You do know that the internet exists outside of the US, right?
Stellar Wind (code name)
11–20 of 175 posts
Re: Stellar Wind (code name)
#12I'm glad someone posted this. My immediate thought after reading the breaking news about the massive phone surveillance was, "wait, did people not think this was happening?" I'm really not a conspiracy nut, but that Wired article and the NYTimes reporting made it pretty clear that the Gov't is pretty much collecting everything they can get their hands on. Glad to finally see some outrage though. Legitimate question:…
Journalist Glenn Greenwald obtained documents from a leak that confirm the NSA has secretly been requiring Verizon (and presumably the same for other networks) to provide the complete information (location, duration, id) of every single call, national or international, on an ongoing daily basis.
There is no discrimination - this is everybody, all the time.
That's kind of a big deal.
It's also pretty damn brave of whoever leaked the document.
His original article is here...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-record...
Re: Stellar Wind (code name)
#13I've always wondered, as a Canadian whose communications are most assuredly intercepted by the US gov., why such spying is not considered an act of war? If I go to the US and "physically" spy, I'll get prosecuted, won't I? To be clear: I don't want to go to war.
You're right, with one big caveat.
All international slights are weighed against the cost of losing the offending country as a trade partner. This is how most peace is maintained these days.
Re: Stellar Wind (code name)
#14You do know that the internet exists outside of the US, right?
Are you sure ? I thought they had only minitel.
Re: Stellar Wind (code name)
#15It is interesting what the media and public choose to be concerned by. 15 years ago I would've guessed that this sort of wide-spread operation would never have been tolerated by either. Post 9/11, it was surely scandalous when ATT got caught providing taps, but honestly, it didn't seem that anyone cared that much. Not enough to put strong pressure on the government to, you know, stop. At this point, I'm convinced that almost nobody actually cares. (I'm talking about practical concern, not just a vague sense of "I don't approve".)
Interestingly, this has roughly coincided with the growth of cloud services. When using a cloud service, there is some level of conscious acceptance that someone else is processing your data and can see what you're doing, and you're more-or-less OK with it. I wouldn't have guessed that people would be so eager to use cloud services whole-sale.
I think that at this point, people tend to assume that anything that leaves their computer will/can be inspected, and for the large part they're OK with it.
Re: Stellar Wind (code name)
#16It's useful when discussing this topic to break the word "spy" down into more discrete terms to understand exactly what we are discussing.
I found this article to be useful in differentiating the various terms:
On its face, the document suggests that the U.S. government regularly collects and stores all domestic telephone records. I use the caveat because there are several ways to interpret it, assuming it is real. (It looks real.)
A few definitions: to "collect" means to gather and store; to "analyze" means that a computer or human actually does something with the records; to "intercept" means that a computer or human actually listens to or records calls.
... The NSA, under the FISA Amendments Act, is able to analyze metadata, like incoming and outgoing call records, so long as the Attorney General certifies that a particular set of information is useful for reasons of national security. Then, the NSA asks the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to order that a company comply. As that bill was being ironed out, this step was requested by private companies because they wanted protection from lawsuits in case innocents — or millions of innocents — found that the NSA had gathered their call information.
My own understanding is that the NSA routinely collects millions of domestic-to-domestic phone records. It does not do anything with them unless there is a need to search through them for lawful purposes. That is, an analyst at the NSA cannot legally simply perform random searches through the stored data. He or she needs to have a reason, usually some intelligence tip. That would allow him or her to segregate the part of the data that's necessary to analyze, and proceed from there.
In a way, it makes sense for the NSA to collect all telephone records because it can't know in advance what sections or slices it might need in the future. It does not follow that simply because the NSA collects data that it is legal for the NSA to use the data for foreign intelligence or counter-terrorism analysis.
http://theweek.com/article/index/245228/the-fbi-collects-all...
This is written specifically about the telephone call metadata, but being able to differentiate exactly what is collected about Internet traffic would also aid this discussion. Unfortunately this would only be possible if the government was more transparent about what is being collected.
Re: Stellar Wind (code name)
#17You do know that the internet exists outside of the US, right?
Yes, you know that the Internet that exists outside the US is connected to the US, right?
Which belies one of the most insidious parts of Stellar Wind... that the NSA could've just tapped the cables which link the US to other countries, but they chose to spy directly on US citizens as well.
Re: Stellar Wind (code name)
#18Stuff like this does not surprise me. Well, actually it does. It makes me question my assumption that the U.S. government has been doing stuff like this all along. If this leak is legitimate, then one can reason that the NSA didn't just acquire all of this data by itself in the past, but that they asked permission for it in the present.
Re: Stellar Wind (code name)
#19My brother worked for years in the intelligence community. One of the common stereotypes within the IC regards the fact that Mormons are heavily overrepresented, for various reasons that involve foreign language skills from mission trips, a reputation for respecting authority, abstinence from drugs/alcohol, family connections, ease of gaining security clearances, etc. The stereotype in the IC regarding Mormons is they never "question." The dozens of friends I have that work in the IC say that the stereotype is accurate.
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/11-surprising-things-you-didn...
" The apparent incorruptibility of Mormons' moral righteousness make them ideal candidates for the nation's law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
Mormons are disproportionately represented in the CIA. A recruiter told the Salt Lake Tribune that returned Mormon missionaries are valued for their foreign language skills, abstinence from drugs and alcohol, and respect for authority "
I wonder if this has bearings on constructing the new data center in Utah?
Re: Stellar Wind (code name)
#20Does anyone know how they do this, technically, and to what extent? Does Google just feed them billions of emails, or what? Do they type my name into a form on Amazon.com to get SSH access my EC2 server? And how the hell do they see my finances? Do all of those terms of service agreements say, "By the way, we give your private information to the government without question" ???
At first I thought it didn't matter that they can see what I do, because if I store a movie of my underground lair with nukes and a few F-22s in Google Drive, they can't use the evidence against me in court unless they get a warrant. But let's be real: if you've got a movie of yourself shooting some guy in the face in Google Drive, they're going to find a way to get that warrant before you delete the movie. And they'll have a copy of it to show the judge. You don't even know they've seen your not-so-secret stuff. The fact that they do this in a clandestine manner effectively makes it unconstitutional since the warrant protection is easy for them to circumvent.