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NSA collected 500M U.S. call records in 2017, a sharp rise: official report

reuters.com

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Re: NSA collected 500M U.S. call records in 2017, a sharp rise: official report

#271

Post by lern_too_spel »

sterlind wrote: post #228
lern_too_spel wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. James Clapper is not in the NSA. 2. The NSA never recorded all domestic phone calls, and there is no evidence that they ever did, so neither Clapper nor the NSA lied about that.

I've been citing a lot of sources here. Can you clearly cite your assertion? Over the past few weeks and several threads, you've consistently asserted that NSA/CIA don't bulk-collect Americans' data, with no citing proof. Did you fill out an SF-86 or something?

None of your sources support your claims. I've been pointing to the exact same sources.

I do not work for the US government any more than you work for the Kremlin. Obama called for a "thoughtful fact based debate" over government data collection policies in the wake of the Snowden leaks. By spreading nonsense, you are preventing that debate from occurring.

Re: NSA collected 500M U.S. call records in 2017, a sharp rise: official report

#272

Post by lern_too_spel »

keketi wrote: post #242
lern_too_spel wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. James Clapper is not in the NSA. 2. The NSA never recorded all domestic phone calls, and there is no evidence that they ever did, so neither Clapper nor the NSA lied about that.

> 1. James Clapper is not in the NSA. It's true that James Clapper was not employed by the NSA at the time the question was asked. Are you suggesting that therefore he does not know the answer? If he does not know the answer then why did he answer the question? > 2. The NSA never recorded all domestic phone calls, and there is no evidence that they ever did, so neither Clapper nor the NSA lied about that. The questio…

> Are you suggesting that therefore he does not know the answer?

No, I'm asserting that any statements by Clapper can't show the NSA lying about anything any more than statements by Trump can show the NSA lying about anything because neither is part of the NSA.

> The question posed in the linked video clip is "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions of Americans?".

And the video is irrelevant to the discussion both due to the point above and due to the discussion being about recording content of conversations, as I said in GGP.

Re: NSA collected 500M U.S. call records in 2017, a sharp rise: official report

#273

Post by coldtea »

fulafel wrote: post #267
coldtea wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this is attributing too much agency to "government". Voters wanted slavery, and so public officials supported it. The voters vote what they're told to -- and they're told to by those in power who can pay for campaigns, have their pals in party positions, etc. Plus, the voters get all kinds of stuff that benefit the powerful that they never explicitly asked or voted for, and that were never on any platform.…

Taking this view lets the voters off the hook too easily. Citizens often genuinely want things that are bad for a bunch of other people. Look at the immigration/refugee related polling for example. Or climate change inaction. Sure the public opinion is affected by PR efforts, but people still possess facilities for critical thinking, and everyone knows to be critical about political claims rather than take them at fa…

>Taking this view lets the voters off the hook too easily. Citizens often genuinely want things that are bad for a bunch of other people. Look at the immigration/refugee related polling for example. Or climate change inaction.

Voters might want lots of things, but do they get them though, when those things don't align with what those in power want?

Re: NSA collected 500M U.S. call records in 2017, a sharp rise: official report

#274

Post by lern_too_spel »

sterlind wrote: post #227
lern_too_spel wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TEMPORA is a GCHQ system, not an NSA system, and has nothing to do with Room 641A. Additionally, it cannot record all US phone conversations as you claimed because domestic phone calls do not leave the US.

Fair point, though we did get GCHQ's data. Room 641A was part of the WINDSTOP programs run by SSO, comprised of MUSCULAR, INCENSER and DS-300. According to [1], the NSA mass-collects VoIP partly through XKEYSCORE, FALLOUT and TURMOIL (harvested from INCENSER/DS-300/others), and PSTN through LOPERS (though it's unclear if LOPERS ingests domestic (INCENSER) data or just Europe Asia (DANCINGOASIS) data.) Incidentally, i…

> Fair point, though we did get GCHQ's data.

No, the US gets some of GCHQ's intelligence reports, not all of GCHQ'S data.

> According to [1], the NSA mass-collects VoIP partly through XKEYSCORE, FALLOUT and TURMOIL (harvested from INCENSER/DS-300/others), and PSTN through LOPERS (though it's unclear if LOPERS ingests domestic (INCENSER) data or just EuropeAsia (DANCINGOASIS) data.)

Do you even read your own sources? INCENSER (https://electrospaces.blogspot.com/2014/11/incenser-or-how-n...) designates a cable that links Europe and Asia. None of the collection points you listed are domestic, and none of them collect comtents, only metadata. In Snowden's documents, the only contents that were collected were in regions hostile to the United States.

Read https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Minimization%20Procedure... for an executive summary of NSA data collection, which all of Snowden's documents agree with, once you understand what they say.

Re: NSA collected 500M U.S. call records in 2017, a sharp rise: official report

#275

Post by wybiral »

stale2002 wrote: post #194
wybiral wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your grandmother worked somewhere with access to critical infrastructure or had access to IP that would be in our best interest to protect and she was for some reason in contact with terrorists or suspected foreign agents then it's useful information. Keep in mind that they need court ordered approval to access the data so without that existing context it's off limits. You should be more concerned with what your s…

OK then. And you believe that there are literally 500 million phones going to suspected terrorists in the US? Also, I'd like to point out that the fisa courts do not limit anything. They are a rubber stamp, that never rejects anything.

As I understand it, to quote the article:

> 534 million records of phone calls and text messages

But we don't know how that breaks down to "phones" as you say. I don't even like to use my phone but I bet if you count my texts and calls in a year it would be in the 1000s of records.

No I don't believe that there are "500 million phones going to suspected terrorists in the US" but there may be 500 messages from individuals who have suspected connections to terrorists and foreign agents. And you would never know for sure unless you can look at their metadata to analyze those suspected connections.

You're right that the FISA approval rate is incredible. But it's still a record of requests made (which helps prevent abuse). and as I understand it that number of requests is only in the ~2000 range.

Again, it's a much better situation than the level of scrutiny you're holding to companies like Google/Facebook/Microsoft or ISPs. And those companies aren't even offering national security as a service.

Re: NSA collected 500M U.S. call records in 2017, a sharp rise: official report

#276

Post by DSingularity »

jochung wrote: post #268
jknoepfler wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although I tend to see most ultra-liberal conspiracy babble as nonsense, experience with my own psychology and observation of those around has led me to believe that white male fragility is a real thing. You're being downvoted because people on HN, who are by and large financially secure, well-educated technocrats (like myself!), feel like there's something deeply irritating about your post, whether or not it is stat…

You're right. Just look at all those men telling us they don't feel safe because of what someone wrote, that the work place needs to be more welcoming to them, that being told they're bossy or domineering is insulting, that having to defend themselves in public debate is unacceptable, that they shouldn't be expected to choose between career and family, and that male hygiene products should be paid for by the governme…

Okay. Since the original point — as I understood it — was on the deep seated, institutional racism, racial inequality and how we are oblivious to it — do you mind making your point a bit more clear?

I really don’t get what you are saying. I understand you have a point to make on whether or not women are the biggest victims today — but what is the link to the post?

Re: NSA collected 500M U.S. call records in 2017, a sharp rise: official report

#277

Post by DSingularity »

MertsA wrote: post #183
jlgaddis wrote: post #82

500M in all of 2017? Oh, come on! We found out that Verizon -- just Verizon -- was handing over "phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily" in June 2013. 500M might be an official number that they're willing to release but (without any way to prove it, obviously) I'm certain that the REAL number is much, much higher. For an organization who has vowed to "collect it all", it just doesn't seem likely that th…

>Or perhaps it's just 500M according to their own made up definition of "collect"? This sounds like it's much closer to the truth. "It's not a collection until it comes up as a result in a search" would be about on par with the nonsense the NSA was claiming about what was considered searching data on American Citizens.

So we just need an analyst to search for “lol” or “:-)” and the number goes to 50 billion.

Re: NSA collected 500M U.S. call records in 2017, a sharp rise: official report

#278

Post by lern_too_spel »

jlgaddis wrote: post #153
zevyoura wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: > The 2017 call records tally remained far less than an estimated billions of records collected per day under the NSA’s old bulk surveillance system, which was exposed by former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden in 2013.

Oh I read it. I just don't believe it. After learning of their liberal use of the English language and how they have "re-defined" common words to suit their agenda, I believe very little of anything they say.

They've redefined nothing. See section 2 of https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Minimization%20Procedure.... All the definitions seem reasonable.

The definitions you're thinking of came from conspiracy theory blogs in the aftermath of the Snowden leaks, which proliferated because the numbers didn't add up when taken together with Greenwald's mistaken assertion that PRISM is a full-take program.

Re: NSA collected 500M U.S. call records in 2017, a sharp rise: official report

#280

Post by chii »

coldtea wrote: post #261
chii wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> voters vote what they're told to who's "they"?

I think that the syntactic structure makes it pretty clear that "they" refers to the voters.

i think i was unclear in what i meant - who are the people telling the voters what to do?
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