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Rand Paul: NSA Routinely Monitors Americans’ Communications Without Warrants

theintercept.com

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

#181

Post by hackuser »

willstrafach wrote: post #125
grandalf wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 f…

> Not at all. I mean that any number of people inside the intelligence organizations could have opted to "wiretap" Trump This is not true. The system will not allow you to just query a US Person, and will automatically flag such requests for review if you try to do so. Even if an analyst conducted "reverse targeting" (Querying a foreign person who the US Person was communicating with), the US Person's information wit…

On what basis can you state these things with such authority? (Apologies if there is something obvious that I'm overlooking.)

Also, do you mean that these are the stated rules, or that these are the practices? I don't mean that in a conspiratorial sense. In any institution, the actual practices vary from the rules, sometimes significantly.

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

#182

Post by dredmorbius »

danarmak wrote: post #107
jacquesm wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The Nazis didn't have anything like modern surveillance, and they didn't need it to enact the Holocaust. So I'm not sure what your point is; could you clarify? Surveillance enables many kinds of government oppression, but large-scale ethnic cleansing doesn't seem to be one of them, in that it's already possible and efficient. The Nazi's logistical problems in enacting the Holocaust were more in moving and killing Jew…

The Nazis had IBM.

https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/bshytzp0on1dfvjdfw4-vq

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

#183

Post by danjoc »

willstrafach wrote: post #128
danjoc wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SSL should prevent that. Sadly, SNI leaks the domain name. Hacker News appears in favor of SNI though, because lack of IPv4 address space. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13639112 Oddly, HN is really worried about server privacy. If we shared a single certificate across 20 domains, then people could see all those domains are hosted in the same place. My point? We are part of the problem.

SSL does not really keep the domain name private at all either way though. That is no good solution to this, because your ISP needs to know how to route your request, right? Or, am I misunderstanding your point?

>SSL does not really keep the domain name private at all either way though.

Sure it does. That's the whole point of SNI. SSL encrypts the request, including the domain name. If you share a single IP address with multiple vhosts, you have two options. SNI, which leaks the domain in the clear, or a certificate matching all the domains you vhost.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication

If a server hosts hillaryclintonisgreat.com and donaldtrumpisgreat.com, then SNI leaks the domain and lets the ISP know definitively which one you visited.

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

#184

Post by [deleted] »

grandalf wrote: post #159
willstrafach wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do you make of Snowden's assertion that he could have eavesdropped on anyone he wanted? Was he failing to mention that his actions could be audited? Was he failing to mention that he had access to someone else's PKI with which to do the surveillance? Other? I think he was not really telling the truth. And I don't mean that he intended to be dishonest, but rather, he was trying to explain the issue as he unders…

I appreciate your thoughtful comments. I wish Snowden were a participant on HN so he could address the specific detail points. One recent historical point I'd mention based on your reasoning is that there was a period of time toward the end of Obama's presidency when there was immense political pressure on him to "do something" about Russia meddling in the US election to benefit Trump. It seems plausible that since O…

[deleted]

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

#185

Post by dboreham »

lordnacho wrote: post #19

I have a question about this whole government intrusion thing. Perhaps a lawyer can explain: Suppose the government gets a warrant to wiretap some guy. He happens to get a call from his lawyer, and the government overhears that he's committed some crime. Now there's an attorney/client privilege preventing you from directly producing the tape (is there?) so you can't just do that. But the fact that you've heard this m…

Watch the TV show "The Good Wife" for a detailed treatment of this technique.

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

#186

Post by willstrafach »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #180
willstrafach wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no proper oversight, not for any reasonable definition of the word. Could you elaborate on what practices you precisely take issue with? If it is regarding domestic telephony metadata collection, I am in agreement and I am glad that the USA Freedom Act restricted that. Otherwise, I don't really know how to answer you as you haven't stated any specific problem that you have. Additionally, I'm not so sure my…

USA Freedom act isn't reform, it's a post getting caught minor change of and extension of the Patriot act. Reporting is still voluntary for all practical purposes. Oversight of FISC matters is still the domain of the same FISC that did close to nothing to stop the rampant abuse, except maybe give cover. My biggest issue is the mixing of the NSA's surveillance power with domestic law enforcement. As for your facts you…

I don't know if I would call it rampant abuse. It was one program which I also disagree with, and the USA Freedom Act rectified this (Or rather, it fixed the concerns that I had about it, you may disagree).

> My biggest issue is the mixing of the NSA's surveillance power with domestic law enforcement.

I fully agree. Serious changes are needed here in my opinion and I hope the pressure due to renewal this year will allow for some reform.

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

#187

Post by willstrafach »

grandalf wrote: post #175
willstrafach wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no proper oversight, not for any reasonable definition of the word. Could you elaborate on what practices you precisely take issue with? If it is regarding domestic telephony metadata collection, I am in agreement and I am glad that the USA Freedom Act restricted that. Otherwise, I don't really know how to answer you as you haven't stated any specific problem that you have. Additionally, I'm not so sure my…

> Additionally, I'm not so sure my reply is that great of a defense, I am only stating facts because I do not believe that spreading misconceptions is very helpful to discussion on this kind of topic. This is an interesting point. Over the past few years I've come to think that the most responsible perspective to adopt as a citizen is that officials and government are all, to some extent, bad actors who deserve a goo…

> The biggest breakdown in the democratic process has been a lack of appreciation on the part of the public for all that we consent to by not actively dissenting and demanding answers and accountability.

I agree. I don't intend to defend anything problematic. I just worry that it will be hard to demand actual changes if people are concerned about vague issues driven by a misunderstanding of how things work, versus actually being able to call up their representatives with specific changes and demands in mind.

> Frankly, the response by officials to the Snowden revelations was deeply embarrassing to our nation.

I think this was due to the amount of material he leaked. If it was only the metadata-related material or other material related to problematic practices, I would think there would be far more leniency. But because he had taken and leaked everything he could get his hands on, much of it unrelated to anything domestic, the disclosures were viewed very differently. I personally think it makes no sense to charge him with relation to the leaks regarding domestic metadata collection since it was already admitted that this was overreach, but it is hard to figure out why he would blindly copy and leak other sensitive unrelated material (Easy example: I do not understand how he justifies scraping the content of certain internal wiki pages and giving it to The Intercept, there are no injustices described there, just legitimate sensitive intelligence information).

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

#188

Post by willstrafach »

dredmorbius wrote: post #178
willstrafach wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious how you would define "spying" though. - Should NGA not use imaging satellites to keep track of national disasters and environmental issues? - Should NGA not use imaging satellites for nuclear non-proliferation monitoring? - Should DoD not have digital sensors at the egress points of their networks to gather information on attacks by foreign actors? - Should NSA not monitor the communications of foreign a…

Generally: false equivalence, excluded middle.

I do not understand. The question was:

> Can you elaborate on what you specifically take issue with?

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

#189

Post by guelo »

mirimir wrote: post #112
waqf wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of people do, but it's best not to rate it too highly. It's a lot easier to communicate clearly and effectively when your propositions are simple, and it's a lot easier to have simple propositions when you're not constrained by the evidence. That's pretty much the whole story of demagoguery and why it continues to work.

> demagoguery Well, if President Trump actually does serve the common people, it will be a wondrous thing.

  A demagogue for the common people* !

  *only certain people qualify

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

#190

Post by datatan »

youdontknowtho wrote: post #173
3131s wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comments in this thread are repetitive and totally devoid of content. The one above is a non sequitur that is unnecessarily aggressive. I think it is you not paying attention if you haven't noticed yet that Democrats and Republicans are nearly the same and equally blunderous and corrupted. They both support war, surveillance, mass incarceration, mass deportation, drug prohibition, and more. Barack Obama was a te…

I'm not saying republicans are corrupt. Democrats are corrupt. I can work with corrupt. Republicans are crazy and dangerous. Keep fiddling while Rome burns. Hopefully no one will be aggressive to you...but then you never really had to worry about that did you?

Look at your posts in this thread. Then ask yourself who the "crazy" one is. Hint: it isn't the Republicans.
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