NSA “precomputed contact chaining” enhances phone-record tracking program • Hacker News Board

Re: NSA “precomputed contact chaining” enhances phone-record tracking program

#51

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, May 25, 2020, 3:38 PM UTC

voxic11 wrote: post #50

dragonwriter wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That deals with immunity to civil liability, not immunity to criminal prosecution. There's no necessary relationship between them.

The president has the power to fire any federal prosecutor, there should be no expectation that any action he approves of will ever result in criminal prosecution. Civil liability is the only mechanism for holding those in the executive accountable besides impeachment. Many violations of rights are not criminally prosecutable anyways.

> The president has the power to fire any federal prosecutor, there should be no expectation that any action he approves of will ever result in criminal prosecution.

The President does not have the power to fire federal prosecutors serving in subsequent administrations. It's true that you've provided the explanation for why (even without the DoJ opinion which currently prohibits filing charges against a sitting President) it is dubious that a President could effectively be held criminally accountable while in office.

After he leaves office, his only protection is relying on political concerns, or an anticipatory pardon.

Re: NSA “precomputed contact chaining” enhances phone-record tracking program

#52

Post by kyuudou » Fri, May 29, 2020, 8:01 PM UTC

monocasa wrote: post #26

soraminazuki wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're correct in the sense that it's how things are supposed to work. However in practice, things are different. Secret interpretations of the law, which should have no more weight than mere opinions, were used to justify surveillance programs that seems outright illegal at first glance, and people got away with it.

Or create a program to extrajudicially assassinate American citizens, including specifically targeting minors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdulrahman_al-Awlaki

Just to be clear, there was no due process of law or habeas corpus with that particular murder.

The blowback from such atrocities is probably going to kill this country as we know it. It'll take a few years to unravel, as many powerbroker boomers die off, but it does not look good.

I do not want to be right about this.

Re: NSA “precomputed contact chaining” enhances phone-record tracking program

#53

Post by dredmorbius » Fri, May 29, 2020, 10:38 PM UTC

Lammy wrote: post #2

"The agency collected “only metadata,” it said, not the content of telephone calls." Relevant: "Using Metadata to find Paul Revere" (2013) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23276083

"We Kill People Based on Metadata", General Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and the CIA.

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/05/10/we-kill-people-base...

Re: NSA “precomputed contact chaining” enhances phone-record tracking program

#54

Post by memexy » Wed, Jun 03, 2020, 1:55 AM UTC

walterbell wrote: post #13

PaulHoule wrote: post #11

Around that time (2013) I knew a European defense contractor was trying to build a triple store that could inject a trillion or so triples a day without purging any; they went to an RDF specialist and a columnar database pro and they said "are you kidding me?" I told them that they were not. See also Mark Lombardi an artist who died under mysterious circumstances after hanging meticulously designed linkages between f…

Which OSS/commercial database is currently best for high-performance scalable triple-stores? Is there anything that works with PostgreSQL?

Any specific reason for the triple store vs a generic sql or graph database? What queries would you be looking for that would be better served with a triple store vs another type of database?