You can argue about metadata and the third party doctrine, but this is completing against the Fourth Amendment. Unless you're going to say that phone conversations should not be considered 'papers and effects'. Or unless the phone companies themselves are recording the calls and keeping them around, which seems highly unlikely.
NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants
181–190 of 407 posts
Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants
#182Since the modus operandi seems to be for the NSA to suck up everything it can and decide later it seems (wild speculation follows) that the NSA might be sitting on audio recrodings of all your phone calls for the past several years. Can you imagine the number of divorce cases that would impact? Civil lawsuits? Proof of innocence or guilt in a crime? Hell, get a decade or two of this and historians alone would have a…
If they were obtained without a warrant, wouldn't they be inadmissible as evidence, especially if they were being used in an inculpatory rather than exculpatory manner?
How quaint, assuming there would be a trial with evidence and everything.
What makes all of this horrifying instead of merely troubling to me is the corresponding destruction of the idea of a writ of habeas corpus.
Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
Part of the book 1984 was the complacence of the lower class. I am not targeting any class here but pointing out that a culture of complacency by division was a large warning in that book that is often overlooked.
It's really unfortunate that most people read 1984 as teenagers (I did). I went back to it as an adult, somewhat expecting it to be a let down. What I found was quite the opposite, there's a lot more nuance in that book than would really be absorbed by high school students being forced to read it. "The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you beg…
Do not stereotype teenagers. I am merely fifteen years old, and if you take a look through my comment thread you may find more insight than you expected.
Yes, most in my generation are shallow and passive; but that doesn't mean all are. There are some intellectuals on the fringes.
Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
"and the Guardian walked the claim back" No they didn't. "The Guardian has not revised any of our articles and, to my knowledge, has no intention to do so. That's because we did not claim that the NSA document alleging direct collection from the servers was true; we reported - accurately - that the NSA document claims that the program allows direct collection from the companies' servers. Before publishing, we went to…
I'm not interested in the semantic argument. Emily Bazelon called The Guardian out this week on the Slate political podcast, as have many others; this is now a mainstream criticism of how The Guardian reported the story. Either way: the original notion that NSA had direct access to the servers that actually operate Google Mail has been found to be unsupported by the evidence published thus far. I call this out contin…
Imagine if you were designing a system to store massive amounts of intercepted email data for archival and occasional retrieval. The design would be quite different from gmail and it would require a lot less infrastructure.
I think your analysis is perhaps being biased a bit by the idea that dealing with all the email data would be massively expensive.
Also, consider that phone companies already have existing government granted monopolies, while companies like Google and Facebook are significantly more vulnerable to bad press or some kind of disruption triggered by public mistrust.
Hence one possible strategy for minimizing the impact of Snowden's revelations would be to admit to the phone aspect of the powerpoint and to drastically minimize the relationships with web companies.
Also considering the power of ad network cookies and the amount of information stored, the intelligence value of internet companies' data dwarfs the value of phone call data by several orders of magnitude.
Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you may be forgetting that it's not all-or-nothing. Not everyone uses Chrome. I can't speak to a slide deck; We've only seen some slides for one program (PRISM). I am quite sure that NSA has several different programs variously encompassing collection and decryption. Hopefully in the next few days or weeks we'll see details about more of them. I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility for a nation-st…
Then we should definitely consider DDG, a much smaller company in the same country, sharing its keys with NSA. They too might be under some gag order that not only stops them from saying that they are compromised but also gagged to say that their users are anonymous so that all the terrorists, law breakers and cheating husbands use this service because of a false sense of security. It is not beyond the realm of possi…
Again, just to keep stomping on this bit of urban legendry: while courts can issue gag orders for FISA directives, they cannot compel people to lie.
Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants
#186So that's not good. You can see how that could be happening; NSA has trunk-level access to telephony circuits. Telcos are engaged in a long-running game of footsie with the government that makes billion dollar Internet companies look like anarcho-capitalists. But I'm not seeing how we get from there to the contents of email. To have the email of arbitrary Americans without a warrant, the NSA would need direct access…
tptacek why are you always defending ridiculous statements and behavior by the US administration and spy agencies? You seem willing to bend over backwards (or is it forwards) to justify any statement from the authorities but will attack the tiniest issue in a fellow HNers post. Have you and/or your company ever worked for them? If so it would explain a lot.
We do no work whatsoever for the USG, or for any defense contractors. That's not an accident. There are other software security firms that do; Matasano does not.
Once again: I am not sticking up for NSA. I do not trust NSA. I probably share your opinion of NSA, modulo I might not mythologize their capabilities as much as other people on HN do.
I am sticking up for Google. I have friends who work there. I think very highly of their security group. From my vantage point, Google is in this instance fighting for the privacy of their users, at great expense, and getting shellacked in online forums by people who are happy to use the outrage over NSA overreach to tar Google, especially since Glenn Greenwald more or less defamed them in print.
Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's really unfortunate that most people read 1984 as teenagers (I did). I went back to it as an adult, somewhat expecting it to be a let down. What I found was quite the opposite, there's a lot more nuance in that book than would really be absorbed by high school students being forced to read it. "The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you beg…
Do not stereotype teenagers. I am merely fifteen years old, and if you take a look through my comment thread you may find more insight than you expected. Yes, most in my generation are shallow and passive; but that doesn't mean all are. There are some intellectuals on the fringes.
And think how much more astute you will be in 20 years.
Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not interested in the semantic argument. Emily Bazelon called The Guardian out this week on the Slate political podcast, as have many others; this is now a mainstream criticism of how The Guardian reported the story. Either way: the original notion that NSA had direct access to the servers that actually operate Google Mail has been found to be unsupported by the evidence published thus far. I call this out contin…
Imagine if you were designing a system to store massive amounts of intercepted email data for archival and occasional retrieval. The design would be quite different from gmail and it would require a lot less infrastructure. I think your analysis is perhaps being biased a bit by the idea that dealing with all the email data would be massively expensive. Also, consider that phone companies already have existing governm…
You think the average American would be less concerned about direct access to Google Mail than they would about the NSA having the ability to listen to everyone's phone calls?
Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's really unfortunate that most people read 1984 as teenagers (I did). I went back to it as an adult, somewhat expecting it to be a let down. What I found was quite the opposite, there's a lot more nuance in that book than would really be absorbed by high school students being forced to read it. "The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you beg…
Do not stereotype teenagers. I am merely fifteen years old, and if you take a look through my comment thread you may find more insight than you expected. Yes, most in my generation are shallow and passive; but that doesn't mean all are. There are some intellectuals on the fringes.
I agree that we should be careful not to stereotype based on age, but your comment made me think of this funny (yet poignant) bit by Louis C.K.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXcWeFn-YYM
"Older people are smarter, and if you get into an argument with someone who's older, you should listen. It doesn't mean they're always right; but even if they're wrong, their wrongness is rooted in more experience."
Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's really unfortunate that most people read 1984 as teenagers (I did). I went back to it as an adult, somewhat expecting it to be a let down. What I found was quite the opposite, there's a lot more nuance in that book than would really be absorbed by high school students being forced to read it. "The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you beg…
Do not stereotype teenagers. I am merely fifteen years old, and if you take a look through my comment thread you may find more insight than you expected. Yes, most in my generation are shallow and passive; but that doesn't mean all are. There are some intellectuals on the fringes.
Homunculiheaded was not criticizing or belittling teenagers. Notice you yourself acknowledge most teenagers today are "shallow"- consider that Homunculiheaded is not concerned with the exceptional individuals, but rather the larger group. To attempt to illustrate, a question: "At what age ought citizens read 1984, that more of them will see the deeper meanings?"