Moon of Alabama Brecht quote
June 06, 2013

Why Should Voters Pay For Useless NSA Databases?

Glenn Greenwald has a scoop for the Guardian. Well - sort of a scroop:

NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily:

The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.

The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

The Guardian has a copy of the current secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) order. It was issued on April 25 and gives the government unlimited authority to obtain data from Verizon for a three-month period ending on July 19.

Greenwald's scoop is in getting his hands on the court order. It is likely that the U.S. government will now open a case against the leaker of that order as well as against Greenwald himself. (Popcorn please.)

But the larger issue was already well known. The National Security Agency is collecting all telephone meta-data in the U.S. since at least 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, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.
After the issue became public the telecoms demanded immunity and congress arranged for that. Congress also instituted a process that creates some formal legality for the massive data collection. While that mechanism is in itself secret we can reasonably assume that the FISA court will, every three month, issue court orders to all telecommunication companies and demand all the meta-data for all calls. It will likely have a similar process for individual internet access. Additional commercial data sources will enable the government to pinpoint each call and internet access back to individuals.

The purpose for such a massive data collection is somewhat dubious. The official reasoning is "terrorism":

A senior administration official said: "Information of the sort described in the Guardian article has been a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States, as it allows counter-terrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States.
That may be a theoretical purpose but how is that supposed to justify such massive preemptive data collection? The government could reasonably demand that telecommunication providers store individual call records for some three month. Many already do so for billing purposes. The government could then, should it need to in a specific case, request through a judge the relevant past connection data for a specific person. That mechanism would fulfill the purported need of the above "senior administration official".

But that seems not to be what the government wants. It wants to collect all data and it wants to process all that data. But for what purpose? After at least seven years and likely billions spend on the program one really wonders what this is about. Only two or three cases of successful terrorism have occurred in those years. Many other case went to court but all of those were of some dimwits entrapped by the FBI or caught otherwise. There is not one case I am aware of that can somehow be connected to the NSA's massive data hunt.

If there is no such case, or even if there were a few, why continue this unnecessary massive waste of federal resources? There is zero to little benefit from this project while it sucks up an enormous amount of tax payer money. Why should anyone pay for that?  That is the question voters should ask their representatives.

Posted by b on June 6, 2013 at 14:52 UTC | Permalink

Comments

one purpose to the vast data mining is to be able to go back and manufacture a case against someone that the government wants to lock up. it does not have to be a valid case, just carefully chosen "evidence" and possibly "secret evidence".

"terrorism" is doublespeak for opposition to US government. US "enemies" can range from actual military opponents to protestors to party hacks fighting over who is king in the White House.

I don't think this is a new strategy through history...

Posted by: anon | Jun 6 2013 15:23 utc | 1

Job creation.

Posted by: dh | Jun 6 2013 15:25 utc | 2

Home of the brave, land of the free?

Posted by: Fernando | Jun 6 2013 16:22 utc | 3

The US Supreme Court has consistently has recognized the limited circumstances in which the Fourth Amendment's usual requirement of individualized suspicion does not apply when intrusions on freedom are reasonable. To determine reasonableness, courts balance the public interest and the individual's right to be free from governmental intrusion and/or interference. So the Land of the Free becomes the Land of the Secure. This is natural in a national security state.

Later today I will have to pass through a militarized highway checkpoint en route to a doctor's appointment. There will be armed guards and possibly a sniffer dog (intermittent use). It's only a slight delay (could be five or ten minutes if the line is long), and longer if one is ordered into "secondary" for a full vehicle inspection (which is illegal w/o reasonable suspicion but they get away with it), but the Court deems it reasonable. It's Keeping Us Safe.

That's what the U.S. has come to, in comparison to Europe, say, where even national borders don't have checkpoints. It's one reason why a lot of Americans have moved to Mexico and other places.

Posted by: Don Bacon | Jun 6 2013 16:38 utc | 4

can someone explain what is meta-data and what is the defferent between meta-data and "Aggregated Mobile Phone Data Analysis" in this link http://www.unglobalpulse.org/pulse-lab/jakarta ? thanx

Posted by: Salemba | Jun 6 2013 17:01 utc | 5

Yeah the NSA stores everything. Built or building a great new data storage center in Utah. They have too much data and too little expertise at analysis. That's where CISPA or son or grandson of CISPA comes in ... they need Google's search and statistical conversion expertise to convert that data into standing cases against every American. It won't be much longer now. You have relatives in Amerika? The only thing that might save us is the collapse of the dollar and paupery. So we do have something to look forward to.

Posted by: john francis lee | Jun 6 2013 17:12 utc | 6

Islamic world--home of the veiled. America--home of the surveiled.

Posted by: JohnH | Jun 6 2013 17:28 utc | 7

Reassuring words from Dianne Feinstein...

"I think people want the homeland kept safe to the extent we can," Feinstein said at a Capitol Hill news conference. "We want to protect these privacy rights. That's why this is carefully done in federal court with federal judges who sit 24/7 who review these requests."

Posted by: dh | Jun 6 2013 18:06 utc | 8

1) It creates a climate of fear and obedience.

2) As another poster mentioned, it can be used retroactively against a target after a case is built using traditional methods.

3) I suspect that technology will at some point in the near future make such use of big data more efficient and "productive" than may seem the case presently.

Posted by: sleepy | Jun 6 2013 18:12 utc | 9

The fundamental problem is that the United States has no constitutional guarantee on the secrecy of correspondence (and communication). The Soviet Union had, as does just about every other constitutional democracy. Even the concept is largely unknown in the English language.

There is not even an article in English on Wikipedia, except this awful stub, I wrote seven years ago. (It has not seen any improvement since.)

In the US the secrecy of letters and correspondence is only derived through litigation from the Fourth Amendment to the constitution. It only goes as far as the "reasonable expectation of privacy." Now, who of you would expect the NSA NOT to record all your phone calls? They have technical capability, so why not?

Posted by: Petri Krohn | Jun 6 2013 18:43 utc | 10

@5 - in computer contexts, meta-data is external information describing some media file (for example), and data is internal information. an example of meta-data would be file name, size, time stamps, etc, while the data is everything stored inside of it.
so my guess is that phone call meta-data is all the phone call info that you see on your phone bill, while the data would be the recording of the call itself.

Posted by: anon | Jun 6 2013 19:27 utc | 11

But that seems not to be what the government wants. It wants to collect all data and it wants to process all that data. But for what purpose?

My assumption:

Humans are communicative beings. Furthermore social interaction neccessitates, at least to a degree and occasionally, communication; therefore in a sense communications reflect social connections and interactions.

Communications again, at least nowadays can be split into undirected and directed communications.
Directed communications, that is, communications with a defined sender with a defined target(s) naturally reflect interactions and are, by their very nature, often less socially encrypted ("politically correct", indirect, etc.).

Both types of communications can be easily associated with the parties involved, be it by IP adress, phone number, etc. Having ones IP adress also offers the capability to associate undirected communication (eg. posts in a forum) with persons.

Having all that information available is, of course, immensely valuable for different purposes, most of them of a darker nature.

Among other things feasible it allows the government to have a "live" picture of social relations, connections and interactions as well as to occasionally dig deeper and get a very detailed profile of almost everyone.
But there is more to it. The real power is in the option to cross-connect data sets, in particular with other data sources such as location info related to mobile phones.

This is truly orwellian, allowing some faceless government agent to dig deeply into the private space of a human. Adding to the frightening prospects is the fact that using very flexible grids and criteria the whole operation can be widely automated.

Does this really target terrorism? Hardly. For one, most terrorism is controlled - and initiated - anyway by state players with zusa at the leading front. Furthermore terrorists can quite simply escape the system by mimicking usual Mary and Joe communication habits and by adapting to the situation.

So, the real target is quite evidently the american people.

I personally interpret this as a "doomsday preparation", not in a esoteric (marsians coming!) sense but rather in a sense of "pretty soon the situation will be so deteriorated, all the dirty things we did will sooner or later and probably very soon come to be seen that the people will grab shovels and axes and walk against us" or, no better, in a sense of "We've planned something that is so extreme and ugly that the people will not possibly accept it. So, we need a means of brutally controlling them and extingiush any potential upheaval at the earliest possible".

Posted by: Mr. Pragma | Jun 6 2013 19:48 utc | 12

I actually agree with number 2, its not the whole answer but it is a great part. The US economy relies on this kind of stimulus far more than anyone would dare admit. And this kind of spending is palatable to big business (not like we're wasting it on food for the needy or anything...) because it goes straight to them and keeps them safe.

As for the end use... god only knows. Like SIPR (sp?) Net who knows who even has access to it or if it is being used in any coherent way. It could just be some technocrats grand idea unused by anyone except jealous fbi agents spying on cheating spouses.

Or they could be using it to track down specific dissidents, whistleblowers or to map the entire social structure of the country.

They say it is used to check terrorist phone numbers but why cant they just look at those records individually?

Posted by: guest77 | Jun 6 2013 19:59 utc | 13

@12 Glad you agree guest77. Security is a growth industry.

Posted by: dh | Jun 6 2013 21:08 utc | 14

The national security state with its huge expenditures relies upon Americans being afraid, and concerned above all about their physical security from attacks by "them." So many (most?) voters are willing to pay for useless NSA databases, and anything else that will help them feel secure against "them."

Politicians know this, and help it along, because it builds confidence in the state as protector, and it also helps out with campaign financing. Many people actually LIKE the TSA pat-downs and highway checkpoints, for example, because it helps them feel secure.

What to do? We can't change the inevitable. Better to put it in its place, as Thoreau did with his (typical) play on words between sense and senses.

Thus the state never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.

However, the government does not concern me much, and I shall bestow the fewest possible thoughts on it. It is not many moments that I live under a government, even in this world. If a man is thought-free, fancy-free, imagination-free, that which is not never for a long time appearing to be to him, unwise rulers or reformers cannot fatally interrupt him. --from Civil Disobedience


And then, not taking the government seriously (the ultimate put-down), we may go about our business.

Posted by: Don Bacon | Jun 6 2013 21:32 utc | 15

So then in the future, this blog and our mere participation in it, or just perusing online will make us liable, subject to interrogation, damages or fines. In other words reading MOA will be illegal. What a great world were heading into.
Typing Bradley Manning, could cause one to be considered suspicious?!! Awesome!!!

Posted by: Fernando | Jun 6 2013 22:04 utc | 16

McCain say we must arm al qaeda terrorists, if not, the region will sink into extremism. Yes you heard it, we must ARM terrorists unless we want extremism. More nonsense from this old baldie.

http://presstv.com/detail/2013/06/06/307560/us-must-send-missiles-to-syria-militants/

Posted by: Anonymous | Jun 6 2013 22:24 utc | 17

@12&13, Concur, it is part of the parcel, the security industry is growth, in fact the industry is gigantic; so are 'leads'. Decades ago you could buy Names and addresses, then it advanced to email addresses, now credit details, keywords with frequency (Audio and electronic). Just search Google for 'Something' (You can Buy) then in every page you visit an advert appears relating to that one time brief search. I keep on getting edible printers this week as my wife asked me a technical question relating to the print head. The month before ‘metal detectors’. Such systems also profile you; so last month I like Cake and lost something while baking I guess. However, if you eavesdrop, tap, you are liable, and have committed a number of crimes, even federal, and if you use evidence that is audio, strangely it's rarely admissible in a court of Law. It seems they have tweaked the Laws over decades and have likewise been eavesdropping as well as 'Selling' data/content while mitigating it as a crime.

The units that monitor are overloaded, more so within cyberspace, the keywords range from 5000, and up in every language possible. To cripple (Temp) such a system is simple, a group like Anonymous could simple mass email just keywords and 100% the WWW would crawl for a few days, and the result: garbage in, garbage out. Another method id to mass tweet/FB or any ‘On the watch’ SM app, and state a line that infers a head of state has been killed, we did see the stock market fall when one tweet managed to give a fake fact just last month, and why this was taken and became reactive, was simply the priority of the ‘person’ at hand.
@Fernado#15, yes typing BM will get you flagged, and yes you emails are also read, even delayed, analyzed and sent, this can occur in nano seconds or hours. days depending on the volume. Events also steer the keywords, and also make a focus (Priority) 'Boston' would now be added, and older keywords that are less needed become secondary, but are never removed! So I petty those with the Boston terrier (Dog and not Boston terror) as the system also flags typo’s much like word can.

End of the day if you are in the US, UK etc and you do have a phone, email and credit card, someone can see where you stop to fuel (Estimate how many Kms you drive), what you buy (Even look at food group to see if it indicates an ethnic preference), where you eat, where you frequent (Social), what you drink, what you wear - all with times and dates; all that data can not only summarize you lifestyle, but your budget, and give a pretty good picture of your habits. Great ‘sellable’ info on a potential consumer - Or if you were flagged for other reasons ( Typing BM), the system would do the same and highlight anything that was not routine (Creatures of habit), i.e. you bought flowers and it’s not your wife’s B’day, or you overnighter in a Hotel, you take short trips to a particular destination, it would try and correlate any event or person with the same anomaly.

This of course is complex and in turn needs a ‘Human’ analyst to further analyze, then you are placed in specialized DB’s, like i2, where even fragmented data sets are included (Partial phone numbers, names, relationships, contacts etc) and we all know it’s human to err!

Just think, you engage in a topic online, you happen to be buy a pressure cooker,you planned a trip to Boston with the Kid's, own a Dog, and you are in a world of hurt without being involved...

Posted by: kev | Jun 6 2013 23:30 utc | 18

Petri Krohn 10.

We in the anglo countries don't have the deep distrust and suspicion that many people have, rightly so ,of their government because it was considered our government, and if it said it need to do something which had never done before, well that was ok because it wasn't targeting anybody one knew, perhaps drug traffickers or indigenous activitists or something. Yes we got fat and lazy. Still are, largely.

Posted by: heath | Jun 7 2013 3:31 utc | 19

I think this makes great watching for anyone really interested in this issue.

Taped in Hamburg, Germany (b's haunts, but no squirrels to be seen unfortunately) at the - most recent, I believe - Chaos Computer Congress, a sort of techo/cypherpunk meeting of minds or something, it covers everything from 9/11, the torture, the Utah Data center to Total Information Awareness type programs run by the US Government. All three speakers were attacked (legally and physically) by the US government for blowing the whistle on domestic spying.

www.youtube DOT com/watch?v=XDM3MqHln8U

From the synopsis:


Enemies of the State: What Happens When Telling the Truth about Secret US Government Power Becomes a Crime
Blowing the Whistle on Spying, Lying & Illegalities in the Digital Era

Panel presented at 29C3 (29th Chaos Communication Congress), 27 December 2012. Speakers are Jesselyn Radack, Thomas Drake, and William Binney. Q&A afterward is not included in this video.

Posted by: guest77 | Jun 7 2013 3:43 utc | 20

I think this is great to watch for people truly interested.

youtube DOT com/watch?v=XDM3MqHln8U

It covers everything from the Utah Data center to Total Information Awareness type programs run by the US Government. All three speakers were indicted or harassed by the US government for whistleblowing about domestic spying.

From Chaos Computer congress in Hamburg.

Posted by: guest77 | Jun 7 2013 3:46 utc | 21

Search YouTube for: 29C3 Panel: Jesselyn Radack, Thomas Drake, William Binney

All three speakers were attacked by the US government for whistle blowing on torture and domestic spying. Excellent talk form Chaos Computer Congress in Hamburg. Topics include Utah Data Center, Torture, and even more detail on systems like the one described by kev above.

Really interesting. And timely apparently...

Posted by: guest77 | Jun 7 2013 3:50 utc | 22

All this data has been crucial to all the Sarbane-Oxley prosecutions.

Posted by: biklett | Jun 7 2013 6:22 utc | 23

@biklett This is why financial crimes have been de facto legalized. The crimes were and are incredibly blatant, done without pretense of secrecy.

Posted by: Crest | Jun 7 2013 8:08 utc | 24

The difference here is that the Administration collects 'All' conversations, but does not target a specific number or person or conversation for that matter (even if it does), that is how it bypasses the legal issues. That data mined (Be it Keywords or association) in turn is flagged if a match is struck. If flagged, then the legal arms may request seizure of the records, be it Fed or state Law (Some have "One Party Consent" state Laws), even International calls can be vetted/screened. The part I dislike 'Anything affiliated in anyway' is then also screened and a part of the profile/case. So - if your local Pizza guy is a dealer on the side, you phone him for a thin crust special once an week, you are also flagged and linked to a crime, thus guilty until cleared in DB's, very problematic since this data is not cleaned, in fact it just become more, shared and enhanced. So if your Pizza man was simply a small time dealer, but is connected to a Cartel, so could you be, all because 'you' did not vet your Pizza man...

Posted by: kev | Jun 7 2013 8:39 utc | 25

Off topic, but there are reports that Syria has taken a Golan border crossing from the rebels. The Zio's say the are worried that the fighting will spill over into "thier" territory and that the rebels will try to use The Golan to mount attacks on Israeli citizens. Oh dear, they don't know what to do or whats going to happen. Are they going to be rootin' for the Syrian army now. We know that they were happy with the status quo but fighting in the Golan my cause a miscalculation.......

Posted by: Billy boy | Jun 7 2013 9:00 utc | 26

Prism. 1) A transparent body used to refract a beam of light. 2) A medium that distorts whatever is viewed through it. 3) The US government's secret program to mine Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Skype and other tech giants for users' "private" data.

It's a definition we learned within 24 hours of finding out that the National Security Agency had gained wholesale access to Verizon customers' phone records, and like that discovery, came courtesy of leaked confidential documents. Washington's top intelligence official has since confirmed that PRISM exists – and berated the media for exposing it to the public. But anyone who, like the snoops, has been watching closely will know that the government surveilling its citizens and others is nothing new. Welcome to the Bush-Obama era, where Big Brother is most definitely watching.

Posted by: kev | Jun 7 2013 11:47 utc | 27

@24 Kev –
Yeah, Prism (wapo) or Guardian. I was going to post about it. This latest leak is probably much more damaging. And interesting in the light of the upcoming “summit” between Obama and Xi. The Obama regime has been running a 2 years campaign pounding on the Chinese for a) hacking into US networks and corporations and b) for selling untrustable computer network equipment (routers, switches,… see Huawei). And of course for spying on their own citizens. I suspect Xi will come to Obama and crack a few jokes…

Aside from that, not much new under the sun with that Prism thing, it is a continuation of the spying started with Echelon listening posts. Interesting how they actively target networks that are more used by individuals here (Google Gmail and its chat & phone thingies, Facebook, Apple’s Facetime and iMessages).

Me wonders who’s leaking this stuff.

Posted by: Philippe | Jun 7 2013 12:22 utc | 28

Guardian:
NSA taps in to user data of Facebook, Google and others, secret files reveal

and the British services then use the NSA database:
UK gathering secret intelligence via covert NSA operation

WSJ:
U.S. Collects Vast Data Trove - NSA Monitoring Includes Three Major Phone Companies, as Well as Online Activity

WaPo:
Documents: U.S. mining data from 9 leading Internet firms; companies deny knowledge

Just a few month ago someone gave testimony to Congress

"Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" committee member Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Clapper during the March 12 hearing.

In response, Clapper replied quickly: "No, sir."

Posted by: b | Jun 7 2013 13:55 utc | 29

Seven years? No, this has been going on since George HW Bush admin. Through Clinton, through Bush Jr, and under Obama. This program started as Carnivore and Echelon through the NSA. James Banford's book, Body of Secrets details it all. Written and published in 99-00 Banford closed the book warning about some obscure terrorist, OBL.

Posted by: scottindallas | Jun 7 2013 14:04 utc | 30

McCain urged Yemen terrorists to fight Syria.

http://goingtotehran.com/john-mccain-and-the-desperate-flailing-of-syrian-oppositionists-external-supporters

Posted by: Anyonymous | Jun 7 2013 14:10 utc | 31

HuffPost had a nice picture of NSA headquarters. Thousands of cars in the parking lots of huge, gleaming buildings. Buildings full of expensive IT equipment. In other words, money, and lots of it. The question of whether the information being processed is useful is utterly secondary. People are making a lot of money off of it, and they are not going to give up that money without a fight.

Posted by: MikeW_CA | Jun 7 2013 14:26 utc | 32

Sorry for the multiple posts there.

So nice to see these leaks. Hopefully we'll see some perjury charges, or a lawsuit by the EU (lol - just kidding).

Nice to see that some people brought into the administration didn't realize that "Hope" and "Change" was meant to be a joke. Now if end users can just change their habitual use of this bullshit - like they might do with buying a new style of clothes or whatever - we'll really have something.

Clearly the CIA connection is why the battle for control of Facebook was so important and why attempts to supplant it have failed. The creator of an open source alternate to facebook committed suicide - surely that's just a sad coincidence like Aaron Swartz. When Facebook was most under fire for its privacy practices, Google offered an "alternative" meanwhile the Google Chairman is treated like a defacto public official. Facebook's new "graph search" is just an attempt to commercialize this power.

We don't have to try and imagine the social maps they have. If you look at a union organizing campaign, you'll see these relationship maps on blackboards of who knows who, what the relationship is, and how much influence they have. This is used to decide who to talk to, who needs to be convinced - where the opposition bottlenecks are. There you are dealing with a hundred people maybe, but scale that up to millions like in Egypt and you have a "revolution." You could turn this into a kill list just as easily. It's likely that some of the people killed in drone strikes were not violent at all - they were just influential nodes on the CIA's Grand Map of Humanity.

What an infinitely useful tool of social control: in depth detailed records of everything a particular person have ever viewed (and what goes in, likely comes out - this is real mind-reading), instant feedback on all human thought in real time, as well as a map indicating just who you have to get to say what (or who you have to eliminate) to try and generate some desired outcome. The Nazi Gestapo couldn't have imagined such a perfect system in their wildest dreams.

Other news: "Bulgaria now says Hezbollah's role in bus bombing unproven" of course. Someone's going to have to update that Wikipedia article I guess...

Posted by: guest77 | Jun 7 2013 15:03 utc | 33

If true, the Yemen Post report could be construed as another piece of evidence against the apparently terrorist-supporting Sen. McCain. For, according to this story, McCain lobbied the Yemeni government to send more jihadi fighters to Syria, in order to swell the ranks of groups engaged in terrorist activity—representatives of which the Arizona senator had met with immediately before traveling to Yemen.
http://goingtotehran.com/john-mccain-and-the-desperate-flailing-of-syrian-oppositionists-external-supporters

Posted by: brian | Jun 7 2013 15:17 utc | 34

OT: "The U.S. military is sending a massive new contingent of guards to help contain the revolt of hunger-striking prisoners at Guantánamo Bay."

Incredible. Another 125 soldiers to deal with some starving wretches?

We don't need to close Guantanamo. We just need to replace the inmates with the guards.

Campaign promise #1. Obomber is a joke.

Posted by: guest77 | Jun 7 2013 15:28 utc | 35

I've not watched this yet, but seems like it could be valuable in understanding the latest sociopath operating in USAn's name:

2008 Debate: U.N. Ambassador Nominee Samantha Power vs. Jeremy Scahill

democracynow DOT org/blog/2013/6/5/must_watch_2008_debate_un_ambassador_nominee_samantha_power_vs_jeremy_scahill

Posted by: guest77 | Jun 7 2013 15:31 utc | 36

I'll just leave this here: nsa DOT gov1.info

;)

Posted by: guest77 | Jun 7 2013 16:07 utc | 37

With all this data gathering going on you would think if terrorists had been the target the wusa govt. would have nabbed the Boston Marathon attackers beforehand, as they allegedly had enough materiel in their apartment to convict them of something. So what can we conclude? Either the USA, home of irrational Fahrenheit and miles, is not capable intellectually of analysing the data it has been gathering, or, the real targets are not terrorists but political opponents of whomever is in power.

Posted by: Albertde | Jun 7 2013 17:17 utc | 38

Sensational news breaking that Russia offers to replace Austrian peace keepers pm the Golan. There's a big back story to this move.

Posted by: Mcdoo | Jun 7 2013 17:34 utc | 39

"The National Security Agency is collecting all telephone meta-data in the U.S. since at least..."

Maybe I'm not up-to-date on the latest techcnical terms, but what's a "meta" for? I meta physicist once, but we didn't get along.

Posted by: Mooser | Jun 7 2013 17:55 utc | 40

"Campaign promise #1. Obomber is a joke."

I'll never, ever understand it. What on earth, what in heaven's name did they tell Obama to convince him that he should take over the Bush crimes and push them to a successful conclusion? That he was smart enough, good enough, good-looking enough, and people liked him? And it never occurred to Obama that somebody would be left holding the bag (having to account for) and he was probably it?
What the hell kind of thought process does he have which allowed him to do this? What kind of ego? "Gee, my predecessor launched unnecessary expeditionary wars on false pretexts for ambiguous ends (which of course, engendered atrocities and constitutional atrocities here) on borrowed money, something well-known for destroying empires. And I promised to stop it, to end it. But I'm so smart I can make it come out right. Besides, all those Generals told me they would do exactly what I say, and never embarrass me.."

The man is, in the simplest terms, a first-class chump.

Posted by: Mooser | Jun 7 2013 18:07 utc | 41

Nawww, little EU afraid of its european jihadists comrades coming back home?

http://presstv.com/detail/2013/06/07/307699/eu-fears-militants-returning-from-syria/

Posted by: Anonymous | Jun 7 2013 18:36 utc | 42

@42 Not a problem. The Syria Government will gladly provide all the data.

Posted by: dh | Jun 7 2013 19:04 utc | 43

This is very much a case of: The data is available, and we can capt it easily, we are the bosses, we need it, that is it.

We, the Gvmt. cannot let this go to the private sector such as Corps and advertisers, etc. We need info to implement control.

In the past, to intercept fixed phone, by wire tapping, and post in the shape of letters you needed a target, or a group of targets, the op is just too costly without some real expectation of return. No more.

Social scientists are busy making deals with Yahoo, Facebook, and the like to analyze their data, and have been doing that for *years.*
Somewhat pretty trivial, who is friends with whom, like geographically, or in function of nos. of friends, pol opinions, music tastes, etc. Cheap and easy.

Gvmt. wants the authority of collecting and analyzing such data, mostly to judge opinion in the country, so as to adjust pol discourse, to seduce Joe + Jane and pander to their opinions, as pol discourse aims only to match entrenched opinions and stereotypes and proposes nothing, merely formats the behavior at the voting booth on the /rare/ occasions.

What to do about social media, where are the most resisters, what are their opinions, what are com. nodes in the US, are questions of concern, etc.

Sure the data has many ostensibly slavering about identifying ‘terrorists’ and gearing up for witch hunts, put forward by greedy security analyst cos. Not the first aim imho, the data can be used against individuals if needs be but I feel this is not the primary objective.

Shoddy Analysis with a lot of Power Points and proper submission will provide a lot of plummy jobs.

The legality of it all, the intrusion to privacy, etc. is another question. Constitution etc. As long as ppl don’t rise up and object this kind of data mining will continue.

US citizens are habituated to having a ‘credit score’ which basically determines vital aspects of their lives, from an opaque authority whom they can’t even identify. They accept it and struggle to improve it and so on. Although I am being fanciful and it is not for next year, a ‘terrorist’ score is on the horizon, as an ex.

Posted by: Noirette | Jun 7 2013 19:49 utc | 44

Forbes, May 26, 2012
Dept. of Homeland Security Forced to Release List of Keywords Used to Monitor Social Networking Sites

The list was posted by the Electronic Privacy Information Center who filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act, before suing to obtain the release of the documents. The documents were part of the department’s 2011 ’Analyst’s Desktop Binder‘

p.20
This is a current list of terms that will be used by the NOC when monitoring social media sites to provide situational awareness and establish a common operating picture.

p. 23
Terrorism
Terrorism, Al Qaeda (all spellings),Terror, Attack, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Agro, Environmental, terrorist, Eco terrorism, Conventional weapon, Target, Weapons grade, Dirty Bomb, Enriched, Nuclear, Chemical weapon, Biological weapon, Ammonium nitrate, Improvised explosive device


WARNING: Do not use these dangerous words on a social media site. And don't a bunch of you start packing bundles of these dangerous words into your emails -- you might blow computer fuze at NSA. That would be bad.

Posted by: Don Bacon | Jun 7 2013 19:58 utc | 45

As there seem to float quite a lot of misunderstandings, let's look at some relevant facts.

"Meta data" are data that are used/needed to process some data (the content). In the context of large observation/control projects sometimes only or mainly that part of meta data that are not usually available for normal users are considered meta data.

An example: an email.
The content, as considered by the user, of an email is evidently the information he wishes to confer such as some text for the adressee.
In order to process and transfer the email some further data are needed, sometimes being generated by the system (the users computer) itself. Examples are sender information, target information (the recipients email adress), date and time, a subject, aso.

This example also shows an important aspect of the term "meta data", it is relative and changing, depending on the perspective. At the user level sender and recipient adress are meta data; they are not part of the content desired to be transmitted but merely a technical necessity.
As soon as the email is transmitted trough the Internet that changes. Now, these technically required data become content (jargon: payload) too; The systems transmitting data on the internet only care about data packets, for them both, sender email adress and original email content are just payload and only the data these "transmission systems" need to transmitt those data packets are considered payload (by them).

The important point is that, no matter which data were considered meta data on the technical side, they had one thing in common: those data were needed for mere technical reasons (and actually are, to a large degree, discarded ("deleted") as soon as some technical task such as transmitting some data packet between any two points is completed.

This innocent purely technical machinery becomes dark and evil, when all those data are collected and processed for *non-technical purposes*. And the real danger consists of two main vectors:
- The collection and storage
Reason: All those bits and pieces are quite meaningless and innocent techno-junk by themselves (at least most of them). By not discarding but collecting them information is created that, while consisting of small innocent pieces, alltogether creates a "picture" (similar to a puzzle but way more dangerous).
- The processing and, in particular, the combining (and rearranging)

An example again for non-tech readers: Some (1) traffic camera taking a picture, say, every minute so as to allow traffic controllers to have an overall impression of the traffic situation in a large city is rather innocent and the information relating to a single person is very small.
However, collecting all those pictures from this and all other cameras creates a completely new and very extensive information layer potentially including very many citizens. When in a final step some image analysis software scans and process all those pictures and then processes and correlates the information gathered, an evil regime can trace where any citizen went and, correlating and processing that again, they can learn e.g. about relations between citizens.


"observing, spying the internet"

At first sight the internet seems to be an overwhelmingly large and wild parallel universe. There are, after all billions of systems interconnected.
Looking closer though there are actually excellent preconditions for observation. The reason for that is the way data are transmitted.

Actually there are rather few central nodes where pretty everyone interconnects. Data aren't travelling wildly around. When you connect to the internet you do so through your provider. This provider (ISP) has a (usually rather small) network, say, in your city and some cities around. In order to have your data travelling all over the planet you ISP must, simply speaking, have an ISP himself. Usually that major ISP is one of the companies having cables on a considerably larger scale, say, all over France or possibly even all over major parts of Europe.
Now, when (grossly simplified) you, sitting in France, wend an email to a friend in, say, Argentina, your data packets must travel through quite some networks. For example you yourself connect through "France ISP" who has interconnections with neighbours such as "German ISP" and "Spain ISP" as well as to some large international ISPs such as Level3 or Global Crossing who have capacities on major transatlantic cables.
So, your ISP "France ISP", in order to send your email to Argentina, connects to, say, "Global ISP 5" who can transmitt packets tofrom zusa east cost. Global ISP 5 again is interconnected to "Americas 3 ISP" who happens to transport data packets between north and south America connecting to "Argentina ISP".

So, while communicating across the globe your email was sent over just a few large networks across the globe. In order to do so those ISPs must interconnect their cables and networks somewhere. And actually they do. Those points are called "internet exchanges" and the most important (because cross connecting the most ISPs) one in France is called "PAIX" (Paris Internet eXchange).

It is there, at those IXes, where basically all internet traffic must and will pass through. And it is there where secret services can quite comfortably look at any and all traffic - and, if desired, store it.

But wait, it gets worse. The scheme I elaborated actually is valid throughout the world - except zusa. in zusa the major IXes (sometimes called "NAP" there) are associated with private companies. The major node is "Equinix", named after the company that runs the major part of zusa IX nodes as well as a major ISP.

The situation is similar on the telephony side and there, like on the internet side, many of the major global players like Equinix are present (often controlling) on most if not all major ISes in the world.

All together it can be said that the zusa regime, by having contracts (or secret court orders) with just a dozen large corporations basically controls not only the zusa but actually internet and tel. traffic throughout major parts of the world.

A final remark:

facebook and google might play it along the line being forced by court orders. Actually, however, there is solid reason to assume that many major players like google have since quite a while an increasingly cozy relationship with the military industrial complex. And no wonder, the interests of the player "nicely" fit: google wants data mining (such as processing email contents) for commercial reasons, mainly advertising, while nsa wants quite the same albeit for different reasons.

Posted by: Mr. Pragma | Jun 7 2013 21:36 utc | 46

b

I'm quite happy to be here but, frankly, I'm getting really pi**ed by the typepad lottery. Once more I wrote a major (long) post into which I invested quite some work - and it vanishes.
Clicking "Post" seems to work, saying "Your comment has been posted." -- but the post doesn't arrive at MoA or can't be seen.

And no, I didn't write urls, dirty words, or the like in it. Neither was there critical or sensitive stuff; actually it was a rather neutral text.

Would you please kindly inform us how to avoid this posting lottery or other wise take care of that ugly problem?

Posted by: Mr. Pragma | Jun 7 2013 21:42 utc | 47

Mr P: If it's too long, it's too wrong. Break it up into 2 or 3. It works for me.

Posted by: Don Bacon | Jun 7 2013 22:10 utc | 48

I don't understand the complaints. If the technology exists, they will use it. Tomorrow someone will have a way around it. If you want to conceal your communications, encrypt them. For the moment encryption works. If they want to read communications, they will do, including this one.

However you also have to consider reading overload. Even if detection is being done by keywords, the number of risks thrown up will far exceed the potential of humans to check them. That means that lots of people will be unreasonably accused. The consequent fuss means that there will be a retraction. Whether one can arrive at a balance, is possible, but I don't see how.

Posted by: alexno | Jun 7 2013 22:14 utc | 49

Dan Bacon (47)

Ah, OK. Thank you, that might be the issue.

Nevertheless, I think it might be very helpful if b explained those issues (and some data such as "how long can a post be?") so that we can avoid them.

Thanks again

Posted by: Mr. Pragma | Jun 7 2013 22:19 utc | 50

As there seem to float quite a lot of misunderstandings, let's look at some relevant facts.

"Meta data" are data that are used/needed to process some data (the content). In the context of large observation/control projects sometimes only or mainly that part of meta data that are not usually available for normal users are considered meta data.

An example: an email.
The content, as considered by the user, of an email is evidently the information he wishes to confer such as some text for the adressee.
In order to process and transfer the email some further data are needed, sometimes being generated by the system (the users computer) itself. Examples are sender information, target information (the recipients email adress), date and time, a subject, aso.

This example also shows an important aspect of the term "meta data", it is relative and changing, depending on the perspective. At the user level sender and recipient adress are meta data; they are not part of the content desired to be transmitted but merely a technical necessity.
As soon as the email is transmitted trough the Internet that changes. Now, these technically required data become content (jargon: payload) too; The systems transmitting data on the internet only care about data packets, for them both, sender email adress and original email content are just payload and only the data these "transmission systems" need to transmitt those data packets are considered payload (by them).

The important point is that, no matter which data were considered meta data on the technical side, they had one thing in common: those data were needed for mere technical reasons (and actually are, to a large degree, discarded ("deleted") as soon as some technical task such as transmitting some data packet between any two points is completed.

(continued ...)

Posted by: Mr. Pragma | Jun 7 2013 22:21 utc | 51

(...)

This innocent purely technical machinery becomes dark and evil, when all those data are collected and processed for *non-technical purposes*. And the real danger consists of two main vectors:
- The collection and storage
Reason: All those bits and pieces are quite meaningless and innocent techno-junk by themselves (at least most of them). By not discarding but collecting them information is created that, while consisting of small innocent pieces, alltogether creates a "picture" (similar to a puzzle but way more dangerous).
- The processing and, in particular, the combining (and rearranging)

An example again for non-tech readers: Some (1) traffic camera taking a picture, say, every minute so as to allow traffic controllers to have an overall impression of the traffic situation in a large city is rather innocent and the information relating to a single person is very small.
However, collecting all those pictures from this and all other cameras creates a completely new and very extensive information layer potentially including very many citizens. When in a final step some image analysis software scans and process all those pictures and then processes and correlates the information gathered, an evil regime can trace where any citizen went and, correlating and processing that again, they can learn e.g. about relations between citizens.


"observing, spying the internet"

At first sight the internet seems to be an overwhelmingly large and wild parallel universe. There are, after all billions of systems interconnected.
Looking closer though there are actually excellent preconditions for observation. The reason for that is the way data are transmitted.

(...)

Posted by: Mr. Pragma | Jun 7 2013 22:22 utc | 52

(...)

Actually there are rather few central nodes where pretty everyone interconnects. Data aren't travelling wildly around. When you connect to the internet you do so through your provider. This provider (ISP) has a (usually rather small) network, say, in your city and some cities around. In order to have your data travelling all over the planet you ISP must, simply speaking, have an ISP himself. Usually that major ISP is one of the companies having cables on a considerably larger scale, say, all over France or possibly even all over major parts of Europe.
Now, when (grossly simplified) you, sitting in France, wend an email to a friend in, say, Argentina, your data packets must travel through quite some networks. For example you yourself connect through "France ISP" who has interconnections with neighbours such as "German ISP" and "Spain ISP" as well as to some large international ISPs such as Level3 or Global Crossing who have capacities on major transatlantic cables.
So, your ISP "France ISP", in order to send your email to Argentina, connects to, say, "Global ISP 5" who can transmitt packets tofrom zusa east cost. Global ISP 5 again is interconnected to "Americas 3 ISP" who happens to transport data packets between north and south America connecting to "Argentina ISP".

So, while communicating across the globe your email was sent over just a few large networks across the globe. In order to do so those ISPs must interconnect their cables and networks somewhere. And actually they do. Those points are called "internet exchanges" and the most important (because cross connecting the most ISPs) one in France is called "PAIX" (Paris Internet eXchange).

It is there, at those IXes, where basically all internet traffic must and will pass through. And it is there where secret services can quite comfortably look at any and all traffic - and, if desired, store it.

But wait, it gets worse. The scheme I elaborated actually is valid throughout the world - except zusa. in zusa the major IXes (sometimes called "NAP" there) are associated with private companies. The major node is "Equinix", named after the company that runs the major part of zusa IX nodes as well as a major ISP.

(...)

Posted by: Mr. Pragma | Jun 7 2013 22:23 utc | 53

(...)

The situation is similar on the telephony side and there, like on the internet side, many of the major global players like Equinix are present (often controlling) on most if not all major ISes in the world.

All together it can be said that the zusa regime, by having contracts (or secret court orders) with just a dozen large corporations basically controls not only the zusa but actually internet and tel. traffic throughout major parts of the world.

A final remark:

facebook and google might play it along the line being forced by court orders. Actually, however, there is solid reason to assume that many major players like google have since quite a while an increasingly cozy relationship with the military industrial complex. And no wonder, the interests of the player "nicely" fit: google wants data mining (such as processing email contents) for commercial reasons, mainly advertising, while nsa wants quite the same albeit for different reasons.

Posted by: Mr. Pragma | Jun 7 2013 22:23 utc | 54

re 53. OK, the states can pick up what we say. We've known that for a long time, if we are not fools. If they've the time to sort out the data, that's doubtful.

Posted by: alexno | Jun 7 2013 22:45 utc | 55

alexno (54)

Sorry, no.

The danger of this issue (verizon, google, etc) is different and way more sinister.

The point you adress is "What do A and b say/write in their phone conversation/emails?"

This, however, is a different story. This is about "whom does A call?", generally and over long periods, and then "And that B who is called by A, with whom does he, B, talk?"

Add to this statistics like "In which regions of zusa are the most emails sent to recipients within the same state whose contents indicate a negative attitude toward "

The idea is as brutal as simple: don't care (for the time being) the 98% content and grab and store "just" the 2% meta data that allows to basically analyse all social networks and relations so as to make citizens completely transparent.

Of course they have right now the technology and means to get moloch loads of informations from phone eavesdropping or all those cameras a.s.o.

But there are 2 major problems related to that, namely the immense amounts of - widely unstructured - data and the lack of relations hidden within those data.
If, for instance, you store data from 1000 cameras, you have basically not much unless you invest insane amounts of human analysis. The decisive point is: The central actors are humans and, very importantly, their relations and interactions. So, in a way, the meta data gathered through verizon, google and the like given them a basic structure that can then serve as meta data for the heaps of otherwise unrelated data like zillions of pictures.

Posted by: Mr. Pragma | Jun 7 2013 23:06 utc | 56

@Don, I had a mail delay scenario, in short mail was taking a few hours to be delivered, using a few tools I figured out that Camp Bondsteel (Kosovo)was the block - Some background http://globalresearch.ca/articles/STU205A.html,

My post at that time was in the Office of the PM in Pristina as an consultant for security both physical and electronic. I did inquire to the Camp, and never received a reply, so I simply took the 'Keyword list' and bulk mailed through the network to 50 bogus addresses repeatedly, and got others to do the same (Just a test as I put it) the Gov system crashed, the US base IT guy made contact and apologized, there system was overloaded.

In turn I implemented 256 bit encryption (AES), also for the mobile phones for the Office VIP's. If you want encryption that is low cost even free, try something like https://www.gold-lock.com/en/home/ (Although like most of the spy and protection software, it is developed/made by Israel and US funded!).

Bondsteel is still open today, and is the Balkan 'Gitmo' it is a mega city in its own right in terms of Kosovo. 2012 inventory of all DoD assets at home and abroad, which seems to cover both owned and leased facilities http://www.acq.osd.mil/ie/download/bsr/BSR%20Baseline%20FY2012%20Jan072013.pdf since more has been added, more so in the Asian Pacific.

Posted by: kev | Jun 7 2013 23:10 utc | 57

By the way, I'd like to tell you a story on this issue. It occurred many years ago before the internet, when I was in Baghdad in 1983. It was well understood that the authorities listened in to our calls. Nevertheless, when I called a surveyor who was going to help us, a cultivated English voice broke in and asked who I was calling. Evidently I said, as I have no secrets. But it was evident that the authorities couldn't detect what I was doing without asking me. And today? Is it really different? Can you have a real case without intervention?

Posted by: alexno | Jun 7 2013 23:11 utc | 58

The danger of this issue (verizon, google, etc) is different and way more sinister.

The point you adress is "What do A and b say/write in their phone conversation/emails?"

This, however, is a different story. This is about "whom does A call?", generally and over long periods, and then "And that B who is called by A, with whom does he, B, talk?"

Add to this statistics like "In which regions of zusa are the most emails sent to recipients within the same state whose contents indicate a negative attitude toward "

The idea is as brutal as simple: don't care (for the time being) the 98% content and grab and store "just" the 2% meta data that allows to basically analyse all social networks and relations so as to make citizens completely transparent.

The same issue of data overload occurs. Whatever the refinement of data keywords is made, there is very little likelihood of obtaining the dataset tha

Posted by: alexno | Jun 7 2013 23:20 utc | 59

there is very little likelihood of obtaining the dataset that one wants. So humans are going to be required, and a lot of them.

Posted by: alexno | Jun 7 2013 23:22 utc | 60

I'm afraid, no.

There exist today chips that can scan for regular expressions to the tune of Gigabytes per second. Let's not forget that the underlying technology is widely used on standard PCs for anti-virus scanners.

Furthermore meta data already *are* structured, reasonably small and *already stored* albeit for small intervals of time only.

Considering that the worlds largest IX, DeCIX in Germany, transmitts around 1.500 Gb/s average (and ~2.000 Gb/s max) it would be perfectly feasible to grab, raw process and store the meta data. This is even more true for other, more average, IX nodes like in zusa where the typical full (i.e. meta data and payload) is around 300 to 700 Gb/s.
So the actual load on meta data spy equipment can be reasonably assumed to be in the range of 5 - 20 Gb/s which is quite practicably to handle even without high-tech equipment.

Posted by: Mr. Pragma | Jun 7 2013 23:40 utc | 61

This reminds me of signature drone-rocket strikes, going on behavior, which is low reliability, so I wouldn't worry . . .what's that buzzing I hear . . .

Posted by: Don Bacon | Jun 7 2013 23:48 utc | 62

talk of "metadata" vs "data" is a distraction.
the point is that the US demands all the info a company (like phone) stores on its customers on an ongoing basis. there was a story about the government tapping into AT&T switching hubs (?) a while back, and I've always assumed they are storing a lot of phone call content.
putting that together with the control information gives the government everything it needs to have full records of every phone call it has disk space to hoard.

Obama laughs and says, "we're not listening to your phone calls", but they can all be retrieved, analyzed, selectively edited, and used against you for the unforeseeable future.

Posted by: anon | Jun 7 2013 23:49 utc | 63

p.s. creepy that Obama says the phone spying is NOT "secret" because your duly-elected congresspeople have ALL been told about it. but it IS "classified", so YOU may NOT be told anything about YOUR duly-elected officials abusing your privacy.

we PAY them to do this. we give them health care, bodyguards, jets, and soldiers. we further enslave ourselves by building their weapons and growing their food while they find ways to extract more value from us. what else would we expect?

Posted by: anon | Jun 7 2013 23:57 utc | 64

So my point is that the government "leaked" this information on purpose simply to make us afraid, and our best reaction is to say "FU -- it didn't work -- I'm not afraid."

Anyhow that's my reaction, going 'Thoreauvian' as in my #15 above. Be afraid, if it suits you. I think they're a bunch of chumps, these "intelligence" people. They've proven over and over again that they can't even process mini-data, never mind mega-data. Fear this guy? No.

Posted by: Don Bacon | Jun 7 2013 23:57 utc | 65

anon @ 63 -- Obama is telling us about the joys of rule by oligarchy. The Powers That Be get to be "in the know," while the rest of us get left in the dark.

He knew, FISA court judges knew, Congress knew (but did not dare tell us their constituents about it). That is our Corportistic aristocracy at work.

Posted by: jawbone | Jun 8 2013 0:01 utc | 66

Mooser @ 41 -- Obama made a Faustian bargain: His Wall Street backers wanted a get out jail free card, along with all the financial support they wanted. Some of the MIC wanted to be sure there was a president who would do what they wanted done. Big Health Industry players wanted their bacon saved and more paying customers.

Obama made it clear he would meet their needs, that he could essentially control the Dems in Congress since to defy him would tick off many of the black voters so important to the party.

He has been delivering on his agreements. Secret agreements, of course.

Posted by: jawbone | Jun 8 2013 0:11 utc | 67

Mcdoo @ 39 -- I heard on the news that Russia offered to replace the Austrian troops in the Golan Heights. I bet Israel said that would happen when hell freezes over.

Posted by: jawbone | Jun 8 2013 0:13 utc | 68

@67, Russia cant! The agreement included that no 'permanent' member (Veto wielding)could take on this duty/role. Also, the UN is calling for its largest pledge in the History of the UN, 5.2 billion (1/4 for inside Syria, it seems the UN is the arm to re-pay the pack's debt from the worlds taxpayers yet again). Given that less was funded for genocides in Africa, or conflicts that caused more deaths, and it has no mandate, only 'The non-binding resolution' is all a bit presumptuous, more so how they came up with the 'Price Tag' unless as I mentioned; it's owed already. Just think it asked for 2 billion 2003 for the Iraq post conflict(UNAMI)and that was a utter failure, Note:1000 people were killed last month, an epic result!

In my view, Russia is looking at openings, the UN mission depending on how it is 'defined', notice it is not focused or likely to be HQ in Syria, this mean it would need to be placed on a boarder, Jordan is likely. Adding to the fact that the Austrian contingent is leaving its 'time' for the GH's as a peace keeping contingent is so obscure since even as inept as the UN is, the Peacekeeping (UNDP) and the contingents have a roster in place, the handover is months before the end of tour, so all this media on who will replace the Austrians is utter BS. What Russia will more than likely do is ensure Russia & China are a large part of the mission, i.e. RoL including having the appointment of a SRSG.
could go on and on, but I would just frustrate myself, and it’s all just games…

Posted by: kev | Jun 8 2013 1:01 utc | 69

Wow obama is such a fraud.

First he have ordered targets for cyberattacks against other nations.

http://presstv.com/detail/2013/06/08/307733/us-making-target-list-for-cyber-attacks/

Another news tells us that he refuse to join in an effort to make MENA region free from nukes.

http://presstv.com/detail/2013/06/08/307728/us-blocked-mideast-nukefree-zone-confab/

Posted by: Anonymous | Jun 8 2013 8:39 utc | 70

What would happen if everyone included key danger words in every post everywhere.
Would the system jam up? What words are sure eg Bomb, ?

Posted by: boindub | Jun 8 2013 9:39 utc | 71

"What would happen if everyone included key danger words in every post everywhere.
Would the system jam up?"

You assume that words such as "bomb" are what they are looking for. I suspect that they are unconcerned with "terrorist attacks" for the very simple reason that the only ones that occur are organised by government provocateurs. Besides which the occasional massacre by freelances or AQ is precisely what the government needs to justify its panopticon.
It collects data because it is in its nature to do so: the more it has, the greater its power is. The more power it has the more deference and work it can milk from the proles.
If you really want to frighten it use terms such as "mass meeting" "transparency" "honesty" and "solidarity," perhaps even "Love" or "Peace."

Posted by: bevin | Jun 8 2013 12:41 utc | 72

@45 Don: That list raises more questions than it answers. Obviously they don't think Osama Bin Laden sends memos like

"Dear terrorists,

How's the Al Qaeda bomb making going today?

Much Jihad terror enrichment agro,

Osama"

So then what are they looking for? My uneducated guesses would

a) people searching the words so that they can gauge general attention, interest and possibly find people who are reporters or writers who are researching the topic

b) poor dumb patsies who are at the first rungs of the radicalization ladder (if such a thing exists) that they can either threaten or string along into a "successful prevention" of a terror attack

c) check the general level of fear in the polity by combining those key words with emotional indicators.

Because those keywords are a bit obvious.


What is "Agro"? I know that as a particular American subcultural term for anger but that's about it.

Posted by: guest77 | Jun 8 2013 13:16 utc | 73

Data overload ties them in knots -- that's good.

RT (excerpts)

While the intelligence community has succeeded in duping the US administration into allowing mass surveillance, it did not help improve national security at all, former NSA analyst William Binney told RT.

William Binney, who worked for the NSA for over 30 years as a cryptanalyst-mathematician but resigned in 2001 as a whistleblower, explained why the notion that mass surveillance is necessary in order to combat terrorism is false.

RT: President Obama has said that the invasion of privacy is done in the name of security, is he right about that? Does mass surveillance help security?

WB: No, it doesn’t. In fact it adds more of a problem because what that means, quite simply, is that if you go into a larger database, you get more data back no matter what the query is. It’s like making a query with Google. If you go in with a Google query you can get tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands or even a million returns. Well, there’s no way you can go through that, all of that, to see what you’re really interested in. So what that does is make them less proficient at doing their jobs.

Posted by: Don Bacon | Jun 8 2013 14:16 utc | 74

jawbone @ 66: "Corportistic aristocracy" I now have a new description of the 1%ers, thanks. These are the folks the NSA REALLY works for.

Posted by: ben | Jun 8 2013 15:01 utc | 75

Mr. Pragma at 46 wrote: Actually, however, there is solid reason to assume that many major players like google have since quite a while an increasingly cozy relationship with the military industrial complex.

I think this is correct, except I would amend ‘milit. ind. complex’ to Government.

The Gvmt. - with its relations, of course, to the defense industry, the media, prisons / policing / repression, the finance sector, crony capitalism, Big Corps, etc. - is the one who is at the center node of the different entities that are pushing forward to a totalitarian state (for lack of another snappy moniker for the modern ‘new normal’ dystopia which is international.)

Julian Assange wrote a one page critique of The New Digital Age by Schmidt (Google) and Cohen (Google, former advisor to Condoleeza and Hillary) for the NYT. It is somewhat confused, still worth a read.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/opinion/sunday/the-banality-of-googles-dont-be-evil.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Posted by: Noirette | Jun 8 2013 15:06 utc | 76

This so called meta-data (calling it that is just to be reassuring, nobody is being listened to, etc.) can be extremely useful. But, as pointed out by others above, this is hard to effect, expensive as well, and is probably imho not the essential point, or only one point amongst very many other confused ones.

Important:

>> links between Gov and large Corps. Google married with the Gvmt. A melding of private and public. Emergency / secret legislation, etc.

>> the pretense by various actors that some kind of info is vital, leading to more investment into gathering info, which provides a false sense of being in control, and opens up doors for scammers of various kinds. Regimes that are drifting always do this. (Combined with jackboots and stipends to the loyal.) One aim is of course to impress on citizens that they are spied on, have no privacy, are transparent - even when that isn’t really the case it leads to conformism.

>> holding info permits the manipulation of it, false stats and so on. The USA is already well down that road. Of course to discredit, banish, imprison etc. random dissidents, enemies of the State, that goes without saying.

>> other. (As these points are just some of many and maybe not the best etc.)

Posted by: Noirette | Jun 8 2013 15:54 utc | 77

It doesn't have to be that complex. At least not if they want you to know they're monitoring you, which seems to be the case with my blog. I have a regular reader called "Joe" whose location resolves to "strangers.bragg.army.mil". Fort Bragg being the home of US Army Psyops Command. The whole 147.238 block is Psyops people pretending to be surfers. He posted a comment a few months ago, and I asked him why he was using a Fort Bragg line computer, and he said: "bragg has nice computers and kind enough to let me use." Two days ago he posted (or tried to post) a comment on my description of Samantha Power and Susan Rice as "junkyard bitches." He said he might use that, because he liked it so much, but that he would give me credit.

:-)

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Jun 8 2013 16:37 utc | 78

"The whole 147.238 block is Psyops people pretending to be surfers."

Check their knees. No "knobbies"? Then he's a ringer. Oh, they'll be wearing their baggies, huarache sandals ,too. And they'll tell you they're surfing, for the USA.

Posted by: Mooser | Jun 8 2013 17:30 utc | 79

I don't think the (supposed) massiveness of the data is a real problem.

Again, we are talking about a very small part of the data travelling through the cables. Furthermore, storing about 6 months worth of those meta data actually is standard practice at many if not most communication companies.

This again highlights an important point: The data are already there. nsa do *not* need to do any complex processing, they merely need to copy/store the data.

To put it in relation, it is common practice for many countries that companies must keep basic financial data such as invoices 10 or even more years on store. In large corporations this may easily amount to billions and billions of data sets. As if this were not enough, many companies actually look out and/or pay for getting ever more data, for instance, for marketing purposes.

The technical dimensions we're dealing with is something like 2 or 3 large international banks - and considerably less than google. So we're talking about dimensions that are quite feasible.

Furthermore in particular massive data such as images can be compressed and, processing them logically, they can compressed by factors in the 10.000 or even 1.000.000.

An example: Most camera images contain meaningless data for the most part. Processing them to e.g. identify numer plates and possibly persons an image of, say, 3 MB can be "logically compressed" by a factor of roughly 3.000. Talking about cameras a lot of that information is again redundant (because e.g. a car passing for 3 seconds is in 50 frames) so that an overall compression factor of 100.000 is quite realistic.

There is another factor: Most crimes don't evolve over years but rather weaks or months. So there is no need to store everything eternally. It is more reasonable and still providing a success rate of way beyond 90% to
- logically compress, e.g. by extracting relevant information, raw data (like camera, email, etc.) and storing that quais eternally in databases
- keep the raw data themselves for a limited amount of time such as 3 months.

This way, using the database to find ooi (objects of interest) one can dig deeper into the raw material for a reasonable amount of time so as to reconstruct or generate leads or evidence while still keeping the core of information available long term.

I therefore consider it dangerously simplistic to assume that "they can't possibly handle that much information, they'll drown anyway".

Frankly, imo any Ex nsa turned whistlelower telling you otherwise is still of service to his former agency, be it paid for or not.

Posted by: Mr. Pragma | Jun 8 2013 19:54 utc | 80

whose location resolves to "strangers.bragg.army.mil". Fort Bragg being the home of US Army Psyops Command. The whole 147.238 block is Psyops people pretending to be surfers

Yeah, right. And if they come from just_surfing_for_fun.nsa.gov they are auntie Mary and uncle Ben. But watch out when they come from dark_zone.nsa.gov or from eavesdropping.fbi.gov!

Too bad for the police and secret services that they can't afford a plain dsl subscription for 19.95$

Posted by: Mr. Pragma | Jun 8 2013 20:01 utc | 81

This analysis suggests that the Israeli's are deeply involved in the NSA spying scandal. Not a surprise I guess as the US Govt is completely sold out to Israeli interests. I doubt any of this will hit the MSM. http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/06/exclusive-top-nsa-whistleblower-spills-the-beans-on-the-real-scope-of-the-spying-program.html

Posted by: pauly | Jun 9 2013 4:38 utc | 82

the west has no choice -like in the movie the gate keepers ,a bridge needs to be built between opposing sides where peace talks can resolve issues instead of bombs and bullets-the british empire like the american empire could not do the queens bidding on the day and secure the realm in afghanistan,and for that matter nor could the russians -it is that war in a far away place in search of treasure that has led to growth of institutions like the nsa to counter the fight back by countries like afghanistan

Posted by: west | Jun 9 2013 6:53 utc | 83

It's all intended to connect phone lines to American whistleblowers and dissenters. How much fear do the elite have for terrorists? They have a much greater threat coming from their own people whom they have looted and deceived.

Time to stock up on pencils and find myself a well-trained pigeon.

Posted by: Cynthia | Jun 9 2013 14:18 utc | 84

If you're a real terrorist,you'll know to encrypt all of your messages. So just who the hell is the NSA really spying on?

You're right, b. All that data and not a single brain to process it. What a shame.

Posted by: Cynthia | Jun 9 2013 14:28 utc | 85

@76

"The Gvmt....is the one who is at the center node of the different entities that are pushing forward to a totalitarian state"

It's interesting comment. I've gotten some new insights recently on the dynamic (military, industrial, government) you're talking about through reading a book from the late '50s called "The Power Elite" by C. Wright Mills.

Mills shows how there were (are? it is very interesting to think about the changes since then...) three power centers in the US - the government, the military, and the corporations. He notes these as distinct entities that both sort of vie for power amongst one another, but they also combine their powers, or lean on each other for legitimacy. When you think about it like this, Eisenhower's warning of the "Military-Industrial Complex" sounds less like a bold warning to the American people, and instead a cry for help by one power-center against the others.

As Mills notes how these centers are ever more powerful - but also reliant on each other - we have to take into consideration the changes in US society since the 1960s.

The government of the 1960s was the only a source of power that common people could even hope to affect its behavior (how ever so much more slightly). So your point about the government being a nexus of power-centers instead of a power-center in its own right would just show how dangerously far we've wandered off into the forests of corporate totalitarianism - to the point where "We the People..." have lost every single social control of the country.

Posted by: guest77 | Jun 9 2013 18:55 utc | 86

Jay Leno on Obama’s Latest Scandal: “We Wanted a President That Listens to All Americans – Now We Have One” - Classic!

Posted by: kev | Jun 10 2013 3:33 utc | 87

Okay this is a warning to all who post here
after my post no.83 above my ip address was blocked on all sites except Gmail . either this site is a nsa sponsored site or the nsa picked up something suspicious
spread the word

Posted by: west | Jun 10 2013 3:45 utc | 88

I read the Heise story years ago, nevertheless a timely reminder:

In researching the stunning pervasiveness of spying by the government (it’s much more wide spread than you’ve heard even now), we ran across the fact that the FBI wants software programmers to install a backdoor in all software.

Digging a little further, we found a 1999 article by leading European computer publication Heise which noted that the NSA had already built a backdoor into all Windows software:

A careless mistake by Microsoft programmers has revealed that special access codes prepared by the US National Security Agency have been secretly built into Windows. The NSA access system is built into every version of the Windows operating system now in use, except early releases of Windows 95 (and its predecessors). The discovery comes close on the heels of the revelations earlier this year that another US software giant, Lotus, had built an NSA “help information” trapdoor into its Notes system, and that security functions on other software systems had been deliberately crippled.

The first discovery of the new NSA access system was made two years ago by British researcher Dr Nicko van Someren [an expert in computer security]. But it was only a few weeks ago when a second researcher rediscovered the access system. With it, he found the evidence linking it to NSA. [...]

According to Fernandez of Cryptonym, the result of having the secret key inside your Windows operating system “is that it is tremendously easier for the NSA to load unauthorized security services on all copies of Microsoft Windows, and once these security services are loaded, they can effectively compromise your entire operating system“. The NSA key is contained inside all versions of Windows from Windows 95 OSR2 onwards.

“How is an IT manager to feel when they learn that in every copy of Windows sold, Microsoft has a ‘back door’ for NSA – making it orders of magnitude easier for the US government to access your computer?” he asked.


Source: www.globalresearch.ca

Posted by: Juan Moment | Jun 10 2013 4:17 utc | 89

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