Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rand Paul: NSA Routinely Monitors Americans’ Communications Without Warrants

theintercept.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 300 posts

Re: Rand Paul: NSA Routinely Monitors Americans’ Communications Without Warrants

#51

Post by mirimir »

mysterypie wrote: post #6
willvarfar wrote: post #4

Why aren't politicians and their staff using end-to-end encrypted VOIP?

The same reason you aren't. The same reason PGP has been around for 25 years and only a miniscule fraction of people ever encrypt their email. I.e., it's because none of this privacy technology is built-in as the default into our communications infrastructure. Therefore, for the average person (and even for privacy-conscious techies), it is inconvenient and difficult, and you have to convince the party you're talking…

It's really not that hard. Mumble works quite well in TCP mode, via Tor onion service. That gives you end-to-end encryption plus some anonymity. Except for the voiceprint issue, anyway. And you get cellular-level sound quality. Latency isn't problematic if you run in press-to-transmit mode.

Re: Rand Paul: NSA Routinely Monitors Americans’ Communications Without Warrants

#52

Post by Bartweiss »

mgamache wrote: post #5

The problem with the press coverage of this topic is a lack of personalization. What does the government know about me and why is that important? I think most US citizens would be shocked to learn that most of our personal information is accessible without a warrant. (phone records / bank account / email / web history / phone location data / Car location / Purchase history / Facebook etc....). Also, how much the gove…

Someone (the EFF?) put out a really interesting widget a few years ago that demonstrated what you could learn about a hypothetical person using two-removes metadata. In fact, they managed to build a metadata feed which cast the innocent person as a major terrorism threat by sheer coincidences.

Re: Rand Paul: NSA Routinely Monitors Americans’ Communications Without Warrants

#53

Post by unityByFreedom »

grandalf wrote: post #43

While this article offers the clearest presentation of the issue I've seen to date, I think the key point (which the article points out halfway in) is that the truth of Trump's claim that he was wiretapped does not depend on the presence or absence of a FISA warrant. The system is designed to be used without warrant, so those harping on the detail of whether or not a warrant existed that had Trump in scope are not fo…

> It would be nice if all surveillance could be traced back to FISA warrants, but Snowden's revelations make it clear this is absolutely not the case

You mean, since the NSA collects data on millions of Americans?

If that's the type of monitoring you mean, Trump's complaint holds no more water than an average Joe claiming "Obama ordered a wiretap on me". More like, "Obama continued policy begun by previous administrations to enable spying to protect national security.". It's the primary function of the NSA.

Re: Rand Paul: NSA Routinely Monitors Americans’ Communications Without Warrants

#54

Post by thinkling »

andy_ppp wrote: post #14
1001101 wrote: post #7

It's interesting that the article mentions then Sen. Obama's change of heart re: the FISA Amendments Act - saying he would filibuster it and then voting for it. I wonder what led to his change of heart. I haven't heard that explained.

Probably that he was running for president and wanted to appear on the side of the security services? Then when in office it clearly must be a useful tool to start build profiles of everyone and be able to mine their activities.

It's easy to be principled when you're not calling the shots yet and not confronted with all the realities of the choice.

I imagine once Obama was in office, he was told what had been accomplished so far using this kind of intelligence (terrorists killed, plots prevented, lives (allegedly) saved, etc) that the US would give up if the intelligence dried up. Who will chose to accept that attacks might happen on your watch as President when the tools to avoid them are already in hand?

Re: Rand Paul: NSA Routinely Monitors Americans’ Communications Without Warrants

#55

Post by lostlogin »

jacquesm wrote: post #46
joshontheweb wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately I have found that most people aren't shocked when I explain this to them. Most commonly they just say That their life is boring and they've got nothing to hide. Additionally they think that it may be worth the invasion if we can catch the 'bad guys'. I'm not sure what would need to happen to change this sentiment on a large enough scale to get people motivated into political action.

> I'm not sure what would need to happen to change this sentiment on a large enough scale to get people motivated into political action. A couple of razzias where they or their loved ones were taken to gas chambers should do the job. But we have such short memories. In just about every Dutch town, usually near the railway station there is a monument documenting just that and it still does not seem to make much of a d…

From what I understand, the Dutch are one of the most surveilled societies on earth. It would appear that a holocaust doesn't make a population sensitive to state surveillance.

Re: Rand Paul: NSA Routinely Monitors Americans’ Communications Without Warrants

#56

Post by grandalf »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #53
grandalf wrote: post #43

While this article offers the clearest presentation of the issue I've seen to date, I think the key point (which the article points out halfway in) is that the truth of Trump's claim that he was wiretapped does not depend on the presence or absence of a FISA warrant. The system is designed to be used without warrant, so those harping on the detail of whether or not a warrant existed that had Trump in scope are not fo…

> It would be nice if all surveillance could be traced back to FISA warrants, but Snowden's revelations make it clear this is absolutely not the case You mean, since the NSA collects data on millions of Americans? If that's the type of monitoring you mean, Trump's complaint holds no more water than an average Joe claiming "Obama ordered a wiretap on me". More like, "Obama continued policy begun by previous administra…

> If that's the type of monitoring you mean

Not at all. I mean that any number of people inside the intelligence organizations could have opted to "wiretap" Trump and there would have been no audit trail and no warrant.

> holds no more water than an average Joe claiming "Obama ordered a wiretap on me"

For what it's worth though, I do think the lowly "average Joe" you mention does deserve to be quite irate about his fourth amendment rights being thrown away.

Re: Rand Paul: NSA Routinely Monitors Americans’ Communications Without Warrants

#58

Post by datatan »

nerdponx wrote: post #22
exabrial wrote: post #2

My opinion on hn was unpopular when I spoke out against Apple during the San Bernardino affair, because the FBI seemed to have the proper DOJ signoff and I think the motivation was obvious. However this is unacceptable. We are a society of laws, and one of them is due process. Spying likely started during the Bush years, and Obama somehow escaped scrutiny for continuing the program (even with Snowden leaks). Hopefull…

Haven't we been spying on our own citizens since WWII? Or at least since J Edgar Hoover and thr McCarthy era?

McCarthy didn't spy on anyone. He was a Senator not an intel agent. Additionally, McCarthy has been proven right. His estimate was that there were around 20 Soviet agents that had infiltrated the US government at the highest levels. Once the USSR fell and their documents became public it was proven they had well over 200. McCarthy was right but people still tarnish his name out of spite.

Hoover was an SOB far worse than McCarthy ever could have been but is still revered by many in the intel services. His name still adorns the FBI HQ building and other than accusations of cross dressing, no ones dug in to truly uncover the evil things that man did.

Re: Rand Paul: NSA Routinely Monitors Americans’ Communications Without Warrants

#59

Post by mi100hael »

emehrkay wrote: post #57

Where exactly does Paul stand on issues of privacy like this? You'd think we is against it, but he is also okay with ISPs selling your browsing history. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/gop-senators-new...

Whether or not you agree, there is a legitimate & legal distinction between a private corporation and a publicly-funded government organization.

Re: Rand Paul: NSA Routinely Monitors Americans’ Communications Without Warrants

#60

Post by kabdib »

nerdponx wrote: post #22
exabrial wrote: post #2

My opinion on hn was unpopular when I spoke out against Apple during the San Bernardino affair, because the FBI seemed to have the proper DOJ signoff and I think the motivation was obvious. However this is unacceptable. We are a society of laws, and one of them is due process. Spying likely started during the Bush years, and Obama somehow escaped scrutiny for continuing the program (even with Snowden leaks). Hopefull…

Haven't we been spying on our own citizens since WWII? Or at least since J Edgar Hoover and thr McCarthy era?

Surveillance has been at smaller scale, but increasing as the technology behind the data footprint has moved from punchcards and magtape to farms of SSDs and gigabit optical links.

Hoover didn't know your shoe size. It's likely that the NSA could find that out in seconds to minutes (and I'm not kidding).

Post reply on HN