The PRISM Scandal - Feds spying on millions of people

[Anonymous]

Solution : recognise that THE clear and present danger is the cabal that's in power today, as we speak.

Not Emanuel Goldstein (1984).

:face:

 

[Anonymous]

George Wallace.

Robert Kennedy.

Ross Perot was making waves until warned off.

:face:

 

[MisterE]

I think the overall problem is bigger than any one man or administration can rectify.

The momentum of technological development is far greater than our capacity to keep it contained and manageable. Instant worldwide access to both information and communication via internet makes data mining/surveillance a natural consequence. In other words, because it's there and the way it works, it's the natural outcome if national security and government are part of the panorama.

What we're seeing really can't be avoided given society as we know it today. It will invariably move towards what people call a police state in the effort to control it.

 

[alfredo_buscatti]

The Utah facility is supposed to be able to store 5 zettabytes of data. A zettabyte is 10 to the 21st power, or 1 million times larger than a terabyte, the largest amount of storage in whose terms I was accustomed to thinking, until now.

1Kilobyte or 10 to the 3rd power = 1,000
1Megabyte or 10 to the 6th power = 100,000
1Gigabyte or 10 to the 9th power = 100,000,000
1Terabyte or 10 to the 12th power = 100,000,000,000
1Petabyte or 10 to the 15th power = 100,000,000,000,000
1Exabyte or 10 to the 18th power = 100,000,000,000,000,000
1 Zettabyte = 10 to the 21st power = 100,000,000,000,000,000,000

But I applaud thinking big.

 

[Anonymous]

The Gattling gun was supposed to make warfare so horrifying that people would never consider it again.

:face:

 

[Anonymous]

The Gattling gun was supposed to make warfare so horrifying that people would never consider it again.

:face:

That would seem dependent on which end of the gun you are on. :twisted:

 

[Kyle Weiss]

Well, the Utah facility has plenty of storage.

Coming to mind is that horrid show "Hoarders" that I see every so often when I'm staying in some crappy motel in backwater Nevada for work...so much stuff... only one poor soul to stack it, stash it and forget about it.

I can't imagine that almost 300 million people, accessing, saving, processing, replicating and creating new data each day is pined through with a fine-toothed comb. There isn't the manpower. There isn't the computer power. So they can store it. The Gatling Gun comparison is apropos--it was used a lot more for show and awe than as a strategic military weapon.

The scary thing is--what all came after the Gatling Gun...

...which is why this PRISM thing is (or should be) of some concern.

The new weapon is information. Whoever controls it controls the world. Not such a "new" idea after all, just the technology involved. How obedient reliant we are. :heart:

8)

 

[alfredo_buscatti]

The nature of power is to want more power.
Total information is total? power; the data will be collected. (MisterE)
Any mid-level government official and those over him will have access to it.
The government will use the data to secure re-election as well as frame, prosecute,
convict and jail those who get in their way.

The rich will buy access to the data.
They will use it ruthlessly to get richer. Their riches will be fabled, like the Persian kings.
In comparison the riches they've amassed through the capital gains tax slash will seem
small.
They will exploit the classes below without mercy.
Ultimately there will be revolution.
One of the first acts of the revolutionary government will be to destroy all digital
technology.
Society will once again be primitive.

 

[MisterE]

^Everything except the revolution and the destruction of all digital technology has (and is) already happened.

 

[alfredo_buscatti]

In your mind, not yet mine.

Moreover, if the above is correct it will be done on a far more grand scale, about which, were it occurring now, we would know.

But if so we couldn't talk about it as there will be no conversation that wouldn't be recorded. Even employing practical anti-eavesdropping techniques such as back round noise, how would you know if your home/business was bugged?

 

[Vito]

Lost in the shuffle (apparently)

No, Yakst…not lost. I can’t address every point in the avalanche of stuff you’ve posted in this thread; there’s only so much time. Anyhow, I was hoping someone else would cover it, or that you would do your own research and discover for yourself that the infamous "_NSAKEY" was not a back door into Windows.

The short answer is that the "_NSAKEY" is a requirement so that NSA can test the software to confirm that it complies with export regulations. Certain kinds of software are actually subject to such regulations, especially software that uses strong encryption. That has been true for a long time, and as far as I know most people in the security community don't take issue with it.

The “_NSAKEY” issue caused quite a stir, and Mr. Fernandez garnered quite a bit of publicity for it. But it wasn’t a back door. Microsoft would utterly KILL their market credibility if they let such a thing happen, and in any case it would be immediately detected. If you don’t know how or why, then I take it you neither know about nor use network monitoring software.

See, even if the key were a back door, any responsible user is going to be running a network monitor that notifies him/her when an application makes an outgoing connection request. (I use Little Snitch...been using it for many years. It works great...and there are Windows equivalents.) Nobody can run a "back door" on any of my machines without my knowing it.

There’s a longer answer — including an explanation about the third key, and the fact that a back door in Windows (or any other software) is a different and separate issue from the PRISM surveillance scandal (over which Microsoft has no control) — but I’m not going to try to persuade you. You can research the issue for yourself. I have complete confidence that you will reach your own conclusions, irrespective of what I say.

I’m certainly not going to attempt to defend Microsoft’s…er, “integrity” (such as it is). If they had true integrity they would actually fix the features in their software that have consistently and persistently remained broken, while they continue to add new “features” that eliminate operability that wasn’t broken in the first place. Jerks. :x

Anyhow, I've written and published one significant workaround of a huge bug in MS Word's "Insert cross reference..." feature — a bug that Microsoft refuses to fix. So, I probably understand as well as anyone the degree to which Microsoft’s actions are both incompetent and injudicious. But far more experienced eyes than mine (and Mr. Fernandez’s, evidently) are all over Windows like white on rice every day. There’s no back door.

None of this absolves the NSA of the current chicanery, of course, which is bad enough without resurrecting the “_NSAKEY” scare. For my part, I rejoice that you and I actually agree on so much of what is wrong about the PRISM scandal. :mrgreen:

 

[Anonymous]

Some seem under the impression that this is recent. A number of years ago it was known that at least one floor in AT&T SF tower had been turned over to NSA and they had access to their complete network. Don't think of this as new or recent. The only real change has been the increases in storage capability and probably software scanning that pulls up anything suspect. I imagine the main improvement there is fewer false positives. I imagine that the period around the Boston incident drove those analysts bonkers with the rash of false positive that came from our discussions of death and tools of terror.

Having the data and not using it to its fullest extent makes collecting it a worthless activity.

 

[Vito]

Some seem under the impression that this is recent. A number of years ago it was known that at least one floor in AT&T SF tower had been turned over to NSA and they had access to their complete network.

If "some" believe that, some didn't read this:

PRISM is essentially a next-step application of the same method that NSA was already caught doing in the Room 641A incident in 2006, wherein the Feds used a beam splitter on an Internet backbone fiber optic cable owned by AT&T. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation reported, it wasn't anything so trivial as a mere "wiretap" of Google, or Microsoft, ...etc.; it was a country tap — a massive interception of a huge portion of the Internet flowing in and out of the U.S.

:mrgreen:

Having the data and not using it to its fullest extent makes collecting it a worthless activity.

Hmmm...I think there are many (including yours truly) whose greatest wish is that the Feds will not use the data to its fullest extent.

I respectfully submit that whether you or I or anyone else thinks their capturing the data is "worthless" is something they're not likely to be especially concerned about. The fact remains that they are capturing the data, and they're doing it by a circuitous route that ends up being a violation of the Fourth Amendment. The warrants under which they have intercepted the data give the NSA no right to seize the information of millions of users, most of whom could not possibly be specified on the warrants. Whether or how they use it is irrelevant. They're not entitled to seize it in the first place.

The Constitution is supposed to be the supreme law of the land. I'll be the first to admit that it's not perfect, but it's better than what we've got now.

 

[Andy Lowry]

Truecrypt and netstat are my best friends.

 

[Gumball]

So they changed the name from ESCHELON to PRISM.

As a wise old frenchman (Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord) once said..."An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public."


In the UK we have been assured by our politicians that it is all very legal and necessary for our safety and they would never dream of doing anything underhand and that we should all go about our business and stay calm because mother knows best. We should under no circumstances ask for evidence that it legal etc :shock:

I have no problem with the government spying on me, so long as the government is okay with me spying on them. Unfortunately they don't seem to like that idea very much :lol!:

 

[Anonymous]

<table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="1" width="90%"><tr><td>JKenP wrote:</td></tr><tr><td class="quote">Having the data and not using it to its fullest extent makes collecting it a worthless activity.
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I respectfully submit that whether you or I or anyone else thinks their capturing the data is "worthless" is something they're not likely to be especially concerned about. The fact remains that they are capturing the data, and they're doing it by a circuitous route that ends up being a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

When I talked about not using the data being unlikely when they possessed it, I was not talking about legality or integrity.  I was point out the attraction being unstoppable.  I think you read extra.

The defense being mounted is already including their need to protect us and that opens all the data in their minds. 

It is nice to see that the House and Senate  are holding hearings.   Now if they'd just appoint a special prosecutor instead of resolving it politically, we might get this resolved a lot sooner.

Here another bit to misunderstand.  The politicians aren't the ones at fault.

P.S.  War footing created and creates a lot of exception that are overlooked by all patriotic Americans.  If you don't believe me, ask a Japanese-American my age.

 

[Anonymous]

The following is taken from www.slashdot.org and seems like good news for all American and for the Constitution. (Lots of links included)

"In an open letter addressed to U.S. attorney general Eric Holder and FBI director Robert Mueller, Google chief legal officer David Drummond again insisted that reports of his company freely offering user data to the NSA and other agencies were untrue. 'However,' he wrote, 'government nondisclosure obligations regarding the number of FISA national security requests that Google receives, as well as the number of accounts covered by those requests, fuel that speculation.' In light of that, Drummond had a request of the two men: 'We therefore ask you to help make it possible for Google to publish in our Transparency Report aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures—in terms of both the number we receive and their scope.' Apparently Google's numbers would show 'that our compliance with these requests falls far short of the claims being made.' Google, Drummond added, 'has nothing to hide.'" Another open letter was sent to Congress from a variety of internet companies and civil liberties groups, (headlined by Mozilla, the EFF, the ACLU, and the FSF), asking them to enact legislation to prohibit the kind of surveillance apparently going on at the NSA and to hold accountable the people who implemented it. (A bipartison group of senators has just come forth with legislation that would end such surveillance.) In addition to the letter, the ACLU sent a lawsuit as well, directed at President Obama, Eric Holder, the NSA, Verizon and the Dept. of Justice (filing, PDF). They've also asked (PDF) for a release of court records relevant to the scandal. Mozilla has also launched Stopwatching.us, a campaign to "demand a full accounting of the extent to which our online data, communications and interactions are being monitored." Other reactions: Tim Berners-Lee is against it, Australia's Foreign Minister doesn't mind it, the European Parliament has denounced it, and John Oliver is hilarious about it (video). Meanwhile, Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who leaked the information about the NSA's surveillance program, is being praised widely as a hero and a patriot. There's already a petition on Whitehouse.gov to pardon him for his involvement, and it's already reached half the required number of signatures for a response from the Obama administration.

 

[somedumbjerk]

there is a lot going on here, and i think this is rising to a point where people are getting pissed off. i've already been a victim of big brother watching what i do and was listed as a potential political threat because of my affiliation with a militant anti racism group in my youth. back then i refused to use cell phones, credit cards or email to do any communication with this group, and no purchases with credit cards at any place where we would meet up or any political places like bookshops, etc. i was pretty paranoid, and this was ten years ago. this whole scandal has raised a part of me that has laid dormant for many years and now i'm pissed. mostly my strong political views have to do with social issues and equality, and this strikes both home. there are a few groups who are listing ways of peaceful protest on the web, and i encourage everyone to take part in letting your voice get heard. i no longer partake in any form of violence, so i really do encourage as many of us as possible to stand up for ourselves and be heard before it turns to that.

 

[Anonymous]

This isn't exactly Deja vu, is it?

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[Slartibartfast]

Well gawwwwlly.  Surprise, surprise, surprise!   :roll:   :monkey: