Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal • Hacker News Board

Re: Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

#181

Post by Strshps1MoreTim » Mon, Dec 17, 2012, 5:59 AM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #179

Strshps1MoreTim wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Simply stating what you believe is frowned upon here, you are supposed to include your reasons. The basic assumption that we all hold about our opinions is that everyone else would believe in them too if they knew the facts we did, so it is best to accompany all statements of opinion with a logical argument for their validity.

Rules are made to broken (especially on a site called Hacker News) ;-) Plus I don't think jacquesm's "Please leave" has anything to do with the rules.

Anyway, out of the numerous reasons I believe 9/11 was an inside job, here's my favorite:

1. On 9/10 David Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defense, hold a pres conference (it's on CNN.com, etc.) and stated there are 2.3 trillion dollars, that the Pentagon cannot account for.

2. On 9/11 a part of the Pentagon, including the budget analysis department rooms, was destroyed. Most of the victims were accountants.

3. Same day WTC building 7 (not mentioned in 9/11 commission report, not investigated by any other authority) was destroyed in NY. Pentagon's primary financial information backup site was inside.

One out of the many, many "coincidences" on 9/11 ...

Re: Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

#182

Post by javajosh » Mon, Dec 17, 2012, 6:28 AM UTC

d0ne wrote: post #145

My company will sponsor $5,000 for the best idea submission for mitigation techniques against these types of systems. Any suggestion on the best service to use host this / receive submissions? We will: 1) Open source all submitted ideas. 2) Let the community choose the top 5 and we will hold an internal review process for the top spot. 3) Fly the winner(s) to our office in Atlanta, GA to discuss the winning submissio…

There are two basic approaches to mitigating massive data collection efforts: reduce your digital footprint, or add noise to your digital footprint. The latter is far more effective, as you fuck them in three ways: you hide your data, you have plausible deniability, and you spam their databases with crap.

However, the "data flak" approach has limits. It is only doable with discretionary data, and even that might be problematic. But it would work well to make access logs useless. While I don't want the system to spam hacker news with nonsense posts about building nuclear weapons, I might be able to harmlessly incorporate intentionally explosive phrases in a post just to annoy them (hah, see what I did there?) For things like flights and credit card usage, there is no way to introduce flak, or really minimize exposure.

Of course, the best mitigation technique is to raise Cain over this and get the entire system dismantled. There is simply no excuse to be doing this sort of thing. The fact is that it would be pretty hard to organize an attack and not trigger (local) alarms. Local police have a feel for the community, for what's what. They can call in the feds if they need to.

Systems like this are going to always have three serious problems: a) bringing the hammer down on the innocent (false positives), b) failing to detect actual plots (false negatives), c) be abused (used as a weapon for politically or personally motivated attacks). And in the long run a) and c) are going to grow monotonically, and that is not acceptable. It's one thing to have the asshole local cop bust down your door for no good reason, it's quite another to have a bunch of feds fly in to nab you based on some data in their computers. They've never met you, don't know you, don't know your relationships to the people around you - but based on data will ruin your life. That's a nightmare scenario if I've ever heard one!

Re: Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

#183

Post by SoftwareMaven » Mon, Dec 17, 2012, 6:45 AM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #164

jivatmanx wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Done Right" means that he wants to provide a default assumption of trust for government actions. However, the bill of rights is based upon a default distrust, and he may want to research why that was the case.

No, it means I believe that with the right pieces of law (e.g., the bill of rights), we can govern ourselves relatively successfully (e.g., the United States government) As clearly evidenced by the bill of rights and the US government, you don't have to implicitly trust your government to grant them power without finding yourself in the middle of a dictatorship police state. (Yes, I know, some people believe the USA…

I'm afraid I don't see that working out very well right now. Illegal search and seizure is common. The president can do just about anything he chooses through executive orders. The number of ways to be arrested and tried as a criminal means it is up to the police and prosecutors whether you are in or out of prison.

All of these things exist like this today. Now give them nearly unlimited information about the citizenry. I find it hard to fathom, when the government has done so poorly with what it's been given today, that they will suddenly turn around and become true protectors of the people once they have that kind of information.

Re: Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

#184

Post by tsotha » Mon, Dec 17, 2012, 6:46 AM UTC

buro9 wrote: post #3

nnq wrote: post #2

> allow databases about U.S. civilians to be handed over to foreign governments for analysis, presumably so that they too can attempt to determine future criminal actions ...where on the line did these guys lost the "innocent until proven guilty" part?! (the possibility of your government handing personal data of innocent civilians to foreign governments sounds "out of your freakyn minds" even for a foreigner like me…

It's been happening in the other direction for a number of years now. My brother was turned back when he flew to Miami with his family to take his children to Disney World. It turned out that because he had been arrested aged 19 and failed to declare it that the border people felt that he had answered fraudulantly when challenged on "Have you ever been arrested?". My brother answered no because whilst he was arrested…

Well, it's hard for me to feel much sympathy for him. They didn't ask if he was convicted, right? They asked if he'd been arrested. And he lied.

Re: Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

#185

Post by tsotha » Mon, Dec 17, 2012, 6:50 AM UTC

pyre wrote: post #180

tsotha wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Petraeus affair didn't come to light because of surveillance. That was a garden variety love triangle that blew up. The FBI wouldn't have known if they hadn't been told.

Their investigation is what is being referred to here. Their ability to dig into the email accounts without any oversight.

They have always had the ability to do that if you work in any job that requires a security clearance. Sexual orientation, affairs, drugs, politics... they have the right to look at anything that points to behavior which could make you a target for blackmail.

Re: Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

#186

Post by pyre » Mon, Dec 17, 2012, 7:33 AM UTC

tsotha wrote: post #185

pyre wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their investigation is what is being referred to here. Their ability to dig into the email accounts without any oversight.

They have always had the ability to do that if you work in any job that requires a security clearance. Sexual orientation, affairs, drugs, politics... they have the right to look at anything that points to behavior which could make you a target for blackmail.

They (the FBI) didn't know that this was connected to the director of the CIA when they started the investigation. They only made the connection to him after getting information from Google without judicial oversight.

Re: Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

#187

Post by pyre » Mon, Dec 17, 2012, 7:39 AM UTC

Strshps1MoreTim wrote: post #181

whatshisface wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simply stating what you believe is frowned upon here, you are supposed to include your reasons. The basic assumption that we all hold about our opinions is that everyone else would believe in them too if they knew the facts we did, so it is best to accompany all statements of opinion with a logical argument for their validity.

Rules are made to broken (especially on a site called Hacker News) ;-) Plus I don't think jacquesm's "Please leave" has anything to do with the rules. Anyway, out of the numerous reasons I believe 9/11 was an inside job, here's my favorite: 1. On 9/10 David Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defense, hold a pres conference (it's on CNN.com, etc.) and stated there are 2.3 trillion dollars, that the Pentagon cannot account…

Re: Item 1 and Item 2

Are you claiming that the government 'whipped up' the terrorist attack in under 24 hours?

Re: Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

#188

Post by nitrogen » Mon, Dec 17, 2012, 8:15 AM UTC

barking wrote: post #112

jlgreco wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.....and, where the cost of false positives is sufficiently high and the rate of false positives is sufficiently high, that is a very relevant consideration that is in fact made by the medical community. That is just a basic of modern medicine. The world is not black and white. These are things that must be weighed and considered rationally with real data, not emotionally with fabricated absolutes. You don't get to d…

I'm sorry but you have gone off on a tangent there. We weren't arguing about the effectiveness of the policy just the rationale behind it, I believe. I don't have any stats on that, do you?

Effectiveness is the only rationale that should matter. Also, you might benefit from having a look around http://lesswrong.com/; many of the arguments you will see on HN are grounded in the concepts of Bayesian rationality described there.

Re: Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

#189

Post by Vivtek » Mon, Dec 17, 2012, 8:23 AM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #164

jivatmanx wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Done Right" means that he wants to provide a default assumption of trust for government actions. However, the bill of rights is based upon a default distrust, and he may want to research why that was the case.

No, it means I believe that with the right pieces of law (e.g., the bill of rights), we can govern ourselves relatively successfully (e.g., the United States government) As clearly evidenced by the bill of rights and the US government, you don't have to implicitly trust your government to grant them power without finding yourself in the middle of a dictatorship police state. (Yes, I know, some people believe the USA…

Yes, you can grant them some power, but clearly there's a limit. In fact, our law and the Constitution defines that limit - and this program (and others; see SoftwareMaven's response as well) is beyond it. They have taken power not granted them.

And I don't think anybody (except maybe protesters in large cities who suffer police violence, and of course black people anywhere in the country) thinks the United States is a police state. Similarly, I am not suffering a heart attack as I'm typing this. I still eat salad instead of cheeseburgers for every meal. Analogously, I think it's important to keep an eye on excessive power grabs by the government.

The Bill of Rights is only self-government if it's used to limit the government, you see.

Re: Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal

#190

Post by Vivtek » Mon, Dec 17, 2012, 8:26 AM UTC

pyre wrote: post #186

tsotha wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have always had the ability to do that if you work in any job that requires a security clearance. Sexual orientation, affairs, drugs, politics... they have the right to look at anything that points to behavior which could make you a target for blackmail.

They (the FBI) didn't know that this was connected to the director of the CIA when they started the investigation. They only made the connection to him after getting information from Google without judicial oversight.

No, the biographer also had a clearance. They were actually within their rights.

Whether it was a gainful use of resources given the origin of the tip is dubious, but they weren't actually violating the judicial oversight requirement, as far as I understand it.