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Government obtains wide AP phone records in probe

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Re: Government obtains wide AP phone records in probe

#21
post #16
post #12

Actually we need more of that! Whatever it takes to help media wake up and become more critical of government intrusion tactics.

No we don't. Most of this is already reported, if you want to look for it. If you're worried that citizens of your country aren't interested in those stories, you should get out and make more people aware.

This is about agenda setting. Media coverage determines what gets covered and what not.

Scandals like these make government's ongoing privacy intrusion a real, tangible issue. If I go around spreading the gospel, I am just an internet tinfoil head. If it is the headline on a national newspaper, it is a real issue that needs discussion.

Re: Government obtains wide AP phone records in probe

#22
Let's not forget the IRS having authority to pull all electronic communications from an entity without any kind of oversight at all (because they are a "special" agency) and now word that some of the documents they've been pulling, perhaps against policy, were leaked to the press.

I tried to post an analysis of why the IRS story was important to hackers everywhere earlier. It was killed. Beats me why. Some wag said it was just more political bullshit.

I quite understand people who want to hear exclusively about Erlang innards and point out there are plenty of other places for articles that involve any politics at all. But this is the world we live in, and the technologies we are developing are being used for this stuff.

One day some guy writes code to exploit MITM attacks for web devices, and one day very soon afterwards some despotic government uses it to target and kill people. You can't continue to hide your head in the sand and pretend that somehow some really cool tech will come along and save the day, so back to the Apple and SV gossip tripe. That's simply not realistic. We don't write pure technology. We create powerful tools that impact the lives of people everywhere. It is not rational to pretend that impact does not exist. I guarantee you that some hacker in the audience probably played a role in the software used for the AP intercept.

ADD: And the joke I've been thinking about all day which must come out: they don't make a Hallmark card for this.

Re: Government obtains wide AP phone records in probe

#23
post #13

Maybe my memory's failing me, but I can't think of a similarly-sized press surveillance operation by the Bush Administration. Keep in mind that under Obama, more alleged government leakers have been prosecuted than all of his predecessors combined: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-18/obama-pursuing-leak... This includes administrations that oversaw such problematic eras as the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the McCa…

Maybe Alberto Gonzalez never bothered to send the letter. The scary thing is, how would we ever know that the government is respecting the security of our privacy, if they have to power to ignore it?

Re: Government obtains wide AP phone records in probe

#24
post #17

Are there currently any VOIP+Tor type technologies that could reasonably replace existing telephone services and prevent this sort of thing in the future?

VOIP is just as easily snooped as regular lines. It's not as easy, but you can do it with the right tools.

Re: Government obtains wide AP phone records in probe

#25

They told me if I voted for McCain that we'd end up living in a police state after 8 years...and they were right! Credit to Instapundit if you care to see more from the most transparent administration ever http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/?s=%22They+told+me+if+I+voted...

Pretty much both sides of the spectrum look pretty grim.

I used to be a hard-ass liberal, but now I've changed my outlook, matured a bit, and become a libertarian.

Their philosophy makes the most sense, but no one seems to listen.

Re: Government obtains wide AP phone records in probe

#26
post #24
post #17

Are there currently any VOIP+Tor type technologies that could reasonably replace existing telephone services and prevent this sort of thing in the future?

VOIP is just as easily snooped as regular lines. It's not as easy, but you can do it with the right tools.

Which is the "+Tor" part, which both encrypts the data and obscures the sending and receiving parties.

Re: Government obtains wide AP phone records in probe

#27
post #17

Are there currently any VOIP+Tor type technologies that could reasonably replace existing telephone services and prevent this sort of thing in the future?

Adding to your question, it seems there are two things that are needed: Reducing reliance on a third-party service (phone company, Skype, etc.) that may keep call records which can be subpoenaed; and encrypting the conversation itself so it can't be monitored.

It seeems there are "crypto phones", but do these still rely on a third-party service to initiate and transmit the call? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_phone

Re: Government obtains wide AP phone records in probe

#28
post #17

Are there currently any VOIP+Tor type technologies that could reasonably replace existing telephone services and prevent this sort of thing in the future?

Adding to your question, it seems there are two things that are needed: Reducing reliance on a third-party service (phone company, Skype, etc.) that may keep call records which can be subpoenaed; and encrypting the conversation itself so it can't be monitored. It seeems there are "crypto phones", but do these still rely on a third-party service to initiate and transmit the call? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_ph…

From what I can gather, those crypto phones will encrypt the communication but the identity of the two parties and the duration of the calls would still be known.

Re: Government obtains wide AP phone records in probe

#29
post #13

Maybe my memory's failing me, but I can't think of a similarly-sized press surveillance operation by the Bush Administration. Keep in mind that under Obama, more alleged government leakers have been prosecuted than all of his predecessors combined: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-18/obama-pursuing-leak... This includes administrations that oversaw such problematic eras as the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the McCa…

This was an interesting argument, so I did some quick research. Apparently, six (6) Espionage Act cases have been filed under Obama. I found and read the indictments for each (they're easy to find, since FAS tracks them). They were:

* Thomas Drake, an NSA employee who favored "ThinThread" instead of the later-adopted "Trailblazer" internet surveillance scheme, who then created a Hushmail account and fed classified documents to a reporter from it.

* Shamai Leibowitz, an FBI contractor/interpreter, who fed the contents of an cable intercepted from the Israeli embassy to a blogger because he felt it implicated Israel in an attack on Iran.

* Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a career civil servant at State who worked on counterproliferation and North Korea and fed classified documents about North Korea to Fox News, and then lied to the FBI about having any contact with journalists.

* Bradley Manning

* Jeffrey Sterling, who was fired from the CIA, lodged a series of employment law disputes with the CIA, attempted to write a memoir about his time at CIA, and then fed classified details about Iranian counterproliferation to a reporter which put a human intelligence resource at risk.

* John Kiriakou, a CIA counterterrorism official who worked in Pakistan, who outed two covert operatives to a reporter (they had allegedly been involved in the Bush-era interrogation program).

Of this list, Kiriakou and Drake are sympathetic to me, but every single case here seems like a valid prosecution; when you take a role that requires you to handle the most sensitive data the government handles, you cannot share it with the press expecting not to end up arguing your side of the story in a court of law. You certainly can't out covert operatives, or feed foreign intercepts you translate to bloggers!

Re: Government obtains wide AP phone records in probe

#30
post #13

Maybe my memory's failing me, but I can't think of a similarly-sized press surveillance operation by the Bush Administration. Keep in mind that under Obama, more alleged government leakers have been prosecuted than all of his predecessors combined: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-18/obama-pursuing-leak... This includes administrations that oversaw such problematic eras as the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the McCa…

Have you ever thought of the fact that perhaps people behaved themselves because they were more afraid of Bush than Obama? It's easy to say, under "Obama's Administration" as if they called Obama for permission and he stamped approved on it. That's akin to blaming the President of a company for something an intern did. Sure, in the overall picture, the President is responsible for everything that happens underneath him, but without the detail of who did what, why, who gave who permission, etc, let's not rush to judgement.
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