NSA Scraping Buddy Lists and Address Books From Live Internet Traffic 188
Charliemopps writes that the Washington Post reports "The NSA is collecting hundreds of millions of contact lists from all over the world, many of them belonging to Americans. The intercept them from instant messaging services as they move across global data links. The NSA is gathering contact lists in large numbers that amount to a sizable fraction of the world's e-mail and instant messaging accounts."
According to the leaked document (original as a PDF), the NSA is intercepting some chat protocols and at least IMAP, and then analyzing the data for buddy list information and inbox contents.
Re:Foreigners (Score:5, Informative)
The article explicitly says this does not appear to be based on the co-operation of US providers but rather international fibre taps - presumably placed or operated by compliant intelligence agencies that are merely extensions of the NSA. The US might be a ringleader in this activity, but other countries have out of control security services as well. After a long period of political silence in the UK we finally got some discussion this week, after senior cabinet members who served on the national security committees admitted they had no clue anything like that was happening. Cameron's response was priceless, he said the agencies would have told them about it if they'd asked!
Re:Foreigners (Score:2, Informative)
Then do something about it and stop using US-based web services.
Also European and Australian ones, in fact any web services that are in a country where there is an NSA-affiliated tap point, or where your traffic crosses one of those countries. In fact, if you are a 'foreigner' best disconnect completely and go live in a cave -- but not one dug by the CIA because then you're a terrorist and we will send drones.
"European" is much too broad stroke here, there are major differences between the countries. If you host online services in Norway fx law enforcement have to go through normal official court proceedings and get a specific court order for a provider to have to give them any information on the customer covered by the court order. No blanket access, they have to go through normal due process in each case, there are no special laws that circumvent this. They/NSA could of course still tap at the network level at some point, but use services that use encryption and that is much less likely.
Re:Clapper... (Score:5, Informative)
For people who aren't aware:
"I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful manner by saying no."
http://www.nbcumv.com/mediavillage/networks/nbcnews/pressreleases?pr=contents/press-releases/2013/06/09/nbcnewsexclusiv1370799482417.xml [nbcumv.com]
Re:Raspberry Pi to the rescue! (Score:4, Informative)
As long as you don't transfer your data through sneakernet stored on your phone in the 44 states that allow this without a warrant...
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/18983-police-can-search-your-phone-without-a-warrant [truth-out.org]