US Mining Data Directly From 9 Silicon Valley Companies 404
Rick Zeman writes "Hot on the heels of Verizon's massive data dump to NSA comes news of 'PRISM' where The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person's movements and contacts over time. This program, established in 2007, includes major companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook...and more."
land of the free... (Score:5, Insightful)
Tinfoil hat brigade (Score:5, Insightful)
Bye bye Dropbox? (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
Dropbox, the cloud storage and synchronization service, is described as “coming soon.”
I'm very dependent on Dropbox but I just might have to cancel it. As I type this, I'm already cancelling GoogleDrive, and MS SkyDrive.
Re:I'm Okay With It (Score:5, Insightful)
My life and my family's lives are more important than whatever privacy I had on these sites.
...says the anonymous coward? Am I missing some Soviet Russia joke here?
Re:land of the free... (Score:5, Insightful)
is anyone really that surprised by this, though?
Agreed,
Anyone who didn't see this coming 12 years ago had their head in the sand or hasn't read their history.
Re:Money quote... (Score:5, Insightful)
“They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type,” the officer said.
I'm pretty sure I'd notice a keylogger on my network sending every keystroke out to elsewhere...
As for the leap from idea to typing, that technology is the sole purview of the NSA it seems...
Oh, so you've turned off auto-complete predictions in Chrome's address bar, and never use any cloud based apps like Google Docs that send keystrokes to the cloud? Though you might not notice a good keylogger that could queue up data and send it periodically as innocent looking DNS queires, ajax queries, etc.
Regardless, one needn't watch keystrokes to watch ideas form as you type - that statement is just as true if they watch you type facebook posts, slashdot comments, IM's, etc in real time.
Sounds familiar (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm Okay With It (Score:5, Insightful)
Its a good thing your ancestors had a little more guts and a lot more principal. They were willing to die, if necessary, first to free America from being ruled by Kings and then to fight other countries who wished to force their ideologies onto the rest of the world.
Meanwhile, all that most of us from this generation had to do was not screw it up. Which it looks like we are. Hopefully these disclosures will remind everyone that the reason we have a national security apparatus is to protect our liberty.
Re:Is I also said on Ars... (Score:1, Insightful)
Before you get too outraged, keep in mind this is all based on some random PowerPoint presentation. I wouldn't exactly call that confirmation, especially since the companies supposedly involved, many of whom have gone to court repeatedly to protect their users from unreasonable government data access, all deny knowledge of it.
Free Market Risk (Score:5, Insightful)
This data poses a significant risk to a free market economy reliant on technology. Business is no longer demarcated from personal life, so spying on people means spying on business.
Would you start a new business if the government had access to all it's communications? Would you trust them not to share that information with others, or exploit it for their own benefit?
Unless there's checks and balances, like the recently neutered STOCK Act, there will be temptation to exploit this data for unimaginable gain.
Re:Any chance this will cause real outrage? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you remember aaaalll the way back to 2005, a whistleblower at AT&T in San Francisco made public the NSA's secret wiretapping program. Despite ongoing lawsuits brought on by the EFF, it doesn't seem like the majority of the public really cared at all.
Seems like most people simply don't give a shit about their rights. The government could announce a plan to cut every man's dick off, and few would complain. Well, some cranky newspaper columnists might complain about the "hippie protesters," but that's it.
Re:I'm Okay With It (Score:5, Insightful)
The Internet needs to be policed. There are bad men and evildoers actively plotting to do us harm. These nefarious activities now are increasingly being planned and coordinated using the Internet. I don't think this is so bad that the authorities are mining and searching and seeking out these dastardly terrorists.
Are you sure you're ok with the US Government scrutinizing your private life?
Right now there are so many laws and regulations in the USA that not even the US Government can tell you how many there are (criminal law alone is 23,000 pages across 50 volumes, and that doesn't include thousands of federal regulations that you're expected to abide by). Every day you probably break dozens of laws without knowing it.
How will you feel if the government starts mining your data and issuing violations automatically: "Citizen: on June 3, 2013 you told your aunt that you fixed your backyard fence. We found no record of a proper building permit, therefore you must tear down your fence and build it again" "Citizen: On September 9, 2013 your daughter said she planted a dandelion in front of your house. That plant has been determined to be a noxious weed, we will be sending a drone to eradicate your front yard". "Citizen: In Jan 10th, 2003 you had lunch with a Tea Party leader. The Tea Party has been determined to be a terrorist organization. Come quietly and we'll go easy on your family".
Even if you trust the current administration with the data, do you trust all future administrations since the data will likely be retained beyond your lifetime? How would you feel if they selling profiles about yourself to private corporations? (first to the credit rating agencies, then maybe to insurance companies, then to anyone that wants to buy a profile on you).
My life and my family's lives are more important than whatever privacy I had on these sites. I know Apple, Google, Facebook have the data anyway, so I see know harm on giving this up so that I feel safer. Just my two cents, I know its not the majority viewpoint in this current uproar.
Why do you assume that you have to give up all privacy to ensure the safety of your family? Do you think terrorism is something new that can only be stopped by scrutinizing the personal lives of everyone?
If you're so open with your privacy, why post as Anonymous Coward? Why not post your Facebook Profile, LinkedIn Profile, Twitter name, etc here for us all to see? What are you trying to hide?
Re:I'm Okay With It (Score:3, Insightful)
That AC is severely lacking in foresight, this AC prefers the words of General John Stark that so well expressed the view of many: "Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils."
Re:Is I also said on Ars... (Score:5, Insightful)
If this doesn't make you angry, upset and outraged, what will? Most of you will have relatives that fought and died to fight the evil of fascism in the Second World War.
An excellent point. It almost struck me as wrapping yourself in the flag at first, but really it's not. "Fought and died for our freedoms" is something I heard often, starting in grade school. I hope it's not complete bull. We could really use some WWII and other vets saying "this is not what I fought for".
The most effective thing I read back when an anti-flag burning amendment was the hot topic, was a letter in a local paper from a WWII vet. He had serious creds - airborne and did 3 major jumps, including D-Day. If he didn't risk his neck for this country I don't know who did. His statement was very simple. "I didn't fight for the flag, I fought for what it stands for".
Re:How to stop it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't use these services I guess...
Those are the services you know of.
Will you also stop using your bank, email, IM, your credit card, etc? The government can (and probably is) monitoring everything you do that has an electronic trail.
Re:land of the free... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:land of the free... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Or not (Score:5, Insightful)
Parse their words. They are denying a very pointed question that wasn't asked. They are all saying, "We don't allow the government direct access to our servers"
This isn't the denial you think it is.
Re:Slashleft (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:land of the free... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not all that surprising. The scope and size of data is simply too overwhelming even for the NSA, if they were to collect absolutely everything. These technical limitations are the only thing keeping some semblance of practical privacy... for now.
Re:land of the free... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell, some companies may just be fronts for surveillance activities.
Oh, that is a given.
China also has more than 3,000 front companies in the U.S. “for the sole purpose of acquiring ... technology [bloomberg.com]
It is probably not fair for the Chinese to get all the action.
Re:I'm Okay With It (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm Okay With It (Score:5, Insightful)
Forget the "bad guys" for a second. Your entire life and those of your family and friends is being monitored in detail regarding daily activities to attempt to incriminate you for being a child pornographer or terrorist. Any little off-color humor, flippant statements, random private discussions, outbursts, travel plans, purchasing decisions, etc, all can contribute to increasing that terrorist/child porn indicator for your personal life, regardless of your actual innocence, with no human judgment involved.
This is complete insanity, and it is the implicit condemnation of every single US citizen as being a terrorism suspect. You are complicit in subjecting yourself as a suspected terrorist, instead of demanding to live your life as a regular, upstanding citizen with no charges held against you.
I know Apple, Google, Facebook have the data anyway, so I see know harm on giving this up so that I feel safer.
Sure, you "feel" safer. But you are not safer. You are a suspect now, and are more at risk of having your life destroyed by the authorities, regardless of innocence, than before.
Re:Is I also said on Ars... (Score:3, Insightful)
Give me some evidence the CIA or the NSA are attempting to control anything about internal American politics, control people's lives, the outcomes of political processes or even innocent individuals lives or even anything like business outcomes. Because without that you have no case that they are a nefarious force in our lives. They are not breaking any law-. If you don't like it, repeal the Patriot Act.
An ability to hypothetically do evil thing X is NOT NOT NOT the same as the desire to. They COULD nuke us! All move to a safe place and then push the button! Are you worried about that too?
Civil society runs on the fact that people do not WANT to do evil things and if you're the NSA or the CIA evil things include any form of taking over the country politically or financially or personally.
People do not want to do the Worst Case Scenario Evil things you are imagining. If that changes, then that's something to deal with. History is FILLED with people who have all kinds of power to do evil that they never avail themselves of. In fact, that's the normative case. I COULD shoot my dog. I don't want to. I COULD rob a bank. All of civilization goes forward on two legs. One is the basic decent impulses of people who are not anti-social but rather civic minded . The other is the law which forms a structural barrier against people who are bad and also guidance and directives for morally ambiguous or ethically complex situations.
Without BOTH of those, we're fucked. People can be individually good, but still create chaos , war and anarchy if there is no law. OTOH even if the law is very clear, if no one WANTS to obey it, we're all fucked.
We have law, we have decent people applying that law. We're not the Reichstag. We're not Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia . We're not Pol Pots' Cambodia.
To tell you the truth, those were nations who came under the control of MORAL ABSOLUTISTS like yourself who were in a perpetual internal RED ALERT , who saw no shades of gray, admitted of no degrees, could not process ambiguity,and harkened back in each case to a mythical yesteryear which had been corrupted by a cabal of evil men - a situation which required the collective violence of The People against the Oppressors to rectify.
Want to read something? Read Animal Farm.
Re:land of the free... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:land of the free... (Score:5, Insightful)
...or why Google dropped XMPP support, re-added it, and pretty much dropped it again. Such federation would get in the way of Governmental Monitoring And Intelligence Gathering For Liberty And Freedom And Also Liberty, apparently.
Re:land of the free... (Score:5, Insightful)
If it is true that Google, for example, is unaware of PRISM, then an appropriate response from Google would be the rapid development and deployment of an EASY TO USE, MULTIPLATFORM browser add on to enable its users to CONVENIENTLY send and receive pgp-encrypted gmail that prevents plaintext from ever reaching Google's servers.
Encrypted mail is a problem of convenience, not technology. Google has the resources to provide the necessary convenience to a large enough user base that encrypted email could become an expectation.
I hope one of the major companies is sufficiently principles and sufficiently independent of the United States government (and its academic/corporate/lobbyist friends) that it is willing to do this.
Re:land of the free... (Score:5, Insightful)
but under current rules the agency does not try to collect it all.
Rules can be changed at will as soon as the eye of public scrutiny decided to overlook their abuse due to "a promise that under current policy", the data won't be used to make dragnet
Re:Money quote... (Score:4, Insightful)
What's the use of turning off an option in a browser made by a company that acts hand in glove with its domestic intelligence agency? How can anyone trust one checkbox in Chrome after this?
Re:Is I also said on Ars... (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't get angry anymore.
I've spent the last 12 years watching the western world, and my own country in particular, fall apart in slow motion. Everything I thought I knew about the politics and the rule of law has been been invalidated three times over to the point where I can't make beleive anymore.
How can I be angry at an outcome which I knew was inevitable? And outcome produced by a system that is inherently dysfunctional? I may as well become angry at a bird for eating a worm as become angry at the US government for doing what everyone saw coming since 2001. What happens when a government is given arbitrary powers, an eternal enemy, and a compliant judiciary and media? We all know what happens. The government being in the west does not make it different and anyone who ever thought so (I include myself in this) was a fool.
I used to think that eventually, the political class would stoop so low they would hit rock bottom, and the resulting public outrage would sweep them away. I no longer see a logical rock bottom, apart from a return to hunter-gatherer status. I see a slow collapse of the west in general, and the US in particular, along the lines of the Soviet Union, which spent 80 years dying.
In 100 years time, things may be different. But don't expect anger or change in the next 20. Expect decline.
Re:We knew it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:land of the free... (Score:5, Insightful)
You have only their word for it, and they've made it abundantly clear that they will lie to you "for your own good".