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The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google

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Re: The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google

#71

Post by drunkcatsdgaf »

Dolimiter wrote: post #68
glitchdout wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do record and store (foreign and domestic) phone calls. Your comment proves you're simply an ignorant or a shill. Proof: * NSA Collects ‘Word for Word’ Every Domestic Communication, Says Former Analyst http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/government_programs-july-dec1... * NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-recor... * NSA surveilla…

I'm a "shill"? Really? This is the level of debate? Also, none of your links in any way prove that the NSA stores all phone calls. None of them. 1 is hearsay from someone, another talks about metadata, and another says that the NSA can record any phone call (yes we know that). Nowhere is there any proof that all calls are being recorded. This is what I am talking about. It doesn't seem possible to have a conversation…

"MYSTIC is a voice interception program used by the National Security Agency. The program recorded every phone call made within a non-specified country for thirty days."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MYSTIC_(surveillance_program)

Re: The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google

#72

Post by Squarel »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #50

This has been released and is use by almost two dozen federal agencies and now is the first time we're hearing about it? When folks tell us crazy things, like the government is tracking every place you go and your opinions through your cell phone and social networks, we're supposed to say something like "That's extraordinary. With extraordinary claims, we require extraordinary proof" Then, if they persist, we're supp…

Tracking of information has been known about since the initial NSA whistleblowers after 9/11

I have not heard a single conspiracy theorist suggest any of the things disclosed by Snowden, and I have yet to see evidence of RFID chips and the government monitoring us through our microwaves, or that Person of Interest is based on a true story.

Extraordinary claims still require extraordinary evidence, and that evidence usually comes from someone involved, not from a random blog/site on the internet, or a youtube channel.

The one thing everyone misses with this, which is my main concern, is less that the entire NSA/Insert Alphabet Soup here can track me, but that any one individual within these organisations who decides they don't like you for any reason can majorly screw you over. It is not the whole that concerns me, it is the parts.

Re: The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google

#73

Post by brianmwaters_hn »

pdkl95 wrote: post #16
eli wrote: post #10

I guess it's always cool to learn about top secret stuff that spies do, but I don't get why the specifics of how their search engine works is significant. Am I just missing something?

This, as with most of Greenwald's work on this subject, has been a slow effort to educate people about a very technical (for the average person) topic. Building on previous reports that showed the type of activity and the threat it can cause, this installment is about establishing the pattern of illegality. If the NSA could justify the time and expense to make a search tool, there must be a lot of searching needs...…

Also, this article goes over "parallel construction" quite a lot. Although we've heard about it a lot in the past year, this leak shows how and what kind of data NSA is sharing with DEA, FBI, etc.

It's even more important for us to know what kinds of data about us domestic law enforcement has access to, than it is to know what foreign intelligence has access to.

Re: The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google

#74

Post by wil421 »

curiousDog wrote: post #13

Wonder how and where they recruit their top-talent. Pretty much every top scorer in my school went to Facebook/Google/Msft/Amzn. The mediocre ones went to Northrop Grumman/Raytheon/Rockwell and the like.

These recruiters find you, you dont find them. I doubt that any of your classmates would be so dumb as to tell everyone they got hired by a 3 letter agency. They probably are looking for more seasoned devs than the typical college grad.

Also you have to be an American citizen with parents who live in America. At least I know this is the case for civilians who want high security clearances.

Re: The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google

#75

Post by mpyne »

atmosx wrote: post #42
Tangokat wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the Intercept, the U.S Military has banned employees from visiting First Look because there could be classified information on the site. [1] [2] (extra source since you can't see the real one..) Maybe that is what you are experiencing? [1] https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/08/20/u-s-military-b... [2] https://thebulletwire.com/u-s-military-bans-glenn-greenwalds...

That's similar to the wikileaks ban. I don't understand this policy: If something is accessible virtually from everywhere, what do you gain by not allowing your employees to access the info?! The only thing I can think of, is internal issues at political level (who said what lies to whom to achieve more funding about his work, etc.) which even that won't take long before the interested party eventually finds out.

Of all the people I would expect to be following the rules (even the "stupid" ones), it would be actual employees of the government and military itself.

Once the military decides that they get to ignore laws which are silly, they will decide they can ignore laws which are unenforceable in practice, and then the Republic will fall.

You either have a culture of civilian control of the military, and a nation of laws, or you don't. The Church Committee is what resulted from the last time the Intelligence Community decided that laws are silly; is that what you want to go back to? Before you answer, keep in mind that the NSA was actually following the laws this time, so the situation as you see it post-Snowden could easily have been far worse.

Re: The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google

#76

Post by mpyne »

pdkl95 wrote: post #16
eli wrote: post #10

I guess it's always cool to learn about top secret stuff that spies do, but I don't get why the specifics of how their search engine works is significant. Am I just missing something?

This, as with most of Greenwald's work on this subject, has been a slow effort to educate people about a very technical (for the average person) topic. Building on previous reports that showed the type of activity and the threat it can cause, this installment is about establishing the pattern of illegality. If the NSA could justify the time and expense to make a search tool, there must be a lot of searching needs...…

> Also, more explicitly-stated details about how powerful "metadata" can be. Obvious to anybody who understands INNER JOIN, but this is still new for most people.

The power of metadata is implicit. No one at NSA is arguing that metadata isn't powerful, that's the whole reason they're collecting it.

What the NSA is arguing is against the meme that they're trodding roughshod over the Constitution and illegally scooping up data (as they have done in the past). On the contrary, this time they've been very careful to try to remain within the law, and one of those arguments is by pointing out that, according to the law, some types of information are less protected than others.

Greenwald can educate all he wants, but the problem isn't that Americans are stupid or whatever you all seem to think. Americans on the large have been assuming the NSA is doing far worse than what Snowden accused them of, because Americans (on the large) expect that the NSA (or some other branch of the government) is actually able to intercept and listen in on "those jihadis' phone calls and emails".

You're talking about a generation of Americans who grew up listening to PBS stories hounding the Federal government agencies of the Bush and Clinton Administrations for "not connecting the dots", and for having a "lack of imagination", and for "treating terrorism like a law enforcement" problem and for being hamstrung by a bunch of civil liberties protections.

This is by and large the same generation that decided to vote against privacy when they bought into to having their digital lives collectively managed by Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook. Explain the low-level bits and bytes to them all you want, but they've already voted on the big picture they want to see.

Re: The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google

#77

Post by mpyne »

scintill76 wrote: post #23
yen223 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glenn Greenwald has a lot of Powerpoint slides. Am I the only one who wants to see the source code for ICREACH, and all the other ALLCAPS projects?

I wonder if that's a line even Snowden wouldn't cross. It risks those tools falling into the "wrong hands", and is the most extreme way he could be said to be aiding terrorists by alerting them of our intelligence capabilities (which he is already accused of.)

Why wouldn't Snowden cross that line, given all the other ones he crossed? I mean, blowing PRISM by itself was far more than "alerting them of our intelligence capabilities", so he's already crossed the Rubicon on that topic.

Re: The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google

#78

Post by cryoshon »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #50

This has been released and is use by almost two dozen federal agencies and now is the first time we're hearing about it? When folks tell us crazy things, like the government is tracking every place you go and your opinions through your cell phone and social networks, we're supposed to say something like "That's extraordinary. With extraordinary claims, we require extraordinary proof" Then, if they persist, we're supp…

For people paying attention to the evidence, the writing has been on the wall for many years-- enough to build credible, defensible, strong suspicions, at least. Of course, these people have been slandered in perpetuity by the government, who stands to gain stability from the "rationalist" suspicions seeming ridiculous. The confirmatory value of these reveals cannot be understated: a subset of the people who have been much maligned as "conspiracy theorists" were in fact reasonable in their assumptions and correct in their hunches.

If these evidence-attenders and conspiracy theorists were maligned as being on the lunatic fringe up until recently and were fully exonerated, what else could they have been right about? This question has the government running scared, scrambling to reassure the public that the now-redeemed former crackpots are still off the rocker, and have nothing else that is relevant to say about things which the public doesn't yet believe.

The public failed these conspiracy theorists because they accepted the establishment friendly line that they were kooky-- the public accepted the false associations and intentional counfoundment made between people with legitimate but not mainstream ideas backed with evidence, and various cultish, indefensible fantasy theories like aliens controlling the government, and the moon landing being faked. Thankfully, the public received a gut shot when Snowden went public with the truth. Maybe next time people will listen a bit closer to voices that the government would love to suppress.

Re: The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google

#79

Post by mpyne »

dredmorbius wrote: post #31
Twirrim wrote: post #28

I think I'm more surprised that this was a surprise to people. Of course they built a search engine. Wouldn't you? Don't you have similar at your workplace? We use them all the time. Think about web interfaces built on top of ElasticSearch, for example. Is that not a 'search engine'?

It's not the building a search engine part. It's the opening it up to LEO. Taking homeland security-justified warrantless searches and turning those over to criminal investigations is far beyond unconstitutional.

> Taking homeland security-justified warrantless searches and turning those over to criminal investigations is far beyond unconstitutional.

Except, that it's not.

It's all about how the government comes into possession of information that makes it the fruit (or not) of the "poisonous tree".

Once the government legally learns of some bit of information, there's no requirement by itself that they have to "pretend not to know" something is going on. That's why a third party voluntarily divulging information to the government doesn't cause that evidence to get thrown out of court: There may be a cause for civil or even criminal action against that third party, but that doesn't invalidate the evidence.

Now, Congress has passed statute laws limiting information sharing between intelligence agencies and law enforcement precisely because of the threat of having this all-seeing eye subvert democratic government, but the limits were never complete exclusions, even before 9/11. And the reason statute laws were needed is because there was no barrier to this activity from the judicial side alone.

Parallel construction came in not because evidence was illegally gathered, but because giving the (fully legal!) chain of custody for evidence derived from intelligence sources would have quite naturally have "burned" that source or method, so the NSA would require law enforcement agencies using that data to use alternate (again though, legal) means to make a case in court, in order to protect their intelligence source. It's the old apocryphal dilemma about whether to let Coventry be bombed to protect ULTRA, applied to the post-9/11 world.

Re: The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google

#80

Post by mpyne »

drunkcatsdgaf wrote: post #71
Dolimiter wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a "shill"? Really? This is the level of debate? Also, none of your links in any way prove that the NSA stores all phone calls. None of them. 1 is hearsay from someone, another talks about metadata, and another says that the NSA can record any phone call (yes we know that). Nowhere is there any proof that all calls are being recorded. This is what I am talking about. It doesn't seem possible to have a conversation…

"MYSTIC is a voice interception program used by the National Security Agency. The program recorded every phone call made within a non-specified country for thirty days." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MYSTIC_(surveillance_program)

Again, this is moving the goalposts.

The original claim was "the NSA records all phone calls".

This is saying, "the NSA records all phone calls, in a certain, non-domestic country, for a 30-day window", which is nowhere near the same.

You would think that simply accusing the NSA of what it's actually doing what be good enough, but that's only rarely the case here at HN.

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