161–170 of 360 posts
But where call records are concerned it's not actually that big. I could pick out 100 mid-sized businesses and double that number readily. And that's not even thinking about text messages.
500M text messages. That's like 1 high school.
The NSA plays the "Kevin Bacon" game, where selectors target an individual, their friends, friends of friends (2 degrees of separation out, iirc.) I suspect they're performing a full-take of the call contents as well, just not through the PINWALE/MARINA ingestion system. It's likely commingled with bulk traffic snarfed up by beam splitters at the telcos' NOCs, and separated on-demand from the TEMPORA buffer. At this…
> I suspect they're performing a full-take of the call contents as well, just not through the PINWALE/MARINA ingestion system. What is the basis for this suspicion? If it were true, that's what people would have reported on from Snowden's millions of leaked documents instead of simply metadata (call data records).
500M in all of 2017? Oh, come on! We found out that Verizon -- just Verizon -- was handing over "phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily" in June 2013. 500M might be an official number that they're willing to release but (without any way to prove it, obviously) I'm certain that the REAL number is much, much higher. For an organization who has vowed to "collect it all", it just doesn't seem likely that th…
They could easily make it be an honest statement by simply having a different three-letter organization collecting the rest.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I suspect they're performing a full-take of the call contents as well, just not through the PINWALE/MARINA ingestion system. What is the basis for this suspicion? If it were true, that's what people would have reported on from Snowden's millions of leaked documents instead of simply metadata (call data records).
Here's a decent review. The sad that as time passes, the more normal this will seem to everybody. https://www.propublica.org/article/nsa-data-collection-faq
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I suspect they're performing a full-take of the call contents as well, just not through the PINWALE/MARINA ingestion system. What is the basis for this suspicion? If it were true, that's what people would have reported on from Snowden's millions of leaked documents instead of simply metadata (call data records).
"In the telcos, singlemode fiber is used to connect long distance switches, central offices and SLCs (subscriber loop carriers, small switches in pedestals in subdivisions or office parks or in the basement of a larger building). Practically every telco's network is now fiber optics except the connection to the home." [1] Specifically, AT&T has transitioned its PSTN backbone fully to SIP, which is a form of VoIP: "AT…
500M in all of 2017? Oh, come on! We found out that Verizon -- just Verizon -- was handing over "phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily" in June 2013. 500M might be an official number that they're willing to release but (without any way to prove it, obviously) I'm certain that the REAL number is much, much higher. For an organization who has vowed to "collect it all", it just doesn't seem likely that th…
The NSA only counts data as collected once it was accessed by a human in a query... but they do have all the data.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're not the only one. What hurts the most for me is that I wrote my doctoral thesis on privacy back in 2003 and I touched on a number of these issues. 9/11 ruined my career, though. After 9/11, nobody wanted privacy or to even talk about privacy. I knew all this was going to happen. David Brin knew all this was going to happen, and so did a lot of other writers and pundits. And here we sit now, wondering what to d…
> After 9/11, nobody wanted privacy or to even talk about privacy. Yup! And not only did the NSA turn into a monster, but so did the TSA (or more aptly, that monster was created), the biggest theatre troupe on the planet, because that's all it is. The most eye opening thing happened just recently to cement this in my mind. After the Superbowl parade in Philadelphia this year, I caught a ride from PHL to SFO. Basicall…
[0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/09/21/tsa-dog-teams...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I suspect they're performing a full-take of the call contents as well, just not through the PINWALE/MARINA ingestion system. What is the basis for this suspicion? If it were true, that's what people would have reported on from Snowden's millions of leaked documents instead of simply metadata (call data records).
Here's a decent review. The sad that as time passes, the more normal this will seem to everybody. https://www.propublica.org/article/nsa-data-collection-faq
The A5/1 cipher has been totally pwned, without even needing a crib, but it's still used for voice traffic. The NSA is allowed to store and decrypt all of this, AFAICT, through this loophole.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's a decent review. The sad that as time passes, the more normal this will seem to everybody. https://www.propublica.org/article/nsa-data-collection-faq
This is both old (they no longer get all metadata, just the 500 million requested as described in today's article) and contradicts GGP's claim.