Innocent Or Not, the NSA Is Watching You 410
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Wired: "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."
Innocent? (Score:5, Informative)
Nobody's innocent anymore. There is too much information flowing about - we're all guilty of something. Even if you don't quite no what it is - it's not important. You're just guilty of something so it's important that somebody keep tags on you.
Just in case.
Re:Innocent? (Score:5, Informative)
Not so deep in the desert (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not so deep in the desert (Score:4, Informative)
Location of the Utah Data Center (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not so deep in the desert (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Innocent? (Score:4, Informative)
"Give me six lines written by the most honorable of men, and I will find an excuse in them to hang him."
Cardinal Richelieu
Re:Innocent? (Score:4, Informative)
One reviewer wrote,
"With such a provocative title, I expected a thorough list of ways that ordinary citizens can be unwittingly trapped by federal law. Maybe a handful of frightening anecdotes, maybe some telling historical analysis.
Instead, after two lengthy introductions, I find a dense chapter defending ... a Florida politician accused of corruption. And a Massachusetts governor. And a Massachusetts House speaker. When I got to the chapter defending Michael Milken I started skimming instead of reading."
Re:Conflicted (Score:4, Informative)
A number of northern European countries -- Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland -- provide state health care and pensions, but also respect individual liberties to an extent sometimes even beyond in the United States.
Denmark is #3 in the World Audit Civil Liberties rankings.
Finland is #1
Sweden is #2
Norway is #5
The United States is #15.
See here [worldaudit.org].
These are the classic "Third Way" democracies -- and they outnumber the Stalinist states (USSR, North Korea, Cuba) that are always put up as straw men. In short: Your argument sounds compelling, but, like Aristotle's reasonable-sounding assertion that heaver objects accelerate faster in freefall, it is not supported by empiricism.
Has nothing to do with "hate" or "like" (Score:4, Informative)
Surveillance of non-US Persons has never required a warrant, and never will. It has nothing to do with whether it's a group someone "hates" or "likes".
An intelligence service cannot be effective if its sources, methods, capabilities, and techniques are known to the adversary. Intelligence processes must be kept secret, even in an open society. This has been true for the history of our nation.
NSA is authorized to monitor foreign communications WITHIN THE US, and must be able to identify, discern, and target such communications within the sea of digital communications.
NSA lacks the authority to monitor American citizens without an individualized warrant. And the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 actually is more strict with respect to US Persons than previous law: a warrant is required to monitor the communications of a US Person anywhere on the globe. But what the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 also does is allow NSA to target and monitor FOREIGN communications within the US, without a warrant.
I know some people might be stunned to learn this, but the primary mission of the foreign intelligence agencies is FOREIGN intelligence. But what about "warrantless wiretapping", you ask?
In the immediate wake of 9/11, the administration claimed the the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) allowed them to target American citizens identified as having contact with the enemy and/or were active combatants. The current Attorney General also argues that the President has this intrinsic authority under Article II of the Constitution. This was the same justification used in the targeted killing of Anwar al-Awlaki.
Other examples are things like journalists embedded with military units having the communications allegedly monitored, which would happen under the guise of the Joint COMSEC Monitoring Activity. And then we have the court cases — all of which involved people or groups who were thought to be linked to terror groups, not just ordinary, everyday citizens.
Even the most egregious examples of "warrantless wiretapping" (as alleged in the leaks to the press, or documented in various court proceedings) in the wake of 9/11 targeted very specific people — and were justified by the Justice Department, secretly reported to Congress, and reauthorized every 45 days. And that program had long ended by the time the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 fixed the dismal state of foreign intelligence collection.
This excerpt (An 'Intel Gap': What We're Missing, Newsweek, Aug 6, 2007) sums up the issue:
Re:Has nothing to do with "hate" or "like" (Score:0, Informative)
Read the whole article and you'll find this:
"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."
Your reply?
Re:Datacenter in the Desert? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:End the USA (Score:5, Informative)
european and eastern governments are no better than the US.
Some European and Eastern governments are no better than the US.
Most European and some Eastern governments are better than the US, whatever measurements you use to define "better" (there exist a lot of international human-rights/life-quality/press-freedom/democracy/crime/health/IQ et c. indices and the same countries usually top most of them, US is usually placed somewhere in the middle (if it is not an index constructed with the sole purpose to show how "good" US is, it is easy to identify those, they have to change their methods of measurement every other year)). Almost all countries around the world behave better towards people living in other countries (even China (the atrocities committed in Tibet is nothing compared to what US troupes does abroad, and China only occupy one region outside China, it doesn't invade a lot of new regions every year like USA (and Tibet was not a very nice place to live for most inhabitants even before the Chinese occupation))), the exceptions being perhaps Israel and Russia.
If you look at Northern Europe (sans Great Britain, i.e. Scandinavia, Netherlands, Germany et c., even France if you fancy), all countries there are much "better" then US, both to live in and in their relations towards other countries. [Except, perhaps, if you consider owning and carrying weapons designed to kill people a basic human right. But both Sweden and Finland have more privately owned fire arms per capita then US, except they are made for hunting animals and are not very good for killing or maiming people, hunting being the most popular hobby in most regions of those countries]
The countries in Northern Europe practise the 20th century kind of democracy, and they are a lot "better" then the 18th century kind of democracies, the model of democracy practised in USA. They may be surpassed by some new 21th century democracy model (there are a lot of experiments in government models going on today in societies in South Americas, the Baltics and the Middle East, perhaps they lead to even better modes of Democracy), but for now, they are as good as it gets.
Myself, I live in Sweden, one of those countries that usually are ranked among the best in different human life quality indexes. I'm highly critical towards the Swedish government and society, and very active in actions trying to make Sweden a better place to live. If you heard or read my criticism of the Swedish society, you could get the impression that it is hell on earth. Except it is not, my criticism i aimed at making Sweden better, I'm very well aware that compared to most countries around the world (including USA) it is almost a paradise. Heck, I couldn't even do most of the things (methods of protests et c.) I have the right to do Sweden in most countries outside Northern Europe, including USA.
Re:End the USA (Score:5, Informative)
Re:End the USA (Score:5, Informative)
Then again... "intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world's communications" is ok just as long as it does not affect US citizens?
The real problem with this line of reasoning (which is very common in the USA - rights are only for citizens) is that it opens you up to easy abuses. The NSA spies on British citizens, GCHQ spies on US citizens, and both can say 'we don't spy on our own people!'. Of course, they share data when something interesting crops up...