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NSA collected 500M U.S. call records in 2017, a sharp rise: official report

reuters.com

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Re: NSA collected 500M U.S. call records in 2017, a sharp rise: official report

#221

Post by lovich »

contourtrails wrote: post #160
jMyles wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say total slaves vs. total prisoners - I said black men. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/12/michelle-alexander... edit: I can't imagine why I'm being downvoted here. My statement was utterly correct, and when challenged I cited a credible source. What'd I do wrong?!

They broke laws and are being punished as criminals. Many people of all races are punished in the same way. I think drug laws in this country are way too harsh, but those are the laws. People should not break them if they don't want to be jailed. Also slavery was a human problem for thousands of years, it took humanity collectively waking up to the evils of slavery to abolish it. Human governments the world over supp…

"I think drug laws in this country are way too harsh, but those are the laws. People should not break them if they don't want to be jailed."

This quote might be a defensible argument if the laws were applied equally in the United States. What has happened is that we have so many laws that the government doesn't even know how many laws there are anymore[0]. This has led to something called selective enforcement[1]. When everyone breaks the law, but you are twice as likely to be punished for it if you are one color vs another, then personal responsibility has very little to do with it. The government is setting up an environment where they can punish whomever they want, whenever they want, and then punishing the people they don't like for non law related reasons

[0]https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304319804576389... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_enforcement

Re: NSA collected 500M U.S. call records in 2017, a sharp rise: official report

#223

Post by cheschire »

Imagine what one could do with access to every phone conversation in terms of training a neural network. A properly trained network could easily identify code words among a network of certain individuals and then use the frequency of usage to identify potential windows of opportunity even if they didn't specify time windows over the phone.

And do all of this without actually saving a single thing so it wouldn't be considered "collecting".

Re: NSA collected 500M U.S. call records in 2017, a sharp rise: official report

#224

Post by mirimir »

anoncoward778 wrote: post #17

Automatically collecting everyone's cell phone data, has software automatically installed in Smart TV's everywhere, monitors your online footprint (emails, social media[of course]). All those warning from Snowden all those secret software reveals from wikileaks an untold amount of funding from congress with virtually no oversight. And yet tons of bad things keep happening to regular citizens in the US. What exactly d…

> What exactly does the NSA do?

It's a military signals-intelligence organization.

> Whom are they protecting?

It's hardly monolithic. Imagine Catch 22 on steroids. Likely each power center is primarily protecting itself, and its funding. Overall, they're protecting the military-industrial complex. The 1%. The powers that be.

Edit: Whoever pays the bills.

Re: NSA collected 500M U.S. call records in 2017, a sharp rise: official report

#225

Post by omeid2 »

giardini wrote: post #212

Is there a chance, nay, is there not certainty, that some individual or group of persons in the NSA could or does, by selectively monitoring, personally gain tremendous wealth or influence? E.g., if I were an NSA employee and used my access to follow the phone calls of, say, the officers of Goldman-Sachs? What information, of financial value, could I possibly gain? What possibilities for gain await a a rogue organize…

It is called Information Asymmetry[0] in Contract Theory.

NSA, KGB, FBI, Google, Facebook, any institution with access to large-scale privileged information– you name it, has at least one case to support the use of this advantage.

Perhaps Nixon and Hoover case is the most obvious one.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1991/06/05/us/tape-shows-nixon-feare...

Re: NSA collected 500M U.S. call records in 2017, a sharp rise: official report

#226

Post by toufique »

rhizome wrote: post #16
olfactory wrote: post #2

I think the bottom line is that the American people do not really mind the NSA doing this. I suspect this is because most people do not realize just how powerful and privacy-invading metadata surveillance is, or how the dataset does not need to be added to indefinitely to have tremendous value to law enforcement (for appropriate and inappropriate uses) once it exists at sufficient scale.

Not to be glib, but I think I saw this comment a couple weeks ago, substituting "Facebook" for "the NSA."

Major difference though is that we as individuals gave Facebook permission, and most of us would still knowingly make a "limited tracking in exchange for tangible personal utility" trade.

We as individuals never gave the NSA permission to track us, and most of us would never knowingly make the "unlimited tracking in exchange for nebulous collective utility" trade.

Re: NSA collected 500M U.S. call records in 2017, a sharp rise: official report

#227

Post by sterlind »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #205
sterlind wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you provide a source for your claim? You can read about TEMPORA here [1], which contradicts you: "We keep the full sessions for 3 working days and the metadata for 30." The filtering you're talking about would happen in POKERFACE, which applies after intake into TEMPORA. Basically: Backhaul -> TEMPORA (3 day buffer) -> POKERFACE (scrubs data by policy such as US citizen status) -> XKeyscore 1. http://www.spiege…

TEMPORA is a GCHQ system, not an NSA system, and has nothing to do with Room 641A. Additionally, it cannot record all US phone conversations as you claimed because domestic phone calls do not leave the US.

Fair point, though we did get GCHQ's data.

Room 641A was part of the WINDSTOP programs run by SSO, comprised of MUSCULAR, INCENSER and DS-300. According to [1], the NSA mass-collects VoIP partly through XKEYSCORE, FALLOUT and TURMOIL (harvested from INCENSER/DS-300/others), and PSTN through LOPERS (though it's unclear if LOPERS ingests domestic (INCENSER) data or just EuropeAsia (DANCINGOASIS) data.)

Incidentally, it's pretty impressive how much scale they handle. The DANCINGOASIS cable transfers 25Pb per day, while 3-6Pb were analyzed. And that's on a totally black op (no corporate knowledge) tap! Seriously cool.

1. https://electrospaces.blogspot.com/2014/05/nsas-largest-cabl...

Re: NSA collected 500M U.S. call records in 2017, a sharp rise: official report

#228

Post by sterlind »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #206
Clubber wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4521220/james-clapper-witting...

1. James Clapper is not in the NSA. 2. The NSA never recorded all domestic phone calls, and there is no evidence that they ever did, so neither Clapper nor the NSA lied about that.

I've been citing a lot of sources here. Can you clearly cite your assertion?

Over the past few weeks and several threads, you've consistently asserted that NSA/CIA don't bulk-collect Americans' data, with no citing proof. Did you fill out an SF-86 or something?

Re: NSA collected 500M U.S. call records in 2017, a sharp rise: official report

#229

Post by smokeyj »

jknoepfler wrote: post #201
jMyles wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say total slaves vs. total prisoners - I said black men. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/12/michelle-alexander... edit: I can't imagine why I'm being downvoted here. My statement was utterly correct, and when challenged I cited a credible source. What'd I do wrong?!

Although I tend to see most ultra-liberal conspiracy babble as nonsense, experience with my own psychology and observation of those around has led me to believe that white male fragility is a real thing. You're being downvoted because people on HN, who are by and large financially secure, well-educated technocrats (like myself!), feel like there's something deeply irritating about your post, whether or not it is stat…

It’s not about the fragility of liberal white males, it’s the fragility of government as a religion. It’s like asking Catholics to admit the atrocities in their history. Ever wonder why every crypto related article is met with disdain? It’s because their faith cannot tolerate questioning. The line between nationalism and religion is blurred intentionally.

Re: NSA collected 500M U.S. call records in 2017, a sharp rise: official report

#230

Post by jMyles »

lovich wrote: post #220
basicplus2 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to look it up.. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_economy And in doing so I read this bit about "it may have had as much to do with spreading poverty around" I presume that white people no longer having the black people to live off meant A. white people had to do alot more work themselves, and B. white people had to share much more of the available resources with black people So that they actively partic…

You had to look up Jim Crow laws? If you are American then that is an active level of ignorance. It is taught in most schools systems as far as I am aware, and is frequently brought up in the news and other political commentary, especially in the context of any sort of checks on voter registration. I took OP's comment as you would have to look up the peonage system If you are not American then it would be perfectly u…

Perhaps you misread; the looking-up wasn't for Jim Crow Laws, but the Jim Crow Economy, which is not taught in most school systems.
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