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

William Binney: 80% of audio calls are recorded and stored in the US

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 135 posts

Re: William Binney: 80% of audio calls are recorded and stored in the US

#101

Post by MichaelGG »

JohnnyBuffalo wrote: post #79

But here's the rub - who still uses audio calls? Its a point of deminishing intelligence. That's like saying that 80% of all 8-tracks are now in 1970 cars (as a statement in 2014). Its just not relevant.

Uh, essentially everyone? I have a small VoIP company and we were handling around a billion calls a week. You have a really terrible selection bias if you think people aren't using audio calls. In fact, audio calls are on the RISE because of easy and cheap international calling. We have clients that have customers that literally leave their phones open to their families 8 hours a day. Just on and walking around the house.

Re: William Binney: 80% of audio calls are recorded and stored in the US

#102

Post by FD3SA »

tokenadult wrote: post #39

The story in the Guardian by Antony Loewenstein certainly reports that William Binney's personal opinion as a former employee of NSA is that NSA is gathering up and recording whatever it can and that NSA has a "totalitarian mentality." That is a very important issue, if true, but it is at least debatable that NSA is really that thorough in its actual practices and really that generally blatant in disregarding the civ…

For one thing, Binney also points to NSA intelligence failures in the same article, and if NSA is missing major activities of other countries (the Russian intervention in Ukraine) and nonstate terrorist groups (the "Islamic State" capture of much territory in Iraq), then surely NSA doesn't have the time and resources to analyze all of the data it gathers, and maybe it is not gathering as much data as some people claim.

I do not mean this as an ad hominem, but just by this statement, the rest of your arguments comes off as absurdly naive. Have you considered that perhaps the NSA and all the other "alphabet" organizations don't actually care much about accomplishing their stated goal, but are instead working tirelessly to amass power and influence through the machinations of the state? The linear way in which you assess personal and organizational motivations is simplistic to the point of uselessness.

Very few people or organizations with power are doing what they say. Instead, you must ascertain their intentions by what they do. This is politics 101. There are countless examples of this throughout history, but now is neither the time nor place to enumerate them all.

The real question to ask is, how in the name of Alan Turing's ghost did the NSA, CIA, FBI and the rest of the spooks with all their capabilities not find Osama, or Saddam's WMDs, or the Russian invasion, or...? Hint: it's not incompetence.

TL;DR: First order analysis of intention based upon a person or organization's stated intent are rarely correct. Instead, empirical modelling of behavior over time is required to ascertain true intent.

Re: William Binney: 80% of audio calls are recorded and stored in the US

#103

Post by asgard1024 »

eli wrote: post #6

"At least 80% of fibre-optic cables globally go via the US. This is no accident and allows the US to view all communication coming in. At least 80% of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the US. The NSA lies about what it stores." I think he meant that the NSA had access to the 80% of calls that are routed through the US, not the the NSA is recording and storing literally every single one o…

I don't think there is any doubt about the fact that NSA wants to store it all. Just look at the short interview/documentary with Binney that was linked from the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=590cy1biewc

Re: William Binney: 80% of audio calls are recorded and stored in the US

#104

Post by FD3SA »

ryanklee wrote: post #41
tokenadult wrote: post #39

The story in the Guardian by Antony Loewenstein certainly reports that William Binney's personal opinion as a former employee of NSA is that NSA is gathering up and recording whatever it can and that NSA has a "totalitarian mentality." That is a very important issue, if true, but it is at least debatable that NSA is really that thorough in its actual practices and really that generally blatant in disregarding the civ…

I'm interested to hear from those who voted this comment down: Why? The parent's comment, even if disagreeable in some regards, is substantial and the discussion is better for it having been made.

It's naive to the point of absurdity. It's basically saying:

The NSA/CIA/FBI/etc. couldn't even see Ukraine coming! They were on their coffee breaks, those silly spooks! They never get anything right do they? So don't worry about them collecting information on you! They couldn't even find Osama! Those slackers. Don't worry be happy!"

The stupidest assumption one can make about a powerful organization is that it's incompetent and thus benign. Crack open a history book to see how benign power really can be.

Re: William Binney: 80% of audio calls are recorded and stored in the US

#105

Post by eruditely »

tokenadult wrote: post #39

The story in the Guardian by Antony Loewenstein certainly reports that William Binney's personal opinion as a former employee of NSA is that NSA is gathering up and recording whatever it can and that NSA has a "totalitarian mentality." That is a very important issue, if true, but it is at least debatable that NSA is really that thorough in its actual practices and really that generally blatant in disregarding the civ…

I legitimately believe the greatest threat to most controversy scandals is individuals like you, who with long posts of obfuscation and obscurant arguments attempt to meddle with any bit of chance that any consensus or unity will form. To people like you, once we have enough evidence that would satisfy you, much would be lost.

I see no reason to trust you after posts like these. You have said so little with so much text. It shows that you were a lawyer.

Re: William Binney: 80% of audio calls are recorded and stored in the US

#106

Post by dm2 »

joelhaus wrote: post #63
Someone1234 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming that the 20% drop off is due to capacity. That isn't my understanding of the current situation. The Utah facility gives them the ability to store calls for longer, it doesn't increase their scope. The reason they don't record 20% of calls is, from my understanding, that they have internal rules against recording certain people important to the democratic process within the US (e.g. politicians (and th…

They are not allowed to spy on US persons without a warrant. Full stop. The law is quite clear. Further, the court ruled that metadata was exempt from protection because, in part, it was voluntarily handed over to a third party by the end user. I'd love to hear how you came to your conclusion that only politicians, et. al. enjoy such protections.

While that use to be true, it isn't anymore.

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

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130917/13395324556/court...

https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/government-confi...

Re: William Binney: 80% of audio calls are recorded and stored in the US

#107

Post by tptacek »

MisterWebz wrote: post #56
tokenadult wrote: post #39

The story in the Guardian by Antony Loewenstein certainly reports that William Binney's personal opinion as a former employee of NSA is that NSA is gathering up and recording whatever it can and that NSA has a "totalitarian mentality." That is a very important issue, if true, but it is at least debatable that NSA is really that thorough in its actual practices and really that generally blatant in disregarding the civ…

That is an incredibly weak argument. First of all, whether they are shameless or not doesn't really matter. If sexually explicit pictures of a politician end up on the internet, his reputation takes damage. It's beyond his control. Plenty of politicians are willing to go to great lengths to avoid this. So what does it matter if he's shameless or not? Second of all, politicians and other powerful people might have som…

Nacchio was convicted of running a pump-and-dump insider trading scam that netted him ~$100MM at the expense of common public shareholders. If there's an award for "most obnoxious implication of NSA's wrongdoing", it should go to the attempted rehabilitation of people like Nacchio.

Here's the indictment. It's quite straightforward.

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site36/2007/0307...

Here's the cliff notes:

"No later than December 4, 2000, through and including September 10, 2001, NACCHIO was aware of material, non-public information about Qwest’s business, including, but not limited to" [litany of distressing concerns about Qwest's bottom line which ultimately proved dispositive in valuing Qwest].

Note the date.

Now, look at this table of Nacchio's stock sales:

http://oi60.tinypic.com/2n1tgr6.jpg

Nacchio claims to have believed that secret national security government contracts were going to rescue Qwest from their financial problems (note the implicit concession that Qwest had problems from which its financials needed to be rescued). One tie-in between Nacchio and NSA is the notion that by refusing requests from NSA, Nacchio lost those contracts. Stipulate that this is true; it's a plausible complaint. Nacchio still took the money and ran.

Re: William Binney: 80% of audio calls are recorded and stored in the US

#110

Post by GHFigs »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #58
tokenadult wrote: post #39

The story in the Guardian by Antony Loewenstein certainly reports that William Binney's personal opinion as a former employee of NSA is that NSA is gathering up and recording whatever it can and that NSA has a "totalitarian mentality." That is a very important issue, if true, but it is at least debatable that NSA is really that thorough in its actual practices and really that generally blatant in disregarding the civ…

>but it is at least debatable that NSA is really that thorough in its actual practices and really that generally blatant in disregarding the civil rights of Americans or even of people in other countries. At this point in the debate it has been observed on a number of occasions that ranking officials at the NSA are dishonest. They have made comments both sworn, and in general press releases / statements (on the recor…

At this point in the debate it has been observed on a number of occasions that ranking officials at the NSA are dishonest. They have made comments both sworn, and in general press releases / statements (on the record) that have later been proven false; and we have reason to believe those officials knew they were making false or misleading statements at the time. So in short, the NSA, and the intelligence community in general have destroyed their credibility.

Do you include William Binney, 30 year veteran of the NSA, in that cohort?

Post reply on HN