Verizon Ordered To Provide All Customer Data To NSA 609
Rick Zeman writes "According to Wired, an order by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court '...requires Verizon to give the NSA metadata on all calls within the U.S. and between the U.S. and foreign countries on an "ongoing, daily basis" for three months.' Unlike orders in years past, there's not even the pretense that one of the parties needed to be in a foreign country. It is unknown (but likely) that other carriers are under the same order."
What would happen if they required names? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a puzzle. What magic line would they cross by demanding names as well, when the amount of information they already require is enough to determine the individuals involved in a call and then some. This smells of a careful exclusion crafted by the AG or some such to skirt a law.
Re:All customers!!! (Score:0, Interesting)
Oh OK, only a small subset of Americans lose their 4th amendment rights. Well thats ok then; fuck those people, they probably voted for that 'other' party. Since the precident has already been set by removing certain Americans Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth amendment rights, I'm looking foward to the time when we remove the fifteenth amendment rights from a 'small subset'; My cotton fields aint gonna pick themselves.
All data all the time (Score:3, Interesting)
William Biddy, who was involved in the early part of this data grab, explaining why he became a whistleblower:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuET0kpHoyM
This is from 2012, before Boston. He says they've intercepted at least 15 TRILLION communications with the system.
Worth noting, is that despite a decade of data grabs, they didn't stop Boston. The claimed purpose doesn't work.
Re:But I'm a democrat.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed. I vote Green whenever there is a Green candidate. It's not so much that I adore their politics as it is I abhor the Republicans and Democrats. It may be a lost cause but I refuse to support what is going on.
Re:Second amandment (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Second amandment (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmm, that analogy doesn't seem very relevant. A Communist dictator who kept himself in power by brutal means and exported all of his country's resources for his own personal gain vs. a democracy with a 2 term president, checks and balances, and media that scrutinizes and publicizes every dump a politician takes?
The fact is > 50% of the voters elected the current leader of the US within the last 4 years, which makes it pretty hard to have passionate majority popular uprising. Pretty sure the military, though not happy about it, would have no problem using their guns on any small revolt (that we all know will never happen anyway). As history has shown, the only realistic way a remotely successful revolt can happen in the US is when it's on extremely divisive and more importantly GEOGRAPHICAL boundaries (which allowed the military itself to organize along *local* loyalties - as you said, friends and neighbors). Those divisions just don't exist any more on geographical lines - now the only major division (beyond the relatively recent idiotic fanatical "conservative" vs. "liberal" debate which is mostly just a disgusting media-driven creation) is really rich vs poor, with a large buffering middle class that just doesn't care much as long as they are left alone.
Then again, even if I disagree with your point it was at least much more interesting than the one you replied to, which was just a blatant anti-US troll with no real insight whatsoever...
Re:All data all the time (Score:5, Interesting)
William Biddy, who was involved in the early part of this data grab, explaining why he became a whistleblower:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuET0kpHoyM [youtube.com]
This is from 2012, before Boston. He says they've intercepted at least 15 TRILLION communications with the system.
Worth noting, is that despite a decade of data grabs, they didn't stop Boston. The claimed purpose doesn't work.
I'm very skeptical about the utility of "grab everything" evidence collection. After 9/11 - back when we weren't collecting anywhere near as much information as we are now - there was a feeling of "we should have caught that", based on after-the-fact understanding of clues. But IMO it simply wasn't a realistic expectation: intelligence agencies are pyramidal, so lots of details get filtered out when the 10,000 people at the bottom pass their reports up to the handful at the top. If two closely related clues are separated enough that they don't get put together at the bottom, odds are that they'll both seem irrelevant and not get passed up.
With 15 trillion intercepts, I'm sure the emphasis has shifted to computational analysis, but I'm not convinced that that makes any difference. Even the NSA can't do combinatoric crosschecks on 15 trill intercepts, so stuff is going to have to get digested and pushed upward just like with people.
And so I'm utterly unsurprised to read:
Worth noting, is that despite a decade of data grabs, they didn't stop Boston
Shoes on the ground catch a phenomenal amount of stuff.[*] Is Big Data catching anything?
[*] I remember ~10 years ago a redneck couple in Texas was going to blow up some chemical plant when the wind was blowing the right direction to kill everyone in the adjacent company town (for obscure reasons). Somehow an undercover cop was on to them, got recruited into their plot, and hid a microphone/camera in their dashboard. The news televised the footage of the three of them sitting in their truck on a hillside overlooking the plant, discussing the plot, when the men with handcuffs came to take two of them away.
When I watched V for Vendetta years ago... (Score:5, Interesting)
...I remember thinking that no sane citizens of any democratic country would ever allow the the state to amass such abusive and intrusive powers.
And then, I read today's Slashdot article.
So, given that it was bad under Bush, and is now worse under Obama, it is readily apparent that regardless of whichever political party you choose to vote for, all roads lead to the same end. The system will prevail. Is anarchy the only solution then?
Xbox One = NSA spy platform (Score:5, Interesting)
NSA spying on all electronic communication is (very) old news. Microsoft's Xbox One (increasingly known as the XBone) has been designed from the ground up to massively increase the surveillance abilities of the NSA.
The new console has 8 CPU cores and 8GB of memory. It actually runs as two distinct computers, with two CPU cores and up to 3GB of RAM forming a special 'Kinect' computer system that has its own OS, and is continuously processing the input from the Kinect sensor systems, regardless of what the user is currently using the console for (including AAA games that appear to NOT use the Kinect sensors in any way).
The Kinect computer is constantly generating snapshots of data from the camera and microphone array, and stores these snapshots as encrypted files in a dedicated area of the enclosed HDD. These snapshots include full face photographs of each new person who enters the room. The Kinect computer is designed to compare sound and video/image data with a signature list (that can be changed and updated remotely), so that full video and sound recording can be triggered if the signature patterns are matched. This data can be either stored on the HDD (again, as encrypted streams) or immediately streamed to a remote server over the Internet if the console is currently online.
Signature triggers can include things like gunshots or sounds of explosions, people talking in a given language (say Arabic), or a man shouting at a woman.
Signatures can also (thanks to the body movement recognition ability of Kinect) represent given physical actions by people (for instance, two people engaging in love-making). Yes, you read that correctly- the Xbox One can be set to start streaming video to any remote server on the Internet if it detects people having sex in front of the camera.
Most 'signatures' are quite small pieces of data, and the console can have many thousands of signatures active at any time. Usually triggering a signature will allow an actual Human to remotely inspect some of the snapshot data being constantly generated to determine whether to activate full streaming. This practice is similar to that used by the NSA for decades when spying on ALL phonecalls- phonecalls are also routed through signature systems, and those that trigger on any signature are flagged for immediate inspection (although ALL phonecalls are actually recorded and later subject to much deeper mining).
The NSA (and other security services around the globe) have long dreamed of placing their spying equipment into the homes of every citizen. Mobile phones have gone some way to achieving this (the NSA collects, where practical, all the image data captured on mobile phones, but this is obviously severely limited by the bandwidth issues). The Xbox One puts a dream spy system into the living rooms of millions of people, together with massive amounts of mains powered computing resources to pre-process the data captured.
Microsoft demands that ALL applications and games have some Kinect functionality to encourage owners to keep the Kinect bar fully 'calibrated'. The Kinect system CANNOT ever be deactivated. If the Kinect sensors report any failure, the console refuses to run games/applications. If the sensors detect any problem with visibility (like tape over the cameras, or Kinect turned to face a wall), the console pesters the user to recalibrate the system. One can start a game, and then block the cameras in some sense, but research by Microsoft and the NSA has determined that people willing to buy the Xbox One, even if they are aware of the worst stories about invasion of privacy, will cease taking any measures to protect their privacy after only a couple of weeks of ownership.
Conversely, those who are prepared to ALWAYS block the cameras when not using a 'Kinect' game, or those who forego Kinect functionality altogether and permanently 'blind' the sensors will prove to be the tiniest minority, and can be safely considered to be no different from those who refuse to buy the console in the first plac
Re:Shocking! (Score:5, Interesting)
Reminds me of after 9/11 when there were so many feds abusing wiretaps they couldn't afford to pay the bills and were getting them shut off [cbsnews.com].
Re:All data all the time (Score:4, Interesting)
The key isn't to actually catch anything, the key is to convince people you can, then snow over gullible juries in court with tales of how you have super secret evidence that proves you're a pedophile terrorist drug pusher but if they told them they'd have to kill them, so they find you guilty.
Re:Second amandment (Score:4, Interesting)
Plus the US president doesn't rule by fiat.
I'd say this is pretty strong evidence he does. This should be both unconstitutional and illegal by all publicly known laws. If it's legal by secret laws that's pretty much the definition of ruling by fiat.
As history has shown.
The British empire kept very few English soldiers anywhere except the British isles.
In what period of modern history did the British keep the main part of their Army in the home Islands? The British relied on their navy to protect the home Islands. The Army kept order in the Empire...and fought Napoleon occasionally when they ran out of reliable countries to bribe to fight him.
Re:Which amendment would you like to lose today? (Score:1, Interesting)
"Actually I make a very big deal about the second amendment because I care so much about the other amendments. The second is the last line of defense in the protection of the others. It is the only amendment that gives the people a physical recourse should the three branches of government fail to up hold the Constitution."
I am so tired of such a stupid fucking argument
Do you think your little machine gun is going to protect you from invisible drones? napalm? and many other version of death of above. USA military is by far the strongest military in the world, it makes syrias look like those firework tanks. Look what kind of problems they are having; no amount of guns going to protect you from the USA military, for that be certain and stop believing such stupid propaganda.
No revolution is going to stop this, even if you had a large enough brain to start one. Most it would do is get you killed (better for the gene pool) and make a good 80-90% of our country's citizens starve and throw the world into chaos;
Maybe you can get a chia-brain and start growing one. Just add water, probably do you loads of good.
Grow up and start getting involved and more important, get educated. Its dumbasses like you that voted people in that put us in this situation in the first place. And no im not talking about the President, this kind of shit happens because of idelogoical dumbasses in congress giving feel good blowjobs to people like you so you will listen to there stupidity and vote with your boner up and no blood to the brain. This leads to congress feeling comfortable enough in there seats that they can vote for power and money, not for the good of the people.
you want to make change, get to the streets or get into politics and force change. Shooting a automatic rifle at some cop driving down the street to start a revolution might help humanity in the long run with the removal of such stupidity in the collective pool, but in the short run and medium run you compound the problem and make the government want to do more shit like this.
Re:It could easily be focused (Score:5, Interesting)
Like everyone else, I have no idea what they're doing, but no, it doesn't rule out focused surveillance.
What's being acquired as evidence is very wide, and the NSA is famous for both large data storage and building a database of interpersonal connections. Regardless if the particular reason this information is being gathered, I'm working under the assumption that they're going to be using the information in whatever way they can, rather than for the original reason they're taking the data.
I find it really concerning that a secret court can order such wide data transfer to the NSA, and also order that the order be kept secret.
Re:Read the court order here, all 4 pages of it (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Read the court order here, all 4 pages of it (Score:5, Interesting)
Aided and abetted by resources made available by the Bush Administration.
This is why rabid partisans - among others - should be careful what they wish for. They may get it, only to discover that it ends up in the hands of the other side.
But no matter which side holds them, we all lose.
Actually, no. Frankly, if this were to catch terrorists, as they claim, I don't think I'd have a problem with it. The Bush administration had these powers, and as far as we know, they used them to monitor terrorists. If the Bush administration had been caught abusing federal power to oppress political opponents, he would have never been granted these powers. If he had abused other powers after granting them, they would have been stripped away. There were checks and balances.
Bush was watched and when he screwed up or even appeared to overstep his bounds, he was hammered. There were those screaming for his impeachment over the Valerie Plame affair, which was merely leaking the name of an operative who had been sitting at a desk in Washington for over five years. The administration didn't even have anything to do with leaking the name! Scooter Libbey went to jail over the matter because he said he couldn't remember a conversation he had that was unrelated to the case. The actual leaker, Richard Armitage faced no jail time. He wasn't even charged. The Bush presidency didn't need to push boundaries to see where the limits were. They were punished for petty crimes they had nothing to do with.
Compare that with the current administration. The Obama administration has been pushing boundaries since it came into office. Fast and Furious, lies and demonization of opponents of Obamacare, lying over Benghazi, using the IRS to oppress opposing political groups, phone tapping the AP, fake charges to get a warrant of the Fox News reporter AND HIS PARENTS, lying about knowledge of the fake charges over the warrant, and many many other abuses of power. The administration has not been held to account for any of them. The Republicans try, but when the press goes against them, Republicans lose votes and are labeled as racists.
This administration has been pushing the boundaries from the beginning and has not found the edge yet. They will keep pushing until people go to jail, and even then, as long as it's low level people, they won't care. This is extremely dangerous, and all Obama's supporters can do is continue to blame Bush.
Re:Read the court order here, all 4 pages of it (Score:2, Interesting)
Next thing you know we'll be killing American citizens in a modern civil war...