NSA web/phone records collection

Manach

According to various news sources (link) most of the US phone records data have been gathered by the NSA.
Wondering what people's opinions' on this. On one hand there is the security aspect of this, as a tool in the war on terror. On the other, a massive fishing expedition that breaches each US citizen's privacy rights.
This has gathered support and condemnation from both main US political parties so should be interesting how the media run with this.

gctest50

old news sure... CALEA and all that has been out for ages

Amerika

Interesting that no major US media outlets have broken any of the scandals that have emerged under this administration.

20Cent

Amerika wrote: »

Interesting that no major US media outlets have broken any of the scandals that have emerged under this administration.

Its on the front page of every major news outlet I've looked at.


What about the new xbox with its camera and microphone very 1984.

Amerika

20Cent wrote: »

Its on the front page of every major news outlet I've looked at.

Yeah okay... after the fact, but my comment was about them breaking the news stories.

And apparently it seems the NY Times is afraid of an IRS audit, phone taps by the DOJ, the wrath of "the most transparent" administration in history, or something.

http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/06/new-york-times-quietly-changes-published-editorial-to-make-it-less-damning-of-obama/

Amerika

20Cent wrote: »

What about the new xbox with its camera and microphone very 1984.

XBOX… Hell, the government will be able to spy on you through your dishwasher.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/03/petraeus-tv-remote/

20Cent

Amerika wrote: »

Yeah okay... after the fact, but my comment was about them breaking the news stories.

And apparently it seems the NY Times is afraid of an IRS audit, phone taps by the DOJ, the wrath of "the most transparent" administration in history, or something.

http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/06/new-york-times-quietly-changes-published-editorial-to-make-it-less-damning-of-obama/

That and the treatment of Bradly Manning is terrible.
You think Romney would be any better?

Amerika

20Cent wrote: »

You think Romney would be any better?

Don't rightly know, but I do know the media wouldn't be in the tank for him.

20Cent

Amerika wrote: »

Don't rightly know, but I do know the media wouldn't be in the tank for him.

Which media isn't reporting it? because I'm seeing it everywhere.

Amerika

20Cent wrote: »

Which media isn't reporting it? because I'm seeing it everywhere.

There must be some language problem. I haven’t said the US media didn’t report on any of the scandals. They all have had to report on them after the stories gained traction with the public. But they all seem to be giving pretty good cover for the WH administration in their reporting. And one has to wonder how many of the US main media outlets had these stories and chose not to report on them… until that is they had to? And how many other scandals are out there waiting on the Guardian or the BBC to break, or the Federal agencies themselves letting them out in a preemptive strike.

And what is the buzz word from just about all the US media outlets on the handling by the GOP in investigating these scandals.... "OVERREACH." Where do you all think it came from... the DNC perhaps?

Jonny7

Amerika wrote: »

There must be some language problem. I haven’t said the US media didn’t report on any of the scandals.

It was a US paper and a UK paper which broke the story.

Obama has had to stand up and address the issue.

It's not like anyone didn't know it was happening, it's the fact that we didn't have the precise details of it. Now we do.

opti0nal

Everything is OK...they dont't spy on Amercians, only everybody else in the world. That's all right then.:rolleyes:

20Cent

The leaker has gone public now.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance
This is going to be interesting how he is handled. A long prison sentence will cause outrage I bet a lot of people consider him a patriot. If they let him off then what about Bradly Manning who's done pretty much the same thing!

nagilum2

20Cent wrote: »

The leaker has gone public now.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance
This is going to be interesting how he is handled. A long prison sentence will cause outrage I bet a lot of people consider him a patriot. If they let him off then what about Bradly Manning who's done pretty much the same thing!

This is the difference:

Greenwald: "If your motive had been to harm the United States and help its enemies or if your motive had been personal material gain were there things you could have done with these documents to advance those goals that you didn't end up doing?"

Snowden: "Oh absolutely. Anyone in the positions of access with the technical capabilities that I had could suck out secrets, pass them on the open market to Russia; they always have an open door as we do. I had access to the full rosters of everyone working at the NSA, the entire intelligence community, and undercover assets all over the world. The locations of every station, we have what their missions are and so forth. If I had just wanted to harm the US? You could shut down the surveillance system in an afternoon. But that's not my intention."
...
“I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest,” he said. “There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn’t turn over, because harming people isn’t my goal. Transparency is.”

20Cent

nagilum2 wrote: »

This is the difference:

Manning sent his data to Wikileaks who sent it to professional journalists to remove any data that could harm individuals. Pretty much the same thing, considering the amount of material Manning leaked it would have been impossible to go through it all himself.

nagilum2

20Cent wrote: »

Manning sent his data to Wikileaks who sent it to professional journalists to remove any data that could harm individuals. Pretty much the same thing, considering the amount of material Manning leaked it would have been impossible to go through it all himself.

Sorry, but I have no idea how you can conclude that this is "pretty much the same thing"???

Manning didn't review what he released, and clearly didn't care about the consequences to individuals. Snowden specifically wanted to highlight illegal activity without putting individuals at risk.

Amerika

I’m holding judgement on Snowden for the time being, as it very well could be just as bad as what Manning did. But the major difference between the two is Snowden specifically put credence to what some politicians, particularly Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee, Mark Udall of Colorado and Ron Wyden of Oregon, have been trying to warn us for years on what was going on at the NSA... and still be in compliance with their restrictions and limitations on what could be said. They have been warning us that the government was engaging in surveillance programs under the Patriot Act that went way way beyond what most would consider a permissible interpretation of that law. Seems these Democrats were quite right.

opti0nal

The context of this story is intriguing:

Obama is lecturing the Chinese on cybersecurity & not hacking US computers.

The NSA is revealed to be harvesting and storing private, personal data on everyone (except, it says: Americans).

The whistleblower says he wants to stay in Hong Kong (in....China).

Now, if you're looking for a 'Cloud' solution - do you trust the USA?

Black Swan

Manach wrote: »

According to various news sources most of the US phone records data have been gathered by the NSA. Wondering what people's opinions' on this. On one hand there is the security aspect of this, as a tool in the war on terror. On the other, a massive fishing expedition that breaches each US citizen's privacy rights.

"Nothing new under the Sun." This is old news. Wired magazine did a feature story about No Such Agency building a massive storage city of servers in Utah, and storing all phone, email, IM, etc., communications (published 15 March 2012). They had been doing it for years, but were running out of storage space, hence the new city of servers.

Jonny7

Snowden has gone to ground

If PRISM is as powerful as he claims, they should have no problem finding him

yara

nagilum2 wrote: »

Manning didn't review what he released, and clearly didn't care about the consequences to individuals.

this is bollocks and i don't know how you've managed to deduce this

20Cent

nagilum2 wrote: »

Sorry, but I have no idea how you can conclude that this is "pretty much the same thing"???

Manning didn't review what he released, and clearly didn't care about the consequences to individuals. Snowden specifically wanted to highlight illegal activity without putting individuals at risk.

Manning put no one at risk.

Amerika

Black Swan wrote: »

"Nothing new under the Sun." This is old news. Wired magazine did a feature story about No Such Agency building a massive storage city of servers in Utah, and storing all phone, email, IM, etc., communications (published 15 March 2012). They had been doing it for years, but were running out of storage space, hence the new city of servers.

Nothing new… please move along, because of some article in an obscure magazine?

But why then is it now being called the most explosive national security leak in US history? Why are information chiefs worldwide sounding alarms? Should we blame the major medial outlets for not knowing and screaming from the rooftops about the scope, overreach, and misuse of the Patriot Act on the part of the NSA? I doubt people knew until now the NSA believes they are entitled to collect records for every single American regardless of whether or not we’ve done anything wrong. What will the people in power, or future people in power, use the stored information for?

Do we know there isn’t haphazard probing into all of our personal e-mails? Do we know what the NSA has been doing with their information gathered under the programs? Do we know how far the NSA has gone? Do we know private individuals haven’t been targeted? No, and we won’t until we get an independent investigation into the activities of the NSA.

Here is one thing, and probably the most important thing of all… the people now believe this WH administration has failed to ensure that powerful departments under the Executive branch of the government won’t abuse information they gather, as we now know they have since at least 2010. Specifically the IRS & DOJ. Trust in this White House administration is very low, and deservedly so.

(And things are hopping around here as of late where I live. Snowden’s father and stepmother are locals.)

Jonny7

There have been dozens of stories on this, it's been going on quite heavily since planes flew into the towers, look up project Echelon

It's not like we didn't know it was going on - it's just big news because it became official

It's a security measure, a fairly extreme one, that many people think is over the top. That's where the debate lies.

nagilum2

yara wrote: »

this is bollocks and i don't know how you've managed to deduce this

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/06/why-edward-snowden-is-a-hero.html

The National Security Agency has already referred the case to the Justice Department, and James Clapper, Obama’s director of National Intelligence, has said that Snowden’s leaks have done “huge, grave damage” to “our intelligence capabilities.”

Before accepting such claims at face value, let’s remind ourselves of what the leaks so far have not contained. They didn’t reveal anything about the algorithms that the N.S.A. uses, the groups or individuals that the agency targets, or the identities of U.S. agents. They didn’t contain the contents of any U.S. military plans, or of any conversations between U.S. or foreign officials. As Glenn Greenwald, one of the journalists who broke the story, pointed out on “Morning Joe” today, this wasn’t a WikiLeaks-style data dump. “[Snowden] spent months meticulously studying every document,” Greenwald said. “He didn’t just upload them to the Internet.”

Black Swan

Amerika wrote: »

Nothing new… please move along, because of some article in an obscure magazine?

WIRED is a monthly with a total print circulation of 819,457. Its online version received average monthly page views of 76,271,080.

If you had not read last year's WIRED, perhaps you have read USA Today? It's a nationally distributed US newspaper with one of the largest print circulations of 1,817,446 in the United States. USA Today reported 11 May 2006:

"The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth"

"For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others."

Once again, this is OLD NEWS.

KyussBishop

This is not old news. Some things (like certain types of specific phone/messaging wiretapping) were known from the previous illegal wiretapping Bush undertook, and the breadth of the current surveillance laws was suspected of being very broad, but just how broad was not 100% confirmed, because the actual legal interpretations used in applying it are (bizarrely) kept secret, through abuse of 'national security' privileges.

So, the extent of surveillance was heavily suspected yet not fully known/confirmed (allowing Obama's admin to remain unaccountable, by not disclosing any information about it), but now that there is undeniable confirmation from Snowden, it is properly kicking up a storm now, which Obama can't ignore, and which actually looks like it may lead to reform (which will be very good for Snowden, as it makes persecuting him more politically costly).

This is starting to create a notable reaction from many congresspeople (many of them are only hearing of this stuff for the first time), and now Europe is demanding answers from the US, regarding EU citizens privacy; this is a big deal for sure, not old news.

Black Swan

KyussBishop wrote: »

This is not old news.

From WIRED feature/cover article circulated both in print and online media 15 March 2012, this is old news for No Such Agency practices that have been ongoing for over a decade, if not a lot longer (and very much in the old J Edgar Hoover tradition of spying on their own US citizens):

"the NSA has turned its surveillance apparatus on the US and its citizens. It has established listening posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the country or overseas."

"Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases..."

KyussBishop wrote: »

This is starting to create a notable reaction from many congresspeople

How far off are the mid-term US elections? Will this political and media controversy mysteriously die immediately after their elections, just like the Ground Zero Mosque controversy?

KyussBishop wrote: »

(many of them are only hearing of this stuff for the first time)

I find it hard to believe that someone running for public office in the US "are only hearing this stuff for the first time," given the huge scandal that occurred during the GW Bush administration in 2006 regarding NSA snooping on millions of American citizen phone and Internet comms?

Nothing on the net or mobile phones is secure or private from No Such Agency or a host of other US domestic interests or foreign governments, including your friendly javahouse wardriving hacker using free snoopware downloaded from the web.

KyussBishop

I saw that article when it was released; from a brief look (I haven't re-read it all), it is the claims of an ex-NSA official, not a rock-solid confirmation like this recent leak is.

The revelations aren't new to people who have been keeping up with the topic, but the level of detail of information directly sourced from the NSA is new, and provides direct undeniable confirmation.

Black Swan wrote:

How far off are the mid-term US elections? Will this political and media controversy mysteriously die immediately after their elections, just like the Ground Zero Mosque controversy?
...
I find it hard to believe that someone running for public office in the US "are only hearing this stuff for the first time," given the huge scandal that occurred during the GW Bush administration in 2006 regarding NSA snooping on millions of American citizen phone and Internet comms?

Nothing on the net or mobile phones is secure or private from No Such Agency or a host of other US domestic interests or foreign governments, including your friendly javahouse wardriving hacker using free snoopware downloaded from the web.

There are already attempts at putting together bills to neuter surveillance, and there looks to be potential for bipartisan support for similar measures, as mentioned in the Guardian article.

The Guardian article also noted, that many of the briefs claimed to have been sent out to congresspeople, were never sent; I agree that they all likely had some level of knowledge of surveillance, but what is important are the details of the knowledge and direct confirmation of the scale of what is going on, that is revealed by this new leak.

KyussBishop

I missed posting this link yesterday:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/11/europe-us-privacy

That is a big deal: Europe directly sending a letter to Eric Holder (US attorney general), demanding answers on the spying programs.

Jonny7

There is a certain irony that Snowden is making a stand in China of all places