Big Brother is Watching You

[O Really]

Good article here... http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc ... picks=true

What is a "rational response" to terrorists?

[Stinger]

Speaking of the IRS, and I am certainly not a fan, but I'm sick of the whiney teapartiers bitching about the IRS targeting "conservatives" or "conservative groups." So you've got an organization - not a charitable organization, but a political organization, whose name letters supposedly stand for "Taxed Enough Already" and everybody in the organization spends tons of money and time whining about not wanting to pay taxes, and this group applies for tax-exempt status, should it be surprising they are subject to higher than typical review? The IRS doesn't care about teapartiers or conservatives or liberals. It cares about collecting money.

Yeah.... I pretty much agree with that. Those "tea partiers" would have no problem with targeting Muslims even without catchy titles like the tea party counterparts.

If I named my organization something to those effects I would be surprised if they didn't do a double take when it came up.

Muslims for World Peace would make the Tea-che baggers start foaming at the mouth. You wouldn't have to have a suggestive name like Muslims Extremely Unhappy with American Militarism.

[Cowboy]

Muslims for World Peace would make the Tea-che baggers start foaming at the mouth. You wouldn't have to have a suggestive name like Muslims Extremely Unhappy with American Militarism.

How about "Muslims For Jesus"?
That would short circuit them.
Both knees would be jerking in opposite directions.

[O Really]

Speaking of Ellsberg...http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc ... picks=true

I like numbers 4,7,9 in particular.

[Stinger]

Interesting about 4, I was just listening this morning to a discussion about how the war against "terrorism" has shifted from the use of infiltrators, developing sources, etc. to the NSA way not because it had to but because it's easier, cheaper, and more efficient. In other words, we have alternatives. Seems the same would be true about domestic law enforcement and suppression of dissent once Americans are used to the idea, it already is for the drug war.

That was the complaint about intelligence before September 11th. After the Cold War ended -- sort of -- the CIA backed off human intel and began to rely on electronic and technical intel, mainly because it was easier and cheaper.

[Stinger]

I was making an educated guess above about the NSA and our failed drug war, just found this:

Did You Know that NSA Spymasters Are Involved in the War on Drugs?: A lot of people don't realize that the NSA has a mandate to "stem the flow of narcotics into the country."

That means that PRISM may have noted any of our posts here about drugs and the drug war. Knock, knock . . .

Next to impossible. PRISM collects records from internet companies, not content. The most they should be able to tell is who posted when, not who posted what.

There is still the NSA program for snooping emails entering and leaving the U.S., so if anyone posts from overseas, the Alphabet Boys might know about it.

[Stinger]

Duh.

[Stinger]

...PRISM collects records from internet companies, not content. The most they should be able to tell is who posted when, not who posted what...

I believe you're thinking of the Verizion, etc. phone snooping, PRISM is all about content and who posted what.

From your source" "the NSA collects the phone data in broad swaths, because collecting it (in) a narrow fashion would make it harder to identify terrorism-related communications. The information collected lets the government, over time, make connections about terrorist activities. The program doesn't let the U.S. listen to people's calls, but only includes information like call length and telephone numbers dialed."

There are criminal requests or requests based on suspicion of terrorist activities, but from every article -- informed article, not winger nonsense -- I've read, this program has been described as data mining.

Here's a good read on what PRISM is and isn't.: Vanity Fair 1 and Vanity Fair 2

[O Really]

I had a great idea - Since almost everyone who goes past my house is innocent, I think I'll just turn on the video only when there's an actual burglar outside. I'm sure I'll be able to pick him out since he'll be wearing a lone ranger type mask and looking sneaky. Why waste disc space on innocent neighbors walking their kids or dogs?

[Cowboy]

It worked for Stasi.

And that Zimmerman guy.

[O Really]

It worked for Stasi.

What - is Stasi the new Hitler-type reference for exaggeration now? Are we going to have to come up with a Godwin's Law adaptation?

[O Really]

It worked for Stasi.

And that Zimmerman guy.

Yeah, but there's a reason they call it "Community Watch" and not "Community Get Out Of Your Car and Accost Somebody"

[Cowboy]

Guess Zimmerman didn't get the memo.

[O Really]

What - is Stasi the new Hitler-type reference for exaggeration now? Are we going to have to come up with a Godwin's Law adaptation?

You tell me, you're the one videoing everyone that walks past your home and, by extension, want the government to do the same thing.

tin hats

paranoid . . . men in black

.

I did use those terms, and I'll stand by them. Actually, I don't really video everyone who goes past my house - you have to get past the end of the drive. And I probably wouldn't have video at all here except I already had the equipment from when I lived closer to an iffy neighborhood. But the analogy is still valid. If a set of data is helpful in identifying undesirables (whatever undesirables might be - burglars or terrorists), then the more data available, the better the chances of identifying the undesirables.

There isn't any system that couldn't be used for nefarious reasons, and there isn't any organization that is totally immune from having bad people. But to believe that there is a probability of real harm to innocent citizens because of the simple existence of the phone call data mining, you have to believe not that some FBI guy might fabricate a case - you have to believe that at the top level of NSA and the Department of Defense the intent is to make life hard on innocent people for no good reason whatsoever.
I don't think that is the case, and I don't have to believe that everybody in the intelligence community wears a white hat to think that.

Why aren't we complaining to Verizon, et. al. about collecting all that data in the first place if we think it can be harmful to the innocent?

I'll suggest an answer to that - because we want the service they provide, and thus pretty much have to accept whatever is in their TOS.

[Stinger]

That's a description of the supposed limits to the phone snooping. About PRISM it says: "...the intelligence analysts search PRISM data using terms intended to identify suspicious communications..."

Can't search terms unless you have access to all content.

Yes, you can. That's what they do. Here's how:

as part of K.D.D.,[Knowledge Discovery Database] an algorithm was applied to the broader data set in efforts to detect patterns of behavior fitting models that had been previously established as being indicative of the activities of a terrorist cell. In regards to protecting individual privacy, the standards are strict. As I described it in the book:

The NSA would have no authority to pull up, say, some American’s email account out of curiosity. Anyone violating this ban could potentially be committing a crime, just as an unauthorized IRS employee sneaking a peek at an individual tax return could be cited for wrongdoing. But the stricture was largely theoretical; sifting through the metadata to isolate an (arbitrary) individual’s records would be an almost impossible—and pointless—undertaking.

As he explains, sifting through that much data to happen upon an arbitrary individual's data -- say some derogatory comments on an anonymous forum -- would be almost impossible and pointless. They have bigger fish to fry.

Here are quotes from my source, a libertarian who's been investigating and writing about this for seven years.

As I wrote in the book, the phone information included the time and length of the conversation along with other metadata; however, actual conversations will not be heard.

The government is also obtaining e-mail records showing when they were sent, to what accounts, and the subject lines. There's your content -- the subject line of your e-mail.

As for the phone snooping:
NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants: National Security Agency discloses in secret Capitol Hill briefing that thousands of analysts can listen to domestic phone calls. That authorization appears to extend to e-mail and text messages too.

Yes, that's the warrantless wiretapping that the FISA court said is legal in a very specific manner. Like I've been explaining all week, that's different from the data mining non-story that became headline news a week or so ago.

With warrantless wiretapping, you actually have to be suspected of something. The only U.S. phone calls that are wiretapped are those making or receiving calls to or from foreign numbers. Now, you're actually supposed to be suspected of something.

Here's a better explanation than I can give:

My hope is that these explanations will make it clear why even I, as a civil libertarian, have no problem with data-mining programs. The information being obtained by the government entails far fewer privacy issues and danger of abuse than exists in your taxes or the census. Sure, people could make the argument that this could be the slippery slope to some sort of effort by the government to monitor your porn subscriptions, but . . . really? The N.S.A. is downloading petabytes of data every day with so many anonymizers and protections in place, it is incomprehensible to imagine (and illegal and technologically problematic) that someone would just somehow start surfing through private records. To me, the slippery-slope argument makes as much sense as the N.R.A.’s position that, if we use background checks to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, the United States is on the way to the seizure of weapons. And they make the same silly argument—they think that the government invades their privacy by running those checks.

As Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson said in a 1949 dissent, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. Creating absurd hurdles to protect against imaginary threats that instead open the door to real threats is self-defeating. We all need to calm down, recognize that no one is listening to our phone calls or reading our e-mails or hiding under our beds. These are programs that have been adopted very carefully, for a specific purpose. And for all those hypocrites who first wail that the Boston bombing wasn’t stopped, and now wail about a working program that has successfully impeded real terror attacks, I have this to say: shut up, Mr. Hannity. And you too, those of you critics hoping to turn a Bush program into an Obama scandal. Or, as Republicans were wont to say during the Bush administration: Why do you hate America? And why do you support the terrorists? (I’m being sarcastic.)

Enough. Let’s start getting real.

[Stinger]

From your source's comments:

...Regardless of where they're snagging it from, they can indeed see where the packets are coming from and peel off streams of data that are interesting, which would definitely give them access to the content. You clearly misunderstand IP networks...

In other words, they record everything, there are plenty of safeguards, it's all legal, we can't verify this, any other way is suicide, and I am a civil libertarian.

Right. Some random person in comments knows more than someone who's been investigating this for years. What's obviously misunderstood is the commenter's knowledge of the petabytes of information that the NSA receives on a daily basis. Having access and being able to use the access for mundane nosiness are two entirely different events.

Did anyone not realize that the NSA had the ability to access anyone's phone or internet use?

[Stinger]

There isn't any system that couldn't be used for nefarious reasons, and there isn't any organization that is totally immune from having bad people. But to believe that there is a probability of real harm to innocent citizens because of the simple existence of the phone call data mining, you have to believe not that some FBI guy might fabricate a case - you have to believe that at the top level of NSA and the Department of Defense the intent is to make life hard on innocent people for no good reason whatsoever.
I don't think that is the case, and I don't have to believe that everybody in the intelligence community wears a white hat to think that.

Why aren't we complaining to Verizon, et. al. about collecting all that data in the first place if we think it can be harmful to the innocent?

I'll suggest an answer to that - because we want the service they provide, and thus pretty much have to accept whatever is in their TOS.

You should check out this article's legal explanations explaining why the FISA court is not a mere rubber stamp. Vanity Fair -- Eichenwald

[Stinger]

You sure take a lot on faith, Stinger. Are you so trusting when it's a GOP administration asking you to believe them?

I'm not believing the administration. I'm believing the credible experts who know a whole lot more about this than I do. And there are a number of other knowledgeable people who are saying pretty much the same thing.

We have a decades long history of not very "mundane" repression at home and abroad by our intelligence agencies.

We also have a program in place that looks at phone RECORDS and stops terrorist plots, all without as much personal invasion as filing your taxes or filling out a census form, and far, far, far less personal information than you make available when you visit a doctor or use a computer at work or any of a number of other things.

What are the not-very-mundane repressions at home and abroad?

[Stinger]

I've been listing historic domestic repressions by our intelligence services all along, and our imperialism abroad is not a matter of debate.

When it comes to credible expertise on civil liberties I believe: Senator Bernie Sanders, Demand Progress, Free Press, Huffington Post, ACLU, Al Gore, New York Times, Center for Media and Democracy, Defending Dissent, RootsAction, CREDO, etc. You're choosing your own knowledgeable people, all of whom are either part of the problem or are taking on faith what the government's telling them.

You just made a false accusation you can't defend. You claimed I'm choosing people who are part of the problem or taking on faith what the government's telling them. That's simply not true.

Kurt Eichenwald has been interviewing people -- and reporting -- on this topic for over seven years. He's well-versed in this topic, and has been for some time. If you read the articles, you would know that.

Many of your sources seem shocked at these revelations. My source has known about them for years. Who's better informed?

Eichenwald writes about corporate scandals and against the Bush administration and its torture. He's a civil libertarian who has been investigating and writing about Al Qaeda and the "war on terror" since September 11th, and the NSA monitoring for over seven years.

As he points out, this is not new, and it is not news. It's been discussed in Congress and reported in the news for years.

Eichenwald is a two-time winner of the George Polk Award for Excellence in Journalism in 1995 and 1998, for articles about the dialysis industry and fraud at the nation's largest hospital company, Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corporation. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2000, along with his Times colleague Gina Kolata, for an investigation of medical clinical trials. In 2006, he won the Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism and the Best in Business Enterprise Award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.

Show me where Al Gore is better informed than Kurt Eichenwald.

[Dryer Vent]

I had a great idea - Since almost everyone who goes past my house is innocent, I think I'll just turn on the video only when there's an actual burglar outside. I'm sure I'll be able to pick him out since he'll be wearing a lone ranger type mask and looking sneaky. Why waste disc space on innocent neighbors walking their kids or dogs?

That really sums it up. My son's neighbor's video camera caught the guy who was burglaring the houses in the neighborhood in broad daylight when most folks were at work. Idiot looked right at the camera when he was jimmying the lock on the front door.

However, according to some, he violated the privacy of Mrs. Jenkins and her dog Fluffy.