good article on Prism and other such efforts

T

tekkychick

New member
http://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/Secret-to-Prism-program-Even-bigger-data-seizure-4602275.php#page-1

Some excerpts:

While the court provides the government with broad authority to seize records, the directives themselves typically are specific, said one former associate general counsel at a major Internet company. They identify a specific target or groups of targets. Other company officials recall similar experiences.

All adamantly denied turning over the kind of broad swaths of data that many people believed when the Prism documents were first released.

"We only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers," Microsoft said in a statement.

Facebook said it received between 9,000 and 10,000 requests for data from all government agencies in the second half of last year. The social media company said fewer than 19,000 users were targeted.

How many of those were related to national security is unclear, and likely classified. The numbers suggest each request typically related to one or two people, not a vast range of users.


Under Prism, the delivery process varied by company.

Google, for instance, says it makes secure file transfers. Others use contractors or have set up stand-alone systems. Some have set up user interfaces making it easier for the government, according to a security expert familiar with the process.

Every company involved denied the most sensational assertion in the Prism documents: that the NSA pulled data "directly from the servers" of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, AOL and more.

Technology experts and a former government official say that phrasing, taken from a PowerPoint slide describing the program, was likely meant to differentiate Prism's neatly organized, company-provided data from the unstructured information snatched out of the Internet's major pipelines.
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and

http://www.businessinsider.com/prism-is-just-the-start-of-nsa-spying-2013-6?utm_source=hearst&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=allverticals#ixzz2WIkgYDqZ

which pretty much is the same version of the above article.

Americans who disapprove of the government reading their emails have more to worry about from a different and larger NSA effort that snatches data as it passes through the fiber optic cables that make up the Internet's backbone. That program, which has been known for years, copies Internet traffic as it enters and leaves the United States, then routes it to the NSA for analysis.
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http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-5...istening-to-u.s-phone-calls-without-warrants/

The National Security Agency has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed this week that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed "simply based on an analyst deciding that."

If the NSA wants "to listen to the phone," an analyst's decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. "I was rather startled," said Nadler, an attorney and congressman who serves on the House Judiciary committee.

Not only does this disclosure shed more light on how the NSA's formidable eavesdropping apparatus works domestically it also suggests the Justice Department has secretly interpreted federal surveillance law to permit thousands of low-ranking analysts to eavesdrop on phone calls.

Because the same legal standards that apply to phone calls also apply to e-mail messages, text messages, and instant messages, Nadler's disclosure indicates the NSA analysts could also access the contents of Internet communications without going before a court and seeking approval.

The disclosure appears to confirm some of the allegations made by Edward Snowden, a former NSA infrastructure analyst who leaked classified documents to the Guardian. Snowden said in a video interview that, while not all NSA analysts had this ability, he could from Hawaii "wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president."
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Snowden is an even bigger hero now.
 
I don't want public attention because I don't want the story to be about me. I want it to be about what the US government is doing.

I really want the focus to be on these documents and the debate which I hope this will trigger among citizens around the globe about what kind of world we want to live in.

I can't in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building.
 
I don't know what's worse. A coward hiding behind a sock puppet or an idiot thinking a congressman divulged classified information.

And really tekky, quoting Business Insider?
 
Edward Snowden said:
I don't want public attention because I don't want the story to be about me. I want it to be about what the US government is doing.

I really want the focus to be on these documents and the debate which I hope this will trigger among citizens around the globe about what kind of world we want to live in.

I can't in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building.
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Wouldn't it be amazing if this was the real Snowden?
 
Howey said:
I don't know what's worse. A coward hiding behind a sock puppet or an idiot thinking a congressman divulged classified information.

And really tekky, quoting Business Insider?
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Well, it looked like pretty much the same AP article that SFGate posted; thinking about it, I didn't really need to put both links.

But hey! it shows my diversity! (grin)

And yeah... is that the first thing a congressman does after a secret briefing? spill the details? seems odd...
 
NSA routinely lies in response to congressional inquiries about the scope of surveillance in America. I believe that when Wyden and Udall asked about the scale of this, they said it did not have the tools to provide an answer. We do have the tools and I have maps showing where people have been scrutinized most. We collect more digital communications from America than we do from the Russians.
 
Some more info -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22925892

The US government searched for detailed information on fewer than 300 phone numbers last year, according to a government paper.

They were among millions of phone and email records collected by the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2012, it says.

The paper adds that such searches led to two men who were plotting to attack New York's subway system in 2009.

The newly declassified paper has been circulated within the government by US intelligence agencies.

It was made public by the Senate Intelligence Committee on Sunday.
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I have been surprised and pleased to see the public has reacted so strongly in defense of these rights that are being suppressed in the name of security.

It is not like Occupy Wall Street but there is a grassroots movement to take to the streets on July 4 in defense of the Fourth Amendment called Restore The Fourth Amendment and it grew out of Reddit. The response over the internet has been huge and supportive.
 
The reality is that due to the FISA Amendments Act and its section 702 authorities, Americans’ communications are collected and viewed on a daily basis on the certification of an analyst rather than a warrant.

They excuse this as "incidental" collection, but at the end of the day, someone at NSA still has the content of your communications. Even in the event of "warranted" intercept, it's important to understand the intelligence community doesn't always deal with what you would consider a "real" warrant like a Police department would have to, the "warrant" is more of a templated form they fill out and send to a reliable judge with a rubber stamp.
 
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