I wonder if the NSA and the politicians that enabled this realize the amount of economic damage this could do to the US by promoting the balkanization of the world's telecom networks and spreading mistrust for US tech and telecom companies. This seems very short sighted, if they care about that stuff at all.
NSA slides explain the PRISM data-collection program
51–60 of 121 posts
Re: NSA slides explain the PRISM data-collection program
#52I-M-P-E-A-C-H
oh please. like this has a thing to do with POTUS. I worked at an ISP in 1998 when we were contacted by the FBI and required to install carnivore. This has been going on a very long time.
I'll make the middle-ground argument then: Obama is at fault and should have done better, but he's also done a lot of other good things. This is one aspect of his presidency I am not happy with; for a lot of other aspects, I think he has been quite reasonable and progressive.
Re: NSA slides explain the PRISM data-collection program
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder how the Obama administration will repond to this other than the usual "Terrorism is bad and you need to trust us that we do all this for your own safety"
I hate to be this guy but there are people lighting off bombs out there and as soon as a big one goes off people will demand they do a lot more than this. Would you rather have your Facebook scanned or see a car bomb go off in Times Square during rush hour? That's not hyperbole, that's the decision we have to make.
Nobody wants to see a car bomb go off in Times Square, but the problem with this line of reasoning is that it requires an unrealistic amount of trust that the government won't take this power to extremes. It's just human nature that power tends to corrupt, and absolute power will corrupt absolutely -- especially if left unchecked. In the case of these revelations, how can something be kept in check if its mere existence is kept secret by those who abuse it?
Re: NSA slides explain the PRISM data-collection program
#54Link to delete Google Account: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/32046?hl=en
Why? If your ISP is giving you up, what does google matter?
Most Google services can work over SSL (after years of pressure). That trumps ISP's DPI. And live traffic is nothing compared to your search history (with location and profiling) and email.
Re: NSA slides explain the PRISM data-collection program
#55So when do we get to read about The Machine in Person of Interest?
Re: NSA slides explain the PRISM data-collection program
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder how the Obama administration will repond to this other than the usual "Terrorism is bad and you need to trust us that we do all this for your own safety"
I hate to be this guy but there are people lighting off bombs out there and as soon as a big one goes off people will demand they do a lot more than this. Would you rather have your Facebook scanned or see a car bomb go off in Times Square during rush hour? That's not hyperbole, that's the decision we have to make.
That is hyperbole. The number of terrorist incidents is massively low, and the few that the government claims to have stopped were such laughably unrealistic plots that one wonders the government even bothered. Meanwhile, we have a government surveillance program that literally surpasses the level of the Stasi, here in the United States, and simultaneously an administration that will not even reveal the criteria used for deciding when to engage in an extrajudicial killing.
Sorry, but you cannot scare me with terrorism. I would rather see the rare terrorist attack than live in a country where I have to think twice about what I say on the phone.
Re: NSA slides explain the PRISM data-collection program
#57I'm not sure why this is a big surprise to anyone. I'm a cynic, but if anyone asked me whether I think the NSA, CIA, or FBI are eavesdropping on personal communications, I would say, "of course they are." This is nothing new: ECHELON, Clipper/Skipjack, Carnivore, ...
How many times does some one have to say this? I'm sorry, but this sort of comment is getting pretty tiresome. Yes we all "knew". All of us "knew". Some of us have "known" for something like 15 years. (Which, BTW, is why I'm most sure why Obama is getting so much flack. Its a Clinton - Bush - Obama scandal.) But none of us, not one, actually did know anything at all. We suspected, or assumed. But we did not know. Not…
No. Don't downplay people concerned with privacy who noticed a series of obvious, blatant actions over a period of literally decades as cynics or conspiracy nuts.
You are picking on people; we really did know, not "know." It was obvious, it remains obvious, and the fact is that its going to continue and get worse despite the revelations of this week, unless we do something.
Painting rational people who notice and complain about government overreach as paranoid is precisely what enables the expansion of these policies. You should be asking what you can do now to help rather than setting us up to be further discredited or ignored by implying our years of complaining weren't substantiated until just now.
Re: NSA slides explain the PRISM data-collection program
#58Now. Exactly which data is exposed for each provider? I'm thinking mostly about Gmail. Because virtually everyone now is using it… The whole content of any communications? Just origin/dest? This is becoming scary.
Exactly which data is exposed for each provider? According to slide 2, all of it. You might be confusing this with yesterday's Verizon story, which was "only" metadata -- caller, sender, time, and duration. This one is "actual" data -- email content, chat text, audio/video of VoIP calls. (From the article, there's also a parallel NSA program (BLARNEY) that collects metadata only. I don't know why there's two of them)…
Rather, I'm trying to hold onto the idea that my mail is not directly piped, entirely, into a government tracking and storage system. No questions asked, no filters: just everything.
Which is what is probably happening right now.
Re: NSA slides explain the PRISM data-collection program
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate to be this guy but there are people lighting off bombs out there and as soon as a big one goes off people will demand they do a lot more than this. Would you rather have your Facebook scanned or see a car bomb go off in Times Square during rush hour? That's not hyperbole, that's the decision we have to make.
Nobody wants to see a car bomb go off in Times Square, but the problem with this line of reasoning is that it requires an unrealistic amount of trust that the government won't take this power to extremes. It's just human nature that power tends to corrupt, and absolute power will corrupt absolutely -- especially if left unchecked. In the case of these revelations, how can something be kept in check if its mere existe…
I'm just happy someone found a productive use for Facebook.
But right, it can't be kept in check because it will bleed out into other areas of law enforcement. Then we hit back. But I do think people's thermometers are good enough to know when something like this is warranted and when it's not. When you remember that we are at war, on our own soil, this is a very minor thing. But if one major attack happens though it will create a panic and then we'll see major changes to our way of life. And a lot of the same tough guys here from New York and San Francisco will be the ones demanding it.
Re: NSA slides explain the PRISM data-collection program
#60I'd like the raw/unredacted slides, please (or at least images of them, to protect the source).