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

The thought of someone getting paid to watch porn with me. The unexpected outcome of that being a few agents discovering a world of fetishes that never knew they had themselves, and a few hefty therapy bills later.

My point being though I wonder how many living breathing people are actually looking over all that mundane info from all the mundane people who are just curious about Tor, or simply interested in protecting their right of privacy even while not having anything to hide. How many resources in money/man power are wasted in combing over such mundane stuff? Or were/are we just close to an age where everything we flush gets drug and bomb tested?

 

Hi

More on the programs on this already linked site https://www.nsa-observer.net/
Dynamic connections http://www.cyphercat.eu/d3js/
Just for fun http://www.propublica.org/getinvolved/item/name-that-nsa-program
http://projects.propublica.org/nsa-...ial&utm_source=twitter&utm_content=1404144865
Special juice by the ...? http://www.nsa.ch/

Now about the latest revelations, i can uderstand the famous september trauma day, and that for any state, it is a "never again" security plan.
We know that any technology used for privacy can also be used for criminal activities, it is the case for Tor or for TrueCrypt for instance.
But hunting all awared privacy users and classifing them in the same category is not welcome.
A knife can be used to cook a tortilla, but also to kill someone; the same for a sugar and co.
On the other hand, many users put their life on social networks, and in the same time are schocked by the privacy invasion of the three letters agency programs.
It is quite paradoxical...
And should law enforcement autorities let live an outlaw teritorry without any kind of regulation?
Things are not so simple, and often grey.

 

I personally think the waste in resources is worse than the privacy violations. No one at the NSA or elsewhere is actually "watching", unless there is an actual investigation going on. But the storage of the data, the people tasked with checking out "flags" in a system that is way too broad, etc is just a massive waste of money and time. The fact that they are catching very few real threats just makes it even worse. Instead of catching more Bin Ladens, the system is being used to monitor heads of state, journalists and other people who are political threats and not physical ones. Now local police departments are using all this to start up their own programs and act in ways that 10 years ago would have gotten them all fired or even jailed. I've said all along that the people who thought they were avoiding all of this using VPNs, TOR, etc were going to be targeted even more, and now it looks like I was right. The only way for all of this settle down or end is for the people at the top to say enough is enough. Unfortunately, currently it's these same people who are wanting it to continue. We need changes in policy, not more tools to avoid the policies. Quite honestly, I think they are more paranoid than a lot of us are. It's interesting to me that they'd flag a Linux blog. Are they worried because there are less back doors or easy hacks into the OS, or is this another case of a particular person or persons behind the blog that they don't like?

 

Relations between Berlin and Washington just keep improving.
A member of the German BND/Federal Intelligence Service has been caught and confessed to spying for the NSA.
He was caught when spying on the german parliamentary committee on, of course, the NSA spying on Prime Minister Merkel, in Germany.
First it was thought he might work for Moscow but he confessed it was for NSA handouts.

International NYTimes; German Accused of Passing Secrets, and Fingers Point at U.S. link
Der Spiegel Online (in german) link

 

http://www.spiegel.de/international...experts-on-us-spying-in-germany-a-979215.html

 

Details regarding what and who the NSA chooses to target makes it clear who they (and the rest of the federal government) actually work for and what their purpose is. It has nothing to do with protecting citizens from terrorism or protecting national security as we would define it. An examination of a list of those that the NSA and the other government agencies target reveals common threads. Any organization, individual, or product/commodity that empowers people or gives them alternatives to corporate products is targeted. Non-profit groups are targeted because they interfere with corporate monopolies. They're denied non-profit status because they create alternatives to the monopolies of for-profit corporations. Aid and relief agencies that don't make their assistance conditional in support of corporate interests are targeted. Anything that interferes with corporate control and dominance is deemed terrorist activity. These corporations don't just control the government. They are the government. One only needs to look at who holds the key positions and who they previously worked for as proof. The head of the corporation that's trying to control the world food supply put in charge of food safety. The most vocal opponents of patent reform put in charge of the patent office. All of the key positions of agencies tasked with consumer protection are staffed by former executives of the very industries they're supposed to monitor. Corporate security is the national security that the NSA is concerned with. Anything that stands in the way of corporate dominance is deemed a terrorist threat. Example, "occupy wall street" protesters officially classified as potential terrorists. Using cash for transactions instead of the plastic issued by the big financial corporations is considered suspicious activity. It interferes with their ability to monitor your spending and profiting from it at every opportunity. Linux gives people an alternative to corporate-ware, planned obsolescence, and mandatory upgrades, and the expenditures that come with it. The software giants have publicly referred to Open Source software as socialist software, an attempt to connect it to repression when the opposite is true. Open Source gives us alternatives to corporate repression.

This list is endless. Anything that empowers common people or interferes with the corporate control and domination of people is considered suspicious, subversive, or outright terrorism. One only needs to go through the lists, look at each item, group, organization, or idea and determine whose "security" is threatened by them to see that there's only one possible answer.

 

"The shocking move to criminalize nonviolent protest

In 2002, investigative journalist and TED Fellow Will Potter took a break from his regular beat, writing about shootings and murders for the Chicago Tribune. He went to help a local group campaigning against animal testing: "I thought it would be a safe way to do something positive," he says. Instead, he was arrested, and so began his ongoing journey into a world in which peaceful protest is branded as terrorism."

Watch this TED Talks. Frightening and supports your views

https://www.ted.com/talks/will_potter_the_shocking_move_to_criminalize_non_violent_protest

 

Assuming global conspiracies behind social, economic and political events is rather like assuming that biological systems have a creator

 

The more I look at the overall picture, the more I'm convinced that there is a devil.

 

I think at this point too much has gone on and continues to go on to consider it all just "one of those things". Conspiracy or not, it has become a global issue and not just 9/11 government paranoia like it was originally thought to be. There's also far too many right people in the right places to shut down almost all opposition to the activities of these agencies and administrations. They are fighting back too hard against keeping these programs in check and applying said programs too broadly for it to be a simple thing of making sure 9/11 doesn't happen again. You don't need that much surveillance and that many programs to stop such things. When ex-CIA officers and ex-NSA agents tell you these people have lost their minds, something is very wrong. Men and women spoil plots, not software. Is it more expensive and dangerous? Damn straight. But far more effective than software sifting through mountains of random searches, phone calls, etc to hope you find some guy out there wanting to make something and someone go boom instead of some guy who just happened to play around on Google one day or a journalist coming up with a juicy story.

Screw all the "one world government" talk, things are seriously wrong and playing with TOR, Tails and all that junk isn't going to fix it.

 

You might be interested in the writings of Chris Hedges. Hedges is an American journalist specializing in American politics and society.

He has reported from more than fifty countries, and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, The Dallas Morning News, and The New York Times,[3] where he was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years (1990–2005).

In 2002, Hedges was part of the team of reporters at The New York Times awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the paper's coverage of global terrorism. He also received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2002.[4] He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University[3] and The University of Toronto. Hedges is currently a columnist for news website Truthdig.

This is just one recent example of his recent prolific articles:

"The Last Gasp of American Democracy

This is our last gasp as a democracy. The state’s wholesale intrusion into our lives and obliteration of privacy are now facts. And the challenge to us—one of the final ones, I suspect—is to rise up in outrage and halt this seizure of our rights to liberty and free expression. If we do not do so we will see ourselves become a nation of captives.

The public debates about the government’s measures to prevent terrorism, the character assassination of Edward Snowden and his supporters, the assurances by the powerful that no one is abusing the massive collection and storage of our electronic communications miss the point. Any state that has the capacity to monitor all its citizenry, any state that has the ability to snuff out factual public debate through control of information, any state that has the tools to instantly shut down all dissent is totalitarian. Our corporate state may not use this power today. But it will use it if it feels threatened by a population made restive by its corruption, ineptitude and mounting repression. The moment a popular movement arises—and one will arise—that truly confronts our corporate masters, our venal system of total surveillance will be thrust into overdrive."

Full Story can be found here: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_last_gasp_of_american_democracy_20140105

A collection of his Truthdig articles, which should be mandatory reading for all who value the principles of a free democratic society can be found here: http://www.truthdig.com/staff/chris_hedges

Recommended stories:

"The Post-Constitutional Era

The U.S. Supreme Court decision to refuse to hear our case concerning Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which permits the military to seize U.S. citizens and hold them indefinitely in military detention centers without due process, means that this provision will continue to be law. It means the nation has entered a post-constitutional era. It means that extraordinary rendition of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil by our government is legal. It means that the courts, like the legislative and executive branches of government, exclusively serve corporate power—one of the core definitions of fascism. It means that the internal mechanisms of state are so corrupted and subservient to corporate power that there is no hope of reform or protection for citizens under our most basic constitutional rights. It means that the consent of the governed—a poll by OpenCongress.com showed that this provision had a 98 percent disapproval rating—is a cruel joke. And it means that if we do not rapidly build militant mass movements to overthrow corporate tyranny, including breaking the back of the two-party duopoly that is the mask of corporate power, we will lose our liberty. ....."

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_post-constitutional_era_20140504

"Our Sinister Dual State

"The government officials who, along with their courtiers in the press, castigate Snowden insist that congressional and judicial oversight, the right to privacy, the rule of law, freedom of the press and the right to express dissent remain inviolate. They use the old words and the old phrases, old laws and old constitutional guarantees to give our corporate totalitarianism a democratic veneer. They insist that the system works. They tell us we are still protected by the Fourth Amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” Yet the promise of that sentence in the Bill of Rights is pitted against the fact that every telephone call we make, every email or text we send or receive, every website we visit and many of our travels are tracked, recorded and stored in government computers. The Fourth Amendment was written in 1789 in direct response to the arbitrary and unchecked search powers that the British had exercised through general warrants called writs of assistance, which played a significant part in fomenting the American Revolution. A technical system of surveillance designed to monitor those considered to be a danger to the state has, in the words of Binney, been “turned against you...”

No one who lives under constant surveillance, who is subject to detention anywhere at any time, whose conversations, messages, meetings, proclivities and habits are recorded, stored and analyzed, can be described as free. The relationship between the U.S. government and the U.S. citizen is now one of master and slave. Yet the prerogative state assures us that our rights are sacred, that it abides by the will of the people and the consent of the governed."

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/our_sinister_dual_state_20140216

"Locking Out the Voices of Dissent

NEW YORK—The security and surveillance state, after crushing the Occupy movement and eradicating its encampments, has mounted a relentless and largely clandestine campaign to deny public space to any group or movement that might spawn another popular uprising. The legal system has been grotesquely deformed in most cities to, in essence, shut public space to protesters, eradicating our right to free speech and peaceful assembly. The goal of the corporate state is to criminalize democratic, popular dissent before there is another popular eruption. The vast state surveillance system, detailed in Edward Snowden’s revelations to the British newspaper The Guardian, at the same time ensures that no action or protest can occur without the advanced knowledge of our internal security apparatus. This foreknowledge has allowed the internal security systems to proactively block activists from public spaces as well as carry out pre-emptive harassment, interrogation, intimidation, detention and arrests before protests can begin. There is a word for this type of political system—tyranny......

The executive, legislative and judicial branches of government have been taken over by corporations and used to protect and promote the criminal activity of Wall Street, the destruction of the ecosystem by the fossil fuel industry, the looting of the U.S. Treasury by the banking industry and the corporate seizure of all major centers of power. The primacy of corporate profit trumps our right to a living wage, affordable and adequate health care, the regulation of industry and environmental controls, protection from corporate fraud and abuse, the right to a good and affordable public education, the ability to form labor unions, and having a government that serves the basic needs of ordinary citizens. Our voices, our rights and our aspirations are no longer of concern to the state. And if we try to assert them, the state now has mechanisms in place to shut us down."

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/locking_out_the_voices_of_dissent_20130714

 

I agree we have a serious government issue, well, quite a few nations of the world does. After all, this really started in Europe and spread here. I don't think the normal citizens really "get" it yet though. They understand that somewhere some computers are storing emails and phone records and having a looksee if something is "off", but I think that's about it. To them it's more along the lines of what every ISP does in case of a TOS breach instead of a serious threat and intrusion of their lives. The media is not doing the best job at really explaining all this, which never surprises me as they suck at delivering information after it has been through their filters. Too many people still think that bad things don't happen here, that we're better than that and that our rights can't be hassled with because "Merica" and Constitution. They're wrong, most of the people in this thread know it, but I think it's going to take even more to convince them that we have a serious problem on our hands. Europeans know it, and many courts there have been taking steps to ease it back. Only in the last few weeks has our Supreme Court started making decisions that even hinted that we might have a chance. But as long as the government keeps withholding documents and other data simply by saying "national security" every time they are asked, even the Supreme Court can only do so much.

 

A century ago, what's now the NSA was just a bunch of crypto geeks protecting their careers after the Great War ended. But the organization prospered during WWII and the Cold War, and is effectively exploiting the Internet.

But it wasn't planned. It's filling a niche. For now, anyway.

 

I really don't blame the NSA. It's their job to spy on communications and asking them to stop would be plain stupid. I blame the ones giving the orders at the top of the chain. The NSA isn't doing anything without the permission of the White House, so obviously it's the White House that is the problem, or rather the people in it. Just because I know good and well it's happening to everyone in this thread...*waves hi to the computers monitoring my complaints*

 

That's a dangerous assumption. Arguably, NSA leadership doesn't even know, in any coherent sense, what the NSA is doing. It's just too huge and complicated. And then there's the possibility of evil.

 

Before 9/11 when most "terrorist attacks" were elsewhere, the US preached restraint to the nations where those attacks happened. When the attacks came here, we (the USA, not its people) declared war on a concept without a defined enemy. We invaded several nations, some for fabricated reasons. We expanded surveillance to include most everyone on the planet, including our own people. If a non-allied nation had engaged in our form of "restraint", it would have been global war. It's the finest example of "do as I say, not as I do" that one could imagine.

The government/NSA decisions regarding who to monitor and what to infiltrate, backdoor, etc do not have preventing terrorism as a goal. This surveillance is solely for detecting dissent and preempting any attempts to form an organized resistance. Refer to the internet kill switch in the news a while back. The ability to kill the internet on a national scale is of no value against terrorism. It's real purpose is to destroy communications in the event of a public uprising. We desperately need an alternative to the corporate controlled communications system we currently rely on, like a national meshnet. It needs to utilize all possible methods of transmitting data, wired, wireless, shortwave, point to point laser using modulated light, etc.

The fact that this corporate subversion and corruption of multiple governments has been exposed by Snowden and others has given the common people a temporary advantage. We basically know what they're doing, how they're doing it, and why. This advantage will disappear if we don't use it now. We will never have a better opportunity to effect change than we have right now. But until people see past the rhetoric, the lies, and the fabricated threats, change won't be possible. The real threats to democracy aren't terrorists, communists, or socialists. It's not religious beliefs. It's not even small nations with a few nukes. It's the corporate subversion of governments, their use of war to take resources from nations they don't control, and the human disasters they leave in their wake, all of which is being done in our name. The rest of the world needs for us to clean our own house ASAP.

IMO, this is little more than a distraction designed to give us a false hope. The supreme court will not oppose the administrative branch in any meaningful way, not when the administration appoints the judges. They're not going to bite the hand that feeds them.

The real problem is the white house seizing power and authority that the constitution does not give them. Example: Nowhere in the constitution is the executive branch authorized to create secret courts that answer to no one but the white house itself, courts that claim to have the authority to void our most basic laws with impunity. We are seeing first hand how absolute power corrupts absolutely. The white house is little more than the enforcement arm of the corporations that seized this country and its government.

 

That's not a dangerous assumption, it's being proven with every decision they make when advocates, lower courts and basically anyone calls them out on it. Just about every inquiry made gets shut down, every committee formed to investigate comes back with no or little negative findings and usually consists of people picked by the administration. The head of the NSA doesn't know? It's "too complicated"? Then why is he the head of the damned thing? I get your point, but plenty of times both the NSA and the administration have proven your point wrong. We've never had an administration so blatantly interpret its powers to suit its needs and every controversial situation.

I think that Noone is right about corporations having a hand in some of it. But if you go back to previous decades, again, no one has just drove over the checks and balances the system was founded with as much as is happening now. It absolutely stinks, and the fact that almost every court decision against them has been overturned or so watered down it was pointless to even bother complaining..shows anyone really thinking about it that something is wrong. Again, screw political beliefs, religious views, patriotism and all that stuff. If you throw all that out of the discussion, you're left with the simple fact that these checks and balances are being ran over by a freight train. That is wrong, whether you're a Republican, Democrat, Liberal, Conservative, Christian or Atheist, etc. It's just. plain. wrong. Something has to be done by somebody, and it'll still take years to undo all the damage to U.S reputation in the eyes of its own citizens and other governments.

 

By the way, this isn't just a privacy problem or security problem for citizens. If this keeps going on, it'll end up being an economic problem and we'll also have even more "national security" to worry about. If you think this stuff doesn't affect things like trade deals, U.N negotiations and other essential government functions, you're kidding yourself. It doesn't really matter if other governments are spying too, we know they are. What matters even more than freedom and rights is when people go sit at the table to hammer out deals and resolutions, this kind of stuff is going to give and take away leverage. Believe me, citizens will feel the effects of that as well.

 

Although I agree with you in general, there's more evidence of the former than the latter. You should read Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine.

@hawki: Thanks for the Will Potter video. I'm going to pick up his book, Green is the New Red, during my next stop to the bookstore. It sounds like a good disturbing read.

 

Maybe little too extreme view.
If what he say in his articles is right (I mean to say if it is so very bad), why do the 'corporate masters' continue to permit him to write such things?

 

Congress and Supreme Court also say blessing to what White House doing.
One year pass since Snowden revelation. What new law to limit surveillance power has American Congress pass?
What limits have Supreme Court made?
What in the law has really change in this year pass?

Maybe also it is the people outside the White House - the people in the country.
Yes, maybe some few people worry like readers on Wilders. But probably it is wrong to assume large number of people worry so much. Most people in US probably do not really care because they think it is 'necessary evil' to keep comfortable and safe from terrorism.
The government say the focus of surveillance is put on foreigners not really on Americans. Only Americans who act suspiciously. (Using Tor or reading about how to avoid surveillance is suspicious of course.) Spying on Angela Merkel and Dilma Roussef and Putin and the foreigners is ok.
Same that the phone surveillance and internet surveillance 'is just metadata'. So American people say that is all acceptable.

 

The US Supreme Court opppose the administrative branch regularly on various issues, even the administration appoints the Supreme Court judges.
Like what I write in post above, you assume the American people all agree with you. Maybe that is wrong to assume.
Examine the American elections. About almost half every time vote for candidates who support one side of many issues while other half vote for candidate who support opposite side. It is not a 90-10 or 80-20 situation.

Also, I think I read somewhere that it is the chief judge of the Supreme Court which choose the judges who make decisions on NSA activities. The administrative branch does not make those particular appointments.

 

Yes, same for the president and for the Congress. When Snowden revealed his info, Congress said they had no idea, even those members of committees that suppose to monitor NSA and other security agencies.

If TLAs so well organised and powerful, how does such things as Boston Marathon bombing or Snowden revelations or Bradley Manning leaks happen?

 

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nat...d-briefings/br7NmZETxVJ8ZgN7wpiYRK/story.html

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nat...d-briefings/br7NmZETxVJ8ZgN7wpiYRK/story.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...-but-shes-fine-with-nsa-bulk-data-collection/

 

Because we have a sliver of freedom left and more likely because he hasn't yet become a target.