Final countdown – NSA says it really will end blanket phone spying on US citizens this Sunday Come Sunday, the NSA will end its ferocious dragnet surveillance of American citizens' phones, the White House insists. From 2359 Eastern Time (0459 GMT) on November 29, the super-spy agency must jump through some extra hoops to access US folks' telephone records. Although this information does not include the content of …
This all nice but given that all agencies in all countries monitor/slurp phone data, Internet data, and email data, we're all still being watched by someone. Multiple some ones I gather from what's been reported. And yes, I realize that for the most part it's that ubiquitous metadata.
Maybe someday... the world will be a less dangerous place... and unicorns will roam free.
Lies. Sort of. If they're shutting down one illegal spying program then it's only because the Obama admin has authorized an even worse one with a different code name and that one's up and running now. So we'll shut this one down wink wink.
They didn't build that gigantic new data center for nothing.
While I agree, the "they didn't build that gigantic new data center for nothing" argument doesn't apply to the government. They would write off the data center if they didn't need it, and if they needed a new supermassive data center for something else in a year, they'd build a new one from scratch because the existing one would somehow be unsuitable for their current needs (where current needs = to line the pockets of government contractors who will build the new one)
Obama and Putin are just different sides of the same coin.
Obama's first job was an in intern in CIA.
He is more of a 3-letter president than Bush senior who actually was a CIA director for quite a while.
Probably that is the difference between being an intern and seeing it all nice and rosy as your first work experience and actually doing this for a living and seeing people be waterboarded, hanged and shot based on your work.
One thing the documentation Edward Snowden released illegally does not show is that the NSA deceived the President, the Departments of Defense and Justice, or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Indeed, it is fairly clear that they also provided timely and relatively complete information to the intelligence committees of the Senate and House of Representatives, despite the fact that few members of either body took the trouble to read the documents provided. A presumption that NSA managers and employees operated programs in secret that were intended to generally subvert the rights or liberties of US citizens or those of other countries is unwarranted. Replacement of the program being ended, of course, was authorized by the Congress and directed by the President.
Reasonable people may differ about the appropriateness of various intelligence agency programs and whether they are consistent with the US Constitution and laws. In addition to citizens, federal judges and legislators, including members of the intelligence committees, did so often, and there is no clear reason to think any of them dishonest.
We regularly read about the latest abuse of data but have you ever wondered how much of the stuff we generate and how realistic it really is that the NSA/GCHQ/<the other three> really watch your every move?
Phone records alone represent a fairly large amount of data but is tiny compared to intertubes traffic and of course the call contents themselves.
My home FTTC connection alone receives well over 1TB per month of IPSEC traffic (PFS enabled in P2) and that's before we actually use it for the usual stuff - wifey does need her cat pics. My office generates about 0.5GB per day of marked up flow data (that's like call records for the interwebs). The data itself is more like 5-20TB per month (conservative guess - we have 4 x 80/20 links plus various others).
That's a lot of storage requirement for just 20 odd people. There are 60M+ people in the UK alone. The US is rather bigger and of course other countries are implicated. I suspect some form of sampling and targeting of the grand slurp is in force but frankly any form of pervasive data surveillance is doomed. You are probably better off doing things the old fashioned way and they probably are - I doubt very much if a 5i is bothering to store my intertube data. However, the implied threat of the possibility is left hanging ...
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They aren't storing all the traffic, just what sites you visited (AL Jazera, CND, Greenpeace, the Labour party) plus the dodgy sites that any ad links happen to connect to.
They need this in case you ever have a little accident on the tube and they need to show your links to terrorism. Or you complain about slipping on the pavement and the local council needs to find some porn / alcohol / gambling links to suggest you might not want published if you decide to sue.
Of course the real use of all this is for reasons of national security - like claiming to live in a better school catchment area
"They aren't storing all the traffic, just what sites you visited (AL Jazera, CND, Greenpeace, the Labour party) plus the dodgy sites that any ad links happen to connect to."
In the UK the headline figure for investment in this is £175M over the next 10 years (New Scientist 3047, p20 is my source here). That is roughly £3 per head of population for 10 years for ISPs to gather the data. Good luck with that one.
If you have the means, have a look a the sheer amount and variety of data that flows in and out of your WAN connection. Phones, TVs, PCs, your switch phoning home ...
"In the UK the headline figure for investment in this is £175M over the next 10 years"
And the ISPs, etc, who have a clue are saying £2B or so is needed. Now why would the gov not publish its costing approach when the bill is in the debate stage?
Good try at explaining the realities of the matter but you're wasting your time. The tinfoil-attired enjoy their ignorance, anyone that exposes it will simply be labelled a "Fascist", etc., etc., as the tinfoil-attired take comfort in the baaaaaahlief there is some Great Conspiracy which is responsible for their failed lives. It's more fun just to point and laugh at them as they froth and run in circles.
He stands up in court as commander in chief and swears under oath that no branch of the US government is mass spying on American's communications, or getting other countries to do it for them.
Then when down the road it is proved he was lying - an opposition US government get to court martial him and send him to Leavenworth for 20years.
Then when down the road it is proved he was lying - an opposition US government get to court martial him and send him to Leavenworth for 20years.
Keep on dreaming. What do you think the presidential pardon system is for?
They won't slurp your naughty bits, but only if you are an "American". First of all there is no nation called America.
If they are are using the tag "American" to mean a lapel-flag-wearing person then 99.99% of the residents of the USofA won't be included. If you include "idiot" in the description than 100% are able to be surveilled.
"If they are are using the tag "American" to mean a lapel-flag-wearing person then 99.99% of the residents of the USofA won't be included. If you include "idiot" in the description than 100% are able to be surveilled."
You used the internet to post that, so presumably you're happy using TCP/IP despite it being invented by "idiots".
"Although this information does not include the content of phone calls"
We're talking cellular transmissions - They already have the content of the phone calls and the times they were made and ended.
The other data lets them match the content to the callers.
Why do the news articles NEVER point that out?
In any case - given the track record of this administration, does anyone really believe that they will begin complying with the law?
As an American I urge all my international friends and colleagues to NOT believe that the NSA is ending mass data collection on US citizens. My experience is that Americans never relinquish a capability once achieved (see nuclear weapons). In any case, mass surveillance of non-Americans continues. Generally, Americans do not harbor ill intent, however if American politics ever devolve and we transform into a theocracy - all bets are off.
Had to check to make sure there actually will be a February 29th next year. I wouldn't have been surprised to find that they were trying to pull a fast one on us and never delete the information: "We said we will delete it all on 29 Feb 2016, but since that day never came..."
Department of Defense rules (and NSA is a DoD agency) require that disk drives containing restricted data (i. e., PII, FOUO, or more controlled), be degaussed and physically destroyed. I think the others still may be overwritten multiply using different patterns and then excessed.
This blanket surveillance consumes enormous amounts of electricity (which is why these data centres need so much cooling).
If they really turn off the monitoring we should immediately see a step change in power consumption in places like Utah.
My prediction is we won't. They have the toys and we all know these power obsessed people will use all the toys they have. They won't give the toys away.
The NSA can simply outsource the information gathering to British allies in order to maintain the ability to monitor American communications. Simple compartmentalization to circumvent the nasty lack of legality in what they do. They've had ample time to develop their workaround solutions.
So the law says that the NSA now has to "ask" for the data, and it must be related to an investigation. But the easiest and cheapest way to implement this would be to create a database interface at the telephone company which can receive queries from the NSA. The NSA in turn promises only to send queries about things it is interested in, which is no problem because it already promises only to look at its mass data when it is interested in it.
So the only change is that the data is stored with the phone company instead of at the NSA.
This is basically what I was about to say.
I don't believe a single word about the whole "We'll stop spying on you! Promise! Kisses, The NSA" thing. Not a word. But y'know what? As much as I might occasionally mock the Americans as Gun-nutter Religious-bigot Tea-Wasters, at least *THEIR* legal system decided that mass surveillance of their own citizenry by an arm of the security and intelligence apparatus was illegal!
Which is far far far better than the Law Lords and High Court and whatever else managed in the UK. And even their 'new' program for spying on their own citizens at least has the illusion of going in front of a 'judge' for something like a 'warrant' before they get to read all the lovely metadata. Over here, it just goes before the Home Secretary. In secret. Who will somehow manage to be totally unaccountable when it's discovered she's got it wrong.
Yer all whining like little bitches, ya bitches!!!!! Take a stand! Fuck off until you DO something. And FUCK OFF UK. You think you're this grandiose voice .... grow a set and do something, unless Cameron has got ya worried. Down thumb me all ya want, you're still PUSSIES!!!!
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