Gotta love this…
Intelligence officials say they have been careful to limit the use of the security agency’s troves of data and eavesdropping spyware for fear they could be misused in ways that violate Americans’ privacy rights.
The goodie-two-shoes defence?
From the Obama Mafia?
Now I HAVE heard everything…

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Aug 5 2013 16:34 utc | 3

Do you really believe the “Googling for pressure cooker and backpack” incident started with the husband’s former employee searching his former computer for his former search history?
Update: Now We Know Why Googling ‘Pressure Cookers’ Gets a Visit from Cops

Posted by: Petri Krohn | Aug 5 2013 17:45 utc | 5

Excellent work b, on this story. The NYT story also offers much food for thought, because it’s clear that this NSA to DOJ connection opens a vast avenue for abuse of power, politically motivated prosecutions, and selective prosecution.
And this kind of intelligence agency help is also a great tool for the government confiscation of assets and bank accounts in the case of drug suspects, since government seizure of funds and assets under the racketeering clauses of the drug laws, often makes the seizure of these assets permanent, even if the person is subsequently released without any charge ever being filed.

Posted by: Copeland | Aug 5 2013 18:20 utc | 7

What is a “serious criminal activity”? …
Cheatsheet – The answers are: yes, yes and no.

Yes, yes and no doesn’t answer the first question. “What is a “serious criminal activity”?’
I’d like to offer my answer to that. It’s really easy. Follow the money.
We live in a corporately controlled world. Not just the good old US of A but the multinationals now have an economic strangle hold on practically every aspect of world commerce. JohnH (#1) and Rowan Berkeley (#2) and JohnE’s (#6) comments are all clues to the right answer. Reread them in relationship to what I have to say. The DEA and the CIA fit together like hand in glove in this instance. Where are the big huge bucks outside box store America and the National Defense Industry and the pharmaceuticals. Dugs, eh. Self medication is verboten. Cuts into the pharm’s huge profits. One Pharmaceutical executive is on record as saying he wants to sell a pill to every American every day. The CIA is the “company” and the DEA tries to control the competition from non-corporate drug profits. The CIA? Well it has been pretty well established that they create the market and then control the supply of illegal drugs to enhance their own need for cash for clandestine and non government funded activities.
Is there any doubt that the filthy rich who own and control corporate world are not calling the shots on all major government bureaucracies? It’s a no brainer. Of course, where threats to corporate profits by competition from the real free markets exist, the NSA, CIA, DEA and all handmaidens of the elite.
You bet the info is shared.

Posted by: juannie | Aug 5 2013 20:00 utc | 9

One of the factors motivating the NSA will be the same jealous need to protect the information it has gathered in order to ensure the information maintains premium value.
It is that which makes this type of stickybeaking ultimately an expensive waste of money as well as being an egregious intrusion.
If the NSA were to allow too much of its intelligence into the hands of dea fbi local cops etc, it would become only a matter of time before all its expensive toys became worthless cause every crim in amerika knew their communications were spied on, & so reverted to ancient proven analog means of communication.
This is already happening among the smart fellas, but most crims are careless & imagine that it’ll never happen to them. The NSA is probably trying to ‘protect’ its illegally obtained information by giving as little away as possible, as much as feds are trying to prevent ‘fruit of teh poisonous tree’ type situations.
This is nothing new, back when the agents of the oppressor relied on human intelligence, there were numerous examples of major incidents including (in england) bomb attacks being left unreported/unprevented lest a major source be compromised.
Mass use of electronic intelligence to round up all low level criminality would provoke a behavioural change among those ordinary citizens who understand most laws are designed to protect the powerful & fuck ordinary peeps over.
During the Kim Dotcom fiasco here in Aotearoa, Dotcom whose first move was to force the police to give back a big chunk of the cash they stole from him, threw millions at lawyers in a way that hadn’t been seen in NZ before. It didn’t take long before senior police & spooks got caught out in lies. Mostly for using the GCSB (govmint communications security bureau) gathered data to spy on a NZ resident which is a breach of the gcsb charter who are, under their establishment acts, only allowed to intercept communications between foreigners.
Of course it also surfaced that the amerikan assholes fbi, homeland security etc had spent millions on data intercepts of Dotcom’s business. Why? cause he is alleged to breach intellectual property laws.
Not fuck children, blow up buses or any of the other bullshit reason peeps are told these laws will be used for, no, Dotcom was spied upon in order to stop some poor fuck from watching some shithouse TV show before a local TV station screened it, or to keep receipts up for the mindless ‘blockbusters’ Hollywood churns out.
You’d think heads would roll especially after an inquiry revealed there had been 86 other instances of kiwis being spied upon by the gcsb in the past decade. Not so – the guvmint is currently pushing a new act thru parliament under urgency to retrospectively legalise the GCSB crimes and create a local version of prism where everything gets grabbed & stored.
The other mob of neoliberals (the NZ labour party) claim to oppose the bill but I betcha they don’t repeal it next time they win the chook raffle.
The moral there is that it doesn’t really matter about what the laws say, we have entered a time when PTB contempt for the rule of law is taken for granted. In fact the more the better they believe. People have to know their situation is totally helpless and then maybe they will stop resisting.
As for the crims, well the smarties have known about this for a long time. The few acquaintances I have who get up to no good big time & still remember where they came from, so finance ‘good works’ as well, stopped using mobile phones a long time ago back in the noughties. When they do use phones they are strictly for family stuff and only use $40 feature phones without alla the gps, blutooth, wifi, 3 & 4 g etc.
When working the phone is left behind on the dresser by the bed or somesuch.
One good thing has come of the emphasis on metadata, dodgy friends no longer change their numbers n sim cards every 5 minutes. The phones themselves are changed because there is always a paranoia about hardware hacks by the forces of darkness, but since the sheet sniffers get their information by pulling down the data from cell phone towers then running algorithms across that data which looks for patterns between connections on phones from that tower & connections from phones on other ‘hot’ towers, close to the habitats of other targets, there is simply no point in trying for the furphy of security by obscurity of swapping numbers & sim cards.
The basic rule is you know what you say is monitored so don’t say anything, never bother with silly codes where substances are items of clothing, albums or whatever and go back to quick face to face.
One of those guys told me that the agents of darkness are so invested in technology that they are positively discouraged from using human intelligence any more because of the risk of lies, corruption & mostly fear of dealing with ‘the enemy’ that is rife in current law enforcement.
Oh they still try n get peeps to talk after the fact but general intelligence is now exclusively from communications intercepts.
The smarties worked that out long ago & as soon as the spooks use much of what they gather ordinary peeps will wake up too.
Even though these information brokers are trying hard to give away as little as possible, politicians & competitors will force them to release more and more, eventually the general public will wake up & get real careful using their smartphones, tablets etc. That should please the shit outta google et al. Serves em right greedy bastards.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 5 2013 22:48 utc | 11

Americans, at least, have been eased into this through television shows and film. I haven’t seen one cop show in the last decade where the cops haven’t used wildly criminal methods to take down the supposed criminals. From “24” to the rash of “CSI” and “Law and Order” type shows, all of them often show the police using illegal methods but it is all presented as “the way it is.”
And of course the recent story about the FBI allowing over 5100 crimes in one year (and only those reported) to be committed by their informants is only the tip of the iceberg when you consider what the CIA is doing around the world.
Its frightening that this “SOD” is yet another completely secret program being run by the Justice Department, one of what must be hundreds operated by the government. Completely free from judicial oversight and checks and balances… I’m pretty sure this isn’t what America’s beloved Founders had in mind.

Posted by: guest77 | Aug 6 2013 1:10 utc | 13

nsa is more than just about data mining, it’s up to the eyeballs in black ops n ff, just like its twin terror outfit , cia.
*THE WHITE HOUSE RESCUES A TERRORIST
What is unusual about the case, The Manila Times reported, is that Meiring was: whisked out of Davao, past the Philippine National Police guarding him at the hospital, and on to a chartered plane, accompanied by what Immigration officials described as agents of the US National Security Agency and agents of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation*
http://www.declarepeace.org.uk/captain/murder_inc/site/gladio/030309Fake.html
obama do kenya….
*During the parliamentary elections of December 2007, a survey funded by USAID announces the victory of Odinga. On election day, John McCain announced that President Kibaki rigged the election in favor of his party and that in fact the opposition led by Odinga had won. The NSA, in conjunction with local phone operators, sent anonymous text messages to the population. In areas populated by the Luo (Odinga’s ethnic group), they read “Dear Kenyans, the Kikuyu have stolen our children’s future… We must treat them in the only way that they understand… with violence.” In areas populated by Kikuyu, they read: “The blood of any innocent Kikuyu will be paid. We will slaughter them right to the heart of the capital. For Justice, establish a list of Luos that you know. We will send you the phone numbers to call with such information.” Within days, this peaceful country sank into sectarian violence. The riots caused over 1 000 deaths and 300 000 displaced. 500 000 jobs were lost.*
http://www.voltairenet.org/article162559.html
p.s.
just the tip of an iceberg.

Posted by: denk | Aug 6 2013 5:27 utc | 15

Debs,
My post at #9 was released from purgatory this morning and I feel it was a shame it got caught in the filter, for what reason, I’d like to know. But if you happened to read it after it was posted, or perhaps now, you will note that I took a somewhat different position than you in answering b’s post. I don’t think our thesis are mutually exclusive and I certainly give credence to yours.
Yes, I think there is an abundance of interagency rivalry and always has been. And yes, as too much intelligence information is recognized by the spied upon, it becomes less and less valuable and useful. Shit, even I recognized years ago that everything I put out on the electronic ethers was available to any sophisticated enough to tap into it. I’m sure the really big league bad guys, crims in your lexicon, also realized this a long time ago. (Which fuels my incredulity when I hear that US intelligent forces just happened to tune into the big bad AQ guys shortly after the public was in need of a reassurance of their efficacious and preventative nature, and are thus shutting down M-E embassies right now.)
However, it is still the real top level PTB that call the major shots. The working agency plebs can have their jealousies and squabbles as long as the prime objectives are not endangered. It may have been a little more obvious when an absolute monarch such as George III was a stock holder in the East Indian Company but I still believe that when huge profits are in jeopardy, the prime directive is to protect them and it is the plutocracy that call the important shots. So I think both our calls are carrect but mutually intertwined.
Always good to read your thought provoking writings. Come back more.

Posted by: juannie | Aug 6 2013 15:55 utc | 17

At some point, after the internet is made functionally non-functional by one tyrant or other, the printing press will become our new, old best friend. That is if there’s anyone left here who can still read or write.
The Drug War has been, like juannie says above, an established, effective two-fer in that it not only criminalizes normal behavior under certain ‘sociological’ circumstances but also confiscates the crumbs of each life they destroy. Millions and millions and millions of crumbs. And then in prison, more slave labor for the state. As an untermenschen, if you don’t be a good citizen and join up for the SS regimen of overseas service followed by a domestic Security career, you do time.
It’s time to GTFO imo.

Posted by: L Bean | Aug 6 2013 16:57 utc | 19

for devices, it’s hardly a ipv4 vs ipv6 thingy, all they have to do (and they sure do it for quite some time already…) is to store your ARP adress, which is already the standard procedure used by google netflix and al to monitor/list/count the devices you’re using…

Posted by: zingaro | Aug 6 2013 22:37 utc | 21

No its not an IPv4 V IPv6 thingy, but the point I was trying to make is that IPV6 has vastly increased the number of addresses immediately accessible from the net. With IPV4 the average user who had many connected items usually only had one WAN IP address and mostly the devices were connected on a seperate LAN using either 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.255.254 or 10.0.0.1 to 10.1.255.254 that of itself made monitoring a little easier just as it made protection via firewall a little simpler.
The increase in addresses be they address resolution protocol or internet protocol means the same thing- it becomes harder to monitor since watching a hundred rabbits holes is always easier that watching a million rabbit holes no matter what method is used.
IPV4 is also inherently less secure than IPv6.
More & more devices formerly separated from the WAN will be separate no longer which is equally good & bad from the point of view of privacy.
I’m unsure of the exact prism model but somehow I doubt that every switch on the WAN is monitored, most likely monitoring occurs at ‘choke points’ when all the data passes through an area switch.
So peeps wanting to communicate off the net safe from most monitoring will need to use an encrypted tunnel to one of the soon to be billions of connected objects.
The next bit has become trickier & it is likely one of the reasons that there is so much resistance to using hardware that isn’t manufactured by trusted NSA partners such as Cisco.
As we know most metadata can’t be encrypted cause otherwise how would the servers n switches know where to send stuff.
At the moment if I skype the bloke next door the data is sent to a server outside Aotearoa then forwarded thousands of kilometers back to the place up the road. Crazy & inefficient but that is the current model & is unlikely to change as long as it permits easy monitoring. However if there was a modified switch anywhere between my place and the Skype server, a hardware switch that had been configured to do something different with either a packet or maybe even a frame that contained a particular routine up front, the communication could be forwarded down compromised elements of the WAN to the next similarly compromised hardware point.
This next bit has been added on in response to Mr Pragma whose post appeared while I was talking to a visitor.
As far as the ability to determine regions from IP addresses goes, that was the case under IPV4 too. NZ had a coupla class A address range allocations one of which was shared with South Korea sure but it has generally been the case that geographic location can be determined from IP addresses.
I believe zingaro is refering to something different than the old hardware identifier the MAC address. Under IPV6 address resolution protocol is no more so calling this address ARP address is confusing, but importantly there is no more broadcast facility, only multicasting to selected targets, whose IP address may or may not be known.
I haven’t studied IPV6 sufficiently to comprehend hoe that is resolved but one would think that some form of temporary, server created address might be used.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 7 2013 1:37 utc | 23

Denk, the second of your stories directly concerns electronic information warfare, so that’s quite plausible, but the first makes no sense, even after reading all the linked material. I think the explanation is that the supposed NSA agents were in fact NSC agents: if you look at the link, which details the NSC’s functions and powers, one of these is “coordinating these [national security and foreign] policies among various government agencies.” So one or more persons could be sent to Manila with NSC authority to coordinate the other agencies invoved (CIA, FBI, State Dept, and Manilan).
Rowan Berkeley 16
*Denk, the second of your stories directly concerns electronic information warfare, so that’s quite plausible, but the first makes no sense, even after reading all the linked material. I think the explanation is that the supposed NSA agents were in fact NSC agents: if you look at the link, which details the NSC’s functions and powers, one of these is “coordinating these [national security and foreign] policies among various government agencies.*
u r saying nsc is the coordinator of the various agencies, but how does this contradicts the philippinos accounts, that the agents on the ground were fbi, nsa ?
the spooks’d have to identify themselves n flash their badges i suppose ?
*What is unusual about the case, The Manila Times reported, is that Meiring was: whisked out of Davao, past the Philippine National Police guarding him at the hospital, and on to a chartered plane, accompanied by what Immigration officials described as agents of the US National Security Agency and agents of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The National Security Agency intervention, confirmed by Immigration Deputy Commissioner Daniel Queto, sparked intense local speculation as to why an agency that reports directly to the Office of the President of the United States would send an entourage of bodyguards to speed Meiring to a hospital in Manila
*
here’s another account ….
+The despicable US media giants were silent when undisputed proof surfaced that the CIA, NSA, British Intelligence, the US Secret Service and the FBI were all involved in the May 16th 2002 blast in a Philippine hotel room when their agent, Michael Meiring accidently blew his own legs off while constructing a bomb which was intended, if ignited as planned, to be a staged “Al Queda” terror attack, justifying a tightened US- Philippine military alliance
Meiring who operated under the cover of being a treasure hunter was in fact a CIA operative under the direct protection of the White House (As evidenced by his swift NSA/FBI medivac to San Diego after blowing his own legs off+
http://www.voxfux.com/archives/00000080.htm

Posted by: denk | Aug 7 2013 3:31 utc | 25

Good read
Welcome to the Post-Constitution
By Peter Van Buren
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/World/WOR-01-060813.html

Posted by: Mina | Aug 7 2013 11:52 utc | 27

28: It would have been in one the Der Spiegel articles that appeared directly after the Snowden story broke. This one looks most likely (it’s 9 pages long). Notice the ‘relevant links’ for further information. See also this one & links.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Aug 7 2013 22:35 utc | 29

For all the computerized ways of attempting to secure our rights, I fear we’ll never really be able to have peace of mind on a mass level until the US has a national holiday commemorating “The Storming of the Utah Data Center.”
I can’t see how we can get out of this retaining our humanity without a real revolution against this surveillance-state neo-liberalism.

Posted by: guest77 | Aug 7 2013 23:47 utc | 31

Hmm I was gonna defend Simon on the grounds that the TV series ‘The Wire’ was written about the period before the global war on terror in the 1990’s when he was a police reporter and the technology for intercepting calls was much more primitive therefore he hadn’t set out to deceive with his show. The fact that englanders only discovered the wire a few years ago leads to some confusion about the period covered. In the show Simon does show ‘strapping’ that is the collection of circuit switching (old school telephone networks use a system called circuit switching where the entire call travels just one route unlike the IP system where packets of data can travel many different routes or I guess circuits, during the course of a single communication)metadata which required a lower level of probable cause to get a warrant.
However Simon (go on say it – a likely zionist and now a member of the Hollywood liberal interventionist cabal)is being disingenuous when he compares the old telephone strapping metadata with what is collected by PRISM.
In fact this is the heart of the problem, judges appear to be deciding on the basis of old definitions when technology has vastly changed what it is that is being collected.
Strapping got a pen record of what numbers were called by a phone under surveillance as well as details of the numbers of phones which called in. Apart from the number there was only the time and date.
As Simon says in his spiel this information would be collected in the hope of getting enough evidence to obtain an full interception warrant.
Mostly it didn’t. As someone who was the victim of a prolonged strapping interception back in the day, I have to say it was pretty difficult not to know it was happening. There would be an abnormal amount of buzzes and clicks which was enough to make some paranoid, but the real giveaway was the connection delay while details of the call were recorded prior to the connection being made.
On the upside in the country where I was subjected to this (Australia) the telecommunications network was publicly owned and had strict instructions from the federal police not to disconnect any phone subject to interception – strapping or tap. So we just stopped paying our phone bill (I mean if you’re not gonna get any right to privacy why pay for the thing) and the phone remained connected for the years I stayed at the house. Crazy looking back on it and not at all the way things happen nowadays which is why Simon’s use of back in the day when he was a Baltimore police reporter is so wrong.
Metadata gives so much more information nowadays and as someone says in response to Simon’s post, the metadata collected now can be reassembled and content extracted. So much more information must demand a higher level of probable cause.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 8 2013 21:36 utc | 33

For anyone concerned that the DEA was getting most of the NSA intel/info for its uses, leaving the IRS out in the cold, worry no longer.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130807/17003624104/irs-also-secretly-got-intelligence-info-was-told-to-launder-it.shtml
The IRS gets intel/info from the NSA, just like other government agencies, and it gets the same training in how to hide the source through “reconstructive investigation” training.
In short, their agents are taught to lie to the courts just like the DEA agents. Rule of law? Heh, heh, heh. Rule of power is more like it, and money is power in the modern state.
Ain’t the Corporate state with its (formerly) hidden surveillance state just grand? Bet the Powers That Be think so.
It’s becoming almost impossible that NSA collected info collected from the Big Banksters was somehow missed, making it so “difficult” for the FBI to bring any criminal charges against the Wall streeters and Banksters who nearly brought the world economy down completely…. That was the excuse given, that it’s just so hard to win a conviction for crimes which are based on confusing and difficult things, like credit default swaps and tranches and so on and so forth. B can explain such things very well, but, apparently, government lawyers cannot.
Gee, makes one think that perhaps info was actually withheld from any governmental agencies or levels which wanted to really investigate in order to bring criminal charges. Slaps on the wrist are just so much more acceptable to the Banskter types.
State attys general who might want to still prosecute, having retained their right to do so, after some gave away that right under the Obama DOJ agreements to provide a pittance to homeowners done wrong by the banksters, will probably get ZERO cooperation from the NSA.
Some privacy rights are indeed sacrosanct, even now. But that’s how a Coporatist State rolls.

Posted by: jawbone | Aug 9 2013 15:30 utc | 35