Whistleblower: NSA Has All of Your Email 478
mspohr writes with this excerpt from Democracy Now!: "National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney reveals he believes domestic surveillance has become more expansive under President Obama than President George W. Bush. He estimates the NSA has assembled 20 trillion 'transactions' — phone calls, emails and other forms of data — from Americans. This likely includes copies of almost all of the emails sent and received from most people living in the United States. Binney talks about Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act and challenges NSA Director Keith Alexander's assertion that the NSA is not intercepting information about U.S. citizens." The parts about National Security Letters in particular are chilling, even though the issue is not new.
anyone surprised? (Score:5, Funny)
if someone is - that would be shocking.
Re:anyone surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the whole Bush/Obama thing is a total distraction - and it works for too many people. It's unfortunate it is in the summary because as I see it what is happening is the that the government is travelling further down the same path - regardless of which party controls which branch. The idea that Obama is better or worse is meaningless, by and large they are exactly the same. And if somehow Romney were to beat Obama in the next election, the largest difference would be the switch in which group was defending and which was attacking the administration -- over the very same actions.
Re:anyone surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the whole Bush/Obama thing is a total distraction - and it works for too many people. It's unfortunate it is in the summary because as I see it what is happening is the that the government is travelling further down the same path - regardless of which party controls which branch. The idea that Obama is better or worse is meaningless, by and large they are exactly the same. And if somehow Romney were to beat Obama in the next election, the largest difference would be the switch in which group was defending and which was attacking the administration -- over the very same actions.
I think if Romney were elected the unaccountable spying and intrusion would get worse. However, if Obama were re-elected, the unaccountable spying and intrusion would get worse. I suppose you're right that the partisan thing is a mere distraction. The problem is that Congress -- whether of the same or different party of the president in power -- absolutely refuses to reign in the White House. Are they lazy? Do they see the trend as a good thing? Do they not care? Has someone got the dirt on them all?
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I think if Romney were elected the unaccountable spying and intrusion would get worse. However, if Obama were re-elected, the unaccountable spying and intrusion would get worse. I suppose you're right that the partisan thing is a mere distraction. The problem is that Congress -- whether of the same or different party of the president in power -- absolutely refuses to reign in the White House. Are they lazy? Do they see the trend as a good thing? Do they not care? Has someone got the dirt on them all?
There is another possibility - this is a systemic issue and our society has run into a scalability problem. Most aspects of modern society are very technologically sophisticated - computers, cars, medicine, finance. It stands to reason that running the government is technologically sophisticated as well.
In such situation it is very difficult to make long-term decisions. We are well-familiar with the quarter to quarter mentality in the corporations - well, the same thing is true for the government, it is
Re:anyone surprised? (Score:5, Informative)
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the government has become worse than the enemy while searching for ghosts
"Be careful when you fight with monsters that you don't become one yourself, and remember when you look into the abyss the abyss looks into you." Nietszche
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Does anyone think that a serious candidate who would threaten the surveillance agencies' plans would ever get to the presidency, or even to a major party nomination? Any dirt on candidates or their families would appear from "anonymous sources" well before that happens.
I seriously doubt the the NSA - even if ordered by a court or by whoever the current administration is at the time - would actually stop collecting the data or to delete the data in question
Re:anyone surprised? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, I have political viewpoints that would probably agree more with the candidate than the incumbent, however deep down inside I know that it truly doesn't matter. There is so much blatantly open evidence that the POTUS is a figurehead for whichever power base installs them in WDC.
I was once talking with someone who was ridiculously spazzing about the current president and it set me off. I said essentially that it doesn't really matter who the POTUS is and they might as well put Nancy Pelosi in there for all the difference it would make, just the color and speed of the handbasket, not the destination. He about had a stroke.
I think the only candidate this time around who would be worth a hill of beans is Ron Paul.
No, I'm not a rabid RP supporter or shill (check my posts and how long I've been on here) I'm just sayin. And notice how he gets no coverage and ridiculously low votes in spite of his actual real popularity with those sick of the BS from WDC.
Anyway. Long story short I agree. The right/left foxnews/cnn rivalry is a distraction away from the actual important issues that get buried underneath the scandal of the week.
Re:anyone surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
Answer this honestly - has the operational tempo of the United States military changed significantly?
I would say no. Sure, we've drawn down troops in one country, and increased the number in others. We've also radically increased the number of assassinations we are carrying out.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yes it has. It's moved from undefined long term deployments (we might sill be there a hundred years from now--John McCain) to well defined missions with objectives. We are out of Iraq, we got bin Laden, and we won't be in Afghanistan in a couple of years.
Sure, we've drawn down troops in one country, and increased the number in others.
Net number is down, with more reductions in the way.
Re:anyone surprised? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm having trouble tracking down good numbers on over all 'troops on the ground' numbers - but it looks like you are right that over all numbers are dropping, especially in the last year to two years.
I still have concerns about our activity that extends well beyond the number of troops deployed. I wonder to what extent this reflects the ability to automate warfare and leave key actions to elite units. Our drone attack activity is way up - but of course this can't be compared to the past as the ability itself has been growing.
I hope you are correct that this points to a substantial difference in long term US policy but I (as is obvious) am very skeptical. I think it's unfair to say that under McCain that the same reductions could not have happened. And it's difficult to judge this based on politicians reactions to what Obama has done- and this strikes to the heart of my concern. Republicans attack Obama no matter what he does - not because of the action itself but because they want to try and see their party gain advantage. Democrats do the same. If a Republican President were dropping hell-fires all over the middle east, there would be some Dems plenty wound up.
They can't argue over substance because there isn't enough there. They are beholden to the same limited set of money brokers. So it's all flash and theater with personal profit as the ultimate goal.
Right now I don't live in the US. I've had the opportunity the last year to get a closer view of politics in another country. It pretty much looks the same. I see this as a part of the human condition. And so I don't think we can say it's the recent crop that are the problem, we need to look at building and improving systems to reign in this natural tendency towards corruption.
Right now I'd probably vote for Obama too - but only in the sense that it feels like a slightly lesser of the evils.
Re:anyone surprised? (Score:5, Interesting)
Right now I'd probably vote for Obama too - but only in the sense that it feels like a slightly lesser of the evils.
Vote for a third party or bust. Anything else is in itself evil.
Re:No (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
That certainly helps, but votes carry much more teeth than campaigns. Some small percentage of the population has to be willing to "throw away" their vote to an independent (or Green, Libertarian, Socialist, etc.) in order to convince the larger population to start taking the party seriously and stop voting for what they perceive as the second-worst candidate.
Be the early adopter that you want to
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
If you believe abortion is murder, you may pick Republicans as the lesser of two evils because in the event of a Court Appointee, you save a lot of lives. If you believe a woman's right to control her body is sacrosanct, you may pick Democrats as the lesser of two evils because otherwise you prevent a lot of intolerance.
Either way, you're voting for a government that kills people without trials, in terms of drone targeting. But that doesn't mean there's no difference.
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Bingo, we have a winner.
The parties most certainly are different in several important respects - but, if you look at it, it's as if they have carefully cherry picked several hot button issues on which to be different - abortion, gay marriage etc. It's very convenient, because all those issues tend to be highly emotional for both sides - and hence people rank them over other stuff - and present few opportunities for compromise, festering the "us vs them, no middle ground" mentality. From there it's very easy
Re:anyone surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never understood this mentality. Your vote is mind-bogglingly unlikely to make the difference either way. What exactly do you have to lose by actually voting for the candidate you like the best?
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... we need to look at building and improving systems to reign in this natural tendency towards corruption.
To do that, we need to take money out of the equation at every step in the process. Below are just a few things that would have to occur:
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Republicans attack Obama no matter what he does - not because of the action itself but because they want to try and see their party gain advantage. Democrats do the same.
No they don't, certainly not to the same degree at least. This is one area where there is a clear distinction between the parties. Remember that health care plan proposed by Republicans back in the 90's as an alternative to Hilary Clinton's plan? Now that it has Obama's name on it what happened to all that Republican support? That's just one example, but there are plenty of examples of Republican's doing complete 180s on bills for complete partisan reasons. I don't remember the bill, but a few years ago a R
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I don't think much of the guy - but I don't think that when he literally said it that he literally meant it.
And we still have US Military in Iraq. We still have US military in over 150 countries and some have been there for some time. Having people somewhere and being actively engaged in combat are different things.
Re:anyone surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
"At the same time Obama was campaigning on the promise of leaving Iraq."
Maybe that's the whole problem with our strategy? We treat war and occupations like it was a trip to McDonalds. Drive up, place your order, drive out. Maybe sit in the parking lot for a bit to eat, but everyone can see you're not going to stay there for very long.
The British were very different. They moved in conquered the place, and the very first thing they would build was a central government. You didn't have a pot to piss in, but by God, there was a place where you could go to complain about it! And things would expand out from there. People would see you building these huge, government buildings, building homes, paving streets, raising families, and they would understand that hey, these folks are SERIOUS about reconstruction!
Granted, the British treated the locals little better than slaves, but that's not the point? The point is, they were in it for the LONG TERM. As in lifetime.
We really could rebuild Afghanistan, but it would mean acting just like the British. But Americans-and indeed, most of the first world-no longer has any sort of stomach for that sort of long-term brutality and imperiousness.
Re:anyone surprised? (Score:5, Informative)
(we might sill be there a hundred years from now--John McCain)
We're still in Germany, Japan and Italy and it has been almost 70 years. We're still in Korea and that has been about 50 years.
What McCain was referring to was not combat operations, but the possibility of long-term joint military bases. To imply he was talking about combat operations or hostilities is dishonest and/or naive.
Re:anyone surprised? (Score:4, Informative)
While I agree we've gone overboard, you have to look at it from both a historical and political perspective.
The United States is treaty-bound to defends many of those nations. We are enforcing peace by our presence, as there isn't anyone crazy enough to launch a military assault against the only remaining military superpower.
Japan, for example, has agreed not to develop nuclear weapons because they are covered by the United States nuclear umbrella. That is, we'll defend them against a nuclear attack if necessary.
They are also not allowed by their Constitution to have any real military, other than a minor "home defense force". Again, because of treaty obligations with the U.S.
People may make jokes about enforcing peace, especially with troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. But compared to the squabbles of Europe pre-WW1 and the chaos that reigned in WW2, this is nothing.
Our treaty obligations with Kuwait are what led us to liberate them after the initial Iraq invasion and to ensure their continued safety by dealing with the Iraqi military.
If countries insist, the U.S. will withdraw and close bases. For an example look to the Philippines.
Many of these smaller nations want guarantees they won't be constantly invaded by their neighbors. While developing their own military is one answer, it has never really worked. The problem is the contest is too even, so the others think "if we hit 'em first, we can win this".
But under the protection of a superpower is a different answer. "If we hit 'em first, we're toast".
And honestly if we don't do it the Russians would be glad to. And I'm sure the Chinese could probably be convinced. And I'd really, really rather have the U.S. do it than the Russians.
So would Hungary, Poland, the Czech and Slovak Republics, etc. Their memories of Soviet "protection" haven't gone away, yet.
Re:anyone surprised? (Score:5, Informative)
looks like we're at 150k total as of december 2011 (why didn't you mention that?)
Re:anyone surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
The mission was over. Saddam is dead.
The Iraq war goal was filled. We're still in Afghanistan. Why?
The truth is, our country has its own "business" that is seperate of who is in office. The puppet in office maintains the gov's business and rarely changes course. Obama said he would close Gitmo. It's still open.
Obama said he would give us a public option... he lied.
Republicans play to the religious crazy people. Democrats play to the sane people... the result is the same. Corporations and power rule all, and the policies created have nothing to do with the voters.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:anyone surprised? (Score:5, Informative)
That's unmitigated bullshit.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miles-mogulescu/ny-times-reporter-confirm_b_500999.html [huffingtonpost.com]
As for Gitmo -- he's the commander in chief. That leaves two options: he's too weak to be president, or he lied in his campaign. Neither option is really all that awesome.
Re:anyone surprised? (Score:5, Informative)
Or third option: he did try to close it but Congress vetoed [guardian.co.uk] the plan to close Gitmo without letting the terrorist loose.
There are three branches in our government and one can often estop the other, Commander-in-Chief or not.
Simply an excuse. (Score:5, Interesting)
The president has the power to veto any law congress has passed to limit his ability to deal with prisoners in Guantanamo. And he doesn't need congress' approval to move the 150+ detainees from Guantanamo to another facility - say Bagram, something he has already done to circumvent habeas - or give them due process or just *let them go*. The excuse, apparently, is that congress wont authorise special funds to deal with the prison and prisoners in the exact manner the president would like. But that is a far ways from keeping him from closing the camp. He could do so today.
Re:anyone surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama tried to close Gitmo, and congress wouldn't let him.
Sure he could have:
"I swore a solemn oath to protect and uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. The Sixth Amendment specifically requires that all persons receive a speedy and public trial for any crimes they may have committed. Therefor, while I would have preferred to try the prisoners currently held in Guantanamo Bay for their crimes, with Congress preventing my from doing so in any court I am required by law to release them without charges."
That's the leverage that President Obama never used. If he had threatened to do so, Congressional Republicans would almost definitely have changed their tune about trying those prisoners. Ergo, he decided that there are prisoners in Guantanamo Bay that will under no circumstances be either released or tried in an open and fair court, but that the best way to avoid flak from loyal Democrats was to blame it on Congressional Republicans (who wanted to appear tough on terrorism to their constituents). The claim that Congress wouldn't let him, therefor, is a lie, albeit a very believable one.
He tried to include the public option, and congress wouldn't let him.
The health care act passed with absolutely no Republican support, including using budget reconciliation to get around Republican filibuster attempts in the Senate. If Obama had had a deal that the Republicans reneged on, he could have vetoed the bill and told his party allies in Congress to send him the bill he really wanted. Since he didn't, the only possibilities are (A) he got exactly the bill he wanted, and/or (B) he was not negotiating with congressional Republicans but congressional Democrats. As the sibling post alludes, it seems that the answer was that he got exactly the bill he wanted.
From my point of view as an independent, the battle in Washington is not Republicans versus Democrats or conservative versus liberal, but the 'bipartisan consensus' (forged in lobbying dollars) versus the people's real interests. And the people's real interests don't stand a chance.
Re:anyone surprised? (Score:4, Interesting)
The health care reform is incredibly good - prevent insurers from blocking patients due to pre-existing conditions, prevent insurers from imposing lifetime benefit caps, prevent insurers from putting more than 20% of their revenue towards expenses other than patient care, prevent insurers from charging higher prices for any pre-existing condition other than smoking, make it easier to qualify for Medicaid, subsidize health insurance costs for individuals and families that earn too much for Medicaid but less than 400% of the poverty level, and eventually all preventative care and checkups will not carry copays. That's pretty damn far from a public option and pretty damn far from ideal (specifically, it does very little to address costs - I have an indigent relative that spent 24 hours in a hospital because of appendicitis, he got served a $39,000 bill). But it's a damn sight better than the Republican solution - fuck the people that can't pay, let them die.
I know the lesser of two evils argument is frustrating and unsatisfying. But if I'm going to choose between a roommate that steals my money and one that rapes my kids, I'm going to pick the thief every time. So I'm voting for Obama again. He's no better than Bush on civil liberties and foreign policy, but that doesn't mean he's the same as the party "Of the Oligarchy, By the Oligarchy, and For the Oligarchy", so I support him with a clear conscience.
Re:anyone surprised? (Score:4, Insightful)
The truth is, our country has its own "business" that is seperate of who is in office. The puppet in office maintains the gov's business and rarely changes course.
I absolutely agree. The military-industrial complex has owned this country since the dawn of the 20th century. Any President that gets out of line with their whims likely has a real 'Dallas, 1963 moment' in their not-to-far future.
Conspiracy theory bullshit? Maybe. But I doubt for a second that these war merchants would sit back for a second and allow any President to cut off the steady stream of blank checks we've been sending their way for at least the last 70 years.
I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
- Major General Smedley D. Butler, War Is A Racket [wikipedia.org]
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I can agree with the fact that there are differences. Believe me, I'm voting for Obama no matter what come next election. I cant stand the republican party as it is. I cant stand insanely religious people. I can not stand anyone that does not believe in science and technology and claims a man in the sky speaks to them. I will NEVER support anyone that wraps that nonsense around their party.
So there are differences but not huge differences. I mean the Koch brothers are notorious for funding republican campai
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Bush went to war against Iraq, Obama got us out. Can you see the wee-bit of difference there? I can and I'm voting for Obama.
There was a set timeline on exiting Iraq, and yes he did keep to that timeline..... Somewhat. There are still many thousands of troops, and workers living inside of the Iraq embassy, whish is larger than the Vatican. If you're voting for Obama because of that, you better take a good look at Ron Paul. Since these wars are undeclared, and illegal, as president Ron Paul will IMMEDIATELY one day one, bring every foreign troop back home.
Re:anyone surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you cannot see the flaw in Ron Paul's simplistic solutions I don't know what to say.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. ---Henry Louis Mencken
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I'll be voting for Ron Paul not because I agree with him on everything (although I agree with him on several things), but because I think it would be better to have a significant change, even if it includes crazy changes, rather than more of the same. It would be beneficial to shake up the current Federal government policies.
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The flaw is that it would lead to major economic mayhem. Learn some economy some day, but please not from a right wing nutjob.
Re: (Score:3)
What "simplistic solutions"?
Re:anyone surprised? (Score:4, Informative)
Ron Paul doesn't support a direct return to the gold standard, so that's where I stopped reading your post. I certainly wouldn't vote for him (or anybody for that matter) but I'm not going to waste my time on Slashdot reading posts where someone didn't even do their most basic research. This is slashdot, not reddit.
Re:anyone surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:anyone surprised? (Score:5, Interesting)
NDAA, continued surveillance, complete disregard for the constitution... hm, nope. Not much difference there. Seems like he just pulled out when it was convenient to do so.
Re:anyone surprised? (Score:5, Interesting)
This notion you have is so misinformed it's appalling.
Obama did not leave, Obama got booted. Dec. 2011 marked the end of the Status of Forces Agreement negotiated by GWB. SOFA prevented the Iraqi government from local prosecution of US troops for crimes committed in Iraq. Prior to the expiration of SOFA, Obama tried to get it extended so that the troops could stay longer and avoid any risk of prosecution. Obama failed in those negotiations, in large part because the war crimes confirmed in the WikiLeaks cache, made it politically impossible for Iraqi politicians to extend SOFA.
In other words, you are giving Obama credit for ending the war in Iraq when he tried to EXTEND it. To put this in Slashdot car analogy form, that's like giving a drunk driver accolades for not killing anyone while driving home, despite being blitzed and despite intentionally swerving at oncoming traffic. That's not laudable, it's despicable even if the drunk accidentally missed everyone.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/26/obama-iraq_n_1032507.html [huffingtonpost.com]
Finally, if Bradley Manning was the source behind the wikileaks cache, rather than the torture and persecution he is receiving under Obama, he should get a fucking Nobel because it is HE who got us out of Iraq.
http://www.salon.com/2011/10/23/wikileaks_cables_and_the_iraq_war/singleton/ [salon.com]
If you're going to vote for Obama, and you really believe he's some sort of peace loving socialist, consider some of the issues here: http://nothingchanged.org/ [nothingchanged.org]
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Do your research. Obama didn't want to get out. [cbsnews.com]
It's not about Bush vs Obama, it's' about being represented and Obama does not represent the people who voted for him because his policies go the opposite way from his candidate prom
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Bush went to war against Iraq, Obama got us out. Can you see the wee-bit of difference there? I can and I'm voting for Obama.
Yes, the US military left Iraq when Obama was in office. But you do realize that that was the timetable laid out under Bush, right? The exit date was planned and negotiated with the Iraqis before Obama ever even took office.
Re:anyone surprised? (Score:5, Informative)
Obama is a disaster.
You have a rather curious definition of a disaster. Obama inherited a country at war (make that two wars) and in the worst depression since 1929, yet he has seemingly safely delivered us to the other side: the economy is picking up, we are out of Iraq and bin Laden is dead, all while battling a congress hell bent in destroying any and every action he wished to take.
If that is a disaster, then Bush must be the apocalypse.
Re:anyone surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just my $.02 as a Libertarian.
Re:anyone surprised? (Score:4, Insightful)
Our government has a system of checks and balances; the commonly mentioned balance is between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the federal government. A balance that is not mentioned is the check that states place on the federal government, and vice versa... equally as important, but it's a balance that has become totally akimbo over the last 5-10 decades. The federal government now dictates to the states, which are powerless to respond. It has gone past the point of self-correction.
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.. and bin Laden is dead,...
So they claim, after they destroyed any evidence that could support that claim.
If bin Laden were alive, he'd have released a video by now mocking the Americans' claim. This is one of those rare times when the government is saying something, and there's no evidence, and the government is actually telling the truth.
Re:anyone surprised? (Score:4, Insightful)
You can spin it all you want. You can wave you hands around as much as you want.
But it doesn't change the simple fact that GWB's Iraq war was the biggest clusterfuck this country has undertaken in the last 40 years.
End of story.
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"As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am keenly aware that the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons is an issue of grave importance to all nations. Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process." Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (Democrat, California), Statement on US Led Military Strike Against Iraq, December 16, 1998
"In the next cent
Re:anyone surprised? (Score:4, Informative)
Yup, exactly. It's amazing how many people continue to cling to their party, but politics in America is more like sports: people feel compelled to root for their home team no matter how much the team sucks.
I think an encompassing problem here is that Americans have become incredibly jaded about the political process. They vote for who they think has the best chance of winning, not who they want to win. That mental mode means that the person who runs the slickest campaign and gives lip service to the most interest groups will win, not the person with the best ideas or qualifications. And it means third-party candidates are continual non-starters.
Another fairly distressing problem is that the American public is by-and-large becoming more ignorant as time passes. Most people don't care about in-depth political news, and when they do they tend to get their news from a biased source like Fox (the consolidation of news sources under a few megacorps contributes heavily to this problem). And our educational systems are producing people with less critical-thinking skills. The only thing really keeping a democracy from descending into tyranny is an educated public. The public is the largest check and balance in the U.S. system, and we are failing to meet our obligations as citizens.
I've been reading about the creation process of the U.S. Constitution recently, and I believe if the framers of the Constitution foresaw how much corporate interests would corrupt the political system, they would have put much stronger protections in place against such abuse.
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With the amount of mail that now exists in the cloud - couldn't access be the same as "having"? They don't need to actually have own and maintain all the storage for much of it.
Re:anyone surprised? (Score:5, Funny)
Excellent. I lost an email I sent. I'll just give them a call and have them retreive it.
Very handy, government backed backup solution...
i hope... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Actually, maybe you are on to a good idea there. Since the has the best mathematicians in the world, and unlimited computing resources, why not ask them to do a public service? Eliminate spam.
They should be able to identify the sources easily, if they are monitoring what everyone sends everywhere, or . . . ?
Encrypt (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Encrypt (Score:5, Interesting)
Http is more and more replaced by https (even Facebook and Google do it now). Ssh is commonplace, encrypted VPN too, torrent traffic can be encrypted, etc. At a transport level encryption is making steady inroads, and is far from stagnant.
On the other hand, for e-mails, it's not that easy. This is end-user level, and there is a good reason why it's stagnant. It's too technical for the general public to do properly, especially the key exchange with the other parties. And you have to do that over and over again, for every single e-mail contact you have. And in my case, that's easily a couple hundred. That's a bother.
If we want encryption in e-mail, then we need a major e-mail client to implement its use transparently, and by default urge users to create a PGP key for their mail. Then the mail client needs a protocol to exchange keys securely with new contacts, to collect all the keys you may need to send encrypted mail to those contacts.
And now the real fun thing: how to keep your secret key, secret? It's not a one-time key (like ssh uses). It's a permanent key; and you will have to cherish it to be able to decrypt old e-mails unless you store them decrypted on your computer. Have your secret key compromised and you're SOL.
If you can solve all that, you could become rich. Or at least help us all have encrypted e-mail.
Re:Encrypt (Score:4, Informative)
I always saddened when I see people still recommending GPG/PGP. That system is a total hack and not a standard.
Use S/MIME. It's standardized and exists in every good client software.
Re:Encrypt (Score:4, Insightful)
Use S/MIME. It's standardized and exists in every good client software.
PGP or S/MIME is not the point. No-one uses either anyway. The point is: why don't they use it?
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That system is a total hack and not a standard.
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4880 [ietf.org]
The problem with S/MIME is the same one as exists with HTTPS. You're trusting the CAs your vendor tells you to trust (by default -- few people are smart enough to change this), many of whom are not trustworthy, not secure, or can easily be arm-twisted into providing a hostile government with a forged certificate.
Re:Encrypt (Score:5, Insightful)
+1 insightful.
I like to tell people that crypto doesn't solve a problem, but instead changes the problem into one that you hope is easier.
Crypto replaces the problem of securing your communications channel with a problem of key management.
Since the first problem is usually insoluble, this is usually a good thing, but good luck doing key management when the client machines are zombies controlled by an attacker, like so many personal computers are.
Re: (Score:3)
And the more a person "needs" GPG/PGP, the more resistant they are to using it. Sad but true.
GPG/PGP doesn't provide anonymity.
Re: (Score:3)
Why wouldn't an onion network be able to hide the fact that particular people are communicating with each other? Or anonymous remailers?
Re:Encrypt (Score:4, Informative)
I doubt that the media to hold those tables will fit inside this Universe.
Re:Encrypt (Score:5, Informative)
But no guarantee that at the NSA level encryption makes any significant difference
No, but there are pretty good reasons to think that it does. It is possible that the NSA has some proof that P=NP, and that they can reduce NP complete problems to some problem in P in cubic time (any higher and I suspect that it would be impractical to do on a mass scale, even with the NSA's resources). Yet all the work on these problems suggests otherwise, the NP is a strict superset of P and that NP complete problems are disjoint from P. There are enough reasons to think this is the case that people usually just assume it (like the fact that the polynomial hierarchy collapses if P=NP).
In terms of cryptography, there is a bit more to the story. Crypto requires more than just P != NP, it also requires the existence of trapdoor one-way functions (e.g. the RSA problem) and other stronger assumptions. Many commonly used cryptography systems base their security on problems that are not even known to be NP-hard, like the RSA problem. However, these problems have been studied for a long time, and there are good reasons to think they are hard, just like the P vs. NP problem (a proof would be nice though).
If PGP/GPG keys are based upon the product of two very large primes, then I'd expect the NSA to generate a list of these products. Yes, there would be umpteen bazillion to compute. Once compiled, however, the list remains static and can be accessed to crack any cryptographic session (even 128-bit) effectively in real time.
Two problems here:
P=NP=Many-Body Problem (Score:3)
This part of your comment amazed me: "It is possible that the NSA has some proof that P=NP.."
I'm not up on my crypto-game these days (i'm in entrepreneur mode not scientist mode), but that's the right way to think...however, with actual code-breaking, there is ALWAYS a situation and context for the communication to be decoded that puts a 'spin' on the 'universe' of the message
My dad was a cryptographer in the US Navy during the 70s. He taught me cryptography from a wireline, communications engineer perspect
Good... (Score:5, Funny)
Then they should have all those missing White House emails. ...oh, wait...
Fort Meade (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Fort Meade (Score:5, Informative)
Hey paranoid mods -- just so you know, this is a quote from the paranoid thriller "Enemy of the State." It's meant to be funny... or at least ironic, given TFA.
Re:Fort Meade (Score:4, Interesting)
> Where did the get the computational power ...
Some of these stories are probably apocryphal, and most are exaggerated. Example: I remember in the early 80's people claiming that the Keyhole satellites could "read the surgeon general's warning on a pack of cigarettes." Ummm ... not quite. They were very, very good and had outstanding optics, but they weren't THAT good. More like, "I can tell that you're a white male, approx 6' in height, holding a pack of cigarettes and driving a gray BMW."
So it is with government computers. Part of the answer is that "warehouse" thing. Seymour Cray's primary customer was the federal government, and he was well ahead of his time. IBM also custom-made some stuff for the government. Size didn't matter, so who cared if it drew more power than an entire city, required a million tons of cooling and filled aircraft hangars? :)
I doubt if NSA was able to recognize complete conversations 20 years ago, but the stories that I heard (I lived next to Ft. Bragg most of my life, home of the 82nd and the Delta Force, and had friends who worked there) were that they could (1) target specific conversations and (2) look for keywords, at which point, a human operator would listen to the tape and/or take a closer look.
Hey, when you have unlimited money and people crazier than Strangelove running the project, you'd be amazed at what you can accomplish. :)
Just BCC customercare@nsa.gov on all emails (Score:5, Funny)
Save the taxpayers' money.
Re: (Score:3)
why BCC? CC them, so your contact knows, he needs to CC them as well.
easy way to find out (Score:2, Interesting)
send an email between two accounts only you use with fake plans for a terrorist attack...if you get arrested then we'll know they were reading it. (tell somebody you're going to do it just in case you disappear in the night).
Still sometimes I think the government puts out these rumors on purpose to make everyone scared and think they are more powerful than they really are. I mean if the government "knows all" they when did Sept. 11th happen? Why do Mexican drug cartels ship billions of dollars of Cocaine ac
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The truth is the gov
Protest, Send your Rep Everything (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
So we email them relentlessly until they discard all the data they've collected?
We'll know they did this how? "Dear Citizens, we were lying before but now we are not and we've quit spying on you."
Re: (Score:3)
Flamebait?
Really? After we've seen Senators and Representatives from BOTH political parties on the news saying the exact same thing about how Congress is being bypassed through Executive Orders, and how many of their colleagues are complicit in allowing it to go unchallenged?
This isn't partisan. Take off the Party blinders. They only distract you from reality. The reality that BOTH Parties are corrupt and seek to exercise more and more control over every aspect of everyone's lives while confiscating at gunp
Re: (Score:3)
DDOSing Congress is a federal crime.
Transparency (Score:3)
Besides, how could they monitor foreign computer/internet-based espionage and other such things without actually monitoring the entire domestic network? If they where more open about this they could perhaps release information about botnet activity or similar useful data.
Think Big (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider the criticism on government for having failed to head off 9/11. Next consider the fact that the younger government employees will want to operate it in a 21st century way. Then, I think the logical extrapolation is to expect NSA to introduce the requirement that they can track communications retroactively.
Suppose some person X becomes suspicious. Then there will be an instant demand to examine all X's communications in recent years, together with those of X's contacts, and their contacts, N levels deep. NSA can't know in advance who X is, so they only way to meet that requirement is to intercept and archive everyone's communications all the time.
Consider the alternative. If they don't archive that stuff, and they could have, and if another 9/11 occurs, then the criticism will be wilting. They will be blamed for not doing everything possible to prevent it, They must do it as a matter of political self defense.
I posted something similar once before. Another slashdotter thought I was writing science fiction. I don't think so. I calculate that it could be done for 300 million Americans with only a dozen or so exabytes. Heck, pull out your Visa card and order an exabyte server from Oracle today. It is hardly beyond the capability of NSA.
I also believe that we privacy advocates also have to get our heads into the 21st century. It is time to shift focus from restricting government gathering of information to restricting government use of information already in their possession.
Re: (Score:3)
Suppose some person X becomes suspicious.
X could be anyone the government doesn't like. And since there's no real oversight here, getting rid of them would be fairly simple. Oppressive governments or individuals would love this ability.
It is time to shift focus from restricting government gathering of information
As I still believe in the spirit of the constitution and privacy, no, it's not. I do not believe the government should be doing that.
Re: (Score:3)
Ah, the wonderfully pessimistic assumption that what can happen will.
I like your attitude. I don't agree with it, but I like that it exists. The culture of the United States is paranoid and outrage-prone enough that if the government does actually turn oppressive, with opponents disappearing and certain thoughts outlawed, there will be enough activists to notice and care. In many cases this has happened with post 9/11 detainees, where local activists are fighting to have their friends returned. The governme
Re:Think Big (Score:5, Interesting)
Intercepting and storing all this communication is the really easy part.
Making sense of it; finding interesting connections; that's the really hard part.
Now the probable justification would be "for the terrorists" which means you almost instantly have to branch out of the US, and intercept far more than just internal communication. And both possible and actual connections increase exponentially with the volume.
I very much remember a Dutch supermarket introducing their discount card some 20 years ago. They openly stated that they wanted to track what people bought (linking separate purchases through this discount card), in order to put products that were often bought in tandem closer together in the shelves. Better for sales, convenient for customers.
A few years later the card was cancelled. It didn't have the desired result. Sure they got a huge database of linked purchases, but they did not manage to get any useful connections out of it. And that was a relatively limited scope (just the products they sold and maybe a few million cards issued), well defined and easily parsable data (product bar code numbers; no fuzzy communication), and looking for specific connections only (products bought together frequently). Yet they didn't manage to do it.
Sure computing has advanced, US government has possibly more resources, but also the problem is so much more complex in both size and scope. It uses fuzzy human communication, not even necessarily in English, can be any language. Looking for connections - but not knowing in advance what kind of connections. In an immense database: hundreds of millions of e-mail accounts, hundreds of millions of telephone subscriptions, each producing many data points every single day. Trigger by keywords? Well good luck making them general enough to catch who you want, and specific enough to not be drowned in noise.
Only retroactively it may have some use. See who a suspect talked to, and when, can be valuable for investigations. But there surely are other and possibly easier ways to do the same: call up telephone records from their telco, analyse contents on their computer, etc.
Is the story true or not? Can't say. It's unbelievable enough to be true.
Is such a database, if it exists, useful? Probably; but I doubt it's worth the effort.
Re:Think Big (Score:5, Insightful)
I would rather live in a world where occasional acts of terrorism succeed due to missed opportunities to gather intelligence, than live in a world where there is even the REMOTE possibility that said intelligence will be used against me and my family by those we entrust to collect and manage it.
It is time to shift focus from restricting government gathering of information to restricting government use of information already in their possession.
Today's rules for how that information can justifiably be used will be different from tomorrow's. Most likely, the trend will continue towards more liberal use of the information by the authorities as time goes on. When the information exists in storage and the tyrant of the day has sufficient power to gain access to that information, and the right political / social situation presents itself, the information WILL be abused.
When - not IF - but WHEN the next "Hitler" comes to power, we need to have a system of government that limits the damage he can cause. If Hitler had access to a database of all German communications and the resources to process that information, do you think that would have made things better or worse for the Jews?
What mechanism of restricting the use of collected intelligence do you propose that would be effective against a talented and devoted psychopathic world leader?
Re: (Score:3)
Over the course of history, which is more common and more damaging: terrorists, or tyrants?
What about Non-Americans? (Legality) (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
No if you're outside of the US, you're fair game. It's all about national security. You can bitch and whine all you want, but unless you've got a fleet of nuclear bombers you're willing to use on DC, NY, and LA, and a missile defense network that can take out incoming MRV payloads with 100% efficiency you don't have any ground to complain.
The big deal isn't that the US is spying on foreign nationals, it's that they're spying on their own citizens.
Re:What about Non-Americans? (Legality) (Score:4, Interesting)
look, despite their international treaties they(american government) consider it legal to spy, torture, detain without reason or with reason anyone they please - but that getaway for free card isn't for everyone, which makes it complex and generally makes some of their international operations the clusterfucks they are, it's not like they even know when they're working under authorization or not and asking for it would affect it like the cat in the box. they don't really give a shit about international law.. just like they don't give a shit about the spirit of the domestic law, guantanamo being a prime example. "hey we can't hold these people as prisoners, it's against our laws. but hey what if we kept them as prisoners IN CUBA??" and so they're now in a clusterfuck situation from which they have no legal exit - such interpretation of "the rules" wouldn't be allowed in schoolyard games even.
but if you could prove that google is doing behind the scenes work to enable interception of your emails - or if they know beyond doubt that their ssl's are no good, you could sue google successfully.
At what point. . . (Score:4, Insightful)
At what point will psychiatrists have to stop classifying people as paranoid simply because they believe the government is tracking them?
Re:At what point. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is that with the government, if you trip one of their triggers, they really will have you personally identified and tracked. For practical purposes though, you are very, very likely not to be one of those people.
As the megalomaniacs in charge (politicians, secret service chiefs, police chiefs, defence etc.) become more paranoid, their desire for power and control increases and they realise they can automate much of it, things will get much worse.
However, this is an ideal time to invest in storage, server, network and database companies.
Then, we just need to write some scripts to generate thousands of pretty pointless emails a day to each other containing semi-random "trigger" text and sit back as the share prices sky rocket and the security people buy more and more kit...
Everyone's a winner.
Of course we're not intercepting the emails... (Score:3)
He hasn't worked for the NSA for 11 years (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's be clear that this guy doesn't have access to any secret information. He's analyzing publicly available information and coming up with his own conclusions about the probable extent of the surveillance. He may well be right, but the summary makes it sound like he's the new Bradley Manning. Quoting:
Do they provide an online backup service? (Score:3)
As long as they are collecting my data, can I use them as an online backup service? If my hard drive goes up in smoke, will they restore my emails? As a taxpayer, I want access to this government resource that I paid for.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is why you should be a huge fan of Ron Paul. Most people here are too smart (or dumb) for their own good. They'll bitch and complain for hours how the government is too big, gets into our lives, spies on us etc.. Then they'll turn around and complain that people need health insurance, schooling, and everything else under the moon and it's up to the government to do that. Yes, in a perfect world everyone would be taken care of and live happy, but that just isn't the case and never will be.
Re:This is not good. (Score:4, Insightful)
Some of us even recognize the difference between government resources used for spying and government resources used to provide health insurance, schools, etc.
Re: (Score:3)
It's also possible to advocate for both health care and privacy.
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deduplication?
it's a lot of emails - but not a lot of data really - now if they are storing attachments....
if they did keep each full email for every person, my mom would need her own san based on the amount of stuff she forwards to me.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:honestly... (Score:5, Interesting)
I am not a criminal, but yes I do this on a daily basis. And I strongly suspect most people do. Not everything that's sensitive, is criminal in nature.
It's commonplace to communicate about business dealings by e-mail; also the sensitive ones. E-mail is just too convenient to stop using the moment something may be sensitive; actually that's a reason to not stop using it, as e-mail at least leaves a written record, allowing you to look back in discussions to see what was agreed upon (or not).