Facebook and Microsoft Disclose Government Requests For User Data 140
wiredmikey writes "Facebook and Microsoft say they received thousands of requests for information from U.S. authorities last year but are prohibited from listing a separate tally for security-related requests or secret court orders related to terror probes. The two companies have come under heightened scrutiny since reports leaked of a vast secret Internet surveillance program U.S. authorities insist targets only foreign terror suspects and is needed to prevent attacks. Facebook said Friday it had received between 9,000 and 10,000 requests for user data affecting 18,000 to 19,000 accounts during the second half of last year and Microsoft said it had received 6,000 to 7,000 requests affecting 31,000 to 32,000 accounts during the same period."
Meanwhile, an article at the Guardian is suggesting the government may have better targets to pursue than Edward Snowden. "[U.S. director of national intelligence James Clapper] has come out vocally to condemn Snowden as a traitor to the public interest and the country, yet a review of Booz Allen's own history suggests that the government should be investigating his former employer, rather than the whistleblower."
Treason (Score:5, Insightful)
"[U.S. director of national intelligence James Clapper] has come out vocally to condemn Snowden as a traitor to the public interest and the country"
No. The people responsible for spying on American citizens are the ones who have betrayed their country and the public interest. They're the ones who should be caught, tried, and imprisoned. Government officials who violate the US constitution are traitors. People like Snowden are heroes.
Re:Treason (Score:4, Interesting)
o. The people responsible for spying on American citizens are the ones who have betrayed their country and the public interest.
I doubt they see it that way. And in any case, it's easy to blame somebody else... or a group of people... but let me ask: Did you vote in the last election? Did you write to your congress critters at any point during the long procession of decisions that has led us to this point? Held up a sign on a street corner? Had a meaningful discussion with a stranger about this? Met with anyone to discuss the problem? Democracy doesn't run very well on apathy... it's rather like pouring diesel into a gas tank... the results aren't pretty and the engine usually dies as a result.
They're the ones who should be caught, tried, and imprisoned.
Might I suggest that since we already have the highest incarceration rate of any country on the planet we start looking to solutions to social problems that don't involve sending people to our criminal education centers? Because that's pretty much what prison is: It's a place you go to meet like-minded people and learn all kinds of shit you wouldn't otherwise learn... and are then normalized to the idea that what you did was okay. And then you're released back into society where you're promptly told you have few housing or employment options, no friends, and very often just the clothes on your back. Oh... and a fresh new education.
. Government officials who violate the US constitution are traitors.
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom â" go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!" -- Samuel Adams
If you aren't participating, you're part of the problem. As part of the problem, you must be a traitor. As a traitor, you should be executed. (grabs a big rock) So, how do you want to die, sinner?! ... In other news, extreme statements like calling people "traitors" can result in extreme reactions, like stoning to death. Of course, a more civilized discourse would avoid using words like "traitor" to describe government officials carrying out their official duties, and perhaps might focus instead on the actual constitutional definition of what a traitor is... since you did invoke the Constitution afterall. Since you're obviously unfamiliar with the relevant passage...
People like Snowden are heroes.
Snowden himself disagrees with your assessment.
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Of course they don't. That's part of the problem.
Democracy doesn't run very well on apathy, but apathy is itself the product of a failed democracy. You're deluding yourself if you think apathy suffices to explain the sorry state in which we find ourselves. Perhaps some reading [google.com] is in order?
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Re:Treason (Score:5, Insightful)
People like Snowden are heroes
Snowden himself disagrees with your assessment.
Charles Barkley doesn't think he's a role model either, but guess what... he is. When people do extraordinary things, there is a significant chance that millions of people will hold such actions in high regard and elevate said person to 'role model' or 'hero' status. Snowden is a hero for the simple fact that he ousted illegal activity by a government organization. If the actions weren't illegal, but were just 'super secret', Snowden would be a traitor and should hang. But no, all he did was risk his own life to expose quite possibly the worst betrayal of trust the U.S. government has ever bestowed upon its citizens.
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Did you vote in the last election? If you voted, then you are partly to blame for the problems in your society. By refusing to vote for evil, you are not supporting evil. And politicians are nothing if not evil.
Oh, but third party you might cry. First: Waste of time. Second: Evil anyway. Third: Will be cooperated by the system and become evil even if you don't think that they are now.
In conclusion, if you vote Democrat or Republican in the USA you are part of the problem. If you vote third party, you are wa
downmod! parent is dupe! (Score:1)
AC parent (modded +5 Insightful) is a dupe [slashdot.org] which...
1. AC, first post
2. copy/paste dupes
adds up to BOT...
parent is a bot, or a paid commentor, or a very misguided troll...plz mod down
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And given the almost religious "patriotic" response after 9/11 within the US I would say, 2,000 more "patriots" would gladly give their lives in order for the government not to be oppressing the rest of the world like this. Right?
Re:Treason (Score:5, Insightful)
We had ample warning prior to 9-11. The FBI was even keeping track of Mohammad Atah while he was taking flying lessons in Florida. It was the higher-ups in D.C. who didn't take the threat seriously and refused to act on this information.
Another example, the shoe bomber, who was thwarted at the last minute by passengers. His father had grown suspicious about his son, and warned the U.S. embassy in his country. Another real lead that was not followed up on.
After every successful terrorist attack, there is always some soul searching about how this attack could have been prevented. I don't see how spying on Americans by default would have changed things on 9-11. In the end, people have to make decisions based on the incomplete information that is available and chose which leads could be true threats and which ones are probably not. That's where the break down in U.S. security is; effectively interpreting the information available. Not that there is not enough information in the first place.
If the U.S. really wants to be safe from Muslim extremists, the U.S. should focus on building better relations with the Muslim community. The first step would be to stop betraying those values we preach to others. The second step would be to improve access for young people int he middle east to educational opportunities in the U.S. through an expanded visa and scholarship program. The third step would be to improve primary and secondary education in the middle east. I know schools aren't as sexy as an armed Global Hawk drone. But the best information comes from people on the ground who are in contact with potential terrorists. If the U.S. were seen in a more positive light, we would get better information as a result. Lastly, intervening in Syria and taking sides in yet another middle-eastern civil war, is just plain stupid.
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Russian warnings can't all be followed up on. They probably gave a warning on every single Chechnyan. When you're inundated with data you will miss the important data, but will be accused of being incompetent after the fact.
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I'm commenting on the Russian attitude towards their ethnic minority groups.
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When you're inundated with data you will miss the important data, but will be accused of being incompetent after the fact.
All the more reason to not collect information on every phone call made and every email sent from every person in the United States.
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He's saying that they were monitored and it didn't help. So it seems like more monitoring isn't likely to help more.
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And don't forget, the info Google and Facebook has posted about the number of requests and how many users info they divulged doesn't include info from FISA warrants, because...they are secret. The recipient is ordered to turn over the info and to not tell anyone that they even received a FISA warrant.
Zuck doesn't want to post to Facebook from behind bars.
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I'll get hate for pointing this out but then again common sense seems to be poison to the politically correct, but if most of your troubles are coming from one group, how about keeping more of the group from coming over and keeping a closer eye on the ones you got, how about that?
You do realize that the majority of mass killings and other terrorist incidents in the U.S. have been the result of the actions of right-wing white male Christians, right?
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You do realize that the majority of mass killings and other terrorist incidents in the U.S. have been the result of the actions of right-wing white male Christians, right?
You obviously mean the left-wing fascist regime in Washington DC.
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You do realize that left-wing fascist is an oxymoron. Fascism is a feature of the political right. Nationalism, strong militarized government, and inequality are all right-wing ideas, and all essential to fascism.
Game over.
Please insert ten cents to play again.
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Unfortunately for your argument, politics is not a linear continuum. Fascism is a form of authoritarianism, and is closely allied to other forms of authoritarianism, some of which are "left wing".
To a stickler for definitions it would be fair to claim that there is no fascist government in the world today. So you can't win that way either.
As words are generally used, a term defines an approximate centroid of ideas, and can be used to refer to those ideas "near" to the centroid. If the GP was referring to
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That fascism is related in some ways to other forms of authoritarian and totalitarian is irrelevant to the fact that fascism is in no way left-wing.
I never claimed that there were any fascist governments in power today. In fact, whether or not there are or there aren't, it is irrelevant to my argument that fascism is not at all left-wing.
And if the GGP was referring to the authoritarian aspects of fascism and then saying that Washington is left-wing, then they are deluded, as well as miss using the language
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Then bomb those terr'ists back to the Stone Age. They're already back in the Bronze Age, at best, so it should be cheaper too!
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You do realize that the majority of mass killings and other terrorist incidents in the U.S. have been the result of the actions of right-wing white male Christians, right?
So try to keep THEM out of the country and keep the ones there under close supervision :-)
Re:Treason (Score:4)
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I can tell why political correctness is the best choice even for the purely pragmatic: if you persecute or ostracize a particular group of people, you will be creating rancor. While profiling makes sense when you think about immediate prevention of hate crimes, on the long run it's self-defeating. Why do you think religion in the middle east hasn't "grown the fuck up" like a few others, given they were all equally violent a couple of centuries ago? Because it still fits their mindset, because they live stil
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His point was that only loons take those parts seriously among any but the Moslem religions, and that the Moslems DO that those parts (or their equivalents) seriously.
I'm not totally sure that I agree with him, but his point does have some measure of validity. OTOH, tolerance levels can change quickly, and parts that are ignored by one generation can be revived by a following generation. It's happened before. (His argument about religions "growing up" fails on that basis. A temporary level of tolerance
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Dumb thing is - people forget that there were plenty of clues noticed before 9/11 with which, if it weren't for bureaucracy, the plot might very well have been prevented. That's with the laws that were already in place at the time.
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You don't understand, you can't be 100% safe.
Fixed that for you. Since you can't be 100% safe, safety is not an excuse for whole sale spying.
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20 million NYC sewer rats
Re:Treason (Score:4, Informative)
And the 25,000 brave drivers who died on the road, who can forget them. That's 2000 a month. We should outlaw automobiles.
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And the 25,000 brave drivers who died on the road, who can forget them. That's 2000 a month. We should outlaw automobiles.
Terrorism doesn't even make the top ten causes of death in the USA. I say we think about spying on and data mining every single American when it does make the top ten or even the top one hundred and in the meantime we get to work on fixing the things we SHOULD be scared of (see below). The reason given for intercepting and recording all of our communications is obviously a con and yet so many are going for it so easily. I guess the fact that our government is spying on us exactly as a totalitarian govt. wou
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But what about 9/11 ? This country can't afford to lose another brave 2,000 in this war, or any more buildings.
Oooh, is that what passes for insightful nowdays?
US Casualties in Iraq -- 4488
US Casualties in Afghanistan -- 2220
If this country cannot afford to lose more people in wars, maybe they should stay out of wars?
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I guess Irony means a description of a Ferric object right?
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Not necessarily.
"If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron." - Spider Robinson 1977
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But what about 9/11 ? This country can't afford to lose another brave 2,000 in this war, or any more buildings.
I've never seen a Score:0, Insightful before. Thank you for the experience. I'll use my Mod points tomorrow.
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This country can't afford to lose another brave 2,000 in this war
if those 2,000 brave fools hadn't signed up in the first place they wouldn't have died
and for anyone who thinks that without the brave fools terrorists would take over the world... wake the fuck up and get a clue dipshits... when you invade and blow up other countries, you piss people off and they fly planes into your buildings... so... stop blowing people up and you won't need to worry... it's not rocket science for fuck's sake
Treason (Score:1)
No. It's the people responsible for spying on American citizens who have betrayed their country and the public interest. They are the ones who should be tried and punished for treason. People like Snowden are heroes. It's those who violate the US Constitution who are traitors.
I don't understand this (Score:5, Insightful)
"[U.S. director of national intelligence James Clapper] has come out vocally to condemn Snowden as a traitor to the public interest and the country"
I simply cannot wrap my head around this. How is it in public's interest to be constantly surveiled in violation of the bill of rights?
Re:I don't understand this (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait. I thought Snowden was a liar. So how could he be a traitor to [USA] public interest?
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These idiots read 1984 and used it as a guideline for everything they do.
Re:I don't understand this (Score:5, Insightful)
I simply cannot wrap my head around this. How is it in public's interest to be constantly surveiled in violation of the bill of rights?
It gets better. Mr. Clapper said, under oath and before Congress, that Snowden "didn't have the access" necessary to make his claims. He then goes on to state that he's a traitor. Well... he's lying about one of these two things: Either Snowden had access to classified information and is a credible source... or he didn't have access, in which case he can't be a traitor, because he's not giving away government secrets, since he never had them to begin with.
I suspect this is the NSA version of "We don't have a problem and we're working to fix it as quickly as possible," and by fixing, of course we mean throwing someone under the bus. Since Snowden is at the bottom of the food chain, we'll start there, and continue feeding people to the lions at progressively higher levels of the bureauacracy until the "problem" goes away. And the problem of course isn't that the NSA is doing this, but that they got pants'd by some kid. Remember, it's not wrong if it's legal! -_-
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It's the NSA version of saying what is necessary to appease the congress. Normally they only have to deal with a very tiny committee of inner circle friends, like Feinstein. But every so often some of the sheep in congress wake up and start asking questions, and it makes the security people nervous.
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Well... he's lying about one of these two things: Either Snowden had access to classified information and is a credible source... or he didn't have access, in which case he can't be a traitor, because he's not giving away government secrets, since he never had them to begin with.
Snowden made a large list of claims. If just one of them is true, or even partially true, he can both not have the access he claims to have and still be considered a traitor. I like what Snowden did, but I'm pointing out a really obvious flaw in your logic.
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Well... he's lying about one of these two things: Either Snowden had access to classified information and is a credible source... or he didn't have access, in which case he can't be a traitor, because he's not giving away government secrets, since he never had them to begin with.
Snowden made a large list of claims. If just one of them is true, or even partially true, he can both not have the access he claims to have and still be considered a traitor. I like what Snowden did, but I'm pointing out a really obvious flaw in your logic.
The really obvious flaw in your logic is that it requires more than the claim to be true. If I claim the US is secretly recording the content of conversations between Americans (based on my personal speculation), that doesn't make me a traitor, even if it's true. On the other hand, I'm arguably a traitor if the government gives me access to that information and I then betray my NDA/oath/security clearance and reveal it. He really did need to have the access he claims, or it's not really treason, because
Re:I don't understand this (Score:5, Insightful)
I simply cannot wrap my head around this. How is it in public's interest to be constantly surveiled in violation of the bill of rights?
That is what happens when the people in power become convinced of their own righteousness. It is not an evil plot, it is simply the natural result of fact that basically no one ever thinks of themselves as the bad guy. So if they are the good guys, then whatever they do must also be good. They convince themselves that any harmful side-effects truly are minimal (easy to do when the side-effects don't impact them directly) and are a necessary cost for the greater good.
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Problem comes when their job changes from "I must stop terrorism" into "I must stop terrorism at any cost".
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Apparently you don't understand. Most of the bill of rights was has long been nibbled at, even in the beginning our more perfect union we passed a sedition act to quell speech.
Heck, search for "Civil Asset Forfeiture" and be horrified.
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Usually the courts determine after the fact that the actions were unconstitutional. I suspect it will also happen in this case, if we wait long enough.
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Usually the courts determine after the fact that the actions were unconstitutional. I suspect it will also happen in this case, if we wait long enough.
Because that worked so well with the telcos.
Snowden.. (Score:3)
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A head in the sand argument to this spying doesn't hold water, the "I don't do anything wrong, so no problem" argument. It is a problem for everyone simply because people you support can be spyed on, and the information can then be used against them. If a republican government is in power, they can spy on the democrats for example. Objectors to any government policy can be spyed on and their cause undermined. This is a massive problem for America. Sitting here in Australia the media is reporting this quite
read carefully (Score:5, Informative)
If you read carefully, saying that specific requests have come in for 20000 users doesn't mean that there aren't other mechanisms in place to collect a lot more data without specific requests. For example, the NSA could be collecting data where Facebook's servers connect to the Internet. Past reports and disclosures on NSA activities (as well as the activities of other spy agencies) suggest that this is likely routine practice. Facebook doesn't even deny this, and of course even if they did, it's questionable whether such a denial was meaningful. In addition, it's clear that the NSA and other agencies actively collect data from all open sources that they can. And, of course, you have to assume that the Utah data center is going to be used to store something, and it ain't gonna be data obtained from just 20000 Facebook-related requests, because those would fit on my hard drive.
So I don't know what these disclosures are supposed to accomplish. They really don't change anything. At the root of the problem is really that there isn't enough transparency and that people have lost trust. What we need and should demand is complete legal, fiscal, and legislative transparency on our spy organizations, what they are legally allowed to do, who sets limits on them, and how much we're spending on it. I don't see why understanding in such general terms what these organizations do should hinder their ability to catch terrorists. And if such disclosures really interfere with their capabilities, that suggests by itself that they are doing something they shouldn't be doing.
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the 20 000 requests are just normal requests for "normal" crimes.
the requests for crimes to be decided later as such, and taps for them, are secret and it's a treason to tell how they are performed since it's a "critical tool".
naturally that kind of thing existing can only be a pr disaster sooner or later. since people can't believe what the companies are saying since the company personnel would be performing a crime if they admitted to it. however as another catch they're as public companies required to in
Re:read carefully (Score:4, Informative)
doesn't mean that there aren't other mechanisms in place to collect a lot more data without specific requests. For example, the NSA could be collecting data where Facebook's servers connect to the Internet.
Apparently SSL encryption at all of the large internet corps is handled by dedicated front-ends - and the network between the SSL front-ends and the real guts of entities like facebook, google, etc are all in the clear. That makes for a perfect location for the NSA to drop their sniffers in, no need to compromise any SSL certs at all, no forward secrecy, etc, just wide open traffic perfect for raw harvesting.
And, of course, you have to assume that the Utah data center is going to be used to store something, and it ain't gonna be data obtained from just 20000 Facebook-related requests, because those would fit on my hard drive.
I think that bears repeating - the NSA ain't building data silos (there are others, like one in san antonio, texas [nsa.gov]) that consume as much electricity as a small city for nothing. They are collecting literally tons of data on us, its gotta be coming from somewhere.
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The electrical consumption of the the Utah installation is estimated roughly at $40 million/y. At 0.07 per kwhr that's roughly 500 million kwh / yr.
Google as a company is believed to use about 2 billion kWh / yr.
So we can probably say just Google will have 4x the data of this site.
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Apparently SSL encryption at all of the large internet corps is handled by dedicated front-ends - and the network between the SSL front-ends and the real guts of entities like facebook, google, etc are all in the clear. That makes for a perfect location for the NSA to drop their sniffers in, no need to compromise any SSL certs at all, no forward secrecy, etc, just wide open traffic perfect for raw harvesting.
Even if they are using SSL between the front end and the middle tier, self signed certs are probably used between those layers and its "game over" anyway in that case.
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Even if they are using SSL between the front end and the middle tier, self signed certs are probably used between those layers and its "game over" anyway in that case.
You think whether the cert is self-signed or not is relevant in this case, you fundamentally misunderstand the problem. Having Verisign sign the cert wouldn't do jack-diddly-squat here.
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Google uses ephemeral Diffie-Hellman key exchange [blogspot.com] for its SSL implementation, as long as the client is modern enough (i.e. everything except IE on Windows XP). That provides forward secrecy. Even if the NSA had the private keys, they wouldn't be able to snoop on anyone's traffic by passively sniffing - they'd have to mount an active MITM attack, and that is much harder to do, and even harder to do undetectably.
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And if such disclosures really interfere with their capabilities, that suggests by itself that they are doing something they shouldn't be doing.
Not necessarily. There's good reason to capture all kinds of metadata ahead of time, and store it for a period of time; The most practical argument is that it reduces the cost of executing search warrants. Anyone who's worked in IT knows that the moment you have a database, people are going to want access, and eventually, mirrors of at least some of that data is going to start cropping up elsewhere on the network. It'll be exported to spreadsheets, it'll be handed to the building maintenance people, it'll b
Re:read carefully (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that this information is easily available at all, and potentially without a court order, is a threat to our political system. You can be sure that the president gets national security reports on all major political figures, both allies and foes alike. Tax evasion, extramarital affairs, homosexuality, illegitimate children, drug habits, whatever are all considered security relevant and would of course be reported. And all of those also happen to be wonderful means for exerting pressure on people to vote his way or drop out of political races. This is too powerful a political weapon to give to the executive branch.
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The fact that this information is easily available at all, and potentially without a court order, is a threat to our political system.
Dude, a lack of citizen participation is a threat to our political system, but I'm sure you're leaping from the couch right now, rushing out the door without even grabbing your coat, and driving like a crazy man down to your local congress critter's office and telling them what a threat it is. Or, more likely, you're doing what every other American does when faced with a political crisis: Turn on the TV and pat yourself on the back about how you agree with the talking heads of your choice, and then go to be
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The NSA also would not want anybody else to know what their search criteria is. They are at least as vulnerable to traffic analysis as anybody else. If they seize the data, err, I mean acquire and archive the data, then their searches are all local and away from prying eyes.
They just lied (Score:1)
They legally can't disclose the FISA requests, they can however quite legally lie about them.
They can see their businesses going up in smoke, nobody can use the Cloud Services now if the NSA has access to them. Facebook will face worldwide probes and legal bars.
Occam Razor says, they are lying to save their business.
It's the one thing they can legally do under US law. As I wrote that a wave of despair went down my back.
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If you read carefully, saying that specific requests have come in for 20000 users doesn't mean that there aren't other mechanisms in place to collect a lot more data without specific requests. For example, the NSA could be collecting data where Facebook's servers connect to the Internet. Past reports and disclosures on NSA activities (as well as the activities of other spy agencies) suggest that this is likely routine practice. Facebook doesn't even deny this, and of course even if they did, it's questionable whether such a denial was meaningful. In addition, it's clear that the NSA and other agencies actively collect data from all open sources that they can. And, of course, you have to assume that the Utah data center is going to be used to store something, and it ain't gonna be data obtained from just 20000 Facebook-related requests, because those would fit on my hard drive.
So I don't know what these disclosures are supposed to accomplish. They really don't change anything. At the root of the problem is really that there isn't enough transparency and that people have lost trust. What we need and should demand is complete legal, fiscal, and legislative transparency on our spy organizations, what they are legally allowed to do, who sets limits on them, and how much we're spending on it. I don't see why understanding in such general terms what these organizations do should hinder their ability to catch terrorists. And if such disclosures really interfere with their capabilities, that suggests by itself that they are doing something they shouldn't be doing.
They are throwing numbers out there to try to put the genie back in the bottle but Americans already know.
i'll just leave this here (Score:5, Interesting)
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-snowden/Dp03vGYD
Re:i'll just leave this here (Score:4)
I think a lot of people have given up on the White House petitions site, the responses thus far on positions the administration does not approve of have been less than stellar. They are often a boilerplate response roughly approximating "we understand your concerns and will take them under advisement" which is bureaucrat for "get lost".
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Of course, it's all fun and games when it's "those people" we disagree with that get harassed and silenced by our increasingly authoritarian government. Those people bring it on themselves, it's not the fault of the establishment we intentionally built. Oh and "those people" don't have to be the tea party if that's what you were t
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If they arn't doing anything wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
What are all of the three letter agencies so afraid of? I mean, If they aren't doing anything wrong they shouldn't be concerned with some reasonable transparency. As long as they don't have anything to hide, right?
Its always amazing how some federal agencies seem to think it is so important to have unfettered access to others information so they can "keep a vigilant eye out" yet they so detest anyone making sure that their own activities remain above board. Especially in light of the obvious revolving door between the private sector companies which stand to make billions, and the three letter agencies dolling out those fees. As noted in the Guardian article James Clapper the current director of National Intelligence, one of the loudest voices of "disapproval" against Snowden's actions, was Vice-President of Booz Allen Hamilton not too long ago. That coupled with his lies to congress in regards to these programs............ If we're looking for traitors I'm far more concerned with the ones who are fleecing the American taxpayers out of hundreds of billions of dollars and lying to government inquests than one individual who released classified documents in an attempt to inform the public about possibly illegal acts.
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What are all of the three letter agencies so afraid of? I mean, If they aren't doing anything wrong they shouldn't be concerned with some reasonable transparency. As long as they don't have anything to hide, right?
Privacy advocates always say "if you have nothing to hide, hide everything". And that is exactly what these organisations obviously try to do: hide everything.
Now the difference of course is that you and I are individuals, and the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc. are US-government subsidised organisations. It would make sense if the people that pay for them (the general population) would be kept in the know of what they're up to, and how well they perform. Yet they simply try to "hide everything".
The other issue I have
The ultimate crime: (Score:4)
making public officials look bad.
Statistics - reporting half year (Score:4, Interesting)
Is it appropriate to report half a year's worth of data?
Though not unheard of, six months is an uncommon period to report; isn't the general expectation that they would report a full year's worth? Of course that would result in the requests being approximately doubled. My concern would be people will remember the amount as "9,000 and 10,000 requests per year".
This reminds me of politicians who also skew the time period to make dollar amounts appear larger or smaller.
To make dollar amounts appear larger, they increase the time period ("we're investing $4 billion over ten years").
An innovative approach recently used by Australian Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus to convince Australians that politicians were only awarding themselves a tiny increase in public money was to use the following: the increase is only a dollar per vote per year.
I suspect the choice of "six months" was a deliberate attempt to skew the perception of the requests.
Re: (Score:1)
This part doesn't bother me (I think) (Score:2)
This sort of surveillance ("We need to look at these specific accounts") doesn't bother me: that's how search warrants are supposed to work. (Well, assuming they are looking for terrorists and not just harassing Tea Party people.) This seems quite different from some other recent disclosures, like the Verizon warrants: "Give us records of all calls made." Search warrants, to be constitutional, have to be specific. General warrants [thefreedictionary.com] were abused by the British and are a specific reason the Fourth Amendment was
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I suspect the warrants were for specific content that would fall under even their tortured interpretation of the 4th amendment and one of them every 3 months or more often was for *all* of their metadata just like Verizon and other provided. They had a bigger stick to use on the telecommunication companies as Quest found out so dealing with them is easier.
"Terror probes" (Score:2)
A phrase that can be read two ways...
Basic PR 101 (Score:2)
1) deny it.
2) deny it
3) disclose heavily scrubbed and minimized data
4) do damage control
5) repeat as needed.
Ever heard of Vupen? (Score:2)
http://www.vupen.com/english/ [vupen.com]
"defensive and offensive cyber security". Helsingin Sanomat, biggest newspaper in Finland, claims the company is selling security holes (most likely accompanied with easy way to use them) for governments and intelligence agencies.
In Finnish: http://www.hs.fi/ulkomaat/Tietoturva-aukoilla+tahkotaan+miljoonia/a1371264995752 [www.hs.fi]
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What they are also if not only doing... (Score:1)
... its a feedback loop for manipulation of the public via controlled media (Main Stream Media).
Silicon valley should know this and Hollywood certainly does about how feedback loops are used to promote one thing or another.
There is no way such a large amount of spying can be filtered as abstract language is only as useful as the definitions applied by those using it. In other words, a terrorist plot could be communicated in a manner of common conversation that is undetectable. But certainly spying on such a
Booz Allen and Carlyle Group .. (Score:3)
Any luck with copies of the disclosure? (Score:1)
Scam Spin Control (Score:2)
"Facebook and Microsoft Disclose Government Requests For User Data"
Oh yeah, I believe everything that Microsoft and Facebook says about it being the nice guy here and "disclosure" of information.
I have seen scams run on T.V. at 2AM in the morning more convincing than that statement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWyHiV3l3MA [youtube.com]
-Hack
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Then Booz Allen was involved in scattered other irregularities and questionable dealings which are unfortunately typical for companies of that size, that have major dealings with the Pentagon and other agencies of the Federal government.
And you don't see a problem with that?
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Like a lot of folks on Wall Street, the Guardian sees two points and draws a trend line. Only it's more like one point so far. The US Government intentionally, across multiple departments & agencies, with malice aforethought, massively violating the US Constitution and the Rights of it's citizens in nearly every way possible. Well, except house troops in our homes. We can give them that. For now..
FTFY
Strat
money siphoning (Score:4, Insightful)
well.. if nothing else it's highly relevant that the programs work pretty much as a funds siphoning device(in addition to being secret, useless and rights infringing).
you would think that if they had any brains they would legislate such programs to be done with governmental employees only, no? wouldn't it make sense that only military/police/nsa personnel would be allowed to work on the project? 200k/year for technicians! imagine how much the company was billing the government for that 200k - put it at mildly at 400k. for a technician in a role they shouldn't be buying from a private contractor in the first place in a project that should not be touched by private contractor hands in the first place.. now it runs on basis of "hey here's xxx million - do what you please with it! hire friends! give stupid support contracts!".
you know what's worse than a spy program? a spy program ran by dicks for money. it's as stupid as hiring your own veterans as private contractors for military operations.
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"I think this program smells a bit..."
So, the government is wholesale Hoovering the electronic communications of the populace, and by you it's only mildly odiferous. One has to wonder, what would it take for you to sense a stink? As it stands, I can't help but consider you'd fit right in with the "Arbeit macht frei" people.