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NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

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Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

#241

Post by mayanksinghal »

tptacek wrote: post #185
mayanksinghal wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then we should definitely consider DDG, a much smaller company in the same country, sharing its keys with NSA. They too might be under some gag order that not only stops them from saying that they are compromised but also gagged to say that their users are anonymous so that all the terrorists, law breakers and cheating husbands use this service because of a false sense of security. It is not beyond the realm of possi…

Again, just to keep stomping on this bit of urban legendry: while courts can issue gag orders for FISA directives, they cannot compel people to lie.

And I agree with it. I was addressing a different view altogether. There seems to be a very widespread paranoia that the worst possible event is the one that is occurring and that all entities but the user are collaborating willingly to make it happen. What is surprising is that most of the people here are US citizens who at least have some of their rights intact, enough for the companies to fight back as they have publicly acknowledged that they do to as much extent as possible. I am more worried about the legal requests from US government for data about non US citizens. Does there even exist a legal system to prevent mass unmonitored snooping on them?

Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

#242

Post by tptacek »

pradocchia wrote: post #233
tptacek wrote: post #12

So that's not good. You can see how that could be happening; NSA has trunk-level access to telephony circuits. Telcos are engaged in a long-running game of footsie with the government that makes billion dollar Internet companies look like anarcho-capitalists. But I'm not seeing how we get from there to the contents of email. To have the email of arbitrary Americans without a warrant, the NSA would need direct access…

Dude. They have the content of email too. I'm going to make a wild guess here and assume it falls under the "required by law" category of the denials. Well, too bad for them, too bad for us. Welcome to the future, and there's scant chance that any of this will ever get rolled back. Meanwhile, its also fairly obvious that some security folks sympathetic to the NSA have your ear. You like them, you respect their skills…

Dude. Provide evidence for extraordinary claim. I'm all ears. Also: this content vs. metadata thing? Also I think a red herring: they don't have full metadata access from Google Mail either.

Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

#243

Post by [deleted] »

kunai wrote: post #183
Homunculiheaded wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really unfortunate that most people read 1984 as teenagers (I did). I went back to it as an adult, somewhat expecting it to be a let down. What I found was quite the opposite, there's a lot more nuance in that book than would really be absorbed by high school students being forced to read it. "The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you beg…

Do not stereotype teenagers. I am merely fifteen years old, and if you take a look through my comment thread you may find more insight than you expected. Yes, most in my generation are shallow and passive; but that doesn't mean all are. There are some intellectuals on the fringes.

[deleted]

Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

#244

Post by querulous »

tptacek wrote: post #26
sneak wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the NSA would need direct access to the servers that run Google Mail. They do not have that access; Google has categorically denied it, and the Guardian walked the claim back. Also, I don't necessarily buy this. I don't think Google's denials are lies, as Google is not a single brain, but thousands of individuals. Hard to prove a negative.

You think it's possible that NSA got direct access to Google's servers in a way that was invisible to Google's CEO, it's general counsel, its Chief Architect, Justin Schuh of their security team, and any of their thousands of employees, most of whom would immediately report such a thing if they discovered it? Moreover, having obtained this illicit access, in direct defiance of the corporation that owns and controls t…

china seemingly managed it. why wouldn't the nsa have an easier time at it?

Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

#245

Post by linuxhansl »

In school I learned that we have the three powers - the legislative, judicial, and executive - are separated so that they keep each other in balance. If any two of these are held in the same hands there are no restrictions. (if you can make laws and preside over trials you make bring anyone to jail, or if you can preside over trials and execute the sentence)

That's why (IMHO) individual wiretaps with a warrant are fine. Somebody had to make a law, a judge had to weigh the facts and issue a warrant, and an FBI agent/cop/etc executes the actual tap.

In this case the NSA analyst is both the judge and the executor violating these checks and balances. Now maybe there might be temporary warrants for wider range of individuals, even t

Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

#246

Post by tptacek »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #238
tptacek wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Guardian went out of its way to characterize the access not only as "direct" but "unilateral".

So what? The subject of this thread is that the NSA admitted that analysts can listen to the content of all of our phone calls without a warrant. We are having this discussion because the Snowden link put the NSA front and center. Yet, you are arguing some mundane semantics? Instead of smearing the people responsible for these revelations, why not try to focus on the big picture? That is, all of this is leading to lo…

No, I am arguing that AT&T rolled over (and, as it turns out from today's Gellman piece in WaPo, took money from the USG to do it), while Google fought back. But commenters on boards like this are happy to shit all over Google because (a) any allegation that Google rolled over to the USG confirms their biases, (b) they're inclined to put people into binary "agrees with me entirely" or "disagrees with me entirely" buckets that presume anyone who argues with them must be apologizing for NSA, and (c) because it's fun to talk about big companies like Google being evil and less fun to talk about them working hard not to be.

You think these are mundane semantics. I think they're more meaningful than that. People on HN can't get me to shut over the right fix for a CSRF bug or how taxicabs can be licensed; why would anyone think I'd back down on an issue like this?

Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

#247

Post by jacoblyles »

temp9251 wrote: post #199
kunai wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do not stereotype teenagers. I am merely fifteen years old, and if you take a look through my comment thread you may find more insight than you expected. Yes, most in my generation are shallow and passive; but that doesn't mean all are. There are some intellectuals on the fringes.

I'm 20 now, and I think I'm smart. When I was 15 I did as well, but now I think I was pretty stupid at the time. No doubt the pattern will continue at 25.

I hated most literature when I was 18, then magically fell in love with the same novels I hated when I was 24. Still, there is more nuance I can pick up now at 30 with more study of history. If you haven't read the Iliad and a majority of the Bible, then you simply can't understand most of Western literature and those things take time.

It's interesting to see that this is a universal experience. School gave me literature before I was able to appreciate it, and it nearly turned me off to the taste.

Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

#248

Post by reeses »

zrail wrote: post #206
temp9251 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 20 now, and I think I'm smart. When I was 15 I did as well, but now I think I was pretty stupid at the time. No doubt the pattern will continue at 25.

This pattern continues to at the very least 29.

That's about when it stops. Once you hit 30, it's all about having enough information to regret everything you ever did in life.

Then you just wait to die. Why bother trying to save this mess now?

Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

#249

Post by einhverfr »

Lost_BiomedE wrote: post #95
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #77

Since the modus operandi seems to be for the NSA to suck up everything it can and decide later it seems (wild speculation follows) that the NSA might be sitting on audio recrodings of all your phone calls for the past several years. Can you imagine the number of divorce cases that would impact? Civil lawsuits? Proof of innocence or guilt in a crime? Hell, get a decade or two of this and historians alone would have a…

Part of the book 1984 was the complacence of the lower class. I am not targeting any class here but pointing out that a culture of complacency by division was a large warning in that book that is often overlooked.

Indeed all states derive their power from the consent of the governed, do they not? What would have happened if even a third of Iraq decided to ignore their government under Saddam? The government couldn't have responded. Governments work because we agree to do what they say. Now things like drones centralize some of the power in ways that could not be done before but only to a point and the complexity overhead counterbalances that.

Complacency is how tyranny works everywhere and in all ages.

Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

#250

Post by hugogee »

Here we have a great tool at our diposal(internet) and all we can do is use it to bitch, moan and compare notes. Surprisingly, politicians feel they can do as they please. Its a shame we cannot organize and do something about it. I wonder what effect(s) striking for a week would have? Typically solutions are of equal proportion to the problem at hand. But its so inconvenient-i know. A less affected Hong Kong has held a rally but here those most impacted-nothing. Ughh im tired of reading this shit. We deserve everything we get.

Or we could take this as a challenge to see how many people we can get to strike. So much talent here... How will it end?

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