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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

#361

Post by grey-area »

leoc wrote: post #357
mpyne wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What Greenwald/Guardian said about "direct and unilateral access" is what is meant by the paraphrase of "root access". The story made it sound like an NSA analyst could just open an xterm and copy any data about any Google/Facebook/Hotmail/Skype/etc. user, whether the company agreed or not . That is the part that is not only false, but which Greenwald has refused to back down on by just pounding the slides over and o…

Also note the Google statement from the story: > In a statement, Google said: "Google cares deeply about the security of our users' data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government 'back door' into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user…

If we're to criticise journalists, we should hold ourselves to the standards we expect of the them. The article said:

'In a statement, Google said'

You paraphrase this as the article saying:

'Here's a denial of what we are alleging'

The article said or implied no such thing, as your direct quote shows, it merely attributed the quote, without comment. It didn't talk about back doors or denials, Google did, probably in response to more fantastic speculation around the Internet prior to this.

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

#362

Post by Amadou »

alephnil wrote: post #296
pasbesoin wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

A phone call can be compressed to 10 kbits/sec or less given a good speech codec and still be understandable, if not of very good quality. That means that if you are on the phone 20 minutes every day, it will be around a half a GB per year. If every American is on phone that much, it will be bit less than 143 petabytes a year, or about 36000 4GB hardisks. That is a bit, but the datacenter in Utah presumably have a ca…

I tracked down the yottabyte claim to, what I think is, its origin and it seems to refer to raw uncompressed data.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/nov/05/whos-in...

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

#363

Post by Lost_BiomedE »

16s wrote: post #327
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…

Most American's don't care. They are too busy on Facebook or playing games on their iphone/android, taking pictures of themselves in the bathroom, etc. The Native Americans gave their land away for beads. Modern Americans give their constitutional rights away for electronic gadgets that they can play with.

'The Native Americans gave their land away for beads.'

This is one myth sold to us in school. The tribe that sold the land for beads did not own that land. It was the territory of another competing tribe. I will sell you russia for $20, right now.

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

#364

Post by declan »

tptacek wrote: post #253
jlgreco wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many times are you going to make this exact same comment? Just upvote him if you think he's so right.

He's a reporter who has been doing reporting on this story with actual sources. His confirmation of individual comments of mine is useful, at least to me; don't worry, eventually I'll write a comment that will contain something he knows to be wrong, he'll notice it, call me out for it, and you can start jumping up and down again.

True!

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

#365

Post by dag11 »

foobarbazqux wrote: post #358
oleganza wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to extrapolate something from his words and then make a judgement. Can you give an example of one "shallow" thing that shouldn't be replaced by "being intellectual" and makes peers "wise in ways"?

I just mean whatever he happens to find shallow. I can't read his mind, I can only speculate. It might be joining the football team. It might be doing donuts in the parking lot. It might be getting drunk at a party and having his first sexual experience. It might be shopping for cool clothing. It might be riding a skateboard. It might be skipping class, getting high, and failing the 10-point math quiz after recess. I…

Whoa there. You're projecting your own regrets onto him.

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

#367

Post by Tangaroa »

jlgreco wrote: post #164
tptacek wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that when you call something "a peculiar brand of corporatism", you're saying something equivalent to "a label that thus far exists only in my mind". Is there a more direct, refutable way you could construct your claim? How would anyone falsify your argument otherwise? You know what else is a (very) peculiar brand of corporatism? "Not corporatism".

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…

As long as we're playing at labels, I am a socialist and you are a goddamned idiot. There is no such thing as a corporatist. You're just using it as a nasty word to accuse your debate opponents of malicious intentions.

Back to the point: people freely give their personal data to Facebook. Facebook now knows that information and can publish it, sell it, whatever. The people have no expectation of privacy which would be necessary for a 4th Amendment defense. Anybody can go to Facebook and just ask for the data, government agents included. It is Facebook's choice to give it away, set a price, or refuse.

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

#368

Post by leoc »

grey-area wrote: post #361
leoc wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also note the Google statement from the story: > In a statement, Google said: "Google cares deeply about the security of our users' data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government 'back door' into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user…

If we're to criticise journalists, we should hold ourselves to the standards we expect of the them. The article said: 'In a statement, Google said' You paraphrase this as the article saying: 'Here's a denial of what we are alleging' The article said or implied no such thing, as your direct quote shows, it merely attributed the quote, without comment. It didn't talk about back doors or denials, Google did, probably in…

> If we're to criticise journalists, we should hold ourselves to the standards we expect of the them.

In the interests of precision, let me first amend the Guardian non-paraphrase and paraphrase above to 'here's a weaselly statement that doesn't deny what the NSA document claims' and 'here's a denial of what the NSA document claims'. This matters because the article deliberately sets out to report the NSA slides instead of setting out to explicitly report the NSA slides as accurate, and Greenwald later made much of this.

> The article said or implied no such thing, as your direct quote shows, it merely attributed the quote, without comment.

The immediately preceding paragraph is:

> Although the presentation claims the program is run with the assistance of the companies, all those who responded to a Guardian request for comment on Thursday denied knowledge of any such program.

This makes it clear that the next paragraph is, to the Guardian's understanding, Google denying knowledge of any such program.

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

#369

Post by Falling3 »

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.

>Do not stereotype teenagers.

So you can do it for him/her?

>Yes, most in my generation are shallow and passive

You seem very smart - maybe a genius. I've noticed that the smarter people are the more likely they are to denigrate their peers who don't hold the same values. And they're less likely to enjoy other parts of life due to the belief that these things are beneath them. It's not a cool attitude and it will not help you be a happy person.

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

#370

Post by rickhanlonii »

leoc wrote: post #315
rickhanlonii wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may not be interested in a semantic argument, but it's a semantic point you're arguing. The title of the article in question[1] is: "NSA Prism program taps in to user data of Apple, Google and others • Top-secret Prism program claims direct access to servers of firms including Google, Apple and Facebook • Companies deny any knowledge of program in operation since 2007" The first sentence states: "The National Sec…

> The slides say the NSA can "collect data directly from the servers" of these companies. Guardian states the the slides state that the NSA can collect data directly from the servers of these companies. The slides do say the NSA can "collect data directly from the servers" of these companies. (Well, they say that the NSA uses "collection directly from the servers" of these companies, to get the quotation exactly righ…

>What the NSA means by this is that it has root access on Google, Facebook and friends.

This just simply isn't true. The article doesn't say that. Your support for this claim below is that this is what they meant by "direct and unilateral," which you cannot know to be true.

If Google et. al. setup dedicated servers which aggregate the relevant user data the NSA wants, and gave the NSA FTP access, then this would be--by definition--direct and unilateral access. FTP falls under any reasonable definiton of direct, and Google would not have to be involved in any data transmission, thereby making it unilateral.

And can't we all just agree that the idea of giving root access is so outright ridiculous that nobody would intend that as a meaning? Maybe read only access, but root access? Ridiculous.

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