the servers" of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple.
While some companies issued carefully worded denials of involvement,
it's hard to imagine they were unaware of the arrangement, however they choose to describe it.<snip>
The surveillance debate raises the question of whether our expectations
of these companies and their leaders should also extend to the defense of our civil rights.
Imagine, for an instant, that Steve Jobs, Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg had
held a press conference in 2007, when the government first
began seeking this access, and said to the public,
"The government has asked for your information,
and we don't think that's right." <snip>
[COLOR="DarkRed"]This week's revelations demonstrate the centrality of
Silicon Valley to American life, in ways we never imagined.
In the face of that expanded role, maybe it's time to revisit what it means
for a company to be a good corporate citizen, and whether that includes
acting as a check on the government when no one else can.[/COLOR]
Now that national elections are meaningless maybe the right approach is stockholder pressure. At least its a front that can be fought.
I think you can drop the (allegedly).
It actually seems that PRISM is not illegal and has been approved by pretty much all three branches of government. This data mining is a definitely a true slippery slope and it can be strongly argued to violate the 4th amendment, but this seems to be a bi-partisan move that is well known among all elected officials.
In fact, it's a near certainty that the legal theory behind orders of this sort has been carefully examined by all three branches of the government and by both political parties. As the Guardian story makes clear, Sen. Ron Wyden has been agitating for years about what he calls an interpretation of national security law that seems to go beyond anything the American people understand or would support. He could easily have been talking about orders like this. So it's highly likely that the law behind this order was carefully vetted by both intelligence committees, Democrat-led in the Senate and Republican-led in the House. (Indeed, today the leaders of both committees gave interviews defending the order.) And in the executive branch, any legal interpretations adopted by George W. Bush's administration would have been carefully scrubbed by President Barack Obama's Justice Department.
Ah, you say, but the scandal here isn't what has been done illegally -- it's what has been done legally. Even if it's lawful, how can the government justify spying on every American's phone calls?
It can't. No one has repealed the laws that prohibit the National Security Agency (NSA) from targeting Americans unless it has probable cause to believe that they are spies or terrorists. So under the law, the NSA remains prohibited from collecting information on Americans.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/06/why_the_nsa_needs_your_phone_calls?page=0,0
Note: That article is an obvious defense of PRISM and there will likely be a lot of political spin on this in the next few weeks but I think it is important to try to look at PRISM for what it really is (in a factual sense).
You put your whole fucking life online and are worried about someone finding out what you've been up to? :confused::confused:
The hypothetical example in PH45's link is far too tenuous to carry much weight at all.
It basically tries to argue that the phone companies can not manage the author's imaginary problem,
therefore only the government is capable, and therefore
must do it.
"must" ? Why "must" ?
Even the author's final paragraph pre-supposes the "must"
But for those who don't like the alternative model, the real question is "compared to what"?
Those who want to push the government back into the standard law enforcement approach
of identifying terrorists only by name and not by conduct will have to explain
how it will allow us to catch terrorists who use halfway decent tradecraft
-- or why sticking with that model is so fundamentally important that
we should do so even if it means more acts of terrorism at home.
My hypothetical would be to change only the timing in his example.
Instead of urgency, the terrorists use the postal services of each country.
So now, would that justify a government database of the addresses
and return addresses on every piece of mail handled by the post office ?
Who knows, maybe such already exists. :eek:
Although some aspects of physics posits an infinite number of parallel universes,
we don't build our lives around that possibility.
The Boston Marathon bombing shows that a program that has been
in operation for at least 7 years failed to do what it is supposed to do.
Sometimes, absolute safety is not possible for all the possible hypothetical or imaginary situations.
The hypothetical example in PH45's link is far too tenuous to carry much weight at all.
Regarding PRISM's legality, there are many other sources that suggest the same thing. Whether someone agrees or disagrees with it, it does seem to be legal.
Regarding the argument, it hold just as much weight as your argument as well.
The Boston Marathon bombing shows that a program that has been in operation for at least 7 years failed to do what it is supposed to do.
This has no perspective because it doesn't state how many attacks have been prevented because of PRISM. If PRISM has only stopped a single, small attack while not preventing the Boston Marathon bombing then I would agree with you. IF PRISM has stopped 1,000 attacks and the Boston Marathon bombing was someone who slipped through the cracks (this will always occur), then I would disagree with you. Reality is likely going to be somewhere in-between.
I can't tell you what privacy means in the electronic age. I do know that I choose to share on the cellar but I don't name a lot of names and am vague when I feel its warranted. My company forces me to use gmail so I keep that account pretty sterile. I don't fazebook but I have an unused lunkedin account with minimal info and few connections... The English version of privacy has government cameras rolling the Merican has private cameras rolling... Corporations spend a lot on collecting data to sell or to sell us stuff. The same data that sells me a subscription to Mother Earth News could put me on a nutter survivalist watch list. If we look at the drug war folks are killed by their government by accident all the time so what would make the WOT any different? I ask because I don't know. The fascination with secrecy displayed by our government is interesting, individuals have no expectation of privacy but the government that serves us has become extremely opaque.
@PH45: Yes, we are in agreement
... my example was intended to be trivial and carries no weight.
The problems are that with secrecy and "not on my watch",
we (the public) will only know what we are told and/or what
is leaked by insiders-with-their-own-motives and whistle blowers.
The problems are that with secrecy and "not on my watch", we (the public) will only know what we are told and/or what is leaked by insiders-with-their-own-motives and whistle blowers.
Yup. In an ideal sense, the issue with security versus privacy is sort of like quantum physics. The public cannot know of the security practices without compromising those security practices. On the other hand, if the public does not know of the security practices, there is no accountability and much risk of these security practices being misused. In my opinion, there is no is no perfect way of dealing with the security versus privacy problem but informed representatives (congress) and occasional whistleblowers may be a decent equilibrium…
I am pretty agnostic on the current practices but I do think this is a true slippery slope. Here is a good perspective on this slippery slope (I’m emphasizing certain parts):
And yet, Jenkins thinks that the U.S. government’s counterterrorism policies—which he’s helped influence over the decades—have gone too far. “What we have put in place,” he said, “is the foundation of a very oppressive state.”
The oppressive state doesn’t yet exist, he said, but if a president wanted to move in that direction, “the tools are in place now.” The choice to do so “could be made under circumstances that appear perfectly reasonable,” he went on, noting, “Democracy does not preclude voluntary submission to despotism. Given a frightened population, Congress can legislate away liberties just as easily as tyrants can seize power. That seems to be what has started to happen.”
…
“We are driven,” he continued, “by fears of what might happen, not by things that havehappened.” He noted that since Sept. 11, 2001, there have been 42 terrorist plots in the United States. All but four of them were halted. Three of those succeeded and killed a total of 17 people. “Not that this isn’t a tragedy,” he said, “but, really, in a society that has 15–16,000 homicides every year, it isn’t a lot.
…
Jenkins thinks the occasions should be mandated. It appears that these programs are renewed periodically. After the Guardian reprinted a court document allowing the NSA to mine data from Verizon, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, revealed that this was a routine renewal of a long-standing program. But Jenkins is bothered that the renewal is so routine. “I don’t know if it’s every year or five years or seven years,” he said, “but somebody should have to come back and say, ‘These are the measures in place, they were useful in the following circumstances.’ Then a choice should be made on whether to keep them in place. The government will always argue that they should be, but at least they should have to make the argument, again and again.”
This means Congress should take its oversight responsibilities more seriously—and the debate should be conducted more broadly, as much of it as possible in public.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2013/06/brian_jenkins_fears_nsa_overreach_a_top_terrorism_expert_thinks_government.2.htmlTell users about government data requests. To earn a star in this category, Internet companies must [size=5]promise[/size] to tell users when the government seeks their data unless prohibited by law. This gives users a chance to defend themselves against overreaching government demands for their data.
It's a cool report, but I have to admit I'm not impressed with the stringency of this particular criteria. It's the only one that doesn't actually require the company to do anything, and gives them a built-in excuse if they do break it--how many places/situations is this sort of thing prohibited by law? Who knows? It's like, I promise I will totally murder that guy for you, except where prohibited by law.
Americans typically think that of part of their right to privacy is the government not being able to obtain their private communications without justification. That's not the way the government has seen it at least since I qualified as a bona fide US intelligence operative* in military service a quarter century ago. The government makes a distinction between information (raw data) and intelligence (data processed into a useful form). Government does not consider the gathering and accumulation of information to be a violation of the right to privacy because the data accumulation is not yet in the useful form of an intelligence collection that can be used to the detriment of citizens. An intelligence collection without proper authorization has been what constituted violation of privacy rights.
It's the citizens' responsibility to either exchange their private information in a way that can't be accessed by the government; or, via a third party willing render it unsalvageable. It is the government's responsibility to secure its caches of information from misuse. The first level of protection was classifying the information. That way most people wouldn't even know there's something to look for let alone try to exploit. That first level of security is gone.
I don't object to the premise of caching bulk information that can be sifted through later, under a well defined warrant, and processed into intelligence in the pursuit of national security. I don't object to continuing the practice since I know there are remaining levels of security progressively more difficult to breach. I do object to any unauthorized individual deciding for everyone else that subverting a security measure implemented to protect them is what's best for them. The Bradley Manning treatment would be appropriate.
*[COLOR="SlateGray"]A condition of which is that federal law restricts my information gathering activities on US citizens for the rest of my life, not just for while I was in federal service.[/COLOR]
<snip>I do object to any unauthorized individual deciding
for everyone else that subverting a security measure implemented
to protect them is what's best for them....
Being an informed adult a quarter-century ago means that the
"Pentagon Papers" would be well known to you, and since then
you would have recognized the impact the events had on governmental policy.
In my opinion, the publication brought about the end of the war in Viet Nam,
demonstrating that an altruistic insider, such as Daniel Ellesberg,
can make better decisions than those technically assigned to
carry out governmental intentions.
Ellsberg was wrong legally, but it made little difference,
and that's the problem with trying to distinguish differences
between "data gathering" and "intelligence accumulation".
I not sure about you Lamp. You put "data gathering" and "intelligence accumulation" in quotes. I talked about information (raw data) gathering and accumulation, the processing of information into an intelligence collection, and how government views the relation of information gathering to privacy differently from the relation of an intelligence collection to privacy. Where you got "intelligence accumulation" from I don't know.
Think of it this way: A guy regularly "gathers" loose "change" from his pockets and puts it in a jar where it becomes an "accumulation." He does this in anticipation of someday starting a "coin" "collection." Right now, he doesn't know if the "change" will be useful or not. When the time comes, he decides to collect just quarters. He takes only the quarters from the jar and organizes them by date and mintmark into a "coin collection". So far this scenario has been analogous to the difference between an information accumulation and an intelligence collection. The term you put in quotes, "intelligence accumulation", would in this analogy equate to something like an accumulation of coin collections! That's something a coin dealer might have; but, nobody would refer to it as that. They'd just call it inventory and it wouldn't really be a part of the story. I hope this helped.
The contention that "an altruistic insider, such as Daniel Ell[e]sberg, can make better decisions than those technically assigned to carry out governmental intentions" is widely seen as bass ackwards. The career government workers in that field, the ones who stay regardless of which politicians are in power, are generally the good stewards of government. They know that for every altruistic Daniel Ellsberg, there are a thousand subversives, mercenaries, and attention whores who will give up classified information while claiming to be altruistic and collectively do more harm than all the genuine Ellsbergs can ever offset. They don't do what he did because they don't want to be part of making it more acceptable. There are better ways to deal with situations than betraying a trust.
If you had said that an altruistic insider, such as Daniel Ellsberg, can make better decisions than those elected to form governmental intentions ... I would have agreed with you; but, still not with his methods.
In any case, you seem to have created a fusion of two different topics when you said: "Ellsberg was wrong legally, but it made little difference, and that's the problem with trying to distinguish differences between "data gathering" and "intelligence accumulation"." The Ellsberg controversy was over his divulgence of government classified information and the government's classifying of information, not about the government gathering information, processing it into intelligence; or, the relation of these activities to privacy rights.
But how nice you're of the opinion the Pentagon Papers brought about the end of the war in Viet Nam. If we had won the war, that opinion might have been worth something.
@Sexabon: Such an attempt distinguish between "gathering" and "accumulation"
is akin to something Humpty Dumpty might have said to Alice.
Your lead paragraph essentially uses the words interchangeably
The government makes a distinction between information
(raw data) and intelligence (data processed into a useful form).
Government does not consider the gathering and accumulation of information
to be a violation of the right to privacy because the data accumulation
is not yet in the useful form of an intelligence collection
that can be used to the detriment of citizens.<snip>
If you wish to duel about dictionary definitions, we can do that... I prefer not.
Your analogy of a "coin collection" is essentially misleading for PRISM,
because each individual coin is not "linked" to any other individual coin.
The properties of any one coin does not lead to the discovery of any other specific coin in the collection.
If we are to carry on a discussion of what we think we know of PRISM,
let us focus on "data" and "intelligence", because I think they come closer to your attempt
to distinguish between the constitutional and unconstitutional activity of our government.
But first my assumption: The government is obtaining raw data from
service providers and storing it in some logical format.
We (you and I) don't yet know if this format is file cabinets of paper,
databases of virtual data, or a Sheldon Cooper who simply remembers everything.
But I strongly doubt it is anything other than a database, and
I also doubt such database is just a non-sequential data dump
of phone numbers, dates and durations.
Instead, I suspect it is more likely to be a relational database,
organized by caller-ID, recipient-ID, which are in turn linked via date/time
with their durations and maybe even other kinds of data.
If my suspicions are correct, this meets your definition of "intelligence",
because it is the processing of raw data into a useful form.
The government makes a distinction between information
(raw data) and intelligence (data processed into a useful form)
Even if you are squeamish about this level of "processing",
just combining raw data from multiple providers across phone ID's
would constitute your definition of an unconstitutional collection.
And yes, this may be "legal" via the FISA court, but now we are back
to talking about altruistic leaks of classified information and whistle blowers.
TechCrunch: Tech Giants Built Segregated Systems For NSA Instead Of Firehoses To Protect Innocent Users From PRISM
Who's got your back? Google and Facebook
I suspect that this is exactly the kind of thing Sen Ron Wyden
was referring to in the YouTube video posted above.
.. not just PRISM, as we are hearing about it now,
but it's correlation with other virtual data of businesses, etc.
NY Times
Because of smartphones, tablets, social media sites,
e-mail and other forms of digital communications,
the world creates 2.5 quintillion bytes of new data daily,
according to I.B.M.
Ummmm.... lets see now.
That would be 2.5 x 10^21 bytes (letters or characters)
That would be 2,500,000,000,000,000,000,000
With little public debate, the N.S.A. has been undergoing rapid expansion
in order to exploit the mountains of new data being created each day.
The government has poured billions of dollars into the agency over the last decade,
building a one-million-square-foot fortress in the mountains of Utah,
apparently to store huge volumes of personal data indefinitely.
It created intercept stations across the country, according to former industry and intelligence officials,
and helped build one of the world’s fastest computers to crack the codes that protect information.
When separate streams of data are integrated into large databases
— matching, for example, time and location data from cellphones
with credit card purchases or E-ZPass use —
intelligence analysts are given a mosaic of a person’s life
that would never be available from simply listening to their conversations.
Just four data points about the location and time of a mobile phone call,
[COLOR="DarkRed"]a study published in Nature found, make it possible to identify the caller 95 percent of the time.[/COLOR]
Lamp, I can better see where your coming from; but, you still have some gross misconceptions. I never tried to distinguish between "gathering" and "accumulation." I used "gathering" as a verb and "accumulation" as a noun both in regard to information (raw data). The distinction I made, in both actual and analogous form, was between "accumulation" and "collection" as nouns in which accumulation applies to information [loose change] and collection applies to intelligence [coin collection]. I can't break in down much further that; but, I can notice the ease with which you've previously misquoted me and misrepresent what I've said. That's why I don't interact with you much.
Don't worry that "Your analogy of a "coin collection" is essentially misleading for PRISM,". It wasn't leading to PRISM, that's what the plain language was for. It was merely to help explain the relationship between the terms I was using. Not everyone can see that correlation; but, that doesn't mean they're bad people and I won't think any less of you.
Non sequitur here Lamp: "... because each individual coin is not "linked" to any other individual coin. The properties of any one coin does not lead to the discovery of any other specific coin in the collection." I already know what coins are in the "collection." What I don't know specifically is what other coins are among the "accumulation" in the change jar. If my "collection" is arranged in chronological order and I'm missing a date, I go to the "accumulation" in the change jar to look for that date (i.e. not to the other coins in the "collection"). If there's only one - BINGO. If there's more than one, then I have other discriminating criteria with which to choose the best one.
Ref: "let us focus on "data" and "intelligence", because I think they come closer to your attempt to distinguish between the constitutional and unconstitutional activity of our government." How nice of you to regurgitate what I've previously said and present it as your own idea. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. When I visit people in the old folks home they flatter me like that all the time.
"If my suspicions are correct, this meets your definition of "intelligence", because it is the processing of raw data into a useful form. ... Even if you are squeamish about this level of "processing", just combining raw data from multiple providers across phone ID's would constitute your definition of an unconstitutional collection." Nopes, processing for easier access and processing into a useful form for a particular application yield individual results which may converge, diverge, or make no difference. I can take all the change out of my change jar an divide it into multiple change jars separated by denomination; but, I still don't have a coin collection. Apples and oranges.
"And yes, this may be "legal" via the FISA court, but now we are back
to talking about altruistic leaks of classified information and whistle blowers."
But at least now you may have gleaned some insight into why it was deemed legal. Perhaps you could start another thread devoted to whistle blowers. I already know you to be a person for whom the end justifies the means from your positions on other topics right down to your methodology in debate; so, I wouldn't be inclined to join in. Good day.
Too many make conclusions before defining what is actually being collected. We have long known that metadata was being collected. After all, phone companies already have those records. The difference is that NSA can hold those same records BUT not view them without a 'secret' court order.
The problem is that NSA does not need those records. Phone companies have them. Violations of court orders can easily occur when those records are freely available without going to another party. Who is holding the data is the problem.
Meanwhile, we have long suspected that all conversations that go international are also stored. That is properly also legal. But again, the conversations cannot be 'listened to' without a court order.
That's why this has all changed. The laws never considered stored conversation. The public also does not understand the difference between actual data and metadata. Some local gossip reporters clearly have no grasp of that important concept. Creating fears that are unjustified. And lack of any serious call to actually define the problem
Just noticed, the chap who did the leak made sure he was in Hong Kong before decloaking.
Hmmm.
Watching that guy's interview made me cringe a little. And then I read this Slate article which kind of firmed up why:
If the NSA Trusted Edward Snowden With Our Data, Why Should We Trust the NSA?
Edward Snowden sounds like a thoughtful, patriotic young man, and I’m sure glad he blew the whistle on the NSA’s surveillance programs. But the more I learned about him this afternoon, the angrier I became. Wait, him? The NSA trusted its most sensitive documents to this guy? And now, after it has just proven itself so inept at handling its own information, the agency still wants us to believe that it can securely hold on to all of our data? Oy vey!
According to the Guardian, Snowden is a 29-year-old high-school dropout who trained for the Army Special Forces before an injury forced him to leave the military. His IT credentials are apparently limited to a few “computer” classes he took at a community college in order to get his high-school equivalency degree—courses that he did not complete. His first job at the NSA was as a security guard. Then, amazingly, he moved up the ranks of the United States’ national security infrastructure: The CIA gave him a job in IT security. He was given diplomatic cover in Geneva. He was hired by Booz Allen Hamilton, the government contractor, which paid him $200,000 a year to work on the NSA’s computer systems.
He believes this has so much seriousness that he is now an enemy of the state, on the lam, hiding out... and giving interviews to major media, where is announces where he is. He's in a country with rule of law and an extradition treaty with the US. Not too bright.
The other curious thing I noticed about PRISM is that it was funded for $20 Million. After a certain amount of zeroes, a number isn't fathomable, but
this isn't enough zeroes. The last Powerball winner got many times that in cash. $20M isn't enough to house half a floor in a minor building in DC, and when you overpay them ($200K!! That little fucker!) it doesn't even fill a room. That's six cents for every American, so what are we supposed to be royally freaking out about?
It appears that NSA is obtaining phone records from all ISP's,
but I have not seen anything that says they are also getting data
from the land-line companies, such as Century Link.
Obama says the data they are getting is only the same
information that is on your month billing statement.
I think I know why NSA is not getting data from Century Link...
it's because their monthly statements are completely indecipherable.
I think I know why NSA is not getting data from Century Link...it's because their monthly statements are completely indecipherable.
What are land-lines? :p:
Every few decades we go through this again. The Eagle and the Snowman. A real story that was even summarized in a movie. And how this nation's previous and most advanced spy hardware was compromised.
Apparently not many people are watching PBS Frontline every week (or was it CBS 60 Minutes?). NSA secret buildings are popping up all over the countryside. These revelations should not be shocking. They only confirm what previous reports have been noting.
Again, they even showed a picture of the building, with floors that the elevator does not stop at, in San Franciso. None of these recent revelations should be that shocking.
Metadata means they get data from circuit switched technology companies. And packet addresses from packet switched technology companies. Not the tones in that circuit switched connection. And not data in those packets.
What changed things? It is now possible to store, search, and retrieve those tones or data bits. The law is playing catchup.
Snowden provided information to the Washington Post and the Guardian, which also posted a video interview with him. In it, he describes himself as appalled by the government he served:
The N.S.A. has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your e-mails or your wife’s phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your e-mails, passwords, phone records, credit cards.
I don’t want to live in a society that does these sort of things… I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under.
What, one wonders, did Snowden think the N.S.A. did? Any marginally attentive citizen, much less N.S.A. employee or contractor, knows that the entire mission of the agency is to intercept electronic communications. Perhaps he thought that the N.S.A. operated only outside the United States; in that case, he hadn’t been paying very close attention. In any event, Snowden decided that he does not “want to live in a society” that intercepts private communications. His latter-day conversion is dubious.
MoreThere are questions now being asked over here about the way in which our security agencies have used information gained from America's PRISM programme. There are suggestions that we've been using information on UK nationals.
The government is denying any illegality but refusing to give any detail on the 197 requests for information made through the PRISM prgramme.
Awesome quote from Daily Show last night: 'I think you're misunderstanding the perceived problem here, Mr President. No one is saying that you broke any laws. We're just saying it's a little bit weird that you didn't have to'
Shades of Sexabon...
The Hill
Jonathan Easley
1/11/13
Sen. Wyden presses Clapper for ‘straight answers’ on NSA
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) on Tuesday called for public hearings to investigate
the scope of the National Security Agency’s electronic surveillance of Americans,
questioning if Director of National Intelligence James Clapper
had provided “straight answers” to lawmakers about the programs.
The Oregon senator pointed to Clapper’s testimony during a March 12 hearing,
where Wyden asked [COLOR="DarkRed"]if the NSA collects “any type of data at all on millions of Americans.”[/COLOR]
[QUOTE][COLOR="DarkRed"]“No, sir,” [/COLOR]Clapper had responded. [COLOR="DarkRed"]“There are cases where they could
inadvertently perhaps collect [intelligence on Americans], but not wittingly.”[/COLOR]
<snip>
“When NSA Director Alexander failed to clarify previous public statements about domestic surveillance,
it was necessary to put the question to the Director of National Intelligence,” he [Wyden] said.
“So that he would be prepared to answer,
I sent the question to Director Clapper’s office a day in advance.
After the hearing was over my staff and I gave his office
a chance to amend his answer,” he continued.
Clapper tried to clarify the remarks while speaking to MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Monday,
arguing that he meant to convey that the NSA doesn’t “voyeuristically pore through U.S. citizens' emails.”[/QUOTE]
Was that testimony given to a closed session of either the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) or the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI)? Or was it a public hearing?
I would hope that the NSA wouldn't give out top secret information during public hearings. That would be fairly stupid.
edit: I see that the article explains this. Wyden knew the answer already because he's on the Senate intelligence committee. He just wanted to put Clapper on the record disavowing a program they both knew existed.
The exchange put Clapper in a difficult position. Wyden, a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, had been briefed on the NSA program, but publicly led Clapper in a line of questioning that would either require him to disavow knowledge of the program, or to answer truthfully, breaking the law by revealing classified information.
I'm no fan of the NSA data collection, but that's a pretty slimy move.
Slimmy ? I don't think so.
This question was being asked publically for the first time
...atfter PRISM had become public knowledge.
Wyden had previously pursued this in closed sessions, (2012)
and was not being given a straight answer by Clapper.
That is one of the reasons Wyden voted against renewing the Patriot Act.
At least that's the way I've understood these events.
All these problems (fears) are directly traceable to what we discussed when the Patriot Act was being enacted and discussed here. Many problems are created by something (if I remember) called article 215. With all the big dic thinking being touted then, well, find the discussion. Honesty and perspective had gone out the door. Then we so gleefully massacred 5000 Americans for no useful purpose in Mission Accomplished.
Never forget the lessons of history. Our younger participant will see it again sometimes after 2040.
Shades of Sexabon...
And I make 'em look
GOOD. :cool:
I just subscribed to PRISM ONLINE for $49.95 and now have access to everyone's metadata for a year. I'm tickled pink 'cause I never metadata I didn't like.
Say again?
Where did you find this PRISM ONLINE for $49.95?
I found fascinating this article about the way Snowden leaked
the information about PRISM to the Guardian and Washington Post:
(I've deliberately left out some of the details in the article.)
NY Times
NOAM COHEN
June 14, 2013
Player in Leaks Case, Out From Behind Camera
<snip>
Last week, Ms. Poitras, 49, emerged as the pivotal connection between the former
government contractor Edward J. Snowden and writers for The Guardian and The Washington Post
who published his leaked documents about government surveillance.
She also got a byline on two of the papers’ resulting articles.
But she has a much longer history as a filmmaker trying to show on screen
how the world has changed since the Sept. 11 attacks.
<snip>
Mr. Snowden first contacted her in January, she said, telling her that he had read
about her regular border scrutiny and saw it as “an indicator that I was a person who was ‘selected,’*”
that is, someone who would be familiar with what it is to be watched by the government.
“He knew it was a subject that would resonate with me.”
(He had also seen a short film about domestic surveillance,
“The Program,” she made for The New York Times.)
Ms. Poitras, who won a MacArthur “genius” grant last year and
was nominated for an Oscar for “My Country,” was already
living and working outside the country.
After six years of being questioned at the border
— “upwards of 40 times, probably more, I lost count” —
and having her laptop seized, her notes copied, she relocated to Europe.
But in addition to her tense relations with her government, there was another,
more practical reason Mr. Snowden connected with her, she said.
Because of her experience reporting on national security matters, Ms. Poitras said,
she had the technical ability to hold an encrypted online conversation
with Mr. Snowden from the start, which he insisted on.
“The number of journalists who know how to use it is very small,” she said.
“You wouldn’t have been able to communicate with Snowden without encryption.”
<snip>
Turns out the British are doing the same metadata collection, on all internet traffic that passes through Britain.
The spy agency's programs, appropriately called Mastering the Internet and Global Telecoms Exploitation, tap transatlantic fiber-optic cables that "carry the world's phone calls and internet traffic" by attaching "intercept probes" where the cables meet British soil before "carrying data to western Europe from telephone exchanges and internet servers in North America."
The sheer scale of the program trumps any other that has yet to come to light. As the report notes, the GCHQ "produces larger amounts of metadata than NSA."
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/06/21-7Disclaimer: I haven't been following this scandal at all.
Can someone give me a quick breakdown on how what they're doing is different from, say, in a crime drama when they tell the suspect, "we checked your phone records, and you called the victim three times in the hour before they died." Is the only difference that they needed a warrant for that information in NYPD Blue, and now they don't?
That is the difference and it is kind of a big deal. The Constitution would never have been ratified without it. The seeds of unrestrained power are throughout the Constitution if we do away with the Bill of Rights the people have no protection from the government.
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
A people, entering into society, surrender such a part of their natural rights, as shall be necessary for the existence of that society. They are so precious in themselves, that they would never be parted with, did not the preservation of the remainder require it. They are entrusted in the hands of those, who are very willing to receive them, who are naturally fond of exercising of them, and whose passions are always striving to make a bad use of them.
They are conveyed by a written compact, expressing those which are given up, and the mode in which those reserved shall be secured. - John DeWitt (1787)
Is the only difference that they needed a warrant for that information in NYPD Blue, and now they don't?
Like many things in life, quick answers are simplistic and time-dependent.
1) In the aftermath of 9/11, the Congress passed the "Patri0t Act"
that stands for Uniting (and) Strengthening America (by)
Providing Appropriate Tools Required (to) Intercept
(and) Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001.[1]
This gave the government the
legal power to secretly screen communications
between people in other countries and people in the U.S.
2) The government used this power to gather information essentially
without getting a warrant (... as required in Griff's post above)
More recently, the National Security Act has been extended,
with some changes that requires warrants issued via the secret FISA Court.
3) The current PRISM issue has to do with collecting "non-indentified" data,
such as each phone call's caller-ID, recepient-ID, Date, etc.
It also exposes the fact that
every call is being collected indiscriminately,
not just those between U.S. and foreign callers.
4) In order to
actually use the PRISM data, the government (is supposed to)
gets the FISA Court to issue a secret warrant for the only the particular ID numbers,
which then allows them identify the people's names and to
chase down all sorts of other kinds of information.
--- I think most people (today) understand that the PRISM data is collected "legally".
But that doesn't mean that they think the government "should" be doing so.
.
But even if the warrant process is corrected, they do still have to collect the data on everyone all the time, right? I mean, it wouldn't do any good to say, "We're pretty sure the suspect called the murder victim just before he died, so let's start collecting data on his phone calls now..." They've always collected the same information (Caller ID, location of the phone call, etc.) on every call made from a landline, right?
It changed with digitalization (?) of communications. Old phone tapping required an agent on the line listening as they didn't have an efficient way to collect and store the analog information. Folks who support easy collection of data argue that it became much harder to follow the bad guys when mobile devices came on line. I'd argue just the opposite, they've gone from a small focused surveillance system to an enormous one with much more capacity using the excuse of difficulty to make their work much much easier than it was for the guy tapping in by hand.
Yes, I agree with Griff.
It is surprising to me that the news has not reported definitively
on whether the digital media (Comcast, etc.) and phone companies
(Century Link, ATT, etc.) are actually storing all the emails, text docs, pics, etc.
and how long it would be kept by such (private) companies.
Or, whether it's all being passed on to the feds daily,
and they are keeping it (forever) ... without reading or interpreting the content.
The daily content would be enormous !
I've read that voice and IM messaging are not kept, but emails might be.
Be that as it may, again I think the personal identification and content of emails, etc.
can be collected legally, but cannot be reviewed or interpreted until a FISA warrant has be issued.
I guess I've been assuming that all communications are passing to the Feds in real time. They claim they have the authority to store the data for 5 years.
It is surprising to me that the news has not reported definitively on whether the digital media (Comcast, etc.) and phone companies
(Century Link, ATT, etc.) are actually storing all the emails, text docs, pics, etc.
and how long it would be kept by such (private) companies.
Ah, this changes my understanding. I thought we were still only talking about phone data. Content of emails and attachments is a whole different ballgame.
I thought we were still only talking about phone data. Content of emails and attachments is a whole different ballgame.
Phone calls are digital just like emails. The concept is metadata verses an actual (data) content.
For example, when you file taxes, metadata says you filed forms. Numbers in each row of each form (that is owned by a company that submits your data to the IRS) are actual data.
Protection means Verizon, Qwest, etc cannot submit that data to PRISM without a court order. Currently, long distance transmission lines can be tapped and recorded at any time by PRISM. In theory, they cannot listen or read it without a court order. But nobody (Verizon, Qwest, the court) knows whether that data is being reviewed.
"Trust us" was a concept advocated by Cheney, John Yoo, et al. And remains a defacto standard.
This is the first time I've seen info about the FISA court in a public news source...
Washington Post
Peter Wallsten, Carol D. Leonnig and Alice Crites
6/23/13
For secretive surveillance court, rare scrutiny in wake of NSA leaks
Wedged into a secure, windowless basement room deep below the Capitol Visitors Center,
U.S. District Court Judge John Bates appeared before dozens of senators earlier this month
for a highly unusual, top-secret briefing.<snip>
The public is getting a peek into the little-known workings of
a powerful and mostly invisible government entity.
And it is seeing [COLOR="DarkRed"]a court whose secret rulings have in effect created
a body of law separate from the one on the books[/COLOR]
— one that gives U.S. spy agencies the authority to collect bulk information
about Americans’ medical care, firearms purchases, credit card usage and
other interactions with business and commerce, according to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).<snip>
Surveillance court judges are selected from the pool of sitting federal judges
by the chief justice of the United States, as is required by the law that established the panel.
[COLOR="DarkRed"]There is no additional confirmation process.[/COLOR]
Members serve staggered terms of up to seven years.
I now understand that I named this thread badly.
PRISM is a program to monitor suspects outside the US.
There is also the NSA's storing and collation of metadata on (presumably) all US citizens. I don't know if this has a catchy name, but it isn't PRISM.
And this Snowden fellow has been very strategic, first in decloaking in China, then flying to Russia (yet not, apparently, crossing the border, apparently in transit). So of two countries in the world that can (and like to) look the US in the eye and say no, Snowden has managed to entangle both - thereby both thwarting the US government's attempts to pursue him, and getting the story to the public attention in those countries. I'm sure the people of China and Russia have seen the story and most assumed their own governments were doing likewise.
Simon Tisdall has a piece on cnn.com that applies the brakes to the usual sycophant train from that organization. His take is that the world is tired of our shit. I'm tired of our shit so why wouldn't they be?
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/25/opinion/snowden-us-humilation/index.htmlTime has a poll out so I'll cherry pick one paragraph.
Fifty-four percent of respondents said the leaker, Edward Snowden, 29, did a “good thing” in releasing information about the government programs, which collect phone, email, and Internet search records in an effort, officials say, to prevent terrorist attacks. Just 30 percent disagreed.
Read more:
http://swampland.time.com/2013/06/13/new-time-poll-support-for-the-leaker-and-his-prosecution/#ixzz2XKO5iLnkThis is totally going to be a movie. The leak, the political fallout, the manhunt. The smart steps taken by Snowden, like the insurance policy of top secret data that he's left with friends to release if something happens to him. The sneaking around from country to country. Or maybe not. Putting journalist phones in the hotel fridge to stop NSA eavesdropping during the meeting.
Simon Tisdall has a piece on cnn.com that ...
That's a fun article to read... it get's the juices flowing.
If only Simon would tell us what he really thinks. :rolleyes:
<snip>L'affaire Snowden has provided a glorious field day for all those
"surrender monkey Commie pinko crypto-Marxist long-haired
G8-loathing eco-friendly global-warming anti-free market
anti-capitalist anti-McDonald's (anti-stereotype)"
anti-Americans who just love to hate the "Land of the Free."
It's surprising how many of them there are these days.
<snip>
We used to live in Buffalo, NY and listened to the CBC out of Toronto.
It was often eye-opening to hear what the non-US media were saying.
If you
anally* rape a 13-year-old, move to France and all will be forgiven because humiliating the US is game #1. And letting anal rapists hang out in your country is not at all humiliating.
*Wikipedia doesn't say so but yeah he got her in the butt. Everyone down with that?
ETA
Wikipedia says so elsewhere.
Not too long ago, a bunch of Hollywood folks were openly sympathetic about him, making him seem like a victim of an unjust US. I forget when I saw that. Some awards ceremony.
It was statutory rape, no doubt. But there are many who believed his side of the story, that it was consensual. The plea deal he agreed to involved no prison time, which was specifically approved and supported by the defense lawyers and the victim. Then the judge and the prosecutor attempted to give him jail time anyway after he'd already pleaded guilty, which is when he fled.
"Sulky Cultivator in the Woods" just saw that... :)
Yep. But fleeing is a crime itself. The guy needs to face the music or continue being a fugitive. It's unclear what would happen to him if he returned to the US. He might not even get jail time. Or they could throw the book at him.
It's game #1.
Like too many American politicians, Kerry seems to believe "the law" is what the White House counsel and U.S. Justice Department deem it to be on any given day, and that this made-in-America "law" applies inexorably to every country and every corner of the world.
See, Tisdale writes that as if he didn't know that the countries signed extradition treaties. Snowden may merely head for a country that doesn't have an extradition treaty with the US and be legally in the clear. Tisdale knows that but prefers to play game #1 with you, the reader. It's all in fun... unless you're the 13-year-old.
The White House is furious at the non-cooperation it has received. But has it occurred to them that maybe not just the Russians and the Chinese, but those soft, liberal Europeans and all the other neutrals also don't like the idea of being spied on by an out-of-control transnational agency beyond the reach of the law, any law, anywhere?
Physician, heal thyself: we are learning that the
British version of PRISM is bigger than PRISM. But exposing that doesn't play game #1.
Polanski was born in Paris, and so is/was a citizen of France.
The following is also in
Wikipedia about Polanski...
On 11 March 1977, Polanski, then 43 years old, was arrested in Los Angeles
for the sexual assault of 13-year-old Samantha Geimer during
a photo shoot for French Vogue magazine.
Polanski was indicted on six counts of criminal behavior, including rape
[COLOR="DarkRed"]Geimer's attorney next arranged a plea bargain in which five of the
six charges would be dismissed and Polanski accepted.[102][/COLOR]
Because Polanski fled the country before final sentencing,
the charges were not dismissed and still remain pending.
As a result of the plea bargain, Polanski pled guilty to the charge
of "Unlawful Sexual Intercourse with a minor,"[103][104]
and was ordered to undergo 90 days of psychiatric evaluation at Chino State Prison.[105]
On release from prison after 42 days, Polanski understood that
at the final sentencing he would be put on probation.
[COLOR="DarkRed"]However, he learned that the judge was planning to renege on his promise
of no further jail time,[106] and might even deport him.[104][107][/COLOR]
Polanski's attorney suggested that despite the fact that the prosecuting attorneys
recommended probation, "the judge could no longer be trusted . . ."
and the judge's representations were "worthless."[108][/COLOR]
Upon learning of the judge's plans, Polanski fled to France on
1 February 1978, just hours before sentencing.[109]
[COLOR="DarkRed"]As a French citizen, he has been protected from extradition.
and has lived mostly in France since then.[110][/COLOR]
This sounds to me a bit like "humiliating the US is game #1" is in the eye of the beholder.
But there are many who believed his side of the story, that it was consensual.
13-year-olds love Quaaludes and anal so I'm not surprised she was super into it. No actually 13-year-olds can't consent to anything, that's why the charge is statutory.
The plea deal he agreed to involved no prison time, which was specifically approved and supported by the defense lawyers and the victim. Then the judge and the prosecutor attempted to give him jail time anyway after he'd already pleaded guilty, which is when he fled.
If documented, that would be super easy to address on appeal.
Polanski was born in Paris, and so is/was a citizen of France.
"...and that's why it was perfectly OK for him to get away with the statutory anal rape of a 13-year-old."
However, he learned that the judge was planning to renege on his promise of no further jail time, and [COLOR="Red"]might even deport him[/COLOR].
"I'm leaving this country -- before it kicks me out!"
No UT, his attorneys were advising him that...
...the judge was planning to renege on his promise of no further jail time...
...at least according to this page in Wikipedia.
"...and might even deport him," says the page that you quoted. Regardless, that would be super easy to address on appeal, if documented.
13-year-olds love Quaaludes and anal so I'm not surprised she was super into it. No actually 13-year-olds can't consent to anything, that's why the charge is statutory.
As the stepmother of a 15-year-old girl, I completely agree with you. I was just expounding on why several prominent people in Hollywood still support him, as glatt noted. He's an asshole, no doubt, but not a serial violent rapist. His own victim didn't want him to go to prison.
I agree that harboring a political fugitive like Snowden is largely about thumbing their nose the US, and trying to pretend that their own problems aren't at least as big if not bigger. Just like if Ai Weiwei ever got on US soil, we would not be giving him back to China either.
Yes, I might add that it's completely unfair for me to bring Polanski into it; because all I have to say is he gave her ludes and hit her in the pail, and I stake some kind of weird moral high ground that I'm not exactly entitled to.
And the beat goes on...this time it's "DROPMIRE"
The Guardian
Ewen MacAskill
6/30/13
New NSA leaks show how US is bugging its European allies
Exclusive: Edward Snowden papers reveal 38 targets including EU, France and Italy
<snip>
One of the bugging methods mentioned is codenamed 'Dropmire',
which according to a 2007 document is "implanted on the Cryptofax at the EU embassy, DC"
– an apparent reference to a bug placed in a commercially
available encrypted fax machine used at the mission.
The NSA documents notes the machine is used to send cables back
to foreign affairs ministries in European capitals.<snip>
The German magazine Der Spiegel reported at the weekend that
some of the bugging operations in Brussels targeting the EU's Justus Lipsius building
– a venue for summit and ministerial meetings in the Belgian capital –
were directed from within Nato headquarters nearby.<snip>
The US intelligence service codename for the bugging operation
targeting the EU mission at the United Nations is 'Perdido'.
The operation against the French mission to the UN had the covername 'Blackfoot'
and the one against its embassy in Washington was 'Wabash'.
The Italian embassy in Washington was known to the NSA as both 'Bruneau' and 'Hemlock'.
The eavesdropping of the Greek UN mission was known as 'Powell"
and the operation against its embassy was referred to as 'Klondyke'.
Although the latest documents are part of an NSA haul leaked by Snowden,
it is not clear in each case whether the surveillance was being exclusively done by the NSA
[COLOR="DarkRed"] – which is most probable as the embassies and missions are technically overseas –[/COLOR]
or by the FBI or the CIA, or a combination of them.
The 2010 document describes the operation as "close access domestic collection".
As the stepmother of a 15-year-old girl, I completely agree with you.--snip
off topic
I had forgotten about this aspect of your life. Teenagers are a trial and an ordeal unmatched in parenting. Doing it as a stepparent doubles the degree of difficulty. From one veteran of the teen wars to another, stay strong sister, stay strong.
You have to be wary of Putin's intentions but this is interesting:
"Russia never hands over anybody anywhere and has no intention to do so," Mr Putin told a news conference in Moscow.
"If he (Snowden) wants to remain here there is one condition - he should stop his work aimed at inflicting damage on our American partners no matter how strange this may sound coming from me."
This is the clearest indication yet, says the BBC's Steve Rosenberg in Moscow, that Mr Putin is keen to avoid damaging relations with Washington over the Snowden case.
The Russian president also stressed Mr Snowden "is not our agent and does not co-operate with us", and Russian secret services "never worked with him and are not working with him now".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23135734And I should trust Putin's public remarks, take them at face value because....??? Please refresh my memory, because I can't recall any reason to do so.
politics aside, does anyone disagree that the security of our free nation depends upon certain things? Sometimes we have to collect information to determine if people in and outside of the US would be our enemies and attempt to do something like..say...bomb a federal building, or fly a plane into a New York sky scraper. These folks exist, and are planning daily to do harm to the United States. If we stick our collective heads in the sand then we will end up asking questions like...HOW COULD WE NOT HAVE KNOWN?!?!?!? Seriously? Foreign nations who collect on us, and whom we collect on will take the public stance of how wrong this is are just trying to get one up on the good ole US. We all know what we do. We try not to poke each other in the eye in public. These guys who disclose secret information to the general public through leaks are traitors to their nation and harm us in many, many ways. They also signed non-disclosure statements to qualify for access to the information they have leaked, and for that reason alone they should be jailed.
And I should trust Putin's public remarks, take them at face value because....??? Please refresh my memory, because I can't recall any reason to do so.
You should also not trust him with
any of your jewelry.
Joe the disagreement lies with the determination of when the security state becomes counter-productive to its own claimed goals. The leakers are traitors to the state but they are not traitors to the people.
<snip>These guys who disclose secret information to the general public
through leaks are traitors to their nation and harm us in many, many ways.
They also signed non-disclosure statements to qualify for access to the information they have leaked,
and for that reason alone they should be jailed.
I have trouble with each of these statements,
primarily because I don't think there is a bright red line
between being " a traitor " a " whistleblower " and " civil disobediance "
When leaks occur about government activities, the first reaction
of the government is to
publicly label the person a "spy" or "traitor"
and the government usually seeks some kind of criminal charge(s).
This is what is happening with Snowden now.
Only time will tell if harm was done, and if the government charges are valid.
....
Then with respect to signing non-disclosure charges, again I don't think there's a bright red line.
The
case of Thomas Drake, starting in the 2002, is a prime example
of someone signing all sorts of non-disclosure documents
and advancing through promotions up through the CIA and NSA.
He followed all the proscribed legal procedures to correct issues.
He then publicly disclosed problems he had identified as "illegal",
and was then indicted by the government, as I described above.
Basically, the conflict in non-disclosure agreements is "informed consent"
A person cannot consent to something (secrets) they do not yet know
If consent is a pre-condition and only after consenting they can learn the secret,
their non-disclosure agreement may well become the lesser issue.
similar to prefacing a conversation with:
"I'll tell you, but you have to promise not to get mad."
Really. Regardless of the answer to that question, it can't be an example of informed consent. Setting aside the whole difference between a conscious action like repeating information and experiencing a feeling, such an agreement is like
prior restraint.
Prior restraint (also referred to as prior censorship or pre-publication censorship) is censorship imposed, usually by a government, on expression before the expression actually takes place. An alternative to prior restraint is to allow the expression to take place and to take appropriate action afterward, if the expression is found to violate the law, regulations, or other rules.
Prior restraint prevents the censored material from being heard or distributed at all; other measures provide sanctions only after the offending material has been communicated, such as suits for slander or libel. In some countries (e.g., United States, Argentina) prior restraint by the government is forbidden, subject to certain exceptions, by a constitution.
Prior restraint can be effected in a number of ways. For example, the exhibition of works of art or a movie may require a license from a government authority (sometimes referred to a classification board or censorship board) before it can be published, and the failure or refusal to grant a license is a form of censorship as is the revoking of a license. It can also take the form of a legal injunction or government order prohibiting the publication of a specific document or subject. Sometimes, a government or other party becomes aware of a forthcoming publication on a particular subject and seeks to prevent it: to halt ongoing publication and prevent its resumption. These injunctions are considered prior restraint because potential future publications are stopped in advance.
...
Exceptions to restrictions on prior restraint
Not all restrictions on free speech are a breach of the prior restraint doctrine. It is widely accepted that publication of information affecting national security, particularly in wartime, may be restricted, even when there are laws that protect freedom of expression. In many cases invocation of national security is controversial, with opponents of suppression arguing that government errors and embarrassment are being covered up;
Certainly there's a question as to whether or not the material that has been revealed constitutes a harm to our national security or an embarrassment to our government, or both and to what degree. That's a conversation worth having. Our whole system of government has as one of its cornerstones openness in contrast to secrecy.
V, we are probably using different terms to speak of different ideas.
"Prior restraint", as you say, is what the authority/owner is attempting to impose
by having the power to impose a non-disclosure clause or agreement.
"Informed consent" is what the person needs for a good-faith and
continued binding to any contract or (non-disclosure) agreement.
When a person discovers or encounters something they were not informed about,
their "informed consent" may be tainted, and thereby also is their continued obligation to a signed document.
Analogies are not good arguments, but having said that I still
think about something like this: Imagine military personnel are required
to sign non-disclosure agreements regarding all battlefield activities,
and then something like the My Lai Massacre in Viet Nam occurs.
Can the government impose prior restraint on everything, anything,
if the continuity of a person's conscience is (or knowledge) is broken ?
Sure, force/punishment can be used to make the person weigh the alternatives.
But in the long run we see thru civil disobedience that it often backfires.
People give UNinformed consent all the time.
eta: We all give incompletely informed consent, all the time. There are vanishingly few circumstances where our consent is required and where we know all the information. But often, we can know enough.
I think in a case like what we're seeing and hearing about Snowden, I don't know what agreement he'd signed, I imagine he probably violated the letter of such an agreement. I don't have the actual evidence, so I don't know, just speculating here. I also don't know what he's revealed, but what I've read indicates that he's revealed the existence of programs and behavior, but none of the content. Perhaps he's gone as far as confirming what some parties suspected. I don't know if that's a crime, and I'm not even sure what he's done is wrong or important. If it is as serious as some folks are saying, then I would seriously question the organizations and policies that led to such a "damaging" act. How rigorously are these people who have access to such sensitive material vetted? I know we're in a time where more and more and more and more information is redacted or withdrawn or on a need to know basis--this movement troubles me.
I do agree with regular.joe that there *IS* a legitimate need for state secrets. But it is not a need without limits or oversight. All things done in secret I believe inevitably leads to corruption and failure. I'd like to reach other limits before my state faces corruption or failure.
I do agree with regular.joe that there *IS* a legitimate need for state secrets.
Me too. And I agree there are limits, both in the direction of secrecy and in transparency.
FWIW, Thomas Drake made an hour-long public presentation
to the Press Club which is available on YouTube (3Wp2BGLMqDM).
There's a lot fluff in the first 25 min, but then he gets to the meat
of his own case and what he was observing in/after 2002
- illegal "warrant-less wire taps" on large numbers of people.
- "legal - but secret" collection of data on large numbers of people
- unnecessary "over-classification" and secrecy "at the highest level"
- wasteful expenditures of huge sums of $, for little or no gain
I think that his presentation and the Q&A following raised exactly
the issues we are seeing, now in detail, with Snowden.
Drake's case put an end to the illegal warrant-less wire taps,
and he was exonerated on the "legal- but secret" programs
that wasted billions of $.
Eventually, the government case against him was dropped.
My point is/has been, that a good-faith, informed, Agreement is necessary in on the part of both parties.
... They also signed non-disclosure statements to qualify for access to the information they have leaked, and for that reason alone they should be jailed.
Basically, the conflict in non-disclosure agreements is "informed consent" A person cannot consent to something (secrets) they do not yet know If consent is a pre-condition and only after consenting they can learn the secret, their non-disclosure agreement may well become the lesser issue.
Divulging classified information has always been illegal; but, the government has always had difficulty in successfully prosecuting such cases. That's because the standard in criminal cases is "beyond a reasonable doubt" which can be created if a violator uncovered illegal activity, official misconduct, wasn't clear on what was classified and what wasn't, feared reprisal as an internal whistleblower; or, had a crystalizing moment in which the violator became a conscientious objector to something subsequently learned.
So the government went the corporate route back around '86-'87 and started having everyone with a security clearance sign nondisclosure agreements; otherwise, lose their security clearances and most likely their jobs ... including military personnel who would be immediately processed for separation. I signed mine.
The nondisclosure agreements in themselves did not make divulging classified information illegal, there were already laws on the books for that. The agreements reminded people that it was illegal and more importantly provided for forfeiture to the government of any tangible gains a violator may realize from the breach of security. The government can sue violators just as corporations can sue individuals who violate nondisclosure agreements protecting proprietary information. These are civil cases in which the burden of proof is simply "a preponderance of the evidence" that they broke the law.
Shades of O.J.
Snowden could have stayed for trial in the court of public opinion and sought a Presidential pardon; but no, he ran like a traitor. Even if he never sees a day in jail here, the government can try to seize his assets anywhere they may be and every chance it gets for the rest of his life.
We know Snowden has forced a discussion of a part of the US government that even Congressman cannot audit. We spend more on these 'secret' budget items than other countries spend on their entire military. And we know this 'secret' government is taking liberties that threatens foundations of a democracy.
Whether Snowden is a scoundrel or a hero has yet to be determined. Because we still do not know how 'out of control' this part of our government is. And because we have not yet defined what is legal and illegal. Years from now, when that decision is made, only then can we define Snowden's actions.
Calling him a rat because he ran is a cheapshot that ignores what is more important.
We know George Jr had a memo on his desk warning of bin Laden's actions involving planes or buildings. We had sufficient intelligence. "All lights were flashing red." Instead of blaming the problem, we gave the 'secret' government unrestricted access. We are now living with that legacy based in the Cheney's paranoia.
We must decide how excessive this 'secret' government has become. Limits currently are not defined. Boundary lines only exist on paper. We are discussing this only because of Snowden's actions. Snowden really is not the story. The story is about excessive government actions and the legacies of Mission Accomplished.
Pentagon papers were not about Ellsberg. They were also about a government that had become wacko extremist so as to not think or act rationally. In that case, we massacred 50,000 Americans to no useful purpose. Snowden is about a spy system without limits that has not yet caused wars and unnecessary deaths. WikiLeaks were saying same.
We spend more on these 'secret' budget items than other countries spend on their entire military.
On the other hand, this is the type of war we wage where we don't kill [a lot of] people.
We know George Jr had a memo on his desk warning of bin Laden's actions involving planes or buildings.
Planes or buildings. Well there are a shit ton of planes and a shit ton of buildings, so that sounds like something we should DEFINITELY get more specific information on, otherwise there's nothing that can really be done! Amiright? So how do you get more specific information without spying?
I'm not saying there isn't excessive spying going on, just asking a few difficult questions.
Whether Snowden is a scoundrel or a hero has yet to be determined. Because we still do not know how 'out of control' this part of our government is. And because we have not yet defined what is legal and illegal. Years from now, when that decision is made, only then can we define Snowden's actions.
Snowden says he will release more information in the future so that will give better insight about his intentions.
I can understand how Snowden believes that PRISM is wrong and unconstitutional, however, I am confused why he is releasing evidence that the US spies on its European allies. This is not illegal or unconstitutional and won't do much besides deteriorate our relationship with them. Also, countries spying on each other is pretty common practice (not that this necessarily justifies it). We have had a lot of issues with the French and Israelis.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html
Mr. Pickering was targeted by a longtime surveillance system called mail covers, a forerunner of a vastly more expansive effort, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States — about 160 billion pieces last year. It is not known how long the government saves the images.
It's not just your email and phone meta data. The old system of "mail covers" (where the USPS would record the metadata for snail mail of specific addresses upon the individual request of law agencies) has been expanded to automatic collection of
all snail mail metadata.
Happy 4th of July, guys. Enjoy your independence and freedom. :right:
My question was supposed to be rhetorical.
<snip>
My hypothetical would be to change only the timing in his example.
Instead of urgency, the terrorists use the postal services of each country.
So now, would that justify a government database of the addresses
and return addresses on every piece of mail handled by the post office ?
Who knows, maybe such already exists. :eek:
<snip>
So how do you get more specific information without spying?
We know that terrorist attacks were routinely averted without spying; that may 'violate civil rights' and other nation's integrity and interests. An LAX bomber was caught by an alert Border Agent while to cross from British Columbia to Washington. Because the leader in Washington was told lights were flashing red. And therefore ordered all government agencies to be vigilant. The resulting capture then may averted a potential Time Square bombing, a bombing in Canada was averted, an attack on the Raddison in Aman Jordan was averted, and an attack on tourists in Egypt was averted.
Not averted was the bombing of the USS The Sullivans. But those terrorists overloaded their boat with explosives causing that boat to sink.
Because they completely ignored warnings - the same flashing red lights - then George Jr's administration did nothing to avert 11 September. Then used it as an excuse for unlimited spying, extraordinary rendition, secret prisons, holding over 600 innocent people in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Mission Accomplished, and even performing torture (as if acting like a Nazi Gestapo agent was acceptable).
We have numerous despicable and illegal actions to undo or discover. Many were ongoing because they were kept secret (as WikiLeaks demonstrated) or because their actions involve new technologies not yet defined by laws (in a Congress with many who say they want America to fail).
The Eagle and the Snowman was because the US government intentionally tried to subvert presidential elections in Australia. Because the powers that be knew a socialist must be a communist. Many leaks occurred because government actions were contemptuous. Ie Viet Nam resulted in the Pentagon Papers. Watergate and all other Nixon activities were finally exposed by people doing what would otherwise be called illegal.
Nobody can yet honestly say whether Snowden is a traitor or a hero. Too many facts are unknown; and maybe for years.
But we do know that major attacks are easily averted with less intelligence gathering and more intelligence in the leadership. Most failures to avert such attacks are found in leadership; not in insufficient spying.
We have examples of attacks averted because the leadership was intelligent. And other attacks permitted because the leadership was inspired by rhetoric rather than their job.
We must still publicly decide the limits of electronic spying. That (and not Snowden) should be an entire discussion that so many are still trying to avoid.
We know that terrorist attacks were routinely averted without spying; that may 'violate civil rights' and other nation's [nations'] integrity and interests. ...
We also know that terrorists are adaptive and smart enough to exploit any limitations we impose upon ourselves. So are drug cartels, human trafficking organizations, global MBAs ... etc. [I threw MBAs in there just for you.]
... Nobody can yet honestly say whether Snowden is a traitor or a hero. Too many facts are unknown; and maybe for years. ...
Maybe not for years. Maybe we could find out in months by putting him on trial and letting the discovery process work. Heroes welcome that process, traitors shun it. If he's found to be a hero, he'll be exonerated. If he's found to be a traitor; but, later proved to be a hero, he can be pardoned. If we had to wait until all of the possibilities played out before even beginning the process, every petty thief claiming to be a Robin Hood would be walking free.
... But we do know that major attacks are easily averted with less intelligence gathering and more intelligence in the leadership. Most failures to avert such attacks are found in leadership; not in insufficient spying. ...
We know that our top general leadership, which also appoints subordinate specializing leaders, is derived from a popularity contest, not an intelligence contest. Increased spying is a compensating mechanism used by people capable of adjusting to this fact as oppose to people who can't and just complain about it. The cognoscenti know the mechanism works, just not as well as having more intelligent leaders. Adults can accept not being privy to how and when it has worked in the interest of continued success, others just poo poo the whole idea because they're not privy.
... We must still publicly decide the limits of electronic spying. That (and not Snowden) should be an entire discussion that so many are still trying to avoid. ...
They should both be an entire discussion. The limits of electronic spying needs to be discussed for all the reasons given in this thread. Snowden et al. needs to be discussed to protect altruistic citizens from their own government. Adults can handle both conversations:
On the issue of leaking classified information - We have specialized courts for everything from contesting traffic violations to immigrant sanctuary status. Even the hard-nosed US military can take someone who has refused to fight, find them to be a conscientious objector and simply separate them from service. Perhaps we need specialized courts for those claiming whistleblower status. Courts that can not only adjudicate; but, recommend directly to the President whether or not a pardon is warranted even if the law was broken. This would help maintain confidence in the integrity of our security methods for those whose lives depend directly upon them (e.g. military personnel) and the population at large which can pressure the President to act on the court's recommendations.
The alternative would be going back to compartmentalized information if the government decides the compromise of shared information is potentially more dangerous to national security than the limitations of compartmentalization in preventing terrorist attacks. This would also make it once again more difficult for those with altruistic motives to uncover government abuse of power.
On the issue of government monitoring - After a reasonable time period following recent events, the government should poll the American people via the US Census taking apparatus using a questionnaire covering "hypothetical" monitoring methods. The questions would cover monitoring methods previously used, currently used, others currently available, and viable
wish list methods for which the technology may not yet even exist without disclosing which category each falls into. Next to each method would be three pair of Yes/No check boxes. One each for: 1) Do you object to the government using this method on you? 2) Do you object to the government using this method on people in other countries? 3) Would you want our enemies to know if we did this (public disclosure)? The results of the poll could be made public since it contains hypothetical capabilities and the world already knows the US government doesn't always fall in line with the majority of Americans. People can vote for elected officials who endorse it.
Less criticism and I told you so(s) and more constructive criticism with proposed solutions is what we need. A) A Whistleblower Court that can take defendants into protective custody least intrusive on their civil liberties until final disposition of their cases. B) Three criteria polling on government's potential monitoring methods administered via the US Census taking apparatus. That's my :2cents:. What's yours?
Unfortunately WE don't have sufficient facts to even guess where the boundaries should be. But we do know the boundaries do not exist when intelligence services take all information. And then say, we will not look at it unless the super secret court says we can.
The telco companies and others, including Google and Microsoft, want to tell a US public what they have been forced to surrender. We cannot even know that. Without even that information, then we have few if any facts to define the boundaries. The 'secret' government is hiding behind its skirts to even keep such facts from most Senators and Congressmen. And was even denying the Supreme Court access to such information - on a theory that it is National Security.
Even the President does not know unless he asks the right questions. This is, in part, a legacy of Cheney who subverted intelligence so egregiously that the intelligence community became even more secretive and less forecoming. Even a cover up of torture and extraordinary rendition became normal operations.
BTW, a November voting booth (not the Census) is where public plebiscites are best enacted. Unfortunately, some (ie California's Propositions) get subverted by a legacy of their original purpose. But we have a bigger problem. Insufficient information. And a system that will make excuses to keep us ill informed. Because even secret prisons and torture made that secrecy necessary and routine.
But we have a bigger problem. Insufficient information
:D Now TW, you're just trying to be ironic again.
Because the leader in Washington was told lights were flashing red.
How was this determined?
:lol: at lamplighter
The 'secret' government is hiding behind its skirts to even keep such facts from most Senators and Congressmen.
I can't find the link, but there were stories about a few days back, that there had been a special briefing for congress on the NSA matters. However, it was just at the end of a congressional sitting session, and
more than half of your duly elected representatives
chose to skip the presentation rather than miss their scheduled flights back home.
I mean, not like it was important or anything.
Okay, I'll admit that when I started this thread, I was not clear about what was going on and what was properly controversial and what was not.
This article from the New York Times captures what I think is most worrying. It is the failure of the oversight mechanisms (esp FISA) that are supposed to keep bodies like the NSA in check.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/us/in-secret-court-vastly-broadens-powers-of-nsa.html
The 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, was once mostly focused on approving case-by-case wiretapping orders. But since major changes in legislation and greater judicial oversight of intelligence operations were instituted six years ago, it has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court, serving as the ultimate arbiter on surveillance issues and delivering opinions that will most likely shape intelligence practices for years to come, the officials said.
SNIP
Unlike the Supreme Court, the FISA court hears from only one side in the case — the government — and its findings are almost never made public. A Court of Review is empaneled to hear appeals, but that is known to have happened only a handful of times in the court’s history, and no case has ever been taken to the Supreme Court. In fact, it is not clear in all circumstances whether Internet and phone companies that are turning over the reams of data even have the right to appear before the FISA court.
Just whistle while you work (whistling)
[COLOR="White"]Just whistleblow while you work (downloading)[/COLOR]
And cheerfully together we can tidy up the place
[COLOR="white"]And covertly together we can empty out the place[/COLOR]
So hum a merry tune (humming)
[COLOR="white"]So tell a secret or two (uploading)[/COLOR]
It won't take long when there's a song to help you set the pace
[COLOR="white"]It won't take long to right their wrong and help you save the day[/COLOR]
And as you sweep the room
[COLOR="white"]And as you leave the room[/COLOR]
Imagine that the broom is someone that you love
[COLOR="white"]Imagine that the gloom is someone else's doom[/COLOR]
And soon you'll find you're dancing to the tune
[COLOR="white"]But soon you'll find you're singing another tune[/COLOR]
When hearts are high the time will fly so whistle while you work...
[COLOR="white"]When treason is high the reasons won't fly so whistleblow while you work...[/COLOR]
Because the leader in Washington was told lights were flashing red.
How was this determined?
Stop asking rational questions. :p:
HIGH TREASON
by José Emilio Pacheco
translation of “Alta traición” and comments by Dave Bonta
I don’t love my country. Her abstract glory eludes me.

But (this may sound bad) I would give my life

for ten of her places, for certain people,

ports, pine forests, fortresses,
for a ruined city, gray and monstrous,

for several of her historical figures,

for mountains — and three or four rivers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html<snip>
It's not just your email and phone meta data.
<snip>:right:
I continue to be astounded by the vast array of resources being used in NSA surveillance programs.
It's as if someone said, Let's tap
every possible way that people can communicate with one another.
To wit:
[ATTACH]44667[/ATTACH]
Washington Post
7/10/13
The NSA slide you haven’t seen
A classified NSA slide obtained by The Washington Post and
published here for the first time lists “Two Types of Collection.”
One is PRISM, the NSA program that collects information from technology companies,
which was first revealed in reports by the Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper last month.
The slide also shows a separate category labeled “Upstream,” described as
accessing “communications on fiber cables and infrastructure as data flows past.”
The interaction between Upstream and PRISM
— which could be considered “downstream” collection because the data is already processed by tech companies —
is not entirely clear from the slide.
In addition, its description of PRISM as “collection directly from the servers”
of technology giants such as Google, Microsoft and Facebook has been disputed
by many of the companies involved. (They say access to user data is legal and limited).
<snip>
The slide also shows a crude map of the undersea cable network that
carries data from either side of North America and onto the rest of the world.
As a story in Sunday’s Post made clear, these undersea cables are essential
to worldwide data flows – and to the surveillance capabilities of the U.S. government and its allies.
The Post version lists Fairview, Stormbrew, Blarney and Oakstar but does not describe any of them.
The Guardian slide lists Fairview and Blarney but has two others blacked out.
The Post has previously reported that [COLOR="DarkRed"]Blarney gathers up metadata –
describing who is speaking to whom and through what networks and devices
– as data flows through the Internet’s backbone.[[/COLOR]
/
[COLOR="DarkRed"]Has anyone seen Madam Defarge's knitting lately ?[/COLOR]
.
Snowdon's a fool, otherwise he'd have headed straight for where the US government can't touch him...
Wall Street.
Snowden made an appearance today and his remarks are below:
Hello. My name is Ed Snowden. A little over one month ago, I had family, a home in paradise, and I lived in great comfort. I also had the capability without any warrant to search for, seize, and read your communications. Anyone’s communications at any time. That is the power to change people’s fates.
It is also a serious violation of the law. The 4th and 5th Amendments to the Constitution of my country, Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and numerous statutes and treaties forbid such systems of massive, pervasive surveillance. While the US Constitution marks these programs as illegal, my government argues that secret court rulings, which the world is not permitted to see, somehow legitimize an illegal affair. These rulings simply corrupt the most basic notion of justice – that it must be seen to be done. The immoral cannot be made moral through the use of secret law.
I believe in the principle declared at Nuremberg in 1945: "Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."
Accordingly, I did what I believed right and began a campaign to correct this wrongdoing. I did not seek to enrich myself. I did not seek to sell US secrets. I did not partner with any foreign government to guarantee my safety. Instead, I took what I knew to the public, so what affects all of us can be discussed by all of us in the light of day, and I asked the world for justice.
That moral decision to tell the public about spying that affects all of us has been costly, but it was the right thing to do and I have no regrets.
Since that time, the government and intelligence services of the United States of America have attempted to make an example of me, a warning to all others who might speak out as I have. I have been made stateless and hounded for my act of political expression. The United States Government has placed me on no-fly lists. It demanded Hong Kong return me outside of the framework of its laws, in direct violation of the principle of non-refoulement – the Law of Nations. It has threatened with sanctions countries who would stand up for my human rights and the UN asylum system. It has even taken the unprecedented step of ordering military allies to ground a Latin American president’s plane in search for a political refugee. These dangerous escalations represent a threat not just to the dignity of Latin America, but to the basic rights shared by every person, every nation, to live free from persecution, and to seek and enjoy asylum.
Yet even in the face of this historically disproportionate aggression, countries around the world have offered support and asylum. These nations, including Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador have my gratitude and respect for being the first to stand against human rights violations carried out by the powerful rather than the powerless. By refusing to compromise their principles in the face of intimidation, they have earned the respect of the world. It is my intention to travel to each of these countries to extend my personal thanks to their people and leaders.
I announce today my formal acceptance of all offers of support or asylum I have been extended and all others that may be offered in the future. With, for example, the grant of asylum provided by Venezuela’s President Maduro, my asylee status is now formal, and no state has a basis by which to limit or interfere with my right to enjoy that asylum. As we have seen, however, some governments in Western European and North American states have demonstrated a willingness to act outside the law, and this behavior persists today. This unlawful threat makes it impossible for me to travel to Latin America and enjoy the asylum granted there in accordance with our shared rights.
This willingness by powerful states to act extra-legally represents a threat to all of us, and must not be allowed to succeed. Accordingly, I ask for your assistance in requesting guarantees of safe passage from the relevant nations in securing my travel to Latin America, as well as requesting asylum in Russia until such time as these states accede to law and my legal travel is permitted. I will be submitting my request to Russia today, and hope it will be accepted favorably.
If you have any questions, I will answer what I can.
Thank you.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/07/12/snowden_s_moscow_presser_edward_snowden_says_he_ll_apply_for_asylum_in_russia.htmlSnowden made an appearance today and his remarks are below:
... If you have any questions, I will answer what I can.
Thank you.
Hanging, firing squad; or, drone?
Now, now, don't you know Berrigan... uh, I mean Snowdon is a hero? He should be rewarded for telling us what anyone who was paying attention knew in 2007. :rolleyes:
Hanging, firing squad; or, drone?
Venezuela may be punishment enough...
or Russia. As long as the rest of the planet is populated with these petty dictatorships it doesn't put much pressure on our homegrown fascism to ease up. I liked it better when Snowden was hanging with free folks in Hong Kong, but we're determined to drag the free world down.
Petty dictatorships? Aint nuttin petty about Putin's dictation!
FTR, I disagree with the recent posts disapproving of Snowden, but that's becoming a matter of opinion, not information, and I'm not in the mood for that kind of argument. But I think it's time to stop claiming to be the "Free world".
Mind you, US hegemony is still less fucked up than that of China or Russia.
I'm tired of every cocksucker that betrays this country automatically being made a folk hero.
Hegemony? We're just carrying on the family tradition.
Why not let bygones be bygones so Snowden can come back. He can settle down in a nice protected neighborhood somewhere in Florida. To show there's no hard feelings, we'll even buy him a brand new hoodie and have George Zimmerman keep an eye on him.
Not a holiday camp in Cuba?
This article in Der Spiegel
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/nsa-affaere-jimmy-carter-kritisiert-usa-a-911589.html quotes Jimmy Carter as supporting Snowden and even saying "Amerika hat derzeit keine funktionierende Demokratie", i.e. America does not have a functioning democracy.
Has this made it to the US media yet?
Oh no, that would be an inconvenient narrative.
It's showing up on a few second rate "news" sites, but no major news source besides Der Spiegel is reporting it.
The cost of digital data storage has gone down so much, nothing is not feasible !
ACLU
Catherine Crump,
July 17, 2013
You Are Being Tracked: How License Plate Readers Are Being Used to Record Americans' Movements
Automatic license plate readers are the most widespread
location tracking technology you’ve probably never heard of.
Mounted on patrol cars or stationary objects like bridges,
they snap photos of every passing car, recording their plate numbers, times, and locations.
At first the captured plate data was used just to check against lists of cars
law enforcement hoped to locate for various reasons (to act on arrest warrants, find stolen cars, etc.).
But increasingly, all of this data is being fed into massive databases that
contain the location information of many millions of innocent
Americans stretching back for months or even years.
<snip>
Because of the way the technology works – these devices snap photos
of every passing car, not just those registered to people suspected of crimes
– virtually all of the data license plate readers gather is about people who are completely innocent.
Data that we obtained through our records requests illustrates this point vividly:
[ATTACH]44809[/ATTACH]
Law enforcement data-retention policies today are all over the map.
While some police departments store data briefly, others keep it for a long time, or indefinitely.
[ATTACH]44810[/ATTACH]
The entire report is down-loadable as a PDF file.
(See, everyone can store data cheaply, even you :cool:)
I bitched about the plate readers monitoring Interstate 80, years ago, but I was called paranoid, and told not to worry.
Everything you need to know about PRISM.I bitched about the plate readers monitoring Interstate 80, years ago, but I was called paranoid, and told not to worry.
Because the plate readers were not the problem. And must be everywhere in our future. The problem is who controls the data. A major difference. Plate readers will be ubiquitous. Welcome to innovation. We never solve a problem by stifling innovation. First define the resulting problems. Then address them. Who controls the data?
Otherwise the problem is cars that have license plates.
<snip>Otherwise the problem is cars that have license plates
... and bicyclists don't :eyebrow:
[YOUTUBE]n4u_PbToSHU[/YOUTUBE]
You Are Being Tracked: How License Plate Readers Are Being Used to Record Americans' Movements
The headline here is pretty misleading.
There's a real issue about "You" when the data is being stored for years.
At least the "red-light cameras" that give you a $300 "ticket-by-mail" have a photo of the offending driver.
How many car owners can say who was driving their car on a particular highway
on any particular date at any particular time...4 or 14 or 44 years ago.
This amassing of enormous amounts of "data" is a waste of resources,
because the digital age has created one truism: garbage in - garbage out.
First define the resulting problems. Then address them. Who controls the data?
That should be done
before the readers are installed, not after the horse has left the barn.
That should be done before the readers are installed, not after the horse has left the barn.
You are asking for our Congress to advance America. When so many preach the gospel according to Limbaugh. "We want America to fail".
Good luck solving a problem that Cheney and other 'we fear them' wackos wanted. After all, extremist see evil hiding in every phone booth. (Does Superman know how much they hate illegal immigrants?)
The NSA is apparently absolutely enormous.
Big article in the Washington post today goes into some detail on how it has grown since 9/11. But the interesting thing is the
slideshow.
Did you know that the NSA building in Ft. Meade Maryland is larger than the Pentagon? I thought the Pentagon was still the largest office building in the US Government. The Pentagon is huge.
But the NSA headquarters is bigger, and they plan to make it another 50% larger with a new addition.
[ATTACH]44933[/ATTACH]
Did you know that the NSA also has huge facilities in Aurora CO, and Bluffdale Utah?
How about in Yorkshire, England? Did you know they have a large facility there?
[ATTACH]44934[/ATTACH]
Check out the slideshow.
Who says the government doesn't create jobs...
And yet, they are incapable of spying on even themselves, apparently.
http://www.propublica.org/article/nsa-says-it-cant-search-own-emails
I filed a request last week for emails between NSA employees and employees of the National Geographic Channel over a specific time period. The TV station had aired a friendly documentary on the NSA and I want to better understand the agency's public-relations efforts.
A few days after filing the request, Blacker called, asking me to narrow my request since the FOIA office can search emails only “person by person," rather than in bulk. The NSA has more than 30,000 employees.
[editing by ZG]
"There's no central method to search an email at this time with the way our records are set up, unfortunately," NSA Freedom of Information Act officer Cindy Blacker told me last week.
The system is “a little antiquated and archaic," she added.
:eyebrow: :right: :lol: :lol2:
Ron Wyden is still at it... hinting, but not disclosing.
This weekend new issues may be becoming public.
Washington Post
David A. Fahrenthold
July 28, 2013
With NSA revelations, Sen. Ron Wyden’s vague warnings about privacy finally become clear
It was one of the strangest personal crusades on Capitol Hill:
For years, Sen. Ron Wyden said he was worried that intelligence agencies were violating Americans’ privacy.
But he couldn’t say how. That was a secret.
Wyden’s outrage, he said, stemmed from top-secret information he had learned as a member
of the Senate Intelligence Committee. But Wyden (D-Ore.) was bound by secrecy rules, unable to reveal what he knew. <snip>
Two years later, they found out.
The revelations from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden
— detailing vast domestic surveillance programs that vacuumed up data on phone calls,
e-mails and other electronic communications —
have filled in the details of Wyden’s concerns.
<snip>
Now, in the aftermath of Snowden’s disclosures, Wyden is pressing his case on two fronts.<snip>
On Friday, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. responded to a letter co-authored by Wyden with new details.
Washington Post
Peter Wallsten
July 26, 2013
[QUOTE]<snip>
In the letter, released Friday by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.),
a vocal critic of the surveillance program, Clapper said the problems had been
“previously identified and detailed in reports to the Court and briefings to Congress.<snip>
Wyden, in an interview late Friday, said
[COLOR="DarkRed"]intelligence officials could “definitely” reveal more information
about the problems without compromising national security.[/COLOR]<snip>
Wyden has warned in the past that the court’s secret interpretations of the Patriot Act
"gave the government the authority to collect other forms of bulk data,[COLOR="DarkRed"]
including health information and credit card records.[/COLOR]
[/QUOTE]
Holder Tells Russia Snowden Won’t Face Torture or Death...
Water-boarding or a few other extreme interrogation techniques ? Well maybe.
But NO torture... and death would certainly be something of an "Ooooops"
In other news, Holder grants Snowden immortality, apparently. ;)
And the beat goes on... 32 pages of newly declassified documents
that show details of even larger surveillance "projects"
NY Times
CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: July 31, 2013
U.S. Outlines N.S.A.’s Culling of Data for All Domestic Calls
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Wednesday released
formerly classified documents outlining a once-secret program of the National Security Agency
that is collecting records of all domestic phone calls in the United States,
as top officials testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
<snip>
The documents released by the government, meanwhile, include an April ruling
by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that supported a secondary order
— also leaked by Mr. Snowden — requiring a Verizon subsidiary to turn over all
of its customers’ phone logs for a three-month period.
It said the government may access the logs only when an
executive branch official determines that there are
“facts giving rise to a reasonable, articulable suspicion”
that the number searched is associated with terrorism.
<snip>
[COLOR="DarkRed"]The newly disclosed XKeyscore presentation focuses in particular on Internet activities,
ncluding chats and Web site browsing activities, as intelligence analysts
search for terrorist cells by looking at “anomalous events” like who is using encryption
or “searching the web for suspicious stuff.”[/COLOR]
Ho hum. Another day another
violation of the 4th Amendment.
The Guardian
Glenn Greenwald
8/4/13
Members of Congress denied access to basic information about NSA
Documents provided by two House members demonstrate
how they are blocked from exercising any oversight over domestic surveillance
<snjp>
Two House members, GOP Rep. Morgan Griffith of Virginia and
Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida, have provided the Guardian
with numerous letters and emails documenting their persistent,
and unsuccessful, efforts to learn about NSA programs and relevant FISA court rulings.
<snjp>
Rep. Griffith requested information about the NSA from the House Intelligence Committee
six weeks ago, on June 25. He asked for "access to the classified FISA court order(s)
referenced on Meet the Press this past weekend": a reference to my raising with host David Gregory
the still-secret 2011 86-page ruling from the FISA court that found substantial parts
of NSA domestic spying to be in violation of the Fourth Amendment as well as governing surveillance statutes.
And then there is the question of Freedom of Information...
NBC News
Michael Isikoff
6/12/13
Secret court won't object to release of opinion on illegal surveillance
In a rare public ruling by the nation’s most secretive judicial body,
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled Wednesday that
it did not object to the release of a classified 86-page opinion concluding
that some of the U.S. government’s surveillance activities were unconstitutional.
The ruling, signed by the court’s chief judge, Reggie Walton, rejected
the Justice Department’s arguments that the secret national security court’s rules
prevented disclosure of the opinion. [COLOR="DarkRed"]Instead, the court found that
because the document was in the possession of the Justice Department,
it was subject to release under the Freedom of Information Act.[/COLOR]
<snip>
The EFF’s lawsuit was inspired by a July 20, 2012 letter from an aide to
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.,
that stated that “on at least one occasion,” the FISC held that “some collection”
carried out by the U.S. government under classified surveillance programs
“was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.”
I flatly refuse to believe that the government is only intercepting communications of foreigners.
I know that should some American citizen (wacko extremist though he may be) located in the country, make mention of some threat to the president, that it would be acted upon, even though the aforementioned wacko extremist was previously unknown to the government.
Where is the fucking due process in this whole farce? Where is the check and balance of the three co-equal branches of government? Where is the transparency?
sickening!
Screw checks and balances, no branch should be actively subverting the Constitution and right now by my count we are at two and three is likely.
well, defense against the subversion of the constitution is what checks and balances is all about, but never mind that quibble.
I think the core of this problem is a fattening and softening of American attitudes, BY DESIGN, by those who can profit from it, either by increasing their wealth or their power or both. By having unrealistic attitudes like "protect me from everything at all times" "be afraid of _________" "with us or agin us" repeatedly and relentlessly promoted, it gives ideas like this traction. Someone(s) will say, I can provide that protection, just sign here, or rather, look away while I "protect you" and by "protect you" I mean agglomerate more power and money to myself.
THEY'RE culpable for two reasons, simple greed for money and power, and by mistrusting the toughness (indeed, breeding it out of our attitudes) and resilience of regular, civilian citizens.
[youtube]UNtGDqoKfuY[/youtube]
The Drug Enforcement Administration has been the recipient of multiple tips from the NSA. DEA officials in a highly secret office called the Special Operations Division are assigned to handle these incoming tips, according to Reuters. Tips from the NSA are added to a DEA database that includes “intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records.” [COLOR="Red"]This is problematic because it appears to break down the barrier between foreign counter-terrorism investigations and ordinary domestic criminal investigations.[/COLOR]
On and on...
...along that line, here is a story about bank robbers, the FBI, and "tower dumps"
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/how-cell-tower-dumps-caught-the-high-country-bandits-and-why-it-matters/
Ars Technica
Nate Anderson
8/29/13
How “cell tower dumps” caught the High Country Bandits—and why it matters
Fishing expeditions can pay dividends—but do they need a warrant?
On February 18, 2010, the FBI field office in Denver issued a "wanted" notice
for two men known as "the High Country Bandits"—a rather grandiose name
for a pair of middle-aged white men who had been knocking down rural banks
in northern Arizona and Colorado, grabbing a few thousand dollars
from a teller's cash drawer and sometimes escaping on a stolen all-terrain vehicle (ATV).
<snip>
If you're the FBI, you ask a judge to approve a full "cell tower dump,"
in which wireless operators will turn over the records of every cell phone
that registered with a particular tower at a particular time.
(Phones "register" with the nearest cell towers so that the network knows how to route calls.)
And then you look for any numbers that stand out.
<snip>
The FBI actually received more than 150,000 registered cell phone numbers
from this particular set of tower dumps, despite picking the most rural locations possible.
What the case agents wanted to do was scan the logs from all four sites on the belief
that no single person was likely to be at all four banks during the robbery—except for the robber.
So the FBI dumped all the numbers into a Microsoft Access database and ran a query.
As expected, only a single number came back: Verizon Wireless phone number 928-205-xxxx
had registered with the tower closest to three of the banks on the day of each robbery.
(Verizon didn't have a cell tower covering the fourth bank.)
Further analysis found a second number, 928-358-xxxx,
that had been in contact with 928-205-xxx and that had registered with two of the towers in question.
The FBI then went back to the judge and obtained more particular
court orders covering these specific phone numbers.
The phone numbers came back with subscriber names attached: Joel Glore and Ronald Capito.
And the location data returned showed that these two phones had
been present at most of the 16 bank robberies under investigation.
Further, the data showed that both phones tended to travel from Show Low, Arizona,
to the location of each bank just before each robbery.
<snip>
BUT... About those 149,998 other numbers...
Bandits? Caught. Justice? Done.
But let's step back from the final result for a moment and ponder
the technique that provided the big lead —the cell tower dumps.
[COLOR="DarkRed"]Should we have any concerns with the government getting that sort
of mass tracking information on so many Americans without a warrant?
[/COLOR]
Some judges say yes. Former Magistrate Judge Brian Owsley dealt routinely
with warrant requests and court orders until becoming a law school professor earlier this year;
he has just written an intriguing paper about the issues surrounding cell tower dumps.
In his view, these are clearly "searches" under the Fourth Amendment,
and they require a full warrant backed by evidence of "probable cause."
That's because the Supreme Court jurisprudence on surveillance has
relied for decades [COLOR="DarkRed"]in part on the idea of someone's "reasonable expectation of privacy"[/COLOR]
—and people certainly expect that their location won't be easily and routinely accessible
to law enforcement without a warrant, regardless of whether cell phone technology tracks them or not.
So the FBI dumped all the numbers into a Microsoft Access database and ran a query.
Access
??? I don't want anyone having access to this kind of data who does't have a
ƒucking SQL Server guy on staff.Don't worry about it... that was just a product placement ad.
Here is a new program published today ... a program called "HEMISPHERE"
It's not just cell phones... it's every call that goes through an AT&T "switch"
NY Times
SCOTT SHANE and COLIN MOYNIHAN
9/1/13
Drug Agents Use Vast Phone Trove, Eclipsing N.S.A.’s
For at least six years, law enforcement officials working on a counternarcotics program
have had routine access, using subpoenas, to an enormous AT&T database
that contains the records of decades of Americans’ phone calls
— parallel to but covering a far longer time than the National Security Agency’s
hotly disputed collection of phone call logs.<snip>
Hemisphere covers every call that passes through an AT&T switch
— not just those made by AT&T customers —
and includes calls dating back 26 years, according to Hemisphere training slides
bearing the logo of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Some four billion call records are added to the database every day, the slides say;
technical specialists say a single call may generate more than one record.
Unlike the N.S.A. data, the Hemisphere data includes information on the locations of callers.<snip>
Crucially, they said, the phone data is stored by AT&T,
and not by the government as in the N.S.A. program.
[COLOR="DarkRed"]It is queried for phone numbers of interest mainly using what are called
“administrative subpoenas,” those issued [COLOR="RoyalBlue"]not[/COLOR] by a grand jury or a judge
but by a federal agency, in this case the D.E.A.[/COLOR]<snip>
“Is this a massive change in the way the government operates?
No,” said Mr. Richman, who worked as a federal drug prosecutor in Manhattan in the early 1990s.
“Actually you could say that it’s a desperate effort by the government to catch up.”
But Mr. Richman said the program at least touched on an unresolved Fourth Amendment question:
whether mere government possession of huge amounts of private data,
rather than its actual use, may trespass on the amendment’s
requirement that searches be “reasonable.”
[COLOR="DarkRed"]Even though the data resides with AT&T, the deep interest and involvement of the government
in its storage may raise constitutional issues, he said.[/COLOR]
Here is the article-link to the slides described above...
NY Times
9/1/13
Synopsis of the Hemisphere Project
The government pays AT&T to place its employees in drug-fighting units around the country.
Those employees sit alongside Drug Enforcement Administration agents
and local detectives and supply them with the phone data from as far back as 1987.
A slide presentation given to The New York Times shows that the Hemisphere Project
was started in 2007 and has been carried out in great secrecy.
[QUOTE][p3]
Hemisphere Summary
? Hemisphere results can be returned via email within an hour
of the subpoenaed request and include CDRs that are less
than one hour old at the time of the search
? The Hemisphere program has access to long distance and
international CDR's data going back to 1987
? Hemisphere data contains roaming information that can
identify the city and state at the time of the call
? Results are returned in several formats that aid the analyst/
investigator (I2, Penlink, GeoTime, Target Dialed Frequency
report, Common Calls report, etc)<snip>
[ATTACH]45337[/ATTACH]
[/QUOTE]
It's almost(?) getting boring to see one article after another about the ubiquitous abuses by the NSA.
The last time I remember such a drip, drip, drip of exposés were the Watergate crimes of Richard Nixon.
This 4 page article is based on the documents provided by Edward J. Snowden, and
describes the front-door, back-door, and digital methods that NSA is using to decipher
every coded message and to collect and store any/every message that the NSA, itself, decides.
[COLOR="DarkRed"]The NSA apparently asked the news media to NOT PUBLISH
this article because it exposed things they wanted kept secret.[/COLOR]
In this article, the Times tells why they have gone ahead with publication.
NY Times
NICOLE PERLROTH, JEFF LARSON and SCOTT SHANE
September 5, 2013
N.S.A. Foils Much Internet Encryption
The National Security Agency is winning its long-running secret war on encryption,
using supercomputers, technical trickery, court orders and behind-the-scenes persuasion
to undermine the major tools protecting the privacy of everyday communications in the Internet age,
according to newly disclosed documents.
The agency has circumvented or cracked much of the encryption, or digital scrambling,
that guards [COLOR="DarkRed"]global commerce and banking systems, protects sensitive data like trade secrets and medical records,
and automatically secures the e-mails, Web searches, Internet chats and phone calls
of Americans and others around the world,[/COLOR] the documents show.
<snip>
Beginning in 2000, as encryption tools were gradually blanketing the Web,
the N.S.A. invested billions of dollars in a clandestine campaign to preserve its ability to eavesdrop.
Having lost a public battle in the 1990s to insert its own “back door”
in all encryption, it set out to accomplish the same goal by stealth.
The agency, according to the documents and interviews with industry officials,
deployed custom-built, superfast computers to break codes, and began collaborating
with technology companies in the United States and abroad to build entry points into their products.
The documents do not identify which companies have participated.
The N.S.A. hacked into target computers to snare messages before they were encrypted.
And the agency used its influence as the world’s most experienced code maker
to covertly introduce weaknesses into the encryption standards followed by hardware
and software developers around the world.
Etc.,
Etc.,
Etc.,...
<Snip>
This is a link to a "sister" article in The Guardian.
It gives a somewhat different perspective, and different details
The Guardian
James Ball, Julian Borger and Glenn Greenwald
9/5/13
US and UK spy agencies defeat privacy and security on the internet
NSA and GCHQ unlock encryption used to protect emails, banking and medical records
$250m-a-year US program works covertly with tech companies to insert weaknesses into products

Security experts say programs 'undermine the fabric of the internet
It's not just the NSA that is trying to break codes...
US "drone attacks" may be vunerable to false GPS location signals, video transmissions, flight controls, etc.
Washington Post
Craig Whitlock and Barton Gellman
9/3/13
U.S. documents detail al-Qaeda’s efforts to fight back against drones
Al-Qaeda’s leadership has assigned cells of engineers to find ways
to shoot down, jam or remotely hijack U.S. drones, hoping to exploit the
technological vulnerabilities of a weapons system that has inflicted huge losses
upon the terrorist network, according to top-secret U.S. intelligence documents.
<snip>
Details of al-Qaeda’s attempts to fight back against the drone campaign
are contained in a classified intelligence report provided to The Washington Post
by Edward Snowden, the fugitive former National Security Agency contractor.<snip>
In 2011, the DIA concluded that an “al-Qaeda-affiliated research and development cell
currently lacks the technical knowledge to successfully integrate and deploy
a counterdrone strike system.” DIA analysts added, however, that
[COLOR="DarkRed"]if al-Qaeda engineers were to “overcome these substantial design challenges,
we believe such a system probably would be highly disruptive for U.S. operations
in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”[/COLOR]<snip>
Beyond the threat that al-Qaeda might figure out how to hack or shoot down a drone,
however, [COLOR="DarkRed"]U.S. spy agencies worried that their drone campaign was becoming
increasingly vulnerable to public opposition.[/COLOR]
Intelligence analysts took careful note of al-Qaeda’s efforts to portray drone strikes
as cowardly or immoral, beginning in January 2011 with a report titled
“Al-Qa’ida Explores Manipulating Public Opinion to Curb CT Pressure.”
Some Dwellars may
remember this post....
Ron Wyden is still at it... hinting, but not disclosing.
This weekend new issues may be becoming public.
With NSA revelations, Sen. Ron Wyden’s vague warnings about privacy finally become clear
It was one of the strangest personal crusades on Capitol Hill:
For years, Sen. Ron Wyden said he was worried that intelligence agencies were violating Americans’ privacy.
But he couldn’t say how. That was a secret.
Today another article clarifies more of what Wyden was all about...
Washington Post
Ellen Nakashima
9/8/13
Obama administration had restrictions on NSA reversed in 2011
The Obama administration secretly won permission from a surveillance court in 2011
[COLOR="DarkRed"]to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency’s use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails,[/COLOR]
permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans’ communications in its massive databases,
according to interviews with government officials and recently declassified material.
What had not been previously acknowledged is that the court in 2008 imposed an explicit ban
— at the government’s request — on those kinds of searches,
that officials in 2011 got the court to lift the bar and that the search authority has been used.<snip>
But in 2011, to more rapidly and effectively identify relevant foreign intelligence communications,
“we did ask the court” to lift the ban, ODNI general counsel Robert S. Litt said in an interview.
“We wanted to be able to do it,” he said, referring to the searching
of Americans’ communications[COLOR="DarkRed"] without a warrant.[/COLOR]
Together the permission to search and to keep data longer
expanded the NSA’s authority in significant ways without public debate
or any specific authority from Congress.<snip>
The court’s expansion of authority went largely unnoticed when the opinion was released,
[COLOR="DarkRed"]but it formed the basis for cryptic warnings last year by a pair of Democratic senators,
Ron Wyden (Ore.) and Mark Udall (Colo.), that the administration had a “back-door search loophole”
that enabled the NSA to scour intercepted communications for those of Americans.[/COLOR]
They introduced legislation to require a warrant, but they were barred by classification rules
from disclosing the court’s authorization or whether the NSA was already conducting such searches.
<snip>
Let's play the reallocation game! What would you do with
$52.6 Billion a year that have demonstrably made us less free and likely less safe? Education, science research, space exploration, roads and bridges,...
The beat goes on...monotonously and sadly
This article refers to NSA's collection and use of emails, social media, etc.,
to link people to others, who travels with whom, where they go.
Washington Post
Ellen Nakashima
9/28/13
NSA said to be studying some Americans’ social connections using e-mail, call data
The National Security Agency has been mining for several years
its massive collections of e-mail and phone call data to create extensive graphs
of some Americans’ social connections that can include associates, travel companions
and their locations, according to the New York Times.
The social graphing began in 2010 after the NSA lifted restrictions on the practice,
according to an internal January 2011 memorandum, the Times reported online Saturday.
It based its article on documents obtained by former NSA contractor Edward J. Snowden and interviews with officials.
The graphing, or contact chaining, is conducted using details about phone calls and e-mails,
known as “metadata,” but does not involve the communications’ content,
according to the documents cited by the Times.
It is supposed to be done for foreign intelligence purposes only, the documents state,
but that category is extremely broad and may include everything from data
about terrorism and drug smuggling to foreign diplomats and economic talks.
<snip>
According to documents the Times cited, the NSA can augment the data
with material from public, commercial and other sources, including bank codes,
Facebook profiles, airline passenger manifests and GPS location information.
<snip>
“This report confirms what whistleblowers have been saying for years:
The NSA has been monitoring virtually every aspect of Americans’ lives
— their communications, their associations, even their locations,”
said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.<snip>
William Binney, a former NSA technical director turned whistleblower, has
long warned of the NSA’s mining of data to create social graphs.
He alleged that it started in the second week of October 2001,
in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and that it took place on a massive scale.
<snip>
I read this article yesterday, and it blew me away.
This 3-page article goes on and on with a new release of what NSA has been doing.
It seems outlandish to spend so many resources on fear,
...yet they still MISSED the Boston Marathon bombing.
Shouldn't there be something like a signal-to-noise ratio or a risk/benefit analysis.
Washington Post
Barton Gellman and Ashkan Soltani
10/14/13
NSA collects millions of e-mail address books globally
The National Security Agency is harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists
from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world,
many of them belonging to Americans, according to senior intelligence officials
and top-secret documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
The collection program, which has not been disclosed before,
intercepts e-mail address books and “buddy lists” from instant
messaging services as they move across global data links.
Online services often transmit those contacts when a user logs on,
composes a message, or synchronizes a computer or mobile device
with information stored on remote servers.
<snip>
During a single day last year, the NSA’s Special Source Operations branch
collected 444,743 e-mail address books from Yahoo, 105,068 from Hotmail, 82,857 from Facebook,
33,697 from Gmail and 22,881 from unspecified other providers,
according to an internal NSA PowerPoint presentation.
Those figures, described as a typical daily intake in the document,
correspond to a rate of more than 250 million a year.
Each day, the presentation said, the NSA collects contacts from an estimated 500,000 buddy lists
on live-chat services as well as from the inbox displays of Web-based e-mail accounts.
<snip>
<snip>
<snip>
They can't prevent stuff, because there is too much data. They can only go back after the fact and use their info to round up the rest of the gang after an attack has occurred.
... maybe CDC could develop a vaccine ;)
To put it in context, all of these little bits of secondary information add up to an amazing picture of everyone. Bruce Schneier's summary is "metadata is surveillance," which I quite like:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/metadata_equals.html
Imagine you hired a detective to eavesdrop on someone. He might plant a bug in their office. He might tap their phone. He might open their mail. The result would be the details of that person's communications. That's the "data."
Now imagine you hired that same detective to surveil that person. The result would be details of what he did: where he went, who he talked to, what he looked at, what he purchased -- how he spent his day. That's all metadata.
When the government collects metadata on people, the government puts them under surveillance. When the government collects metadata on the entire country, they put everyone under surveillance. When Google does it, they do the same thing. Metadata equals surveillance; it's that simple.
It seems outlandish to spend so many resources on fear,
...yet they still MISSED the Boston Marathon bombing.
Boston Marathon is simply one example. Could easily be the outlier in the data.
But from most every leak is a pattern. Most all averted terrorist attacks were from similar sources that also saw and suspected 11 September. Information that resulted in a memo on the president's desk warning of such an attack. And it was ignored.
Most terrorism was averted by using conventional investigative techniques. Most every failure was due to people not following up on their information (ie underwear bomber). If all this high tech spying on Americans was so useful, then where are all the leaks reporting on those successes? Even bin Laden was located using more conventional techniques.
Conventional investigations: Diana Deans and three other officers - discovered the bomb for LAX. Therefore the word went out from President Clinton to look for other attacks. Using conventional investigation techniques, they probably averted the bombing of Time Square, of Toronto, of the Radisson Hotel in Amman Jordan, and the bombing of the USS The Sullivans. Because top management put out the word and took seriously information from conventional investigation sources.
These advanced investigation tools have proven useful AFTER other information targets a specific threat. IOW every one should require a bench warrant. Currently, even that legal requirement has been bypassed because, well, this is the problem. We still have not defined the definition of the word 'privacy'. And have too many lawmakers who are so wacko extremist that no time remains to address this now serious problem.
This is now on Google News...
Former Pentagon Official to Be Nominated as Homeland Security Chief
New York Times - ‎1 hour ago‎
WASHINGTON - President Obama plans to nominate Jeh C. Johnson,
who framed many of the administration's national security policies as
the Defense Department's general counsel during Mr. Obama's first term,
to become the next chief of the Homeland ...
Now that a lawyer is running the whole show, can you imagine what "legalities" NSA will get away with.
.
The NSA is under the umbrella of the Department of Defense. So now that this guy is leaving DOD he will have no connection to the NSA.
Maybe you are thinking of the TSA? The TSA is under the Department of Homeland Security.
That's probably my bad.
But is DOD under Homeland Security ?
I'm just leery of lawyers in any top position... except DOJustice, etc.
Advising is one thing, making top management decisions, ugh.
I know this particular fellow has been a big help to Obama, but still.
ETA: OK, I was, indeed, wrong. I looked it up and see the difference. Sorry about that.
Apparently, Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Calif) believes she is Mr. Phelps:
Good Morning, Mr. Clapper: Your mission, should you choose to accept it,
involves finding and storing each granule of data from everywhere in the world:
[ATTACH]45939[/ATTACH]
As always, should you or any of your NSA Force be caught or killed,
the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions.
This tape/disc will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Jim
Apparently, Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Calif) believes she is Mr. Phelps:
The revelations from Snowden have been so egregious and surprising that even Senator Feinstein has started criticizing the NSA.
The revelations from Snowden have been so egregious and ...
Interesting choice of words
Interesting choice of words
I never said who is being emotionally absurd as to be offended. That's a major part of the problem. Too many want to be angry (emotional) rather than understand the scope and underlying principles of this problem. So the problem festered - has been becoming severe. And not just with international relations. Would have been even worse - not much different than what was written in a famous book called "1984".
The Cellar [thread=29550]Security Council[/thread] is monitoring this thread.
George Bush Sr threatened to create a New World Order. Thank god we have citizens with assault rifles protecting us in our airports.
Thank god we have citizens with assault rifles protecting us in our airports.
I've seen multiple news reports that say the police are looking for a motive for why this guy hates the TSA.
Is there anyone in the country who likes the TSA? They have to be the most hated branch of the government. Well, maybe the IRS is more hated.
[ATTACH]45947[/ATTACH]
Not saying I approve in any way of the actions of this murderous thug. He belongs in prison. But looking for a motive? Duh.
Once upon a time, workers only hated Post Office Management. Going Postal. Apparently there were not enough of them. With so many assault rifles, hunters must now search for new game.
Bagging trophies in malls and theaters is too easy.
Government will require all guns be connected to the internet. Then Echelon, Prism, or whatever it is now called can actually find and avert crimes.
The Washington Post ran a survey form about on-line privacy for several days,
and the first thing it asked for was your NAME !
This article almost makes it sound as if all of 81 people went past that and responded...
Washington Post
Timothy B. Lee
November 7, 2013
Here’s how people are changing their Internet habits to avoid NSA snooping
<snip>The irony of asking for full names and e-mail addresses in a survey
about online privacy was not lost on Switch readers.
"The questionnaire can't be for real. I thought I inadvertently connected to 'the Onion,'" one reader
wrote in the comment section. Other commenters described the survey as "bizarre" and "creepy."
Some survey respondents indicated that they had cut back on using the Internet
to send sensitive personal information. But a much larger group told us that
they hadn't changed their Internet habits at all.
"If the NSA wants to know I spend too much time researching fantasy football,
hotels in Las Vegas, and the best way to roast pumpkin seeds, so be it," one wrote.
"You only have something to fear if you are looking up things that the NSA would consider dangerous to US citizens."
Other respondents haven't changed their habits because they believe doing so is hopeless.
"There is simply no defense against the NSA if they are targeting you," one reader claimed.
"I accept that I am a minnow swimming in a pool full of sharks," wrote another.
Added a third respondent: "I always add the following to my emails 'Hey NSA, go f--k yourselves.'"
NY Times
By ALISON SMALE and DAVID E. SANGER
11/12/13
Spying Scandal Alters U.S. Ties With Allies and Raises Talk of Policy Shift
BERLIN — Just as European and American negotiators resumed work
on a groundbreaking trade accord meant to tie their two continents closer together,
René Obermann, the chief executive of Deutsche Telekom, the German telecommunications giant,
told a cybersecurity conference in Germany on Monday that his company was
[COLOR="DarkRed"]working to keep electronic message traffic from “unnecessarily” crossing the Atlantic,
where it could fall into the hands of the National Security Agency.[/COLOR]
Other German executives, and some politicians, are beginning to talk of segmenting the Internet,
so that they are not reliant on large American firms that by contract or court order allow
United States intelligence agencies to delve into their data about phone and Internet usage.
Europeans are demanding that any new trade accord include data-privacy protections
that the United States is eager to avoid. Almost never before has a spying scandal
— in this case the revelation of the monitoring of the cellphone of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany —
resulted in such a concrete, commercial backlash.
Now it is also driving a debate inside the American government about whether the United States,
which has long spied on allies even while nurturing them as partners, may have to change its approach.
<snip>
The NSA has finally learned that they can't know everything...
NY Times
MARK MAZZETTI and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
12/14/13
Officials Say U.S. May Never Know Extent of Snowden's Leaks
Investigators remain in the dark partly because the facility where
the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden worked
was not equipped with software to monitor employees.
<snip>
Six months since the investigation began, officials said Mr. Snowden had
further covered his tracks by logging into classified systems using the passwords
of other security agency employees, as well as by hacking firewalls
installed to limit access to certain parts of the system.
<snip>
In recent days, a senior N.S.A. official has told reporters that he believed Mr. Snowden
still had access to documents not yet disclosed. The official, Rick Ledgett, who is heading
the security agency’s task force examining Mr. Snowden’s leak, said he would consider
[COLOR="DarkRed"]recommending amnesty for Mr. Snowden in exchange for those documents.[/COLOR]
<snip>
... but that won't stop them from trying.
It's sort of hilarious watching our government descend into the old soviet ways. I remember sitting in a Roman History class in college when the Professor said something like, "Anything familiar in this?"
This shit is NOT amazing to me Anyone who has contact with the bunch of assholes who work for the Gubberment knows this. From the VA, IRS and all are full of the affitive action assholes. Hey. I got my job. Ya can't fire me.
I know a bunch of people who work for the government and most are not assholes. But one definitely is, and another is a great guy, but the people who have to deal with him think he is an asshole because he's enforcing laws they are breaking.
WOW !
Breaking news (tv talking heads) report that a federal appeals court judge has ruled the "entire law"
under which the NSA digital surveilance programs operate is [COLOR="DarkRed"]unconstitutional[/COLOR].
This judge has also delayed his own ruling while it is being appealed.
But he is saying that the NSA should get ready for it to be supported.
Breaking news (tv talking heads) report that a federal appeals court judge has ruled the "entire law"
under which the NSA digital surveilance programs operate is [COLOR="DarkRed"]unconstitutional[/COLOR].
Justices have danced around this concept in public discussion. For example, Scalia has said the Constitution does not provide a right to privacy. It is possible that Justices reverse previous rulings that defined what is privacy and what is now to become information accessible to police without a court order.
I doubt any decision would be that earth shaking. But a discussion is to (will be) finally occur.
At this point, Snowden is looking more like a hero for exposing rampant disregard in the NSA for laws or for the principles that define those laws. We know this from what has happened after 11 September. NSA and other intelligence agencies no longer can be trusted to make their own rules. With new technologies and virtually unlimited budgets, these organizations need serious and increased oversight.
And the judge singled out the oft-cited precedent case, always used to justify intrusive measures by the gov't, and said it was obsolete (which it should be, it was written 30 years ago, when our technology was much different than now).
Well done, Federal Judge Richard Leon!! :cool:
Snowden is singing a special song:
"Please pass the salt... I've got a lot of rubbing to do"
National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden wrote an open letter
to the people of Brazil published in a Brazilian newspaper on Tuesday.
In the letter, [COLOR="DarkRed"]he said he would be willing to help the country
investigate NSA spying on its soil in exchange for political asylum.[/COLOR]
Brazil, including President Dilma Rousseff, has been a major target of NSA spying
and has complained vehemently in the international community. Snowden has temporary asylum...
Snowden wants to help Brazil fight NSA surveillance
It’s already in Wikipedia (
here), and was reported as an "exclusive" by Reuters on 12/20/13,
but here is a shorter version:
Mother Jones
Kevin Drum
Dec. 21, 2013
NSA Paid Security Company to Adopt Weakened Encryption Standards
Undisclosed until now was that [COLOR="DarkRed"]RSA received $10 million in a deal that set
the NSA formula as the preferred, or default, method for number generation
in [ RSA Security LLC's ] BSafe software[/COLOR], according to two sources familiar with the contract.
Although that sum might seem paltry, it represented more than a third of the revenue
that the relevant division at RSA had taken in during the entire previous year, securities filings show.
....Most of the dozen current and former RSA employees interviewed said that
the company erred in agreeing to such a contract, and many cited RSA's corporate evolution
away from pure cryptography products as one of the reasons it occurred.
But several said that RSA also was misled by government officials,
who portrayed the formula as a secure technological advance.
"They did not show their true hand," one person briefed on the deal said of the NSA,
asserting that government officials did not let on that they knew how to break the encryption.
However, the Wiki version speaks more along the lines that the "random number generator"
that was preferred by NSA was already well known among cryptologists as being one that could be broken
... and so leaves the impression that the RSA cryptologists knew, or should have known,
what was involved for the $10 million contract.
.
So, who do you believe...
Cruxialcio
Antone Gonsalves
December 23, 2013
RSA Denies Hobbling Encryption Software For NSA
RSA has strongly denied a report that it was paid to embed in encryption software-
flawed technology that would have enabled the U.S. National Security Agency to break into computer products.
Reuters reported Dec. 20 that the NSA paid the influential security vendor $10 million
to provide its customers with the agency-developed encryption formula
that would create a backdoor in products.
RSA, a unit of EMC, reportedly used the technology in BSAFE,
which is software embedded in commercial applications to secure data.
On Dec. 22, RSA posted a statement that said,
[COLOR="DarkRed"] "We categorically deny this allegation."[/COLOR]
While acknowledging it worked with the NSA, RSA said it never
kept the relationship secret and often publicized it.
"Our explicit goal has always been to strengthen commercial and government security," RSA said.
RSA said its decision in 2004 to use Dual EC DRBG in BSAFE was in the context of
an industry-wide effort to build stronger methods of encryption into products.
At the time, the NSA had a trusted role in the security industry.
The flawed algorithm was one of multiple choices customers had in BSAFE toolkits, RSA said.
Approval of the standard made it a valuable tool in meeting
government requirements for information technology products.
[COLOR="DarkRed"]RSA continued to offer Dual EC DRBG in its product until NIST recommended in September of this year
that the algorithm no longer be used, because it had been compromised.
[/COLOR]
[QUOTE]"RSA, as a security company, never divulges details of customer engagements,
but we also categorically state that we have never entered into any contract
or engaged in any project with the intention of weakening RSA’s products,
or introducing potential ‘backdoors’ into our products for anyone’s use," the company said.
[/QUOTE]
Now the VA, banks and others have stopped even leaving messages on your answer machine.
I happened to be home when my DR's nurse called, said she had been calling for days. Hello, I have an answer machine. can't leave any messages. Same for bank.
I live alone, so the chance of anyone hearing anything is nil. More likely someone getting something out of my mail box. Thank you assholes.
Did you really think this thread was dead ? Don't be silly.
ACLU: Snowden Proved NSA Internet Spying Harms Americans
ABC News — Mar 10, 2015, 4:58 PM ET
By JULIET LINDERMAN Associated Press
The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups sued the National Security Agency
and the Justice Department on Tuesday, challenging the government's practice of collecting
personal information from vast amounts of data harvested directly from the Internet's infrastructure.
The suit filed in federal court in Maryland accuses the NSA of harvesting virtually[COLOR="Red"]*[/COLOR] everything
sent via the Internet between Americans and people outside the United States,
and then using search terms or identifiers to identify and monitor foreign intelligence targets.<snip>
The suit's other plaintiffs include The Wikimedia Foundation, Human Rights Watch,
Amnesty International USA, the Rutherford Institute, PEN American Center,
The Nation magazine, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers,
Global Fund for Women and Washington Office on Latin America.<snip>
A similar challenge was turned away by the U.S. Supreme Court,
which said the plaintiffs couldn't prove they'd been harmed.
This lawsuit says that's changed since the government confirmed
the surveillance after its scope and details were leaked by former
government contractor Edward Snowden in 2013.
<snip>
[COLOR="Red"]*[/COLOR] ... a rare and surprisingly appropriate use of the word.
.
John Oliver talks about renewal of the US Patriot Act which is up for renewal on June 1st this year.
But, this 33 min video is also his interview with Edward Snowden.
So you can skip to about the 18 min mark for the best/most entertaining part.
NSFW if a discussion of NSA's "dick pic" program is not to your liking
[YOUTUBE]XEVlyP4_11M#t=188[/YOUTUBE]
very good find Lamplighter.
I found the segment starting at 12:02 to be the very best part though.
[YOUTUBE]XEVlyP4_11M&start=721[/YOUTUBE]
The CNN clip is excruciating. :facepalm: It makes me want to cry.
My reaction too.
But Andrea has been a disappointment to me for some time now... and getting worse !
Zengum and Edward Snowden should be very proud today...
Repeated studies found no evidence of intentional abuse for personal or political gain,
but also found no evidence that it [*| had ever thwarted a terrorist attack.
[*] the the bulk collection of phone records program
U.S. Surveillance in Place Since 9/11 Is Sharply Limited
NY Times - JENNIFER STEINHAUER and JONATHAN WEISMANJUNE 2, 2015
WASHINGTON — In a significant scaling back of national security policy formed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks,
[COLOR="Red"]the Senate on Tuesday approved legislation curtailing the federal government’s sweeping surveillance
of American phone records, and President Obama signed the measure hours later.[/COLOR]
The passage of the bill — achieved over the fierce opposition of the Senate majority leader — will allow the government to restart surveillance operations, but with new restrictions.
The legislation signaled a cultural turning point for the nation, almost 14 years after the Sept. 11 attacks heralded the construction of a powerful national security apparatus. The shift against the security state began with the revelation by Edward J. Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor, about the bulk collection of phone records. The backlash was aided by the growth of interconnected communication networks run by companies that have felt manhandled by government prying.
The storage of those records now shifts to the phone companies, and the government must petition a special federal court for permission to search them.
<snip>
The [new] legislation’s goals are twofold: to rein in aspects of the government’s data collection authority and to crack open the workings of the secret national security court that oversees it. After six months, the phone companies, not the N.S.A., will hold the bulk phone records — logs of calls placed from one number to another, and the time and the duration of those contacts, but not the content of what was said. A new kind of court order will permit the government to swiftly analyze them.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, for the first time, will be required to declassify some of its most significant decisions, and outside voices will be allowed to argue for privacy rights before the court in certain cases.