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

N.S.A Halts Collection of Americans’ Emails About Foreign Targets

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 132 posts

Re: N.S.A Halts Collection of Americans’ Emails About Foreign Targets

#31

Post by 1001101 »

hackuser wrote: post #25

A fundamental conflict keeps coming up: 1) Security agencies are much more effective if they collect data before they know it's important. If they wait until Jane Doe blows up a building to start collecting intelligence on her, much of the evidence and other valuable information will be long gone. 2) Spying on innocent people violates their privacy, their legal rights, and is a tool for oppression. Warrants are requi…

We had a good system in place in the Bill of Rights. Unfortunately, broad construction of this document in secret courts without an adversarial process has diminished it substantially. Your proposed system requires trust and goodwill, and that's in short supply.

Re: N.S.A Halts Collection of Americans’ Emails About Foreign Targets

#32

Post by CriticalSection »

Baeocystin wrote: post #3

Things that I do not for one second believe: this. Maybe this one particular program, under one particular name, sure. But overall? I just don't see it. I am not saying this cynically, I just don't. Data collection is too easy, database queries too simple.

Sure.

Prior to World War II, the FBI began keeping a list of people to be rounded up "in the event of a national emergency" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI_Index ). Some people on this index were put in concentration camps during World War II, notably people of Japanese heritage (and as Cygnus co-founder John Gilmore notes, some of these people were identified, via a legal fiction, by them filling out that they were of Japanese heritage on census forms http://www.toad.com/gnu/census.html)

World War II did not end the list, it grew. Finally, Watergate, the death of Hoover and exposure of programs like COINTELPRO led to the Church Committee and the supposed disabling of the list.

Since then, all information has been that the only thing that has changed is that the list is not officially for the detention of American citizens. Some of the people involved in Iran-Contra in the 1980s were also maneuvering for a US military invasion of Nicaragua, which they thought might necessitate putting anti-war protesters into concentration camps( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_84 ). Of course, that plan was so far out that the plan might be more nutty than scary, but then again, these are people who secretly broke the US's own arms embargo against Iran to sell Iran weapons, the money from which they used to fund a war against Nicaragua which Congress had banned.

It's kind of like that Utah Data Center ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center ) they're building to store what is probably permanent recordings of our phone calls, SMS messages, e-mails, web browsing history etc. They didn't spend $1.5 billion on it so far to not use it.

Re: N.S.A Halts Collection of Americans’ Emails About Foreign Targets

#33

Post by logn »

nyolfen wrote: post #23
jancsika wrote: post #17

We can't sensibly discuss this story here unless we know which definition of "collect" is being used in the story. Normal definition: collect. For example: "Even collected all the data going to and from Bob's house by putting a splitter on the cable." NSA's definition: not that, as cited in various stories sourced by the Snowden leaks from the Guardian. I won't attempt to define exactly how the NSA defines "collect"…

their definition (via secret interpretation of USSID 18, according to Bill Binney[1]) is roughly that it's only collected if they actually go back and look at it at some point down the line. your web browsing history (or whatever) sitting on a hard drive in utah doesn't fall under this definition until they look at it. [1] https://youtu.be/r9-3K3rkPRE

Ah so that lends credence to my rationale for scraping websites. Until I actually look at the scraped data no scraping has taken place so no terms of use have been violated. When I look at the scraped data the terms of use come into effect but now I'm personally present so no robotic scraping has taken place.

Re: N.S.A Halts Collection of Americans’ Emails About Foreign Targets

#34

Post by elevenfist »

nyolfen wrote: post #23
jancsika wrote: post #17

We can't sensibly discuss this story here unless we know which definition of "collect" is being used in the story. Normal definition: collect. For example: "Even collected all the data going to and from Bob's house by putting a splitter on the cable." NSA's definition: not that, as cited in various stories sourced by the Snowden leaks from the Guardian. I won't attempt to define exactly how the NSA defines "collect"…

their definition (via secret interpretation of USSID 18, according to Bill Binney[1]) is roughly that it's only collected if they actually go back and look at it at some point down the line. your web browsing history (or whatever) sitting on a hard drive in utah doesn't fall under this definition until they look at it. [1] https://youtu.be/r9-3K3rkPRE

This isn't really a secret interpretation, I and a lot of people I knew noticed the same thing over a decade ago by reading the privacy policies of tech companies. Reading the data requires a warrant. Recording the data doesn't.

Re: N.S.A Halts Collection of Americans’ Emails About Foreign Targets

#35

Post by colordrops »

jancsika wrote: post #17

We can't sensibly discuss this story here unless we know which definition of "collect" is being used in the story. Normal definition: collect. For example: "Even collected all the data going to and from Bob's house by putting a splitter on the cable." NSA's definition: not that, as cited in various stories sourced by the Snowden leaks from the Guardian. I won't attempt to define exactly how the NSA defines "collect"…

It's not only a matter of definitions. It's also a matter of belief. The head of the NSA has lied directly to congress about data collection activities. We have absolutely no reason to believe they will have actually stopped collecting data even if they say so.

Re: N.S.A Halts Collection of Americans’ Emails About Foreign Targets

#36

Post by elevenfist »

logn wrote: post #33
nyolfen wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

their definition (via secret interpretation of USSID 18, according to Bill Binney[1]) is roughly that it's only collected if they actually go back and look at it at some point down the line. your web browsing history (or whatever) sitting on a hard drive in utah doesn't fall under this definition until they look at it. [1] https://youtu.be/r9-3K3rkPRE

Ah so that lends credence to my rationale for scraping websites. Until I actually look at the scraped data no scraping has taken place so no terms of use have been violated. When I look at the scraped data the terms of use come into effect but now I'm personally present so no robotic scraping has taken place.

Well, scraping has taken place, so you've violated a eula and potentially committed theft. But you haven't violated copyright, as long as you do not distribute the data either, (through any means) pretty sure that's fair "use."

Ymmv, not a lawyer and this is internet bullshitting, not legal advice.

Re: N.S.A Halts Collection of Americans’ Emails About Foreign Targets

#37

Post by late2part »

jancsika wrote: post #17

We can't sensibly discuss this story here unless we know which definition of "collect" is being used in the story. Normal definition: collect. For example: "Even collected all the data going to and from Bob's house by putting a splitter on the cable." NSA's definition: not that, as cited in various stories sourced by the Snowden leaks from the Guardian. I won't attempt to define exactly how the NSA defines "collect"…

Not wittingly idiosyncratic, though, right?

Re: N.S.A Halts Collection of Americans’ Emails About Foreign Targets

#38

Post by e12e »

Baeocystin wrote: post #3

Things that I do not for one second believe: this. Maybe this one particular program, under one particular name, sure. But overall? I just don't see it. I am not saying this cynically, I just don't. Data collection is too easy, database queries too simple.

Not to forget the cost and resources sunk in that Utah datasenter - what will they use it for if not chugging through mass surveillance? Farming? http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/05/13/national/science...

(yeah, the Utah center is probably scarce in actual clean rooms... Maybe A "Homeland"-style sock puppet farm is more likely re-use: reduce unemployment, bolster support... /s)

Re: N.S.A Halts Collection of Americans’ Emails About Foreign Targets

#39

Post by elevenfist »

Baeocystin wrote: post #3

Things that I do not for one second believe: this. Maybe this one particular program, under one particular name, sure. But overall? I just don't see it. I am not saying this cynically, I just don't. Data collection is too easy, database queries too simple.

You can't generalize all agencies or all departments within an agency either. I'd be surprised if anyone working with Comey would give a damn based on what he tried to do to Apple, but I doubt everyone in our three letter agencies is going to violate the current system and read data without authorization and a warrant.

Re: N.S.A Halts Collection of Americans’ Emails About Foreign Targets

#40

Post by Jach »

hackuser wrote: post #25

A fundamental conflict keeps coming up: 1) Security agencies are much more effective if they collect data before they know it's important. If they wait until Jane Doe blows up a building to start collecting intelligence on her, much of the evidence and other valuable information will be long gone. 2) Spying on innocent people violates their privacy, their legal rights, and is a tool for oppression. Warrants are requi…

As another comment mentioned the NSA definition of collect seems to be (or was) only when they "look" at it, whatever that means exactly.

An interesting thing that I like to imagine happens with 1 (though I have no evidence) is that often Jane Doe does blow up a building, but then you see in the news over the next few weeks reports of rounding up terrorist cells related to Jane Doe. If they had to start fresh every time I don't think they could do that, they must have prior information, so I like to think it's the powers involved paying the Palantir tax. It's very reactive, which sucks for the people killed by Jane, but perhaps it's indicative that things haven't yet gone full Minority Report.

Post reply on HN