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PRISM – NSA surveillance program did not prevent a single terrorist attack

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Re: PRISM – NSA surveillance program did not prevent a single terrorist attack

#191

Post by djsumdog »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #109
djsumdog wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is still a lot of unrest in Portland and Seattle, but Federal police (US Marshals, FBI, BORTAC, et. al.) have used regular old police work (cameras, under cover anarchists, wiretaps with warrants) to arrest a ton of these people when the city prosecutors simply wouldn't do a damn thing or catch and release them. Now many of these people are facing federal crimes. You can get some serious years for swinging a sl…

Portland: Feds suffer 277 injuries but no lasting blindness. https://pamplinmedia.com/pt/9-news/475908-384635-portland-fe...

Well that's good. I'm glad they're not permanently blind. Those green lasers are still very powerful and shouldn't have been used they way they were.

Re: PRISM – NSA surveillance program did not prevent a single terrorist attack

#192

Post by bigbubba »

UncleEntity wrote: post #155
macintux wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re not going to garner much sympathy for the McCloskeys. One vital rule of gun handling is to never point it at something until you’re ready to shoot, and she pointed it at people with her finger on the trigger .

> One vital rule of gun handling is to never point it at something until you’re ready to shoot... Not so much, never point a gun at something unless you're willing to shoot -- a double barrel shotgun has a lot of power to make someone rethink their life choices when pointed at them without having to actually shoot.

There are numerous formulations of this rule. The one used by the US Marines is 'Never point the weapon at anything you do not INTEND to shoot.'

In this formulation of the rule, pointing a gun with the intent to threaten isn't valid, since an intention to threaten is not an intention to shoot.

Re: PRISM – NSA surveillance program did not prevent a single terrorist attack

#193

Post by aborsy »

zepto wrote: post #81
docPangloss wrote: post #48

I referenced PRISM in a comment to a recent Apple article on HN a couple of days ago. It triggered HN and Apple fans and the comment ultimately got shadow-banned by moderators.[1] Anyway, it’s astonishing that so many people willfully continue to use products/services offered by the core companies that are members of PRISM surveillance. Members provide access to ALL user data/information to NSA et al. Here are some t…

The problem is that what you are saying is false, and the links you provide don’t back up your assertion in the slightest. Perhaps some of these companies ‘joined’ prism willingly, but Google and Apple both deny having done so. The dates you quote are from slides indicating when prism started to acquire data from these companies. They have nothing to do with membership or joining . Data was obtained from these compan…

But the NSA doesn’t need willingness.

If you operate in the United States, you must obey the US laws, among which are the espionage programs (claimed to be national security measures).

Re: PRISM – NSA surveillance program did not prevent a single terrorist attack

#194

Post by zepto »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #174
zepto wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that what you are saying is false, and the links you provide don’t back up your assertion in the slightest. Perhaps some of these companies ‘joined’ prism willingly, but Google and Apple both deny having done so. The dates you quote are from slides indicating when prism started to acquire data from these companies. They have nothing to do with membership or joining . Data was obtained from these compan…

You are correct that parent is wrong (and horribly wrong, to the point of downright fabrication beyond anything Snowden has ever said), but actually you are also wrong. Under PRISM, data cannot be taken without participation. The simple reason for that is that “participation in PRISM” more or less means you respond to court orders. You are confusing it with other programs. The one you are referring to was reported as…

I’m not wrong.

We know they respond to fisa warrants. Nobody claims otherwise.

But - also know from Snowden we know that that PRISM is not just an aggregation of responses to fisa warrants.

PRISM also involved intercepting Google’s bulk traffic from their fiber without Google’s knowledge, and various other kind of interception.

If you equate PRISM with aggregating fisa warrants responses, then what you say is true.

However it is not actually accurate to make that equation.

And even if court ordered data was aggregated as part of PRISM, that doesn’t constitute ‘participating’ in PRISM in any by the most semantically stretched way, since they didn’t know about it.

If you are going to argue like this, you may as well say that the end users ‘participated’ in prism, by giving their data to these companies. In a way that’s true.

But it’s not true in the common understanding of what it means to participate.

Re: PRISM – NSA surveillance program did not prevent a single terrorist attack

#195

Post by zepto »

ksk wrote: post #180
zepto wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are evidence of some kind of collaboration. The problem is that evidence of collaboration doesn’t substantiate anything at all about participation in prism or any other illegal or underhanded scheme. We know that Google does have portals to service lawful government information requests. It’s also entirely possible that Google participated in some kind of analytics development based on their web indexing and not…

I guess we'll have to wait for another leak to get confirmation on the exact nature of the relationship.

Absolutely.

But until we do, there is no evidence to support these claims.

Re: PRISM – NSA surveillance program did not prevent a single terrorist attack

#196

Post by zepto »

fsflover wrote: post #181
zepto wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not calling Snowden’s leaks bullshit either. Nothing Snowden leaked actually corroborates DocPangloss’s claims. Snowden showed that these orgs were compromised by prism, not that they willingly joined. That’s the point.

> Snowden showed that these orgs were compromised by prism, not that they willingly joined. Not true. Snowden showed that Apple and Google were "commercial partners" with PRISM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosure... .

That doesn’t mean they willingly joined PRISM, knew that they had joined, or knew what data the NSA was taking.

As has been discussed elsewhere there are legitimate and legal reasons for them to cooperate with the NSA in certain ways.

Those two words change nothing more than that there was a partnership of some kind.

No evidence has ever been produced of these companies knowingly participating in the kind of bulk data collection that PRISM is asserted to be.

I’m not claiming to be certain they didn’t participate.

I am claiming that the evidence clearly doesn’t not support that claim yet.

Re: PRISM – NSA surveillance program did not prevent a single terrorist attack

#197

Post by InitialLastName »

bigbubba wrote: post #192
UncleEntity wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One vital rule of gun handling is to never point it at something until you’re ready to shoot... Not so much, never point a gun at something unless you're willing to shoot -- a double barrel shotgun has a lot of power to make someone rethink their life choices when pointed at them without having to actually shoot.

There are numerous formulations of this rule. The one used by the US Marines is 'Never point the weapon at anything you do not INTEND to shoot.' In this formulation of the rule, pointing a gun with the intent to threaten isn't valid, since an intention to threaten is not an intention to shoot.

My preferred formulation is "Never point a gun towards anything you don't mean to destroy". Including things within a reasonable solid angle of your target.

Re: PRISM – NSA surveillance program did not prevent a single terrorist attack

#198

Post by zepto »

aborsy wrote: post #193
zepto wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that what you are saying is false, and the links you provide don’t back up your assertion in the slightest. Perhaps some of these companies ‘joined’ prism willingly, but Google and Apple both deny having done so. The dates you quote are from slides indicating when prism started to acquire data from these companies. They have nothing to do with membership or joining . Data was obtained from these compan…

But the NSA doesn’t need willingness. If you operate in the United States, you must obey the US laws, among which are the espionage programs (claimed to be national security measures).

Sure, but that’s irrelevant.

Not only do we not have evidence of willingness. We don’t have evidence they even knowingly participated, whether willing or not.

Re: PRISM – NSA surveillance program did not prevent a single terrorist attack

#199

Post by slg »

Grimm1 wrote: post #186
slg wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>largely borne no fruit in terms of protecting our freedoms and safety but have instead eroded them. If we actually want to convince people that this needs change, we need to hold both sides of the debate to the same standard. We searched for any concrete evidence of these measures adding safety, found none, and then concluded it didn't add safety. The next step is to look for concrete examples of how this erodes fre…

The act of secretly (or I guess not so secretly now) monitoring civilian information is a loss of a freedom in and of itself. Freedom from undue government interference in an otherwise normal citizen's life. It's existence is confirmation in and of itself, another overreach.

What do you mean in tangible and concrete terms? How has my life been made worse by these laws? You need to explain that because these abstract concepts don't seem to motivate people to action.

Re: PRISM – NSA surveillance program did not prevent a single terrorist attack

#200

Post by minerjoe »

fmajid wrote: post #176

Of course not. Its primary purpose is to identify whistleblowers.

That is spot on, yes? I wish more people "on the inside" lived up to their oath to defend the constitution "against all enemies, foreign and domestic."

But maybe the rachet had been tightened too far and they, if they even exist, just don't see a way?

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