The Scary Possibilities of Computerized Snooping

[gulliver]

I'm not sure Americans realize the real technical danger here.

We seem to fall into two camps:

1) If someone listens to my conversations or reads my e-mail, that's fine. I have nothing to hide.
2) I don't want anyone listening to my conversations or reading my e-mail without a warrant

What I don't think people necessarily realize is that both of the above positions are quaint. We just learned today that Bush "snooped" on all international calls. How exactly did they do that if not by computer? And if they snooped all calls by computer, then it is clear why they couldn't get any kind of warrant. It is a fishing expedition, not surveillance.

Everyone knows that e-mail can be screened for spam. They also know that it is possible to convert voice to text. So in theory, it would be possible to run every telephone conversation and every e-mail through a sort of Bayesian categorization program. If people used the wrong combinations of words, their names would pop up on a list somewhere. Welcome to Brazil.

I'm just not sure how happy anyone would be if they knew just how potent new computer technology is for good and evil if we open this Pandora's box.

On the one hand, it would be possible to keep an audit trail (on disk farms and other media) of every voice, e-mail, IM conversation, indexed by ever-increasingly sophisticated automated analysis. If Bush is allowed to get away with what he did, then potentially every phone conversation anyone ever had could be "Googled," cross-correlated for person-to-person linkages, geographic whereabouts ... you name it. I doubt supporters of Bush are considering those possibilities.

On the other hand, suppose this technology had been in place before 9/11. It may or may not have prevented 9/11. Seriously. And if it didn't, it would have made it much easier to quickly track down co-conspirators. With warrant-less automated snooping, you could audit trail essentially everyone. Solve past crimes, detect patterns of spoken or written mental illness or sedition...

You could find out who has guns and where they are.

I wonder if Bush's base realizes that.

[leftchick]

1. I Get it and it is Echelon.....

ECHELON
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This article is about the spy network; for other uses see Echelon (disambiguation).

Antenna 4 (through the wire) in former Echelon intelligence gathering station at Silvermine, Cape Peninsula, South Africa.ECHELON is a highly secretive world-wide signals intelligence and analysis network run by the UKUSA Community. <1> ECHELON can capture radio and satellite communications, telephone calls, faxes and e-mails nearly anywhere in the world and includes computer automated analysis and sorting of intercepts. <2> ECHELON is estimated to intercept up to 3 billion communications every day.


Reportedly created to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its East Bloc allies, ECHELON is today believed to also search for hints of terrorist plots, drug-dealers' plans, and political and diplomatic intelligence. But some critics claim the system is also being used for large-scale commercial theft and invasion of privacy.

The members of the English-speaking alliance are part of the UKUSA intelligence alliance that has maintained ties in collecting and sharing intelligence since World War II. Various sources claim that these states have positioned electronic-intercept stations and space satellites to capture most radio, satellite, microwave, cellular and fiber-optic communications traffic. The captured signals are then processed through a series of supercomputers, known as dictionaries, that are programmed to search each communication for targeted addresses, words, phrases or even individual voices.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eschelon

[gulliver]

3. Thanks for the pointer.

I never bothered reading up on TIA, and the Echelon stuff struck me as too James Bond-ish. So that's what it is, eh?

I don't think people realize that the same technology used in their anti-spam e-mail filter or the automated voice systems they talk to can be used to track them and categorize them with increasingly scary efficiency.

How would a Bush supporter feel about the government being able to categorize gun collectors based on phone conversations with an overseas dealer? We should be telling people what Bush might really have done -- in very simple language.

[Double T]

2. ...and don't forget the added benefit of the 'fear factor'......

of the government tapping into the communications of its citizens. 'fear' fuels the bush administration.

[liveoaktx]

4. Considering a related issue to that-data-mining and Able Danger

here- http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5677483

It is quaint. The cat is already out of the box with computer records aggregation about citizens, and the Patriot Act, through NSA letters, only helps it.

And, as noted on one of the posts below, it isn't just one database. It's private databases such as Choicepoint and Seisint, it's Eschalon, it's Pentagon databases, it's whatever TIA became, it's TSA databases and who knows but that some of the lesser databases don't feed into larger ones (William Arkin in his article from today says that is the case with the Pentagon database)

[liveoaktx]

5. Adding my snoop topic of week, RFID chips, which, because they

have an individualized serial number on every single item, as opposed to a bar code for a type of item, can and will be used to collect information on every person. including being able to track not only buying habits but location (if you had an RFID toll-tag on a highway with readers every so often)

[many a good man]

6. Casting a wide net

The staggering amount of data streaming through computer-telephony networks makes any kind of systematic analysis unfeasible. Sure they probably have worms that tunnel their way around the cybersphere seeking key words but voice recognition on a mass scale is impossible. They have to identify a target first and then spread out from there.

The detection system is a blunt tool and mostly useless. But once they hone in on someone they've got him good (and all his asociates). That's why its more important than ever that they can show probable cause.

While I normally dismiss "slippery slope" arguments, the secrecy surrounding bush*s illegal orders make me shiver. DRIP. DRIP. DRIP. We now know they are eavesdropping and infiltrating peaceful civic groups. WHAT ELSE are they not telling us???

[gulliver]

8. It might be feasible, actually.

A couple of billion dollars would buy a lot of blades and disk farms. A systematic analysis of voice traffic can begin with simple, readily available data items such as phone number, geographic location of the phone, caller id, telephone directory databases. That would get you a lot before you even need to penetrate the call itself. You would know who talked to who when and from where.

Then the voice recognition does not have to be perfect enough for dictation. It only needs to be able to index the call by key words and phrases. The call itself could theoretically be stored, but might only be stored if certain business criteria were met. Once you get a basic system in place, then it is just a matter of scalability. I think this is probably quite a bit easier than cracking high strength encryption, steganography, etc.

I agree that we very likely don't have the ability to "Google" terrorists yet, but I don't think we are far from it.

[SmokingJacket]

7. I suspect this is what happened.

They are auditing the Internet and calls. ALL of us have been spied on.

But I disagree that the technology is good enough to have stopped 9-11. All one would need is a few code words, and no flags would be raised. Instead, tons of innocent people would have been dragged into court.

Unless we act, it will be the new normal.

[gulliver]

9. It would have had to have been in place for a while ...

... before it could have stopped 9/11. For example, Colleen Rowley might have been able to "Google" for the conspiracy based on things the terrorists said on the phone or simply based on them talking to one another and one of them being on a list. Terrorists would probably be careful to avoid phone conversations about their plans, but it is hard to hide connections if you are using electronic media that is being tracked. Computers are really good at connecting the dots.

I do agree that tons of innocent people would be caught in the net if not dragged into court.

[liveoaktx]

10. And don't forget, there's no assurance that there's not an aggregate DB

that is collecting other information for the purpose of more easily identifying people. NSA letters, for example, that get bank records, medical records, etc.

[shance]

11. Technology is being used to police activism and prevent progress.

n/t