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Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

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Re: Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

#191

Post by pessimizer »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #151
mangala wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was the narrative toed by the Bush administration and Fox News, but many Americans and the international community by and large did not agree.

I think that's largely a case of selective memory. People often have a rosy memory of what they believed. Bush said he had clear evidence of WMD's in Iraq, that he showed this to Blair and Blair confirmed. I think it would be fair to say that most people would agree that Hussein wanted WMD's. So I think it's fair to think that most Americans and most in the international community believed that Iraq had WMD's. The ar…

I think the selective memory comes in when people claim that there weren't a huge number of people that thought and proclaimed loudly that the evidence was bunk at the time. It's the same type of historical retcon that happens when people say that no one could see the housing bubble coming, and that everyone during slavery/segregation thought black people were inferior, so no one should be judged terrible for it because they were "of their time."

The television was always sure that the war was necessary, that Powell's speech was coherent, and that the government always knows best because it has access to secret sources that it can't reveal and our best interests at heart. Of course, the television is also in the arms business.

Re: Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

#192

Post by pessimizer »

thereallurch wrote: post #165
VikingCoder wrote: post #140

Math is fun! You can buy a 2 TB HD for $99.99 right now. The population of the United States is 311,591,917. That's 7057 bytes per citizen, for a penny under a Franklin. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg in EPUB format, in 2.3 MB. Therefore, if you wanted to have William Shakespeare write as much text about every single citizen in the United States, as he wrote in all…

While you make a good point, your end number is wildly inaccurate. 1) I highly doubt the NSA is buying $100 dollar low grade hard drives. I bet this data is backed up at least twice per site, at multiple sites. 2) The data is not unstructured, it will be structured in some sort of database. Storing your facebook photos alone will be potentially hundreds of megabytes. 3) I doubt NSA is spending it's entire budget ever…

1) If he's three or four orders of magnitude off, his point still stands.

2) Also, the data could be almost completely unstructured. You mine the data that you have to create structure. If you toss anything, or prematurely optimize things, you're missing out on what the algorithms that you come up with 10 years from now will give you.

3) If you're using enough redundancy to multiply $35,000 into $3,000,000,000, you're insane.

Re: Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

#193

Post by golgo13 »

bobsy wrote: post #27

If this is true doesn't it mean that Bin Laden won the war on terror? Every time I go to the airport I think this. Those full body scanners? Thanks to Bin Laden, now you practically get strip searched for every flight. You have to take off your shoes. You cannot take drinks on a plane. You then have everyone on edge no matter where you go. You and a friend play CounterStrike. You get on the bus and start talking abou…

Incorrect, you can take drinks on the plane. I call them "Freedom Cokes" and "Freedom Water." As long as you buy them on the other side of the TSA, you can take Cokes on planes. Sure, the Cokes probably came from the same truck as your local gas station, but that doesn't matter.

Re: Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

#194

Post by bhaile »

From the article: "In the short video interview, Binney explained a bit more about the NSA spying on Americans: "Domestically, they're pulling together all the data about virtually every U.S. citizen in the country and assembling that information, building communities that you have relationships with, and knowledge about you; what your activities are; what you're doing. So the government is accumulating that kind of information about every individual person and it's a very dangerous process.""

I imagine this is where Palantir is being used. About building the connections through large data sets on the science of ontology.

Re: Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

#195

Post by law »

lubujackson wrote: post #187
law wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd even claim that the left wing has a greater propensity to engage in this conduct, albeit more subtly. For example, one side effect of the Affordable Care Act is the federal government knowing which Americans have health insurance. While this doesn't prove they have access to your health records, it's nevertheless troubling that they have direct evidence of whether you're insured (and whether it's ``Cadillac'' ins…

They also know what car insurance I have and if it's a "Cadillac." Heaven forbid!

Not the federal government...

Re: Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

#196

Post by pstuart »

debacle wrote: post #112
mtgx wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a good reason for any country to have spies at all, especially for internal matters? I feel that spying on other countries (let alone on own citizens) shouldn't exist at all, but it has become accepted by societies as something that the Governments just have to do, to "make their job easier", just like even FBI said recently that they'd prefer if they didn't need to get warrants, because it would make their…

The corporate/bureaucratic symbiosis means that spying on your citizens is seen as necessary to control the populace.

Then add in "terrorism", the war on drugs and child pornography (think of the children!) as excuses for these actions and the game is won.

Re: Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

#197

Post by aidenn0 »

Bishop: Ah. You're the guys I hear breathing on the other end of my phone. Dick Gordon: No, that's the FBI. We're not chartered for domestic surveillance. Bishop: Oh, I see. You just overthrow governments. Set up friendly dictators. Dick Gordon: No, that's the CIA. We protect our government's communications, we try to break the other fella's codes. We're the good guys, Marty. Bishop: Gee, I can't tell you what a relief that is...Dick.

Re: Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

#198

Post by dredmorbius »

dman wrote: post #167
dredmorbius wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

""If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." - Cardinal Richelieu

What if every sentence began with - "Hypothetically speaking"

Hypothetically speaking, I think the good Cardinal would say "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

Re: Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

#199

Post by diminoten »

hooande wrote: post #29

About ten years ago, the NSA got direct access to every phone call, text and email sent via AT&T from the west coast to asia. Every. Single. Message. Set up shop next to the servers and just copied all of the data coming across. I think that by "dossiers" this guy meant "social network information from communication logs". They can start with your number (any number) and see who communicates with it. And then see who…

Let them. I still believe in the justice system enough to be willing to put this sort of thing to a legal test.

Re: Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

#200

Post by fduran »

kitsune_ wrote: post #79

Switzerland had a huge surveillance scandal during the 80's. It was named "Fichenskandal" or in English, "Secret files scandal". More than 700'000 people or organizations were targeted, usually people on the left: unions, feminists, environmentalists etc. A friend of my father runs an independent book store and he requested his files after the scandal was made public. He received a stack of paper over 10 inches high.…

"Switzerland finally allowed women to vote in... drum roll... 1971." the last canton to allow women to vote was forced to do it as late as 1990 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appenzell_Innerrhoden
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