Guardian presents the overview of the NSA revelations

[Savannahmann]

What they mean to you. http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/nov/01/snowden-nsa-files-surveillance-revelations-decoded#section/1

It is a fascinating look at the impact the revelations have had on our discussion nationally, and internationally. The false assurances, the truth, and the true impact of the revelations. It is interactive in a manner of speaking, as you scroll down you see interviews start to play automatically as people who have examined this, or been involved, attempt to explain what it means.

The problem is that our minds can't imagine how big this is. In a way, it's sort of like trying to wrap your head around space. It is so incomprehensibly large that it defies understanding. The scope of the NSA and other associated intelligence services is similarly so large that it also defies true understanding. Put it this way, everything you do, every word you speak, anything that travels from you in any form except pure thought is almost certainly intercepted by the NSA. Your encryption isn't good enough to defeat them, they have solved the math problem that is the foundation of your encryption. Your words, typed or spoken, are almost certainly heard, read, and stored somewhere.

A human may not be listening to you, but voice recognition is much better than it was even five years ago. Now, I tell my phone to answer through my Bluetooth while driving, and it does. I don't take my eyes from the road to find a button, I just speak the word answer or ignore. I tell it to send an email, or a text, and it does. I speak the subject, and the body of the text, and it get's it very right. That is a phone in my pocket, imagine what they can do with unlimited resources, which the combined governments have.

The same is true of your emails. You may be sending a teasing letter to a friend, or a lover. The NSA stores it and examines it for any potential future use. Your data will be examined sooner or later, depending on how many friends you have as you are included in a hop or three from someone they are interested in. Doubt me?

Edward Snowden absconds with the data. He is on facebook, and likes or follows someone that you also follow. Say, the musical group Red Hot Chili Peppers. Now, the NSA is searching for information on Snowden, they cast the net through his friends, and likes. From there to all of their likes, and from there to all of the even bigger groups likes to see if you are saying anything suspicious. The computer is sorting, folding, mutilating your entire digital existence to see if you might be an enemy.

It is a fascinating look, and I encourage you to do so. Because this beast is so large it will take all of us to kill it. And we have to know what we're up against.

[ljm2002]

1. It's a great piece...

...very informative and very well laid out.

K&R for exposure.

[Savannahmann]

2. It is frankly one of the best overviews that is imaginable.

Quotes and interview bits from our Democratic Party Representatives, and ACLU lawyers who really understand this stuff, what an amazing presentation of the information.

[Egnever]

3. I suppose it is the difficulty in wraping your head around it.

That has so many surprised by these revelations.

When it was revealed in 2004 that there was a tap on the data trunk, that pretty much said it all. No one cared back then. I suppose because many had no idea what that meant.

Having said that the idea that this should or would be killed is silly pie in the sky dreaming. There is value to the data collection for law enforcement and international relationships. It will not go away.

The trick in my opinion is getting the correct oversight to keep it from being abused.

As technology continues to grow and and we offer more and more of ourselves up to the digital world we are increasingly living in, the aggregation of that data will only continue to grow.

You should be aware of this and not kid yourself that it is going away. You should act accordingly, if you are concerned about information you should not send it digitally.

[Savannahmann]

4. There I disagree with you.

I believe that your data should be safe from collection, review, or prying by the Federal Government. If you wish to wiretap an individual, and collect their data, with a warrant issued by a Judge, that is one thing. But collecting everyone's data accomplishes nothing to deter terrorism, it is about control.

In the 1980's, the fear among those active in the promotion of Gay Rights and Anti-Nuke groups was that "They" would hear us and target us for retribution. We felt this way because in the 1960's, and 1970's, "They" were infiltrating the anti-war and anti-nuke organizations to try and coax them members into illegal actions so the groups could be broken up. So history clearly taught us that we must consider every action because the one suggesting the radical solution could well be a FBI agent or informant to entrap us.

We seal our letters in security envelopes which are printed on the inside to prevent someone from reading a portion of the letter through the envelope. We do this to protect the information, check numbers, credit card numbers, personal data that criminals would use to steal our identity and otherwise cause us problems. We would rightly object to the police entering our homes to copy our letters or to just copy everything on the grounds that sometime in the future, we might have information on a crime that might be committed by someone we might know at a distance. Not to worry they say, you have nothing to worry about if you're not doing anything wrong.

Why would we accept the same activity because it is happening out of our sight? If it is wrong in one instance, it is wrong in every instance.

The people who wrote the constitution had no inkling that one day you could speak in real time to another person thousands of miles away. Such things weren't even fiction, they were fantasy along with St. George slaying a dragon. Science Fiction was the drawings of Michelangelo and his radical flying machines and parachutes. The idea that you could create a printed document in minutes, and send it around the world in a handful of seconds, was simply unimaginable.

So when you read the Bill of Rights, you must understand that the literal word is part of it, but the spirit is another part we are ignoring. Because the document is ones and zeros doesn't mean it should not be protected just as staunchly as a paper in my desk in my house. You would scream bloody murder, and I'd support you if your nanny cam caught the Sheriff's department entering your home and copying your documents from your desk without a warrant.

Think of it this way. I was dealing with a legal matter with an attorney relating to the estate of my Father. We conversed via email several times, documents and explanations were attached. In every case the email from my attorney said that this was a privileged communication and unauthorized persons who read it were doing so in violation of the law.

Those communications are stored in some NSA database somewhere. Those communications between my attorney and I were examined by another computer, looking for code words that some dolt thought might be suspicious. Those privileged communications were examined by the Government in direct violation of the very principles that we teach our children are the foundation of our legal system. That your Attorney and you can and will communicate privately, and it will be privileged and protected.

In that video, the police officer steals a document from an attorney, and this became national news, because it blatantly violated the attorney client privilege that exists as the foundation of our legal system. It was an illegal search and seizure, and it was a big deal.

Why is it any less of a huge deal when every day, millions of communications between attorney and client are snatched out of cyberspace instead of a briefcase by agents of the Government?

[Egnever]

5. Well

I think where we disagree on this is you think the mere act of collecting the data is the same as someone actually looking at it. I on the other hand see it as a copy of data you already have stored. If a warrant is required to look at it what is the difference?

Again oversight is the key.

The difference in your scary cop example is no one looks at it or takes any action on it. Again assuming proper oversight.

[Savannahmann]

6. But let's be honest.

The collected data is screened. If the lawyers email contains code words, enough code words, and in a long conversation with back and forth history, that is quite possible, then it is kicked up for further review. Even if those code words are used innocuously, or in the vernacular of the day. You could type that the offer bombed, which in the vernacular obviously indicates that it was rejected out of hand. But that word could trigger a program that is the upgraded, more capable version of Carnivore. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_(software)

If the conversation is long enough, enough words used in the normal conversation could well trigger the review by a human.

Oversight only works if there is real penalties for violations. If you make it simple, twenty years in federal prison for viewing data without a valid warrant, for everyone involved, then perhaps I'll believe that the program is not being abused. But there are no consequences. Oh you may get yelled at while you're being promoted for doing a great job. But there are no consequences. Nobody is fired, and nobody resigned for monitoring the POPE. Let's be honest, if the Terrorists have won the Pope, they've won the war. They deserve to win if they've won the Pope.

There are no consequences, and oversight only works with consequences, but even with oversight, you have the older foxes monitoring the younger foxes in the henhouse. For oversight to work, you also have to have the most rabid privacy advocate in the Justice Department reviewing all activity, and that is impossible because there is so bloody much of it.

Every day the cops abuse the NCIC systems. They run neighbors, girlfriends, boyfriends, friend of their children through the system. They're only supposed to access the system for official business, but they abuse it daily. Don't tell me that the NSA data isn't being abused, because I don't believe it for a minute. Everyone abuses the systems. Everyone drags back to work at the end of lunch, arriving a minute or two late, but not too badly. They take pens from the office, they use the work computers to access the internet for personal interests. They use company phones for personal calls. Everyone abuses the system. It's human nature to see what you can get away with.

Johnny Cash sang a song about it.

Seriously though, a vast majority of us cheat a little. It's human nature, and without consequences the more ability to abuse, the greater the abuse potential.

[Egnever]

7. Well if we are being honest

Then your scenario is ridiculous.

They need to make the query's very specific to weed out as much of the useless data as they can otherwise they come up with so many false positives they cant even begin to review them. So the odds of your scenario are slim and none.

But if it did happen if the oversight is good then it would be discarded as a false positive very quickly.

People were fired just recently over abuses so the idea that they just get a pat on the back is silly.

Once again there needs to be good oversight. I am all for having a discussion on what that entails and strengthening it where it is needed.

Hair on fire they are watching everything you do stuff. Not so much.

[Electric Monk]

9. That's what I've pretty much assumed from the beginning. It was invented by DARPA, after all.

[Incitatus]

8. K&R

There goes another note in my file.


or maybe this is more apropos