Big Brother Is Listening...

[Minute]

Thanks Obama:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/ju ... APosition1

My buddy contacted Verizon today asking to opt out. They told him... and this answer really pisses me off... "Because it's the US Government there is no way to opt out".

God damn it...

[MeGusta]

How did this happen?
Who is to blame?
Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. ~ V

[Freecare Spiritwise]

They've been listening to all our shit, peeking at all our packets and playing semantic games with words like "spying" and "is" since the early/mid 90's; way before 9/11. Remember Echelon? The only difference is that people are finally starting to care. All carriers do this and have for quite a while. Remember, they passed a law specifically giving retroactive immunity to AT&T when it came out about 10 years ago that there was a special closet on site that tapped into their entire backbone. That's one of the first things Obama did when he took office- giving these guys immunity so he could continue Bush's draconian actions, which he took over from Clinton.

The only big development was that recent court case where the court ruled the gag orders unconstitutional. Now the carriers can blab, and there were enough people already pissed at Obama to where they are just piling this on. As well they should. Obama fought against giving the telcos retroactive immunity as a senator. But Obama's actions are just a symptom of a problem with the system.

[Kulaf]

To me, this is really a gray area. They are not listening in on your calls. They are gathering intelligence about the call, specifically:

He pointed out that the order only relates to the so-called metadata surrounding phone calls rather than the content of the calls themselves. "The order reprinted overnight does not allow the government to listen in on anyone's telephone calls," Earnest said.
"The information acquired does not include the content of any communications or the name of any subscriber. It relates exclusively to call details, such as a telephone number or the length of a telephone call."

One can argue that this information should be no more protected than logs the US postal service keeps on where letters are going

[MeGusta]

It is much worse than a gray area, Mr. Kulaf.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/investiga ... story.html

The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets, according to a top-secret document obtained by The Washington Post.

The program, code-named PRISM, has not been made public until now. It may be the first of its kind. The NSA prides itself on stealing secrets and breaking codes, and it is accustomed to corporate partnerships that help it divert data traffic or sidestep barriers. But there has never been a Google or Facebook before, and it is unlikely that there are richer troves of valuable intelligence than the ones in Silicon Valley.

Equally unusual is the way the NSA extracts what it wants, according to the document: “Collection directly from the servers of these U.S. Service Providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.”

PRISM was launched from the ashes of President George W. Bush’s secret program of warrantless domestic surveillance in 2007, after news media disclosures, lawsuits and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court forced the president to look for new authority.

Obama's Promise:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6fnfVJzZT4

[Kulaf]

And it is still aimed at foreign sources:

The Obama administration points to ongoing safeguards in the form of “extensive procedures, specifically approved by the court, to ensure that only non-U.S. persons outside the U.S. are targeted, and that minimize the acquisition, retention and dissemination of incidentally acquired information about U.S. persons.”

[MeGusta]

And it is still aimed at foreign sources:

And who is telling you this? What is your proof that what they are saying is true?

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/ju ... s-nsa-data

The program facilitates extensive, in-depth surveillance on live communications and stored information. The law allows for the targeting of any customers of participating firms who live outside the US, or those Americans whose communications include people outside the US.

It also opens the possibility of communications made entirely within the US being collected without warrants.

With this program, the NSA is able to reach directly into the servers of the participating companies and obtain both stored communications as well as perform real-time collection on targeted users.

The presentation claims PRISM was introduced to overcome what the NSA regarded as shortcomings of Fisa warrants in tracking suspected foreign terrorists. It noted that the US has a "home-field advantage" due to housing much of the internet's architecture. But the presentation claimed "Fisa constraints restricted our home-field advantage" because Fisa required individual warrants and confirmations that both the sender and receiver of a communication were outside the US.

I ask again: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

[Freecare Spiritwise]

They are playing a semantic game where they are basically saying "we didn't give the government access to our servers" when the truth is that they are giving the government copies of their servers. Hence the massive data center the NSA is building in Utah, which is rumored to keep a copy of just about every corporate data center in addition to is own secret data gathering activities.

Tech Companies Deny Letting NSA Have Realtime Access To Their Servers, But Choose Their Words Carefully

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201306 ... ully.shtml

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Obama today said "Nobody is listening to your calls" and it's another semantic tap dance that's technically true. It's only done after the fact and it's done by computers using speech recognition. So there is no warm body listening to your calls, just powerful computers listening to identical copies of your calls and flagging anything that meets the criteria for human listening usually way after the fact.

So all we get is semantic sound bites. When absolutely pinned down for facts, the response then becomes a matter of national security. Anything definitive you hear from any of the principals is always going to be a carefully worded bit of semantics. The only real surprise here is that the public is finally waking up to this issue. They're obviously hoping this fades in the background ASAP.

The fourth amendment is extremely clear. I understand the Constitution is a living, breathing document, but the parts of it that took away the fourth amendment are secret. That means technically, we're not allowed to know what the Constitution even says, because those parts of it are secret. I don't believe the founding fathers intended that the law of the land become a state secret, which is what the Patriot Act gave us. And not only is the law secret, but most of the interpretations of it are secret as well.

[Fallakin Kuvari]

Wonder how many people will start trolling the NSA? I for one want to...

Time to start using ominous terms in all my calls.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Haha I'm probably already on their list. I signed a petition against Echelon in the 90's and didn't think too much of it. Then I came home from work one day and my wife said "Why are you getting letters from the CIA, NSA and the Defense Department?" They all said basically "Thanks for caring about your country, but you can sleep well at night knowing that we don't spy on Americans." but it kind of traumatized her, seeing these imposing looking logos on these letters. They even pick imposing fonts. I wish I would've kept them.

So, I'm not sure it should be me trolling them, praise Allah

[Kulaf]

And it is still aimed at foreign sources:

And who is telling you this? What is your proof that what they are saying is true?

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

You have that backwards sir. What is your proof that what they are saying is not true? There has been no assertion of evidence against any American from intel gathered under this program. Unless/Until there is.......your worry is groundless. All laws are being followed and checks and balances are in place.....unless you have evidence to the contrary.

[Fallakin Kuvari]

Since when have you been for Government Surveillance at an ungodly scale, Kulaf?

While its most likely true that they don't have people going through these calls, I err on the side of what Freecare said. They didn't build a huge "data center" in Utah for nothing, and they certainly have enough computing power to run voice recognition on all the calls and flag any ominous terms as defined in some database.

Our government is out of hand. With all the scandals, this is just icing on the already giant sundae.

[Partha]

PATRIOT Act, bitches. Suck on it.

And forget about those fucking hippies who were moaning about it ten years ago.

[MeGusta]

You have that backwards sir. What is your proof that what they are saying is not true? There has been no assertion of evidence against any American from intel gathered under this program. Unless/Until there is.......your worry is groundless. All laws are being followed and checks and balances are in place.....unless you have evidence to the contrary.

That is simply stupid. This is not a case of a citizen innocent until proven guilty. This is a case of government and private sector collusion that has no real oversight. The question is not even if they are looking at the data of U.S. citizens or not. It is enough that they have the ability to do so without a warrant or probable cause that causes serious constitutional concerns.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

There's been plenty of evidence. The only problem is that any evidence that comes out is immediately suppressed under the umbrella of national security. That's the beauty of the Patriot Act. Any evidence against it is basically illegal, and that's by design. As a citizen, you are not harmed until you can prove you have been harmed. And if any proof you are harmed in this instance is contrary to national security, that gives several agencies a carte blanche to harm people, or at the very least be indifferent to whatever harm they do. That's really what it is. No malice or evil intent. Just complete indifference to the rights of those they are sworn to protect.

A couple lawsuits against the government got some decent traction until they pulled that national security BS. So, obviously, even the ones with obvious merit get stopped in their tracks. I don't believe any judge in the history of the country has ever gone against a claim of national security. Which was fine because they were always used sparingly .. until now.

Also, it's interesting to note here that more people have been prosecuted under the espionage act with Obama at the helm than all other presidents combined. Let's just say that he hates leaks and punishes whistle-blowers. Except when he has Hillary out pushing watered-down whistle-blower protection laws, which I know really ticked her off because she really wanted them. The Obama administration has also rejected more FOIA requests than any previous administration, making it what Wired magazine has called the least transparent administration in history.

All I ask as a citizen is that the law apply uniformly to everyone, and that every citizen be held accountable to it; even the rich and powerful. The purpose of the rule of law is not to make laws which secretly circumvent and undermine the laws that aren't secret. Especially when the laws being circumvented are actual amendments to the Constitution. The rule of law should have no dark crevices.

Wow, I really blabbed lol.

[Ddrak]

Isn't the gathering of intelligence itself the problem constitutionally, not whether its used or not? IIRC the 4th amendment is about search and seizure, not use of the results of that search.

Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using Tapatalk 4 Beta

[Kulaf]

The information gathered is not the possession of the caller, but the company originating the call. The only thing that belongs to the caller is the contents of the call which is not collected.

The basis of the 4th amendment is the exclusionary rule which SCOTUS established in 1914 in Weeks v. United States:

In Weeks v. United States (1914), the Supreme Court established what has been known as the exclusionary rule. The exclusionary rule states that evidence obtained through unconstitutional means is inadmissible in court and cannot be used as part of the prosecution's case. Before Weeks, law enforcement officials could violate the Fourth Amendment without being punished for it, secure the evidence, and use it at trial. The exclusionary rule establishes consequences for violating a suspect's Fourth Amendment rights.

[Partha]

Thought you all might like this article:

One top-secret document obtained by The Post described it as “Collection directly from the servers of these U.S. Service Providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.”

Intelligence community sources said that this description, although inaccurate from a technical perspective, matches the experience of analysts at the NSA. From their workstations anywhere in the world, government employees cleared for PRISM access may “task” the system and receive results from an Internet company without further interaction with the company’s staff.

In intelligence parlance, PRISM is the code name for a “signals intelligence address,” or SIGAD, in this case US-984XN, according to the NSA’s official classified description of PRISM and sources interviewed by The Post. The SIGAD is used to designate a source of electronic information, a point of access for the NSA and a method of extraction. In those terms, PRISM is a not a computer system but a set of technologies and operations for collecting intelligence from Facebook, Google and other large Internet companies.

According to a more precise description contained in a classified NSA inspector general’s report, also obtained by The Post, PRISM allows “collection managers [to send] content tasking instructions directly to equipment installed at company-controlled locations,” rather than directly to company servers. The companies cannot see the queries that are sent from the NSA to the systems installed on their premises, according to sources familiar with the PRISM process.

Crucial aspects about the mechanisms of data transfer remain publicly unknown. Several industry officials told The Post that the system pushes requested data from company servers to classified computers at FBI facilities at Quantico. The information is then shared with the NSA or other authorized intelligence agencies.

According to slides describing the mechanics of the system, PRISM works as follows: NSA employees engage the system by typing queries from their desks. For queries involving stored communications, the queries pass first through the FBI’s electronic communications surveillance unit, which reviews the search terms to ensure there are no U.S. citizens named as targets.

That unit then sends the query to the FBI’s data intercept technology unit, which connects to equipment at the Internet company and passes the results to the NSA.

The system is most often used for e-mails, but it handles chat, video, images, documents and other files as well.

Now, you might argue that placing a call is not the property of the caller, but the phone company...but chat, video, and documents? Those sure as hell aren't the company's.

[Harlowe]

I've always assumed intelligence was being collected, especially after The Patriot Act, but thinking about how easily we create SSL's between ourselves and a trusted site, if the government could piggy back on that... and if they did it under the pretense of "national security" that's pretty scary. Especially with things like the MPAA and RIAA, so gung-ho to go after people. Aren't the cell and internet providers already basically spying for them? How long before pirating is loosely labeled as some sort of terrorist act against corporations.

If there is no privacy for citizen's communications, then we're just setting ourselves up for tyranny, no matter what party is in control. Since Citizens United, the corporate interests on either side are who they are going to cater to anyway. Look at Monsanto, before it's even an issue worth looking into, you literally need the world, along with your citizens speaking out against it. Look at the media black outs for freakin' oil spills. Too big to fail or prosecute. We're a country that protects the financial interests, not the citizens.

This is an issue with the the US government entirely, no matter who is sitting in the oval office or who holds what branch of it, because this shit has been going on for decades and both parties are a part of it. Congress is constantly briefed on it, and I'm sure every branch is involved. If you turn this into a party issue, you have no interest in doing anything about it, just leveraging it against one side or the other. It's Bush's fault, it's Obama's fault...are you fucking kidding me, this is our government entirely and both parties are complicit.