NSA surveillance program reaches ‘into the past’ to retrieve, replay phone calls

ChaosComplex

MystikMushroom

I wonder if anyone would ever be able to get phone records from the NSA to help prove their innocence in court? Hm, I probably shouldn't hold my breath.

HAHA! Excellent point.
I also won't hold my breath for that, there is little for "The Man" to gain from an innocent citizen.
Even less if the citizen has proof of innocence.
Quite the world we live in...

It has already been found that they have instructed law enforcement agencies to hide where they got their info when it came from the NSA, if they didn't, the accused could ask for the transcripts to help prove their innocence.

Restricted
Then there's the "I haven't done anything wrong, so there's nothing to worry about" thing. Privacy is already dead. The younger generation killed it with things like sharing on FB, etc., and the government aided and abetted.

So if you haven't done anything wrong, why worry?

PS, we're never getting our privacy back. That train has left the station.

When right and wrong is decided by a greedy bunch of......butt heads.....who are we to say if we've done wrong or not?

MystikMushroom
reply to post by Restricted

 

Put it to you this way:

You're under investigation for something. All they'd need is your telephone number and they'd be able to pull all the phone calls made to/from your phone. Then, they'd be able track down the people you associate the most with and tap their phones.

Once you get one piece of information, it can snowball into a huge case file on someone. It's sort of like the eye of Sauron from the LOTR movies. Most of the time it's just wandering around or staring off into space...but on occasion it can focus in on you with great intensity.

That certainly could snow ball into a nightmare scinario at some point, which is why we need to fight it now.

Say you say something the Current administration doesn't like.

They could pull up all data on you, say just go with statue of limitations for a range date to search.

Next thing you know, those songs you downloaded?

That link you clicked,

That article you read?

Suddenly your a Terrorist with enough Data to build a case, never mind the data consist of every minor crime and anecdotal comment you made.

It certainly could lead to some 1984 thought police shenanigans.

Its why the 4th Existed in the first place, remember the British issuing broad and vague warrants against the colonist?

Called Writs of Assist,

Guess what they are back, and your ISP got them to allow this kind of NSA monitoring.

Im not saying this info isnt true but is does make me wonder if there is some disinformation going on about the NSA capabilities. It certainly wouldn't hurt them for the rest of the world to think they are more powerful than they really are.

reply to post by PhoenixOD


A data processing center that uses more water daily than a coke bottling plant beg to differ.


Thats a staggering level of computational power to need that much water just to cool.

ETA:

As an example that would be more computational power than what is being currently used for disease research. They are even Dumping alarming amounts of money on Quantum Computer research.

In the consumer world we are starting to see breakthroughs, I can only imagine what the NSA is working on.

Really, even as a Tech guy, I can't comprehend what they would be capable of with that level of dedicated research, with a true Quantum computer NO modern encryption would stand for very long.

PhoenixOD
Im not saying this info isnt true but is does make me wonder if there is some disinformation going on about the NSA capabilities. It certainly wouldn't hurt them for the rest of the world to think they are more powerful than they really are.

At the rate they are going those of us talking about them are going to get a visit by a T-1000 from the future.

To do this they'd need to have a tap in every exchange so they could monitor even local calls so that means a lot of black boxes in the corners of exchange in a locked room so really every telecoms company will have to know about it and even help the spooks to configure their kit etc so i'm surprised it hasn't leaked out before as remote wiretapping wouldn't need much network capacity as its rarely used (legally) so suddenly going from a 1mb SDSL line to probably a massive fibre optic setup should of warned some people

reply to post by benrl

Really, even as a Tech guy, I can't comprehend what they would be capable of with that level of dedicated research, with a true Quantum computer NO modern encryption would stand for very long.

With a true quantum computer any encryption would be cracked instantly

PhoenixOD
reply to post by benrl

 

Really, even as a Tech guy, I can't comprehend what they would be capable of with that level of dedicated research, with a true Quantum computer NO modern encryption would stand for very long.

With a true quantum computer any encryption would be cracked instantly

Not quite true but close enough for "government work".

So to speak...

reply to post by Riffrafter


I think the idea of using a quantum computer to crack encryption is they hope to produce all super positions of any possible key and collapse them to the correct answer in a single step.

reply to post by PhoenixOD


Not really, just like modern computing there would be a ramp up to true "functionality" of that level.

The thing is the advantage would only last until consumer Quantum computing, which will happen.

At that point though who knows what technology in general will mean, People truly don't understand what Quantum computing means for EVERYTHING.

Just think things like SETI, or disease research, and yes encryption, it won't be instant, just compared to today's standards it will seem like it.

Like going from a spinning hd to an ssd, the increase is in order of magnitude greater, but its not magic.

reply to post by daaskapital


GCHQ has been doing just that for sometime now(Storing any and all internet traffic for around a month), to its own populace! Hand in hand with the NSA i might add.

George Orwell said its not enough for Big Brother to control the Present and Future, he needed to control the past too.

I could have sworn this was already common knowledge? And not in the "conspiracy speculation" sense either...

There was a video of some foreign dignitary (iirc) whose every move was tracked. Everything from GPS location, travel times, phone calls, etc etc. This information was released publicly, and shown through some program that you could pick any time and date and see where they were. Oddly enough, in the places I posted this video, they are all gone now But, I am pretty sure I got it originally from here, so maybe someone else remembers?

I mean, storing all this data for retro-active searches is the reason why they are building these new facilities!

I think I even remember a thread here about someone who had received a search warrant of their telephone records for "x" amount of months, in a specific range of dates that, iirc (again ), led to a conviction.

Maybe it was all a dream?

This thread is one of the more intense Deja Vu experiences I have had, so for that, s+f! And, you know, cause its a problem when those enforcing and creating the laws are not subject to their scrutiny.

ETA: Found that link of the guy who was tracked here

Big deal, if such activities help in controlling anti social acts like crime and terrorism then that's a small price to pay.

Sounds like the movie Deja vu

I bet they can reach in the past via satellite, too and actually see stuff

PhoenixOD
reply to post by Riffrafter

 

I think the idea of using a quantum computer to crack encryption is they hope to produce all super positions of any possible key and collapse them to the correct answer in a single step.

Absolutely agreed on the idea/premise. The reality is we're not quite there yet.

We're close....but we can't seem to get out of the way of our own code.

i.e. - it may be happening, but in order for us to "see" it, there has to be some code running if for no other reason than I/O.

My info/experience is a little dated but I can say the whole notion of quantum computing presents a very unique set of challenges. For starters, it's ass-backwards in the sense that we can actually get the H/W right (believe it or not), but getting the software right is a bitch. And without the right software, we have no idea exactly what we've achieved in H/W. Test equipment can only tell you so much...and p.s. - test equipment for this presents another whole set of challenges.

If you really want your mind to melt, the S/W part of this veers off into the metaphysical almost immediately unless you want nothing more than a really fast abacus. Try to find a really good programmer that can grasp that.

Forget language compilers. They can't even come up with a base O/S they can trust yet.

That's right - I said trust.

If fully realized, these puppies will make HAL look like a 4 function calculator.

But I've gone OT enough...and besides, what do I know?

victor7
Big deal, if such activities help in controlling anti social acts like crime and terrorism then that's a small price to pay.

Only a fool surrenders his freedom without a fight.

reply to post by Restricted


then go an fight the government and change their actions which they have been undertaking for years for the objectives that they are spending 100s of billions across the globe for.

no surrender of freedom here........'cause smaller fools know that there are bigger fools willing to "fight a whole war" with powerful governments.

A senior manager for the program compares it to a time machine — one that can replay the voices from any call without requiring that a person be identified in advance for surveillance.

Wow, that's incredible! I also have one of these time machines.