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Apologies if this may sound a little naive, but I can't help but wonder; Can anything be done about this situation within the next couple of years? Or is this process of mass data collection just going to continue and reach an irreversible stage where those agencies' power is out of control?
Apologies if this may sound a little naive, but I can't help but wonder; Can anything be done about this situation within the next couple of years? Or is this process of mass data collection just going to continue and reach an irreversible stage where those agencies' power is out of control?
Let's just assume for the moment that outcome X is good while outcome Y is bad. (I know most people wouldn't agree with that as applied to the NSA's history of wide-net surveillance, but just stick with me...)
You design a system that technically delivers outcome X. It could technically deliver outcome Y, but you didn't implement it to deliver that outcome. However, there is nothing at all preventing outcome Y from being achieved with your system other than stated policy. Additionally, your system as designed brings the possibility of outcome Y much closer to fruition at a fraction of the cost of the quotes from contractors from the time.
It comes to be known that your system has been trivially revised to achieve outcome Y, and you become a dissident. Now you take on the responsibility of educating people about what can be achieved with your system, and systems like it.
I get that part. But here's the question: what was Binney's responsibility in designing the system in the first place? In interviews I've watched he seems to justify his contribution to the program by referring to the policy at the time-- to only use wide-net surveillance data gleaned from the internet on non-U.S. citizen targets overseas, and nobody ever imagined it would be turned around to spy on the domestic population.
But has anyone ever asked him if he regrets building a system in the first place that lowered the cost on a type of surveillance the risks of which are not well-understood? In that sense I don't see anything different in what he did than what the Stuxnet authors did. And I'm quite sure if a whistleblower from that team went public someone would ask why they thought it was responsible to build it in the first place.
(That sense of mild threat you feel right now that is preventing you from either watching the video or commenting here is entirely natural and nothing to worry about. Go about your day as normal.)
I went to the comments instead of the link to take a look at whether there was a second source that didn't involve hitting a CCC page. Chilling effects indeed.
I looked at it, I didn't feel any chilling effect. From an engineering point of view its interesting. Maybe I'm too dumb to process fear.
So a quick calculation. 1 zettabyte if stored on 4GB HDD, that's 250 million hard drives. That's without any redundancy. Quarterly production of hard drives is around 100-140 million. That's quite a big slice of global production. The buying operation of this scale should be visible somewhere on the price charts.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I went to the comments instead of the link to take a look at whether there was a second source that didn't involve hitting a CCC page. Chilling effects indeed.
Sorry for the ignorance, but whats the problem with CCC pages?
But it's already come out that searching for Tails or Tor can set off NSA flags, so I was pointing out that reading Chaos Computer Club accounts of NSA surveillance practices sounds like another likely way to be flagged.
It is clear that major Internet companies are colluded with the government, including hardware manufacturers (Intel).
How is Bill Binney still walking around a free man? Surely he had security clearances and made an oath not to break them. Is it just that he's riding a fine line and not disclosing classified information?
As a counter-point (regardless of the legalities) if there are, as he conjectures, 1.2 million people on a drone kill-list (with seemingly no-oversight), is it not in the public interest that these things are highlighted by whistle blowers?
What I don't understand is with such capabilities, why weren't Michelle carters texts flagged? Or the heather Mack texts/fb messages. Or the texts revolving around the death of Tim piazza at penn state? If the capability to save these people was there, why wasn't it exercised?
He states it in the video: they are incredibly overwhelmed with data coming in and are just using "old search methods" such as word search that he deems ineffective. My understanding is that this bulk data gathering is not as much as preventing attacks but further securing of power for the strange amalgamation that we would call the federal government.