Judge Rules -NSA-Phone Surveillance is Legal-Take That Snowden

[Larry]

Just pointing out that I believe your arguments are contradictory.

You assert that, well, that's only in England where cell phone providers are tracking their customers. (Without any support).

You assert that this is because in the US we supposedly have an expectation of privacy.

(I will point out that, no, actually, us law says that customers of a business have no expectation of orivacy whatsoever. That any business is allowed to Hoover up as much information as they can get their hands on, via whatever method they can devise, and do whatever they want to, with it, so long as somewhere there is a piece of paper, which they don't have to show you unless you ask. And that I've read dozens of such documents, and every single one of them was specifically written to allow said business to do whatever they want.).

You then point at court precedents which have ruled that government vacuuming of the records for every phone call I've ever made, with no probable cause needed, is all hunkey dorey, because people using a cell phone have no expectation of privacy.

And, I will point out, the metadata for my call, (for which I have no expectation of privacy), INCLUDES MY LOCATION.

[Popeman38]

Just pointing out that I believe your arguments are contradictory.

You assert that, well, that's only in England where cell phone providers are tracking their customers. (Without any support).

You assert that this is because in the US we supposedly have an expectation of privacy.

(I will point out that, no, actually, us law says that customers of a business have no expectation of orivacy whatsoever. That any business is allowed to Hoover up as much information as they can get their hands on, via whatever method they can devise, and do whatever they want to, with it, so long as somewhere there is a piece of paper, which they don't have to show you unless you ask. And that I've read dozens of such documents, and every single one of them was specifically written to allow said business to do whatever they want.).

You then point at court precedents which have ruled that government vacuuming of the records for every phone call I've ever made, with no probable cause needed, is all hunkey dorey, because people using a cell phone have no expectation of privacy.

And, I will point out, the metadata for my call, (for which I have no expectation of privacy), INCLUDES MY LOCATION.

No, it does not.

[JMS]

Exaggerate much?  Have you even read 1984? You know, the book where the government could literally see and listen to you in your house?  In real time. In every house?

 

It's not an exaggeration.   When you have Federal Judges, Senators sitting on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and even the President's own investigative committee chairman making such comparisons.  All you have to do is follow what is being released to come to the conclusion Orwell's imagination was baby toys compared to what the NSA has built.

 

Yeah in 1984 the government could listen to you through your telephone in your home which was still on the hook.   In 2014 we've learned the NSA has the ability to not only track your movements over years by your cellphone gps as they are doing to hundreds of millions Americans, but also turn your Cell Phone into an eavesdropping device when you aren't even using it;  they can even activate your video camera in your cell phone.

 

See the 50-page "catalog" of NSA capabilities,   specifically the capability named "DROPOUTJEEP"

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/a-941262.html

[Larry]

No, it does not.

Funny, I could have sworn that the warrant Snowden released demanded all cell phone tower information, call routing information, and all similar information.

But I guess I just don't know as much as you do.

Maybe if there were actually a factual, public, discussion, in which the public were informed of what sort of information the government (and corporations) wanted to collect, on them, and the people were allowed to decide whether to grant this authority or not.

Just a fantasy of mine.

It's not an exaggeration. When you have Federal Judges, Senators sitting on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and even the President's own investigative committee chairman making such comparisons. All you have to do is follow what is being released to come to the conclusion Orwell's imagination was baby toys compared to what the NSA has built.

Yeah in 1984 the government could listen to you through your telephone in your home which was still on the hook. In 2014 we've learned the NSA has the ability to not only track your movements over years by your cellphone gps as they are doing to hundreds of millions Americans, but also turn your Cell Phone into an eavesdropping device when you aren't even using it; they can even activate your video camera in your cell phone.

See the 50-page "catalog" of NSA capabilities, specifically the capability named "DROPOUTJEEP"

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/a-941262.html

Just pointing out that there's a difference between what supposedly is technologically possible, and claiming that they're doing it, 24-7, to everybody in the world.

[Popeman38]

Funny, I could have sworn that the warrant Snowden released demanded all cell phone tower information, call routing information, and all similar information.

But I guess I just don't know as much as you do.

Maybe if there were actually a factual, public, discussion, in which the public were informed of what sort of information the government (and corporations) wanted to collect, on them, and the people were allowed to decide whether to grant this authority or not.

Just a fantasy of mine.

You would be wrong:

http://www.justice.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usab5906.pdf (from 2011)

Under the Electronic Communications and Privacy Act (ECPA), 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510–2522, cell providers must be served with either a court order issued pursuant to 18 U.S.C. §2703(d) or a § 2703© search warrant to compel production of CDRs containing cell site information. 

As you can see, cell site information is not covered under the document leaked by Snowden. So no, cell site information is not included in the metadata.  The media has done a wonderful job of presenting incorrect information, and then that gets redistributed by e-magazines and bloggers and then "demonstrated" to show how they can pinpoint your location based on the metadata.  What they fail to properly analyze is what is covered and excluded from the orders. But of course, that wouldn't generate any outrage so why report it.

 

Very confusing stuff.

 

What said leaked document actually demanded:

• comprehensive communications routing information, including but not limited to session identifying information (e.g., originating and terminating telephone number, International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) number, International Mobile station Equipment Identity (IMEI) number, etc.);
• each call’s trunk identifier;
• each call’s telephone calling card numbers; and
• the time and duration of each call.

[JMS]

JMS,

 

My understanding is that they are not listening or recording anything.  They aren't hearing your conversation.  They are banking the phone numbers called from every phone, or as many as they can.  That is not the same as listening in, IMO.  

 

So, I think there's a lot of confusion about what the NSA is doing, and what the real issues are.  I am not going to claim that I understand all the technology of it.  But, there are sound arguments that if they are just collecting the lists of numbers called that its not an unreasonable search.  

 

Yes many newspapers reporting the story are careful to note the NSA is only interested in your Metadata on your calls collected through Operation Prism not your actual conversations.    Metadata is the information about your call but not the actual conversation.  Information like when you called,  who you called,  how long you talked etc....    The facts are however that belief is not supported by the documents.   The NSA records your actual call through operation UPSTREAM in the United States.  that collects information from the fiber optic cables that carry most Internet and voice phone traffic data in the United States.  Operation Tempura in Europe;   The NSA also pays corporate partners hundreds of millions of dollars annually for access to other fiber optic backbones globally...

 

The NSA then pairs the metadata with the actual conversations to fully capture everything about the contact..  We know this because Snowden leaked the Briefs where they discuss paring the metadata with the actual calls for there global ease dropping capabilities.

 

 

 

We also know this because we know the NSA created the data storage capacity to store global voice conversations...   The NSA data center in Ogden Utah initially reportedly had enough storage capacity to record a yottabyte of data... or 10**16 megabytes...

 

Given 12 billion calls a day globally,  average call time of 3 minutes,  average call record time of 30 megabytes per call,  365 days a year.    The NSA has the capacity to record roughly 1000 years of global conversations just at Ogden...

[JMS]

Just pointing out that there's a difference between what supposedly is technologically possible, and claiming that they're doing it, 24-7, to everybody in the world.

 

It is true that the cellular networks are not engineered to be robust enough to support the activation of every cellular phone at the same time.  That distiction doesn't matter;  in a comparison with Orwell which was written prior to the computer age;  Orwell had operators listening to specific conversations and their capacity was limited by hard lines.   The NSA's goal is far eclipse anything Orwell could have imagined.. and their mission is beyond anything most Americans could today could imagine: "anyone, anywhere, anytime".    The NSA literally thinks their mission is to collect everything on everybody, store it, and have it available for analysis.

 

With regards to the NSA where our networks support it... such as fiber optic traffic;  the NSA does listen and record continuously 24-7 and records everything.    In fact their mission is to record every piece of electronic data they can,  regardless of how trivial.

 

In a mission statement last year the US National Security Agency described how it would continue to expand its power and assert itself as the global leader in clandestine surveillance, according to a new report based on the Edward Snowden leaks.

The five-page document brought to light Friday by the New York Times reveals the intelligence agency’s intention to “aggressively pursue legal authorities and a policy framework mapped more fully to the information age.” The spy agency sought the ability to trace “anyone, anywhere, anytime,” according to its 2012 mission statement.

http://rt.com/usa/snowden-leak-expand-surveillance-goal-185/

[Popeman38]

 

It is true that the cellular networks are not engineered to be robust enough to support the activation of every cellular phone at the same time.   That's little comfort however.    That distiction doesn't matter however In a comparison with Orwell which was written prior to the computer age;  Orwell had operators listening to specific conversations.    "anyone, anywhere, anytime".

 

You are a trip. You take a mission statement from a government agency and use that to show they are actually doing it? It is a mission statement made public. Mission statements are overly broad, and with regards to the public are noe not meant to be taken literally. It isn't a stretch to read the "anyone, anywhere, anytime" line mean the ability not necessarily doing it. And using a mission statement as proof positive that they are doing it is ludicrous.

[Larry]

You would be wrong:

http://www.justice.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usab5906.pdf (from 2011)

As you can see, cell site information is not covered under the document leaked by Snowden. So no, cell site information is not included in the metadata. The media has done a wonderful job of presenting incorrect information, and then that gets redistributed by e-magazines and bloggers and then "demonstrated" to show how they can pinpoint your location based on the metadata. What they fail to properly analyze is what is covered and excluded from the orders. But of course, that wouldn't generate any outrage so why report it.

Very confusing stuff.

What said leaked document actually demanded:

1). The leaked document IS a search warrant. Which kinda makes a law (which applies to the NSA?) saying that cell site data can't be collected without a warrant kinda questionable.

(I'll also point out that I've cited the US constitution stating that "no warrants shall issue, without probable cause". And have been piously informed that my belief that this prohibits issuing warrants without probable cause somehow indicates my inability to employ legal reasoning. This, I have to confess, makes me rather reluctant to simply assume that a law saying that accessing cell phone data without a warrant, somehow blocks this same agency from accessing said data. I'm supposed to believe that the constitution doesn't stop them, but this law does?)

2). I will also point out the phrase "complete routing information, including BUT NOT LIMITED TO".

----------

(And I will also express profound thanks for actually bringing some facts to the conversation. Thanks.)

[JMS]

No, it does not. ( metadata containing your location )

Whether it does or not is irreverent. The NSA tracks and records your daily activities though your gps location on your smart phone which is much more accurate than tower triangulation...

 

Operation CO-TRAVELER

 

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-tracking-phone-locations-on-planetary-scale/2013/12/05/dfe21740-5db2-11e3-bc56-c6ca94801fac_story.html

 

NSA tracking phone locations on ‘planetary scale’

 

The National Security Agency is monitoring the locations of most of the world’s cellphones, examining billions of records daily

 

[JMS]

You are a trip. You take a mission statement from a government agency and use that to show they are actually doing it? It is a mission statement made public. Mission statements are overly broad, and with regards to the public are noe not meant to be taken literally. It isn't a stretch to read the "anyone, anywhere, anytime" line mean the ability not necessarily doing it. And using a mission statement as proof positive that they are doing it is ludicrous.

 

Actually I am taking their published catalog of capabilities to show what they are doing today and publishing their mission statement to inform you of what their goal is...

 

Yes I didn't think the NSA has the ability to actually listen to anyone, anywhere, anytime...  I'm sure there are bathrooms safe in some locations.    It was news to me however that the NSA thinks that listenning to anybody anytime anywhere is their national security goal.

 

I posted the NSA's mission statement because I assumed it was news others that the NSA see's their  mission to be as intrusive as could possible be imagined.. literally... everything...   I realize with the worlds largest collection of super computers,  a dedicated trans continental fiber optic backbone which rivals the infrastructure of largest countries on earth;  and physical storage capacity which nearly eclipses the languages ability to describe them;   that even given these things, they haven't quite reached their mission yet.

[Popeman38]

Whether it does or not is irreverent. The NSA tracks and records your daily activities though your gps location on your smart phone which is much more accurate than tower triangulation...

 

Operation CO-TRAVELER

 

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-tracking-phone-locations-on-planetary-scale/2013/12/05/dfe21740-5db2-11e3-bc56-c6ca94801fac_story.html

 

From your source:

 

5 billion records a day, worldwide. 

 

From Google:

 

7 billion people

 

1.5 billion smartphones

 

Now, do you think it is more likely that they are collecting that information many thousands of times per day for targeted phone or that they are taking 2 snapshots per day of everyone. I know where my money lies.

Yes I didn't think the NSA has the ability to actually listen to anyone, anywhere, anytime...  I'm sure there are bathrooms safe in some locations.    I posted the NSA's mission statement because I assumed it was news to some folks that the NSA's mission as they saw it was as intrusive as could possible be imagined.. literally... everything...   I realize with the worlds largest collection of super computers,  a dedicated trans continental fiber optic backbone which rivals the largest countries;  and physical storage capacity which nearly eclipses the languages ability to describe them;   that they haven't quite reached their mission yet.

You are literally tripping on this.

[Larry]

From your source:

 

5 billion records a day, worldwide. 

 

From Google:

 

7 billion people

 

1.5 billion smartphones

 

Now, do you think it is more likely that they are collecting that information many thousands of times per day for targeted phone or that they are taking 2 snapshots per day of everyone. I know where my money lies.

Observing that "thousands of times a day" (well, one thousand times a day), works out to sampling every 1.4 minutes. (And that's assuming that they sample the phone once every 1.4 minutes, all the time their target is asleep.)

And that one thousand samples a day works out to five thousand targeted phones. Which seems like a large number, but I assume is certainly possible.

The math would also work out to say that they're sampling 34 million phones, once every 10 minutes. (Including when they're asleep).

[JMS]

From your source:

 

5 billion records a day, worldwide. 

 

From Google:

 

7 billion people

 

1.5 billion smartphones

 

Now, do you think it is more likely that they are collecting that information many thousands of times per day for targeted phone or that they are taking 2 snapshots per day of everyone. I know where my money lies.

You are literally tripping on this.

 

   So they are collecting 5 billion cell phone records per day...  and there are 7 billion people on earth.. and your take away is they aren't collecting data broadly?

 

If they are collecting 50 records per day they are still collecting data on 100 million people.. and that's just with operation  CO-TRAVELER.

 

Let's not forget,  Operation CO-TRAVELER is just one program discussed among a 50 page catalog of programs.  A program on one of the countries least robust networks.  it pales in comparison to what we know they are doing with the fiber optic network which also includes cell phones and cell phone data.

[gbear]

I read through a lot of this thread wondering how many people understand how little privacy we have and how long this has been true.  I have linked Paul Ohm's work on this in the past (head of electronic data security for the FCC for awhile before going back to law and programing teaching).  We don't have privacy and haven't for more than a decade.

 

I also note with some amusement the perception our software to prevent hacking or intrusion is worth much.  There was a big hubbub about NSA having contracts with providers of security software to leave a back door for them (and the CIA? as I think of Iran's nuclear program).  Most of the software is based on applying an algorithm to a seed number.  When you know the seed, finding the pattern isn't nearly as hard.  What's more, most of the random number generator's seed is just the computer's date/time.  So even though the seed isn't a constant number, the format and range of possible values is known. 

 

The most common random number generating program is known as a linear congruential generator, and these are flawed in that they have a period, meaning the pattern repeats.  True random numbers are rare. If you want more info on test for randomness, check out Diehard tests on wikipedia.  Then ask whether you think the numbers generated as seeds for the protection software we use pass the tests.  Most do not, and NSA's super computers are probably not needed to break commercially available codes.

[JMS]

You are literally tripping on this.   ( dedicated fiber optic network on par with large country )....

 

Actually that is the least remarkable item in the NSA's catalog of assets.  Data capacity is cheap.  We are drowning in transport capacity.   New innovations in Fiber technology has allowed network  capacity to double each 9 months for decades; similar to how Moore's Law describes how computer transistor density on a chip doubles.   It's called Butters' Law of Photonic.     What this means it's a small financial commitment to upgrade a fiber network and far outstrip any known justification for developing such capacity just as a normal course of tech refresh.    You don't touch the lines, all you have to do is modernize the end points and nine months your capacity doubles.    That's why most private fiber companies have 90-95% of their capacity dark.   The folks who sized their network capacity needs earliest like the US Government did in the 1980's are subject to the most "dark fiber" or excess capacity as the technology has improved year to year.   I remember reading an article in the late 1990's which stated the US Governments fiber network leased by Ronald Reagan in the 1980's was 95% dark in the mid 1990's.   According to Buttler's law our total capacity might have doubled 26 times since that report came out.  It's almost unimaginable how much idle transport capacity there is today.   

 

To quote Ted Stevens,  think of the internet as a series of tubes... The US government has about 12 global networks on par with the internet.  Including one dedicated to the Intelligence Community.  Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System- JWICS..  These networks traverse fiber lines with just incredible capacity.

[Popeman38]

Actually that is the least remarkable item in the NSA's catalog of assets.  Data capacity is cheap.  We are drowning in transport capacity.   New innovations in Fiber technology has allowed network  capacity to double each 9 months for decades; similar to how Moore's Law describes how computer transistor density on a chip doubles.   It's called Butters' Law of Photonic.     What this means it's a small financial commitment to upgrade a fiber network and far outstrip any known justification for developing such capacity just as a normal course of tech refresh.    You don't touch the lines, all you have to do is modernize the end points and nine months your capacity doubles.    That's why most private fiber companies have 90-95% of their capacity dark.   The folks who sized their network capacity needs earliest like the US Government did in the 1980's are subject to the most "dark fiber" or excess capacity as the technology has improved year to year.   I remember reading an article in the late 1990's which stated the US Governments fiber network leased by Ronald Reagan in the 1980's was 95% dark in the mid 1990's.   

 

To quote Ted Stevens,  think of the internet as a series of tubes... The US government has about 12 global networks on par with the internet.  Including one dedicated to the Intelligence Community.  Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System- JWICS..  

Apples and tomatoes. JWICS is a classified network used to connect intelligence sites around the world. It, in no way, interconnects with the "backbone" of any provider. It is used for internal communications and data sharing. You can't seem to wrap your mind around the fact that the govt, to collect everything on the internet, would have to have transactional connectivity with literally every network. News flash, networks will not route data through a gjost network. And if you think the govt has tapped into every circuit on the internet, well,, you'r delusional. Think like a carrier, and what you claim is possible is suddenly not possible. And if it was, I go back to the same question: WHY DO THEY NEED TO ISSUE AN ORDER? They could generate all the data they need from their collection, if what you claim is true.

[JMS]

Apples and tomatoes. JWICS is a classified network used to connect intelligence sites around the world. It, in no way, interconnects with the "backbone" of any provider.

 

?   google cross domain guard.   

 

Backbone is a huge tube,  which can have many virtual tubes running through it.     So one huge fiber line can carry many networks each isolated and totally independent.   And even our most secure networks can interact with unsecured data sources through cross domain guard technology which limits and controls security liabilities.

 

It's a simple engineering task to transport zettabits of data into a classified network as long as you have the capacity to do so regardless of the security level of the source data.

 

 

You can't seem to wrap your mind around the fact that the govt, to collect everything on the internet, would have to have transactional connectivity with literally every network.

 

 

So collecting everything on the internet is not what we were discussing.  What we are talking about is collecting everything...   We already know they capture about every xkeystroke from every online internet connected computer.  Operation XKeyscore.

 

Leaked papers tell of directly about operation XKeyscore, an NSA program alluded to in several other news reports. They reveal a network of 500 servers scattered across the globe that collect "nearly everything a user does on the Internet" and store it in databases searchable by name, email, IP address, region and language.

 

http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/31/nsa-project-x-keyscore-collects-nearly-everything-you-do-on-the-internet/

 

NSA Project XKeyscore Collects Nearly Everything You Do On The Internet

 

Further leaks have revealed an NSA project called XKeyscore that, with a few keystrokes, can give a data analyst access to nearly everything a user does on the Internet – from chat sessions to email to browsing habits.

The system requires an email because many behaviors online are completely anonymous and it is only via some sort of identifier — a username and domain — that the system can scour the database of collected Internet traffic and metadata.

As Snowden said to the Guardian on June 10, “I, sitting at

my desk could wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email.” XKeyscore is how it is done

http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/31/nsa-project-x-keyscore-collects-nearly-everything-you-do-on-the-internet/

[JMS]

WHY DO THEY NEED TO ISSUE AN ORDER? They could generate all the data they need from their collection, if what you claim is true.

 

I don't know what your question is here so let me answer this twice...

 

#1 Exactly...  they don't need a warrant to listen to your calls for the last 10 years..   they got the warrant when they collected the data,  now they own it and can use it without any court over site.

Which is why the Presidential Committee assigned to review the NSA recommended they not be allowed to collect the data any longer.

 

Recommendation 4  page 27

We recommend that, as a general rule, and without senior policy review, the government

should not be permitted to collect and store all mass, undigested, non-public personal information

about individuals to enable future queries and data-mining for foreign intelligence purposes.

 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/2013-12-12_rg_final_report.pdf

 

This shouldn't make you feel warm and fuzzy however because the panel recommendation #6 is to mandate your carrier should store the data and the NSA should have to get more specific warrants to review them.

 

#2 Because the FISA court orders they get aren't like the US Legal System Court orders you are familiar with.   In the legal world the FBI for instance used to have to get an court warrant to wire tape a single telephone.   In the post 911 world the NSA get's a single FISA court order to easedrop on every call in the United States...   

 

Latest FISA Court Opinion: A Preview of Surveillance Without Limits

 

The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) released an opinion yesterday explaining its decision to allow the NSA to collect a record of every single phone call made by every single American every single day.

The program—which we have called the “mass call-tracking program” in our lawsuit challenging it—is one of the most sweeping surveillance programs ever approved by a court or instituted in a democracy. And so you might reasonably expect that a judicial justification of the program would require a lengthy opinion explaining in detail how such indiscriminate surveillance can possibly be lawful. Not so—the FISC managed to approve the indefinite tracking of every American’s phone calls in under 30 pages.

There are a lot of reasons to question the court’s reasoning, but I want to focus on the key passage, which is this one:

https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/latest-fisa-court-opinion-preview-surveillance-without-limits

 

Not that they are limited by FISA court orders very permissive findings.   We also know the NSA  violates FISA court authority thousands of times in any given year.

 

Documents show NSA repeatedly violated spy limits

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/11/19/documents-show-nsaadmitteditoversteppeditsauthorityrepeatedly.html

Now just to be clear.   These are secret court where no opposing argument is sanctioned..  Which issues findings which only the NSA is aware of,  in which not even the courts are informed about how the NSA interprets these findings;  and the NSA still can't stay within the bounds of their constraints.

[Larry]

JMS, you're trying to claim that the NSA is RECORDING every phone call, by quoting articles which say they're recording THE DATA OF the phone call.

[Popeman38]

JMS, you're trying to claim that the NSA is RECORDING every phone call, by quoting articles which say they're recording THE DATA OF the phone call.

Thank you.

 

JMS, please go read the actual documents leaked. Don't read the ACLU's, or Al Jazeera's, or TheTechBlog's interpretation of the documents, because they are flawed in a way to sensationalize.  Even The Guardian and the Post hyberbolize quite a bit because they have no understanding of what they are writing about. It isn't nearly as 1984 as you are making it out to be.  I understand the concern about it, just not sure it is all warranted (pun intended).

[JMS]

JMS, you're trying to claim that the NSA is RECORDING every phone call, by quoting articles which say they're recording THE DATA OF the phone call.

 

Operation Upstream gives them our conversations..   Prism is what gives them the metadata.   They need both in order to make efficient use of the conversations.   It's not enough to hear what we are saying.   They have to know who is saying what to whom where and when in order to make meaningful indexes of the data being stored.

 

 

 

So unless your assumption is telephone conversations don't traverse the fiber backbone... They have our actual conversations.

 

They have the access,  they have the storage, and they have the transport..     Operation Upstream is targeted on American fiber traffic.   We have sister programs in Europe, Asia, and Africa....  As well as having corporate partners which the NSA pays hundreds of millions annually for access and metadata.

[Popeman38]

Operation Upstream gives them our conversations..   Prism is what gives them the metadata.   They need both in order to make efficient use of the conversations.   It's not enough to hear what we are saying.   They have to know who is saying what to whom where and when in order to make meaningful indexes of the data being stored.

 

 

 

So unless your assumption is telephone conversations don't traverse the fiber backbone... They have our actual conversations.

 

They have the access,  they have the storage, and they have the transport..     Operation Upstream is targeted on American fiber traffic.   We have sister programs in Europe, Asia, and Africa....  As well as having corporate partners which the NSA pays hundreds of millions annually for access and metadata.

JMS, your slide mentions prism: 

The Prism program collects stored Internet communications based on demands made to Internet companies such as Google Inc. and Apple Inc. under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to turn over any data that match court-approved search terms

Internet communications = NOT PHONE CALLS.

Court approved search terms = NOT EVERYTHING

 

Jeebus man, do a little research and quit reposting blogs and opinions.

 

And "Operation Upstream"? Notice there is no detail attached to "upstream", just a name on a slide. You are speculating based on bloggers and reporters speculation of what upstream is/does. You don't know anything about it. You can't give any details. You continue to make claims and ignore any challenges to your thinking.

[JMS]

Thank you.

 

JMS, please go read the actual documents leaked. Don't read the ACLU's, or Al Jazeera's, or TheTechBlog's interpretation of the documents, because they are flawed in a way to sensationalize.  Even The Guardian and the Post hyberbolize quite a bit because they have no understanding of what they are writing about. It isn't nearly as 1984 as you are making it out to be.  I understand the concern about it, just not sure it is all warranted (pun intended).

 

So let me get this straight...

 

• Two federal judges tell you the NSA's activities are unconstitutional within the last 60 days?
• Two US Senators who sit on the Intelligence committee tell you if the American people understood what the NSA is doing they would be outraged.
• The President's own over site committee tells you the NSA needs to be reigned in..
• The NSA themselves tells you they've violated the FISA court orders thousands of times a year going back years
• We have leaked documents informing us that the NSA's capabilities are simple unimaginable to even the most tech savy observers...

 

And still you feel perfectly comfortable smugly waiving your hands and dismissing the entire issue as overblown.    Well what comes next should fill you with confidence then.   Look for President Obama to announce sweeping new reforms on the NSA in the next few weeks...

Only those really shouldn't make you feel comfortable either..

[JMS]

JMS, your slide mentions prism: 

Internet communications = NOT PHONE CALLS.

Court approved search terms = NOT EVERYTHING

 

Did you notice they are collecting data by tapping into the fiber optic backbone of the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa?  Everything goes over that fiber optic backbone..   Cell phones,  house phones, internet, text messages... EVERYTHING!!!...

 

How about a classified briefing from the NSA as related by a member of congress.. Will you believe someone who sits on the Judiciary committee?

 

 

NSA spying flap extends to contents of U.S. phone calls

 

June 15, 2013

 

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed on Thursday that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed "simply based on an analyst deciding that."

If the NSA wants "to listen to the phone," an analyst's decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. "I was rather startled," said Nadler, an attorney and congressman who serves on the House Judiciary committee.

 

 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57589495-38/nsa-spying-flap-extends-to-contents-of-u.s-phone-calls/

 

 

 

 

Jeebus man, do a little research and quit reposting blogs and opinions.

 

Only I haven't referenced a single blog.   I have referenced source documents including NSA Briefs,  Presidential over site committee reports,  The NSA's catalog of capabilities

 

And it seems you haven't referenced any source material supporting your position..

 

It's really difficult to over react once you grasp what the NSA's capabilities are, and what one could gain from having such capabilities...   I mean I grew up in an era where a guy like J. Edgar Hoover used information to remain in power and warp elected officials to his will for four or five decades.  Forget Orwell, not even Hoover could imagine the kind of information the NSA has access too in real time.