I think it's interesting to ask why these programs are so widely hated. These are national security assets: evidence gathered here will never be used in a drug case, or a tax evasion case. Why not? These tools exist for the bigger fish: the dozens of Soviet-era nuclear weapons believed to be missing, or the small amounts of dangerous pathogens that periodically vanish from research labs. These are what the government…
It seems odd to claim both that: - This government program is widely hated - We have a functioning democracy
I've lived under surveillance before, so I feel my perspective might be somewhat appropriate. I won't comment on the specifics (uninteresting and irrelevant, had to do with where I was living). I won't even make a statement about whether it's justified in my case or in general. I'd just ask everyone here to do one thing: Watch this, then ask yourself how you feel (if it doesn't go directly to 6:40, fastforward to it,…
At a very minimum - this guy needs to be tried for perjury and removed from his post. And millions of americans should sign a petition to have this happen.
If you're referring to online petitions then you needn't waste your time, there are already petitions to make sure this never happens.
I think it's interesting to ask why these programs are so widely hated. These are national security assets: evidence gathered here will never be used in a drug case, or a tax evasion case. Why not? These tools exist for the bigger fish: the dozens of Soviet-era nuclear weapons believed to be missing, or the small amounts of dangerous pathogens that periodically vanish from research labs. These are what the government…
I appreciate the thoughtfulness of your comment. But even if the scope of this program were somehow limited in perpetuity to large-scale terrorism, the massive, centralized storage of every online citizen's Internet history should be frightening to everyone. In other news today, it was revealed that Chinese hackers targeted the Obama and McCain campaigns in '08. What happens when there is a breach in the NSA surveillance database and your individual Google search history is posted openly alongside your browsing history, emails, and Skype chats?
From the 2nd page of the article : “Google cares deeply about the security of our users’ data,” a company spokesman said. “We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government ‘back door’ into our systems, but Google does not have a ‘back door’ for the government to access private user data.”
They are legally required, personally and individually, to lie about the existence of these programs, or go to prison instantly. These orders are gag-ordered by default.
Simply not true. They are forbidden from disclosing individual cases. Google files Transparency Reports all the time announcing that the government compels them to release user data unwillingly.
Looking at all the spiffy official "Top Secret" warnings on top of all the slides, it seems that maybe this ties into previous WaPo stories about the "top secret" spying mentality in the Mil-Ind-Complex since 9/11. The top spooks tried to get an account of all the "top secret" programs and clearances going on in all the intelligence/law enforcement agencies and found that there were so many that were shielded away from oversight that it was impossible to get an accounting of everything the government was up to.
So knowing how audacious of a undertaking this would be I'm a bit skeptical that the Tech companies complied. No one keeps a secret this big for this long, plus some of these companies actually do care about privacy and are rather open about their government requests for data.
It seems more feasible that the ISP's are cooperating (the Guardian article states they rely on compliance of ISPs). The government and ISP's/telecoms have a long history of cooperation in regards to surveillance. Wouldn't it be feasible for the government to sniff traffic to/from these companies central servers with help from ISP's? The data would be encrypted, but we already know the NSA can quickly break the most common encryption methods employed by these companies. (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/al...)
From there who knows who they rebuild or aggregate the data, but this seems more likely/feasible than trying to strong arm companies into back doors. Also makes the program scalable. Regardless this is ridiculous.
you guys all knew about the surveillance sinse the eary 90´s, and i dont mean all the non tech guys, i mean you.It was all about the foreigners, so you dont care. Echelon was all about the non-american, so nobody cares at all. My sympathy now for you is so close to zero, like same sympathy you have shown in the past
>>Warren Buffet has predicted a major nuclear terrorist attack on an American city to be a "virtual certainty" given enough time. Everything is a certainty given enough time. In addition, Mr. Buffet may be a great investor, but what exactly how much would he know about terrorists or nuclear weapons? Probably as much as you and I.
Buffett (via Berkshire Hathaway) has made huge amounts of money selling insurance against catastrophes. This includes natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and floods, as well as other catastrophic events including terrorism.
"You will definitely suffer a terrorist attack" certainly sounds like something that a person who sells insurance would say.
Edit: Just saw the portion markings (the stuff on the slides that says their classification level), and I'm going to change my judgement to "this was pretty classified." And whoever released these slides to the public is going to jail for violating the NDA they signed. Jail for quite a few years for knowingly revealing TS information. I'll leave my previous comment below so you won't think I erased anything. My probl…
>Even Tor, the darling of the EFF, was initially developed by the Navy. Tor is open source. Are you suggesting there is some secret backdoor inserted by the Navy which is not apparent in the public code?
No, I was suggesting that the government has touched things that many people don't realize. There might not be an explicit backdoor in the code, but it's quite possible there is a vulnerability that the government can exploit. I'm not saying that there is, but if there was it wouldn't be publicized and they'd be milking it for all it was worth before someone else discovers the hole and fixes it.
I think it's interesting to ask why these programs are so widely hated. These are national security assets: evidence gathered here will never be used in a drug case, or a tax evasion case. Why not? These tools exist for the bigger fish: the dozens of Soviet-era nuclear weapons believed to be missing, or the small amounts of dangerous pathogens that periodically vanish from research labs. These are what the government…
Let's see. Besides the scary terrorists they have phone records going back to at least 2006 of reporters talking to sources, government and business whistleblowers, all kinds of business negotiations, powerful people calling prostitutes or drug dealers, political rivals, activists and protesters and on and on. It's every other phone call made. And we are not allowed to know what protections they have on database access or what their data retention is. It's almost guaranteed it will be abused if it hasn't already, which we wouldn't be allowed to know either.