NSA has direct access to tech giants' systems for user data, secret files reveal

Linking "people", "elect" and "government" in that context is, at best, naive.

 

As others have already pointed out, linking those two groups is a grave mistake. If the Snowden revelations should have made you realize anything, it is that those groups have very different interests, and what's "good for" one, is almost always bad for the other.

 

The Syrians or other non-friends probably do not see with your glasses.
But I should not say more because it gets too off-topic.

 

Well your question is kind of a microcosm of the overall issue with this whole NSA thing:
Are you, as a non-"high ranking government employee" (this means people who work for TLAs and the politicians who are supposedly in charge of them) more secure because of this stuff, or not?

In other words, do these policies actually increase security? There's plenty that argue they don't.

In regards to your specific question, you're basically asking if the people this agency is supposedly protecting are helped by learning about its incompetency. I would think that's certainly better than the alternative, which would be the agency operating with complete impunity, and able to do basically whatever (including taking an entire country offline) without fear of the public ever finding out they did it (and by accident, no less).

This is actually something security expert Bruce Schneier has been talking about pretty much ever since this stuff started coming out...the fact that the documents reveal the NSA is extremely risk averse, and the fact that now that they have to operate as if whatever they do will be public knowledge in 3-5 years, it forces them to make considerations they otherwise wouldn't.

This does seem to be better in terms of making the general public more secure.

 

>

"NSA and GCHQ agents 'leak Tor bugs', alleges developer


British and American intelligence agents attempting to hack the "dark web" are being deliberately undermined by colleagues, it has been alleged. Spies from both countries have been working on finding flaws in Tor, a popular way of anonymously accessing "hidden" sites. But the team behind Tor says other spies are tipping them off, allowing them to quickly fix any vulnerabilities...

The allegations were made in an interview given to the BBC by Andrew Lewman, who is responsible for all the Tor Project's operations. He said leaks had come from both the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the US National Security Agency (NSA). By fixing these flaws, the project can protect users' anonymity, he said.

'There are plenty of people in both organisations who can anonymously leak data to us to say - maybe you should look here, maybe you should look at this to fix this,' he said. 'And they have.'....

However, he acknowledged that because of the way the Tor Project received such information, he could not prove who had sent it. 'It's a hunch,' he said. 'Obviously we are not going to ask for any details.' You have to think about the type of people who would be able to do this and have the expertise and time to read Tor source code from scratch for hours, for weeks, for months, and find and elucidate these super-subtle bugs or other things that they probably don't get to see in most commercial software. 'And the fact that we take a completely anonymous bug report allows them to report to us safely.'

He added that he had been told by William Binney, a former NSA official turned whistleblower, that one reason NSA workers might have leaked such information was because many were 'upset that they are spying on Americans'."

Full Story here: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28886462

 

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/...each-nsa-cia-secret-google-crisscross-proton/

 

http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=17295

 

No stone left unturned it seems in this monstrous invasion of privacy.

 

From This is why you can't trust the NSA. Ever.:

 

British spy agency scanned for vulnerable systems in 32 countries, German paper reveals

 

The executive order that led to mass spying, as told by NSA alumni

 

The NSA Revelations All in One Chart

 

From FISC OKs Section 215 Investigations of Americans, Despite First Amendment:

 

From Intercept Reporting Raises Broader Metadata Minimization Question:

 

Meet the shadowy tech brokers that deliver your data to the NSA

 

The U.S. Government’s Secret Plans to Spy for American Corporations

 

Legal memos released on Bush-era justification for warrantless wiretapping

 

The NSA is a military agency, and it does not consider itself bound by civilian law, or answerable to civilian authority. Like it or not, that is what's so. At least, that's what I get from reading Bamford.

 

The Military in the USA remains under civilian control and if our military believes that it is not bound by the Constitution and Bill of Rights then we are in lot more serious trouble than I thought.

Since 9/11 the concept of the "unitary executive" having unlimited powers in times of war has developed, but even if wrong, that applies to The President and not directly to the Military.

Seems like the Brass could use some education about the Constitution.

Just this morning I read a story about an air force pilot who was refused re-enlistment because he refused to sign an oath that included references to "God" or "Under God" or something to that effect. The pilot is an atheist and refused to sign and was thus denied re-enlistment.

"U.S. Air Force: Swear to God—or Get Out

In a new, unexplained shift, the Air Force is compelling its troops to use the phrase ‘so help me God’ in their oaths or be discharged."

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/08/u-s-air-force-swear-to-god-or-get-out.html#

 

Indeed.

In one of the first wave of articles about the Snowden leaks, I recall reading that "need to know" policies firewall some projects from senior management. In other words, neither the Director of National Intelligence nor the Secretary of Defense knows about all NSA programs.

 

"U.S. threatened huge fine to force Yahoo on data

Unsealed court documents illuminate how federal officials forced American tech companies to participate in a program that gave the National Security Agency extensive access to user data."


From top story above the fold on tonight's edition Of Washington Post Online Edition.

W/O a subscription you only get to view a certain number of articles per month and didn't feel it it was worth using one of those to learn more about this atm. I'm sure more will be published about this on a totally free site later. Just posted as a note of interest.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/regional/

 

"NSA: Yahoo Threatened with Huge Fines for Refusal to Provide Data to US Government

Yahoo was threatened with a fine of $250,000 a day by the US government if the search engine giant did not cooperate with data collection operations, according to newly released documents.

The documents give a glimpse as to how US intelligence coerced tech companies into participating with the NSA's wide-reaching PRISM program.
Yahoo challenged the constitutional grounds of the NSA's request in a secret, and ultimately fruitless legal process detailed in 1,500 documents, pored over by reporters at the Washington Post.

Its failed fight against US government's vast data collection operation saw Yahoo become one of first major tech companies to grant access to the now-defunct PRISM initiative. Facebook, Google and practically the entirety of the industry were eventually roped in."

Full Story here:

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/nsa-yahoo-threatened-huge-fines-refusal-provide-data-us-government-1465118

 

WSJ/Today

"Justice Sotomayor: Americans Should be Alarmed by Spread of Drones

Americans should be more concerned about their privacy being invaded by the spread of drones, Justice Sonia Sotomayor told an Oklahoma City audience on Thursday.

Speaking before a group of faculty members and students at Oklahoma City University’s law school on Sept. 11, Justice Sotomayor said “frightening” changes in surveillance technology should encourage citizens to take a more active role in the privacy debate. She said she’s particularly troubled by the potential for commercial and government drones to compromise personal privacy.

Said Justice Sotomayor:

There are drones flying over the air randomly that are recording everything that’s happening on what we consider our private property. That type of technology has to stimulate us to think about what is it that we cherish in privacy and how far we want to protect it and from whom. Because people think that it should be protected just against government intrusion, but I don’t like the fact that someone I don’t know…can pick up, if they’re a private citizen, one of these drones and fly it over my property.

Technological advances make it possible for devices to “listen to your conversations from miles away and through your walls,” Justice Sotomayor said. “We are in that brave new world, and we are capable of being in that Orwellian world, too.”..............

Full Story:

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2014/09/12...ricans-should-be-alarmed-by-spread-of-drones/

 

Justice Sotomayor says technology could lead to “Orwellian world”

-- Tom