NSA Phone Records, recording, tapping warrantless [Archive] - Debate Policy

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revelarts

06-19-2013, 07:04 AM

...the White House, the NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the record for this article. A senior intelligence official agreed to answer questions if not identified.“We have rich oversight across three branches of government. I’ve got an [inspector general] here, a fairly robust legal staff here . . . and there’s the Justice Department’s national security division,” the official said. “For those things done under court jurisdiction, the courts are intrusive in my business, appropriately so, and there are two congressional committees. It’s a belts-and-suspenders-and-Velcro approach, and inside there’s rich auditing.”
But privacy advocates, such as Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) (http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ron-wyden-d-ore/gIQAfn599O_topic.html), said the intelligence committee on which he serves needs “straight answers” to do vigorous oversight.
He added: “The typical person says, ‘If I am law-abiding and the government is out there collecting lots of information about me — who I call, when I call, where I call from’ . . . I think the typical person is going to say, ‘That sure sounds like it could have some effect on my privacy.’ ”
Two of the four collection programs, one each for telephony and the Internet, process trillions of “metadata” records for storage and analysis in systems called MAINWAY (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/call-records-of-fewer-than-300-people-were-searched-in-2012-us-says/2013/06/15/5e611cee-d61b-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_story.html) and MARINA, respectively. Metadata (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/metadata-reveals-the-secrets-of-social-position-company-hierarchy-terrorist-cells/2013/06/15/5058647c-d5c1-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_story.html) includes highly revealing information about the times, places, devices and participants in electronic communication, but not its contents. The bulk collection of telephone call records from Verizon Business Services (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/administration-lawmakers-defend-nsa-program-to-collect-phone-records/2013/06/06/2a56d966-ceb9-11e2-8f6b-67f40e176f03_story.html), disclosed this month by the British newspaper the Guardian, is one source of raw intelligence for MAINWAY.
The other two types of collection, which operate on a much smaller scale, are aimed at content. One of them intercepts telephone calls and routes the spoken words to a system called *NUCLEON....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-surveillance-architecture-includes-collection-of-revealing-internet-phone-metadata/2013/06/15/e9bf004a-d511-11e2-b05f-3ea3f0e7bb5a_print.html

...Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.

But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target...

....The broad outlines of the so-called warrantless-wiretapping program have long been exposed—how the NSA secretly and illegally bypassed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Co urt), which was supposed to oversee and authorize highly targeted domestic eavesdropping; how the program allowed wholesale monitoring of millions of American phone calls and email. In the wake of the program’s exposure, Congress passed the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which largely made the practices legal. Telecoms that had agreed to participate in the illegal activity were granted immunity from prosecution and lawsuits. What wasn’t revealed until now, however, was the enormity of this ongoing domestic spying program....”

...The NSA also has the ability to eavesdrop on phone calls directly and in real time. According to Adrienne J. Kinne, who worked both before and after 9/11 as a voice interceptor at the NSA facility in Georgia, in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks “basically all rules were thrown out the window, and they would use any excuse to justify a waiver to spy on Americans.” Even journalists calling home from overseas were included. “A lot of time you could tell they were calling their families,” she says, “incredibly intimate, personal conversations.” Kinne found the act of eavesdropping on innocent fellow citizens personally distressing. “It’s almost like going through and finding somebody’s diary,” she says....

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/

more details
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35306.htm

Tyr-Ziu Saxnot

06-19-2013, 09:22 PM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-surveillance-architecture-includes-collection-of-revealing-internet-phone-metadata/2013/06/15/e9bf004a-d511-11e2-b05f-3ea3f0e7bb5a_print.html

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/

more details
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35306.htm Ok, sheep now its time to go graze on that hill yonder until noon. Then we will gather you back into your roomy little pen for a few choice selections to cook for our lunch. After that you will be allowed to go back to sleep until morning , repeat, repeat, repeat.. Do not be alarmed all is done for your comfort, safety and protection. We are the government, your lords and masters.

revelarts

06-19-2013, 10:16 PM

REDState exposes the "we don't listen" lies

‘Thousands of NSA Analysts Can Listen to Domestic Phone Calls,’ Read Emails, Texts, IMs By: Seton Motley (http://www.redstate.com/users/setonmotley/) (Diary (http://www.redstate.com/setonmotley/)) | June 17th, 2013 at 08:54 AM |
RESIZE: AAA

UPDATES: Aplenty – from late last night – below. Please, indulge us and read from top to bottom – for clarity’s sake.
—–
That’s some good news right there. (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57589495-38/nsa-admits-listening-to-u.s-phone-calls-without-warrants/)
The National Security Agency (NSA) has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls….

Hold the phone. (Get it?) The NSA claims “it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls.” The Fourth Amendment begs to differ. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution )
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.
How unreasonable are all of these probable-cause-and-warrant-free listening expeditions?
(T)he Justice Department has secretly interpreted federal surveillance law to permit thousands of low-ranking analysts to eavesdrop on phone calls….
If the NSA wants “to listen to the phone,” an analyst’s decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required….
More legal flights of fancy from Held-in-Bipartisan-Contempt-of-Congress-Once (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/06/28/house-holds-holder-contempt/)-and-Counting (http://reason.com/archives/2013/05/30/if-eric-holder-lied-to-congress-he-shoul) Attorney General Eric Holder.
Edward Snowden – the guy who first alerted us to this NSA-PRISM-NUCLEON mess (http://world.time.com/2013/06/10/edward-snowden-comes-forward-as-nsa-whistleblower-surfaces-in-hong-kong/) – has had his veracity (and mental stability) challenged for claiming Little-Old-He could unilaterally “wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/jun/09/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-interview-video).”
Edward Snowden Is Completely Wrong (http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/edward-snowden-is-completely-wrong-20130613)
Not so wrong after all.
When some of us responded to all of this with alarm (http://www.redstate.com/setonmotley/2013/06/06/with-tens-of-millions-of-phone-records-grabbed-its-the-government-stupid/), we too were summarily dismissed.
‘Nobody is Listening to Your Telephone Calls,’ Obama Says (http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/06/07/nobody-is-listening-to-your-telephone-calls-obama-says/)
NSA Data Mining (http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2013/06/14/Is-PRISMs-Big-Data-about-Big-Money.aspx%23page1)
The paranoid imagine that government eavesdroppers are listening in on their phone conversations and reading their intimate emails.
Someone is listening. Thousands of someones (at least), in fact. (And reading – please stay tuned.) Not so paranoid after all.
(President Barack) Obama Calls Surveillance Programs Legal and Limited (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/us/national-security-agency-surveillance.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)
“Legal” is highly dubious. How about “limited?”
NSA Collecting Phone Records of Millions of Verizon Customers Daily (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order)
That’s a fairly expansive definition of “limited.”
By now, the following claim – now just nine days old – seems quaint and antiquated. Not to mention fundamentally untrue.
President Insists Americans Not Target of Records Sweep (http://www.yakimaherald.com/news/yhr/saturday/1213463-8/president-insists-americans-not-target-of-records-sweep)
Again (http://www.redstate.com/setonmotley/2013/06/06/with-tens-of-millions-of-phone-records-grabbed-its-the-government-stupid/), we’re all James Rosens now (http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/55532).
What about our fantasies of the government reading our emails (and text messages, and instant messages, and…) (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57589495-38/nsa-spying-flap-extends-to-contents-of-u.s-phone-calls/)?
(NSA phone call self-)authorization appears to extend to e-mail and text messages too….
Because the same legal standards that apply to phone calls also apply to e-mail messages, text messages, and instant messages, being able to listen to phone calls would mean the NSA analysts could also access the contents of Internet communications too without going before a court and seeking approval.
Again (http://www.redstate.com/setonmotley/2013/06/06/with-tens-of-millions-of-phone-records-grabbed-its-the-government-stupid/), we’re all James Rosens now (http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/55532). And then some.
But wait – we were told it was just the email and Internet metadata – not the content (http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/06/12/What-If-It-Is-Not-Just-Metadata-the-NSA-is-Collecting).
Again, not so much.
We have throughout this nightmare awakening had Big Government proponents and officials aplenty – up to and repeatedly including the President – lying their faces off about what is actually happening with our phone calls, emails and all things Internet.
Preemptively listening to, peeking at and harvesting the data of hundreds of millions of innocent Americans is not a “national security” prerogative. It is, however, a Big Brother imperative.
So when we have warned you about things like:
Forget the ‘Fairness’ Doctrine – Net Neutrality is the Future of Censorship (http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2011/07/11/Forget-the----Fairness----Doctrine-----Net-Neutrality-is-the-Future-of-Censorship)
Obama Official-Network Neutrality Deviser Says First Amendment Doesn’t Apply to Our Computers (http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/06/24/Obama-Official-Network-Neutrality-Deviser-Says-First-Amendment-Doesn-t-Apply-to-Our-Computers)
And the Left’s response is:
Right-Wing Delusion: Net Neutrality is Government Plot to Control Internet Content (http://mediamatters.org/research/2010/04/05/right-wing-delusion-net-neutrality-is-governmen/162709)
We can all be forgiven for being more than a little skeptical. On Net Neutrality – and just about everything else.
—–
UPDATE #1: Obama Administration Director of National Intelligence James Clapper late last night released a statement denying most or all of the above. Which in part reads (http://www.redstate.com/setonmotley/2013/06/17/thousands-of-nsa-analysts-can-listen-to-domestic-phone-calls-read-emails-texts-ims/www.zdnet.com/nsa-can-allegedly-listen-to-phone-calls-without-warrants-report-7000016864/):
“The statement that a single analyst can eavesdrop on domestic communications without proper legal authorization is incorrect and was not briefed to Congress.”
This is the same James Clapper that in a March 12 Congressional hearing lied to Oregon Democrat Senator Ron Wyden (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYgkjczoBYk) – denying that trillions of Verizon domestic phone call sweeps were occurring.
Fire James Clapper (http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2013/06/fire_dni_james_clapper_he_lied_to_congress_about_n sa_surveillance.html)
The Director of National Intelligence lied to Congress about NSA surveillance. What else will he lie about?
Good question. Is it possible (probable?) that Clapper is lying again here? Indeed it is.
Which makes the following even more pathetic.
UPDATE #2: New York Democrat Congressman Jerry Nadler was a key original source for this eavesdropping story (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57589495-38/nsa-spying-flap-extends-to-contents-of-u.s-phone-calls/).
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed on Thursday that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed “simply based on an analyst deciding that.”
If the NSA wants “to listen to the phone,” an analyst’s decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. “I was rather startled,” said Nadler, an attorney and congressman who serves on the House Judiciary committee….
In prostrating response to the statement from proven liar James Clapper – a member of the proven-lying Obama Administration – Congressman Nadler has retreated into being a good Democrat, but a troublingly bad representative of We the People and our Constitutional rights (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57589495-38/nsa-spying-flap-extends-to-contents-of-u.s-phone-calls/).
James Owens, a spokesman for Nadler, provided a statement on Sunday morning, a day after this (original) article was published, saying:
“I am pleased that the administration has reiterated that, as I have always believed, the NSA cannot listen to the content of Americans’ phone calls without a specific warrant.”
Owens said he couldn’t comment on what assurances from the Obama administration Nadler was referring to, and said Nadler was unavailable for an interview.
Congressman Nadler was thus also unavailable to explain why or how this latest Obama Administration assertion, after all of these lies, is any more believable.
And is Congressman Nadler addled? Was the briefing he (and obviously, ostensibly other Members) attended merely a figment of his imagination?
Hard to think so. Especially since he – and Snowdon – aren’t the only people to make similar Administration snooping claims (http://www.zdnet.com/nsa-can-allegedly-listen-to-phone-calls-without-warrants-report-7000016864/):
Senate Intelligence committee chairperson Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) confirmed on Thursday, according to the report, that a court order is not necessary for the NSA to search its call data database that it collects under secret orders from major U.S. telecom firms….
(F)ormer FBI counter-terrorism agent Tim Clemente disclosed to CNN (http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1305/01/ebo.01.html)that under certain investigations relating to the protection of national security, his former employer could access call records and contents of those calls.
“All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not,” he claimed.
It is difficult under these circumstances – with all of these corroborating statements – to not think that what best represents the truth is what Congressman Nadler said first.
Given that the serially untruthful Obama Administration are the only ones denying it.

http://www.redstate.com/setonmotley/2013/06/17/thousands-of-nsa-analysts-can-listen-to-domestic-phone-calls-read-emails-texts-ims/

Tyr-Ziu Saxnot

06-19-2013, 10:32 PM

logroller

06-19-2013, 10:58 PM

Actually doesn't matter about needing FISA to give the consent. Heard today on the radio that FISA to date has only refused to give consent 0.03% of the requests submitted by the Feds. Rubberstamped approval makes a sham of the presentation that we have a court and honorable judges looking after our rights and protecting our privacy. I already knew this because the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PICKED THE JUDGES !!! Who was gullible enough to think they wouldn't pick people that would rubberstamp approval?
There is a distinct possibility that those cases that would be rejected simply weren't requested and done anyways under the auspices that even if they do get caught, there's little or no repercussions since exposing the government's illegal activities is quite often against the law.

For a fun story of how government circumvents the system, look up Brandon Mayfield. Hiuse searched with no warrant, issued a formal apology by the government and paid $2million in damages with the understanding he could still challenge the constitutionality of the patriot act amendments to fisa that were utilized to conduct the search. He did, and subsequently the 9th circuit ruled parts of the patriot act unconstitutional and, following the government's appeal to the Supreme Court, the case was vacated and dismissed because Mayfield lacked standing to sue since he had accepted the money for damages.

red states rule

06-20-2013, 03:31 AM

http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/gmc11016820130619073100.jpg

Tyr-Ziu Saxnot

06-20-2013, 07:49 AM

There is a distinct possibility that those cases that would be rejected simply weren't requested and done anyways under the auspices that even if they do get caught, there's little or no repercussions since exposing the government's illegal activities is quite often against the law.

For a fun story of how government circumvents the system, look up Brandon Mayfield. Hiuse searched with no warrant, issued a formal apology by the government and paid $2million in damages with the understanding he could still challenge the constitutionality of the patriot act amendments to fisa that were utilized to conduct the search. He did, and subsequently the 9th circuit ruled parts of the patriot act unconstitutional and, following the government's appeal to the Supreme Court, the case was vacated and dismissed because Mayfield lacked standing to sue since he had accepted the money for damages. I found this on Mayfield. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/5053007/ns/us_news-security/t/fbi-apologizes-lawyer-held-madrid-bombings/
U.S. District Judge Robert Jones said all property that had been seized from the Mayfield residence should be returned, and all copies of Mayfield’s personal documents held by the federal government were to be destroyed.
The case began when FBI fingerprint examiners in Quantico, Va., searched for possible matches to a digital image of a fingerprint found on a bag of detonators the day of the Spanish bombings on March 11.
The system returned 15 possible matches, including prints belonging to Mayfield, on file from a 1984 burglary arrest in Wichita, Kan., when Mayfield was a teenager.
Three separate FBI examiners narrowed the identification to Mayfield, according to Robert Jordan, the FBI agent in charge of Oregon. A court-appointed fingerprint expert agreed.
Spain doubted any connection
The FBI maintained its certainty even as Spanish authorities said by mid-April that the original image of the fingerprint taken directly from the bag did not match Mayfield’s, Wax said.
Last week, Spanish authorities said the fingerprints of an Algerian man were on the bag. Jordan said FBI examiners flew to Spain, viewed the original print pattern of the fingerprint on paper, and agreed that it was not Mayfield’s.
As additional evidence in support of Mayfield’s arrest, the FBI pointed to Mayfield’s attendance at a local mosque, his advertising legal services in a publication owned by a man suspected to have links to terrorism, and a telephone call his wife placed to a branch of an Islamic charity with suspected terrorist ties.
They also noted that Mayfield represented a man in a child custody case who later pleaded guilty to conspiring to help al-Qaida and the Taliban fight U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
According to court documents, FBI agents began their surveillance of Mayfield two weeks after the attacks in the Spanish capital. Under a provision of the U.S. Patriot Act, they entered his home without his knowledge — but aroused the family’s suspicion by bolting the wrong lock on their way out and leaving a footprint on the rug that didn’t match any family members. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sloppy work on the fingerprints is no excuse. Only after a fingerprint match to the guilty guy was found did the FBI admit its mistake. I do note that the wrongly accused man got some justice but also he was both a lawyer and a Muslim. We are going to see more and more extra care taken with Muslim Americans. Telling you right now the apology came because he was Muslim, had he been any other religion no apology would have been issued by the FBI. -Tyr

Gaffer

06-20-2013, 09:03 AM

Something I find interesting about the Snowden case. They all say he couldn't hack into all the systems and people he claims. However, they leave out one important thing he said at the end of his statement. "If I had their email account". It's how he qualified his statement. That part always gets left out when they talk about him.

As for his fleeing to China. I have problems with that, however I see it as he's fleeing one communist country to go to another communist country. The only difference is the brands of communism.

Tyr-Ziu Saxnot

06-20-2013, 09:16 AM

revelarts

06-23-2013, 04:08 PM

revelarts

06-23-2013, 10:22 PM

NSA Whisltle blower Thomas Drake
says he's Not surprised by Snowdens revelations.

says he cannot believe how far the Surveilance state has gone. that when he flew recon flights over the USSR, he sent info back to "big daddy" what they called the NSA. He never dreamed it would become "Big Brother"..
<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/WsrEqC2ABlg?feature=player_detailpage" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" width="640"></iframe><iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/e0hO5fTGwPY?feature=player_detailpage" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

red states rule

06-24-2013, 03:14 AM

http://0.tqn.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/J/v/5/Telephone-Traffic.jpg

aboutime

06-25-2013, 02:55 PM

red states rule

06-25-2013, 02:59 PM

and what a surprise our resident liberals and hero worshipers have fell silent on the NSA and domestic spying

Once again I will give Rev 5 stars for being consistent

jimnyc

06-25-2013, 03:18 PM

To anyone who might be interested. I have one question for all of you who claim not to be concerned, and for those who are.

I learned earlier today. The NSA has access to most personal computers in this nation, and it is via the Microsoft, Windows Operating system, and has been since Windows 95 was first introduced.

If you have any knowledge of your computer. Simply do a search for one particular file. In particular. A file named "ADVAPI.DLL".

It can be found in your computer directory 'Windows/System'. That is the shared file used by the NSA.

For those who want to know more:

"In a nut shell, a dynamic link library (DLL) is a collection of small programs, which can be called upon when needed by the executable program (EXE) that is running. The DLL lets the executable communicate with a specific device such as a printer or may contain source code to do particular functions."

I fully expect most will simply laugh this off as just another kind of conspiracy theory. And, to that I say.
Fine with me.
I'm not claiming to be any kind of expert in this field since I have been away from it since 1995, as part of my military profession.
But. I may be older than most. Yet, not so old I can't remember the warnings I learned at the inception of Computer usage back in the early 90's.

Microsoft has denied this. I don't think I believe it either. They said it was from Windows 95 through Windows 2000 I believe. Anyway, with so many programs to monitor incoming/outgoing traffic, I think there would have been much proof of this from around the world. And then firewalls. And then of course the thousands, if not more, of what I call "supergeeks" around the world that live to work on things like this. I certainly have no expertise in the programming department though and that's just my opinion. I' going to look around in a few at these supergeek sites and see what they're all saying about this.

And it's based on the following:

Overview Microsoft (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft)'s operating systems (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system) require all cryptography (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptography) suites that work with its operating systems to have a digital signature (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_signature). Since only Microsoft-approved cryptography suites can be installed or used as a component of Windows it is possible to keep export copies of this operating system (and products with Windows installed) in compliance with the Export Administration Regulations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_Administration_Regulations) (EAR), which are enforced by the US Department of Commerce (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Department_of_Commerce) Bureau of Industry and Security (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Industry_and_Security) (BIS).
It was already known that Microsoft used two keys, a primary and a spare, either of which can create valid signatures. Microsoft had failed to remove the debugging symbols in ADVAPI.DLL, a security and encryption driver, when it released Service Pack 5 for Windows NT 4.0 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_4.0) and Andrew Fernandes, chief scientist with Cryptonym found the primary key stored in the variable _KEY and the second key was labeled _NSAKEY.[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_key#cite_note-1) Fernandes published his discovery, touching off a flurry of speculation and conspiracy theories (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory); such as the second key, owned by the United States National Security Agency (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency) (the NSA), could allow the intelligence agency to subvert any Windows user's security.[citation needed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed)]
During a presentation at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computers,_Freedom_and_Privacy_Conference) 2000 (CFP2000) conference, Duncan Campbell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_Campbell_%28investigative_journalist%29), Senior Research Fellow at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Privacy_Information_Center) (EPIC), mentioned the _NSAKEY controversy as an example of an outstanding issue related to security and surveillance.[citation needed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed)]
In addition Dr. Nicko van Someren found a third key in Windows 2000 which he doubted had a legitimate purpose, and declared that "It looks more fishy".[ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_key#cite_note-2)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_key

aboutime

06-25-2013, 03:46 PM

Microsoft has denied this. I don't think I believe it either. They said it was from Windows 95 through Windows 2000 I believe. Anyway, with so many programs to monitor incoming/outgoing traffic, I think there would have been much proof of this from around the world. And then firewalls. And then of course the thousands, if not more, of what I call "supergeeks" around the world that live to work on things like this. I certainly have no expertise in the programming department though and that's just my opinion. I' going to look around in a few at these supergeek sites and see what they're all saying about this.

And it's based on the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_key

That's for you to decide Jim. If you choose to believe the denials at Wiki. Go for it.
But, you can check your own pc by using the Search feature from the START button on the lower Left of your monitor.
Don't take my word for it. Most of you won't anyway because you simply can't, and won't.
In fact. I'll give all of you a little more information I learned back in the early 90's about "AOL". One of the very first to offer the Internet Service to Americans.
Anyone who ever installed AOL on their computer...still has invasive files from AOL..which are undetectable by the BEST protections offered today.
Don't take my word for that either.
In fact. Forget I said anything. Why do I even bother?

red states rule

06-26-2013, 03:31 AM

http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/130624whistleblowerRGB20130625080109.jpg

revelarts

06-26-2013, 08:44 AM

jimnyc

06-26-2013, 09:09 AM

That's for you to decide Jim. If you choose to believe the denials at Wiki. Go for it.
But, you can check your own pc by using the Search feature from the START button on the lower Left of your monitor.
Don't take my word for it. Most of you won't anyway because you simply can't, and won't.
In fact. I'll give all of you a little more information I learned back in the early 90's about "AOL". One of the very first to offer the Internet Service to Americans.
Anyone who ever installed AOL on their computer...still has invasive files from AOL..which are undetectable by the BEST protections offered today.
Don't take my word for that either.
In fact. Forget I said anything. Why do I even bother?

I didn't go by Wiki as you imply, I simply linked to that page for others to understand where this accusation is coming from. My not believing is so far based on lack of any proof. I have searched my computer, nothing. I have had AOL before, and know people who still have it. What do you mean by "invasive files"? Are you saying some sort of spying, like the accusation about Microsoft and the NSA? What proof is there for either of these? With so many geeks in this country, and both software obviously available to the public, one would think there would be legit proof of these accusations. It IS black and white when it comes to programming and software. If an engineer looked at a machine, they should be able to prove that there is spying software, outgoing packets or software that does more than described. This doesn't mean I'm stating it's 100% wrong, or impossible. But if this is true about earlier versions of Windows, or AOL - why not just show the world how either of these pieces of software is doing as accused? This isn't an opinion thing, but rather that it exists or it does not exist.

Contrary to your wording, I can do the searches, and have done what you state. I even went one step further and spent a great deal of time to read about said accusations, to see for myself what proof is out there. I won't take your word for it as you state, nor would I take the word of Microsoft or AOL. I have done some research from both sides, and simply don't see any proof of the claims.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on the MS issue, at least until someone comes forward with actual proof showing a computer doing what they accuse them of. As for AOL, I will reserve further opinion until I see some links from you showing what it is you are talking about. But I'll give you an idea why I don't believe such claims at face value. One can image a machine, the install software, delete software, make changes - and then compare the images for any and all changes. These changes after an AOL install, or what's left after a removal, would be fairly easy to detect.

In fact. Forget I said anything. Why do I even bother?

I don't know. Is it because I didn't immediately agree with you? Why would you want me to forget it? Isn't the point to discuss things here, to debate what we have differences about? I'm not sure why you bother either, if you're only going to dismiss those who have a differing opinion.

aboutime

06-26-2013, 12:47 PM

I didn't go by Wiki as you imply, I simply linked to that page for others to understand where this accusation is coming from. My not believing is so far based on lack of any proof. I have searched my computer, nothing. I have had AOL before, and know people who still have it. What do you mean by "invasive files"? Are you saying some sort of spying, like the accusation about Microsoft and the NSA? What proof is there for either of these? With so many geeks in this country, and both software obviously available to the public, one would think there would be legit proof of these accusations. It IS black and white when it comes to programming and software. If an engineer looked at a machine, they should be able to prove that there is spying software, outgoing packets or software that does more than described. This doesn't mean I'm stating it's 100% wrong, or impossible. But if this is true about earlier versions of Windows, or AOL - why not just show the world how either of these pieces of software is doing as accused? This isn't an opinion thing, but rather that it exists or it does not exist.

Contrary to your wording, I can do the searches, and have done what you state. I even went one step further and spent a great deal of time to read about said accusations, to see for myself what proof is out there. I won't take your word for it as you state, nor would I take the word of Microsoft or AOL. I have done some research from both sides, and simply don't see any proof of the claims.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on the MS issue, at least until someone comes forward with actual proof showing a computer doing what they accuse them of. As for AOL, I will reserve further opinion until I see some links from you showing what it is you are talking about. But I'll give you an idea why I don't believe such claims at face value. One can image a machine, the install software, delete software, make changes - and then compare the images for any and all changes. These changes after an AOL install, or what's left after a removal, would be fairly easy to detect.

I don't know. Is it because I didn't immediately agree with you? Why would you want me to forget it? Isn't the point to discuss things here, to debate what we have differences about? I'm not sure why you bother either, if you're only going to dismiss those who have a differing opinion.

Jim. The very reason I said "FORGET IT" can be seen in your lengthy diatribe above.
As for AOL. Anyone who has ever installed AOL on their PC still has hidden files from AOL in more than One directory.
As I said. You don't need to believe me.
But...why would I have any reason to intentionally lie to you?
NEVER MIND. means that.

jimnyc

06-26-2013, 12:58 PM

Jim. The very reason I said "FORGET IT" can be seen in your lengthy diatribe above.
As for AOL. Anyone who has ever installed AOL on their PC still has hidden files from AOL in more than One directory.
As I said. You don't need to believe me.
But...why would I have any reason to intentionally lie to you?
NEVER MIND. means that.

So now what I wrote is diatribe? Did I attack you, or what you wrote somehow? I think I was reasonable in my thoughts and explained myself in length for better understanding. As for the AOL "issue", so be it. You claim it has "hidden files". If it were hidden, how are you aware of it? And if you're aware of it, why would you prefer to get touchy with me as opposed to simply posting proof via a link to backup what you're stating? I never once stated you lied, but you wouldn't be the first person to be misinformed about something. But if you want to post and run, like Gabby does, and dismiss anyone who replies to what you write - maybe just not write it next time? Or perhaps just don't reply to those who do decide to reply to a rant with no facts to back it up?

revelarts

06-26-2013, 01:03 PM

jimnyc

06-26-2013, 01:15 PM

https://www.google.com/search?q=proof+nsa+backdoor+microsoft&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Jim I did search with these terms
"Proof nsa backdoor microsoft"
2 of many returns

http://techrights.org/2013/06/15/nsa-and-microsoft/

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/06/microsoft-programmed-in-nsa-backdoor-in-windows-by-1999.html

but like a lot of things along this line I'm never sure what you consider "proof".
sometimes you ask for "irrefutable proof" before you'll consider an alternative seriously.
But there's information available , is it "proof" to you :dunno:

Proof in technology is easy. You simply provide code to experts and show how it is used for malicious reasons. I'm not a cryptographer, but I can explain in our terms. Similar to a .PHP file that comes with various scripts on can buy, like vbulletin we are using here on this website. If one claims a PHP file was snuck in there for whatever malicious reasons, the file can simply be looked at and the code exposed. The difference being, PHP is much easier to read. But the principle is the same. I'm only halfway through your second article, and nothing yet. And the first article mentions the name of the key and the name of a DLL file, but c'mon, there has to be at least a SMALL amount of proof offered! In a case like this, irrefutable proof is the ONLY way to end the mystery and is pretty much the ONLY proof they could really offer. It's as simple as exposing the code and showing what it does. If they can't expose the code, and can't explain what it does, then how can one make such an accusation? I'll even read more if you have it, and peek around myself. I'm open to things like this being true, but won't accept anything less than actually seeing the proof. I've honestly only seen names and generalizations in everything I have read. But again, if someone was able to view the code and saw it as a backdoor and/or malicious code, then they can simply show us what they saw themselves. I would call this "information" I've seen thus far as 'file names' and 'key names'.

jimnyc

06-26-2013, 01:19 PM

Let me add the following before I get hit with it...

I don't support any back doors built into software, but I know it happens. I don't trust Microsoft any further than I can toss their HQ building. It wouldn't surprise me if I ultimately do see the proof I would need. Being as large as they are, and as powerful, I have little doubt about any perceived connections they have with the government and/or intelligence agencies. The same with AOL, and I've always hated them. But it appears these are 2 different scenarios.

revelarts

06-26-2013, 01:31 PM

Proof in technology is easy. You simply provide code to experts and show how it is used for malicious reasons. I'm not a cryptographer, but I can explain in our terms. Similar to a .PHP file that comes with various scripts on can buy, like vbulletin we are using here on this website. If one claims a PHP file was snuck in there for whatever malicious reasons, the file can simply be looked at and the code exposed. The difference being, PHP is much easier to read. But the principle is the same. I'm only halfway through your second article, and nothing yet. And the first article mentions the name of the key and the name of a DLL file, but c'mon, there has to be at least a SMALL amount of proof offered! In a case like this, irrefutable proof is the ONLY way to end the mystery and is pretty much the ONLY proof they could really offer. It's as simple as exposing the code and showing what it does. If they can't expose the code, and can't explain what it does, then how can one make such an accusation? I'll even read more if you have it, and peek around myself. I'm open to things like this being true, but won't accept anything less than actually seeing the proof. I've honestly only seen names and generalizations in everything I have read. But again, if someone was able to view the code and saw it as a backdoor and/or malicious code, then they can simply show us what they saw themselves. I would call this "information" I've seen thus far as 'file names' and 'key names'.

so seeing something in the code call "NSAkey" is not proof. you personally want to know how it is a key by looking at the full code.
http://www.debatepolicy.com/showthread.php?41452-NSA-Backdoor-into-all-windows-machines&p=647389#post647389

And the NSA Saying they tell the NSA about unpatched holes before they fix it is not a "real" key it's just a potential key/backdoor to hack into others stuff so it doesn't count to you?

jimnyc

06-26-2013, 02:38 PM

so seeing something in the code call "NSAkey" is not proof. you personally want to know how it is a key by looking at the full code.
http://www.debatepolicy.com/showthread.php?41452-NSA-Backdoor-into-all-windows-machines&p=647389#post647389

And the NSA Saying they tell the NSA about unpatched holes before they fix it is not a "real" key it's just a potential key/backdoor to hack into others stuff so it doesn't count to you?

Seeing a key with the name NSA in it is proof of a name, that's all. And the explanation makes a hell of a lot more sense than a company like Microsoft putting their entire business on the line with something that could be found and exposed.

From the same Wiki article:

Microsoft denied the speculations on _NSAKEY. "This report is inaccurate and unfounded. The key in question is a Microsoft key. It is maintained and safeguarded by Microsoft, and we have not shared this key with the NSA or any other party."[3] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY#cite_note-3) Microsoft said that the key's symbol was "_NSAKEY" because the NSA is the technical review authority for U.S. export controls, and the key ensures compliance with U.S. export laws.[4] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY#cite_note-NoBackdoor-4)

Sounds very reasonable to me. More reasonable than one of the largest and most powerful companies making a glaring mistake and even naming something in an incriminating manner. Either way, the name offers nothing as far as proof is concerned.

Maybe they tell the NSA as part of the laws it falls under, and they need to be aware? Maybe it's for security purposes, and the NSA may need to be aware of servers, government computers and the likes being in 'danger'? I honestly don't know why they would inform them first/quickly. Maybe even they were helping with encryption issues? Who knows, but them being in contact with the NSA is only proof that they are in contact with the NSA. Apparently this has been around for like 15 years. In that time I'm surprised that a hacker/geek/programmer, or even a MS insider, couldn't find out specifics about any alleged back door made specifically for the NSA.

red states rule

06-26-2013, 03:09 PM

http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/sbr062613dAPR20130626034518.jpg

revelarts

06-26-2013, 07:03 PM

Seeing a key with the name NSA in it is proof of a name, that's all. And the explanation makes a hell of a lot more sense than a company like Microsoft putting their entire business on the line with something that could be found and exposed.

From the same Wiki article:

Sounds very reasonable to me. More reasonable than one of the largest and most powerful companies making a glaring mistake and even naming something in an incriminating manner. Either way, the name offers nothing as far as proof is concerned.

Maybe they tell the NSA as part of the laws it falls under, and they need to be aware? Maybe it's for security purposes, and the NSA may need to be aware of servers, government computers and the likes being in 'danger'? I honestly don't know why they would inform them first/quickly. Maybe even they were helping with encryption issues? Who knows, but them being in contact with the NSA is only proof that they are in contact with the NSA. Apparently this has been around for like 15 years. In that time I'm surprised that a hacker/geek/programmer, or even a MS insider, couldn't find out specifics about any alleged back door made specifically for the NSA.

Maybe they use it as a backdoor, maybe.
you say you don't trust Mircrosoft. And the NSA has proven that it lies so we can't trust them.
And even if they maybe don't have a backdoor we now know that they are recording everything that comes from all of our computers though the front door.
So it seems reasonable to me that they might like to have full access to any computer via a backdoor as well.
for our safety.

ANd If it is made MORE public than it already is, I'm sure some folks will claim that it's legal for the gov't to do because of the patriot act or executive war powers or the moon is in Aquarius.

And the Hacker or whistle blower that reveals the details your requesting will be called a traitor and a criminal for exposing super top secret national security life and death info of the sanctimonious gov't and mircrosoft mega corp .
Thaaat we already know about today , if we take the current reports seriously.

red states rule

06-27-2013, 02:28 AM

https://www.privacyassociation.org/media/images/publications/girlfriend.jpg

revelarts

06-27-2013, 06:56 AM

jimnyc

06-27-2013, 10:16 AM

that one of the things that bugs me the most. Everything we do is suppose to be a open book. Accessible anytime with or without request to anyone in the gov't. . The Nsa , Police Irs all EXPECT us to hand info over "or else".

But we have beg (FIOA) to get most any info from anywhere in the Gov't and some info we just don't have the privilege to get. they just deny they have it or say it's classified. And More and more things begin life classified as secret and if a gov't employee revels any classified info they are considered a CRIMINAL. There no assumption of "...if you haven't done anything wrong..." nearly everything the gov't does is life or death if it becomes public somehow, utter BS.
Even when the gov't is caught in the act of doing wrong the "internal investigation" is secret while any investigations of you or I are PUBLIC.
It completely backwards, they work for us, the bosses get to see what the civil servants are doing not the other way around.

WHy don't we have the power to Classify our property as Classified, Secret and top secret. with Zero Access to it except by court order. OH wait that's the way it USED TO BE. but we are in the modern day now we can't expect the gov't to give us the same respect they want from us somehow. that's extreme crazy talk. computers access only works one way.

In theory I agree with you, to an extent. And I wish things could be that simple and forward, so don't bite my head off for the following...

This is why were elect "responsible" people, those who are supposed to be a part of oversight on intelligence based things. They aren't supposed to be granted unlimited powers, nor get away with anything they please. Their activities should have oversight via several intelligence committees in congress. It would appear that the agencies are gaining more power than necessary, and the "oversight" is either granting it to them, or not properly doing their jobs by keeping Americans safe from violations.

But we can't just have intelligence agencies with public information, or easily accessible information. If it was "easy", then there wouldn't be much point in having these agencies and their intelligence, which would no longer be national security secrets, unless they were kept secret, to the agency and those in the need to know.

With that said, I DO think there are a lot of other things in government, that are kept secret, that aren't from intelligence agencies. Unless having to do with security, I think almost all of what goes on by those representing us should be available to the public.

As for citizens, I agree that they also overreach when we get demands from the IRS and other government agencies. Some things are pertinent, but a lot isn't. And I agree, regardless, we don't have an option on many things. This goes back to the shitheads we put in office. Protections should be there, and stay there, and they should be fighting FOR us, not the other way around.

And one last thing - "if a gov't employee revels any classified info they are considered a CRIMINAL."

IMO, only a criminal if they perform a criminal act. Look at your latest example, Tice, who I also used as an example. Probably not the results that you would like out of any investigations, or lack thereof, but he's not a criminal, as he committed no criminal acts when presenting his issues to congress.

revelarts

06-27-2013, 10:49 AM

In theory I agree with you, to an extent. And I wish things could be that simple and forward, so don't bite my head off for the following...

This is why were elect "responsible" people, those who are supposed to be a part of oversight on intelligence based things. They aren't supposed to be granted unlimited powers, nor get away with anything they please. Their activities should have oversight via several intelligence committees in congress. It would appear that the agencies are gaining more power than necessary, and the "oversight" is either granting it to them, or not properly doing their jobs by keeping Americans safe from violations.

But we can't just have intelligence agencies with public information, or easily accessible information. If it was "easy", then there wouldn't be much point in having these agencies and their intelligence, which would no longer be national security secrets, unless they were kept secret, to the agency and those in the need to know.

With that said, I DO think there are a lot of other things in government, that are kept secret, that aren't from intelligence agencies. Unless having to do with security, I think almost all of what goes on by those representing us should be available to the public.

As for citizens, I agree that they also overreach when we get demands from the IRS and other government agencies. Some things are pertinent, but a lot isn't. And I agree, regardless, we don't have an option on many things. This goes back to the shitheads we put in office. Protections should be there, and stay there, and they should be fighting FOR us, not the other way around.

And one last thing - "if a gov't employee revels any classified info they are considered a CRIMINAL."

IMO, only a criminal if they perform a criminal act. Look at your latest example, Tice, who I also used as an example. Probably not the results that you would like out of any investigations, or lack thereof, but he's not a criminal, as he committed no criminal acts when presenting his issues to congress.

I agree with a lot of that Jim.
As far as Tice Goes he may have been the exception rather than the rule though Jim. Tom Drake reported though channels as well and was charged with horrible crimes. So did Sybel Edmonds and she was fired and gagged, threatened and family threatened overseas. Bill Binney was fired and the Fbi raided house put a gun to his head and laid False Charges against him. to name a few. Going though proper channels is not safe or fair. Russ Tice himself recommends now that a whistle blowers release information completely anonymously if possible, because the system is so broken.

revelarts

07-09-2013, 08:41 AM

The Fact that Mass Surveillance Doesn’t Keep Us Safe
...

Source: Washington's Blog

The fact that mass spying on Americans isn’t necessary to keep us safe is finally going mainstream.
The top counter-terrorism czar under Presidents Clinton and Bush – Richard Clarke – says (http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/worry-nsa-article-1.1369705):

The argument that this sweeping search must be kept secret from the terrorists is laughable. Terrorists already assume this sort of thing is being done. Only law-abiding American citizens were blissfully ignorant of what their government was doing.
***
If the government wanted a particular set of records, it could tell the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court why — and then be granted permission to access those records directly from specially maintained company servers. The telephone companies would not have to know what data were being accessed. There are no technical disadvantages to doing it that way, although it might be more expensive.
Would we, as a nation, be willing to pay a little more for a program designed this way, to avoid a situation in which the government keeps on its own computers a record of every time anyone picks up a telephone? That is a question that should have been openly asked and answered in Congress.
William Binney – the head of NSA’s digital communications program – says (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/06/we-have-the-technological-ability-to-keep-americans-safe-without-spying-on-everyone.html) that he set up the NSA’s system so that all of the information would automatically be encrypted, so that the government had to obtain a search warrant based upon probably cause before a particular suspect’s communications could be decrypted. But the NSA now collects all data in an unencrypted form, so that no probable cause is needed to view any citizen’s information. He says that it is actually cheaper and easier to store the data in an encrypted format: so the government’s current system is being done for political – not practical – purposes. Binney’s statements have been confirmed by other high-level NSA whistleblowers (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/06/we-have-the-technological-ability-to-keep-americans-safe-without-spying-on-everyone.html).
Binney also says:

Massive surveillance doesn’t work to make us safer (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/06/the-dirty-little-secret-about-nsa-spying-it-doesnt-work.html)

The government is using information gained through mass surveillance in order to go after anyone they take a dislike to (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/06/top-spying-experts-even-good-people-should-oppose-spying-because-if-someone-in-government-takes-a-dislike-to-you-the-surveillance-can-be-used-to-frame-you.html) (a lieutenant colonel for the Stasi East German’s agrees (http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/06/26/195045/memories-of-stasi-color-germans.html#.Ucykpth31ac))

NSA whistleblower J. Kirk Wiebe (http://www.whistleblower.org/press/press-release-archive/2013/2745-nsa-domestic-spying-revelation-vindicates-gap-clients) has long said that such intrusions on Americans’ privacy were never necessary to protect national security. NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake (http://m.guardiannews.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/12/snowden-surveillance-subverting-constitution) agrees. So does NSA whistleblower Russell Tice (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russ_Tice#Whistleblower).
Israeli-American terrorism expert Barry Rubins points out (http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2013/06/by-barry-rubin-what-is-most-important.html):

What is most important to understand about the revelations of massive message interception by the U.S. government is this:
In counterterrorist terms, it is a farce. Basically the NSA, as one of my readers suggested, is the digital equivalent of the TSA strip-searching an 80 year-old Minnesota grandmothers rather than profiling and focusing on the likely terrorists.
***
And isn’t it absurd that the United States can’t … stop a would-be terrorist in the U.S. army who gives a power point presentation on why he is about to shoot people (Major Nadal Hassan), can’t follow up on Russian intelligence warnings about Chechen terrorist contacts (the Boston bombing), or a dozen similar incidents must now collect every telephone call in the country? A system in which a photo shop clerk has to stop an attack on Fort Dix by overcoming his fear of appearing “racist” to report a cell of terrorists or brave passengers must jump a would-be “underpants bomber” from Nigeria because his own father’s warning that he was a terrorist was insufficient?
And how about a country where terrorists and terrorist supporters visit the White House, hang out with the FBI, advise the U.S. government on counter-terrorist policy (even while, like CAIR) advising Muslims not to cooperate with law enforcement….
***
Or how about the time when (http://muqata.blogspot.co.il/2010/01/why-us-will-lose-war-against-islamic.html)the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem had a (previously jailed) Hamas agent working in their motor pool with direct access to the vehicles and itineraries of all visiting US dignitaries and senior officials.
***
Suppose the U.S. ambassador to Libya warns that the American compound there may be attacked. No response. Then he tells the deputy chief of mission that he is under attack. No response. Then the U.S. military is not allowed to respond. Then the president goes to sleep without making a decision about doing anything because communications break down between the secretaries of defense and state and the president, who goes to sleep because he has a very important fund-raiser the next day. But don’t worry because three billion telephone calls by Americans are daily being intercepted and supposedly analyzed.
In other words, you have a massive counterterrorist project costing $1 trillion but when it comes down to it the thing repeatedly fails. In that case, to quote the former secretary of state, “”What difference does it make?”
If one looks at the great intelligence failures of the past, these two points quickly become obvious. Take for example the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. U.S. naval intelligence had broken Japanese codes. They had the information needed to conclude the attack would take place. Yet a focus on the key to the problem was not achieved. The important messages were not read and interpreted; the strategic mindset of the leadership was not in place.
***
And remember that the number of terrorists caught by the TSA hovers around the zero level. The shoe, underpants, and Times Square bombers weren’t even caught by security at all and many other such cases can be listed. In addition to this, the U.S.-Mexico border is practically open.
**
The war on al-Qaida has not really been won, since its continued campaigning is undeniable and it has even [B]grown in Syria, partly thanks to U.S. policy.
***
So the problem of growing government spying is three-fold.
–First, it is against the American system and reduces liberty.
–Second, it is a misapplication of resources, in other words money is being spent and liberty sacrificed for no real gain.
–Third, since government decisionmaking and policy about international terrorism is very bad the threat is increasing.
Senators Wyden and Udall – both on the Senate Intelligence Committee, with access to all of the top-secret information about the government’s spying programs – write (http://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-udall-statement-on-the-disclosure-of-bulk-email-records-collection-program):

“We are quite familiar with the bulk email records collection program that operated under the USA Patriot Act and has now been confirmed by senior intelligence officials. We were very concerned about this program’s impact on Americans’ civil liberties and privacy rights, and we spent a significant portion of 2011 pressing intelligence officials to provide evidence of its effectiveness. They were unable to do so ….
***
In our judgment it is also important to note that intelligence agencies made statements to both Congress and the Court that significantly exaggerated this program’s effectiveness. This experience demonstrates to us that intelligence agencies’ assessments of the usefulness of particular collection programs – even significant ones – are not always accurate. This experience has also led us to be skeptical of claims about the value of the bulk phone records collection program in particular.
***
Assertions from intelligence agencies about the value and effectiveness of particular programs should not simply be accepted at face value by policymakers or oversight bodies any more than statements about the usefulness of other government programs should be taken at face value when they are made by other government officials. It is up to Congress, the courts and the public to ask the tough questions and press even experienced intelligence officials to back their assertions up with actual evidence, rather than simply deferring to these officials’ conclusions without challenging them.
NBC News reported (http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/privacy-vs-security-false-choice-poisons-debate-nsa-leaks-6C10536226) 2 days ago:

“I’ve never liked the idea of security vs. privacy, because no one feels more secure in a surveillance state,” said Bruce Schneier, security expert and author of Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Insecure World. “There’s plenty of examples of security that doesn’t infringe on privacy. They are all around. Door locks. Fences … Firewalls. People are forgetting that quite a lot of security doesn’t affect privacy. The real dichotomy is liberty vs. control.”
Dan Solove, a privacy law expert at George Washington University Law School, said the privacy vs. security framing has interfered with what could be a healthy national debate about using high-tech tools to fight terror.
“You have pollsters and pundits and (National Intelligence Director James) Clapper saying, ‘Do you want us to catch the terrorists or do you want privacy?’ But that’s a false choice. It’s like asking, ‘Do you want the police to exist or not?’” he said. “We already have the most invasive investigative techniques permissible with the right oversight. With probable cause you can search my home. … People want limitations and transparency, so they can make a choice about how much surveillance (they) are willing to tolerate.”
By creating an either/or tension between privacy and security, government officials have invented a heavy weapon to wield against those who raise civil liberties concerns, he said. It’s easy to cast the choice in stark terms: Who wouldn’t trade a little personal data to save even one American life?
An honest, open examination of surveillance programs might show the choice is not so simple, says Ashkan Soltani, an independent security researcher.
“The government feels like they need all this information in order to do its job, that there can’t be security without them having access to everything. Well, that’s a lazy or shortsighted way of seeing things,” he says. “The idea I reject is that you need to violate everyone’s privacy rather than be better at your job of identifying specific (targets).’”
An article on Bloomberg notes that real terrorists don’t even use the normal phone service or publicly-visible portions of the web that we innocent Americans use (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-23/u-s-surveillance-is-not-aimed-at-terrorists.html):

The debate over the U.S. government’s monitoring of digital communications suggests that Americans are willing to allow it as long as it is genuinely targeted at terrorists. What they fail to realize is that the surveillance systems are best suited for gathering information on law-abiding citizens.
***
The infrastructure set up by the National Security Agency, however, may only be good for gathering information on the stupidest, lowest-ranking of terrorists. The Prism surveillance program focuses on access to the servers of America’s largest Internet companies, which support such popular services as Skype, Gmail and iCloud. These are not the services that truly dangerous elements typically use.
In a January 2012 report (https://www.aivd.nl/english/publications-press/@2873/jihadism-web/) titled “Jihadism on the Web: A Breeding Ground for Jihad in the Modern Age,” the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service drew a convincing picture of an Islamist Web underground centered around “core forums.” These websites are part of the Deep Web, or Undernet, the multitude of online resources not indexed by commonly used search engines.
The Netherlands’ security service, which couldn’t find recent data on the size of the Undernet, cited a 2003 study from the University of California at Berkeley as the “latest available scientific assessment.” The study found that just 0.2 percent of the Internet could be searched. The rest remained inscrutable and has probably grown since. In 2010, Google Inc. said it had indexed just 0.004 percent of the information on the Internet.
Websites aimed at attracting traffic do their best to get noticed, paying to tailor their content to the real or perceived requirements of search engines such as Google. Terrorists have no such ambitions. They prefer to lurk in the dark recesses of the Undernet.
“People who radicalise under the influence of jihadist websites often go through a number of stages,” the Dutch report said. “Their virtual activities increasingly shift to the invisible Web, their security awareness increases and their activities become more conspiratorial.”
***
Communication on the core forums is often encrypted. In 2012, a French court found nuclear physicist Adlene Hicheur guilty of, among other things, conspiring to commit an act of terror for distributing and using software called Asrar al-Mujahideen, or Mujahideen Secrets. The program employed various cutting-edge encryption methods, including variable stealth ciphers and RSA 2,048-bit keys.
***
Even complete access to these servers brings U.S. authorities no closer to the core forums. These must be infiltrated by more traditional intelligence means, such as using agents posing as jihadists or by informants within terrorist organizations.
Similarly, monitoring phone calls is hardly the way to catch terrorists. They’re generally not dumb enough to use Verizon.
***
At best, the recent revelations concerning Prism and telephone surveillance might deter potential recruits to terrorist causes from using the most visible parts of the Internet. Beyond that, the government’s efforts are much more dangerous to civil liberties than they are to al-Qaeda and other organizations like it.
(And see this (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/06/no-nsa-spying-did-not-prevent-a-terror-attack-on-wall-street.html).)
Mass Spying Actually HURTS – Rather than Helps – Anti-Terror Efforts
Not yet convinced?
Former NSA executive William Binney – who was the head of the NSA’s entire digital spying program – told (http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/10/what-do-they-know-about-you-an-interview-with-nsa-analyst-william-binney/3/) Daily Caller that the spying dragnet being carried out by the government is less than useless:

Daily Caller: So it seems logical to ask: Why do we need all of this new data collection when they’re not following up obvious leads, such as an intelligence agency calling and saying you need to be aware of this particular terrorist?
Binney: It’s sensible to ask, but that’s exactly what they’re doing. They’re making themselves dysfunctional by collecting all of this data. They’ve got so much collection capability but they can’t do everything.
***
[All this data gathered is] putting an extra burden on all of their analysts. It’s not something that’s going to help them; it’s something that’s burdensome. There are ways to do the analysis properly, but they don’t really want the solution because if they got it, they wouldn’t be able to keep demanding the money to solve it. I call it their business statement, “Keep the problems going so the money keeps flowing.” It’s all about contracts and money.

***

The issue is, can you figure out what’s important in it? And figure out the intentions and capabilities of the people you’re monitoring? And they are in no way prepared to do that, because that takes analysis. That’s what the big data initiative (http://www.whitehouse.gov/innovationfellows/open-data-initiatives) was all about out of the White House last year. It was to try to get algorithms and figure out what’s important and tell the people what’s important so that they can find things. The probability of them finding what’s really there is low.
Indeed, even before 9/11 – when Binney was building the precursor to the NSA’s current digital collection system – there weren’t enough analysts to look through the more modest amount of data (http://www.pcworld.com/article/2043080/former-nsa-leakers-we-told-you-so.html) being collected at the time:

The danger of the mass collection of data by the NSA is that it “buries” analysts in data, said Binney, who developed a surveillance program called ThinThread (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinThread) intended to allow the NSA to look at data but not collect it. The NSA dumped that program in favor of more extensive data collection.
“The biggest problem was getting data to a manageable level,” he said. “We didn’t have enough people, we couldn’t hire enough people east of the Mississippi to manage all the data we were getting.”
Terrorism expert Barry Rubins writes (http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2013/06/by-barry-rubin-what-is-most-important.html):

There is a fallacy behind the current intelligence strategy of the United States, the collection of massive amounts of phone calls, emails, and even credit card expenditures, up to 3 billion phone calls a day alone, not to mention the government spying on the mass media. It is this:
The more quantity of intelligence, the better it is for preventing terrorism.
In the real, practical world this is—though it might seem counterintuitive—untrue. You don’t need–to put it in an exaggerated way–an atomic bomb against a flea. The intelligence budget is not unlimited, is it? Where should hiring priorities be put?
***
It is not the quantity of material that counts but the need to locate and correctly understand the most vital material. This requires your security forces to understand the ideological, psychological, and organizational nature of the threat.
***
If the U.S. government can’t even figure out what the Muslim Brotherhood is like or the dangers of supporting Islamists to take over Syria, or the fact that the Turkish regime is an American enemy, or can’t even teach military officers who the enemy is, what’s it going to do with scores of billions of telephone call traffic to overcome terrorism? It isn’t even using the intelligence material it already has!
If, however, the material is almost limitless, that actually weakens a focus on the most needed intelligence regarding the most likely terrorist threats. Imagine, for example, going through billions of telephone calls even with high-speed computers rather than, say, following up a tip from Russian intelligence on a young Chechen man in Boston who is in contact with terrorists or, for instance, the communications between a Yemeni al-Qaida leader and a U.S. army major who is assigned as a psychiatrist to Fort Hood.
That is why the old system of getting warrants, focusing on individual email addresses, or sites, or telephones makes sense, at least if it is only used properly. Then those people who are communicating with known terrorists can be traced further. There are no technological magic spells. If analysts are incompetent … and leaders unwilling to take proper action, who cares how much data was collected?
***
Decision-makers and intelligence analysts only have so many hours in the day. There can only be so many meetings; only so many priorities. And the policymaking pyramid narrows rapidly toward the top. There is a point of diminishing returns for the size of an intelligence bureaucracy. Lower-priority tasks proliferate; too much paper is generated and meetings are held; the system clogs when it has too much data.
PC World reports (http://www.pcworld.com/article/2042976/critics-question-whether-nsa-data-collection-is-effective.html):

“In knowing a lot about a lot of different people [the data collection] is great for that,” said Mike German, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent whose policy counsel for national security at the American Civil Liberties Union. “In actually finding the very few bad actors that are out there, not so good.”
The mass collection of data from innocent people “won’t tell you how guilty people act,” German added. The problem with catching terrorism suspects has never been the inability to collect information, but to analyze the “oceans” of information collected, he said.
Mass data collection is “like trying to look for needles by building bigger haystacks,” added Wendy Grossman, a freelance technology writer who helped organize the conference.
New Republic notes (http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113416/nsa-spying-scandal-data-mining-isnt-good-keeping-us-safe):

This kind of dragnet-style data capture simply doesn’t keep us safe.
First, intelligence and law enforcement agencies are increasingly drowning in data; the more that comes in, the harder it is to stay afloat. Most recently, the failure of the intelligence community to intercept the 2009 “underwear bomber” was blamed in large part on a surfeit of information: according to an official White House review (http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/summary_of_wh_review_12-25-09.pdf), a significant amount of critical information was “embedded in a large volume of other data.” Similarly, the independent investigation (http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113416/nsa-spying-scandal-data-mining-isnt-good-keeping-us-safe#_top) of the alleged shootings by U.S. Army Major Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood concluded that the “crushing volume” of information was one of the factors that hampered the FBI’s analysis before the attack.
Multiple security officials have echoed this assessment. As one veteran CIA agent told (http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2010-01-06/opinions/36805490_1_cia-base-cia-veteran-agency-officers) The Washington Post in 2010, “The problem is that the system is clogged with information. Most of it isn’t of interest, but people are afraid not to put it in.” A former Department of Homeland Security official told (http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/media/investigative-report-criticizes-counterterrorism-reporting-waste-at-state-and-local-intelligence-fusion-centers) a Senate subcommittee that there was “a lot of data clogging the system with no value.” Even former Defense Secretary Robert Gates acknowledged (http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control) that “we’ve built tremendous capability, but do we have more than we need?” And the NSA itself was brought to a grinding halt before 9/11 by the “torrent of data” pouring into the system, leaving the agency “brain-dead” for half a week and “[unable] to process information,” as its then-director Gen. Michael Hayden publicly acknowledged (http://www.economist.com/node/15557507).
National security hawks say there’s a simple answer to this glut: data mining. The NSA has apparently described (http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-06-06/billions-of-phone-calls-mined-by-u-dot-s-dot-in-search-for-terrorists) its computer systems as having the ability to “manipulate and analyze huge volumes of data at mind-boggling speeds.” Could those systems pore through this information trove to come up with unassailable patterns of terrorist activity? The Department of Defense (http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/rare.pdf) and security experts (http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2006/03/70357?currentPage=all) have concluded that the answer is no: There is simply no known way to effectively anticipate terrorist threats.
***
The FBI’s and NSA’s scheme is an affront to democratic values. Let’s also not pretend it’s an effective and efficient way of keeping us safe.
Fortune writes that the NSA’s “big data” strategy is ineffective: (http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2013/06/10/big-data-nsa-spying-is-not-even-an-effective-strategy/)

The evidence for big data is scant at best. To date, large fields of data have generated meaningful insights at times, but not on the scale many have promised. This disappointment has been documented in the Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324196204578298381588348290.html), Information Week (http://www.informationweek.com/software/information-management/vague-goals-seed-big-data-failures/240147135), and SmartData Collective (http://smartdatacollective.com/paulbarsch/109461/big-data-success-stories-grain-salt).
***
According to my firm’s research, local farmers in India with tiny fields frequently outperform — in productivity and sustainability — a predictive global model developed by one of the world’s leading agrochemical companies. Why? Because they develop unique planting, fertilizing, or harvesting practices linked to the uniqueness of their soil, their weather pattern, or the rare utilization of some compost. There is more to learn from a local Indian outlier than from building a giant multivariate yield prediction model of all farms in the world. The same is true for terrorism. Don’t look for a needle in a giant haystack. Find one needle in a small clump of hay and see whether similar clumps of hay also contain needles.
You need local knowledge to glean insights from any data. I once ran a data-mining project with Wal-Mart (WMT (http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=WMT)) where we tried to figure out sales patterns in New England. One of the questions was, “Why are our gun sales lower in Massachusetts than in other states, even accounting for the liberal bias of the state?” The answer: There were city ordinances prohibiting the sale of guns in many towns. I still remember the disappointed look of my client when he realized the answer had come from a few phone calls to store managers rather than from a multivariate regression model.
So, please, Mr. President, stop building your giant database in the sky and quit hoping that algorithm experts will generate a terrorist prevention strategy from that data. Instead, rely on your people in the field to detect suspicious local patterns of behavior, communication, or spending, then aggregate data for the folks involved and let your data hounds loose on these focused samples. You and I will both sleep better. And I won’t have to worry about who is lurking in the shadows of my business or bedroom.
Security expert Bruce Schneier explained (http://www.schneier.com/essay-108.html) in 2005:

Many believe data mining is the crystal ball that will enable us to uncover future terrorist plots. But even in the most wildly optimistic projections, data mining isn’t tenable for that purpose. We’re not trading privacy for security; we’re giving up privacy and getting no security in return.
***
The promise of data mining is compelling, and convinces many. But it’s wrong. We’re not going to find terrorist plots through systems like this, and we’re going to waste valuable resources chasing down false alarms.
***
Data-mining systems won’t uncover any terrorist plots until they are very accurate, and that even very accurate systems will be so flooded with false alarms that they will be useless.
All data-mining systems fail in two different ways: false positives and false negatives.
***
Data mining for terrorist plots will be sloppy, and it’ll be hard to find anything useful.
***
When it comes to terrorism, however, trillions of connections exist between people and events — things that the data-mining system will have to “look at” — and very few plots. This rarity makes even accurate identification systems useless.
Let’s look at some numbers. We’ll be optimistic — we’ll assume the system has a one in 100 false-positive rate (99 percent accurate), and a one in 1,000 false-negative rate (99.9 percent accurate). Assume 1 trillion possible indicators to sift through: that’s about 10 events — e-mails, phone calls, purchases, web destinations, whatever — per person in the United States per day. Also assume that 10 of them are actually terrorists plotting.
This unrealistically accurate system will generate 1 billion false alarms for every real terrorist plot it uncovers. Every day of every year, the police will have to investigate 27 million potential plots in order to find the one real terrorist plot per month. Raise that false-positive accuracy to an absurd 99.9999 percent and you’re still chasing 2,750 false alarms per day — but that will inevitably raise your false negatives, and you’re going to miss some of those 10 real plots.
This isn’t anything new. In statistics, it’s called the “base rate fallacy,” and it applies in other domains as well. For example, even highly accurate medical tests are useless as diagnostic tools if the incidence of the disease is rare in the general population. Terrorist attacks are also rare, any “test” is going to result in an endless stream of false alarms.
This is exactly the sort of thing we saw with the NSA’s eavesdropping program: the <cite>New York Times</cite> reported that the computers spat out thousands of tips (http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/01/post_1.html) per month. Every one of them turned out to be a false alarm.
And the cost was enormous — not just for the FBI agents running around chasing dead-end leads instead of doing things that might actually make us safer, but also the cost in civil liberties.
***
Finding terrorism plots is not a problem that lends itself to data mining. It’s a needle-in-a-haystack problem, and throwing more hay on the pile doesn’t make that problem any easier. We’d be far better off putting people in charge of investigating potential plots and letting them direct the computers, instead of putting the computers in charge and letting them decide who should be investigated.
Schneier noted (http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/10/data_mining_for_1.html) in 2008:

According to a massive report (http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12452) from the National Research Council, data mining for terrorists doesn’t work.
NBC News reports (http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/privacy-vs-security-false-choice-poisons-debate-nsa-leaks-6C10536226):

Casting such wide nets is also ineffective, [security researcher Ashkan Soltani] argues. Collecting mountains and mountains of data simply means that when the time comes to find that proverbial needle in a haystack, you’ve simply created a bigger haystack.”Law enforcement is being sold bill of goods that the more data you get, the better your security is. We find that is not true,” Soltani said.
Collecting data is a hard habit to break, as many U.S. corporations have discovered after years of expensive data breaches. The NSA’s data hoard may be useful in future investigations, helping agents in the future in unpredictable ways, some argue. Schneier doesn’t buy it.
“The NSA has this fetish for data, and will get it any way they can, and get as much as they can,” he said. “But old ladies who hoard newspapers say the same thing, that someday, this might be useful.”
Even worse, an overreliance on Big Data surveillance will shift focus from other security techniques that are both less invasive and potentially more effective, like old-fashioned “spycraft,” Soltani says.
Nassim Taleb writes (http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/02/big-data-means-big-errors-people/):

Big data may mean more information, but it also means more false information.
***
Because of excess data as compared to real signals, someone looking at history from the vantage point of a library will necessarily find many more spurious relationships than one who sees matters in the making; he will be duped by more epiphenomena (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphenomenon). Even experiments can be marred with bias, especially when researchers hide failed attempts or formulate a hypothesis after the results — thus fitting the hypothesis to the experiment (though the bias is smaller there).

http://www.wired.com/opinion/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/bigdatabigerrors_taleb.jpg (http://www.wired.com/opinion/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/bigdatabigerrors_taleb.jpg)
This is the tragedy of big data: The more variables, the more correlations that can show significance. Falsity also grows faster than information; it is nonlinear (convex) with respect to data (this convexity in fact resembles that of a financial option payoff). Noise is antifragile. Source: N.N. Taleb

If big data leads to more false correlations, then mass surveillance may lead to more false accusations of terrorism (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/12/the-fbi-drowning-in-counter-terrorism-money-power-and-other-resources-will-apply-the-term-terrorism-to-any-group-it-dislikes-and-wants-to-control-and-suppress.html).

revelarts

07-09-2013, 01:35 PM

More info means more computer automation to sift through it . and if the computer says your a terrorist.. welll

<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/nSQ5EsbT4cE?feature=player_detailpage" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

revelarts

07-11-2013, 03:26 PM

http://th04.deviantart.net/fs70/PRE/f/2013/103/b/5/they_re_my_taxes__by_poasterchild-d61hs5s.png

revelarts

07-16-2013, 11:07 AM

http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r124/Loralei_01/mime-attachment_zpsecb4ab8e.jpg

revelarts

07-16-2013, 11:24 AM

http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r124/Loralei_01/read_zps6f0bd2ae.jpg

revelarts

07-16-2013, 11:28 AM

http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r124/Loralei_01/aria_c11049820130704120100_zpsa7e05f03.jpg

revelarts

07-22-2013, 04:35 PM

more than you want to know about old wiretapping

Documents Show Undersea Cable Firms Provide Surveillance Access to US Secret State July 18, 2013

Source: Tom Burghardt, Antifascist Calling (http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/2013/07/documents-show-undersea-cable-firms.html)

Documents published last week by the Australian web site Crikey (http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/07/12/telstras-deal-with-the-devil-fbi-access-to-its-undersea-cables/) revealed that the US government "compelled Telstra and Hong Kong-based PCCW to give it access to their undersea cables for spying on communications traffic entering and leaving the US."

The significance of the disclosure is obvious; today, more than 99 percent of the world's internet and telephone traffic is now carried by undersea fiber optic cables. An interactive submarine cable map (http://www.submarinecablemap.com/) published by the Global Bandwidth Research Service (http://www.telegeography.com/research-services/global-bandwidth-research-service/index.html) is illustrative in this regard.

Since the late 1960s as part of its ECHELON spy project, the United States has been tapping undersea cables to extract communications and signals intelligence. In fact, projects such as Operation Ivy Bells (http://www.specialoperations.com/Operations/ivybells.html), a joint Navy-NSA secret intelligence program directed against the former Soviet Union was designed to do just that.

Prefiguring the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping scandal (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/16program.html) which broke in 2005, the Associated Press (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/20/politics/20submarine.html) reported that a $3.2 billion Navy Seawolf class submarine, a 453-foot behemoth called the USS Jimmy Carter, "has a special capability: it is able to tap undersea cables and eavesdrop on the communications passing through them."

A year later, AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein told Wired Magazine (http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/05/70944) that NSA was tapping directly into the world's internet backbone, and was doing so from domestic listening posts the telecommunications' giant jointly built with the agency at corporate switching stations.

Whatever submarine operations NSA still carry out with the US Navy and "Five Eyes" surveillance partners (Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the US), access to information flowing through undersea cables mean that the US government is well-positioned to scoop-up virtually all global communications.

Since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden began spilling the beans last month, it should be clear that the American government's capabilities in amassing unprecedented volumes of information from cable traffic, also potentially hands the US and their corporate collaborators a treasure trove of sensitive economic secrets from competitors.

Economic Espionage

Reporting by Australian journalists confirm information published July 6 by The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/agreements-with-private-companies-protect-us-access-to-cables-data-for-surveillance/2013/07/06/aa5d017a-df77-11e2-b2d4-ea6d8f477a01_print.html). There we learned that overseas submarine cable companies doing business in the United States must maintain "an internal corporate cell of American citizens with government clearances," a cadre of personnel whose job is to ensure that "when US government agencies seek access to the massive amounts of data flowing through their networks, the companies have systems in place to provide it securely."

Inked just weeks after the 9/11 provocation, the 23-page Telstra document (http://media.crikey.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/US-NSAs-Telstra.pdf) specifies that access to undersea cable traffic by the FBI and "any US governmental authorities entitled to effect Electronic Surveillance," is an explicit condition for doing business in the United States.

Similar agreements (https://publicintelligence.net/us-nsas/) were signed between 1999 and 2011 with telecommunication companies, satellite firms, submarine cable operators and the US government and were published earlier this month by the Public Intelligence (https://publicintelligence.net/) web site.

It has long been known that the Australian secret state agency, the Defence Security Directorate (DSD), is a key participant in US global surveillance projects. Classified NSA maps provided by Snowden and subsequently published by Brazil's O Globo (http://oglobo.globo.com/infograficos/big-brother-am-latina/) newspaper, revealed the locations of dozens of US and allied signals intelligence sites worldwide. DSD currently operates four military installations involved in a top secret NSA program called X-Keyscore.

Snowden described X-Keyscore and other programs to Der Spiegel (http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-with-whistleblower-edward-snowden-on-global-spying-a-910006-druck.html) as "the intelligence community's first 'full-take' Internet buffer that doesn't care about content type . . . 'Full take' means it doesn't miss anything, and ingests the entirety of each circuit's capacity."

According to The Sydney Morning Herald (http://www.smh.com.au/world/snowden-reveals-australias-links-to-us-spy-web-20130708-2plyg.html), along with the "US Australian Joint Defence Facility at Pine Gap near Alice Springs," three other DSD facilities, "the Shoal Bay Receiving Station near Darwin, the Australian Defence Satellite Communications Facility at Geraldton and the naval communications station HMAS Harman outside Canberra," were identified as X-Keyscore "contributors." The paper also reported that "a new state-of-the-art data storage facility at HMAS Harman to support the Australian signals directorate and other Australian intelligence agencies" is currently under construction.

The Herald described the project as "an intelligence collection program" that "processes all signals before they are shunted off to various 'production lines' that deal with specific issues and the exploitation of different data types for analysis--variously code-named Nucleon (voice), Pinwale (video), Mainway (call records) and Marina (internet records). US intelligence expert William Arkin describes X-Keyscore as a 'national Intelligence collection mission system'."

Two of the Australian bases illustrated on the X-Keyscore map sit adjacent to major undersea cable sites transiting the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Cozy arrangements with Telstra and other firms however, hardly represent mere passive acceptance of terms and conditions laid out by the US government. On the contrary, these, and dozens of other agreements which have come to light, are emblematic of decades-long US corporate-state "public-private partnerships."

As Bloomberg (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-14/u-s-agencies-said-to-swap-data-with-thousands-of-firms.html) reported last month, "thousands of technology, finance and manufacturing companies are working closely with US national security agencies, providing sensitive information and in return receiving benefits that include access to classified intelligence."

It's a two-way street, Bloomberg noted. Firms providing "US intelligence organizations with additional data, such as equipment specifications" use it "to help infiltrate computers of its adversaries." In return, "companies are given quick warnings about threats that could affect their bottom line." Such sensitive data can also be used to undermine the position of their foreign competitors.

We now know, based on documents provided by Snowden, that the "infiltration" of computer networks by US secret state agencies are useful not only for filching military secrets and mass spying but also for economic and industrial espionage.

That point was driven home more than a decade ago in a paper (http://www.duncancampbell.org/menu/surveillance/echelon/IC2001-Paper2.pdf) prepared by journalist Duncan Campbell for the European Parliament.

"By the end of the 1990s," Campbell wrote, "the US administration claimed that intelligence activity against foreign companies had gained the US nearly $150 billion in exports."

"Although US intelligence officials and spokespeople have admitted using Comint [communications intelligence] against European companies . . . documents show that the CIA has been directly involved in obtaining competitor intelligence for business purposes."

At the time the Telstra (http://telstra.com.au/) pact was signed, the Australian telecommunications and internet giant was "50.1% owned" by the Australian government. Reach Global Services (http://www.reach.com/about/overview.php), is described in the document as "a joint venture indirectly owned 50% by Telstra" and "50% owned" by Hong Kong's Pacific Century CyberWorks Limited (PCCW (http://www.pccwglobal.com/)).

With controlling interest in more than 40 undersea fiber optic cables, and with landing rights in global markets that include Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Australia, North America and Europe, the joint venture was then the largest commercial telecommunications carrier in Asia with some 82,000 kilometers of undersea cables. Reach also operates international satellite systems that cover two-third's of the planet's surface.

Such assets would be prime targets of "Five Eyes" spy agencies under terms of the UKUSA Communications Intelligence Agreement.

Telstra and PCCW restructured their partnership in 2011, with the Australian firm now controlling the lion's share of an undersea cable network that stretches "more than 364,000 kilometres and connects more than 240 markets worldwide," the South Morning China Post (http://www.scmp.com/article/739626/pccw-telstra-restructure-reach) reported. Inevitably, the restructuring will afford the US government an even greater opportunity for spying.

Network security agreements hammered out among undersea cable firms and the US government have profound implications for global commerce. Their geopolitical significance hasn't been lost on America's closet "allies."

The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/30/nsa-leaks-us-bugging-european-allies) revealed last month that the US is "spying on the European Union mission in New York and its embassy in Washington." In addition to the EU mission, target lists include "the French, Italian and Greek embassies, as well as a number of other American allies, including Japan, Mexico, South Korea, India and Turkey."

That list has since been supplemented by further disclosures.

Snowden told the South China Morning Post (http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1266777/exclusive-snowden-safe-hong-kong-more-us-cyberspying-details-revealed) that NSA hacked into the "computers at the Hong Kong headquarters of Pacnet, which owns one of the most extensive fibre optic submarine cable networks in the region."

Recently, the firm signed major deals with the Chinese mainland's "top mobile phone companies" and "owns more than 46,000 kilometres of fibre-optic cables."

According to the paper, Pacnet "cables connect its regional data centres across the Asia-Pacific region, including Hong Kong, the mainland, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. It also has offices in the US."

The South Morning China Post also disclosed that Tsinghua University, "China's premier seat of learning" has sustained extensive attacks on the school's "network backbones."

Available documents based on Snowden disclosures and other sources seem to suggest that President Obama's militaristic "pivot to Asia" is also an aggressive campaign to steal commercial and trade secrets from US imperialism's Asian rivals.

Whether or not these revelations will effect negotiations over the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a NAFTA-style "free trade" agreement between the US and ten Pacific Rim nations, including Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru and Singapore--all prime US-UK targets of PRISM, TEMPORA and X-Keyscore--remains to be seen.

'Legal' License to Spy

If we have learned anything since Snowden's revelations began surfacing last month, it is that the US secret state relies on a body of "secret laws" overseen by a Star Chamber-like FISA court described in the polite language The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/us/in-secret-court-vastly-broadens-powers-of-nsa.html) as a "parallel Supreme Court," to do its dirty work.

Along with leaked NSA documents, published agreements between telecommunications firms, internet service providers and the US government should demolish the fiction that blanket surveillance is "legal," "limited in scope" or chiefly concerned with fighting "crime" and "terrorism."

Proclaiming that "US communications systems are essential to the ability of the US government to fulfill its responsibilities to the public to preserve the national security of the United States, to enforce the laws, and to maintain the safety of the public," the Telstra summary posted by Crikey should dispel any illusions on that score.

On the contrary, the agreement reveals the existence of a vast surveillance web linking private companies to the government's relentless drive, as The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/for-nsa-chief-terrorist-threat-drives-passion-to-collect-it-all/2013/07/14/3d26ef80-ea49-11e2-a301-ea5a8116d211_print.html) explained, to "collect it all."

● All customer billing data to be stored for two years;
● Ability to provide to agencies any stored telecommunications or internet communications and comply with preservation requests;
● Ability to provide any stored metadata, billing data or subscriber information about US customers;
● They are not to comply with any foreign privacy laws that might lead to mandatory destruction of stored data;
● Plans and infrastructure to demonstrate other states cannot spy on US customers;
● They are not to comply with information requests from other countries without DoJ permission;
● A requirement to:

. . . designate points of contact within the United States with the authority and responsibility for accepting and overseeing the carrying out of Lawful US Process to conduct Electronic Surveillance of or relating to Domestic Communications carried by or through Domestic Communications Infrastructure; or relating to customers or subscribers of Domestic Communications Companies. The points of contact shall be assigned to Domestic Communications Companies security office(s) in the United States, shall be available twenty-four (24) hours per day, seven (7) days per week and shall be responsible for accepting service and maintaining the security of Classified Information and any Lawful US Process for Electronic Surveillance . . . The Points of contact shall be resident US citizens who are eligible for US security clearances. In other words, an "internal corporate cell of American citizens," charged with providing confidential customer data to the secret state, as The Washington Post first reported.

Additional demands include:

● A requirement to keep such surveillance confidential, and to use US citizens "who meet high standards of trustworthiness for maintaining the confidentiality of Sensitive Information" to handle requests;
● A right for the FBI and the DoJ to conduct inspection visits of the companies' infrastructure and offices; and
● An annual compliance report, to be protected from Freedom of Information requests. This is not a one-off as the other 27 Agreements published by Public Intelligence readily attest.

For example, the 31-page 2011 Agreement (http://info.publicintelligence.net/US-NSAs/US-NSAs-Level3.pdf) between the US government and Level 3 Communications (http://www.level3.com/), which operates in North America, Europe, Latin America and the Asia-Pacific, which acquired Global Crossing from from the Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa and Singapore Technologies Telemedia (the focus of The Washington Post's July 6 report), was expanded beyond the FBI and Department of Justice to include the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense, NSA's "parent" agency.

As with the 2001 Telstra agreement, "Access" to Level 3's systems by governmental entities is defined as "the ability to physically or logically undertake any of the following actions: (a) read, divert, or otherwise obtain non-public information or technology from or about software, hardware, a system or a network; (b) add, edit or alter information or technology stored on or by software, hardware, a system or a network; and (c) alter the physical or logical state of software, hardware, a system or a network (e.g., turning it on or off, changing configuration, removing or adding components or connections)."

NSA, the principle US spy agency charged with obtaining, storing and analyzing COMINT/SIGINT "products, i.e., user data, has been handed virtually unlimited access to information flowing through Level 3 fiber optic cables as it enters the US.

This includes what is described as "Domestic Communications," content, not simply the metadata, of any phone call or email that transit Level 3 systems: "'Domestic Communications' means: (a) Wire Communications or Electronic Communications (whether stored or not) from one US location to another US location; and (b) the US portion of a Wire Communication or Electronic Communication (whether stored or not) that originates or terminates in the United States."

So much for President Obama's mendacious claim that "nobody is listening to your phone calls"!

Access to the entirety of customer records and communications is clearly spelled out in the section entitled "Electronic Surveillance."

Note: the "USC." provisions refer to (18) the Stored Communications Act which compels disclosure to the government of stored wire, electronic and transactional data; a provision that greatly weakened the Fourth Amendment right to privacy. 50 USC outlines the role of War and National Defense in the United States Code and includes "foreign intelligence," "electronic surveillance authorization without court order," "internal security," including the "control of subversive activities" and the "exercise of emergency powers and authorities" by the Executive Branch.

'Electronic Surveillance,' for the purposes of this Agreement, includes: (a) the interception of wire, oral, or electronic communications as defined in 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510(1), (2), (4) and (12), respectively, and electronic surveillance as defined in 50 U.S.C. § 1801(f); (b) Access to stored wire or electronic communications, as referred to in 18 U.S.C. § 2701 et seq.; (c) acquisition of dialing, routing, addressing, or signaling information through pen register or trap and trace devices or other devices or features capable of acquiring such information pursuant to law as defined in 18 U.S.C. § 3121 et seq. and 50 U.S.C. § 1841 et seq.; (d) acquisition of location-related information concerning a service subscriber or facility; (e) preservation of any of the above information pursuant to 18 U.S.C.§ 2703(f); and (f) Access to, or acquisition, interception, or preservation of, wire, oral, or electronic communications or information as described in (a) through (e) above and comparable state laws.
Level 3 is further enjoined from disclosing what is described as "Sensitive Information," that is, "information that is not Classified Information regarding: (a) the persons or facilities that are the subjects of Lawful US Process; (b) the identity of the Government Authority or Government Authorities serving such Lawful US Process; (c) the location or identity of the line, circuit, transmission path, or other facilities or equipment used to conduct Electronic Surveillance; (d) the means of carrying out Electronic Surveillance."

In other words, we do the spying; you hand over it over and keep your mouths shut.

The electronic driftnet thrown over global communications is expedited by direct access to Level 3's equipment by the US government.

'Principal Equipment' means the primary electronic components of a submarine cable system, to include the hardware used at the NOC(s) [Network Operations Center], landing station(s) and the cable itself, such as servers, repeaters, submarine line terminal equipment (SLTE), system supervisory equipment (SSE), power feed equipment (PFE), tilt and shape equalizer units (TEQ/SEQ), optical distribution frames (ODF), and synchronous optical network (SONET), synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH), wave division multiplexing (WDM), dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM), coarse wave division multiplexing (CWDM) or optical carrier network (OCx) equipment, as applicable.
Who oversees the set-up? On paper it appears that Level 3 control their operations. However, the Agreement specifies that the firm must utilize "primary US NOCs for any Domestic Communications Infrastructure" and it "shall be maintained and remain within the United States and US territories, to be operated by Level 3, exclusively using Screened Personnel."

Who signs off on "screened personnel"? Why the US government of course, which raises the suspicion that corporate employees are little more than spook assets.

But here's where it gets interesting. "Level 3 may nonetheless use the United Kingdom NOC for routine day-to-day management of any of the Cable Systems as such management is in existence as of the Effective Date."

Why might that be the case, pray tell?

Could it be that fiber optic cables transiting the UK are already lovingly scrutinized by NSA's kissin' cousins across the pond? GCHQ, as The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-cables-secret-world-communications-nsa) disclosed, is merrily ingesting "vast quantities of global email messages, Facebook posts, internet histories and calls, and shares them" with the American agency.

Therefore, since UK undersea cable traffic is already under close "management" via the British agency's TEMPORA program, described as having the "'biggest internet access' of any member of the Five Eyes electronic eavesdropping alliance," it makes sense that Level 3 is allowed to "use the United Kingdom NOC" as a hub for its "Domestic Communications Infrastructure"!

In conclusion, these publicly available documents provide additional confirmation of how major corporations are empowering the US surveillance octopus.

By entering into devil's pacts with the world's "sole superpower," giant telcos and internet firms view the destruction of privacy rights as just another item on the balance sheet, a necessary cost of doing business in America.

And business is very good.

revelarts

08-04-2013, 05:40 PM

Members of Congress Denied Access to Basic Information About NSA August 4, 2013

Members of Congress are increasingly frustrated at their inability to obtain even basic information about the NSA and FISA court. Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty ImagesMembers of Congress have been repeatedly thwarted when attempting to learn basic information about the National Security Agency (NSA (http://www.theguardian.com/world/nsa)) and the secret FISA court which authorizes its activities, documents provided by two House members demonstrate (http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/aug/04/documents-information-griffith-letters).
From the beginning of the NSA controversy, the agency's defenders have insisted that Congress is aware of the disclosed programs and exercises robust supervision over them. "These programs are subject to congressional oversight and congressional reauthorization and congressional debate," President Obama said the day after (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/07/nsa-surveillance-program-oversight_n_3405716.html) the first story on NSA bulk collection of phone records was published in this space (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order). "And if there are members of Congress who feel differently, then they should speak up."

But members of Congress, including those in Obama's party, have flatly denied knowing about them. On MSNBC on Wednesday night, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Ct) was asked by host Chris Hayes (http://www.nbcnews.com/id/52641568/ns/msnbc-all_in_with_chris_hayes): "How much are you learning about what the government that you are charged with overseeing and holding accountable is doing from the newspaper and how much of this do you know?" The Senator's reply:

The revelations about the magnitude, the scope and scale of these surveillances, the metadata and the invasive actions surveillance of social media Web sites were indeed revelations to me."
But it is not merely that members of Congress are unaware of the very existence of these programs, let alone their capabilities. Beyond that, members who seek out basic information - including about NSA programs they are required to vote on and FISA court (FISC) rulings on the legality of those programs - find that they are unable to obtain it.
Two House members, GOP Rep. Morgan Griffith of Virginia (http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/aug/04/documents-information-griffith-letters) and Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida (http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/aug/04/email-exchange-alan-grayson), 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.
"If I can't get basic information about these programs, then I'm not able to do my job", Rep. Griffith told me. A practicing lawyer before being elected to Congress, he said that his job includes "making decisions about whether these programs should be funded, but also an oath to safeguard the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which includes the Fourth Amendment."
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 (http://www.ibtimes.com/fisc-will-not-object-release-2011-court-opinion-confirmed-nsas-illegal-surveillance-1305023) that found substantial parts of NSA domestic spying to be in violation of the Fourth Amendment as well as governing surveillance statutes.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/04/congress-nsa-denied-access

red states rule

08-13-2013, 03:07 AM

http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/gv081113dAPR20130812054514.jpg

revelarts

08-13-2013, 07:12 AM

NSA R-U 3 Drgrees from Bin Laden, AlZwarhehe? then U R a terro rsuspect!!!
NSA Spokesman Accidentally Admits that the Government Is Spying On Virtually All Americans

July 21, 2013
Source: Washington’s Blog (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/07/nsa-spokesman-accidentally-admits-that-the-government-is-spying-on-all-americans.html)

We have long noted that the government is spying on just about everything we do (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/07/anyone-who-says-the-government-only-spies-on-limited-targets-is-wrong.html).
The NSA has pretended that it only spies on a small number of potential terrorists. But NSA Deputy Director John C. Inglis inadvertently admitted that the NSA could spy on just about all Americans.
Inglis told Congress last week that the agency conducts “three-hop” analysis (http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2013/07/17/nsa-spying-under-fire-you-got-problem/Ev73I1XwPYtvD2WFZ6idGK/story.html).
Three-hop (also known as “three degree”) analysis means (http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2013/07/17/nsa-spying-under-fire-you-got-problem/Ev73I1XwPYtvD2WFZ6idGK/story.html):

The government can look at the phone data of a suspected terrorist, plus the data of all of the contacts, then all of those people’s contacts, and all of those people’s contacts.
This means that a lot of people (http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2013/07/17/nsa-spying-under-fire-you-got-problem/Ev73I1XwPYtvD2WFZ6idGK/story.html) could be caught up in the dragnet:

If the average person calls 40 unique people, three-hop analysis could allow the government to mine the records of 2.5 million Americans when investigating onesuspected terrorist.
Given that there are now approximately 875,000 (http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/03/us-usa-security-database-idUSBRE94200720130503) people in the government’s database of suspected terrorists – including many thousands of Americans – every single American living on U.S. soil could easily be caught up in the dragnet.
For example, 350 million Americans divided by 2.5 million Americans caught up in dragnet for each suspected terrorist, means that a mere 140 (https://www.google.com/search?q=350+divided+by+2.5&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#client=firefox-a&hs=SL4&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&sclient=psy-ab&q=350+million+divided+by+2.5+million+&oq=350+million+divided+by+2.5+million+&gs_l=serp.3...68253.73421.0.73863.17.17.0.0.0.3.27 4.2413.6j8j3.17.0....0...1c.1.21.psy-ab.ZX5KplpsI9s&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.49478099,d.cGE&fp=b08dbb3e193b471d&biw=853&bih=350) potential terrorists could lead to spying on all Americans. There are tens of thousands of Americans listed as suspected terrorists … including just about anyone who protests anything that the government or big banks do (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/12/peaceful-protest-treated-as-terrorism-by-the-fbi.html).
As the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/12/government-attorneys-agree-eff-new-counterterrorism-database-rules-threaten):

According to an unusually blunt Senate investigation of so-called “fusion centers”released last month (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/new-senate-report-confirms-government-counterterrorism-centers-dont-stop), the TIDE database is also full of information of innocent people that have nothing to do with terrorism. The report gave examples of: a TIDE profile of a person whom the FBI had already cleared of any connection to terrorism, a TIDE profile of a two-year old-boy, and even a TIDE profile of Ford Motor Company.

ARS Technica reports (http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/you-may-already-be-a-winner-in-nsas-three-degrees-surveillance-sweepstakes/):

When the first revelations about the National Security Agency’s (NSA) widespread collection of phone call metadata and Internet traffic began to surface, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham noted that for those not talking to terrorists on the phone, “We don’t have anything to worry about. (http://www.mediaite.com/tv/lindsey-graham-glad-nsa-gathering-phone-records-i-know-im-not-talking-to-terrorists/) I’m glad that activity is going on, but it is limited totracking people who are suspected to be terrorists and who they may be talking to.”
Turns out the data collection is not so limited. In testimony yesterday before the House Judiciary Committee, National Security Agency Deputy Director Chris Inglis said that the NSA’s probing of data in search of terrorist activity extended “two to three hops (http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/07/nsa-admits-it-analyzes-more-peoples-data-previously-revealed/67287/)” away from suspected terrorists. Previously, NSA leaders had said surveillance was limited to only two “hops” from a suspect.
If you’ve ever played “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon (http://www.sixdegrees.org/about)” or used LinkedIn to try to reach someone professionally, you know how small the world of interconnected contacts can be. When you use big data tools to mine for relationships, the world gets even smaller. That third hop in connections greatly expands the probability of innocent people worldwide being scooped up into the NSA’s surveillance machine to include a good-sized share of American citizens—citizens who Senator Graham said “don’t have anything to worry about.”
***
By reading this article, you’re one hop from me—and three hops from [Afghan President] Hamid Karzai.

***
The NSA’s systems sort through the data using algorithms to find connections. These can be detected in near real time from Internet data or discovered in the periodic dumps of phone metadata from carriers, building upon the system’s knowledge of previous connections. The system narrows the field of potential surveillance targets through a process that’s similar to playing the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”—only, in this case, it’s more like “Three Degrees of Osama Bin Laden.”***
To determine how many hops you are from Osama, for example, the NSA’s data analysis engine software constantly plows through information and builds a model of all the relationships between every phone number on record and every IP address. Other software robots query the graph to discover which “nodes”—phone numbers, IP addresses and email accounts—fall within three degrees of separation from an established suspect.

If you have a direct relationship with a suspected terrorist or target (you’ve called them, you’ve emailed them, you’ve visited their website) that’s a “one hop” relationship; there’s a solid line connecting you to that person in the NSA’s relationship graph. If you talk with, e-mail, or visit the Facebook page or website of someone who’s got a one-hop relationship, you’re two hops away. Add one more person in between in the graph, and you’re three hops away.
If you’re within three hops, you may get flagged for analysis, and then you could get extra special attention, such as a secret FISA warrant request to use PRISM for access to your data on cloud providers’ servers.[I]....

revelarts

08-13-2013, 07:13 AM

Former NSA On PBS says NSA targeted Supreme Court

and other Officials.

held in his hands the orders to tape Alito and Senator Obama

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Watch NSA Collects 'Word for Word' Every Domestic Communication (http://video.pbs.org/video/2365057220) on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour. (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/)

Tonight, we have a conversation with three former NSA officials, a former inspector general and two NSA veterans who blew the whistle on what they say were abuses and mismanagement at the secret government intelligence agency.
William Binney worked at the NSA for over three decades as a mathematician, where he designed systems for collecting and analyzing large amounts of data. He retired in 2001. And Russell Tice had a two-decade career with the NSA where he focused on collection and analysis. He says he was fired in 2005 after calling on Congress to provide greater protection to whistle-blowers.
He claims the NSA tapped the phone of high-level government officials and the news media 10 years ago.
RUSSELL TICE, former National Security Agency analyst: The United States were, at that time, using satellites to spy on American citizens. At that time, it was news organizations, the State Department, including Colin Powell, and an awful lot of senior military people and industrial types.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, this is the early 2000s.
RUSSELL TICE: This was in 2002-2003 time frame. The NSA were targeting individuals. In that case, they were judges like the Supreme Court. I held in my hand Judge Alito’s targeting information for his phones and his staff and his family.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Bill Binney, what was your sense of who was being targeted and why they were being targeted? And what was being collected, in other words?
WILLIAM BINNEY, former National Security Agency technical leader: Well, I wasn’t aware of specific targeting like Russ was. I just saw the inputs were including hundreds of millions of records of phone calls of U.S. citizens every day. So it was virtually — there wasn’t anybody who wasn’t a part of this collection of information.
So, virtually, you could target anybody in this country you wanted.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Both Binney and Tice suspect that today, the NSA is doing more than just collecting metadata on calls made in the U.S. They both point to this CNN interview by former FBI counterterrorism agent Tim Clemente days after the Boston Marathon bombing. Clemente was asked if the government had a way to get the recordings of the calls between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his wife.
TIM CLEMENTE, former FBI counterterrorism agent: On the national security side of the house, in the federal government, you know, we have assets. There are lots of assets at our disposal throughout the intelligence community and also not just domestically, but overseas. Those assets allow us to gain information, intelligence on things that we can’t use ordinarily in a criminal investigation.
All digital communications are — there’s a way to look at digital communications in the past. And I can’t go into detail of how that’s done or what’s done. But I can tell you that no digital communication is secure.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Tice says after he saw this interview on television, he called some former workmates at the NSA.
RUSSELL TICE: Well, two months ago, I contacted some colleagues at NSA. We had a little meeting, and the question came up, was NSA collecting everything now? Because we kind of figured that was the goal all along. And the answer came back. It was, yes, they are collecting everything, contents word for word, everything of every domestic communication in this country.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Both of you know what the government says is that we’re collecting this — we’re collecting the number of phone calls that are made, the e-mails, but we’re not listening to them.
WILLIAM BINNEY: Well, I don’t believe that for a minute. OK?
I mean, that’s why they had to build Bluffdale, that facility in Utah with that massive amount of storage that could store all these recordings and all the data being passed along the fiberoptic networks of the world. I mean, you could store 100 years of the world’s communications here. That’s for content storage. That’s not for metadata.
Metadata if you were doing it and putting it into the systems we built, you could do it in a 12-by-20-foot room for the world. That’s all the space you need. You don’t need 100,000 square feet of space that they have at Bluffdale to do that. You need that kind of storage for content.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, what does that say, Russell Tice, about what the government — you’re saying — your understanding is of what the government does once these conversations take place, is it your understanding they’re recorded and kept?
RUSSELL TICE: Yes, digitized and recorded and archived in a facility that is now online. And they’re kind of fibbing about that as well, because Bluffdale is online right now.
And that’s where the information is going. Now, as far as being able to have an analyst look at all that, that’s impossible, of course. And I think, semantically, they’re trying to say that their definition of collection is having literally a physical analyst look or listen, which would be disingenuous.
JUDY WOODRUFF: But the government vehemently denies it is recording all telephone calls. Robert Litt is the general counsel in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. He recently spoke at the Brookings Institution.
ROBERT LITT, NSA general counsel: We do not indiscriminately sweep up and store the contents of the communications of Americans or of the citizenry of any country. We do collect metadata, information about communications, more broadly than we collect the actual content of communications, but that’s because it is less intrusive than collecting content and in fact can provide us information that helps us more narrowly focus our collection of content on appropriate foreign intelligence targets.
But it simply is not true that the United States government is listening to everything said by the citizens of any country.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Joel Brenner, who was the NSA’s inspector general and then senior legal counsel, says the intelligence agency obeys the law and the directions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court.
JOEL BRENNER, former NSA inspector general: It’s really important to understand that the NSA hasn’t done anything, as I understand it and from all I know, that goes one inch beyond what it’s been authorized to do by a court.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, tell us, how extensive is the NSA’s collection of data on American citizens, on their phone calls, on their e-mails, on their use of the Internet?
JOEL BRENNER: This the program only involves telephony metadata, not e-mails, not geographic location information.
The idea that NSA is keeping files on Americans, as a general rule, just isn’t true. There’s no basis for believing that. The idea that NSA is compiling dossiers on people the way J. Edgar Hoover did in the ’40s and ’50s or the way the East German police did, as some people allege, that’s just not true.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, we have been talking to a couple of former NSA employees and one of the allegations they make is that it’s not just collecting this metadata on telephone conversations; it’s recording those conversations and it’s storing them and keeping them for possible future use.
JOEL BRENNER: I think you’re talking about Mr. Tice and Mr. Binney.
Mr. Binney hasn’t been at the agency since 2001. Mr. Tice hasn’t been at the agency since 2005. They don’t know what’s going on inside the agency.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Another allegation we heard from them, from Mr. Tice, is that back as of the time before he left the NSA in the early 2000s, that there was spying going on, on news organizations, on Supreme Court justices, on presidential candidates, then Senator Barack Obama, on military leaders, top generals in the army.
JOEL BRENNER: Mr. Tice made the allegations you have just indicated having to do with the period before 2005, eight years ago. They’re just coming out now. I wonder why.
The farther he gets from the period when he could have known what he was talking about, the more fanciful his allegations have become.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Brenner claims that oversight of information gathering has actually improved.
JOEL BRENNER: We have turned intelligence into a regulated industry in a way that none of our allies, even in Europe, have done.
We have all three branches of government now involved in overseeing the activities of the NSA, the CIA, the DIA, and our other intelligence apparatus. This is an enormous achievement.
MAN: Government has gone too far in the name of security, that the Fourth Amendment has been bruised.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Last week, one oversight proposal in Congress aimed at preventing the NSA from collecting date on phone calls was narrowly defeated, but some members are vowing to press for additional restrictions on the investigative agency.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/gover...ers_08-01.html (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/government_programs/july-dec13/whistleblowers_08-01.html)

Last edited by revelarts; 08-04-2013 at 06:58 PM.

revelarts

08-13-2013, 07:16 AM

http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r124/Loralei_01/1016686_219463068201392_366845798_n_zps3dd2f96c.jp g

red states rule

08-14-2013, 02:33 AM

http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/mrz081313dAPR20130812114553.jpg

aboutime

08-14-2013, 08:54 PM

http://youtu.be/NzlG28B-R8Y

And the Conspiracy Theories never, ever end.

red states rule

08-15-2013, 03:00 AM

http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/lb0815cd20130813104158.jpg

revelarts

08-20-2013, 12:12 PM

http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/jwaug16_13.jpg