omnibus PRISM/NSA/free Edward Snowden/encryption tutorial thread

so it's the platform that counts, not the principle

ok, use of the word shock may have overstated things.

however, this is not a new expose either :

i mean ...

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

when it comes to how we store personal data online the platform does count. nobody could have conceived of the arguments we're having today because back in 2001 the idea that 1 billion people would put all of their personal info on one website wasn't really conceivable.

it's almost like there was a slope that became slippery

when it comes to how we store personal data online the platform does count. nobody could have conceived of the arguments we're having today because back in 2001 the idea that 1 billion people would put all of their personal info on one website wasn't really conceivable.

except of course for all of the order history info in Amazon and Travelocity

fuck being a spook in 2013, the real action's in being a historian in 2200

ya this had been happening w/ consumer data for much longer, but I think people don't take that as seriously as their fb photos etc? or maybe just cause stuff like acxiom so far under the radar that many people just only have a vague idea.

also amazon / the internet back then was still not used as widely as it is today. fewer people had amazon purchasing histories to worry about.

Plus they only had seven books for sale, and two of them were Who Moved My Cheese? and What Color Is My Parachute?

Grateful to Amazon for offering pristine copies of used Eno albums in '98.

The idea that no one could have known that all of this information would be out there when there were concerted technical initiatives to make it easier to put all of this info out there, not only through third-party websites but also through ISP recruitment (remember the age of the ever-present AOL installation CD) is pretty asinine. Data repositories for successful, long-lasting endeavors don't shrink.

I don't think the rise of social networks and the fact that people would voluntarily be putting up as much personal info as they do today was seen as inevitable by the public at large - those were the 'nobody knows you're a dog' years

I mean if it's not your job or your hobby you don't spend that much time thinking about what technology is going to look like in 12 years and adjusting your political beliefs accordingly

http://www.aclu.org/stop-government-plan-mine-our-privacy-total-information-awareness-system

just as long as people keep sharing yummy rum raisin cake recipes i'm happy. kudos to marge p. in sheboygan! :)

I don't think anyone here is "shocked." What bothers me are the billions spent on private contractors on data accumulation and the fetishizing of secrecy. But with a million people boasting top secret clearance you gotta keep the secrecy industry afloat, you know?

from 2993

Imean 2003

lols at marge p in sheboygan

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access http://www.aclu.org/privacy/spying on this server.

THANKS ACLU

I don't think anyone here is "shocked." What bothers me are the billions spent on private contractors on data accumulation and the fetishizing of secrecy. But with a million people boasting top secret clearance you gotta keep the secrecy industry afloat, you know?

― A deeper shade of lol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, June 11, 2013 1:07 PM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

why, it's almost like.. the military!

also http://gawker.com/the-vain-media-cynics-of-the-nsa-story-512575457

Al Franken.

but also...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-spy-access-20130611,0,171405.story

Analyst overstated claims on NSA leaks, experts say

Amid questions over how Edward Snowden gained access to critical data, experts cite the technical limits and far-reaching oversight within the agency.

i don't think the US should be engaged in warrantless (meaning=without a warrant from a non-secret court) "data mining" to begin with, so there's not much that "officials" and "experts" can do to convince me all is OK

shhh but Sully will explain it to you.

"oh, that can't be true. when we warrantlessly tap your phone, that can only be initiated by a supervisor." thanks bro.

Any NSA analyst "at any time can target anyone, any selector, anywhere," Snowden told the Guardian. "I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president if I had a personal email."

Robert Deitz, a former top lawyer at the NSA and CIA, called the claim a "complete and utter" falsehood.

"First of all it's illegal," he said. "There is enormous oversight. They have keystroke auditing. There are, from time to time, cases in which some analyst is [angry] at his ex-wife and looks at the wrong thing and he is caught and fired," he said.

NSA analysts who have the authority to query databases of metadata such as phone records — or Internet content, such as emails, videos or chat logs — are subject to stringent internal supervision and also the external oversight of the foreign surveillance court, former NSA officials said.

"It's actually very difficult to do your job," said a former senior NSA operator, who also declined be quoted by name because of the sensitive nature of the case. "There are all these checks that don't allow you to move agilely enough."

[angry]

"I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president if I had a personal email."

hmmmmmmm

"It's actually very difficult to do your job," said a former senior NSA operator, who also declined be quoted by name because she was about to leave for a four-week vacation in Bali, paid for thanks to a $250,000 salary.

[angry]

tried to make this my dn but no brackets allowed :(

lol @ the idea of a senior NSA operator making $250K

$150K, sure; lol @ $250K tho

Snowman's salary somewhere in the middle though!

the lowball on his salary (from "booze allen") is $122k; highball (from him i guess?) is $200k; i don't think he was a "senior analyst"

sorry, "operator"

(i think we got "disconnected")

if he left a $200k job for this, he is a true american hero but if he only left a $122k job, he is scum

and he didn't spend a dime on eyeglass frames

lol at sullivan praising obama for, among other things, 'no more completely unchecked executive power.'

Lol at Sullivan forever

this will probably seem paranoid to some but i think it hits the nail on the head.

http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/18018-when-the-surveillance-state-is-used-to-investigate-and-prosecute-whistleblowers-the-occupy-movement-and-environmental-activists

Normally annoying inside the beltway centrist Washington Post columnist Dana Millbank suddenly decided to spell out the efforts some folks had gone to trying to get some information in the recent past and the roadblocks they ran into:

lawmakers quashed efforts to allow even modest public disclosure of the broad contours of the program. Steven Aftergood, who runs the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy, lists the various ways in which the administration, Congress and the courts denied the public any right to know:

The Justice Department and the DNI promised a new effort to declassify opinions issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court; Justice official Lisa Monaco, now Obama’s counterterrorism director, said all significant FISA rulings would be reviewed for declassification. But no new opinions were declassified under the initiative.

The House last year turned back attempts to require public reports on the general outlines of the government’s surveillance programs. The various disclosure proposals, offered by Democratic Reps. Bobby Scott (Va.), Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.) and Sheila Jackson Lee (Tex.), were defeated by the Judiciary Committee.

In the Senate, amendments to provide modest disclosures and declassifications, offered by Wyden and fellow Democratic Sens. Jeff Merkley (Ore.) and Mark Udall (Colo.) during the FISA renewal in December, were all defeated.

The FISA court itself colluded in the secrecy. After senators asked the court to provide declassified summaries of its decisions, the chief FISA judge, Reggie B. Walton, responded with a letter on March 27 citing “serious obstacles” to the request.

“It was a shoddy performance all around,” Aftergood said Monday. “The pervasive secrecy on this topic created an information vacuum. If congressional oversight was not going to fill it in, it turned out leaks would. That’s not the optimal solution.”

Not optimal, but probably inevitable. Officials who denied the public a responsible debate on surveillance will now have a debate on Snowden’s terms — and there’s no use in bellyaching about it.

Has this been discussed? http://www.vanityfair.com/online/eichenwald/2013/06/obama-verizon-cell-phone

Re Eichenwald's piece, defenders of the program always say that such data has been useful (but then they say that national security prevents them from telling one how). There was also a New Rebublic article saying that NSA andothers are so bogged down in huge data scooping that they are missing out on following up on real, hard data.

I heard constitutional law scholar Floyd Abrams on a radio show saying that the NSA's legal authority to look at written phone data (but requiring a warrant to listen to a call) without a warrant comes from a 5 to 3 Supreme Court decision that he disagrees with.

that article amateurist posted is mostly OTM. in a way it's kind of sad that so many progressives (me included) seem to expect more from obama just because he was once a 'constitutional lawyer.' i held out hope for the guy as long as i could but even when i read 'the audacity of hope' back in 2007 it was sadly obvious that obama was way more enthusiastic about some mostly imaginary ideal of truman-era 'centrism,' an era when all the politicians were mostly sensible guys who played poker and cut deals, than he ever was about restoring civil liberties or reversing the bad trends of the bush era. i can't say i ever expected him to become basically the worst civil liberties president of the modern era but i'm sure he's justified it all to himself. when he writes his memoirs he'll probably come up with some eloquent gloss on why he let it all happen and everyone will be praising his wise moderation or whatever.

and he didn't spend a dime on eyeglass frames

Or a decent haircut!

josh marshall has been particularly boneheaded on all of this.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2013/06/like_the_oj_simpson_trial.php?ref=fpblg

you know something is awry when your rambling defense starts out with OJ and includes about 10-15 strawmen arguments.

But it’s more than that. Snowden is doing more than triggering a debate. I think it’s clear he’s trying to upend, damage - choose your verb - the US intelligence apparatus and policieis he opposes. The fact that what he’s doing is against the law speaks for itself. I don’t think anyone doubts that narrow point. But he’s not just opening the thing up for debate. He’s taking it upon himself to make certain things no longer possible, or much harder to do. To me that’s a betrayal.

and he didn't spend a dime on eyeglass frames

Or a decent haircut!

well he only made 122k, barely enough to live on after taxes and ron paul donations