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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

#271

Post by gojomo »

cpleppert wrote: post #202
moxie wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is the video clip from General Alexander's congressional testimony three days ago, where he stated this was not happening: http://youtu.be/ZmBAxEWxDFs?t=1h29m50s It's not clear to me whether they were sworn in for this hearing or not, but if this new report is true, then this seems to be at least the second documented case of an exposed lie about the scope of surveillance during congressional testimony. The firs…

He might be interpreting the claim as being that Snowden could do that, which is, of course, false.

I don't follow your "of course, false". Maybe Snowden really could obtain wiretaps of federal judges and the President, either because he was given the discretionary permission to do so in the course of an investigation, or they were available to him with a little trivial privilege-escalation.

Alexander might have meant Snowden wasn't supposed to have that capability. Or that Snowden had it but wasn't supposed to use it that way, so he "couldn't" do it under the law (but could in practice).

It's hard to say; the testimony has often used obfuscatory weasel words and conveniently shifting definitions, and the avuncular grandparents in the Senate aren't exactly vigorous in their cross-examination.

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

#272

Post by dragonwriter »

tptacek wrote: post #264
lessnonymous wrote: post #31

Why is Snowden a traitor but Nadler not? Did Nadler not just go to the press with information that was part of a secret NSA briefing?

Congresspeople have immunity for anything they say on the House floor barring treason. Mike Gravel read Ellsburg's Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record in the '70s.

> Congresspeople have immunity for anything they say on the House floor barring treason.

This is true all up until the "barring treason" part, which is incorrect.

Congresspeople have immunity for anything they say on the floor, additionally, they can't be arrested while attending a session except on charges of treason, felony, or "breach of peace". [1]

A lot of people in recent discussions on HN have been confusing the exception that allows them to be arrested on certain basis while they are attending session as an exception to the immunity for legislative acts.

[1] US Constitution, Article I, Sec. 6, Clause 1.

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

#274

Post by throwaway10001 »

tptacek wrote: post #242
pradocchia wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude. They have the content of email too. I'm going to make a wild guess here and assume it falls under the "required by law" category of the denials. Well, too bad for them, too bad for us. Welcome to the future, and there's scant chance that any of this will ever get rolled back. Meanwhile, its also fairly obvious that some security folks sympathetic to the NSA have your ear. You like them, you respect their skills…

Dude. Provide evidence for extraordinary claim. I'm all ears. Also: this content vs. metadata thing? Also I think a red herring: they don't have full metadata access from Google Mail either.

they don't have full metadata access from Google Mail either.

And you know this...how exactly? I can't say they do but it wouldn't surprise me. To say that they don't however is a different story. What's the difference between phone metadata http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/06/06/nsa_veriz... and email metadata? Why one is OK and the other is not, assuming NSA goes to court to get them? In fact, emails over 180 days have very little protection.

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

#275

Post by vidarh »

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,…

You can record GSM encoded (9600bps) voice of all americans 24/7 for a year and still only fill up a couple of percent of the speculated storage capacity of the NSA's new Utah data centre. I don't know how long the average person spends on the phone each day, but clearly recording the phone calls will be just a small fraction of that again. So keeping a few years of recordings of all phone calls they can get their hands on would not be a storage problem.

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

#276

Post by vidarh »

tptacek wrote: post #36
eightyone wrote: post #33

Earlier 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…

Unless I have missed something, Guardian has NOT said the NSA does not have direct access.

The Guardian has reported that an NSA document says they do, and that Google says they don't. As far as I have seen, the Guardian has not made a claim either way.

You choose to trust Google. A lot of other people here choose to trust the NSA documents more.

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

#277

Post by dandelany »

trevelyan wrote: post #168
tptacek wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For fuck's sake. So you don't just disagree with (1) and (2), but with the whole thing. Why not just say that? Yes, to whatever extent that slide deck said NSA has direct access to the servers that run Google Mail, I am arguing with the slide deck.

Two days ago you were arguing with a slide deck. At this point, you're also arguing with a NSA brief of Congress and numerous public statements by members of Congress. Swearing at me isn't the solution in any case. If you want to stop taking flack on HN, you should stop attacking the credibility of whistleblowers on the rhetorical basis that you know more about what the NSA is doing than the NSA does.

You misread the article - the briefing seems to only specifically mention wiretapping phone calls. The author goes on to say:

> Because the same legal standards that apply to phone calls also apply to e-mail messages, text messages, and instant messages, Nadler's disclosure indicates the NSA analysts could also access the contents of Internet communications without going before a court and seeking approval.

Meaning the US Gov't believes it has as much legal right to access e-mail as it does phone calls. Claims that they've done so in the same way (that is, in massive numbers with very little oversight or attention) are speculation. As more evidence begins to surface, it seems like telephone companies like AT&T and Verizon have been far more complicit in the NSA's indiscriminate surveillance programs than companies eg. Google that control e-mail - when's the last time you saw AT&T publish a transparency report detailing government requests for user data?

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

#278

Post by babesh »

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…

That 'might' seems much more like an 'is'. And they seem to be sharing that information with foreign governments as well.

As an aside, why is Silicon Valley not much more worked up about this versus say immigration acts? This seems to be more important than the immigration bills they are pushing. Talking about misplaced values... Thinking of more ways to make money while Rome burns.

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

#279

Post by etherael »

tptacek wrote: post #251
etherael wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say "that's not an accident" do you mean to imply you'd have ethical objections to it? As you are one of the three most common defenders of the state that I have noticed on this site, that would be very surprising to me. But quite interesting if so, it would be some indication that your perspective on the issues and seeming constant defense is an indication of spiraling paranoia in counterparties to your arg…

Yes, I have an ethical problem with doing the kind of work I do for defense contractors or for the USG. I'm not saying that doing work for USG, or even software security work for them, or even offensive software security for them is prima facie unethical; I only know that I don't feel qualified to navigate the ethical quagmire, and thankfully am not required to do so. I'm also not a defender of the state. However, of…

That's why I seek to clarify, I know I don't know what's in your head. All I can know is what I see.

For the record, there is no doubt in my mind that rayiner is a hell of a lot more of a statist than you.

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