Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

pbs.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 110 posts

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

#71

Post by ippisl »

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…

I read some research about provably secure steganography , which claim that if you know the statistics of the communication channel, you can build secure steno, at least to the level one way functions.

So it is interesting if in reality there is a stego detection tool.

www​.cs.umn.edu/~hopper/tc-stego.pdf

Btw one of the authors is Luis von ahn, the founder of duelingo, the language teaching/translation app.

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

#72

Post by blisterpeanuts »

Backups! That's the upside of this whole NSA domestic spying brouhaha. How many times have you wanted to replay a phone conversation, or recover an email from a past account, or throw your boss's memo back in his face when he tries to "scope creep" your project?

That's right. Probably every one of us wishes for this capability. And then there's the federal budget deficit, no? I propose to kill two birds with one stone here. NSA can offer to "remember it for you wholesale" as Philip K. Dick put it! Maybe $0.10 per byte (or $0.25/minute for audio) to search and provide on CD virtually anything you have said or done since 1992.

It's actually rather comforting to think that, although they're not very good at their primary mission of stopping terrorism, they have this great ancillary benefit that we can all take advantage of!

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

#73

Post by beagle3 »

northwest wrote: post #51
ollysb wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the information be more useful in text form? Transcripts would take far less space and would probably be necessary for any sort of useful search. They might even call the transcript "meta-data".

Exactly, just speech-to-text the whole thing and you're done. Bonus: it's a lot speedier to search through. Since you don't have to justify yourself in court, you're never going to have to submit the actual audio to any judge as evidence, so why would you keep it?

Unless the NSA also has speech to text that is decades ahead of everyone else, AND works perfectly well in ~50 languages of interest - because of transcription quality.

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

#74

Post by espeed »

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...…

Here's a question I've been pondering: Did the NSA want PRISM to leak?

Having everyone in the world know that someone is watching will have significant sociological effects. It is akin to the idea that "God is watching".

Thousands of years ago the fear of God and promise of reward was the carrot and stick that resulted in people working together for the greater good rather than pursuing self interest. It was the invisible hand. Those that united and cooperated survived and evolved, and those that refused to unite died off.

Jonathan Haidt has been talking (http://www.ted.com/speakers/jonathan_haidt.html) and writing (http://www.amazon.com/Jonathan-Haidt/e/B001H6GAXW) about how this was key to and accelerated civilization's evolution -- "it put everyone in the same boat."

This same phenomenon happens at the cellular level -- bacteria group to form mitochondria, and mitochondria to form cells, and so on, each time forming a superorganism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organization).

E pluribus unum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_pluribus_unum) -- "out of many, one."

Ants, wasps, and bees are the canonical example of this, and the beehive is often used to symbolize this concept (https://www.google.com/search?q=beehive+symbolism&newwindow=...). The PRISM name even reflects the symbology -- a honeycomb is made up of prisms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeycomb, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexagonal_prismatic_honeycomb).

For the last few hundred years, market forces have been the invible hand (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand), and the corporation emerged as the superorganism. But overtime entropy increases and order erodes. Maybe PRISM is an attempt to reestablish order.

The NSA may see other benefits from PRISM leaking. For example, mining the world's communication data may or may not be practical today, but observing a system changes a system.

How will people's behavior change now that they know they're being watched? It would be easier to detect deltas than to mine the entire system. Turn on the lights. Roaches scatter. Targets reveal.

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

#75

Post by logn »

espeed wrote: post #74
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...…

Here's a question I've been pondering: Did the NSA want PRISM to leak? Having everyone in the world know that someone is watching will have significant sociological effects. It is akin to the idea that "God is watching". Thousands of years ago the fear of God and promise of reward was the carrot and stick that resulted in people working together for the greater good rather than pursuing self interest. It was the invi…

I've also wondered if perhaps Snowden is still on CIA payroll. Maybe the NSA didn't want this leaked but CIA did.

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

#76

Post by northwest »

espeed wrote: post #74
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...…

Here's a question I've been pondering: Did the NSA want PRISM to leak? Having everyone in the world know that someone is watching will have significant sociological effects. It is akin to the idea that "God is watching". Thousands of years ago the fear of God and promise of reward was the carrot and stick that resulted in people working together for the greater good rather than pursuing self interest. It was the invi…

They certainly know that sooner or later things risk coming to light.

But it seems more likely that they would have preferred to have this leak and its accompanying chilling effect happen at a later date, when they can be sure that everybody is under their control and their power structure could not be brought down anymore.

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

#77

Post by logn »

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…

http://www.governmentcontractswon.com

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

#78

Post by sixothree »

llamataboot wrote: post #20

So it's now in the realm of maybe-to-probable that the NSA has every domestic phone call on tape as well as some non-trivial sized chunk of all emails sent? Plus for sure has all metadata they can get their hands on? Plus cable taps on most (all?) internet backbones?

Plus anything municipal agencies are collecting. Eg. License plates, etc.

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

#79

Post by moocowduckquack »

espeed wrote: post #74
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...…

Here's a question I've been pondering: Did the NSA want PRISM to leak? Having everyone in the world know that someone is watching will have significant sociological effects. It is akin to the idea that "God is watching". Thousands of years ago the fear of God and promise of reward was the carrot and stick that resulted in people working together for the greater good rather than pursuing self interest. It was the invi…

"Here's a question I've been pondering: Did the NSA want PRISM to leak?"

Perhaps they have been taking notes from Jeremy Bentham.

"PANOPTICON; OR THE INSPECTION-HOUSE: CONTAINING THE IDEA OF A NEW PRINCIPLE OF CONSTRUCTION APPLICABLE TO ANY SORT OF ESTABLISHMENT, IN WHICH PERSONS OF ANY DESCRIPTION ARE TO BE KEPT UNDER INSPECTION"

...

"To say all in one word, it will be found applicable, I think, without exception, to all establishments whatsoever, in which, within a space not too large to be covered or commanded by buildings, a number of persons are meant to be kept under inspection.

No matter how different, or even opposite the purpose: whether it be that of punishing the incorrigible, guarding the insane, reforming the vicious, confining the suspected, employing the idle, maintaining the helpless, curing the sick, instructing the willing in any branch of industry, or training the rising race in the path of education: in a word, whether it be applied to the purposes of perpetual prisons in the room of death, or prisons for confinement before trial, or penitentiary-houses, or houses of correction, or work-houses, or manufactories, or mad-houses, or hospitals, or schools.

It is obvious that, in all these instances, the more constantly the persons to be inspected are under the eyes of the persons who should inspect them, the more perfectly will the purpose X of the establishment have been attained.

Ideal perfection, if that were the object, would require that each person should actually be in that predicament, during every instant of time.

This being impossible, the next thing to be wished for is, that, at every instant, seeing reason to believe as much, and not being able to satisfy himself to the contrary, he should conceive himself to be so."

http://cartome.org/panopticon2.htm

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

#80

Post by eigenvalue »

espeed wrote: post #74
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...…

Here's a question I've been pondering: Did the NSA want PRISM to leak? Having everyone in the world know that someone is watching will have significant sociological effects. It is akin to the idea that "God is watching". Thousands of years ago the fear of God and promise of reward was the carrot and stick that resulted in people working together for the greater good rather than pursuing self interest. It was the invi…

Really thought provoking post, thanks.
Post reply on HN