File Says NSA Found Way To Replace Email Program (nytimes.com) 93
schwit1 writes: Newly disclosed documents show that the NSA had found a way to create the functional equivalent of programs that had been shut down. The shift has permitted the agency to continue analyzing social links revealed by Americans' email patterns, but without collecting the data in bulk from American telecommunications companies — and with less oversight by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
The disclosure comes as a sister program that collects Americans' phone records in bulk is set to end this month. Under a law enacted in June, known as the USA Freedom Act, the program will be replaced with a system in which the NSA can still gain access to the data to hunt for associates of terrorism suspects, but the bulk logs will stay in the hands of phone companies.
The newly disclosed information about the email records program is contained in a report by the NSA's inspector general that was obtained through a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act. One passage lists four reasons the NSA decided to end the email program and purge previously collected data. Three were redacted, but the fourth was uncensored. It said that "other authorities can satisfy certain foreign intelligence requirements" that the bulk email records program "had been designed to meet."
The disclosure comes as a sister program that collects Americans' phone records in bulk is set to end this month. Under a law enacted in June, known as the USA Freedom Act, the program will be replaced with a system in which the NSA can still gain access to the data to hunt for associates of terrorism suspects, but the bulk logs will stay in the hands of phone companies.
The newly disclosed information about the email records program is contained in a report by the NSA's inspector general that was obtained through a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act. One passage lists four reasons the NSA decided to end the email program and purge previously collected data. Three were redacted, but the fourth was uncensored. It said that "other authorities can satisfy certain foreign intelligence requirements" that the bulk email records program "had been designed to meet."
Yeah (Score:2)
The "Freedom Act"
Sounds almost as good as the Patriot Act. /s
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Brought to you by a cooperation between Minitru and Miniluv.
Someone needs to sponsor a virginity act. (Score:3)
Someone needs to sponsor a virginity act. That way everyone gets laid.
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Re:Badly written headline (Score:4, Interesting)
The content's even worse.
found a way to create the functional equivalent of programs that had been shut down
In English a program is a software application, which makes the statement above sound seriously fucking impressive.
Turns out the article is talking about programmes, at which point it's merely just another aspect of the Police States of America.
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No, yes, and no.
No. Programme is the English spelling of program. Yes, programme is the spelling of program used in Britain. No, programme is different to program.
There is no language called British.
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Yes, we are talking about the difference between "English" and "American"
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In the companies I have worked for, there have been lots of Program Managers, who manage what you're referring to as "programmes". We have zero Programme Managers.
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Maybe you don't work in a country that speaks English.
https://jobs.telegraph.co.uk/j... [telegraph.co.uk]
https://sjobs.brassring.com/TG... [brassring.com]
http://acre.com/jobs/internati... [acre.com]
https://jobs.royalmailgroup.co... [royalmailgroup.com]
https://www.london.edu/about/j... [london.edu]
https://www.london.edu/about/j... [london.edu]
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Clearly your version of Google works differently to mine, as I'm spotting nothing that contradicts what I've stated.
Of course, if you'd actually articulate why you think I'm wrong instead of merely asserting it then you wouldn't come across as a complete twat.
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From your link to the Monticello
Comments: Neither this quotation nor any of its variant forms has been found in the writings of Thomas Jefferson.
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Ah, yes, the ad hominem when you disagree with the message. Classy.
So if a human has any failings we should ignore any insights they happen to have. Not that your ad hominem is all that good anyway. You fail to demonstrate that he was plagiarizing John Locke (and be sure to know what plagiarism actually is before trying to do so).
Lets be clear: I'm not defending Thomas Jefferson. I'm just calling out one of the lamest attempts to discredit someone.
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It's not ad-homenim. Invoking the name of a famous person along with quotes or advice by them is attempting to use their position of fame and their reputation to lend weight to the advice.
So because they committed the fallacy of "appeal to authority", you committing the fallacy of "arguing ad hominem", thus compounding rather than pointing out the original fallacy, isn't actually a fallacy, it's magically delicious instead?
Re:Phbbbt. We don't need not stinking fact checkin (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, Jefferson was an incredible hypocrite. He's also one of the major reasons the U.S. Constitution has the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights, in turn, has done far more to promote liberty in the U.S. and the world at large than any other single thing in history. So, yes, I'll drink to the old bastard.
Re:Phbbbt. We don't need not stinking fact checkin (Score:5, Interesting)
Being a hypocrite merely means you have standards, and want to be better than you currently are.
Have you ever looked back at some code you've written, and said, "I should have done better on that code?" Now if you tell other people to not make the same mistake you did, suddenly you are a hypocrite. If "hypocrite" is the worst thing anyone can ever call you, then you've done a good job.
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Curious. Posting something accurate about rebutting a false quote gets marked as "Troll".
It's possible to be entirely accurate and a troll at the same time. Think about it.
In this case, your argument that "Jefferson was one of the lamest founding fathers" isn't very convincing. His architecture was some of the best, his writing was excellent, and a lot of his ideas were interesting (none of us is entirely original....I'm not sure I've ever had an entirely original idea myself).
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Surely, you've had an original idea.
"Pink and purple garbanzo beans fester in my scrotum, not entirely unlike fuchsia."
You can have that one, for free even.
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I imagine that might have been me. 'Tis a long story but that's what blurted out of me while in a museum, while tripping, and surrounded by a tour group. The lady friend that was with me turned and said, "My brain has been removed by a skyhook." We were good until she turned around and saw a giant lobster hanging on the wall and started going "meep meep meep!" (Which, at the time, indicated great excitement.) We were not technically asked to leave, even then, but we knew we'd overstayed our welcome so we me
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Unlike governments, corporations have no power to imprison or execute you. And no one's forcing you to use any of the services you list, whereas you can't opt-out of goverment surveillence.
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"AND MOREOVER, Our Will and Pleasure is, and by these Presents, for Us, Our Heirs and Successors, WE DO GIVE and grant unto the said Governor and Company, and their Successors, free Liberty and Licence, in case they conceive it necessary, to send either Ships of War, Men or Ammunition, unto any their Plantations, Forts, Factories, or Places of Trade aforesaid,
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Unlike governments, corporations have no power to imprison or execute you./p>
You have obviously never met a corporate "fixer". Pray you never do; they tend to be actual psychopaths.
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Yes, simply by not bothering with things like having a phone or a place to live, you too can opt out of corporate tyranny. Of course, that opts you out of government interference as well for all practical purposes (especially if you go live in the woods), so I suppose they're about the same. Except that there is at least a Constitution and concepts of due process that occasionally save you from the government. There's no such protection from corporate tyranny.
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A government will do anything asked of it... It is there to serve
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Asked by who? If I report you as a Communist or ISIS sympathizer, will you cheerfully accept the monitoring and eavesdropping, that's sure to follow?
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Asked by who?
Exactly my point... Quid pro quo...
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Re:To Slashdot Resident Statists... (Score:5, Insightful)
To paraphrase Jefferson [monticello.org]: "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to listen to your every word and track your every move."
Whether Jefferson said it or not, it's also important to note that, no matter how much power you foolishly cede to the government, you still don't get everything you want. To me, at least, it's not really clear that you get much of anything in exchange.
Re:To Slashdot Resident Statists... (Score:5, Insightful)
At the altar of sacrosanct police and military spending you'll find the most anti-welfare-state, anti-public-infrastructure activists imaginable. And notice that its *private* services that always seem to be on the cutting edge of expanding surveillance in this country.
Police states form when the political class feels that police and military are the first and last resort to peace and prosperity. And they may resort to impoverishing the public to keep those police and soldiers well staffed and well fed.
Re:What with? (Score:5, Funny)
What did they replace their email program with? Pine? Elm? Mutt? Eudora? Thunderbird? Outlook? Outlook Express? Citadel? Courier? Squirrelmail? Something else [wikipedia.org]?
Gnus writing to a file processed by Thunderbird message passing to Seamonkey sent to an instance of Microsoft Entourage passing to Outlook Express in a VM that is forwarded to a qmail instance which delivers it to Kmail that encrypts it with GPG and sends it to mutt which ROT13 encodes it and converts it to morse to be punched on cards and delivered by snail mail.
Everyone calls it contractor.
Better than the IRS (Score:2)
So what you're saying is that it's roughly an order of magnitude more efficient and secure that the way the IRS processes and stores our financial data.
They figured it out before (Score:5, Interesting)
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Well, basically they only need to sniff and pair IP addesses and ports to each other. Now they do it themselves instead of asking for service providers logs
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Sorry, man. You gotta cough up some green...
Them too? (Score:3)
I found a way as well, to replace the email program, I deleted Outlook and installed Thunderbird.
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Woosh!
What part of no is hard to understand? (Score:1)
These a-holes just cant be told no can they?
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http://reactiongifs.com/?p=223... [reactiongifs.com]
The US Government is broken (Score:3, Insightful)
If this can happen, clearly there are problems with the separation of powers (i.e. the Executive is walking all-over the Congress). Unfortunately, the Congress is either too weak to regain their Constitutional rights and powers, or it simply doesn't want to.
Too bad we cannot harness the energy output from the founding fathers turning and spinning in their graves.
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The US Government is broken
We broke it ourselves...
Re: The US Government is broken (Score:3, Interesting)
You speak like the executive is one group. When I listen to Obama, he says the talking points he has been told. So so called 'anonymous' records, which I know are only technically anonymous, and trivial to de-anonymize, he claims as anonymous.
In the UK, we REJECTED Snoopers charter, and GCHQ then went on and did the mass surveillance anyway. They should NOT be spying on UK citizens or politicians, but claim they can and that's its legal. They haven't explained how its legal. Currently Theresa May, (appointe
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Sure, but they're supposed to be answerable to the president, but they keep him under their control. Then the executive branch is supposed to be checked and balanced by the legislative and judicial branches. The legislative is too busy whipping dead horses to deal with this and the judicial has abdicated.
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The US government declaring War on something that isn't a clear military target is the greatest guarantee that "something" will grow every year and be a bigger and bigger problem. Because that's the only way to keep the bureaucrats and contractors feeding at the trough.
I'm skeptical, but ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Given their track record, it seems likely the NSA replaced one horribly overreaching program with another. But as far as I can tell, there's little or no evidence (yet) to tell us this new program is equally invasive of Americans' privacy - in fact, that report didn't seem to contain any details at all. While I am very skeptical of this, there is always the possibility they could find a way to accomplish this in a more targeted manner we would not find onerous.
Of course, the basic problem is - telling us what they're doing, in that case, would likely make such a new program worthless. And it's pointless for them to say "just trust us", since they thoroughly burned that bridge to the ground over the past twenty or so years. Not to mention that we can't trust Congress or the President to effectively oversee such a program and protect our constitutional rights, since they also have a demonstrated history of thoroughly abrogating their responsibility on that subject.
I'm not sure what the solution is, unfortunately.
The Onion beat the NYT to the story (Score:3)
They just outsource the spying (Score:4, Informative)
It isn't illegal for Britain or Canada or Australia to collect email from Americans so the NSA just outsource the illegal collection.
Smell (Score:2)
A program by any other name would smell the same.
Replacing an email program? (Score:2)
Which one? Thunderbird? Kmail? Evolution?
Perhaps they found a way to replace their email programme.