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Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

networkworld.com

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Re: Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

#21

Post by walexander »

tlrobinson wrote: post #19
WestCoastJustin wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a question about this -- maybe I'm ignorant. But using https without self-signed keys actually allows the government to peer into your communications, doesn't it? We are worried about third parties stealing your data between you and your bank for example. A bank might be a bad example as they probably already have access to their databases for compliance reasons. Can't the US government ask for the keys of the…

They don't even need to ask for the keys. Pretty much every OS/browser comes with root CAs belonging to the U.S. government (on OS X I see "DoD Root CA 2" and "DoD CLASS 3 Root CA", see also http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4415 ). As I understand it, if they wanted to, they could MITM any HTTPS connection by forging a certificate using their root CAs. This is why people were upset when a root CA for some Chinese govern…

Just remove DoD certs from your trust list if you don't want to accept them.

This might not be a laymen solution, but it's a very simple procedure in most browsers.

Re: Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

#22

Post by gasull »

tlrobinson wrote: post #19
WestCoastJustin wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a question about this -- maybe I'm ignorant. But using https without self-signed keys actually allows the government to peer into your communications, doesn't it? We are worried about third parties stealing your data between you and your bank for example. A bank might be a bad example as they probably already have access to their databases for compliance reasons. Can't the US government ask for the keys of the…

They don't even need to ask for the keys. Pretty much every OS/browser comes with root CAs belonging to the U.S. government (on OS X I see "DoD Root CA 2" and "DoD CLASS 3 Root CA", see also http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4415 ). As I understand it, if they wanted to, they could MITM any HTTPS connection by forging a certificate using their root CAs. This is why people were upset when a root CA for some Chinese govern…

Try Perspectives addon:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/perspectives/

Re: Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

#24

Post by waiwai933 »

tikhonj wrote: post #16
waiwai933 wrote: post #9

Ethics, morality and legality aside, I'd be really curious to see what information is actually stored in these "dossiers", besides (presumably) one's name, address, and other details that other branches of the government legitimately have.

Is that the sort of thing you can ask for with a FOIA request? If you have some spare time it might be worth trying--it certainly couldn't hurt. I'm not familiar enough with the actual procedure to say if it would be particularly difficult or not.

Not really, unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, if one is speaking practically and not philosophically, since I'd rather terrorists not know what intelligence agencies have on them).

FOIA has an extensive list of exemptions, and pretty much anything relating to do with national security is exempt from FOIA requests. And well, it's called the National Security Agency for a reason; even though the information probably isn't legitimately related to national security, can you prove that it isn't, keeping in mind that you can't see it until you've proven that it's not?

Re: Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

#25

Post by h2000 »

waiwai933 wrote: post #9

Ethics, morality and legality aside, I'd be really curious to see what information is actually stored in these "dossiers", besides (presumably) one's name, address, and other details that other branches of the government legitimately have.

I think the great majority of the dossiers states only 'mostly harmless'.

Re: Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

#26

Post by grandalf »

waiwai933 wrote: post #9

Ethics, morality and legality aside, I'd be really curious to see what information is actually stored in these "dossiers", besides (presumably) one's name, address, and other details that other branches of the government legitimately have.

I'm guessing that it's a timeline with some useful visualizations that allow the viewer to see patterns based on all the available data.

They'd have income/employment/tax data, your "network" as defined by google, facebook, the phones #s you dial, the phone #s that call you, family, classmates, etc.

They'd also have information about (and tools to easily search for) internet community involvement, travel history, banking history, credit score, and TONS of clickstream data.

The challenge for the government is that there is so much data on each person (available already or available with a few automated warrants) that creating tools to facilitate automated and human pattern recognition are crucial.

There are likely lots of metrics (formulated similarly to something like a credit score or a life insurance policy quote) that are updated automatically and indicate the chances that you'll do various things.

While it's very unlikely that most of us are of any interest whatsoever to authorities, the power of this information is when it can be used on someone else connected to you who is a target. Suppose the system flags 500 individuals as potential domestic terrorists. There is humint needed to rule these out as quacks, which the intel in your dossier might be useful for.

I think that what we have to keep in mind is that the state having these powers is tolerable now only b/c we are still in the infancy of this kind of technology and those in power haven't really developed a clear path toward totalitarianism yet, though now and then they start to come close.

Re: Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

#27

Post by bobsy »

If this is true doesn't it mean that Bin Laden won the war on terror?

Every time I go to the airport I think this. Those full body scanners? Thanks to Bin Laden, now you practically get strip searched for every flight. You have to take off your shoes. You cannot take drinks on a plane.

You then have everyone on edge no matter where you go. You and a friend play CounterStrike. You get on the bus and start talking about good locations to plant the bomb. You will probably be wrestled to the floor by some over-zealous commuter.

It doesn't surprise me if this is true. The US attitude to privacy and civil rights have been becoming more like China's every year since 2001.

Re: Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

#28

Post by conradfr »

bobsy wrote: post #27

If this is true doesn't it mean that Bin Laden won the war on terror? Every time I go to the airport I think this. Those full body scanners? Thanks to Bin Laden, now you practically get strip searched for every flight. You have to take off your shoes. You cannot take drinks on a plane. You then have everyone on edge no matter where you go. You and a friend play CounterStrike. You get on the bus and start talking abou…

The U.S (or the West) did not change its politics in the Middle-East and is still not an Islamic country so I don't think Bin Laden won.

Now maybe the U.S citizens lost ...

Re: Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

#29

Post by hooande »

About ten years ago, the NSA got direct access to every phone call, text and email sent via AT&T from the west coast to asia. Every. Single. Message. Set up shop next to the servers and just copied all of the data coming across.

I think that by "dossiers" this guy meant "social network information from communication logs". They can start with your number (any number) and see who communicates with it. And then see who communicates with those people, and so on until they find a link to a terrorist or whatever.

If you're doing something that the government doesn't want you to do, use a burner phone. And drive 30 minutes from your home, and use a proxy server to connect to the internet. Any federal agent can get a record of every call you make with a boilerplate warrant. The NSA can dig up the full text of all of your conversations with a tech support ticket. Welcome to 2012.

If it makes you feel any better, facebook has a similar level of information about you and they haven't done much harm with it.

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