Snowden Disclosures Finally Hit 12 on a Scale of 1 to 10

[Purveyor]

By Kevin Drum| Fri Sep. 6, 2013 11:19 AM PDT

A few days ago, NBC News quoted a former intelligence official about the fallout from Edward Snowden's NSA leaks. "The damage, on a scale of 1 to 10, is a 12," he said.

At the time, I thought it was an odd thing to say. Obviously Snowden's leaks have been damaging to the NSA, and just as obviously they've caused the NSA enormous PR problems. Still, we've known for years that they were collecting telephone metadata. We've known they were subpoenaing email and online documents from tech providers like Google and Microsoft. We've known they were monitoring switching equipment and fiber optic cables. We certainly know a lot more details about this stuff than we used to, but the basic outline of NSA's capabilities hasn't really come as much of a surprise.

So what was this former intelligence official talking about? I suspect it was this:

The agency has circumvented or cracked much of the encryption, or digital scrambling, that guards global commerce and banking systems, protects sensitive data like trade secrets and medical records, and automatically secures the e-mails, Web searches, Internet chats and phone calls of Americans and others around the world, the documents show.

more...

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/09/snowden-disclosures-nsa-bombshell-decryption

[pscot]

1. They've violated the security system the 1% hide behind

that's why it's a 12. Snowden deserves a Nobel for turning their coat back.

[fujiyama]

7. In my opinion, he'd be more worthy than the President at this point

He has exposed what needed to come out. If he hadn't revealed this info, it would be classified for at the least the next fifty years, if not perpetually.

The security state must be dismantled. The status quo is simply unacceptable.

[CoffeeCat]

73. I have a close friend who was interviewing...

...for a job with the CEO of a very big company. All of you would recognize the name of this CEO.

He made it through several layers of interviews. The offer was signed and he was to start in a week. On a Tuesday night, after being hired and after surviving multiple interviews and background checks, he was to fly to Florida that evening and meet with the CEO.

That day my friend received an email from a colleague who warned him about this CEO. Lots of corruption and other horrendous stuff. My friend responded professionally, but basically he said he wouldn't participate in corruption and he would quit if asked to do anything illegal or corrupt. My friend also said that he had nothing but positive communications and interactions with this CEO and he was surprised to hear this. He didn't backstab the CEO. He was positive and professional, but clearly indicated that he would maintain his integrity.

Ten minutes after sending that email--he received a phone call from the company secretary. His flight to Florida that evening was cancelled. My friend suspected that they had spied on him. He never heard from them again. After three months of courting him, interviewing him, drilling him and thoroughly checking his background--it all ends ten minutes after that email.

You think they don't read your email? You think the government doesn't give powerful people access to email and phone records? My friend sure thinks they do--and after his experience, I'm convinced as well.

[delrem]

2. Total information awareness is total control. I'm sure the 0.05% know this, and use this.

I'm sure any of this total information collection is available for a price.
It would give any commercial/economic venture an absolute advantage.
That's why I refined the 1%.

Just the fact of its existence has killed critical journalism. If you're a journalist and you aren't 100% embedded, then you're toast if you do your job.

[woo me with science]

25. +1000000 Total information awareness for profit.

And yes, it is the death knell for investigative journalism or any form of organized protest or dissent.

This is the infrastructure of a corporate, totalitarian state.

[BainsBane]

3. How exactly is this surprising?

[VanillaRhapsody]

50. exactly what I wondered.

[Agschmid]

60. It isn't.

At least if you have been paying attention.

[jsr]

4. The NSA practically owns the Internet.

[Uncle Joe]

6. The people own the Internet.

[cui bono]

16. "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."

- Goethe

[Uncle Joe]

63. "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they should be slaves."

Uncle Joe

[Democracyinkind]

52. You can not be serious or your're stuck in 1991.

[Uncle Joe]

64. If you believe the people have no power, you're stuck in Germany of the 1930s'

[Democracyinkind]

65. Lol. yeah. The internet is just as free as in 1991...

How can you seriously claim that?

[Uncle Joe]

66. I never said that, I said the people own the Internet.

Any erosion of Internet 1st Amendment, 4th Amendment freedom has only come about because the people have not come to full realization of their inherent power, full appreciation of their rights and mass conscious awareness of the dangers posed by an ever growing intrusive surveillance state.

[Democracyinkind]

69. I agree with that.

The internet is a good example of the people simply watching while it is taken out of their hands.

[joshcryer]

5. More likely the NSA now must assume all operational procedures are public.

And therefore "the enemy" knows about them.

This will require a complete overhaul of NSA procedures.

75% of those private contractors are about to make a whole lot of money since they likely get funded under a cost-plus type of system and any system procedure upgrades will come out of the pockets of the taxpayer.

[Aerows]

9. Good.

[Cha]

8. Kevin Drum: "this is about the point where I get off the Snowden train"

Smartypants @Smartypants32

RT @bobcesca_go: Kevin Drum: "this is about the point where I get off the Snowden train" http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/09/snowden-disclosures-nsa-bombshell-decryption … @kdrum // Finally!!!

From your link, Purveyor..

"But now that's all changed. Now every bad guy in the world knows for a fact that commercial crypto won't help them, and the ones with even modest smarts will switch to strong crypto techniques that remain unbreakable. It's still a pain in the ass, but it's not that big a pain in the ass.

For what it's worth, this is about the point where I get off the Snowden train. It's true that some of these disclosures are of clear public interest. In particular, I'm thinking about the details of NSA efforts to infiltrate and corrupt the standards setting groups that produce commercial crypto schemes."

[Aerows]

11. Let me know when you were ever on it

I think your station is in 2017.

I believe in policy not personalities.

[Cha]

20. The quote is from Kevin Drum at The Atlantic and he was on

the snowden train.. until now evidentlyl.

[DevonRex]

14. Things look clear to me.

As they have from the beginning.

[Cha]

21. Exactly. Now Kevin Drum is getting clued into what

snowden's agenda is and it's not in the Public's interest.

[DevonRex]

10. Kevin Drum says THIS is where he gets off the Snowden train:

"For what it's worth, this is about the point where I get off the Snowden train. It's true that some of these disclosures are of clear public interest. In particular, I'm thinking about the details of NSA efforts to infiltrate and corrupt the standards setting groups that produce commercial crypto schemes.

But the rest of it is a lot more dubious. It's not clear to me how disclosing NSA's decryption breakthroughs benefits the public debate much, unlike previous disclosures that have raised serious questions about the scope and legality of NSA's surveillance of U.S. persons. Conversely, it's really easy to see how disclosing them harms U.S. efforts to keep up our surveillance on genuine bad guys. Unlike previous rounds of disclosures, I'm a lot less certain that this one should have seen the light of day."
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/09/snowden-disclosures-nsa-bombshell-decryption

Is it finally becoming clear now?

[Aerows]

12. Oh, it's clear

You will be all aboard in 2017 if it isn't a Democrat in office.

[sabrina 1]

24. Lol! So true.

[DevonRex]

33. Not my fault you got played by a spy.

But that's what happened.

I detest people who spy on the U.S. for that fucking asshole Putin. He's goddamned ex-KGB slime. He's a disgusting bigot. Russia is an oppressive country who jails whistleblowers, beats them, refuses medical care to them and then allows them to die untreated in their cells. Then lies about it. And after they do that, they convict them posthumously. For questioning fucking Putin.

And they let loose Neo-Nazi fucking thugs to do the same thing to LGBTs. But fucking asshole Snowden is golden for betraying US and kissing up to Russia for being pro human rights? GMAFB.

This is what Russia does to its whistleblowers. This is only a little about Magnitsky.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/29/world/europe/29russia.html?_r=0
Snip
"Zoya Svetova, one of the commission’s investigators, said the inquiry had challenged her assumptions. “I had the impression that Magnitsky died because of doctors’ negligence, because they thought he had invented his illness,” she said. “Now I have the frightening feeling that it was not negligence but that it was, to some extent, as terrible as it is to say, a premeditated murder.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8372894.stm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/6608505/Russia-refuses-autopsy-for-anti-corruption-lawyer.html

And there's this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/world/europe/for-russias-liberals-putin-announcement-stokes-woes.html?pagewanted=all

"For Russia’s Liberals, Flickers of Hope Vanish

On Sunday she awoke to the reality that Vladimir V. Putin had, in effect, appointed himself president, and she knew that the aspirations of the Mikhail S. Gorbachev era had been snuffed out."

And this:
http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-05/why-smart-russians-are-leaving-their-country-behind
Why Smart Russians Are Fleeing
By Leonid Bershidsky

The regime of Vladimir Putin has always presented successful, liberal-minded Russians with a quandary: To what extent are they willing to put up with an authoritarian government in return for making a life in their native country?
snip
Political scientist Vladimir Guelman saw a parallel with recent reprisals against independent sociologists for receiving foreign funding. “It is hard to say how long the purge of disloyal scientists will go on and how far it will go,” he wrote on Slon.ru. “There are no objective obstacles to this purge in today’s Russia.”
snip
Guriev was only the latest public intellectual to declare his disenchantment with living in Russia. Earlier, the writer and editor Masha Gessen, who authored a popular book on Putin, “The Man Without a Face,” said she was leaving for New York with her three children.
Snip
Gessen’s specific problem is the recent legislative backlash against homosexuals. As a lesbian living openly with her partner, she fears losing custody of her children.
Snip END


But, by all means, stick by your guy, the spy for Putin's oppressive regime. Funny, though, that if you'd paid attention to Wyden at any point on the Patriot Act and FISA you wouldn't have needed Snowden at all. Or, if you'd been the least bit curious you could have gone to that super secret site Wikipedia.

[Th1onein]

40. Oh, NOW, he's a spy for Putin? Geez.

Jump to conclusions much?

We force Snowden to stay in Russia; ground a head of state's plane, looking for him, and NOW he's all of a sudden a spy for Putin? Get real.

Everyone and their mother is talking about encryption and how to use it, and Snowden gives us information that tells us which encryption has been broken, and now it's time to get off the train? Once again, get real.

[DevonRex]

45. Of course he is. He is exactly where he intended to be.

Good lord. If you haven't figured even that much out...

[Democracyinkind]

53. Lol.

I'm starting to think that you really believe that.

[sendero]

57. If there was the slightest evidence or even reasonable belief.

.... that these capabilities would only be used against foreign terrorists or spies, I'd be able to live with it.

But clear and convincing evidence points to the contrary and if you haven't heard of that evidence you are not paying attention.

[DevonRex]

68. I understand your concern.

Absolutely I do. That's where Congress has utterly failed in its job, IMO. And what gets me is that they're still failing even after all the public attention that some claim to have wanted for so long (Wyden, Udall).

There should be daily meetings going on right now about direct oversight of NSA. And I mean direct. Not just annual reports or whatever. I don't believe that's what the public will ever be comfortable with.

I am proposing that members of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees actually perform their own onsite inspections of areas they deem to be troublesome. That they be allowed complete access to all parts of NSA whenever they show up. That they be given any documentation they request on the spot.

That they have the ability to watch the ops and analysts and supervisors perform their duties as long as they deem necessary to get an idea of how certain programs work in fact, not just on paper. And that they be allowed to see the FISA warrant process from initiation all the way through the FISC decision.

They need to know exactly what they have enacted. And NSA needs real oversight. But so far I haven't seen anything out of these lawmakers.

[Th1onein]

82. Bullshit--Spying on Americans' communications brought to you by Obama:

See here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023626005

[leveymg]

30. Why would anyone ever assume that commercial encryption hadn't been compromised?

Or, that even so-called strong encryption isn't? NSA has the world's largest server farms and billions of dollars of consulting brains to work with to crunch those numbers and find ways to insert compromises and backdoors into machines and software.

Encryption is just painting a big red target on your data and telling them, "this isn't mom's raisin salad recipe."

Cheezitz.

[DevonRex]

35. You and I know that.

I suspect there's much more to it. But I haven't read the latest.

[Melynn]

55. I read back in the '90's that using encryption paints you as a target to the Government.

I remember reading that the Feds want to know why a person would want to use encryption. That was 20 years ago.

It doesn't surprise me that the government can break any encryption program. I would be surprise if they couldn't crack a encryption program.

To me the issue isn't whether they can crack encryption communications. To me the issue is whether they can spy on America citizens without probable cause.

[HumansAndResources]

38. If Privacy is a Right, then Kevin Drum is Wrong

It's not clear to me how disclosing NSA's decryption breakthroughs benefits the public debate much

This means, you can NEVER have a private conversation electronically with anyone - EVER and the Govt Knows Everything. Try organizing politically with that disadvantage.

This is at least as important as "them" knowing "everyone you talk to" - your "network" - which was bad enough - given the day may come when the TPTB are threatened enough by public-awakenings to call "roundup time" - perhaps using those billions of hollow-point bullets our domestic-only "Department of Hammer and Sickle" bought (you don't use high-dollar big-exit-wound ammo for target practice).

You will have to excuse me if I Hate Totalitarianism - in either right or left flavors. I suffer from Drapetomania, which includes a "problem" with "authority."

[CakeGrrl]

54. Apparently it will NEVER be clear to some. -nt

[gulliver]

13. The damage to the country has been immense.

All for nothing.

[cui bono]

17. What is the damage that has happend to this country

because of what Snowden did?

[leveymg]

31. Nobody's going to answer that question.

Because it is unanswerable.

[cui bono]

49. I have a few unanswered questions out there from the past couple days.

People like to just blurt things out then when asked to elaborate they become quiet all of a sudden. Funny how that is. Well not so funny really. You know what I mean.

[leveymg]

56. I know what you mean.

Primo screen name.

[longship]

15. Oh dear. Where to start.

First, Snowden had access to briefing documents, not the details. Actual top secret documents are indicated so on every single page. We see none of that on Snowden's releases.

Second, these briefing contain overviews of the big picture. They are subject to misinterpretation. And conflation.

I have no doubt that the security industry is shaking in their boots about Snowden's revelations. And yes, it looks very much like the NSA is doing illegal domestic spying, against their charter, as well as the US Constitution.

But let's not make shit up because it does our case no good to do that. Again, these are briefing documents, not the top secret ones which give the details. If we use speculation to present our case we lose when the facts show that we're wrong.

You shoot too high, you miss the mark. There's already enough dirt to hang the SOBs without hanging ourselves. When we make incredible claims it does no good for our side. We end up sounding like some Alex Jones kook.

No. Strong encryption has probably not been cracked. If that had happened it would be a mathematical breakthrough equivalent to the Nobel Prize. The fact that there are thousands of brilliant mathematicians all over the world working on these very problems -- yes, a few are employed at NSA -- attests to the fact that it hasn't yet happened. Fame and fortune awaits the person who does that. It hasn't yet happened because these problems are very, very difficult and are theoretically unsolvable, which is why they are used for encryption.

They are so difficult that it takes extraordinary computer resources to solve them by brute force, so great that there are not enough computers on the planet to break them. And if they can, simply extending the key length can make the encryption arbitrarily secure, even using the same algorithm.

The NSA is losing the encryption battle and has been losing it for a couple of decades, ever since strong encryption came onto the scene. If they can read encrypted messages it is not because they can break the encryption. This is an important fact. They must be getting the information before it's encrypted, or they aren't getting it at all.

Another claim is that the NSA is recording everybody's phone calls. I will leave others to do the Fermi calculation on how much storage, calculation, and network bandwidth that would take to show what a ridiculous claim this is. Anyway, the NSA doesn't have to record phone calls. What would they do with it all? They're already taking the meta-data which tells them everything they need. They don't need to record phone conversations. If they have a suspect they can easily obtain a wire tap. Why add billions of haystacks of phone calls when they can already find the needles in the meta-data haystacks? And they can always get the court order to tap the lines where there is likely to be a needle or two. No rational person would do it otherwise.

These are the arguments to which people who claim that the NSA is vacuuming up everything have to provide answers.

I am very worried about what NSA is doing as it is. But let's use our heads for something other than a hat rack. Let's not descend into woo woo land and lose our target.

The reportage on this has been horrible. Journalists who are uneducated in computer and network security are conflating the briefing documents that Snowden has released. They are basically making shit up and people are believing the conflation instead of what many people who really know the technology could tell them about the documents.

What really worries me, above all, is the credible allegation that commercial software firms have opened doors to the NSA intrusion (whether by soft- or hardware). That's why I only use open source platforms/software and have nearly exclusively for many years. At least there I can be reasonably sure that my computers and servers are safe.

I recommend that DUers who are likely concerned do the same. For ease, I recommend Ubuntu Linux.

Thanks. Sorry that I went on so long here.
And forgive my typos which I have tried to correct. It's late.

Peace, friends.

[gtar100]

22. Glad you stated all that. The claims defy logic and capabilities.

Any auditor will tell you that having too much information can be as problematic as not enough. Especially considering the known fact that *so much* of it would be completely useless.

[longship]

26. Yes, like recording all the teen-agers phone conversations.

That alone would flood their capacity with:

Well, I just said to him that I couldn't make it on Friday. And he goes, why not? And I go, because I have something else to do. And he goes...

Like there'd be a bunch of hay there and very few needles.

And who in the fuck are they gonna get to listen to all that? Voice recognition? Right. Like Siri works well if I mispronounce a word on my iPhone, let alone use an obscure vernacular sentence structure.

So recording all phone calls has no credibility right off the bat. It gets the NSA nothing.

People don't think very clearly sometimes.

Thanks for the response.

[GoneFishin]

70. You assume that all of their decisions are rational.

They are already collecting data on mostly innocent americans. Regardless of what you believe they store (unless you believe they store nothing), most of what they collect and store is already irrelevant. But they do it anyway, and lie about it.

If they offered a no-bid contract for Booz Allen to store all phone calls do you think they would refuse the business or try to find a way to do it? I think they would do whatever it took to jump on another taxpayer funded gravy train.

[longship]

71. I don't think there's enough storage on the planet.

Audio recording has a rather huge storage footprint. If one wants fidelity, beneficial if one wants to do voice-to-text, it takes quite a bit of storage. If one is arguing that NSA is listening in with humans, I cannot help them with their delusions. So let's leave that one aside.

But speech to text is also very difficult, as anybody who's interfaced with Siri can attest. I like Siri and use it, but one has to enunciate clearly, with no background noise for Siri to comprehend. Text to speech on phone audio would be orders of magnitude more difficult and I do not think that engineers at the NSA are much more magic than those at Apple. Conversational speech to text is a very difficult problem which has not yet been solved, IMHO.

But the best argument against the NSA are those I gave above. What the fuck are they going to do with it? It only clouds the already huge data they are accumulating with totally irrelevant and unimportant rubbish. This goes beyond irrationality to total madness. If the NSA is doing this, we should find them a rubber room and start shock therapy.

Alas, this claim goes beyond reasonable assertion. Even if it were within technical abilities, which it clearly isn't -- do the Fermi calculation yourself -- the benefit is dwarfed by the costs to implement such a thing. And what the hell is the NSA going to do with all those teen-ager conversations? My thinking is that's not a productive data set to look for threats to national security.

I am sure those who disagree will come up with answers to my arguments here. I have seen them all here already. The claim still has no plausibility.

Plus, as I maintain, we already have enough real stuff to fight this. We don't need to make shit up.

[GoneFishin]

75. I substantially agree. Most important is that this is not about national threats, it is about

snooping on americans and lucrative DHS and NSA (taxpayer) money being doled out for fun and profit, cloaked by a veil of national security to thwart critics from calling bullshit on them.

I disagree on some finer technical points, but I mostly agree.

[djean111]

76. There is software you and I can buy right off the internet that searches through stored conversation

for any keywords or phrases you want. Call trunk. With argo search. $19.95 a month. And if you think the software is stumped by vernacular, in this day and age, you are naive. Just like Dragon software, it learns from experience. If you tell Dragon to translate "yall" into "you all" or "y'all", it will do that. Just table entries, really.

NO ONE sits and listens to to all that. That's just silly. Unless there is an actual warranted wiretap. What the stored conversations are used for is the ability to search through conversations of interest after the fact - the three hop thing.

Right now, I believe, if you were so foolish as to call someone and ask for weed, and that someone was being investigated, they could just search through all stored conversations to his number(s) and see if you used any key words and then go from there. I believe the DEA does this now, and then creates a plausible "legal" way in which they got the information.

Recording all phone calls is just chock full of credibility - and we are paying for the storage space.
When Obama says no one is listening to your phone calls, he is correct - they just search through afterwards, if they feel they need to. Get a transcript if key words are used or if you are a person of interest. All automated, a few table entries, piece of cake. No one is listening LIVE in real time. Unless working on an actual case, of course.

Also modern day compression of data is truly wondrous indeed.

[aquart]

77. Thank you.

Everyone at DU was screaming "the sky is falling" but I was greatly cheered by the ridiculous amount of data collected.

[tblue37]

59. Since we cannot recommend posts in a thread,

and also since your post needs to be read--in fact, I'd love to see it pinned to the top of the "Greatest" page--please repost it as an OP--in GD for widest availability!

[alfredo]

18. This is nothing new. The NSA has always had big ears, has

always had the tools to eaves drop even the most secretive organization. They are the eyes and ears of the US. This is nothing new.

Kagnew Station veteran.

[SheilaT]

19. Damage? What damage? Who exactly got hurt?

When Valerie Plame was outed, as I understand it, agents she knew were killed. With Snowden, who has died?

I had a brief time working for the Army Archives. I was supposed to get a secret, maybe a top secret clearance. Can't recall exactly because this was back in 1980 and that's a while ago. Anyway, I simply didn't fill out the required paperwork in no small part because I knew I'd be leaving the job in a couple of months.

I was the lowest of the low, a GS-2. Maybe a 3, but the next lowest person in the office I was in was a GS-7. I was actually a sort of intern, I'd gotten the job through my history professor at Northern Virginia Community College. The Army Archives at that time made steady use of students for such low level jobs.

Anyway, among other things I learned in that job that the government would classify anything and everything it could. Trust me, they'd like to classify the location of your butt, requiring you to have clearance just to wipe it.

I was also amazed at the laxity of various things. I was used to working in the private sector. I'd been an airline ticket agent at DCA for ten years and so I was capable of getting an amazing amount of stuff done in a limited time. So I had little patience with the rather lackadaisical attitude I encountered in my new department. I took perverse pleasure in completing tasks in less than an hour that the assigner indicated should take me two days. They did not know what to do with me, kept on assigning me new tasks in the hope of overwhelming me. I was even given the job of updating the manuals that this specific office was in charge of producing. That was the task that finally kept me occuppied for a while. Mainly because at that point none of the manuals had been updated for twelve years. But I got it done. I also found a way to shuffle between two locations until I figured no one really knew where I was supposed to be and I'd go home two hours early. I later learned that they were actually glad I did that, because I did so much in so little time that it made everyone else in the office look bad.

Anyway, the whole point of this rambling post is that a lot of government work is junk, does not accomplish very much, and just serves to keep the employees sort of occuppied.

Actually, the very fact that I could still get on board airplanes a few years ago tells me that the surveillance isn't very good. I haven't tried to fly in about six years only because I refuse to put up with the bullshit of the TSA, but despite my outspoken opposition the the government I was never flagged. Interesting. On the other hand, Senator Edward Kennedy (an obvious terrorist if there ever was one) was on the extra search list after 9/11.

[woo me with science]

39. What an outrageous, absurd question. ("Who exactly got hurt?" from mass surveillance)

Last edited Sun May 4, 2014, 06:12 PM - Edit history (1)

We already have evidence of the NSA's information being used to target Americans for drug prosecutions using fabricated evidence trails that prevent them from mounting a legal defense. That's HUGE.

But we don't even need to ask for that kind of proof. The existence of these spying programs in and of itself is an axe to our Constitution, the Bill of Rights. It chills free expression and free association guaranteed by the First Amendment of the Constitution. It shreds the letter *and* the spirit of the Fourth Amendment. Investigative journalism is being destroyed in this country as sources and potential witnesses dry up, because they know their communications are being collected and the government may seek retribution for what they disclose.

It's absurd to insist on "proof" of harm before denying government access to powers that are clearly ripe for abuse. The spying itself is abuse of power. The spying itself is harm.

The Founders knew this. That's why the Bill of Rights focuses on what the government may NOT do. That's why the spying is wrong and unconstitutional, even if we didn't have a shred of proof of abuse beyond the egregious existence of the spying in the first place. History is clear that offering opportunities for abuse of power inevitably leads to abuses of power.

This situation is not analogous to a human defendant in court who deserves presumption of innocence until proof of guilt is determined and corrective action may be taken. This is about creating governmental structures that wield power over millions of human lives. The bias should always go toward limiting highly "abusable" powers from the start, and maintaining constant vigilance, transparency, and skepticism to ensure that abuses don't begin to grow. That's why we have a Fourth Amendment that prohibits this garbage in the first place.

Who has been harmed? ALL OF US.

Good god.

[Th1onein]

42. ABSOLUTELY, WMWS!

GREAT post!

[SheilaT]

47. We've been harmed by the NSA spying,

not by the revealing of that spying.

[questionseverything]

62. i think you misunderstood her post

her point was..who has been hurt by snowdens revelations? answer,no one...

but i love ur post,keep fighting for the Constitution

[woo me with science]

23. The corporate talking points brigade is already swarming this thread,

and they will continue to swarm it, because the information here is so damning to their goal of papering over the enormity of the scandal here. The depth of the corruption we now face within our government has been revealed. There are two fundamental reasons for this monstrous spying system:

1) Total information awareness for PROFIT.

and

2) A surveillance state to target and eliminate dissent by those being exploited for PROFIT.


Now the elite have access to it all:

global commerce and banking systems, protects sensitive data like trade secrets and medical records, and automatically secures the e-mails, Web searches, Internet chats and phone calls of Americans and others around the world, the documents show.

This is the infrastructure of a corporate totalitarian state. It puts unlimited information and power in the hands of a corporate elite and is the death knell for protest, whistleblowing, investigative journalism, and dissent.

It is not tolerable in the United States of America.

[NYC_SKP]

27. Are you referring to actual DU members posting in this thread?

Calling them names?

I hope not. That wouldn't be very nice.

[Th1onein]

43. Wow! What a DEFENSE you posted! You sure that's all you got?

[sabrina 1]

28. Thank you. Had all this happened when Bush in office, this thread would be entirely different.

Not that that would change anything, just noting that for some it isn't about the damage to the country that has been inflicted since 9/11. . But for most people it is.

We should be outraged at what has been allowed to happen using the tragedy of 9/11, so cynical, so heartless, to get it all done.

But on the good side, what we feared when we so opposed all of Bush's policies we know now, has come to pass and that means we don't have to waste time speculating anymore, we have to start working on what to do about it.

[DevonRex]

41. Looks to me like the RT people are here.

[gristy]

29. This was the lead story in the NY Times today

A long and detailed article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet-encryption.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

[leveymg]

37. Thnx for that NYT link to the NSA encryption compromise. I've been saying this for years

[woo me with science]

58. Thank you. nt

[ZRT2209]

32. Sneakers

Too Many Secrets

[Kablooie]

34. Does this mean that NSA employees will be using my credit card to buy themselves gifts?

Maybe I'll switch to bitcoin commerce.

[davidpdx]

51. No, but I did

Thanks for the new car by the way.

On second thought, maybe I'll just charge it to Mr. Underhill's credit card. He has a higher limit:

[bhikkhu]

36. Cracking encryption isn't especially news

again, as with all the other "revelations", what did people think they were doing? Cracking encryption has been a big part of any intelligence gathering since encryption began, well before computers.

[Th1onein]

44. Please send me a copy of your bank statement from last month.

I found the one for July in your trash, but I need the one for August.

What's the big deal? It's been going on for so long, ya know?

[bhikkhu]

46. You realize that "random stranger on the internet" is less trusted than the government

which already has plenty of my personal information through tax and employment records, birth and marriage records, banking records and transactions. And all of our school records and education information. We all trust them to manage our retirements through social security, and our health through medicare and medicaid, and soon through the healthcare program. If they needed my bank statement to verify something or other I'd send it to them.

[Th1onein]

74. You don't get the analogy.

I'm saying that just because I (government) has done it before, it doesn't make it right when they are doing it now.

[gordianot]

48. The big disclosure is not just the "what" but is the "how".

The big question should be the "how" and "who" knows? The how question would be the greatest intelligence disclosure ever and would make the Enigma program look like a minor inconvenience.

[woo me with science]

61. kick

[soundsgreat]

67. kick

[Warren Stupidity]

72. The fact that the NSA stopped fighting the PGP battle in 2000 was a clear signal.

They no longer cared about "strong" encryption. Presumably because it no longer mattered.

[Zorra]

78. That type of information could maybe do a lot of good if it got into the right hands. nt

[randome]

79. Sure. What LE agency in its right mind would want to unencrypt child pornography images?

Or documents used to launder money? Or interactions within organized crime?

Of course rather than expecting evidence of misuse, it's always easier (lazier) to imply that everything law enforcement does is designed to shaft us.

Is anyone really surprised that a law enforcement agency tries to get around the bad guys' encryption efforts? Letting the bad guys know this is not a good thing but we all know that's not the point of any of this. It's simply to scream, "EVIL!" as loud and as long as possible.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Birds are territorial creatures.
The lyrics to the songbird's melodious trill go something like this:
"Stay out of my territory or I'll PECK YOUR GODDAMNED EYES OUT!"[/center][/font][hr]

[4bucksagallon]

80. Did you read further?

The writer says "For what it's worth, this is about the point where I get off the Snowden train.
more....
"But the rest of it is a lot more dubious. It's not clear to me how disclosing NSA's decryption breakthroughs benefits the public debate much, unlike previous disclosures that have raised serious questions about the scope and legality of NSA's surveillance of U.S. persons. Conversely, it's really easy to see how disclosing them harms U.S. efforts to keep up our surveillance on genuine bad guys. Unlike previous rounds of disclosures, I'm a lot less certain that this one should have seen the light of day."
Yeah great guy this traitor Snowed In is. America needs more heroes like him. I hope you raise a statue to him that he can't visit because he is a thief and a coward.......... and did I mention a traitor.

[randome]

81. I did NOT read that far. Thanks for pointing that out.

This has the stink of Libertarian about it. Anything to damage the existing world so long as Libertarians benefit in some way.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Birds are territorial creatures.
The lyrics to the songbird's melodious trill go something like this:
"Stay out of my territory or I'll PECK YOUR GODDAMNED EYES OUT!"[/center][/font][hr]