9 ms·

Obama Administration Set to Expand Sharing of Data That N.S.A. Intercepts

329 points by ddlatham 11y ago

USANEEDSHELP 11y ago
After they share the data within, they will begin to sell the data to private corporations, or offer the data to them for next to nothing & as long as they share the output of their processing results. The Public - Private partnership will be in full swing in a few years. Why are we analyzing this? Why aren't we telling our representatives that this is wrong & it must stop? peace
- Gibbon1 11y ago
  My data point on this is Aldrich Ames who living way beyond his means for a full decade. All the CIA did was send to agents around to tell him to 'cool it' What this says to me is that people at his level in the CIA and NSA, etc at the time and probably still are trading classified information to friendly governments and large corporate clients. What the CIA didn't expect was that Ames was so utterly stupid as to be selling information to the Soviets instead of say the French Government, or the someone at a hedge fund, or a VP of sales at Boeing.
- ChrisAntaki 11y ago
  What you are describing is inevitable, unless we fight for better laws in America. For instance, accessing email older than 180 days currently doesn't require a warrant. I helped Demand Progress build a website to promote a fix, the Email Privacy Act. The act actually has 310 cosponsors, which is more than any other bill in the House! The website goes into greater detail: https://savethefourth.net/ https://savethefourth.net/ We have to choose our battles, and I think this is a good one. By the way, please feel free to send a PR / issue on GitHub: https://github.com/demand-progress/ecpa-www https://github.com/demand-progress/ecpa-www
- pekk 11y ago
  Private corporations already have the data. Did you see the list of companies supporting Apple? Nobody is worried about this. We think that companies have the right to keep dossiers on people, as long as they make a scout's promise that it's only for advertising. And selling to each other. But don't give data to the government, that would be unethical.
  - Gibbon1 11y ago
    More think of you're bidding on a contract with General Electric and the guy across the table has been listening in on all of your conference calls and reading all of your confidential documents courtesy of your competitors mole at the FBI. And so he knows what your go no go point is to the penny.
  - ChrisAntaki 11y ago
    Corporations can sue you, whereas governments can do a lot more.
rl3 11y ago
>They said the government should disclose how much American content the N.S.A. collects incidentally ... The NSA's lawyers have twisted the definition of "collection" to mean the accessing of information already present in storage. By any reasonable definition of the word, they already collect virtually everything they can on Americans. Not just metadata, but full content—everything. Asking the NSA to disclose incidental collection on Americans would only reveal incidental access to Americans' information in context of foreign-targeted operations.
glasz 11y ago
that idiot definitely had a private screening of the zapruder film. i mean, come on. what a beautiful shill he is.
toufka 11y ago
As Snowden stated, the data on nearly everyone alive's habits is kept 'safe and secret' by policy alone, and not by any technical or legal controls. There are few if any technical or legal limits to what the United States government collects about not only the world, but also its citizens. As policy changes, from period to period or president to president, the data too will be subject to ever-changing political controls. If no technical or legal safeguards are installed, then at some inevitable point along that pendulum swing, those in charge of keeping that data 'safe and secret' will not have your best interests in mind and will use it to harm your interests in pursuit of their own: "Turnkey tyranny."
- Laaw 11y ago
  This just isn't true. You can't, on one hand, claim the NSA has everyone's data, and on the other hand claim Apple has a legitimate case against the FBI -- if the NSA had that data, they'd share it with the FBI, and Apple would be tilting at windmills. Edit: A lot of speculation and guesses in the replies here. If anyone's got actual evidence that the NSA "has data on everyone" or "wouldn't share their intel with the FBI", please post it. Otherwise, why make the claim? If you all really think the NSA can simply magic their way into an encrypted system, then why even bother? You're flying in the face of every security expert's opinion on the matter. No one with expertise in this area is going to agree that the NSA has data collection ongoing for every person in the US, that's patently absurd. The Snowden leaks showed us what they're capable of, and while it was substantial, it wasn't universal. Not by a long shot, and especially not after so many fixes were made as a result of those leaks.
  - drdeca 11y ago
    Is parallel construction relevant to this?
    - anxman 11y ago
      As far as I can tell, parallel construction won't even be necessary in this new model. It's very troubling.
  - 11y ago
studentrob 11y ago
That's their prerogative. The public, though, is largely against these mass surveillance programs, and should be informed from the horse's mouth exactly what they are. Former NSA Director Michael Hayden said last year that he was glad to see that as a result of the Snowden leaks the NSA only lost ease of access to their small 215 program, and didn't even lose the program entirely [1] Mass surveillance and our right to privacy need to become election issues if any of this is ever to change. [1] https://theintercept.com/2015/06/17/hayden-mocks-extent-post-snowden-surveillance-reform-2-years-cool/ https://theintercept.com/2015/06/17/hayden-mocks-extent-post...
- themartorana 11y ago
  Also he's not in jail. So he's probably pretty stoked about that, too.
- FreedomToCreate 11y ago
  Even if it does become an election issues, we know the Dems are for it and from tonights Republican debate and their stance on Apple, I'm pretty sure its safe to say they also support the NSA surveillance initiatives. Anything justified as "protection from terrorists" will be supported by the government and sadly by most US citizens.
  - mtbcoder 11y ago
    > from tonights Republican debate and their stance on Apple, I'm pretty sure its safe to say they also support the NSA surveillance initiatives. Anything justified as "protection from terrorists" will be supported by the government and sadly by most US citizens. Was there any doubt? One of the core pillars of the Republican party is massive defense spending while the party's opinion on Snowden is not exactly favorable (to say the least). Furthermore, a current Rubio ad is literally claiming we will enter into the Apocalypse (due to terrorism and economic collapse) if he isn't elected as the GOP nominee.
  - studentrob 11y ago
    Are you saying the population is largely in favor of mass surveillance? Americans say otherwise in this poll, http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/18/us-voters-broadly-opposed-nsa-surveillance http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/18/us-voters-bro...
someguydave 11y ago
There is a legitimate place for foreign intelligence collection. It's a pity that the US Government doesn't use the newfound (and unwanted) publicity of its SIGINT program to gain the public's trust through straightforward explanation rather than continue to maintain the facade of confidentiality through the usual rumors and press leaks.
notthegov 11y ago
How does a nation built upon the concept of natural rights in turn deny non-Americans those same innate rights? It is a crime what the NSA is doing. Against Americans, the world and the first principles of governance (i.e. classical liberalism). If Jefferson's notion of an Empire of Library was alive and vibrant today, the target would not be Canada but the United States government. Jefferson on defending the concept of popular sovereignty etc all over the world- "...we should then have only to include the North [Canada] in our confederacy...and we should have such an empire for liberty as she has never surveyed since the creation: & I am persuaded no constitution was ever before so well calculated as ours for extensive empire & self government." - Jefferson to James Madison, 27 April 1809 "where this progress will stop no-one can say. Barbarism has, in the meantime, been receding before the steady step of amelioration; and will in time, I trust, disappear from the earth" - Jefferson to William Ludlow, 6 September 1824
- cookrn 11y ago
  Here are more details on the Jefferson reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_of_Liberty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_of_Liberty
- sneak 11y ago
  Most Americans alive today have never read the declaration. A significant minority are extremely nationalistic in a terrifying, we-can-do-no-wrong manner.
- x5n1 11y ago
  The leadership does not believe in the Founding Fathers or the Constitution in the way Americans would like. At best they see it as a set of rules made by people just like themselves that they can adjust and change to meet the needs of the times. And that usually entails more control over the ever out of control masses, according to their perceptions. The NSA or analogue in the late 1700s in the time of the Founding Fathers would probably lead to a revolution. The NSA of today is common news and no one cares that someone is always listening, not might be but is (it's being recorded somewhere), to everything they type or do and might share that with people who are literally out to get you if it's convenient to do so. Ultimately this is to create a further atmosphere of fear, anxiety, and paranoia about anything you might do or say that could come back to haunt you later... to protect the government's fear, anxiety, and paranoia that the citizens are always doing something wrong and need to be found out. Nefarious plans are always being hatched that can be prevented if the right agency just knew what everyone was doing at all times. And the specter of the panopticon keeps everyone from even contemplating doing anything wrong. And maybe they are not wrong. But I hate living in a paranoid world like that, which can make people mentally ill if they think about it too much. The scene from the Simpson where Bart is on Focusyn comes to mind.
ipsin 11y ago
What are the names of the "other American intelligence agencies" involved? The CIA is mentioned, but I can't tell if it's already included or not, given the examples in the article. Is the Drug Enforcement Agency one of them?
- adventured 11y ago
  I think it's extremely likely the DEA, IRS, CIA, FBI, DHS, and a few other huge agencies will see either expanded data access or get access for the first time. The Feds are nothing if not very predictable.
ekianjo 11y ago
> The idea is to let more experts across American intelligence gain direct access to unprocessed information, increasing the chances that they will recognize any possible nuggets of value And in reality, increasing the very real possibility of a police-state at unprecedented levels. > “Before we allow them to spread that information further in the government, we need to have a serious conversation about how to protect Americans’ information,” said Alexander Abdo, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer. And as a non-American, this kind of things makes me want to scream. Why aren't we talking about human rights instead of just Americans' rights. It sounds like something out of "Animal Farm", i.e. everyone is equal in principle but Americans are "more equal" than the others.
- icelancer 11y ago
  Because the ACLU stands for "AMERICAN Civil Liberties Union?" They are campaigning for their userbase, which is already an unpopular stance in the media today given that these programs get pushed through anyway.
  - Ensorceled 11y ago
    The point still stands. The vast majority of this discussion is in the context of "should the NSA be able to do this to Americans" as opposed to "should the NSA be able to do this at all".
    - fit2rule 11y ago
      Americans don't like to admit that the heinous policies of their government effect people around the world .. this would require that culturally they accept responsibility for the actions of their government, which is not something you can get an average American to do, easily, alas. It takes some shock to get an average American to actually do something. Alas, this shock is too often expressed as terrorism.
chatmasta 11y ago
Privacy advocacy has not gained traction as a mainstream issue because its proponents continue to cite potential government overreach as the primary risk factor in a world of diminishing privacy. As a result, even though many people are convinced of the moral arguments against dragnet surveillance, they disregard it as an issue, because "government overreach" seems like a small risk factor. In other words, people hear "big brother is watching you" and think "sure, but he's not going to do anything to me." Nobody actually thinks the US government will suddenly implement martial law, extrajudicial detention, or unsanctioned executions. Nobody actually thinks the US is on the verge of collapsing into totalitarianism. So why would anyone actually care about the privacy debate? The privacy debate promulgates fear of government overreach, and as a result tends to attract isolated clusters of libertarian idealogues rather than a grassroots distribution of everyday citizens. To achieve mainstream viability, the privacy debate needs to shift direction to focus on more realistic risks of constant monitoring of metadata on the habits of citizens. Do you know who's far more interested in your metadata than the government?: Private organizations that derive profit from actuarial models where you are a datapoint and a confidence interval. Who's going to have a better actuarial model: a century-old health insurance company that has access to your most basic metadata, or a modern insurance company with access to realtime intelligence on your consumption and fitness habits? Insurance companies stand to benefit the most from collecting metadata paired with unique identifiers. The more accurate models an insurance company can develop, the more profit it can make as it hedges against its risk with greater certainty. Of course, this isn't necessarily bad for the consumer. Imagine a healthy 22 year old who wears a Fitbit, connects with his college educated social network on Facebook, and pays only with Google wallet. As a 22 year old, he should be in one of the lowest risk categories for health insurance. But the health insurance company, without access to metadata, does not know for sure how healthy his habits are. But if he's healthy anyway, why shouldn't he opt into sharing his metadata with the insurance company? If he needs to surrender a little privacy to prove he's a healthy 22 year old, but he saves 15% on his insurance because of it, isn't that a worthwhile tradeoff? Recent attempts at insurance startups are already doing this. In NYC for example, Oscar discounts your health insurance if you share your fitness tracker data with them. Who wouldn't take that deal? But if you opt in once, what happens as you age? Will your insurance company increase your rates if you refuse to continue sharing metadata? Will such refusal, a desire to hide metadata previously shared freely, act as evidence in itself of poor health? There are many questions to be asked and answered around the privacy debate, including what exactly is the privacy debate? What is its cause? What will get people to rally behind that cause? Clearly, it's not fear of the government. So maybe it's time to try inducing fear of higher bills.
Argentum01 11y ago
What could go wrong?
whoisthemachine 11y ago
So the NSA is going to give up one of its true roles, signal intelligence (which I presume includes analysis and filtering)? It's just going to be a router of that information?
- mtgx 11y ago
  They finally realized that they collect so much of it, even they don't know what to do with it and how to extract valuable data from it. But they came to the wrong conclusion: giving the data to even more agencies, when they should reduce the collection of the data to more targeted investigations.
edc117 11y ago
Isn't anyone else furious about this? The entire system was built in secret and without the consent of the American people, at huge expense, with little-to-no oversight (secret courts), and now is being expanded to share our data among every 'security' agency in the nation (again without our consent)? It still blows my mind we've spend such huge sums of money on what is effectively a very iffy interpretation of the law, designed to violate civil rights on a mass scale. The other top story in the news is how another security agency is essentially trying to get easy access to people's private data (phones) whenever needed.
- CWuestefeld 11y ago
  You forgot to mention that there's absolutely no evidence that any of these sacrifices have paid off even one iota.
- pc2g4d 11y ago
  Congress has failed us. In the absence of explicit legislation governing these activities, the executive is free to give and take privacy per its own whim. I am furious that these decisions are being made by arbitrary bureaucratic edicts rather than the will of the people as manifest in legislation. The worst part is that whatever system is publicly described, it can simply be secretly subverted by classified presidential directive.[1] [1]: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/06/24/presidential-policy-directives-form-secret-law/29235675/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/06/24/presi...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
thrillgore 11y ago
I still cannot believe the free world gave the head of this Administration a Nobel Peace Prize.
jackcosgrove 11y ago
This is all about bringing allies on side to the global spying cause, and addicting them to the information it provides so the USA isn't alone in the extent of its intrusive activities.

329 points by ddlatham 11y ago

After they share the data within, they will begin to sell the data to private corporations, or offer the data to them for next to nothing & as long as they share the output of their processing results. The Public - Private partnership will be in full swing in a few years. Why are we analyzing this? Why aren't we telling our representatives that this is wrong & it must stop? peace

Gibbon1 11y ago
My data point on this is Aldrich Ames who living way beyond his means for a full decade. All the CIA did was send to agents around to tell him to 'cool it' What this says to me is that people at his level in the CIA and NSA, etc at the time and probably still are trading classified information to friendly governments and large corporate clients. What the CIA didn't expect was that Ames was so utterly stupid as to be selling information to the Soviets instead of say the French Government, or the someone at a hedge fund, or a VP of sales at Boeing.
ChrisAntaki 11y ago
What you are describing is inevitable, unless we fight for better laws in America. For instance, accessing email older than 180 days currently doesn't require a warrant. I helped Demand Progress build a website to promote a fix, the Email Privacy Act. The act actually has 310 cosponsors, which is more than any other bill in the House! The website goes into greater detail: https://savethefourth.net/ https://savethefourth.net/ We have to choose our battles, and I think this is a good one. By the way, please feel free to send a PR / issue on GitHub: https://github.com/demand-progress/ecpa-www https://github.com/demand-progress/ecpa-www
pekk 11y ago
Private corporations already have the data. Did you see the list of companies supporting Apple? Nobody is worried about this. We think that companies have the right to keep dossiers on people, as long as they make a scout's promise that it's only for advertising. And selling to each other. But don't give data to the government, that would be unethical.
- Gibbon1 11y ago
  More think of you're bidding on a contract with General Electric and the guy across the table has been listening in on all of your conference calls and reading all of your confidential documents courtesy of your competitors mole at the FBI. And so he knows what your go no go point is to the penny.
- ChrisAntaki 11y ago
  Corporations can sue you, whereas governments can do a lot more.

rl3 11y ago

>They said the government should disclose how much American content the N.S.A. collects incidentally ... The NSA's lawyers have twisted the definition of "collection" to mean the accessing of information already present in storage. By any reasonable definition of the word, they already collect virtually everything they can on Americans. Not just metadata, but full content—everything. Asking the NSA to disclose incidental collection on Americans would only reveal incidental access to Americans' information in context of foreign-targeted operations.

glasz 11y ago

that idiot definitely had a private screening of the zapruder film. i mean, come on. what a beautiful shill he is.

toufka 11y ago

As Snowden stated, the data on nearly everyone alive's habits is kept 'safe and secret' by policy alone, and not by any technical or legal controls. There are few if any technical or legal limits to what the United States government collects about not only the world, but also its citizens. As policy changes, from period to period or president to president, the data too will be subject to ever-changing political controls. If no technical or legal safeguards are installed, then at some inevitable point along that pendulum swing, those in charge of keeping that data 'safe and secret' will not have your best interests in mind and will use it to harm your interests in pursuit of their own: "Turnkey tyranny."

Laaw 11y ago
This just isn't true. You can't, on one hand, claim the NSA has everyone's data, and on the other hand claim Apple has a legitimate case against the FBI -- if the NSA had that data, they'd share it with the FBI, and Apple would be tilting at windmills. Edit: A lot of speculation and guesses in the replies here. If anyone's got actual evidence that the NSA "has data on everyone" or "wouldn't share their intel with the FBI", please post it. Otherwise, why make the claim? If you all really think the NSA can simply magic their way into an encrypted system, then why even bother? You're flying in the face of every security expert's opinion on the matter. No one with expertise in this area is going to agree that the NSA has data collection ongoing for every person in the US, that's patently absurd. The Snowden leaks showed us what they're capable of, and while it was substantial, it wasn't universal. Not by a long shot, and especially not after so many fixes were made as a result of those leaks.
- drdeca 11y ago
  Is parallel construction relevant to this?
  - anxman 11y ago
    As far as I can tell, parallel construction won't even be necessary in this new model. It's very troubling.
- 11y ago

studentrob 11y ago

That's their prerogative. The public, though, is largely against these mass surveillance programs, and should be informed from the horse's mouth exactly what they are. Former NSA Director Michael Hayden said last year that he was glad to see that as a result of the Snowden leaks the NSA only lost ease of access to their small 215 program, and didn't even lose the program entirely [1] Mass surveillance and our right to privacy need to become election issues if any of this is ever to change. [1] https://theintercept.com/2015/06/17/hayden-mocks-extent-post-snowden-surveillance-reform-2-years-cool/ https://theintercept.com/2015/06/17/hayden-mocks-extent-post...

themartorana 11y ago
Also he's not in jail. So he's probably pretty stoked about that, too.
FreedomToCreate 11y ago
Even if it does become an election issues, we know the Dems are for it and from tonights Republican debate and their stance on Apple, I'm pretty sure its safe to say they also support the NSA surveillance initiatives. Anything justified as "protection from terrorists" will be supported by the government and sadly by most US citizens.
- mtbcoder 11y ago
  > from tonights Republican debate and their stance on Apple, I'm pretty sure its safe to say they also support the NSA surveillance initiatives. Anything justified as "protection from terrorists" will be supported by the government and sadly by most US citizens. Was there any doubt? One of the core pillars of the Republican party is massive defense spending while the party's opinion on Snowden is not exactly favorable (to say the least). Furthermore, a current Rubio ad is literally claiming we will enter into the Apocalypse (due to terrorism and economic collapse) if he isn't elected as the GOP nominee.
- studentrob 11y ago
  Are you saying the population is largely in favor of mass surveillance? Americans say otherwise in this poll, http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/18/us-voters-broadly-opposed-nsa-surveillance http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/18/us-voters-bro...

someguydave 11y ago

There is a legitimate place for foreign intelligence collection. It's a pity that the US Government doesn't use the newfound (and unwanted) publicity of its SIGINT program to gain the public's trust through straightforward explanation rather than continue to maintain the facade of confidentiality through the usual rumors and press leaks.

notthegov 11y ago

How does a nation built upon the concept of natural rights in turn deny non-Americans those same innate rights? It is a crime what the NSA is doing. Against Americans, the world and the first principles of governance (i.e. classical liberalism). If Jefferson's notion of an Empire of Library was alive and vibrant today, the target would not be Canada but the United States government. Jefferson on defending the concept of popular sovereignty etc all over the world- "...we should then have only to include the North [Canada] in our confederacy...and we should have such an empire for liberty as she has never surveyed since the creation: & I am persuaded no constitution was ever before so well calculated as ours for extensive empire & self government." - Jefferson to James Madison, 27 April 1809 "where this progress will stop no-one can say. Barbarism has, in the meantime, been receding before the steady step of amelioration; and will in time, I trust, disappear from the earth" - Jefferson to William Ludlow, 6 September 1824

cookrn 11y ago
Here are more details on the Jefferson reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_of_Liberty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_of_Liberty
sneak 11y ago
Most Americans alive today have never read the declaration. A significant minority are extremely nationalistic in a terrifying, we-can-do-no-wrong manner.
x5n1 11y ago
The leadership does not believe in the Founding Fathers or the Constitution in the way Americans would like. At best they see it as a set of rules made by people just like themselves that they can adjust and change to meet the needs of the times. And that usually entails more control over the ever out of control masses, according to their perceptions. The NSA or analogue in the late 1700s in the time of the Founding Fathers would probably lead to a revolution. The NSA of today is common news and no one cares that someone is always listening, not might be but is (it's being recorded somewhere), to everything they type or do and might share that with people who are literally out to get you if it's convenient to do so. Ultimately this is to create a further atmosphere of fear, anxiety, and paranoia about anything you might do or say that could come back to haunt you later... to protect the government's fear, anxiety, and paranoia that the citizens are always doing something wrong and need to be found out. Nefarious plans are always being hatched that can be prevented if the right agency just knew what everyone was doing at all times. And the specter of the panopticon keeps everyone from even contemplating doing anything wrong. And maybe they are not wrong. But I hate living in a paranoid world like that, which can make people mentally ill if they think about it too much. The scene from the Simpson where Bart is on Focusyn comes to mind.

ipsin 11y ago

What are the names of the "other American intelligence agencies" involved? The CIA is mentioned, but I can't tell if it's already included or not, given the examples in the article. Is the Drug Enforcement Agency one of them?

adventured 11y ago
I think it's extremely likely the DEA, IRS, CIA, FBI, DHS, and a few other huge agencies will see either expanded data access or get access for the first time. The Feds are nothing if not very predictable.

ekianjo 11y ago

> The idea is to let more experts across American intelligence gain direct access to unprocessed information, increasing the chances that they will recognize any possible nuggets of value And in reality, increasing the very real possibility of a police-state at unprecedented levels. > “Before we allow them to spread that information further in the government, we need to have a serious conversation about how to protect Americans’ information,” said Alexander Abdo, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer. And as a non-American, this kind of things makes me want to scream. Why aren't we talking about human rights instead of just Americans' rights. It sounds like something out of "Animal Farm", i.e. everyone is equal in principle but Americans are "more equal" than the others.

icelancer 11y ago
Because the ACLU stands for "AMERICAN Civil Liberties Union?" They are campaigning for their userbase, which is already an unpopular stance in the media today given that these programs get pushed through anyway.
- Ensorceled 11y ago
  The point still stands. The vast majority of this discussion is in the context of "should the NSA be able to do this to Americans" as opposed to "should the NSA be able to do this at all".
  - fit2rule 11y ago
    Americans don't like to admit that the heinous policies of their government effect people around the world .. this would require that culturally they accept responsibility for the actions of their government, which is not something you can get an average American to do, easily, alas. It takes some shock to get an average American to actually do something. Alas, this shock is too often expressed as terrorism.

chatmasta 11y ago

Privacy advocacy has not gained traction as a mainstream issue because its proponents continue to cite potential government overreach as the primary risk factor in a world of diminishing privacy. As a result, even though many people are convinced of the moral arguments against dragnet surveillance, they disregard it as an issue, because "government overreach" seems like a small risk factor. In other words, people hear "big brother is watching you" and think "sure, but he's not going to do anything to me." Nobody actually thinks the US government will suddenly implement martial law, extrajudicial detention, or unsanctioned executions. Nobody actually thinks the US is on the verge of collapsing into totalitarianism. So why would anyone actually care about the privacy debate? The privacy debate promulgates fear of government overreach, and as a result tends to attract isolated clusters of libertarian idealogues rather than a grassroots distribution of everyday citizens. To achieve mainstream viability, the privacy debate needs to shift direction to focus on more realistic risks of constant monitoring of metadata on the habits of citizens. Do you know who's far more interested in your metadata than the government?: Private organizations that derive profit from actuarial models where you are a datapoint and a confidence interval. Who's going to have a better actuarial model: a century-old health insurance company that has access to your most basic metadata, or a modern insurance company with access to realtime intelligence on your consumption and fitness habits? Insurance companies stand to benefit the most from collecting metadata paired with unique identifiers. The more accurate models an insurance company can develop, the more profit it can make as it hedges against its risk with greater certainty. Of course, this isn't necessarily bad for the consumer. Imagine a healthy 22 year old who wears a Fitbit, connects with his college educated social network on Facebook, and pays only with Google wallet. As a 22 year old, he should be in one of the lowest risk categories for health insurance. But the health insurance company, without access to metadata, does not know for sure how healthy his habits are. But if he's healthy anyway, why shouldn't he opt into sharing his metadata with the insurance company? If he needs to surrender a little privacy to prove he's a healthy 22 year old, but he saves 15% on his insurance because of it, isn't that a worthwhile tradeoff? Recent attempts at insurance startups are already doing this. In NYC for example, Oscar discounts your health insurance if you share your fitness tracker data with them. Who wouldn't take that deal? But if you opt in once, what happens as you age? Will your insurance company increase your rates if you refuse to continue sharing metadata? Will such refusal, a desire to hide metadata previously shared freely, act as evidence in itself of poor health? There are many questions to be asked and answered around the privacy debate, including what exactly is the privacy debate? What is its cause? What will get people to rally behind that cause? Clearly, it's not fear of the government. So maybe it's time to try inducing fear of higher bills.

Argentum01 11y ago

What could go wrong?

whoisthemachine 11y ago

So the NSA is going to give up one of its true roles, signal intelligence (which I presume includes analysis and filtering)? It's just going to be a router of that information?

mtgx 11y ago
They finally realized that they collect so much of it, even they don't know what to do with it and how to extract valuable data from it. But they came to the wrong conclusion: giving the data to even more agencies, when they should reduce the collection of the data to more targeted investigations.

edc117 11y ago

Isn't anyone else furious about this? The entire system was built in secret and without the consent of the American people, at huge expense, with little-to-no oversight (secret courts), and now is being expanded to share our data among every 'security' agency in the nation (again without our consent)? It still blows my mind we've spend such huge sums of money on what is effectively a very iffy interpretation of the law, designed to violate civil rights on a mass scale. The other top story in the news is how another security agency is essentially trying to get easy access to people's private data (phones) whenever needed.

CWuestefeld 11y ago
You forgot to mention that there's absolutely no evidence that any of these sacrifices have paid off even one iota.
pc2g4d 11y ago
Congress has failed us. In the absence of explicit legislation governing these activities, the executive is free to give and take privacy per its own whim. I am furious that these decisions are being made by arbitrary bureaucratic edicts rather than the will of the people as manifest in legislation. The worst part is that whatever system is publicly described, it can simply be secretly subverted by classified presidential directive.[1] [1]: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/06/24/presidential-policy-directives-form-secret-law/29235675/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/06/24/presi...

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

thrillgore 11y ago

I still cannot believe the free world gave the head of this Administration a Nobel Peace Prize.

jackcosgrove 11y ago

This is all about bringing allies on side to the global spying cause, and addicting them to the information it provides so the USA isn't alone in the extent of its intrusive activities.