NSA Collects 'Word for Word' Every Domestic Communication, Says Former Analyst • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by demallien » Sat, Aug 03, 2013, 2:18 PM UTC

beagle3 wrote: post #73

northwest wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not necessarily - the speech to text just has to be good enough to flag likely use of interesting terms. Those calls could then be fully stored for later analysis by an investigation if it becomes necessary. The vast majority of calls would end up being stored as a text file, but this technique with today's technology would certainly be good enough to flag a reasonably high percentage of calls of interest for audio storage. That phone call from Jimmy to Sally Mae telling her he's going to be late home from work? It doesn't matter if NSA-Siri garbles the translation...

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

#82

Post by im3w1l » Sat, Aug 03, 2013, 2:19 PM UTC

ippisl wrote: post #71

throwawaykf02 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> if you know the statistics of the communication channel, you can build secure steno

That's a pretty big if though. I mean, if you miss one nuance the NSA didn't, then your scheme could be toast. At least in the high data limit.

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

#83

Post by moocowduckquack » Sat, Aug 03, 2013, 2:24 PM UTC

sk00byd00 wrote: post #65

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.

"I have never seen a spell check that had the word steganography in it though."

Are you sure you looked hard enough? Most of them include it as very faint morse code somewhere in the icon.

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

#84

Post by Lagged2Death » Sat, Aug 03, 2013, 2:53 PM UTC

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…

How will people's behavior change now that they know they're being watched?

Here's one possibility.

The really dangerous people - those few actual, professional-grade, funded and organized terrorists - may contract black-market hackers to flood the internet and cell networks with red-herring terror-signature traffic, rendering the entire surveillance system useless for its original purpose. For just a tiny fraction of its cost.

In order to justify the construction and continued funding of the system, its mission will have to creep, and we'll all soon have the police knocking on our doors because of our internet searches.

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

#85

Post by PavlovsCat » Sat, Aug 03, 2013, 3:04 PM UTC

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…

There is a difference between self-organization and falling prey to parasites. It's the difference between everybody being in the same boat, and almost everybody being in the same pot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality

^ Not what we're dealing with here. Nowhere near.

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

#86

Post by zeckalpha » Sat, Aug 03, 2013, 3:15 PM UTC

xSwag wrote: post #43

panarky wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're off by three orders of magnitude. 6 MB * 300 million = 1716 TB

You're right, but that's only the calls one way. It should really be times by 2. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=6+MB+*+300+million

Actually, it should probably be the logarithm of the population. The calls don't need to be recorded twice.

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

#87

Post by alan_cx » Sat, Aug 03, 2013, 3:20 PM UTC

twoodfin wrote: post #2

No, says an unnamed NSA "colleague" of a former analyst. Say what you like about Snowden, but at least some of his claims have been backed up by evidence. What have these guys got? Why not name names?

In many ways, hard evidence is the last thing a whistle blower wants. Its the evidence that scares the authorities. While its just "claims", you go free. You can be mocked and dismissed as a crank. If you have evidence, well, Snowden, Manning, ...

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

#88

Post by zeckalpha » Sat, Aug 03, 2013, 3:24 PM UTC

ippisl wrote: post #71

throwawaykf02 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also, this group invented the CAPTCHA.

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

#89

Post by alan_cx » Sat, Aug 03, 2013, 3:32 PM UTC

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…

Indeed. This is the obvious issue every seems to be skirting over. Even the mass media seems not as out rages as it easily could be. Problem is we can never know to what extent this may or may not happen. What is needed is a high ranking politician to come out, admit to something awful and go on record to being black mailed.

See, I cant believe that you get to politician age and have a perfect record. I cant believe that the security services would be interested in politicians back grounds. And now we see the mechanism to get all the information they need to comprehensively check them out. So, I almost cant understand why a security service would not raise such issues with prospective politicians, high ranking business men, media, etc. It would be negligent not to. Well, with out saying opr threatening anything, such people know that the security services have something damaging on them which could be leaked. They don't need to be told, do they? Such people are fairly bright. The implications are obvious. Tow the line, don't dump on the security services. And if asked to support some evil new power, well........

To my mind the blackmail circle and potential to select politicians, and others is too obvious.

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

#90

Post by ams6110 » Sat, Aug 03, 2013, 4:14 PM UTC

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…

It wouldn't even have to be technically true. If enough anecdotal evidence "leaked" you could get a lot of people to accept the idea and behave accordingly. It's also a classic move by tyrannical authority.... get the people to believe that the authority is omnipotent and resistance is futile.