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NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

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Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

#211

Post by niels_olson »

pasbesoin wrote: post #174
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #77

Since 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…

I recall some months ago a seemingly fairly technical and generally informed commenter -- here on HN, I believe -- laying out their back of the envelop calculation of what it might take to archive all the U.S. voice traffic. The resulting figures were currently readily achievable, and they became increasingly... "trivial" (my interpretation) with the already announced and in progress data center expansions. And here,…

The real problem is that once a government program is started, good luck shutting it down. Look at the GITMO detainee program.

Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

#212

Post by jhart3333 »

tptacek wrote: post #124
gojomo wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for acknowledging that it is fathomable that NSA has Google Mail's keymatter, and that if they do, it would be one of the most closely guarded secrets in the agency, something they would burn other programs, and make other cover stories, to obscure. The term "direct access" may have been fuzzy speak, and indicative of an "impedance mismatch" between what different concentric layers of the NSA knows. The aut…

Since there's already a program (Ambinder reported on it) called PRISM that pertains to dropboxes used to handle data from FISA requests, Occam's Razor tells me that it's more likely that the slide deck author was referring to direct access to these dropboxes than it is that NSA would somehow have allowed it to become common knowledge within NSA that they had a capability to unilaterally take data from Google Mail.

Occam's Razor? Really? No question of trust enters your mind?

Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

#214

Post by jlgreco »

tptacek wrote: post #195
jlgreco wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose I did not spell this out clear enough for you. A traditional corporatist could be accused of trying to bring corporations up to the same level as governments. Rayiner seems to be playing at the idea of bringing governments up to the level of corporations. Despite appearing to be opposing positions, it should not take a rocket scientist to find the common ground. Of course if you have no interest in doing so…

What does it mean for a corporation to be at "the same level as" a government?

Go find an anarcho-syndicalist and ask them what they think of self-secribed libertarians and anarcho-capitalism.

Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

#216

Post by incongruity »

kunai wrote: post #183
Homunculiheaded wrote: post #134

Earlier 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.

Forgive me, because I'm sure you are as thoughtful as you say you are - but, as someone now a number of years past their teenage years (and who tried hard to be similarly thoughtful) I would argue that you will be even more so in a decade or two.

I don't dispute how you are now, but I promise you'll be all that and more. And that was the point of the previous poster, I believe.

Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

#217

Post by mpyne »

spikels wrote: post #8

Wait - what? Isn't it our leaders consistent position that "listening" without a specific warrant is wrong? Now I am really confused.

That's their position, yes, and was even the position Mueller gave in the unclassified briefing right before the Senator told him there was a conflict in what was said.

I suspect that in the classified briefing the Senator was told something to the effect that phone calls are recorded without a warrant, possibly even that an analyst could flag someone's phone number to be recorded. Presumably whoever was giving the brief failed to make clear that the analyst would need a warrant to listen to the call, as I didn't see in the linked article a direct mention that the analyst could listen, only "tap in".

IMHO this would still run afoul of wiretapping law but certainly the difference between "collect" and "analyze" is an area where NSA has been pushing the boundaries between what is "search and seizure" and what is everything else, so it is at least consistent with their other information collection programs.

Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

#218

Post by declan »

tptacek wrote: post #186
wallio wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

I've had my differences with in the past -- I think polite disagreements over policy -- but he is quite correct here in what he says about Google.

Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

#219

Post by d0mine »

temp9251 wrote: post #199
kunai wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm 20 now, and I think I'm smart. When I was 15 I did as well, but now I think I was pretty stupid at the time. No doubt the pattern will continue at 25.

Related – What Mark Twain Didn’t Say:

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/10/10/twain-father/

Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

#220

Post by leoc »

tptacek wrote: post #66
burntsushi wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most of the people commenting on the NSA story on HN say things that make it clear that they believe NSA continues to have the direct access to Google's systems You're mincing words. Your comments clearly indicate that you think "direct access" unambiguously means "access to servers that run GMail that the NSA can snoop on any time they like." But from what I've seen, most comments on HN adopt and acknowledge a mor…

The process as I understand it: * NSA (or some other USG agency) issues a directive to the provider under authorization from FISA. No court order is required for NSA to issue directives under FISA. * If the provider is Google, Yahoo, or Facebook†, that directive is reviewed manually by the provider. * In at least the case of Yahoo, where this step is supported by court documents, but probably all the other cases too…

> No court order is required for NSA to issue directives under FISA.

As far as I can see (IANAL) most forms of FISA order do require a court order. FAA 702 orders are issued by the government rather than the FISC court, but still have to be reviewed and approved by the FISC. It's just that the nature of the court's review affords no protection to non-resident aliens (except by chance).

> For all intents and purposes USG never loses at FISC.

Well, it has lost at least one signficant case at FISC, it's just not letting us see the ruling.

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