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NSA Collects 'Word for Word' Every Domestic Communication, Says Former Analyst

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Re: NSA Collects 'Word for Word' Every Domestic Communication, Says Former Analyst

#61

Post by LekkoscPiwa »

northwest wrote: post #54
LekkoscPiwa wrote: post #45

Crazy idea: software that would generate TBs of fake communications (email, skype calls, etc) daily to disrupt NSA operations. Possible? Helpful?

If you're paying taxes in the US, you would probably hate this concept, b/c: You spend something like 25% of your work life (taxes) to pay for something that works against you (mass surveillance). Then you start trowing stones at it while continuing to work for it.

Nah, doesn't make sense. According to this fighting nazism while being German wouldn't have make sense in 1930s because you pay taxes.

Re: NSA Collects 'Word for Word' Every Domestic Communication, Says Former Analyst

#63

Post by junto »

northwest wrote: post #49

> He claims the NSA tapped the phone of high-level government officials and the news media 10 years ago. That would explain why Obama seems to have become the best sheep ever: 1. Spy on them 2. Collect everything that's somehow "embarrassing" for them 3. Regularly remind them of what happens if they don't do what would want them to do By that logic, they have probably "vetted" Obama thoroughly, before deciding to not…

I truly believe this is what 'democracy' has become, not just, in the US, but the UK as well.

Re: NSA Collects 'Word for Word' Every Domestic Communication, Says Former Analyst

#64

Post by emddudley »

clicks wrote: post #16
fixxer wrote: post #8

Nice to see somebody pointing out the obvious bullshit regarding the Utah facility's real purpose (content storage, not metadata). What kind of iron do you need to run NLP on a day's worth of content (let's limit "content" to voice transcriptions from phone calls)? Suppose I want to pick out "bomb" in near real-time? How many $billions for total information awareness? Even the best algo is going to produce false posi…

I'm curious about the storage media they might have... is it just plain old rotational harddrives? Who made them -- Seagate? Western Digital? It's curious that no word has come out from that front -- "wow, this customer is requesting a _LOT_ of storage devices... like, more storage space than what is available in the world". And really, because of this I think the idea that they might have some in-house innovation is…

I am sure a lot of it is tape. IBM sells a 900 PB tape library [1]. They could store the actual phone calls on tape, and then only put the necessary metadata for finding it on hard drives.

  [1] http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/tape/ts3500/

Re: NSA Collects 'Word for Word' Every Domestic Communication, Says Former Analyst

#65

Post by sk00byd00 »

cheald wrote: post #44

So here's my startup idea: Stenographically-encoded messages in high-def porn. It's secure communications with a built-in subscription model! Porn accounts for a huge chunk of internet traffic today, and video doesn't compress too well. Get enough people exchanging messages in porn videos and all of a sudden, those listening in have a whole hell of a lot more bytes to sift through. (I'm only half joking.)

If I am not mistaken you mean "steganography" and not "stenography" as the latter is the person(s) that transcribe in a courtroom. I have never seen a spell check that had the word steganography in it though.

Re: NSA Collects 'Word for Word' Every Domestic Communication, Says Former Analyst

#66

Post by nwh »

throwawaykf02 wrote: post #59
cheald wrote: post #44

So here's my startup idea: Stenographically-encoded messages in high-def porn. It's secure communications with a built-in subscription model! Porn accounts for a huge chunk of internet traffic today, and video doesn't compress too well. Get enough people exchanging messages in porn videos and all of a sudden, those listening in have a whole hell of a lot more bytes to sift through. (I'm only half joking.)

Real terrorists have already been using that for a long time. (For instance, remember those media blurbs about lots of porn being found in the raid on bin Laden?) As such I'd bet they have infrastructure in place to detect such communications. But in the same half-joking vein, some other problems: 1. I recall reading that such stegonagraphically watermarked videos were pretty easy to detect using simple statistical a…

> you could just do that without the porn.

I think the idea is that it's something people naturally keep hidden, so it doesn't look suspicious to have handed to someone n a USB drive or sent privately. There's not really much suspicious about people hiding porn.

Re: NSA Collects 'Word for Word' Every Domestic Communication, Says Former Analyst

#67

Post by northwest »

LekkoscPiwa wrote: post #61
northwest wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're paying taxes in the US, you would probably hate this concept, b/c: You spend something like 25% of your work life (taxes) to pay for something that works against you (mass surveillance). Then you start trowing stones at it while continuing to work for it.

Nah, doesn't make sense. According to this fighting nazism while being German wouldn't have make sense in 1930s because you pay taxes.

What I mean is:

We also need to start getting rid of the root of the problem, not only try to fight some symptoms (patching holes is OK for the short term).

Re: NSA Collects 'Word for Word' Every Domestic Communication, Says Former Analyst

#68

Post by arh68 »

espeed wrote: post #52

Reposting this from a previous thread ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5897654 )... I remember during the Boston bombing investigation, Tim Clemente, a former FBI counter-terrorism agent, told Erin Burnett on CNN that they could go back and get access to the content of the calls between the deceased bomber and his wife, Katherine Russell. After some Googling, I found a partial transcript of the CNN interview...…

Perhaps the real leaker here is Tim Clemente, and not Ed Snowden? How many adversaries adapted their communications to avoid the sources and methods Clemente revealed? .. dozens?

Re: NSA Collects 'Word for Word' Every Domestic Communication, Says Former Analyst

#69

Post by luke-stanley »

cheald wrote: post #44

So here's my startup idea: Stenographically-encoded messages in high-def porn. It's secure communications with a built-in subscription model! Porn accounts for a huge chunk of internet traffic today, and video doesn't compress too well. Get enough people exchanging messages in porn videos and all of a sudden, those listening in have a whole hell of a lot more bytes to sift through. (I'm only half joking.)

Already being done. Watch more carefully ;) J/K

Re: NSA Collects 'Word for Word' Every Domestic Communication, Says Former Analyst

#70

Post by arh68 »

martindale wrote: post #3

The "former analyst" in question is Russell Tice, who was terminated by the NSA in 2005 after "publicly urging Congress to pass stronger protections for federal intelligence agency whistleblowers facing retaliation" [1]. There's an interesting exchange from then-director of NSA special access programs Renee Seymour to Tice warning him against testifying on the NSA programs [2] about a half year later. [1]: http://en.…

So if neither intelligence committee (HPSCI, SSCI) has the clearances, who does? How many Congressmen have clearance to be even briefed on programs classified for _both_ military and intelligence 'purposes'?

It surprises me they'd so blatantly seek specific, arbitrary classifications to prevent _the legislators_ from learning the truth.

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