Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

I am loving the faux outrage coming from European leaders over all this.

 

Wet burka contest at fridays?

 

That's a good idea, actually.

I'd really hate to see 1984 become a literal reality.

 

Here's how the system works. Most communications passing through US fiber optic lines are logged. When that information is analyzed and put into categories, when they are judged to be americans, and when they are judged to not be talking to a foreign party, (like we're doing now on hipforums) and when it's judged it doesn't involve a crime, it's encrypted.

But that means all that information is already there. Foreign leaders don't even have those protections, and neither do their citizens. You don't think their are a few foreign leaders who are legitimately mad about this?

What do you mean by faux outrage?

 

You know, I wrote a letter to all my representatives, and John Cornyn was the only one to respond. He pretty much just said 'don't worry, I take it seriously and went to a briefing about the matter by the NSA.'

My concerns aren't allayed by this, and as he's an old guy, I'm pretty sure they just bamboozled him with tech speak, but I'm glad he at least acknowledged it. I expected a response the least from him.

Still though, this is a really big deal. Far beyond a really big deal. People should be really mad about this.

 

Could you post the letter?

Was it an attempt to change his mind?

“I think he’s a traitor. He has leaked classified information about intelligence gathering techniques that the United States government has been involved in which have been authorized and overseen by the US government. I don’t know any other word to describe Mr. Snowden,” Cornyn said.

 

It's already here and no one is going to do a thing about it except make some noise on the Internet. So I'm looking out for myself and my burka has the additional benefit of helping me be more pious.

 

It is faux outrage because their intelligence services collect on us as much as ours collect on them, and any foreign leader who matters knows this.

Does that make it ok? Of course not. It is just the way the game is played and has always been played.

 

Good for you?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CroiMURk8SU"]An Open Message to The NSA - YouTube

 

I'll PM it to you.

 

Nations conduct espionage. Very few nations have the technological capacity for the extent of the dragnet surveillance this entails, it's emerging technology and the US and China are at the apex of it.

 

You're telling me that countries like Germany, the UK, France and other European nations don't have this technological capacity? Yeah, ok....

I say again, the United States isn't alone in doing this. China, Russia, and pretty much every European nation that matters do the same damn thing. The difference? We have a leak at the moment and our shit is all over media.

 

You're wrong. It's deep packet inspection, which isn't technically complex. Run wireshark. What is technically complex and very expensive is to have the capacity to index and store the amounts of data, and the goal, which is a complete archieve of all information sent, and to mine it usefully for data. I did say there were other nations building this capactiy. But no, we do not yet have it complete, and no, most European nations are not building anything similar to an index of all internet traffic within their borders. Other nations of course do internet survalience This is something completly seperate.

 

No, I'm not. Again, the difference here is that our program is out in the open. But, hey, I have some nice oceanfront property in AZ that I'd love to talk to you about.....

 

I'll post some wireshark traffic that maybe helpful a little later. It is hard to conceptualize, and I'm not saying that sarcastically.

 

I believe you, Lode. The thing is, absent a whistle blower like Snowden, those European programs are going to be shrouded in secrecy.

 

If that were actually true, and there were people who were awake--who could prevent such a reality from manifesting, then would you say that you honestly believe that nobody would attempt to do anything?

 

That's not innacurate, but I will say this also, is that for several years now, the NSA has been building up the technical facilities and the legal landscape to make this possible, and there have been many whistleblowers before, some with more insight and technical knowledge then Snowden. What was special about Snowdens case, and lends some credibility to the conspiracy theorists claims that they wanted us to know, was it was in a raw, easy to digest freaking powerpoint. Building up the technical capacity to archeive all telecommunications is a large enough scale of a program to leave trails, even for nation states with virtually infinite resources. The UK rejected that sort of thing a year or so ago because of the scope of it. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/09/imp_hold/ Yes, all nation spy, but the size and scope of this are pretty wonderous and terrifying. http://nsa.gov1.info/utah-data-center/ And this little number.

That's pretty chilling isn't it.