Dominoes continue to fall. Fresh allegations of Domestic Spying in NY Times

Originally posted by mikegrouchy
It's like that "on star" system in some cars.
If the government had forced it on us as surveillance,
we would have hated it.
But if we can have the same technology, except it works _for_ us
then we love it.


Oh... wait....

Mike

I thought i was alone in seeing through the 'on star' scheme of replacing good, reliable, non-computerized, standard parts cars with remote controlled, specialized parts cars that start falling apart after 15,000 miles. ("Failed" Cash for Clunkers)

All my friends and family still think i'm crazy.

Originally posted by occrest

Originally posted by mikegrouchy
It's like that "on star" system in some cars.
If the government had forced it on us as surveillance,
we would have hated it.
But if we can have the same technology, except it works _for_ us
then we love it.


Oh... wait....

Mike

I thought i was alone in seeing through the 'on star' scheme of replacing good, reliable, non-computerized, standard parts cars with remote controlled, specialized parts cars that start falling apart after 15,000 miles. ("Failed" Cash for Clunkers)

All my friends and family still think i'm crazy.

Word.

If the surveillance state wants to win me over
they have to give me my own account
so I can log on an look at my own data
going all the way back to 1984 when I talked with that guy in Chicago
about what the weather was like up there.

In a trial,
the prosecution HAS to share evidence with the defense.
It's called "discovery".

But all these data collection systems,
they are only for our owners aren't they.


Mike

reply to post by supremecommander


You always need permission. You never know, "You see something, Say something." Boy, this website is full of information, Yes I said "information". Time to play trace the I.P. Weeeee.....

But all these data collection systems, they are only for our owners aren't they.

reply to post by mikegrouchy

The trick is---figuring out how to use what we have to our advantage.

Originally posted by gotya
reply to post by supremecommander

 

Do ewe pay taxes?

Do you? (remember they are watching.)

Don't we all?

Spook?

Originally posted by OpViper7
reply to post by supremecommander

 

You always need permission. You never know, "You see something, Say something." Boy, this website is full of information, Yes I said "information". Time to play trace the I.P. Weeeee.....

This website is an NSA treasure trove.

I am not speaking bad about the owners...but regardless of my lack of fear, the "PC" forum is probably a case of bait and switch.

Originally posted by occrest

But all these data collection systems, they are only for our owners aren't they.

reply to post by mikegrouchy

 

The trick is---figuring out how to use what we have to our advantage.

To The secret Surveillance Powers of America.

Ours is an open society.
This is the difference between us and you who use terrorism as a label.
The moment you surveilled the entire internet we became angry.
No one understands you.
This is the flaw in your closed circles.


You are out in the open now,
with the rest of us,
but you are not dressed for the party,
you didn't bring any gifts.
You are not sharing with us.

Now it may be too late for you.


Mike

reply to post by supremecommander


Hey, even some per say NSA, CIA, CSS, NRO and other employees don't all agree with what is going on in the U.S.A., were not here to patrol Americas gateways or internet services. It was never meant to turn into this. See if an employee quits because he doesn't like what he or she says. They will be out of a job and homeless and how will they take care of themselves then. It's a double edged sword, but this websites is full of knowledge and im sure fantastic people of the like minds.
Its funny to think and say that this time in are era, is only a moment of what acrews in our entire universe were not in this alone, it goes much beyond that.

Originally posted by gotya

Originally posted by ShadowLink
reply to post by gotya

 

So you're aware of it, hear about it everywhere and you're "Ok" with it or just sick of hearing about it?

Don't you think it's ridiculous?
Don't you think it's illegal?
Don't you think it goes against everyones rights? Including Non-americans.
Don't you think something should be done about it?
Don't you think someone should be held responsible for the complete violation of practically everyone?

I'm guessing people like you are why these things continue, and right out in the open in our faces no less.

I'm not okay with it but stating the obvious doesn't solve a problem.

Example... there is a leaky pipe. Fine we can all see the pipe is leaking. If we all say the pipe is leaking it won't fix the leak.

If there is a leaky pipe you call a plumber. If the government is spying you........

(I fixed the pipe.)

Let me start by saying that I don't completely disagree with you. "Talk is Cheap", "Put up or shut up", "Actions speak louder than words" - these all quite easily capture your sentiment of 'don't just sit there complaining, do something about it!'

However, fixing a pipe (or any other series of manual/individual tasks toward a fixed outcome is not a good analogy.

"Fixing" the current situation requires more tan one individual's impetus and action, it requires "multimodal" plans of attack that take into account all the variables, the nebulous connections and obfuscated targets. It's not just fixing a pipe...if two people who live together realize a pipe is leaking, commenting on or complaining about how the pipe is leaking could be seen as a form of pragmatic speech, basically meaning that the complainer is trying to ask the other person to fix it. If the other person says, "so, stop whining and fix it already", it's essentially the second person responding to the first that he doesn't want to.

The current overlap of #ed-uppedness that is modern American society is not a pipe, a single person with drive or know-how could do minuscule to bring about change....

...that is, unless they spread the word. Because, at the end of the day, a leaky pipe scenario could be dragged out into all it's constituatuants in the problem-resolution categorylet me preface by saying this would look better as a flow chart...but, yeah, how much time can I really invest in these responses?)

Identify wet spot under sink;
Where is it coming from?;
Move windex, dish soap, bug spray, etc.;
Identify wet counter;
Find somebody who cares, tell them;
Can they fix it or know someone who can?;
Turn off water;
Identify pipe size;
Find/buy requisite replacement, plumber's putty, etc.;
Locate monkey wrench and other necessary tools;
...


You see where Im going with this. The current situation with spying (among other related issues) breaks down in a similar - albeit less simplistic way. The right people to do the right actions to counter the almost incessant bureaucratic nonsense are not all in the know and certainly not all on the same page...

...So, this is where I disagree, talking about it and citing revelations in investigative journalism, doing research and so forth, these are all essentially towards the gaol of the American public being on the same page.

Lastly, I would add, how's about we stop preaching to the choir? ATS is not full of ignorant people to these types of matters. Gotya's attitude is one of a person...perhaps not jaded, but burnt out...I don't know. The real world people are the ones that need to be reached. But just be warned that they do not have your (my audience reading this) frame of reference, they aren't immersed in background info that you and I might gloss over as common knowledge, and, above all, they are skeptical of and contrary-to-official information given by you over Bill O'Reilly or Pierce Morgan (or the TMZ guy, Oprah, whatever else), even if you are this real world Preston's BFF, favorite nephew or dependable coworker. Use digestible pieces of information that are easily comprehensible and require the least amount of background foreknowledge. What you say, especially since you'll be saying it with conviction, must be only about the most grounded, proven and cited examples or issues. Never intersperse your personal conjecture or friend of a friend's baby mama's coworker's very own second hand source, no matter how reliable.

This is why I rarely come here anymore and, moreover, why I frequently do not post...that and my free time is a little limited by sleeping and other requisite activities. I will now crawl off the soapbox and back under my rock...see you ATS people again in a week or two when I can catch up on the insanity of it all.

I was actually hoping this thread would discuss the actual content of the articles I linked. I cannot and will not try and force anyone to actually care about the continued revelations of the surveillance state. If you care about the implications then that is fine please participate. If you do not care then please avoid this thread.

There most likely is a ton of new information that will come down the pike and be far more devastating then what we currently know of so far.

Along with the DEA it is now being alledged that the IRS is using data from the NSA and DEA to go after people. They are then instructed to make it appear they did not get the information from those sources. I personally cannot believe they can argue the legality of operating in this fashion but... Apparently they do.

I personally feel that the rise of the police/surveillance state is the biggest and worst injustice to our democracy perhaps in our entire history. The fact the majority of people seemed willing and oblivious to its implantation is simply mind blowing to me. There will be a day where we will regret this on so many levels.

In addition to the IRS, the Special Operations Division cooperates with a number of government agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency. The way the intelligence-gathering system worked is as follows: The Special Operations Division of the DEA channels secret data from overseas NSA intercepts, domestic wiretaps, informants and a large DEA database of telephone records to authorities nationwide to assist them with criminal investigations of US citizens, according to the Reuters report. The DEA telephone database is different from the NSA database that was revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who is now living in Russia under asylum. The DEA, which works behind the scenes to investigate drug dealers, money launderers and other criminals, argues that the practice does not violate the law and has been in “near-daily use since the 1990s.” The agency said the reason it directs federal agents to recreate the investigation trail is to “protect sources and methods, not to withhold evidence.” Judicial hurdles ahead Legal experts, however, say that concealing potential evidence from defendants violates the US Constitution. According to documents and interviews obtained by Reuters, federal agents use a procedure called "parallel construction" to conceal the tracks of the investigative trail. For example, agents could say that an investigation was launched due to a traffic violation as opposed to an SOD tip.

rt.com...

reply to post by Sphota


Nicely wrote, and well said. Too bad you're not around more, this site needs people of your ilk.

Oh #, we all googled Eric Snowden and even Michael Hastings... hurry up and take pictures of your fapping to disgust your watchers.

Originally posted by gotya
reply to post by supremecommander

 

Paranoid?

I'm not a government spook. (boo.)

I'm just not cattle.

It would sure seem like you are one or the other, after reading your first post in this thread.

Interesting that your 'buddy' is a 'dear friend' after their 20th post.

Originally posted by OpViper7
reply to post by supremecommander

 

Hey, even some per say NSA, CIA, CSS, NRO and other employees don't all agree with what is going on in the U.S.A., were not here to patrol Americas gateways or internet services. It was never meant to turn into this. See if an employee quits because he doesn't like what he or she says. They will be out of a job and homeless and how will they take care of themselves then. It's a double edged sword, but this websites is full of knowledge and im sure fantastic people of the like minds.
Its funny to think and say that this time in are era, is only a moment of what acrews in our entire universe were not in this alone, it goes much beyond that.

So you are saying that you just do it for the money?

reply to post by GArnold


The question remains, Did you believe the US government in the first place when they told everyone that they weren't spying on the public? Fool me once, shame on me, fool me half a dozen times, still shame on me.

The essential situation, has come down to its inevitable end game once more....(as it has for many centuries before us......)
The basic concept of our existence which we hold so dear, that we refuse reality and cling to it;..........Is Flawed.

The way that we have established our primitive society, will always and inevitably lead to this juncture over time...........(think about it)

The revolutions, have been both flower powered, and extremely and cruelly violent.
.........But after they pass, the same society simply heads out in its same direction, till the corruption has reached epidemic and disgusting proportions.
Ask yourself honestly, have we not relaced royal priviledged nobility, with the uber rich?
Are they not still ripping and rending the society, and the common man by creating the very fabirc of our existence with their immense power and wealth?

These agencies are all about their own survival, and expansion of power.
The very purpose of their creation is subverted in this effort to wield more power.

Unless, and until the next "revolution" be it one violence or of mind/ spirit.......the extreme actions of this administration system, will be of a repressive and ever more controlling nature....

They will become more violent and far less tolerant of any so called "human rights",

reply to post by RedShirt73


Actually I knew better. I have been telling people for years they are spying on everything you do. I just had a feeling... Not to mention I study this sort of thing and have a blog that talks about NSA, Drones, Cryptography, CIA etc. I read the book The Shadow Factory by Bamford. I watched the Nova broadcasts about the NSA etc. I have known what they were up to. I was also unfortunately a History major and Political Science minor in College. I knew that what the Govt says vs what it does are two totally separate and distinct things.

You could look at my Facebook feed or Twitter feed or even my Blog and I have been saying "Watch out they are monitoring EVERYTHING" for at least the last three years. I just can sense it...As well. I know that sounds odd but I feel in my everyday life like I feel when I am in a Airport which is essentially that I am being watched 24/7/365.

I was 100% sure after I read the infamous Wired article on the Bluffdale NSA center. Bamford basically spells out exactly what Snowden leaked. The Article is almost 2 or 3 years old. Why have the capacity to do it ( which they do) if they are not going to use it?

Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy. But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”

www.wired.com...

The Nova program "The Spy Factory".

www.pbs.org...

I am posting this in case anyone is interested.

My Blog.

drakeequation.wordpress.com...

I actually recently got a very very small mention in the Yale Journal of International affairs.. Or to be more specific my Blog did. I should add... I do not write often about things that cannot be proven. I love conspiracy things but try and deal with provable facts. There is a post on my blog about The Black Knight Satellite which is as close as I have come to a conspiracy story. I am honestly fascinated by the story.

yalejournal.org...

Down at the bottom in the citations is a link to my blog.. It has actually driven a lot of traffic to my blog.

Found a very interesting article on how XKeyscore actually works. Interesting to me that despite assurances we are not being spied on ( which is a lie) that Obama announced a comprehensive review of the NSA last night. Snowden has forced his hand. It is time to consider Snowden as a hero instead of a "hacker" or spy . The fact is it a duty to point out the wrongs of the Govt and not follow along like fish. Indeed if the Govt is acting in a illegal way it is a moral imperative to expose it. No Nazi who said " we were just following orders " had any success with that argument. By doing nothing you are as guilty as the people who ordered it.

Building a Panopticon .

"Like this prison in Cuba, the N
SA has turned the Internet into a place where the watchmen can see all."

The National Security Agency's (NSA) apparatus for spying on what passes over the Internet, phone lines, and airways has long been the stuff of legend, with the public catching only brief glimpses into its Leviathan nature. Thanks to the documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, we now have a much bigger picture. When that picture is combined with federal contract data and other pieces of the public record—as well as information from other whistleblowers and investigators—it's possible to deduce a great deal about what the NSA has built and what it can do. We've already looked at the NSA's basic capabilities of collecting, managing, and processing "big data." But the recently released XKeyscore documents provide a much more complete picture of how the NSA feeds its big data monsters and how it gets "situational awareness" of what's happening on the Internet. What follows is an analysis of how XKeyscore works and how the NSA's network surveillance capabilities have evolved over the past decade. Boot camp After the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, the NSA and other organizations within the federal intelligence, defense, and law enforcement communities rushed to up their game in Internet surveillance. The NSA had already developed a "signals intelligence" operation that spanned the globe. But it had not had a mandate for sweeping surveillance operations—let alone permission for it—since the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was passed in 1978. (Imagine what Richard Nixon could have done with Facebook monitoring.) The Global War On Terror, or GWOT as it was known around DC's beltway, opened up the purse strings for everything on the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) shopping list. The NSA's budget is hidden within the larger National Intelligence Program (NIP) budget. But some estimates suggest that the NSA's piece of that pie is between 17 and 20 percent—putting its cumulative budget from fiscal year 2006 through 2012, conservatively, at about $58 billion. Early on, the NSA needed a quick fix. It got that by buying largely off-the-shelf systems for network monitoring, as evidenced by the installation of hardware from Boeing subsidiary Narus at network tap sites such as AT&T's Folsom Street facility in San Francisco. In 2003, the NSA worked with AT&T to install a collection of networking and computing gear—including Narus' Semantic Traffic Analyzer (STA) 6400—to monitor the peering links for AT&T's WorldNet Internet service. Narus' STA software, which evolved into the Intelligent Traffic Analyzer line, was also used by the FBI as a replacement for its Carnivore system during that time frame.

arstechnica.com...

As for the Obama news .

Analysis -- NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s revelations have forced President Barack Obama’s hand, leading the president to announce new reforms of the government’s classified surveillance programs. After his administration issued repeated defenses of a National Security Agency monitoring program that collects Americans’ phone and Internet data, Obama announced during a press conference Friday afternoon that reforms to the system will make the collection activities more transparent and "give the American people additional confidence that there are additional safeguards against abuse." Obama said the changes will include changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court system -- which currently greenlights requests for data gathering -- as well as the creation of both an internal NSA position devoted to privacy and an external working group to evaluate transparency in the program. Officials will also launch a new website next week that will serve as “a hub for further transparency” for interested members of the public.

firstread.nbcnews.com...

As you may or not know Lavabit a email encryption service rumored to be used by Edward Snowden stopped operations instead of fighting against secret laws from secret courts. There are other options which I will get to in a minute. Glenn Greenwald has a new article discussing the shutdown of Lavabit.

From the article.

What is particularly creepy about the Lavabit self-shutdown is that the company is gagged by law even from discussing the legal challenges it has mounted and the court proceeding it has engaged. In other words, the American owner of the company believes his Constitutional rights and those of his customers are being violated by the US Government, but he is not allowed to talk about it. Just as is true for people who receive National Security Letters under the Patriot Act, Lavabit has been told that they would face serious criminal sanctions if they publicly discuss what is being done to their company. Thus we get hostage-message-sounding missives like this: I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what's going on - the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests." Does that sound like a message coming from a citizen of a healthy and free country? Secret courts issuing secret rulings invariably in favor of the US government that those most affected are barred by law from discussing? Is there anyone incapable at this point of seeing what the United States has become? Here's the very sound advice issued by Lavabit's founder: This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States." As security expert Bruce Schneier wrote in a great Bloomberg column last week, this is one of the key aspects of the NSA disclosures: the vast public-private surveillance partnership. That's what makes Lavabit's stance so heroic: as our reporting has demonstrated, most US-based tech and telecom companies (though not all) meekly submit to the US government's dictates and cooperate extensively and enthusiastically with the NSA to ensure access to your communications.

www.theguardian.com...

There are other options for encrypting email. I recently started using enlocked.

www.enlocked.com...

You can do it from the website or they have an app for iPhone, IPad and I assume Google type devices.

Here is an article that discusses various options available for Safari, Firefox, Chrome etc. Most are simple add ons to the browser of your choice.

In light of the General Petraeus scandal, and the ease with which the feds can access your email and drafts stored in the cloud, then you may be looking for "keep it simple, stupid" solutions specifically to encrypt Gmail. Here are several Firefox add-ons and Chrome extensions that are free, yet so easy to use that even your technically-challenged friends or family could use them.

m.blogs.computerworld.com... F09%2Flavabit-defunct-secure-email

Why encrypt your email if you have nothing to hide? For me personally I decided it is the principal of the whole thing. Why make it easy for anyone to snoop on you.


I should add virtually any encryption can be broken now a days. The NSA has supercomputers that's whole purpose is breaking encryption. Why make it easy for them however. The Supercomputer at Bluffdale for instance

Breaking into those complex mathematical shells like the AES is one of the key reasons for the construction going on in Bluffdale. That kind of cryptanalysis requires two major ingredients: super-fast computers to conduct brute-force attacks on encrypted messages and a massive number of those messages for the computers to analyze. The more messages from a given target, the more likely it is for the computers to detect telltale patterns, and Bluffdale will be able to hold a great many messages. “We questioned it one time,” says another source, a senior intelligence manager who was also involved with the planning. “Why were we building this NSA facility? And, boy, they rolled out all the old guys—the crypto guys.” According to the official, these experts told then-director of national intelligence Dennis Blair, “You’ve got to build this thing because we just don’t have the capability of doing the code-breaking.” It was a candid admission. In the long war between the code breakers and the code makers—the tens of thousands of cryptographers in the worldwide computer security industry—the code breakers were admitting defeat.

www.wired.com...

I find this interesting complaint from Lavabit.
www.bbb.org...

Complaint: We had have serviced with Colo4 LLC for over 4 years. Our server was purposely hosting private email and for some of development thus bandwidth usage is in minimal usage. Started from August 2012, Colo4 LLC started to raise the monthly bandwidth overage to over 1900+ GB without knowing the caused and continue to charge bandwidth overage to over $500 per month in usage and bandwidth overage and continue to charging us even though all the service within server had been shutdown.We had have requested for an investigate into the bandwidth usage but then had been ignored by Colo4 LLC. Instead, they are trying to convince us that their service have changed and force us to sign their yearly contracts. Product_Or_Service: Collocate Server Hosting Order_Number: XXXX-XXXXX Account_Number: ****** ****** Business Response Contact Name and Title: ************, VP Admin Contact Phone: XXXXXXXXXX Contact Email: *****@colo4.com Mr. ****** was responsible for monitoring his bandwidth usage and maintaining awareness of the applicable charges. The excess usage (overage) billed to Mr. ****** was confirmed; the applicable charges are valid. While Mr. ****** did not ask Colo4 to investigate the cause of the overage (only claiming that they were fraudulent), it was likely caused from being hacked and/or infected by a computer virus. Either of these could dramatically increase the data transmitted to/from (i.e.; usage on) a server. Colo4 was not responsible for protecting Mr. ******'s server from hackers and viruses. It is not known if Mr. ****** had installed and maintained any security software on his server.

So he got billed for the government hacking his email service. The bandwidth overage cost him more money so the government could look through everything. Billed for government spying. How crazy is that.