PRISM - The Mirror That Betrays You

reply to post by Hefficide


Another prism thread while much of this has already been discussed. The government cannot keep track of all the information you detail about everyone in the US. You simply don't understand how much data that is. Where have you seen that Google or Facebook simply give all their information to the NSA? This is absurd. Here is what Google says Link

People read one thing and assume a whole lot. The slides i have seen offer no context. It is a super cheesy looking Power Point presentation. From what i have read, they are filtering as much traffic metadata as they can coming in or heading out of the United States. If that traffic flags, a report can be generated, someone looks at the report. Correlates who the flagged traffic is going to inside the US and then they investigate further.

During that investigation they may scoop up data that is irrelevant because they are overreaching bureaucrats.This is where your traffic could get involved. No US citizen that i know of has been put in jail because of data they have found this way. No one is reading your grandmas emails. Unless your grandma is emailing someone in Pakistan...

With such impressive omnipotent powers the NSA should be able to thwart any would-be bad guy huh? Why you would be a fool to attack the United States. Don't even try it. That sounds like a good message to put out there huh?


V

reply to post by Variable


The capabilities they openly admit to in their own words.

reply to post by Hefficide


Their own words are very chilling!

The Utah Data Center will be powered by the massively parallel Cray XC30 supercomputer which is capable of scaling high performance computing (HPC) workloads of more than 100 petaflops or 100,000 trillion calculations each second.

I can barely comprehend how much that is!

And the cost 1.2 BILLION

reply to post by Hefficide


I don't know if you saw this. i think it was posted here in another thread, but everyone should really take a minute to check it out.

Tell-all telephone Green party politician Malte Spitz sued to have German telecoms giant Deutsche Telekom hand over six months of his phone data that he then made available to ZEIT ONLINE. We combined this geolocation data with information relating to his life as a politician, such as Twitter feeds, blog entries and websites, all of which is all freely available on the internet.

editing to add link to the other thread:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by Hefficide


I will try to be internally consistent, hope I succeed.
Eventually it will be proven that the most powerful force in the universe is love.
If this were not true there would be no universe.

The Doppler shift of distant galaxies is quantized. What this tell us is, we live in a digital universe, so there is no way to tell for sure whether it was created or came about through some random process. Either side could easily prove that the other is ridiculous. It is however far more logical to me that it was created.

Power is in the process of being concentrated to a level never seen before.
If we look at the last century we can see that 180,000 people were murdered by our leaders. If you count abortions it is somewhere between 1 and 2 billion.
Power amplifies a persons character flaws, that is why power corrupts.
What are the chances that our leaders are the least prone to having any character flaws?

Aggressive behavior is caused by low levels of serotonin or lack of conscience.
The jails are full of this type of person. What percentage of our government would also fall into this category?
The good people in government and law enforcement seem to be getting pushed out by the bad people.

Then we have the basic law of human stupidity by Carlo M. Cipolla.
This says that if the percentage of stupid people in the general population get control, all hell will break lose.
Do we have a tyranny of incompetence?

What is interesting about all of this is that the people who are searching for the truth will be persecuted by the people that are the most deceived.

Originally posted by Iamschist
reply to post by superannoyingreality

 

Come visit me in the relocation camp, bring your history and we will talk.

See you there!

I'm smuggling in the Liquor.

reply to post by Hefficide


LOL

Hefficide, that's not a real NSA website.... Come on man Deny Ignorance.

This is a parody of nsa.gov and has not been approved, endorsed, or authorized by the National Security Agency or by any other U.S. Government agency.

The facility isn't online yet. I thought you were talking about what "they" are doing now...So now the argument is SOON they will be able to store ALL domestic traffic?


V

reply to post by Hefficide


I have added a link for my previous post.
www.ecotopia.com..." target="_blank" class="postlink">www.ecotopia.com...

reply to post by Variable

As someone who has written many books and articles about the agency, I have seldom seen the NSA in such a state. Like a night prowler with a bag of stolen goods suddenly caught in a powerful Klieg light, it now finds itself under the glare of nonstop press coverage, accused of robbing the public of its right to privacy. Despite the standard denials from the agency’s public relations office, the documents outline a massive operation to secretly keep track of everyone’s phone calls on a daily basis – billions upon billions of private records; and another to reroute the pipes going in and out of Google, Apple, Yahoo, and the other Internet giants through Fort Meade – figuratively if not literally.

Connecting the Dots on PRISM, Phone Surveillance, and the NSA’s Massive Spy Center

We know its happening though.

Lets focus on what is happening.

SF
Good well researched, informative thread Heff

I suppose some of us may be saying to ourselves ' who cares if I'm profiled. I have nothing to hide. I'm just an ordinary, boring person with no secret agendas'. However one never knows when they can suddenly without warning or any provocation, find themselves in a dire situation, like being falsely accused of a crime. Or actually do commit a petty crime we'd rather hide from. Or we are unintentionally affiliated with somebody who did, that implicates us. With this global spying network we can never run, never escape and be a fugitive. There is nowhere to hide. It seems this is all in place for when anyone becomes a potential target. Whoever they communicate with most frequently has already been logged by their phone usage. I see on my cell phone account I have a ' Top Five' people I call and text. I didn't make them my tops, its just there.


What concerns me is how nobody stands up to this at the onset, before it gets to the point where some actually believe all the new rules and this PRISM etc are good and keeping them safe from alleged terrorists. It will happen again, something where people are so conditioned, they will blindly accept its ok to spy into private homes. I can't think what it is that could have people say that's ok . I'm sure they've thought of it though and its in the planning stages now. I believe we are still in the conditioning phase and its all too easy to do because the masses are naiive. Or they enjoy the 'conveniences' they provide.

reply to post by Variable


Of course its absurd to think they comb through each person daily. Its so if you became a person of interest the data is already there, stored, organized and profiled ready to use against you. They don't have to set up surveillance and seek warrants. God only knows what they could come up with to cause a person to be of interest.
If they're going to implement a new rule that looks to cause resistance, they want to know who these resisters might be, to keep an eye on them or those they talk to. Catch them expediently.

Originally posted by violet
SF
Good well researched, informative thread Heff

I suppose some of us may be saying to ourselves ' who cares if I'm profiled. I have nothing to hide. I'm just an ordinary, boring person with no secret agendas'. However one never knows when they can suddenly without warning or any provocation, find themselves in a dire situation, like being falsely accused of a crime. Or actually do commit a petty crime we'd rather hide from. Or we are unintentionally affiliated with somebody who did, that implicates us. With this global spying network we can never run, never escape and be a fugitive. There is nowhere to hide. It seems this is all in place for when anyone becomes a potential target. Whoever they communicate with most frequently has already been logged by their phone usage. I see on my cell phone account I have a ' Top Five' people I call and text. I didn't make them my tops, its just there.


What concerns me is how nobody stands up to this at the onset, before it gets to the point where some actually believe all the new rules and this PRISM etc are good and keeping them safe from alleged terrorists. It will happen again, something where people are so conditioned, they will blindly accept its ok to spy into private homes. I can't think what it is that could have people say that's ok . I'm sure they've thought of it though and its in the planning stages now. I believe we are still in the conditioning phase and its all too easy to do because the masses are naiive. Or they enjoy the 'conveniences they provide.

The police can already tap your phone and bug your house and follow you, etc., etc., etc., with a ex parte warrant.

The only thing that's changed is the scope, not the rules, not the laws, not the way the system works... you can assume that means some sort of dire consequences, but... there's not reason to...

reply to post by violet

Of course its absurd to think they comb through each person daily. Its so if you became a person of interest the data is already there, stored, organized and profiled ready to use against you.

This is what i'm talking about, the idea that the Government stores all your information is ludicrous. Your just making connections based on erroneous information. It's true "some" kinds of information may be stored, but not all, and the devil is in the details. But people extrapolate wildly inaccurate theories based on ignorance. I'm not saying that what they are doing is always above board, i'm arguing specific points because wild speculation serves no purpose. Further, wild speculations then become the basis of "fact" that someone else then goes off on wild tangents about. Like Hefficide using a parody web site to buttress a point about the Utah facility. He means well, but it undercuts his point. That's all i am saying. People starred the post without doing any due diligence.

What we need to do is educate people with facts and logical thought. Otherwise we are simply ranters. We are like the guys i know in bars, who talk all manner of BS, and everyone just nods and says "Yea." We need to Deny Ignorance. My Dad used to say, Ignorance can be fixed, Stupidity is forever. Some people don't want to hear truth because it doesn't 'fit" in their world view. This is a bad thing.

Again, i'm not saying what the Government is doing is perfect, and always above board.

V

reply to post by Variable


Simple mistake or oversight. It happens. Good catch though.

reply to post by sonnny1

We know its happening though. Lets focus on what is happening.

We know what is happening? What is your point specifically? The wired article, which has been discussed in other threads, is an opinion piece. We know that a warrant was obtained for all of Verizon's meta data. According to the article the ACLU has filed a law suit. I would submit, this case has merit and we should support the effort. I don't know what the rules are here about hawking donations for a cause but, they have a link on their web site for that. Put your money where your mouth is I always say... While your at it, throw some money at this web site.

The other point is the document Snowden released, regarding the PowerPoint presentation. Google, Facebook, yahoo and others flatly deny this is the case. The New York Post has an article that is worth reading by those that want more information NY Post

There is disagreement about what the PowerPoint specifies as "direct access," The companies mentioned have received legal warrants for specific data. The idea that the NSA simply and surreptitiously gathers data, without their consent, would seem to be at odds with the warrant. Why would they need a warrant if they have the information? It could be argued the warrant makes the data, they already have, legally actionable, has merit i would suppose. But again, the assumption that they cull this data without these companies awareness is not a fact. If it was proven they do this, then we have a massive problem. The PowerPoint has no context, it looks poorly made, it looks like a high school student made it. I used to teach MS, Networking and Cisco material to College age pupils. This looks like something they would make. I am not ready to make the leap, based on the document, that the Government is able to tap Google datacenters without their knowledge. I would submit that the techies at Google are just as savvy as any government worker.

V

I feel we are all living in a George Orwell Novel/movie

Firstly awesome post Heff.

Its been a while since I have been posting on here real world and all that.

On topic I think the scenario you have described is indeed a very conservative one. I dare suspect the invasive nature of the PTB would be far greater than what we have been told. Just look at how paranoid THEY are of US.

My only concern is what will happen when they start releasing self replicating sentient code onto the internet to gather info and spy on us as individuals. We might all have an AI spy watching our particular movement online. I know its far fetched but how else would they differentiate the "norms" from the back ground noise but to assign an AI spy for each and every one of us. It is the logical thing to do after all.

Even if people set off red flags there must be billions of red flags going off in the world because this information is getting out faster than they can control it. The only think than can keep up with the speed of change is a machine that is sentient and native to the online environment. Humans are not fast enough or smart enough to handle the amount of information that is moving through cyber space.

just my 2 cents.

reply to post by Variable


Hmmm.......

As one poster from your article said......

So the companies are saying "any government agency requesting customer data must get a court order" and if that court order is like the varizon court order - which is logical - then they would have to give that. Right? Which means give all the communications passing through daily. One court order ..... thats it.

See, I don't have faith in Corporations who not only pander to Government, but at times work hand in hand with it.
If you are waiting for hard core proof of" Big Brother Watching", then I don't know what to say. Being skeptical, and living in denial are two very distinct things.

Lets also not forget that the President has the option to kill citizens, if the necessity arises. That ALSO has been proven..........

You too can train to hack with this Federal Government Online Training Coarse.

www.fedvte-fsi.gov...

You just have to get the military or DHS to give you a password.

reply to post by Hefficide


my guess is every time they tap into the data stream to model our collective behavior they find out we're really good people overall. maybe they've discovered there's just too much going on to be able to figure anything out to begin with so they just stand there slack jawed and dumbfounded over what to do about it. there are computers that can calculate billions of chess moves per second you don't think they've already modeled our collective potentials only to find out when tweaked here and there across the geopolitical landscape the culture is a self-organizing system and can't be tipped out of balance by things made up by mad men.