PRISM

[Undertoad]

Watching that guy's interview made me cringe a little. And then I read this Slate article which kind of firmed up why:

If the NSA Trusted Edward Snowden With Our Data, Why Should We Trust the NSA?

Edward Snowden sounds like a thoughtful, patriotic young man, and I’m sure glad he blew the whistle on the NSA’s surveillance programs. But the more I learned about him this afternoon, the angrier I became. Wait, him? The NSA trusted its most sensitive documents to this guy? And now, after it has just proven itself so inept at handling its own information, the agency still wants us to believe that it can securely hold on to all of our data? Oy vey!

According to the Guardian, Snowden is a 29-year-old high-school dropout who trained for the Army Special Forces before an injury forced him to leave the military. His IT credentials are apparently limited to a few “computer” classes he took at a community college in order to get his high-school equivalency degree—courses that he did not complete. His first job at the NSA was as a security guard. Then, amazingly, he moved up the ranks of the United States’ national security infrastructure: The CIA gave him a job in IT security. He was given diplomatic cover in Geneva. He was hired by Booz Allen Hamilton, the government contractor, which paid him $200,000 a year to work on the NSA’s computer systems.

He believes this has so much seriousness that he is now an enemy of the state, on the lam, hiding out... and giving interviews to major media, where is announces where he is. He's in a country with rule of law and an extradition treaty with the US. Not too bright.

The other curious thing I noticed about PRISM is that it was funded for $20 Million. After a certain amount of zeroes, a number isn't fathomable, but this isn't enough zeroes. The last Powerball winner got many times that in cash. $20M isn't enough to house half a floor in a minor building in DC, and when you overpay them ($200K!! That little fucker!) it doesn't even fill a room. That's six cents for every American, so what are we supposed to be royally freaking out about?

[Lamplighter]

It appears that NSA is obtaining phone records from all ISP's,
but I have not seen anything that says they are also getting data
from the land-line companies, such as Century Link.

Obama says the data they are getting is only the same
information that is on your month billing statement.

I think I know why NSA is not getting data from Century Link...
it's because their monthly statements are completely indecipherable.

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

I think I know why NSA is not getting data from Century Link...it's because their monthly statements are completely indecipherable.

What are land-lines?

[tw]

Every few decades we go through this again. The Eagle and the Snowman. A real story that was even summarized in a movie. And how this nation's previous and most advanced spy hardware was compromised.

Apparently not many people are watching PBS Frontline every week (or was it CBS 60 Minutes?). NSA secret buildings are popping up all over the countryside. These revelations should not be shocking. They only confirm what previous reports have been noting.

Again, they even showed a picture of the building, with floors that the elevator does not stop at, in San Franciso. None of these recent revelations should be that shocking.

Metadata means they get data from circuit switched technology companies. And packet addresses from packet switched technology companies. Not the tones in that circuit switched connection. And not data in those packets.

What changed things? It is now possible to store, search, and retrieve those tones or data bits. The law is playing catchup.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Snowden provided information to the Washington Post and the Guardian, which also posted a video interview with him. In it, he describes himself as appalled by the government he served:

The N.S.A. has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your e-mails or your wife’s phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your e-mails, passwords, phone records, credit cards.

I don’t want to live in a society that does these sort of things… I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under.

What, one wonders, did Snowden think the N.S.A. did? Any marginally attentive citizen, much less N.S.A. employee or contractor, knows that the entire mission of the agency is to intercept electronic communications. Perhaps he thought that the N.S.A. operated only outside the United States; in that case, he hadn’t been paying very close attention. In any event, Snowden decided that he does not “want to live in a society” that intercepts private communications. His latter-day conversion is dubious.

More

[DanaC]

There are questions now being asked over here about the way in which our security agencies have used information gained from America's PRISM programme. There are suggestions that we've been using information on UK nationals.

The government is denying any illegality but refusing to give any detail on the 197 requests for information made through the PRISM prgramme.

Awesome quote from Daily Show last night: 'I think you're misunderstanding the perceived problem here, Mr President. No one is saying that you broke any laws. We're just saying it's a little bit weird that you didn't have to'

[Lamplighter]

Shades of Sexabon...

The Hill
Jonathan Easley
1/11/13

Sen. Wyden presses Clapper for ‘straight answers’ on NSA

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) on Tuesday called for public hearings to investigate
the scope of the National Security Agency’s electronic surveillance of Americans,
questioning if Director of National Intelligence James Clapper
had provided “straight answers” to lawmakers about the programs.

The Oregon senator pointed to Clapper’s testimony during a March 12 hearing,
where Wyden asked if the NSA collects “any type of data at all on millions of Americans.”

<snip>

Clapper tried to clarify the remarks while speaking to MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Monday,
arguing that he meant to convey that the NSA doesn’t “voyeuristically pore through U.S. citizens' emails.”

[glatt]

Was that testimony given to a closed session of either the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) or the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI)? Or was it a public hearing?

I would hope that the NSA wouldn't give out top secret information during public hearings. That would be fairly stupid.

edit: I see that the article explains this. Wyden knew the answer already because he's on the Senate intelligence committee. He just wanted to put Clapper on the record disavowing a program they both knew existed.

The exchange put Clapper in a difficult position. Wyden, a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, had been briefed on the NSA program, but publicly led Clapper in a line of questioning that would either require him to disavow knowledge of the program, or to answer truthfully, breaking the law by revealing classified information.

I'm no fan of the NSA data collection, but that's a pretty slimy move.

[Lamplighter]

Slimmy ? I don't think so.

This question was being asked publically for the first time
...atfter PRISM had become public knowledge.

Wyden had previously pursued this in closed sessions, (2012)
and was not being given a straight answer by Clapper.
That is one of the reasons Wyden voted against renewing the Patriot Act.

At least that's the way I've understood these events.

[sexobon]

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

Shades of Sexabon...

And I make 'em look GOOD.

I just subscribed to PRISM ONLINE for $49.95 and now have access to everyone's metadata for a year. I'm tickled pink 'cause I never metadata I didn't like.

[tw]

All these problems (fears) are directly traceable to what we discussed when the Patriot Act was being enacted and discussed here. Many problems are created by something (if I remember) called article 215. With all the big dic thinking being touted then, well, find the discussion. Honesty and perspective had gone out the door. Then we so gleefully massacred 5000 Americans for no useful purpose in Mission Accomplished.

Never forget the lessons of history. Our younger participant will see it again sometimes after 2040.

[orthodoc]

Say again?

Where did you find this PRISM ONLINE for $49.95?

[Lamplighter]

I found fascinating this article about the way Snowden leaked
the information about PRISM to the Guardian and Washington Post:
(I've deliberately left out some of the details in the article.)

NY Times
NOAM COHEN
June 14, 2013

Player in Leaks Case, Out From Behind Camera
<snip>
Last week, Ms. Poitras, 49, emerged as the pivotal connection between the former
government contractor Edward J. Snowden and writers for The Guardian and The Washington Post
who published his leaked documents about government surveillance.
She also got a byline on two of the papers’ resulting articles.
But she has a much longer history as a filmmaker trying to show on screen
how the world has changed since the Sept. 11 attacks.
<snip>
Mr. Snowden first contacted her in January, she said, telling her that he had read
about her regular border scrutiny and saw it as “an indicator that I was a person who was ‘selected,’*”
that is, someone who would be familiar with what it is to be watched by the government.
“He knew it was a subject that would resonate with me.”
(He had also seen a short film about domestic surveillance,
“The Program,” she made for The New York Times.)

Ms. Poitras, who won a MacArthur “genius” grant last year and
was nominated for an Oscar for “My Country,” was already
living and working outside the country.
After six years of being questioned at the border
— “upwards of 40 times, probably more, I lost count” —
and having her laptop seized, her notes copied, she relocated to Europe.

But in addition to her tense relations with her government, there was another,
more practical reason Mr. Snowden connected with her, she said.
Because of her experience reporting on national security matters, Ms. Poitras said,
she had the technical ability to hold an encrypted online conversation
with Mr. Snowden from the start, which he insisted on.

“The number of journalists who know how to use it is very small,” she said.
“You wouldn’t have been able to communicate with Snowden without encryption.”
<snip>

[Griff]

Woz is not feeling the love for post Patriot Act Merica.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57...ca/?tag=reddit

[ZenGum]

Turns out the British are doing the same metadata collection, on all internet traffic that passes through Britain.

The spy agency's programs, appropriately called Mastering the Internet and Global Telecoms Exploitation, tap transatlantic fiber-optic cables that "carry the world's phone calls and internet traffic" by attaching "intercept probes" where the cables meet British soil before "carrying data to western Europe from telephone exchanges and internet servers in North America."

The sheer scale of the program trumps any other that has yet to come to light. As the report notes, the GCHQ "produces larger amounts of metadata than NSA."

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/06/21-7