You are being watched

[Cyborg Girl]

No seriously.

I have to ask why though. How exactly do they plan to sift through such a mountain of data? How will they know what to look for? Obviously IANAS*, but on the face of it this seems like a hugely misguided breach of the public's trust, for little possible benefit. Unless the govt. defines "benefit" in some way I'm very unfamiliar with.

* I am not a spook

[Cyborg Girl]

BTW, MIT Technology Review recently ran an article about the hazards of reducing everything to data - specifically, the tendency of people to get clever and reduce things to the wrong data. Seems very damn relevant here.

[pumpkinpi]

I haven't done anything wrong.....what should I care?

[Morrolan]

it's not you, it's just us...

[SciFi Chick]

I know it bugs us all when the government over reaches, but what do you suggest they do GJ? If we don't allow them any leeway at all, then all they can do is respond to terror rather than stop it... and maybe that's what some people want. Fair enough. I'm just curious.

[Cyborg Girl]

I haven't done anything wrong.....what should I care?

"Haven't done anything wrong" doesn't imply "haven't done anything the government might dislike."

No, we're not a police state. Not even close. But the tools are basically in place to create one now, should the people at the top so desire. The government can quite legally arrest you on suspicion and make you disappear, and IMO that is a huge problem. What happens if the next person in the Oval Office is a Nixon type?

[Swift]

I not sure why people have suddenly taken notice of this. This has been true since shortly after 9/11/01. Most of these programs, in one way or another, have gone on for 10 years or so.

That doesn't mean I approve of them; frankly, they do feel wrong, but I don't know what the answer is. I think most people have the attitude of pp and SFC: I didn't do anything wrong and we have to use this to fight terrorists.

The first position seems to me to be a slippery slope.

The second bit I don't have enough information to make an informed decision. The whole "War on Terror" has more than a little George Orwell. But the classic trade-off in governance is between freedom and security, and it seems the current zeitgeist is security.

[SciFi Chick]

I said what I said, but frankly, I'm far more worried about the random guy with a gun that doesn't understand gun safety or leaves his gun out for some psycho who decides to snap, than I am about terrorism.

[Cyborg Girl]

The whistleblower reveals himself

And bloody good on him I say. Shit like this needs to be blown wide open before it gets abused.

BTW, I'd like you guys to think about this a bit more. Really. It's not just a matter of keeping your nose clean any more; the government has access to every single thing you have ever transmitted, including things like your bank account password. If they want to make life hard for you, they can and will. And don't think that they wouldn't. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

You ask me, Snowden should get a medal for this.

[brite]

GJ --
As Swift pointed out... the Government has had access to this information since 2002... the Patriot Act... passed the House something 398-11 and the Senate 98-2... and was re-authorized in 2005, to make it PERMANANT! And so this is news... why?? Oh yes... I remember... because according to the Radical Right Wing nut hatchery... it's all Obama's fault...

[Cyborg Girl]

When did I say it was Obama's fault, and how is that germane to the actual issue at hand?

Edit: and this has been suspected since Bush, but the actual magnitude of it hasn't been revealed until now.

Come on. How is this not a problem? How does "oh I'm not surprised" make it less serious?

[SciFi Chick]

Come on. How is this not a problem? How does "oh I'm not surprised" make it less serious?

Because shit like this has been going on since the CIA and the FBI opened their doors, and there's really nothing we can do about it.

Yes, the government could make my life miserable. The odds of that happening are very slim though. Stressing about it isn't going to help. And I don't trust the government enough, that even if we tried to close this barn door, I'm certain they would just skirt around the law as much as possible.

There's nothing we can do about it.

[brite]

GJ --

Did I say that you said it was Obama's fault? No... I don't think that I did. I said that the the reason that this has become news, is that the Radical Right nut hatchery, has decided that it was Obama's fault (convientvently forgetting that they all voted for it, [as well as the Democrats, in 2002] to make law, as they rushed it through). OMG! The Government is spying on us! Well no shit! What the fuck did you think the Patriot Act was authorizing you stupid hacks??

And here's the thing... It's not news. It's fact. The size and scope hasn't changed since 2002. It hasn't changed since the Patriot Act's reauthorization in 2005. News flash -- THIS is what we, as a NATION wanted after 9/11 -- Congratulations...


The terrorists... won.




We are afraid of our own shadows and are spying on ourselves.

[Falstaff]

The terrorists... won.




We are afraid of our own shadows and are spying on ourselves.

Some comments from the former chief prosecutor at Gitmo, who resigned in protest.

“We used to be the land of the free and the home of the brave,” Col. Morris Davis told Current TV host Cenk Uygur on Friday. “Since 9/11, we’ve been the constrained and the cowardly.”

“If you went to the airport 15 years ago and somebody felt you up, it was called a sexual assault, not pre-boarding,” Davis said. “From that, to the ‘kill list,’ to indefinite detention, liberty’s kind of gone by the wayside. Ben Franklin said, ‘Anyone who would trade their liberty for security deserves neither,’ and here we are now.”

I have a solution to that one - if I need to meet anyone who lives in the US, I'll go to Canada and meet them there. Or Mexico, if they tend more southward than northward.

More here.

[FZR1KG]

GJ, the government could already get phone records from phone companies as to who called who etc before this. So could the police.
From what I see all they have done is bypass the middleman to save delays.

e.g. You catch a terrorist in the act and get his phone in the process.
Now that you have the phone you can get all the calls it made and received without incurring a delay penalty.
Then you have other cell numbers which can pinpoint where they are using triangulation techniques.

IOW, catching one makes it extremely fast helping you to get the rest before the news gets to them and they can ditch their phones.
If you add a layer of delay you cannot easily do this. So you may get one but the rest are highly likely to find out and get away.
Minutes can count in this situation.

So I can see the point of it and from a technical and engineering aspect it makes it far easier and increases the probability of success.

I can just imagine the outcry if they get a terrorist, get his phone and can't get the rest and they do a bombing.
People would call the government, the TSA and the police, bloated, inefficient and useless.
Basically take your pick, efficiency in preventing deaths or hamper the efforts and blame the government and enforcement agencies.
Same shit happens in almost all industries. The people that have to do the groundwork get hampered, their requests for tools and efficiency improvements are denied then when things turn to shit, they get blamed for not being able to prevent it.

I honestly can't see the big deal here. If they wanted information on you, they could get it in 24hrs or less anyway.
If you want to give the terrorists the same opportunity timewise then by all means protest it.
But effectively all you will be doing is letting them have time to escape while making absolutely no difference to non time critical situations since they already have the means to get that information. Basically from what I can see it affects no one but the terrorists.
If you can point out how it does I'd like to know.

Unless you can show me where they record conversations I'm going to have to go with they track numbers and call duration, not content.
So they are doing nothing other than increasing response time because they could access that information before this legislation was put into effect.

[FZR1KG]

I have a solution to that one - if I need to meet anyone who lives in the US, I'll go to Canada and meet them there. Or Mexico, if they tend more southward than northward.

While I agree with a lot that people complain about with regard to the TSA and government, I look at it on a case by case basis.
Things I hated were, extraordinary rendition, gitmo, much of the crazy rules regarding air travel etc.
Things that affect peoples lives negatively.

This particular issue unless someone can show more than what is being claimed by the government, I lean towards it being a pretty good concept.

[Cyborg Girl]

The whistleblower has disappeared.

I hope he's alive and well. If he isn't... That could be a sign of very ugly times ahead.

[The Supreme Canuck]

I'm with GJ, here. I'd rather go with the threat that isn't likely to affect me (terrorism) than the threat that is affecting me (government intercepts of my data). I'm not willing to trade my privacy away in order to "protect" myself from a threat I didn't need protecting from. It's an overreach.

And so what if there's nothing to be done about it? It's still wrong, and I'll say so.

[Cyborg Girl]

Hey, anyone remember the Boston Marathon bombings? Those guys slipped right under the radar. Despite PRISM. And they were researching how to make bombs and shit.

... No, I don't think it was a conspiracy. I think they managed it because, despite all the rhetoric about terrorism, intelligence agencies were neither expecting nor looking for terrorists. They were probably digging up dirt on peaceniks or something, and let the bona fide terrorists slip right by.

I mean, how the hell else could they miss the bastards with that kind of panopticon dragnet?

[Falstaff]

They were probably digging up dirt on peacenik or something

[SciFiFisher]

Hey, anyone remember the Boston Marathon bombings? Those guys slipped right under the radar. Despite PRISM. And they were researching how to make bombs and shit.

... No, I don't think it was a conspiracy. I think they managed it because, despite all the rhetoric about terrorism, intelligence agencies were neither expecting nor looking for terrorists. They were probably digging up dirt on peaceniks or something, and let the bona fide terrorists slip right by.

I mean, how the hell else could they miss the bastards with that kind of panopticon dragnet?

Because the Boston Bombers practiced OPSEC. They didn't chatter about it on their FB page. They apparently did not chat about it on other Islamic related sites. In fact, the Boston Marathon wasn't chosen as a target until about 2 weeks before the event because the bombers had enough explosive to do the job. They originally were planning on a 4th of July event.

No amount of electronic snooping will work if there is no signal out there to pick up.

[The Supreme Canuck]

So if it's so easy to avoid detection, what's the point? Seems like security theatre to me.

[Falstaff]

So if it's so easy to avoid detection, what's the point? Seems like security theatre to me.

That it is security theatre, is one possibility. Another is that it is actually quite useful, for purposes other than the one advertised.

[FZR1KG]

Hey, anyone remember the Boston Marathon bombings? Those guys slipped right under the radar. Despite PRISM. And they were researching how to make bombs and shit.

... No, I don't think it was a conspiracy. I think they managed it because, despite all the rhetoric about terrorism, intelligence agencies were neither expecting nor looking for terrorists. They were probably digging up dirt on peaceniks or something, and let the bona fide terrorists slip right by.

I mean, how the hell else could they miss the bastards with that kind of panopticon dragnet?

I rest my case.

[Cyborg Girl]

Because the Boston Bombers practiced OPSEC. They didn't chatter about it on their FB page. They apparently did not chat about it on other Islamic related sites. In fact, the Boston Marathon wasn't chosen as a target until about 2 weeks before the event because the bombers had enough explosive to do the job. They originally were planning on a 4th of July event.

No amount of electronic snooping will work if there is no signal out there to pick up.

Would work, except that the NSA should be quite capable of snooping on visitors to Al Qaeda controlled websites. From there they could resolve the owner and geographical location of visiting IPs, and probably get a good guess at who was looking at it.