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"A Guide to What We Now Know About the NSA's Dragnet Searches of Your Communications"
"A Guide to What We Now Know About the NSA's Dragnet Searches of Your Communications"
http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/guide-what-we-now-know-about-nsas-dragnet-searches-your-communications
Everyone should read this article.
I've noticed that the news jumbles the meta data and content portions of this story enough to make people say things like: "It's just the meta data." It's not just the meta data. That was included in the first bit of information that came out. It was the copies of the Verizon warrants that allowed the NSA to collect call logs. Then came more revelations about the actual content that was being copied, stored(seized), and searched.
What bothers me is the denial of truth. It is disconcerting to watch people hurl insults in order to change what the truth is. I've even seen people arguing that there is no evidence of spying. Not only is there evidence, but there is also confirmation of the evidence.
There is a lot of information being seized and searched. It may be viewed as right or wrong. But I do not understand how intelligent people can say that it is not happening. This is the very definition of search and seizure, except the seizure comes first and then the searching. And I do not think there is enough probable cause to "collect it all."
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Savage's story in the Times advances the ball by explaining, at least in part, what the government does with the things it's accessing via U.S.-based cables. Intelligence officials told the Times that the spy agency casts a net that ensnares virtually every electronic and text communication passing through U.S. borders (in either direction) over fiber-optic networks. The government makes a copy of everything; it then searches inside every message and retrieves, for longer-term storage, any message that includes content matches to "selectors," or approved "targets" under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
A packet going from Los Angeles to New York could actually leave the country before reaching it's destination and may indeed be directed to do so.
But the government's dragnet is not confined to the fiber-optic cables running across domestic boundaries. Recent reporting by Brazil's O Globo, Germany's Der Spiegel, and Australia's Sydney Morning Herald — all based on documents obtained from Edward Snowden — paint a picture of an interconnected network of communications cables and facilities across the world to which the United States has access. (Globally, roughly 99 percent of the world's communications travel over undersea fiber-optic cables.) The government apparently gains that access through its own taps, arrangements between American and foreign telecommunications companies, or agreements with foreign intelligence services. When NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander says he intends for the agency to "collect it all," this is exactly what he means.
Collect it all
How does XKeyScore fit in?
The bottom line: However it does it, the United States is accumulating an almost incomprehensibly massive trove of information, in the form of both metadata and content. But the sheer comprehensiveness of that data also presents the government with a confounding practical problem: If you're looking for the proverbial needle in the most colossal digital haystack the world has ever known, how do you even begin to go about finding it?
One way, as Savage's reporting tells us, is by "copying and then sifting through the contents of" the communications that pass over U.S. borders, and then marking some of those messages for longer-term storage in the government's content databases.
But another — though perhaps related — way to sort the world's data is, apparently, by using XKeyScore.
In typical Fort Meade-ese, the agency's training presentation defines XKeyScore as an "Exploitation System/Analytic Framework" that "[p]rovides real-time target activity." In plainer English, XKeyScore is an integrated set of software interfaces, databases, and servers that allows analysts to find and access the online activities of anyone in the world, in real time. As Marc Ambinder — who has previously written about XKeyScore — explains, it "is not a thing that does collecting," but a cohesive system that lets the NSA sift and sort through the enormous pile of data the agency is vacuuming up every minute around the world.
In other words, XKeyScore is something like a search engine.
One way, as Savage's reporting tells us, is by "copying and then sifting through the contents of" the communications that pass over U.S. borders, and then marking some of those messages for longer-term storage in the government's content databases.
But another — though perhaps related — way to sort the world's data is, apparently, by using XKeyScore.
In typical Fort Meade-ese, the agency's training presentation defines XKeyScore as an "Exploitation System/Analytic Framework" that "[p]rovides real-time target activity." In plainer English, XKeyScore is an integrated set of software interfaces, databases, and servers that allows analysts to find and access the online activities of anyone in the world, in real time. As Marc Ambinder — who has previously written about XKeyScore — explains, it "is not a thing that does collecting," but a cohesive system that lets the NSA sift and sort through the enormous pile of data the agency is vacuuming up every minute around the world.
In other words, XKeyScore is something like a search engine.
It really does not matter what the names are, the truth is massive amounts of information are copied, stored, and searched. "Globally, roughly 99 percent of the world's communications travel over undersea fiber-optic cables."
As our explainer from last month details, those procedures seriously threaten Americans' privacy—even if they are being properly followed by everyone in the NSA—because the protections for American are weak, and riddled with exceptions. Moreover, the prohibition on "targeting" Americans has only limited purchase when it comes to ensuring that Americans' communications will not be swept up in the NSA's global dragnet. Indeed, as my colleague Patrick Toomey discussed last month, "there is nothing inadvertent or accidental" about the size of these loopholes; they were written into the law for the very purpose of allowing the government to gain access to Americans' communications.
The NSA is using computers with USB ports that are wide open. And if you want to dismiss Snowden as a low level hacker then please explain how he could possibly walk over to a computer and access classified information. Who else has this ability? The seizure has already occured, but what right does the government have to make our information so vulnerable to search?
Per the Constitution:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
When did we give up this right?
In an online video shortly after the revelations began, Snowden claimed that "sitting at [his] desk," he could "wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if [he] had a personal email." The government's reaction was both harsh and emphatic. Gen. Alexander went so far as to testify to the Senate Appropriations Committee not only that Snowden's claim was "false," but that "I know of no way to do that."
The Guardian slides give us good reason to believe that Snowden was telling the truth, and that Alexander was being coy. Greenwald reports that Snowden has stated that supervisors often find ways to circumvent the very targeting procedures that are meant to confine the NSA's searches: "It's very rare to be questioned on our searches," he said, "and even when we are, it's usually along the lines of: ‘let's bulk up the justification.'" As far back as 2009, members of Congress were raising alarms about the NSA's collection under the FAA, including Rep. Rush Holt's ominous warning that "[s]ome actions are so flagrant that they can't be accidental."
The Guardian slides give us good reason to believe that Snowden was telling the truth, and that Alexander was being coy. Greenwald reports that Snowden has stated that supervisors often find ways to circumvent the very targeting procedures that are meant to confine the NSA's searches: "It's very rare to be questioned on our searches," he said, "and even when we are, it's usually along the lines of: ‘let's bulk up the justification.'" As far back as 2009, members of Congress were raising alarms about the NSA's collection under the FAA, including Rep. Rush Holt's ominous warning that "[s]ome actions are so flagrant that they can't be accidental."
This is not about Bush, Obama, Snowden, or Greenwald. This is about our Constitution:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Why is it ok to ignore this part of our Constitution?
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What could possibly go wrong with that?
