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

Discussion in 'privacy general' started by Dermot7, Jun 6, 2013.

  1. mirimir

    mirimir Registered Member

    Joined:
    Oct 1, 2011
    Posts:
    9,252
    Sure, but there's also reason to suspect that the NSA weakens stuff that it releases for public use.
     
  2. hawki

    hawki Registered Member

    Joined:
    Dec 17, 2008
    Posts:
    6,065
    Location:
    DC Metro Area
    "Former NSA chief raises $78 million for critical infrastructure cyber security start-up

    Former US National Security Agency chief Keith Alexander has raised $78 million of investment for his tech start-up IronNet Cyber Security...

    Its main product is IronDome, which is described as a collective defence system that provides critical infrastructure organisations with automated threat detection.

    As part of the investment, IronNet confirmed it is working on plans to create additional versions of the platform for the financial and healthcare sectors...

    Having led the NSA in 2005 and 2006, IronNet CEO and chairman Keith Alexander claimed that he is now on a mission to protect nations and industries from cyber attacks..."

    https://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/new...itical-infrastructure-cyber-security-start-up
     
  3. mirimir

    mirimir Registered Member

    Joined:
    Oct 1, 2011
    Posts:
    9,252
    Funny. Iron Dome is the Israeli anti-missile system.
     
  4. hawki

    hawki Registered Member

    Joined:
    Dec 17, 2008
    Posts:
    6,065
    Location:
    DC Metro Area
    "NSA collected 500 million U.S. call records in 2017, a sharp rise: official report

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. National Security Agency collected more than 500 million phone call records of Americans last year, more than triple gathered in 2016, a U.S. intelligence agency report released on Friday said...

    The sharp increase to 534 million call records from 151 million occurred during the second full year of a new surveillance system established at the spy agency after U.S. lawmakers passed a law in 2015 that sought to limit its ability to collect such records in bulk. The reason for the spike was not immediately clear.

    The 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..."

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...17-a-sharp-rise-official-report-idUSKBN1I52FR
     
  5. hawki

    hawki Registered Member

    Joined:
    Dec 17, 2008
    Posts:
    6,065
    Location:
    DC Metro Area
    "The NSA Managed to Collect 500 Million US Call Records in 2017 Despite Targeting Just 40 People...

    The agency also has the ability to collect records en masse with just a few requests. In 2017, the NSA obtained orders, as required by the USA Freedom Act, to target 40 individuals. The couple dozen authorizations allowed the agency to collect the more than 500 million call detail records from telecom providers, as the requests allow the NSA to access metadata from every single person a target has been in contact with..."

    https://gizmodo.com/the-nsa-managed-to-collect-500-million-us-call-records-1825789394

    What... ?00?
     
  6. RockLobster

    RockLobster Registered Member

    Joined:
    Nov 8, 2007
    Posts:
    1,812
    Those 40 people must spend a lot of time on the phone :rolleyes:
     
  7. Minimalist

    Minimalist Registered Member

    Joined:
    Jan 6, 2014
    Posts:
    14,881
    Location:
    Slovenia, EU
    Yes, each made 12,5 millions calls. I wonder what mobile plan they use :confused:;)
     
  8. denis

    denis Registered Member

    Joined:
    Mar 16, 2005
    Posts:
    182
    Skynet
     
  9. reasonablePrivacy

    reasonablePrivacy Registered Member

    Joined:
    Oct 7, 2017
    Posts:
    2,002
    Location:
    Member state of European Union
    I think this is worth to look to understand that:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-world_experiment


    https://medium.com/@duncanjwatts/how-small-is-the-world-really-736fa21808ba
     
  10. deBoetie

    deBoetie Registered Member

    Joined:
    Aug 7, 2013
    Posts:
    1,832
    Location:
    UK
    How many hops do they (officially) do these days? As noted above, it doesn't take many till you've dragged everyone into their graphs.
     
  11. hawki

    hawki Registered Member

    Joined:
    Dec 17, 2008
    Posts:
    6,065
    Location:
    DC Metro Area
  12. hawki

    hawki Registered Member

    Joined:
    Dec 17, 2008
    Posts:
    6,065
    Location:
    DC Metro Area
    Appears to be two-hops:

    "FISA’s License to Hop...

    Following the Snowden bombshell in 2013, the ... administration limited routine access to a two-hop rule, which—after passage of the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act in January 2018—is where things stand today..."

    http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/256333/fisas-license-to-hop
     
    Last edited: May 5, 2018
  13. hawki

    hawki Registered Member

    Joined:
    Dec 17, 2008
    Posts:
    6,065
    Location:
    DC Metro Area
    "NSA Can Legally Access Metadata of 25,000 Callers Based on a Single Suspect’s Phone...

    A new analysis led by researchers at Stanford University’s Computer Security Laboratory quantifies just what this policy change has meant, discovering that, under the old five-year three-hop rules the NSA could legally recover metadata from about 20 million phones per suspect and “the majority of the entire U.S. population” if it analyzed all its suspects. Now, the stricter 18-month "two hop" rule permits the agency to recover metadata from about 25,000 phones with a single request, according to the Stanford study.

    The researchers assumed in each case that the agency would remove “hub” numbers that receive far more calls than usual from their queries. These numbers, such as the number which sends out Google password verifications to millions of users, have limited value in tracking terrorists..."

    https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk...-on-a-single-suspects-phone-analysis-suggests
     
    Last edited: May 5, 2018
  14. RockLobster

    RockLobster Registered Member

    Joined:
    Nov 8, 2007
    Posts:
    1,812
    You know it's strange, maybe I'm losing my mind but I could have sworn we were taught for most of our lives that only the KGB did things like that so we should be thankful to live in the "free world" where this kind of thing can't happen...
    I guess that was not entirely accurate.
    Doesn't that make you wonder what else we have been indoctrinated to believe that also, is not entirely accurate?
    I think there are quite a lot of things.
     
  15. mirimir

    mirimir Registered Member

    Joined:
    Oct 1, 2011
    Posts:
    9,252
    It's all alphabet soup :rolleyes:
     
  16. deBoetie

    deBoetie Registered Member

    Joined:
    Aug 7, 2013
    Posts:
    1,832
    Location:
    UK
    Thanks @hawki - so 40 direct suspects at 25k each is 1M indirect suspects and 12.5M records per year, probably sounds about "right" at 12.5 per graph link.

    But that's nearly 4% of the population assuming no overlap, even more than is incarcerated. Just off 40 primes.
     
  17. cruelsister

    cruelsister Registered Member

    Joined:
    Nov 6, 2007
    Posts:
    1,649
    Location:
    Paris
    By all means let's stop right now all the monitoring by the Good Guys! Just don't squeal like Pigs when your Loved Ones are incinerated by a terrorist blast.
     
  18. Minimalist

    Minimalist Registered Member

    Joined:
    Jan 6, 2014
    Posts:
    14,881
    Location:
    Slovenia, EU
    People usually mourn when their loved one dies, they don't sgueal like pigs. There is a difference...
     
  19. deBoetie

    deBoetie Registered Member

    Joined:
    Aug 7, 2013
    Posts:
    1,832
    Location:
    UK
    Somewhat presumptive when insiders from the "Good Guys" say that data overload makes this strategy counterproductive. I'm not against warranted targeted surveillance at all. That's not what we're seeing here, and the level of trust we have in the Good Guys is clearly debatable given what's happened.

    Also rash when history shows that trashing the rule of law/constitution doesn't have a good long-term record - you might get short term gains but long term losses.
     
  20. RockLobster

    RockLobster Registered Member

    Joined:
    Nov 8, 2007
    Posts:
    1,812
    Apologies for my post that was deleted, yes I said something too political for a tech forum but I just don't understand why no one else seems to get angry at the utter hypocrisy of being put under surveillance by the perpetrators of the crime.
     
  21. Stefan Froberg

    Stefan Froberg Registered Member

    Joined:
    Jul 30, 2014
    Posts:
    747
    Rock, Im angry too about the hypocrites. But must be hush hush becauses ****** here delete
    even innocent matrix reference...
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 6, 2018
  22. RockLobster

    RockLobster Registered Member

    Joined:
    Nov 8, 2007
    Posts:
    1,812
    Maybe individually they are good guys but, they follow the orders and implement the agenda of the bad guys and that is my problem with them.
    My wife literally gets frightened when I post the things I do, she says you need to stop that, one day they'll show up here and take you off and no one will hear of you again and you know my wife is not alone in thinking that way, everyone has that at the back of their mind.
    Just the fact that people are in fear of them, makes them NOT the good guys.
    The whole country should be in an uproar about this, what is wrong with people?
     
    Last edited: May 6, 2018
  23. Stefan Froberg

    Stefan Froberg Registered Member

    Joined:
    Jul 30, 2014
    Posts:
    747
    It's really not surprising when 43% of American "adults" get their news from lying platform like facebook ...
    The remaining either don't know or care and that leaves just a very very tiny percentage of USA population
    to think and question these things. Maybe we all should look back into history and ask ourselves:
    Who started this all in the beginning?

    When you know answer to that you have your enemy.
     
  24. RockLobster

    RockLobster Registered Member

    Joined:
    Nov 8, 2007
    Posts:
    1,812
    "A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murder is less to fear."

    Marcus Tullius Cicero - (106-43 BC) Roman Statesman, Philosopher and Orator.
     
  25. Stefan Froberg

    Stefan Froberg Registered Member

    Joined:
    Jul 30, 2014
    Posts:
    747
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations

    I doubt any other country has as long list and as many enemies because those operations...

    EDIT: And as can be seen, as the years and decades pass, the simple skirmish of turf turns uglier and uglier as it reaches 1900 ...

    EDIT2: Also:
    https://wikispooks.com/wiki/US/Bomb...he_US_has_bombed_since_the_end_of_World_War_2

    EDIT3: "Oooh, look pa! Old U.S.A supporting it's enemies"

    https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.ph...nge_actions&oldid=716626033#Iran_2005–present
     
    Last edited: May 6, 2018
  1. This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
    By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.