NSA dragnet mostly slurped innocents' traffic NSA babbler Edward Snowden's latest drop alleges something that's been suspected ever since he went public during 2013: that spy agencies reach far beyond “persons-of-interest”, with data on ordinary internet users far outstripping that held over formal “targets”. According to The Washington Post, the latest set of documents …
(1) When you do the math, it turns out that keeping the data is free. You only incur a cost when you erase the information. Therefore the NSA is just trying to save money.
(2) As the marginal cost of storing data declines, the cost of keeping your personal information is approaching zero. However, the cost of evaluating information to insure that it does not have any value and will never have any value is quite large, obviously much larger than zero. Therefore, even if they never looked at the information, the NSA can't afford to assess it for deletion.
In conclusion, we are SO screwed.
On the other hand, if they didn't collect the information of "innocents" in the first place, it would be even cheaper und they wouldn't face their current debacle.
In the past spy agencies had limited resources, so they had to be selective about targeting suspected bad guys, be they terrorists, other spies etc. The change in technology means that they don't have to be as selective, because they can pull in more information on more people.
On the other hand, does that give them the right to slurp ALL data on every user of a service, just in case it could some day be useful?
I think it is time to bring George out of retirement and send him back to the Circus to try and clean things up. Maybe the Americans should dig up Felix as well, I'm sure he would be turning in his grave... That said, I expect Hoover's coffin probably needs an extension and some Kleenex.
"On the other hand, if they didn't collect the information of "innocents" in the first place, it would be even cheaper und they wouldn't face their current debacle."
If you look for a needle in a haystack most of what you look at will be hay.
I'm not saying its right to retain the data, but it is inevitable it will be collected.
"In conclusion, we are SO screwed."
Not at all - if the NSA can't afford to assess it, then they'll never look at it and it will eventually cause the entire United States government to collapse due to the escalating electricity cost for the data center(s).
Well, I can dream, can't I?
It isn't just 'Mericans.
As a non-American, non-fundamentalist, non-Muslim, non-terrorist, non-bomb maker, non-spy, just a general nobody, I feel affronted that they are slurping my data "just because they can"...
I wonder if the NSA filter strips off the "non"s above and when they will be knocking on my door...
If you have followed the IRS scandal and the missing e-mails due to a crashed hard drive, you have to wonder if the emails were being searched for political content.
Opponents of Obama would have the E-mails forwarded to the IRS for "checking" of their tax exempt status.
Yes. Using a covert, super enabled, state intelligence agency to investigate tax statuses is probably the first thing people think of once they are holding the reins of power. Of all the creative ways to abuse power, investigating civil infractions with a maximum penalty of $15,000 is definitely the ultimate reward: 'Ha! Choke on the Throbbing Manhood of vengeance you fool! Suck it all. The taste will be burned into your soul as you attend one 30 minute class on asking the IRS for assistance in populating forms. Watch your future slip away as your bank account is debited $125/month for the next decade. The echoes of your suffering will reverberate for ages and all will know the price of thwarting me'.
Quote: it's hardly surprising that the documents Snowden worked through with the Post included men showing off their physiques and images in which “women model lingerie, leaning suggestively into a webcam or striking risque poses in shorts and bikini tops
Hell... letting the NSA play on Facebook would have been cheaper and probably have let them have the same pics. Ok. Maybe not.. add Tumblr and Reddit...etc.... and only slurp Snapchat via the backdoor.
I agree.
The NSA is playing meta data Roulette. They misunderstand this game of chance - Red, Black or Green, no Blue, Pink or Purple, a run of numbers don't mean shit.
Dans les champs de l'observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés.
(In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.)
Louis Pasteur
As Solzhenitsyn quoted of the KGB.
To a data fetishist there is no irrelevant data, merely data that has not been linked to someone who has done something we are interested in yet.
Once the cost per bit dropped low enough it was only a matter of time before some ethical vacuum would ask "why not?"
Extract from an e-mail from the Post article from someone in Afghanistan to his girlfriend (for want of a better word) in Australia...
“look in islam husband doesnt touch girl financial earnigs unless she agrees but as far as privacy goes there is no room….i need to have all ur details everything u do its what im supposed to know that will guide u whether its right or wrong got it”
He was a fanatic. What does that make the NSA?
Memory is cheap, but the operational costs of storing all of that unevaluated data is high.
The presumption that the data cannot be deleted without evaluation implies that the NSA believe it MAY be relevant. That means that when they search the database for connections and patterns they would want to include this potentially relevant data.
All this is just so much digital noise in the system increasing the number of potential false warnings generated. These have to be sorted out by human analysts, a labor-intensive and expensive process. It is also time consuming, increasing the time it takes for a response.
This is why indiscriminate data collection is not just a threat to individual rights and freedoms. It is also counterproductive to the mission of the operation.
"All this is just so much digital noise in the system increasing the number of potential false warnings generated. These have to be sorted out by human analysts, a labor-intensive and expensive process. It is also time consuming, increasing the time it takes for a response."
and the typical response to this. as always, will be higher budgets to employ more people to sort through more rubbish.
The costs of storing all that useless data is nonexistent. That's the biggest perk of being a government that has zero qualms making the taxpayer pay for their own cavity searches. It's really nothing to worry yourself over though. Since this is all related to 'National Security' the actual costs are recorded on the first invisible page of the GAO annual spending report. A lot of work goes into making sure intrusive government surveillance programs don't cause you any anxiety.
@ Don Jefe
Who wrote "It's really nothing to worry yourself over though. Since this is all related to 'National Security' the actual costs are recorded on the first invisible page of the GAO annual spending report. A lot of work goes into making sure intrusive government surveillance programs don't cause you any anxiety."
A Washington Post's Investigative report "Top Secret America" provides some compelling support for Don Jefe's statement. The explosive growth in the number of functions for which the government now requires compartmented clearance runs counter to the most fundamental principles of information and operational security. Serious stuff, this.
@jackofshadows
Technically, what Watson does in the way of data search and retrieval is very different in scope and intent from what so called "horizon scanning and risk assessment" systems are trying to do. The best and most accessible discussion of the problem of data classification (in the filtering sense) that I'm aware is in a couple of papers by Tom Fawcett, on something called ROC curves. ROC originally stood for "receiver operating characteristic", referring to the ability of a receiver to classify targets in noise. An analogous phenomenon occurs in pattern matching in digital data, where the term "relative operating characteristic" is used.
Googling ["Tom Fawcett" ROC analysis] (without the brackets) should produce relevant results in the first few hits.
Your comment on the advances in data correlation and retrieval is correct. However, much, if not most of that advance has been in hardware performance, and in improved algorithms to exploit those capabilities. The basic rules of probability and statistics haven't changed. That said, the reference to Watson is a very helpful addition to the discussion. While it may not address the general problem, it is probably ideally suited for looking for convenient facts about targeted individuals and deserves attention. .
Another observation from an old man, for what it's worth
"The presumption that the data cannot be deleted without evaluation implies that the NSA believe it MAY be relevant."
What is irrelevant today may not be so tomorrow.
Today I'm just a tax paying grunt worker whose data would be irrelevant. Tomorrow I might bump into the PMs wife in Waitrose and start slipping her a length while Dave is out at PMQs. So tomorrow, all my data may be relevant.
"Today I'm just a tax paying grunt worker whose data would be irrelevant. Tomorrow I might bump into the PMs wife in Waitrose and start slipping her a length while Dave is out at PMQs. So tomorrow, all my data may be relevant."
The creed of every data fetishist in a nut(case)shell.
".....The creed of every data fetishist in a nut(case)shell." Which neatly ignores the very, very slim possibility of it happening. You sheeple are very quick to bleat "innocent until proven guilty" for your own, but as far as The Man is concerned, because you have been spoonfed the thought "it must be true!" You are basing your whole decision-making on wild speculation and paranoia because you want to baaaah-lieve.
A wee small correction/clarification on the following from my earlier:
This is why indiscriminate data collection is not just a threat to individual rights and freedoms. It is also counterproductive to the mission of the operation.
This reflected the thought that nations may have legitimate national security requirements for intelligence gathering and surveillance operations, including properly limited targeted and legally sanctioned surveillance of electronic communications on the internet.
It has been bothering me since I posted that the italicized quote could be construed as an implied endorsement of operations currently being conducted. If so, the best response I can offer is the classic response of Baron von Trapp in the movie "The Sound of Music" to the Nazi Colonel's statement, "You flatter me!"
How clumsy of me.
That has bothered me intensely since the Snowden stuff began. Yes, the assault on civil liberties and the 'justified disregard for the law' by lawmakers is revolting. I'm not sure it's possible for them to fail any harder at their jobs. But Christ on a cracker, do they have to curb stomp every principle of information science too?
This is undergrad level stuff here, but the only part they seem to have gotten right is that the public would be upset if they knew the scope of this monument to poor education systems. Regardless of ones stance on the necessity and ethics of all this mess, I cannot see how a compelling argument can be made for ignoring the most basic of information management fundamentals.
Enormous sums of money have been spent (hilariously, lots of it in the form of government grants) to develop better methods and processes for information discrimination in real time data. Obtaining information has never been a problem (spies, public 'secret police' and that nice man from Stasi have been around since day 1 to deal with that). The problem has always been in identifying what information has value. Most of The Register's target audience would be working in coal mines if only the information you wanted organized itself before it got to you.
Half-assed work just pisses me off. If you're going to do something do it right or don't do it at all. That goes double if my tax dollars are being spent on it. Bunch of slackasses. As if it were needed, this is just more proof Douglas Adams was right: Anyone capable of getting into government should be automatically disqualified from government.
"the chances of a false negative *increase*. Not only are these asshats breaking the law, and pissing all over our privacy. They're also making themselves *less* likely to be able to protect us."
I like the phrase (not my own) that roughly goes "Looking for terrorists is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Undirected data slurping now gives you a field of haystacks to search."
IRL of course analogy is a bit dumb as you'd use a metal detector, but what if you're looking for a piece of dyed hay in those haystacks?
The BBC had an article not his last week (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-28182494), though it seems to have been moved off the'US & Canada' page for not being hysterically sensationalist enough. Never mind, El Reg can always be counted on to make any NSA-related molehill into a mountain.
Whilst El Reg tries to quickly gloss over the successful tracing and capture of two terrorists just from this one batch, the Beeb has a bit more detail on what was also found:
"......However the paper says that the intercepted files also contained "discoveries of considerable intelligence value". These included "fresh revelations about a secret overseas nuclear project, double-dealing by an ostensible ally, a military calamity that befell an unfriendly power, and the identities of aggressive intruders into US computer networks", it said....."
And then we get back to the perennial question the sheeple just never want to answer - what 'harm' was done? Did any of the innocent people accidentally caught up in the sweep even report any 'harm'. Of course not, because there was none. It was less inconvenient than a traffic stop, yet the shepherds need to make out it was some life-threatening 'invasion of privacy'. It seems the biggest invasion of privacy was actually by Snowjob and chums when they dumped this data out. Snowjob took data from a carefully safeguarded and regulated environment and gave it to journals to do with as they wish.
The sheeple may now participate in the usual flock population census by clicking the down vote button (don't worry, Big Brother is not actually recording your downvotes, no matter how much you want to baaaah-lieve they are).
"Snowjob took data from a carefully safeguarded and regulated environment"
If the data was sufficiently safeguarded "Snowjob" (Matt Bryant's spelling) would never have been in a position to access the data, let alone leak it. The fact of the matter is that the NSA failed to safeguard the data.
Hopefully the NSA are working on reducing the chances of collateral damage by narrowing their data capture & retention rather than doing fuck all and banking on Matt Bryant to deflect attention away from their inept information security practices.
".....If the data was sufficiently safeguarded "Snowjob" (Matt Bryant's spelling) would never have been in a position to access the data, let alone leak it....." Even Snowjob has had to admit he scarpered to China because the NSA did detect his unauthorised access and was closing in on him.
".....their inept information security practices." LOL! Don't worry, ickle Roominant, if there are pics of your tiny wheiner out there then they probably did not come from an NSA leak, more likely from skiddies and black hats.
"Even Snowjob has had to admit he scarpered to China because the NSA did detect his unauthorised
access and was closing in on him."
The information was taken and published - the horse had already bolted... Which is precisely why I characterised the NSA's best efforts at information security as being 'inept'. Seems like we're in violent agreement on that point.
Even Snowjob has had to admit he scarpered to China because the NSA did detect his unauthorised access and was closing in on him.
I think the previous poster was making the point that Snowden shouldn't have been able to access all that data in the first place.
"I think the previous poster was making the point that Snowden shouldn't have been able to access all
that data in the first place."
Exactly, perhaps I could have made it clearer, but it wouldn't have made much difference because Matt doesn't like facts and logic getting in the way of an argument.
"Exactly..." Yeah, 'cos that totally excuses Snowjob's criminal activities, right? Do you tell people that conmen shouldn't be prosecuted because their marks weren't careful enough? Now about the victims of muggings, are they just too dumb for sympathy? Snowjob is a criminal by his own admission, you just want to excuse him of the crimes because of your spoonfed socio-political baaaah-liefs.
"....Matt doesn't like facts and logic getting in the way of an argument." You wouldn't know a fact if it cut through your tinfoil hat and climbed inside the empty space between your ears. And again, you still have no counter to the points I raised. Have another 'fail' icon to add to your massive collection.
> Do you tell people that conmen shouldn't be prosecuted because their marks weren't careful enough? Now about the victims of muggings, are they just too dumb for sympathy?
That sounds incredibly caring considering it comes from the man who wrote:
> anyone silly enough to send nude pics or sexts or racy emails to a partner or the person they are cheating with, over a consumer network, and expect it not to ever be read, is - TBH - a cluetard.
".....That sounds incredibly caring..." So now you're saying you do care for those stupid enough to send sexts despite the massive amount of case evidence that doing so is highly likely to mean it ends up with those other than the intended recipient, but you don't care for those victims of crimes where they were simply unfortunate through no fault of hp heir own? Please do explain how a mugged grannies is at fault?
You obviously feel the strawman strategy is working out for you seeing you go for it at every turn:
> ".....That sounds incredibly caring..." So now you're saying you do care for those stupid enough to send sexts despite the massive amount of case evidence that doing so is highly likely to mean it ends up with those other than the intended recipient, but you don't care for those victims of crimes where they were simply unfortunate through no fault of hp heir own? Please do explain how a mugged grannies is at fault?
I was really only making fun of you but my opinion is that the vulnerable granny should be protected and so should be the sexters who aren't fully informed on how insecure their comms are, partly because encryption isn't wide-spread and partly because the NSA is subverting comms security as best as they can.
The NSA should work to make the net safer, to make encryption more wide-spread, always-on by default, to improve on the holes that various issues (certificate authorities come to mind) present, so that the uninformed can rightfully rather than foolishly put trust in the technologies they are using.
"....the NSA is subverting comms security as best as they can....." And here we get to the core of your naïveté and lack of understanding - that is their job, not keeping online idiots safe from their own stupidity. They are a spy agency, not Net nannies. But don't worry, as I pointed out before, we are galloping towards the type of regulated Internet where Net nannies will monitor your every communication anyway.
".....The NSA should work to make the net safer....." Not their job. Their job is to intercept coms and provide the information that helps other governmental organisations (such as the CIA and FBI) keep members of the US public and those of their allies safe. The only bit of protection they are charged with is protecting US Government coms and those of a strategic or national importance, not those of the general public (though they have also passed on security advice to the public as a sideline). Your problem stems from a basic misunderstanding of what the NSA is there to do.
> ".....The NSA should work to make the net safer....." Not their job. Their job is to intercept coms and provide the information that helps other governmental organisations
If breaking up or redefining the NSA's brief is what's needed to achieve this, I'm probably the last one to object.
Planting security holes or allowing them to stay open/actively purchasing them on the market and subverting security standards just happens to make the net less safe for everyone, both foreigners and Americans. It's believed by many including me to not be good for business and it very obviously fucks up the privacy of people's online communications.
".....If breaking up or redefining the NSA's brief is what's needed to achieve this...." Again, grasp a simple concept - NOT THEIR JOB!. The NSA are very good at their job, why would the US Government want to stop them doing it just because you sheeple have got your panties in a wad of deluded paranoia? Seriously, El Reg needs to institute an IQ and age test on the forum signup.
"..... I'm probably the last one to object....." Stupid people suggest stupid things every day based on misunderstandings and paranoia, it doesn't mean anyone has to listen. I'm sure your daily uttering supply many a case in point.
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