Surveillance in the 21st Century: Press CTRL-C to Copy the Internet (NSA Thread)

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Surveillance in the 21st Century: Press CTRL-C to Copy the Internet (NSA Thread)

Fuckt Tupp: Apr 19, 2007; Science

Tezzor posted:

The UK's already-tenuous system of press freedom continues to collapse:

http://www.cityam.com/article/13831...lines_right_col

This is a touchy subject, sure, but you have to keep in mind that a news editor in the UK just plead guilty to hacking into a murder victim's cell phone yesterday. See the Hackgate thread for more info about this kind of stuff.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2013 21:03

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# ¿ May 8, 2024 04:00

Fuckt Tupp: Apr 19, 2007; Science

Tezzor posted:

So what? Do you think that this decision is necessitated by or has anything whatsoever to do with that?

Hmm, good question. Does an industry who has been proven to be flagrantly breaking the law require a regulator?

WSWS.org posted:

Established by the coalition government in the wake of revelations of �industrial-sized� criminality on the part of Rupert Murdoch�s News of the World, the inquiry has whitewashed evidence of the corrupt relationship between the oligarch, leading politicians, police officers and other public officials. Instead, under the guise of addressing �press ethics and standards,� it established a pretext for greater state control over the media that has major negative ramifications for democratic rights. Meanwhile, Murdoch has escaped any accountability.

Agreement on the Royal Charter was first established in March following cross-party meetings that included the lobby group Hacked Off. Fronted by celebrities embittered at press intrusion into their personal lives, it has provided a mechanism through which public outrage at the abuses of the corporate media has been used to legitimise state censorship.

Source.

So, yes, it was inspired by the Levenson inquiry on hacking. Whether it will do any good or just do a better job of sweeping things under the rug remains to be seen.

Fuckt Tupp fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Oct 31, 2013

# ¿ Oct 31, 2013 21:44

Fuckt Tupp: Apr 19, 2007; Science

Tezzor posted:

I don't disagree that some journalistic agencies in the UK have been engaging in illegal hacking, but do you believe that the UK government cares more about that than they do about the Snowden leaks? It seems like existing laws and regulations are perfectly competent at punishing that comparatively negligble invasion of privacy.

The Leveson Inquiry started in 2011 and released their report on needing more press regulation in November of 2012. Snowden didn't leak any documents until May of 2013. I have no doubt that the Snowden leaks helped get certain parties on board with a press regulator that wouldn't have otherwise been, but the ball has been rolling on this long before anyone even knew who Snowden was.

Fuckt Tupp fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Oct 31, 2013

# ¿ Oct 31, 2013 22:38

Fuckt Tupp: Apr 19, 2007; Science

I think, like I said, that the Snowden stuff did change some leadership minds about the approval of a press regulation board, but at this point that's all it is, an approval. I don't have enough information about how it will be set-up to accurately gauge if it will have either positive or negative effects as far as serving it's purpose while still giving journalists leeway to have confidential sources.

# ¿ Nov 1, 2013 00:38

Fuckt Tupp: Apr 19, 2007; Science

Kid Gloves posted:

Seems like you'd just want to, you know, prosecute the people responsible for the hacking instead of imposing restrictions on the press that haven't been necessary since the 15th century. Yeah, hacking is bad and all but I'm deeply loving skeptical about any politician-imposed control of the press.

The restrictions are due to the fact that there are known bribes to the police and editors who are literally in bed with politicians. The culture of corruption goes deep within the industry because they have been allowed to get away with these kind of things for so long.

# ¿ Nov 1, 2013 19:46

Fuckt Tupp: Apr 19, 2007; Science

This seems like a big development.

The Guardian posted:

Fisa court order that allowed NSA surveillance is revealed for first time
Fisa court judge who authorised massive tapping of metadata was hesitant but felt she could not stand in the way

A secret court order that authorised a massive trawl by the National Security Agency of Americans' email and internet data was published for the first time on Monday night, among a trove of documents that also revealed a judge's concern that the NSA "continuously" and "systematically" violated the limits placed on the program.
The order by the Fisa court, almost certainly its first ruling on the controversial program and published only in heavily redacted form, shows that it granted permisson for the trawl in part beacause of the type of devices used for the surveillance. Even the judge approving the spying called it a �novel use� of government authorities.
Another later court order found that what it called "systemic overcollection" had taken place.
Transparency lawsuits brought by civil liberties groups compelled the US spy agencies on Monday night to shed new light on the highly controversial program, whose discontinuation in 2011 for unclear reasons was first reported by the Guardian based on leaks by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
In a heavily redacted opinion Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, the former presiding judge of the Fisa court, placed legal weight on the methods of surveillance employed by the NSA, which had never before collected the internet data of �an enormous volume of communications�.
The methods, known as pen registers and trap-and-trace devices, record the incoming and outgoing routing information of communications � traditionally phone calls made between individual users. Kollar-Kotelly ruled that acquiring the metadata, and not the content, of email and internet usage in bulk was harmonious with the �purpose� of Congress and prior court rulings � even though no surveillance statute ever authorized it and top officials at the justice department and the FBI threatened to resign in 2004 over what they considered its dubious legality.
�The court recognizes that, by concluding that these definitions do not restrict the use of pen registers or trap-and-trace devices to communication facilities associated with individual users, it is finding that these definitions encompass an exceptionally broad form of collection,� wrote Kollar-Kotelly in an opinion whose date is redacted.

Pretty good illustration of the "chilling effect" affecting judges as much or maybe more than journalists. Give them an inch and they'll just take a mile.

Source.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2013 21:05

Fuckt Tupp: Apr 19, 2007; Science

Orange Devil posted:

Is anyone still pretending this was more than an empty promise?

It's just illustrating how much power Obama has over these agencies. Anything the president, congress or any judge says is simply taken as a suggestion.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2013 20:06

Fuckt Tupp: Apr 19, 2007; Science

In early September, the FISA court released this statement:

FISA statement posted:

In view of these circumstances, and as an exercise of discretion, the Court has determined that it is appropriate to take steps toward publication of any Section 215 Opinions that are not subject to the ongoing FOIA litigation, without reaching the merits of the asserted right of public access under the First Amendment.

Now:

FISA statement posted:

After careful review of the Opinion by senior intelligence officials and the U.S. Department of Justice, the Executive Branch has determined that the Opinion should be withheld in full and a public version of the Opinion cannot be provided.

Nothing to see here, people. Move along.

Source with links to both of the quoted documents.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2013 22:18

Fuckt Tupp: Apr 19, 2007; Science

I bet the NSA agent that suggested that Americans were so jumpy after 9/11 that we would pay 99 cents for them to spy on us thought he was making a joke.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2014 23:47

Fuckt Tupp: Apr 19, 2007; Science

James Clapper heavily implies that journalists are Snowden's 'accomplices.'

Mashable posted:

James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday for the annual hearing on the assessment of worldwide threats to the United States. Despite the hearing not being about Snowden or the NSA, the shadow of the former contractor, who has been leaking countless top secret documents for more than seven months, loomed large.
"Snowden claims that he's won and that his mission has accomplished," Clapper said during his opening statement. "If that is so, I call on him and his accomplices to facilitate the return of the remaining stolen documents."
...
It wasn't immediately clear who Clapper was referring to when he said "accomplices." Shawn Turner, a spokesperson for the Director of National Intelligence, told Mashable that Clapper meant "anyone who is assisting Edward Snowden further harm our nation through the unauthorized disclosure of stolen documents." (Turner declined to be more specific when asked if that included journalists.)

Sounds like these latest revelations is causing some frustration for the powers that be. Interesting to see if the DOJ will respond or just ignore it.

Source.

Fuckt Tupp fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Jan 29, 2014

# ¿ Jan 29, 2014 22:09

Fuckt Tupp: Apr 19, 2007; Science

Yeah, I'm well aware of that. I got the Mashable link from a Freedom of the Press Foundation article that mentioned today Eric Holder announced that the DoJ would reveal the new media guidelines influenced by the Rosen case in a few weeks and that they are "already in place." This would be a good chance for him to put his money where his mouth is by condemning Clapper for his comments, but unless his comment is widely spread in the media I doubt they will say anything about it.

Edit: On second thought, his comment is probably a veiled barb at this story:

TechDirt posted:

New York Times Suffers Redaction Failure, Exposes Name Of NSA Agent And Targeted Network In Uploaded PDF
from the make-sure-to-dot-all-i's-and-blot-out-all-sensitive-info dept

It appears as if the New York Times, in its latest publication of leaked NSA documents, failed to properly redact the PDF it uploaded, exposing the name of the NSA agent who composed the presentation as well as the name of a targeted network.

Cryptome seems to have been the first site that noticed the redactions that actually weren't, issuing a couple of tweets that informed its followers of this fact. This led to Bob Cesca at the Daily Banter turning the NYT's error into an anti-Snowden rant (which I found via F-Secure's blog) that decried everyone involved while "virtuously" refusing to name the entity that had discovered the poorly-done redactions (but including the uncredited tweets in full for easy searching).

Source.

Fuckt Tupp fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Jan 29, 2014

# ¿ Jan 29, 2014 23:24

Fuckt Tupp: Apr 19, 2007; Science

Anonymous sources come forward to confirm the NSA is collecting data on Americans. But not to worry, they're collecting so little data that it's really not even effective in stopping domestic terrorism so that means we can keep doing it, right?

Ars Technica posted:

According to a new report by The Wall Street Journal, which cites anonymous sources, the NSA's telephony metadata program only "collects data for about 20 percent or less of that data, primarily because it doesn't cover records for most cellphones."

The Journal concluded that "[t]he dwindling coverage suggests the NSA's program is less pervasive than widely believed and also less useful."

If this revelation is borne out, it would undercut the White House's argument that the program is useful, legal, and effective.

Separately, The Washington Post spoke with anonymous intelligence officials who said that while collecting all metadata was ideal, so long as the metadata �is fairly spread across the different vendors in the geographic area that you�re covering,� that collection is useful.

�[Collecting 20 percent] is better than zero,� said NSA Deputy Director Rick Ledgett in an interview with the Post on Thursday, without describing the program�s exact scope. �If it�s zero, there�s no chance.�

"Worry not, citizens. We're way more inept that you ever suspected."

Source.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2014 21:34

Fuckt Tupp: Apr 19, 2007; Science

Elotana posted:

That is some artful comma placement. (In case you're not catching it, the purpose of the acquisition is to obtain foreign intelligence targeting non-US yada yada yada. We already know that. But the queries? Well, those can be for whatever the gently caress we want.)

The exact problem is the one posters in this thread identified immediately and has been danced around by the press ever sense. If they have access to it, they are going to use it. Period. End of story. Exactly why Obama's weak "reform" will basically just outsource the job of storing tons of data collected without a warrant to the telecom companies. They are still going to get what they want out of it and they consider the collection of it completely legal.

More interesting yet is the whole possibility of releasing Jonathan Pollard, who was convicted of trying to sell stolen American military secrets to other countries, in order to kickstart the peace process. I believe we're going to have to find a stronger term than "baldfaced hypocrisy" if that happens yet Snowden still gets pursued.

Fuckt Tupp fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Apr 2, 2014

# ¿ Apr 2, 2014 06:53

Fuckt Tupp: Apr 19, 2007; Science

Brian William's interview with Edward Snowden airs tonight on NBC. Found an interesting article about the secrecy going into getting the interview to happen.

The New York Times posted:

As Mr. Williams described it, the back story of the interview contained its own quotient of cloak-and-dagger activity, including unannounced plane travel, lost luggage, hotel bookings under assumed names and two days sequestered in a room with a view of Red Square.

�We were worried about a number of things,� Mr. Williams said.

�There were competitive concerns,� he said. (Because Mr. Snowden represented the kind of huge interview �get� that has become rare in network television.) �And we didn�t know how much the Russians knew about the reasons for our travel.�

...

As for his impressions, Mr. Williams said: �He is blindingly smart. Pay no attention to the fact that he only has a G.E.D. from high school.� That actually led to a personal connection. �I joked about how, here we were, two guys with high school degrees, both dropouts from the otherwise great American community college system.�

Mr. Williams said Mr. Snowden �came ready for the game, ready to explain himself and describe his life.� Was his motivation to lay groundwork for a possible plea bargain? �I asked him: �What�s your expectation here?'� Mr. Williams said. �No money changed hands. I think his total compensation was half a chicken sandwich from the room service cart.�

Source.

Excerpts used to advertise the interview are already getting under the state department's skin.

The New York Times posted:

�The reality is I never intended to end up in Russia,� he said in a second excerpt broadcast on NBC�s �Today Show.� �I had a flight booked to Cuba onwards to Latin America, and I was stopped because the United States government decided to revoke my passport and trap me in Moscow Airport. So when people ask why are you in Russia, I say, �Please ask the State Department.' �

That comment drew a sharp reaction from Secretary of State John Kerry, in an interview on the same program. �For a supposedly smart guy, that�s a pretty dumb answer, frankly,� Mr. Kerry said. He added: �He can come home, but he�s a fugitive from justice, which is why he�s not being permitted to fly around the world. It�s that simple.�

Mr. Snowden suggested that the government was deliberately playing down his role as a spy, although in the excerpt he did not say why.

�They�re trying to use one position that I�ve had in a career here or there to distract from the totality of my experience,� he said, �which is that I�ve worked for the Central Intelligence Agency undercover overseas, I�ve worked for the National Security Agency undercover overseas and I�ve worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency as a lecturer at the Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy, where I developed sources and methods for keeping our information and people secure in the most hostile and dangerous environments around the world.�

...

Mr. Kerry, in a CBS News interview on Wednesday, suggested that Mr. Snowden�s refusal to return to the United States amounted to cowardice.

�The bottom line is this is a man who has betrayed his country, who is sitting in Russia, an authoritarian country, where he has taken refuge,� he said. �He should man up and come back to the United States if he has a complaint about what�s the matter with American surveillance, come back here and stand in our system of justice and make his case. But instead he is just sitting there taking potshots at his country, violating his oath that he took when he took on the job he took.�

Source.

To recap: Members of the Bush administration who avoid traveling to countries where they could be arrested for war crimes is perfectly legitimate, but when a spy who is intimately familiar with what happens whistleblowers in his line of work avoids going back to the US and he's a coward. Got it.

Fuckt Tupp fucked around with this message at 19:08 on May 28, 2014

# ¿ May 28, 2014 19:06

Fuckt Tupp: Apr 19, 2007; Science

Elotana posted:

Sadly, I think it's mainly going to be a bunch of Muslim activists with no articulable connection to terror groups, but no one will care because they are Muslim.

Ding ding ding! We have a winner.

The Atlantic posted:

ASPEN, Colo.�Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, told an Aspen Ideas Festival panel Wednesday that forthcoming revelations about the NSA will provoke new debate about the propriety of government spying. According to Romero, Glenn Greenwald will reveal that Muslim Americans in public life were "subject to the kind of surveillance that Hoover did on Martin Luther King." In a question-and-answer session, I asked for details.

...

"It will be interesting to see who is on this list but I don't know," he said. "It will be interesting to see if there were members of Congress on this list, what kind of judicial review was provided." He said that ferreting out this information is harder than it once was. "This isn't a manila folder put in a filing cabinet. This is a database. So all the data is there. The question is, what have they pulled from the database. So you actually have to recreate the queries from the databases to see that which they've pulled. It's very labor intensive. It doesn't just spit out something that says, 'Romero, they followed him' ... you have to read the code, it involves a lot of technologists, and part of the reason the journalists have taken as long as they have with these stories is that it's very complicated to pull them out of these massive amounts of data. So we'll stay tuned."

Huge loving surprise. I hope there are some high-level names on there with enough power to make a stink about it. Probably the only story that could possibly make less of a splash with the mainstream is that the NSA was conducting surveillance on undocumented immigrants.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2014 20:56

Fuckt Tupp: Apr 19, 2007; Science

It's hilarious to me that there are still people who trust the NSA over Snowden. Apparently he personally stored thousands of people's personal data in order to destroy his own career and become a persona non grata in his home country just to discredit a flawless government agency. Makes perfect sense.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2014 20:20

Fuckt Tupp: Apr 19, 2007; Science

Miltank posted:

So the courts say "don't do this specific thing" and then maybe they don't, but nothing actually changes.

Well, the whole thing hinges on the FISA rulings. If enough judges smell something fishy then enough of them can get together and release the FISA memos. That outcome being dependent on courts not being as corrupt as government agencies.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2014 22:22

Fuckt Tupp: Apr 19, 2007; Science

Edward Snowden and Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, are going to have a live talk in a few minutes. Thought some of you might be interested.

Live stream here.

# ¿ Jul 19, 2014 19:22

Fuckt Tupp: Apr 19, 2007; Science

So it looks like Tashfeen Malik, one of the San Bernardino shooters, posted publicly on social media about how she supported Jihadists and wanted to help their cause which was completely missed by the US Visa vetting process.

So it's great that they are still trying to permanently destroy encryption while ignoring publicly posted praise for terrorists by people wanting to become citizens. Says a lot about where our priorities lie.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2015 22:01

Fuckt Tupp: Apr 19, 2007; Science

FlamingLiberal posted:

Is something like that going to necessarily disqualify a person anyway? I'm not familiar with what they are looking at as far as things that would disqualify a person for a visa.

Maybe it has to be a more specific threat?

That is pretty much the argument that the immigration department is having. What exactly crosses the line from free speech to something that should be investigated. The article specifically mentions that there was a lot of animosity towards the US during the time she made her comments since it was right after the raid that took out Bin Laden happened.

Still, I think if you have the objective to screen for this kind of thing that publicly posted comments on social media should definitely be brought up as a red flag. I would prefer scrutiny of publicly aired comments rather than courts rubber stamping privacy violations.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2015 03:56

Fuckt Tupp: Apr 19, 2007; Science

Combed Thunderclap posted:

"I work with a team of the best hackers on the planet. They attend Defcon in Las Vegas" good lawd say no more, say no more

"We will primarily use social engineering" dammit you said more

Maybe they'll sidle up to the corpses of the terrorists and ask them if they can use their phone real quick to call their grandma

He doesn't know why the FBI can't crack the encryption and damned if he is actually going to read the news past the headlines to find out why.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2016 18:23

Fuckt Tupp: Apr 19, 2007; Science

It seems to me like Apple will eventually end up making it so the FBI can brute force into the phone by guessing as many PINs as they want and it isn't technically breaking the encryption, just the safety feature that deletes the encryption key after too many tries.

Apple is smart to start a conversation about this because it is important and looking like they are rolling over as soon as the Government tells them to is going to produce a lot of negative headlines.

Seems like the biggest issue is if anyone gets ahold of the altered OS and is able to brute force crack any iPhone. The crux of the issue seems to be if this will effect all iPhones or just the model that was used because I can see this being abused way more if it's the former rather than the latter.

I've also seen people argue that Apple could just release an update that closes the back door, which could be why they were granted more time to comply.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2016 21:58

Fuckt Tupp: Apr 19, 2007; Science

fishmech posted:

No, Tezzor is pretty obviously just angry that any phones have ever had their data taken off. Because he thinks Apple is some sort of bastion of security when really it's pretty bad, and has only gotten acceptable with the very latest generation of their phones.

Hmm. Almost as if they regret that position and are staking their position as one of the major tech supporters of encryption. Strange.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2016 00:33

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# ¿ May 8, 2024 04:00

Fuckt Tupp: Apr 19, 2007; Science

Sounds like John McAffee and his crack team of social engineering hackers are on the case!

# ¿ Mar 22, 2016 02:16

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Surveillance in the 21st Century: Press CTRL-C to Copy the Internet (NSA Thread)