21–30 of 49 posts
"Meanwhile, the BBC has learned that Twitter was invited to join the Prism programme last year, but rejected the approach from US authorities." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22824379
What would be the point? The vast majority of the data is public, and Twitter will give you firehose access (essentially a stream of all tweets) if you ask nicely.
Intelligence community sources said that this description, although inaccurate from a technical perspective, matches the experience of analysts at the NSA. From their workstations anywhere in the world, government employees cleared for PRISM access may “task” the system and receive results from an Internet company without further interaction with the company’s staff.
According to a more precise description contained in a classified NSA inspector general’s report, also obtained by The Post, PRISM allows “collection managers [to send] content tasking instructions directly to equipment installed at company-controlled locations,” rather than directly to company servers. The companies cannot see the queries that are sent from the NSA to the systems installed on their premises, according to sources familiar with the PRISM process.
Crucial aspects about the mechanisms of data transfer remain publicly unknown. Several industry officials told The Post that the system pushes requested data from company servers to classified computers at FBI facilities at Quantico. The information is then shared with the NSA or other authorized intelligence agencies.
The fascinating thing, for me, is whether this catastrophic blow to our privacy will actually even register with most users of the services that are deemed to be 'tainted'.
And if they don't care, at least not enough to stop using those services, then we have accepted these intrusions as a necessary consequence of modern technology and modern life.
And as soon as you are not in the U.S. or aren't the citizen, they don't need any order at all, not even the broad one, it's lawful for security agencies to get as much as they can and for Google to not even log which queries were made. Google can even help agencies by automatically informing them if the "target" fits "free to access" criteria. And everybody is still not breaking the law. Moreover, the amount of beli…
The NSA is not allowed to spy on Americans.
ASIO is not allowed to spy on Australians.
But what if the NSA gave the PRISM tech and data feed to ASIO so ASIO could spy on Americans and answer any question the NSA asks (and vice versa).
Now neither intelligence service has an 'illegal wiretap' on their own citizens. They just receive 'foreign intelligence' from each other.
Now mix in every other 'friendly' state and there's a massive worldwide mesh of data gathering that's all legal .. in the strictest sense of the word.
(I feel like I should put my tinfoil hat on .. but since this has broken I'm fairly sure they're futile)
> "It can begin surveillance a week before making the request to the secret court, and the surveillance can continue during the appeals process if, in a rare case, the spy court rejects the surveillance application." How can this be constitutional? Doesn't the 4th amendment say you need probable cause before spying/searching on someone? I've also read that the NSA is spying on some, and then gives the info to the FBI…
One of the biggest criticisms of democracy is that it would be too slow of a process, when, for example someone runs a plain into a business building and kills lots of people. So the founders of America created something called setting the country into a "state of emergency" which grants certain rights and privileges not normally legal. They didn't think that the government would be so power hungry that they'd just l…
If you look at the link you posted you'll see that the verbiage about "national emergency" was designed and implemented by Congress as law, not as part of the Constitution itself.
> "It can begin surveillance a week before making the request to the secret court, and the surveillance can continue during the appeals process if, in a rare case, the spy court rejects the surveillance application." How can this be constitutional? Doesn't the 4th amendment say you need probable cause before spying/searching on someone? I've also read that the NSA is spying on some, and then gives the info to the FBI…
The twist here is that the NSA gets to trawl through the data looking for interesting stuff (to them) on a pinky promise to a judge (in a court that has never said no) that they won't target US citizens. Given that the US government has stated that a 51% chance that the target is not a US citizen is sufficient to meet this requirement (!), it sounds to me as if the NSA gets to target whoever they like (because taking a huge pile of data and processing it with automated algorithms is not 'collecting' it according to the State doublespeak) and if they happen to wind up targeting some US citizens, well they can always claim in court (should it ever come to that, which it won't) that they thought there was a 51%+ chance that they were dealing with non-US individuals. How would you ever challenge that?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would be the point? The vast majority of the data is public, and Twitter will give you firehose access (essentially a stream of all tweets) if you ask nicely.
IP addresses that access accounts might be of interest.
Justin Schuh is a google chrome security employee and former military/agency contractor with a TS clearance, who hinted that it is basically a REST API on his twitter feed. That's getting pretty close to Arrington's theory. https://twitter.com/justinschuh He's a little drunk on the red, white and blue kool-aid, right now and lashing out, but he had some comments earlier. (make your own interpretation, I don't know hi…
(Bias on the table, I know Justin).
> "It can begin surveillance a week before making the request to the secret court, and the surveillance can continue during the appeals process if, in a rare case, the spy court rejects the surveillance application." How can this be constitutional? Doesn't the 4th amendment say you need probable cause before spying/searching on someone? I've also read that the NSA is spying on some, and then gives the info to the FBI…
You only need probable cause for US citizens IIRC. Anyone else is fair game as far as the NSA is concerned. The twist here is that the NSA gets to trawl through the data looking for interesting stuff (to them) on a pinky promise to a judge (in a court that has never said no) that they won't target US citizens. Given that the US government has stated that a 51% chance that the target is not a US citizen is sufficient…
I think there's the idea of a spectrum of intrusion. Looking in windows of a car is a search, but that stuff is already in plain view. Is that unreasonable? We all know email is plain text and the sender does not control routing. It's more like a postcard than a letter to begin with.
That said, I'm a weeks worth of surveillance without a warrant is horrifying.