NSA collects millions of e-mail address books globally

Wow.... It just gets more and more interesting as time goes on. I had a feeling they didn't bother with individuals or even small source points for most of their work. They hoover right from the top and from there, I'll bet they get the pick of just about everything.

The collection program, which has not been disclosed before, intercepts e-mail address books and “buddy lists” from instant messaging services as they move across global data links. Online services often transmit those contacts when a user logs on, composes a message, or synchronizes a computer or mobile device with information stored on remote servers.

Rather than targeting individual users, the NSA is gathering contact lists in large numbers that amount to a sizable fraction of the world’s e-mail and instant messaging accounts. Analysis of that data enables the agency to search for hidden connections and to map relationships within a much smaller universe of foreign intelligence targets.

Okay, this is getting to be too much. Every week or two, it's news of another 'special' division of some 'special' department within an agency once only half jokingly called 'No Such Agency'.

Now this was working overtime ...and we need to keep perspective. This isn't one program exposed. These numbers likely represent just the contribution of this one program to the whole effort. We know other programs already cover much of the same digital 'ground', from other directions!

During a single day last year, the NSA’s Special Source Operations branch collected 444,743 e-mail address books from Yahoo, 105,068 from Hotmail, 82,857 from Facebook, 33,697 from Gmail and 22,881 from unspecified other providers, according to an internal NSA PowerPoint presentation. Those figures, described as a typical daily intake in the document, correspond to a rate of more than 250 million a year.

Each day, the presentation said, the NSA collects contacts from an estimated 500,000 buddy lists on live-chat services as well as from the inbox displays of Web-based e-mail accounts.

Source

Outrageous? Yup... If we have 500,000 actual enemies(...and that's LISTS..not just people) our Intelligence agencies need to split their time even a tiny fraction between? Well... that would outnumber our military. It's absurd. It's how they

N-ever
S-top
A-ntagonizing

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


they need to for the rare innocent with no skeletons in the closet or under the floorboards
if all else fails they can get you with the Six degrees of separation

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


I am with you here Wrabbit. The more I here the more disgusted and less empowered I feel to have a modicum of privacy within my life. Privacy from government that is. For those I chose to know okay but not the government.

Also, none of this seem to get reported on MSM anymore. Most people never know unless they are into these sites or perhaps Drudge. Where or where is the outrage?

If they wanted this information when someone is suspected they would have no trouble getting it. Why are they doing it all prior...minority report style.

Hmm.

I'm more concerned that address books and buddy lists are being sent freely across networks and no one seems to care.

I could be catching all this data too.

Online services often transmit those contacts when a user logs on, composes a message, or synchronizes a computer or mobile device with information stored on remote servers.

It's a little like walking out the front of your house nude and not caring that everyone is watching you, but as soon as the postie comes, you blame him for peeping.

Why is there no outrage that the companies that allow their data to be transmitted unencrypted?

That is the problem..

liveandlearn
reply to post by Wrabbit2000

 

I am with you here Wrabbit. The more I here the more disgusted and less empowered I feel to have a modicum of privacy within my life.

If you're willingly letting your data out onto the internet YOU HAVE NO PRIVACY.

What is with the blatant ignorance. You never had any expectation of privacy on the internet. Not as soon as you gave all you rpersonal information to a website.

Wow.. lmao..

Sure they're bad for collecting it.. but they're not doing anything you're not allowing them to do.

Stop using services that don't store your data properly. And just assuming they do, is not any guarantee of your privacy.

Man, it's frustrating...

reply to post by winofiend


People obviously have an expectation of privacy NOW though don't they.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


I predicted this in numerous threads in June, July, August etc. it only made sense they would outsource the collection of Americans data globally mostly to the Five Eyes partners . It allows them in some ways to follow the law but still get the info they needed. Sickening. Bow down to Big Brother.

reply to post by winofiend

If you're willingly letting your data out onto the internet YOU HAVE NO PRIVACY.

I think it was fair to say you had to do stupid things on your own to be a victim of total lack of any privacy ..even just a half dozen years ago. Now? They have their hooks so deep at the nexus points of society and all the data which makes it run? Privacy is a 100% fallacy and joke. It probably always has been far less than we've told ourselves...but now? Well, they just took a fat eraser to the lines and removed them entirely.

We are the State. The State is us. All for the State and the State for all! (cough cough...or some such crap)

Welcome to Amerika, Comrade Winofiend!

The 'buddy lists' .... I figured that was going on.

That's why I deleted the 50 or so 'friends' from Facebook who are from ATS.
And that's why I have deleted all the email addresses from ATS that I've collected
over the years and only kept one home address of one poster.

I really don't know who is on the other end of these avatars at ATS and , even though
some have been very nice, I really DO NOT KNOW THEM. So I took them off my lists.
After the second shooter here ... and all the strange things that some folks here
get into ... I thought that was a smart thing to do.

I don't want any 'guilt by association'.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

NSA collects millions of e-mail address books globally

Sorry to disappoint you,but that info is for children,I guess you should see when they visualise the same pages that you open on your computer in the same time with you,this,of course if you represent some interest for them.

But the truth it is that lately there is nothing to be seen,except poverty and suffering,because they are like you and me.

It is what those people usualy feel when they track someone on the interwebs.

Oh,but certainly they track important politicians and rich people all over the world,this way they can anticipate and prevent different political actions.

I wonder how they divy up all the nude pics they collect when vacuuming up people's accounts.

The hits just keep on coming.

As someone whose entire social life pretty much consists of IM conversations I feel really violated right now. I knew all the data was being recorded (and as I often joke about some of the conversations, they'll prevent me from ever holding a national political office), I guess I should have realized they would collect contact lists too. Afterall they sit on servers owned by companies like AOL which legally have to hand the data over, and then lie about doing it.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


I've named one of my folders in my yahoo account, "The NSA Sucks".

Still waiting on a love letter from them.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


If I were to get a crowbar and open a letterbox on a street corner just to look at the addresses, it'd be a federal crime.

If I were to break into your mailbox to see who you were writing to, it'd be a federal crime.

But somehow, they can bypass my ISP, my passwords, to read my LETTERS and WHO I SENT THEM TO with impunity.

And people say we don't live in a police-state.

beezzer
reply to post by Wrabbit2000

 

If I were to get a crowbar and open a letterbox on a street corner just to look at the addresses, it'd be a federal crime.

If I were to break into your mailbox to see who you were writing to, it'd be a federal crime.

But somehow, they can bypass my ISP, my passwords, to read my LETTERS and WHO I SENT THEM TO with impunity.

And people say we don't live in a police-state.

They can't do that to a physical letter without a warrant. The problem is congress believes the constitution doesn't apply to electronic data because it didn't exist when the founders wrote the constitution. This is actually a battle that has gone back and forth for over 100 years. It goes all the way back to wiretaps on telegraph lines. We need technologically minded people in government, and we just don't have any of those.

reply to post by Aazadan


Theyre damn goofballs too. Your rights are part of you, not the internet. Your rights go where you go. They are where you are. That includes the ROADS! nomz. chewin on freedom gum is damn tasty.