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NSA data will soon routinely be used for domestic policing

492 points by Jarred 11y ago

Someone1234 11y ago
Rumour has it that the NSA already has threat predictor algorithms and processes, how long until the NSA provides the FBI this and you get arrested for pre-crimes or thought-crimes? How do you answer the charge that you were thinking about doing something bad?
- DamnYuppie 11y ago
  Since when is thinking about something a crime??? It is the act that is important.
  - feld 11y ago
    Felony to talk about harming the president, even in jest.
    - JetSpiegel 11y ago
      Even for Trump?
    - techdragon 11y ago
      Just going to point out... Many dead presidents are still spinning in their graves from the day that became a crimp. That's not how the freedoms they strived to uphold are supposed to work.
  - awinter-py 11y ago
    not so. intent is part of culpability in most violent crimes. hate crimes legislation takes it a step further. (It's beyond me how the 'thought' element of a hate crime isn't protected political speech).
    - zyxley 11y ago
      > It's beyond me how the 'thought' element of a hate crime isn't protected political speech The courts of the US have literally always that freedom of speech is not unlimited.
      - awinter-py 11y ago
        In Reed v Town of Gilbert we ruled that statutory limitations on free speech must pass scrict scrutiny. You can argue for a compelling state interest in increasing the term of punishment for a violent offender based on his opinions about race. But (1) it's hard to argue the state interest in longer prison terms and (2) it's really hard to prove hate, so there's an easy due process appeal here.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - onion2k 11y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_(criminal)#United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_(criminal)#United... A criminal conspiracy is more than thinking about a crime, but a lot less than actually committing the act.
    - Nelson69 11y ago
      The whole war on terror and this bulk collection is predicated on stopping crimes before they happen. It's a giant catch 22. Would stopping mass shootings and not-called-terorrism-but-domestic-terror be part of the use cases here? Like if you were to ignore some other laws and track gun ownership and purchases, maybe cross reference it with the use/prescription of certain medications and then cross reference that with anti-social posts on the internet or associations with certain call-themselve-patriots-but-really-hate-the-government type groups you might stop some mass shootings. Maybe save some actual lives. It's a terrible rabbit hole to go down, we need to stop it all ASAP.
      - taneq 11y ago
        The best thing about this whole setup is that it's unfalsifiable. Something bad happen? We need to work harder (read: accept more invasion of our privacy) to prevent such atrocities in future. Nothing bad happens? It's working, let's do it even more!
  - mycroft-holmes 11y ago
    Well if you "think" all lives matter at Facebook... In our current hyper sensitive culture there's a lot of expectations that people think a certain way.
  - xg15 11y ago
    I don't think it's about thinking, it's about the supposed probability that you will commit a crime in the future. And as for that I can imagine very well that laws can change, provided the technology is sold to politicians and to the public in the right way. E.g. "we now have technology that can prevent rapes of children before they even happen. So many children today live in the direct neighborhood of a potential rapist - and no-one could do anything because nobody knew. But now we can spot and remove the potential rapists and give the children back the pieceful and carefree life that they deserve. Unfortunately, as of now, making use of the technology would be in violation of certain laws - laws that made a lot of sense in the last century. But given the changes in society and the urgency of the matter, we feel a reformulation would be more than justified..."
  - vkou 11y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List 47,000 people are on it. Most of them have not committed any crime... Probably. We don't actually know, because if you're on it, the government won't tell you why - or even that you're on it.
    - awqrre 11y ago
      Would buying a plane ticket online let you know that you are on it? If so then the airline companies should be able to at least provide a service for informing you that you are on the list, if you ask about it.
      - click170 11y ago
        It seems more likely that they let you buy a ticket but not board the plane, but that's a guess. Can anyone confirm?
        anonbanker 11y ago
        usually, in the states, your ticket will have special letters on it, signifying your relative flight risk. There's countless stories of Laura Poitras and others discussing this. the reader is invited to !yt TSA Poitras.
      - click170 11y ago
        It seems more likely that they let you buy a ticket but not board the plane, but that's a guess. Can anyone confirm?
- api 11y ago
  Laws are so complex that chances are you are breaking some law at some point in your life. If you do anything "interesting" like activism, entrepreneurship, alternative religious practices, DIY maker stuff, etc., you are probably doing something "of interest" according to some statute somewhere. Also don't rule out harassment. Would you hire someone who is under investigation? How would you like a tax audit? Or maybe you'll get pulled over 10X more than the average person because when cops run your plates you are flagged? What about no-fly lists? Detainment at the border when re-entering the country? Exclusion from benefits or consideration for government jobs/contracts? There are many things that can be done to make your life unpleasant or wreck your career that aren't illegal and don't involve actually charging you with a crime. In many cases there may be no recourse civil or criminal. Look into the adventure of getting yourself off a no-fly list for a good example of non-criminal punishment.
  - Someone1234 11y ago
    Reminds me of Mccarthyism. Most people targeted were never arrested, never charged, but they still made their lives a living hell just through systematic harassment and intimitation.
    - api 11y ago
      What we're headed toward is ultra-fine-grained algorithmic McCarthyism. In the future it will be possible to establish, with the aid of big data and machine learning, profiles of "normal" (a.k.a. desired) human behavior and to engage in fine-grained surveillance, harassment, or "nudging" of individuals who deviate from desired behavior. Over time this creates a self-reinforcing feedback loop: felons can't vote, and "soft persecution" could negatively impact peoples' careers causing more and more wealth to systematically accrete into the hands of desirable individuals. Put these two things together and combine them with fine-grained propaganda based on big data and cognitive modeling and you have a recipe for... well... I can't help but see this as the formula of a new dark age of totalistic orthodoxy and immovable dogmas. The last dark age was built on self-enforcement of social norms as dictated by religious orthodoxy. This one might be built on big data and fine grained surveillance and control of the population by a technocratic orthodoxy. Instead of the pope and the Vatican we have the corporate-state complex and the NSA (and private corporations like Google). Collectively the administrators of this system are the technocratic analogs of the Holy See in the middle ages. The next dark age will look like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cQgQIMlwWw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cQgQIMlwWw
- mtgx 11y ago
  "Thinking" in this case is mostly "saying" stuff online, even in "private" to someone. They already arrest people for saying stuff like "I'll kill X" on a public digital place like Twitter or Facebook. The next step is to arrest you when you say that in private - even if you have no intention of ever doing that. Brace yourselves, the police state is coming (civil law enforcement agencies having access to mass surveillance data and then acting on it whenever they like is pretty much the definition of a police state).
- hackuser 11y ago
  > Rumour has it that the NSA already has threat predictor algorithms and processes Local police departments already have this and use it to target individuals. I remember reading that the Chicago PD shows up at people's houses and tells them, 'we watching you'.
meric 11y ago
Is anyone surprised? Don't use electronic messaging to tell people you're holding cash, bring a cheque at least. The cops are going to find out and your cash is going to be confiscated.
- rand1012 11y ago
  The better evil is still fucking evil. Don't ever forget that.
  - anonbanker 11y ago
    I'm printing that out tomorrow, and posting it on my wall. thank you.
- executesorder66 11y ago
  > and your cash is going to be confiscated. On what grounds?
  - weaksauce 11y ago
    Drug money mainly. Look up civil asset forfeiture... It's been a problem for a while and has been highligted in a last week tonight episode recently.
dools 11y ago
It's not enough to go after drug dealers, you have to go after their families as well.
- dev1n 11y ago
  God save us if Trump is the new POTUS.
  - Aeolos 11y ago
    Hillary is just as bad regarding this topic.
    - dTal 11y ago
      I'm not much of a fan of Hillary's record either, but she never called for Snowden to be "assassinated". I submit that an impulsive and narcissistic demagogue with no vested interest in "the establishment" is a far scarier leader in the context of a turnkey police state than even a right-wing career politician.
      - cornchips 11y ago
        She said Snowden should return to the US and "face the music." [1] Treason, punishable by death. [2] IMO, "face the music" is code for "funeral march". [3] 1 http://www.businessinsider.com/democratic-debate-edward-snowden-2015-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/democratic-debate-edward-snow... 2 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2381 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2381 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyFyAqLtHq8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyFyAqLtHq8
        BoysenberryPi 11y ago
        I think you are taking something said figuratively literally. Everyone has used "face the music" as an idiom to mean "take responsibility." I'll give her the benefit of doubt in this situation.
fiatmoney 11y ago
Of course, since this is now available to local & federal cops & prosecutors, same as any other law enforcement database, any exculpatory information will naturally be discoverable by defense attorneys. Right? Right?
- Sophistifunk 11y ago
  Gag of the week.
- Gibbon1 11y ago
  I'm suddenly reminded of two stories. One was my Civics teacher who grew up in a dry country. Every four years they got a new sheriff. Because hey after you've earned a quarter of million in bribes (circa 1965) why not retire. And another who mentioned when she was a teenager the feds busting two local sheriffs deputies for trafficking cocaine. You really want a corrupt sheriff or drug dealing cops to have access to all the stuff the NSA does? Seriously? Scares the crap out of me.
  - krapp 11y ago
    Sounds a lot like the argument the government makes about encryption. "Do you really want terrorists and pedophiles to be able to hide from law enforcement? What about a ticking timebomb scenario?"
  - Gibbon1 11y ago
    Also, just remembered these guys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Eppolito_and_Stephen_Caracappa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Eppolito_and_Stephen_Car...
squozzer 11y ago
To quote the great Gomer Pyle, "surprise, surprise, surprise!"
linkregister 11y ago
I request the link to be changed to the original source; this article is an opinion piece. The original is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/us/politics/obama-administration-set-to-expand-sharing-of-data-that-nsa-intercepts.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/us/politics/obama-administ...
- scribu 11y ago
  I don't know, the WaPo article adds some useful context, like links to stories about previous, unofficial information sharing. Of course, the usefulness hinges on whether you trust that WaPo is being impartial. (I have no opinion on that, since I don't follow US politics that closely.)
  - kough 11y ago
    Yeah, it's not like the NYTimes is impartial either. Read their election coverage for example. I've been thinking about this recently because I was considering adding some more news sources to my feeds, but I'm fairly content because at this point I understand and notice the biases in the sources I do read, and I'm worried it would take a long time to build up a similar understanding of a new source.
    - jonas21 11y ago
      What's wrong with the their election coverage (serious question)?
      - kough 11y ago
        Severely biased in favor of Hillary. Makes sense – their main demographic is bankers, got to appease the customer. When he was in the race, they were hugely in favor of Jeb Bush, too. For instance, this [1] was on the front page of the website for at least a day. [1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/26/us/politics/hear-the-one-about-jeb-bushs-humor-you-have-to-listen-closely.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/26/us/politics/hear-the-one-a...
      - 11y ago
fweespee_ch 11y ago
http://fee.org/articles/three-felonies-a-day-how-the-feds-target-the-innocent/ http://fee.org/articles/three-felonies-a-day-how-the-feds-ta... > Perhaps the most chilling quote of the Soviet era came from Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin’s head of the secret police, who bragged, “Show me the man, and I will find you the crime.” Surely, that never could be the case in America; we’re committed to the rule of law and have the fairest justice system in the world. > This should make everyone fearful. Silverglate declares that federal prosecutors don’t care about guilt or innocence. Instead, many subscribe to a “win at all costs” mentality, and there is little to stop them. > The very expansiveness of federal law turns nearly everyone into lawbreakers. Like the poor Soviet citizen who, on average, broke about three laws a day, a typical American will unwittingly break federal law several times daily. Many go to prison for things that historically never have been seen as criminal. http://mic.com/articles/86797/8-ways-we-regularly-commit-felonies-without-realizing-it#.OsdEK5bhZ http://mic.com/articles/86797/8-ways-we-regularly-commit-fel... http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/11/04/david-barton-explains-how-you-could-be-committing-three-felonies-a-day/ http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/11/04/david-barton-expl... > John Baker, a retired Louisiana State University law professor, made a similar comment to the Wall Street Journal: “There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime. … That is not an exaggeration.” https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/statistics https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/statistics Do you even know the 134 laws passed by the current Congress are? I know I don't and you just have to fall afoul of 1.
- andreyf 11y ago
  John Baker's quote makes more sense if you realize there is no judge or trial or defense in a grand jury indictment. A prosecutor just makes their case and presents their best evidence. One hopes the majority of the indictments he refers to would be foolish to actually prosecute.
  - fweespee_ch 11y ago
    > One hopes the majority of the indictments he refers to would be foolish to actually prosecute. https://www.bja.gov/Publications/PleaBargainingResearchSummary.pdf https://www.bja.gov/Publications/PleaBargainingResearchSumma... > According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (2005), in 2003 there were 75,573 cases disposed of in federal district court by trial or plea. Of these, about 95 percent were disposed of by a guilty plea (Pastore and Maguire, 2003). While there are no exact estimates of the proportion of cases that are resolved through plea bargaining, scholars estimate that about 90 to 95 percent of both federal and state court cases are resolved through this process (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2005; Flanagan and Maguire, 1990). A 95% plea rate makes indictment almost always a conviction [effectively]. If they don't plea, the prosecutor can drop the case. The only people who can defend this are the upper middle class [6 figure incomes] and the wealthy. http://www.reulandlaw.com/about/fee/ http://www.reulandlaw.com/about/fee/ For an example of rates, its 35-75k for a federal case.
dombili 11y ago
This sounds awfully familiar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MINARET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MINARET
anocendi 11y ago
"What is your hue?" The question will become relevant soon enough.
Theodores 11y ago
I think they are a few organisational steps away from something truly terrifying. That will be when the NSA just hand over the 'graph' dataset of all the drug dealers to the FBI/local police. As it stands they have to have a clue, e.g. a name before they can get particulars. So policing is still 'hampered' conveniently for those that use drugs. So long as their network does not arouse the suspicions of the police then there need not be any suspicions. However, if the complete 'graph' is just handed over then even the most discreet of networks could be uprooted, all chains and links identified, geolocated too. This could be done. All it would take is a Donald Trump to take it up another level. He could get a lot of votes by promising to use NSA data to eradicate drugs from America once and for all, with no drug-dealer left behind... Aside from the 'where next' aspects, as it is, I found this article to be quite shocking. So much for the 'land of the free'.
- rand1012 11y ago
  Like Hillary wouldn't. She has Drug Warrior in her blood.
  - duncan_bayne 11y ago
    She would turn from that position the moment it became financially or politically expedient to do so. Edited: for those downvoting, I invite you to consider how her (stated) positions on abortion and the black community have changed over the years. Everyone learns and changes their opinions over time, but her changes are too politically convenient to be simply personal development.
- anexprogrammer 11y ago
  Most of the developed world is discovering freedom is something we (the public) don't much care about. So the "land of the free" (and everywhere else) is free to give away all the hard-won freedoms to all and sundry. And they are. Because terrorism.
matt_wulfeck 11y ago
You when you get paid to find terrorist, and your job depends on you finding terrorists, well then, everybody starts to look like a terrorist.
- ProAm 11y ago
  "I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail." - Manslow
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  I've considered before that overzealous police forces are in certain respects analogues of auto-immune diseases. Host rejecting/attacking itself.
  - npunt 11y ago
    Yes! I've thought the exact same thing, thought I was the only one.
    - dredmorbius 11y ago
      I'm trying to remember where I saw the idea developed. Possibly by Andreas Schou at Google+. Basically: if you've got some discriminating test with Type 1 and Type 2 error (false positive, false negative, don't ask me which is which), then as the actual rate of incidence falls, no matter how sensitive your test, at some point it's mostly making false positive rather than true positive selections. Cue a system which rewards based on, say, arrests, rather than on correct convictions, and doesn't penalise on false arrests or wrongful convictions. You're going to see a lot of false/wrongful arrests and convictions. Makes me think if part of what happens within immune systems isn't similar. Bruce Schneier probably covers similar ground, now that I think of it.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
maerF0x0 11y ago
> It’ll be Black, Brown, poor, immigrant, Muslim, and dissident Americans: the same people who are always targeted by law enforcement for extra “special” attention. .. Another Quote. > First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. > Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a Trade Unionist. > Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Jew > Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. I guess i'm on that list now.
bobby_9x 11y ago
This sounds exactly like what is happening right now. "All lives matter" gets you harassed and possibly fired.
- integraton 11y ago
  And punished for even mentioning it, as the votes on your comment demonstrate.
  - api 11y ago
    These days everyone smart and educated wants to be a 'no-BS' skeptic type person. That means categorically rejecting anything that smells like certain kinds of "low-brow" thought. What I wrote trips the "conspiracy theory" heuristic, so it gets tossed. It's a lazy cheap heuristic. If you took what's happening today and went back in time 20 years and posted about it on the 1990s Internet, even the wacko conspiracy nuts would call you crazy.
    - brbsix 11y ago
      You don't even need a time machine to see the truth in what you've said. Remember the seemingly absurd "silent black helicopters" of conspiracy lore? Then look what was revealed during the bin Laden raid. Of course plenty of people were calling 1984 conspiratorial drivel as well. The world of today puts that to shame.
    - mirimir 11y ago
      We knew about the NSA over 30 years ago. We knew about Echelon over 20 years ago. Nothing in the Snowden dump was a surprise. Only confirmation.
  - chillwaves 11y ago
    Will the punishment never cease??
- trill1 11y ago
  It's not that anyone disagrees that all lives matter, it's that your intention in saying "all lives matter" is to undermine a legitimate social cause. "Black Lives Matter" supporters aren't saying that other lives don't matter, they're saying that black lives matter too -- and that's a valid point in a country where blacks, for example, are much more likely to receive the death penalty for committing the same offences.
api 11y ago
Meanwhile the leading Republican presidential nominee is a right-populist (a.k.a. fascist), and the Democratic presidential nominee was almost a left-populist (socialist). We are literally one economic crisis or major terrorist attack away from some form of significantly more authoritarian if not outright totalitarian government. Whether it would be "left" or "right" is sort of up in the air, and might depend on which side is able to produce a more compelling demagogue at the right time. In any case if history is any guide it doesn't matter much. Totalitarianism is totalitarianism. If that comes to pass, we're going to find out what "turn-key totalitarian state" means. The infrastructure is in place. The only barriers are legal and social/cultural.
- diyorgasms 11y ago
  While I agree that the US is becoming a "turn-key totalitarian state" it is patently absurd to compare Sanders' brand of social democracy (an ideology incredibly far from Socialism) with Trump's fascism. Social democracy coexists with Western values in basically the entirety of Europe. It has not led to the collapse of the continent into some totalitarian nightmare. The fascism being advocated by Trump and members of the alt-right however draws a lot of comparisons to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, and not because the right is unpopular with academics or journalists but because Trump and his supporters are using violent and xenophobic/racist language while they scapegoat ethnic and religious out-groups.
  - api 11y ago
    Off topic but: while I do sympathize with Sanders a bit and I agree with most of what you wrote, I also think his popularity is being driven by the same populist wellspring as Trump. That makes me a bit afraid that we might end up with something more like Hugo Chavez's Venezuela than Denmark. I also agree that Trump is scarier. I just wanted to be an equal opportunity hater of authoritarian ideologies and to make the point that the "key" that turns our "turn-key totalitarian state" to the "on" position could come from either side of the normal political continuum.
- JetSpiegel 11y ago
  Socialists in the US Democratic party? Where?
danenania 11y ago
With low level bureaucrats getting access to this data, isn't it inevitable that we'll start seeing massive security breaches on a routine basis? I suppose we'll just have to start assuming that anything said or written or looked up online will eventually be accessible to anyone who's interested.
- caf 11y ago
  Yes - aside from the inevitable LOVINT abuses, it seems likely that this will end up compromising even more sources and methods.
- adventured 11y ago
  We're also about to witness an explosion of blackmailing by local law enforcement against the citizens they're supposed to be protecting. It'll make the police property confiscation / theft racket look tiny by comparison.
beedogs 11y ago
It's time to shut down the NSA for good.
- brbsix 11y ago
  I wonder why you're being downvoted? Perhaps they know something we don't about the terrorist attacks averted and Constitutional protections upheld due to the NSA's virtuous efforts?
rubyfan 11y ago
In related news, I heard on NPR today people are complaining that the TSA no-fly list didn't catch a man who was a wanted shooting suspect. The insinuation is the no-fly list should be expanded to catch domestic criminals. You know, the no-fly list that you can't be removed from and don't have to have committed a crime to get yourself listed on. The no-fly list that is unconstitutional, yeah that one. http://abcnews.go.com/US/idaho-shooting-suspect-kyle-odom-fly-dc/story?id=37533421 http://abcnews.go.com/US/idaho-shooting-suspect-kyle-odom-fl...
- kough 11y ago
  That response is deeply fucked. It also gives further evidence to the fact that most people simply want to live a good life, and are happy to give power to any authority that can promise them that. The thinking here is: the government created the no fly list to catch bad guys, these are bad guys, why aren't they on the list?
  - rubyfan 11y ago
    My fear with all this is that we all think Snowden was great because it put a spotlight on this stuff. But the reality is Joe Average is perfectly ambivalent and powers in the government can use that to push this far beyond secret programs ostensibly created to protect us from terrorists.
    - s_q_b 11y ago
      I tell people I work for Booz | Allen | Hamilton, and the vast vast majority outside the beltway don't recognize the name at all.
  - Umn44 11y ago
    "It also gives further evidence to the fact that most people simply want to live a good life" The nature of capitalist society produces shitty people, you can't have a culture with a common good if the culture is shit. You need to give people time off enough to be citizens but the nature of the american empire and the culture that runs it is hostile to the people. So you get a fucked up culture of fuck you I got mine. First, our brains are much worse at reality and thinking than thought. AKA we can be manipulated to believe things against our interest. Science on reasoning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ "Intended as an internal document. Good reading to understand the nature of rich democracies and the fact that the common people are not allowed to play a role." Crisis of democracy http://trilateral.org/download/doc/crisis_of_democracy.pdf http://trilateral.org/download/doc/crisis_of_democracy.pdf
losteric 11y ago
So how many candidates in the upcoming election are publicly against this kind of data mining?
- awqrre 11y ago
  Publicly against it doesn't really mean anything for politicians (look at Obama)... I think that looking at their voting history is probably more reliable (in Congress or Senate, if available).
- quadrangle 11y ago
  Bernie Sanders is probably the only one even debatably supportive of privacy sincerely.
kii9mplppmfh 11y ago
The singularity is coming... It just turns out it's fascism.
tehmillhouse 11y ago
As someone who doesn't live in the US, I am awestruck by how big of a deal this seems to be for people. Are you really trying to tell me that surveillance of ~the rest of the world~ is somehow less bad?
- brbsix 11y ago
  Yes. We have Constitutional rights that protect us from such surveillance. Foreigners have no such protections from the U.S. government. This has essentially "lifted the veil" and made it abundantly clear that our government will no longer respect the rights of it's citizen's, even in a formal official capacity. This is no surprise to me, as such abuses tend to go hand in hand, but it definitely takes things to a new level.
  - drjesusphd 11y ago
    > We have Constitutional rights that protect us from such surveillance. Foreigners have no such protections from the U.S. government. This is an example of a lie that has repeated often enough to have become the truth. The Bill of Rights limits what the government can and can't do, period.
- Steuard 11y ago
  Yes! To a first approximation, my government doesn't have the power to put you in jail for, say, hacking into a local server in your hometown. (Yours doesn't have that power over me, either.) So (again to a first approximation) the files that my government collects on you are only available to be used in cases with some sort of international significance. (And the same with the files that your government collects on me.) I see a vast difference between that situation and the situation where a local cop can casually dig through these vast databases to find out if I've ever been associated with anything at all potentially illegal.
  - mirimir 11y ago
    Yes! So for those who value privacy, it's important to route traffic among jurisdictions that don't readily collaborate.
marcusgarvey 11y ago
http://www.isittimetomovetocanadayet.com/ http://www.isittimetomovetocanadayet.com/
datashovel 11y ago
I would not be surprised if there are crowdfunding sites that help fund lawsuits or other legal matters. Are there crowdfunding sites that help fund civil rights cases? Edit: In other words, I'm beginning to think the only way to chip away at this sort of massive government overreach is to crowdfund the hell out of a ton of legitimate civil rights cases. Eventually maybe our government(s) (since I imagine US is not the only one to be concerned about) will get the hint.
- maerF0x0 11y ago
  They do not need to get the hint. All taxpayers are already "Crowdfunding" the govts lawyers. They lose nothing by fighting you in court.
  - datashovel 11y ago
    They lose nothing by fighting you in court. I am 100% certain you are wrong about that.
SwimAway 11y ago
We need to stop this bullshit from happening. We the people.
benevol 11y ago
Sorry in advance if this is somehow not a "substantive" comment, but it really needs to be said very clearly: This country is so f#cked now. What are the remaining options? 1. Those who accept the new reality will be forced to behave like sheep. 2. Those who speak up will be silenced even before they will have organized some kind of serious movement (see: OWS + parallel construction). 3. Leave.
- zo1 11y ago
  I think you should expand point 3. At the very least, consider "where" you'd leave to. I came to the conclusion that pretty much everywhere on the globe, you'll find the same problem you're trying to escape.
cha5m 11y ago
This is honestly the road to 1984.
walid 11y ago
If that is true then that I think is a violation of due process. If proven to have happened then many people can simply go free due to technicalities of the law. Awkward for the FBI.
LinuxBender 11y ago
In my humble opinion, something that folks may want to think about is existing NSA data retention plus the statutes of limitations. Now various agencies can trawl back through decades of data collection and see what people can still be prosecuted for, extorted with, etc.
s_q_b 11y ago
More doors in, more doors out. Bad OPSEC.
s_q_b 11y ago
Public announcement of these programs is good. It opens the door to Constitutional scrutiny. These actions were happening anyway. Aren't we better off now that they're acknowledged and can be challenged?

492 points by Jarred 11y ago

Rumour has it that the NSA already has threat predictor algorithms and processes, how long until the NSA provides the FBI this and you get arrested for pre-crimes or thought-crimes? How do you answer the charge that you were thinking about doing something bad?

DamnYuppie 11y ago
Since when is thinking about something a crime??? It is the act that is important.
- feld 11y ago
  Felony to talk about harming the president, even in jest.
  - JetSpiegel 11y ago
    Even for Trump?
  - techdragon 11y ago
    Just going to point out... Many dead presidents are still spinning in their graves from the day that became a crimp. That's not how the freedoms they strived to uphold are supposed to work.
- awinter-py 11y ago
  not so. intent is part of culpability in most violent crimes. hate crimes legislation takes it a step further. (It's beyond me how the 'thought' element of a hate crime isn't protected political speech).
  - zyxley 11y ago
    > It's beyond me how the 'thought' element of a hate crime isn't protected political speech The courts of the US have literally always that freedom of speech is not unlimited.
    - awinter-py 11y ago
      In Reed v Town of Gilbert we ruled that statutory limitations on free speech must pass scrict scrutiny. You can argue for a compelling state interest in increasing the term of punishment for a violent offender based on his opinions about race. But (1) it's hard to argue the state interest in longer prison terms and (2) it's really hard to prove hate, so there's an easy due process appeal here.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- onion2k 11y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_(criminal)#United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_(criminal)#United... A criminal conspiracy is more than thinking about a crime, but a lot less than actually committing the act.
  - Nelson69 11y ago
    The whole war on terror and this bulk collection is predicated on stopping crimes before they happen. It's a giant catch 22. Would stopping mass shootings and not-called-terorrism-but-domestic-terror be part of the use cases here? Like if you were to ignore some other laws and track gun ownership and purchases, maybe cross reference it with the use/prescription of certain medications and then cross reference that with anti-social posts on the internet or associations with certain call-themselve-patriots-but-really-hate-the-government type groups you might stop some mass shootings. Maybe save some actual lives. It's a terrible rabbit hole to go down, we need to stop it all ASAP.
    - taneq 11y ago
      The best thing about this whole setup is that it's unfalsifiable. Something bad happen? We need to work harder (read: accept more invasion of our privacy) to prevent such atrocities in future. Nothing bad happens? It's working, let's do it even more!
- mycroft-holmes 11y ago
  Well if you "think" all lives matter at Facebook... In our current hyper sensitive culture there's a lot of expectations that people think a certain way.
- xg15 11y ago
  I don't think it's about thinking, it's about the supposed probability that you will commit a crime in the future. And as for that I can imagine very well that laws can change, provided the technology is sold to politicians and to the public in the right way. E.g. "we now have technology that can prevent rapes of children before they even happen. So many children today live in the direct neighborhood of a potential rapist - and no-one could do anything because nobody knew. But now we can spot and remove the potential rapists and give the children back the pieceful and carefree life that they deserve. Unfortunately, as of now, making use of the technology would be in violation of certain laws - laws that made a lot of sense in the last century. But given the changes in society and the urgency of the matter, we feel a reformulation would be more than justified..."
- vkou 11y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List 47,000 people are on it. Most of them have not committed any crime... Probably. We don't actually know, because if you're on it, the government won't tell you why - or even that you're on it.
  - awqrre 11y ago
    Would buying a plane ticket online let you know that you are on it? If so then the airline companies should be able to at least provide a service for informing you that you are on the list, if you ask about it.
    - click170 11y ago
      It seems more likely that they let you buy a ticket but not board the plane, but that's a guess. Can anyone confirm?
      - anonbanker 11y ago
        usually, in the states, your ticket will have special letters on it, signifying your relative flight risk. There's countless stories of Laura Poitras and others discussing this. the reader is invited to !yt TSA Poitras.
    - click170 11y ago
      It seems more likely that they let you buy a ticket but not board the plane, but that's a guess. Can anyone confirm?
api 11y ago
Laws are so complex that chances are you are breaking some law at some point in your life. If you do anything "interesting" like activism, entrepreneurship, alternative religious practices, DIY maker stuff, etc., you are probably doing something "of interest" according to some statute somewhere. Also don't rule out harassment. Would you hire someone who is under investigation? How would you like a tax audit? Or maybe you'll get pulled over 10X more than the average person because when cops run your plates you are flagged? What about no-fly lists? Detainment at the border when re-entering the country? Exclusion from benefits or consideration for government jobs/contracts? There are many things that can be done to make your life unpleasant or wreck your career that aren't illegal and don't involve actually charging you with a crime. In many cases there may be no recourse civil or criminal. Look into the adventure of getting yourself off a no-fly list for a good example of non-criminal punishment.
- Someone1234 11y ago
  Reminds me of Mccarthyism. Most people targeted were never arrested, never charged, but they still made their lives a living hell just through systematic harassment and intimitation.
  - api 11y ago
    What we're headed toward is ultra-fine-grained algorithmic McCarthyism. In the future it will be possible to establish, with the aid of big data and machine learning, profiles of "normal" (a.k.a. desired) human behavior and to engage in fine-grained surveillance, harassment, or "nudging" of individuals who deviate from desired behavior. Over time this creates a self-reinforcing feedback loop: felons can't vote, and "soft persecution" could negatively impact peoples' careers causing more and more wealth to systematically accrete into the hands of desirable individuals. Put these two things together and combine them with fine-grained propaganda based on big data and cognitive modeling and you have a recipe for... well... I can't help but see this as the formula of a new dark age of totalistic orthodoxy and immovable dogmas. The last dark age was built on self-enforcement of social norms as dictated by religious orthodoxy. This one might be built on big data and fine grained surveillance and control of the population by a technocratic orthodoxy. Instead of the pope and the Vatican we have the corporate-state complex and the NSA (and private corporations like Google). Collectively the administrators of this system are the technocratic analogs of the Holy See in the middle ages. The next dark age will look like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cQgQIMlwWw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cQgQIMlwWw
mtgx 11y ago
"Thinking" in this case is mostly "saying" stuff online, even in "private" to someone. They already arrest people for saying stuff like "I'll kill X" on a public digital place like Twitter or Facebook. The next step is to arrest you when you say that in private - even if you have no intention of ever doing that. Brace yourselves, the police state is coming (civil law enforcement agencies having access to mass surveillance data and then acting on it whenever they like is pretty much the definition of a police state).
hackuser 11y ago
> Rumour has it that the NSA already has threat predictor algorithms and processes Local police departments already have this and use it to target individuals. I remember reading that the Chicago PD shows up at people's houses and tells them, 'we watching you'.

meric 11y ago

Is anyone surprised? Don't use electronic messaging to tell people you're holding cash, bring a cheque at least. The cops are going to find out and your cash is going to be confiscated.

rand1012 11y ago
The better evil is still fucking evil. Don't ever forget that.
- anonbanker 11y ago
  I'm printing that out tomorrow, and posting it on my wall. thank you.
executesorder66 11y ago
> and your cash is going to be confiscated. On what grounds?
- weaksauce 11y ago
  Drug money mainly. Look up civil asset forfeiture... It's been a problem for a while and has been highligted in a last week tonight episode recently.

dools 11y ago

It's not enough to go after drug dealers, you have to go after their families as well.

dev1n 11y ago
God save us if Trump is the new POTUS.
- Aeolos 11y ago
  Hillary is just as bad regarding this topic.
  - dTal 11y ago
    I'm not much of a fan of Hillary's record either, but she never called for Snowden to be "assassinated". I submit that an impulsive and narcissistic demagogue with no vested interest in "the establishment" is a far scarier leader in the context of a turnkey police state than even a right-wing career politician.
    - cornchips 11y ago
      She said Snowden should return to the US and "face the music." [1] Treason, punishable by death. [2] IMO, "face the music" is code for "funeral march". [3] 1 http://www.businessinsider.com/democratic-debate-edward-snowden-2015-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/democratic-debate-edward-snow... 2 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2381 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2381 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyFyAqLtHq8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyFyAqLtHq8
      - BoysenberryPi 11y ago
        I think you are taking something said figuratively literally. Everyone has used "face the music" as an idiom to mean "take responsibility." I'll give her the benefit of doubt in this situation.

fiatmoney 11y ago

Of course, since this is now available to local & federal cops & prosecutors, same as any other law enforcement database, any exculpatory information will naturally be discoverable by defense attorneys. Right? Right?

Sophistifunk 11y ago
Gag of the week.
Gibbon1 11y ago
I'm suddenly reminded of two stories. One was my Civics teacher who grew up in a dry country. Every four years they got a new sheriff. Because hey after you've earned a quarter of million in bribes (circa 1965) why not retire. And another who mentioned when she was a teenager the feds busting two local sheriffs deputies for trafficking cocaine. You really want a corrupt sheriff or drug dealing cops to have access to all the stuff the NSA does? Seriously? Scares the crap out of me.
- krapp 11y ago
  Sounds a lot like the argument the government makes about encryption. "Do you really want terrorists and pedophiles to be able to hide from law enforcement? What about a ticking timebomb scenario?"
- Gibbon1 11y ago
  Also, just remembered these guys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Eppolito_and_Stephen_Caracappa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Eppolito_and_Stephen_Car...

squozzer 11y ago

To quote the great Gomer Pyle, "surprise, surprise, surprise!"

linkregister 11y ago

I request the link to be changed to the original source; this article is an opinion piece. The original is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/us/politics/obama-administration-set-to-expand-sharing-of-data-that-nsa-intercepts.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/us/politics/obama-administ...

scribu 11y ago
I don't know, the WaPo article adds some useful context, like links to stories about previous, unofficial information sharing. Of course, the usefulness hinges on whether you trust that WaPo is being impartial. (I have no opinion on that, since I don't follow US politics that closely.)
- kough 11y ago
  Yeah, it's not like the NYTimes is impartial either. Read their election coverage for example. I've been thinking about this recently because I was considering adding some more news sources to my feeds, but I'm fairly content because at this point I understand and notice the biases in the sources I do read, and I'm worried it would take a long time to build up a similar understanding of a new source.
  - jonas21 11y ago
    What's wrong with the their election coverage (serious question)?
    - kough 11y ago
      Severely biased in favor of Hillary. Makes sense – their main demographic is bankers, got to appease the customer. When he was in the race, they were hugely in favor of Jeb Bush, too. For instance, this [1] was on the front page of the website for at least a day. [1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/26/us/politics/hear-the-one-about-jeb-bushs-humor-you-have-to-listen-closely.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/26/us/politics/hear-the-one-a...
    - 11y ago

fweespee_ch 11y ago

http://fee.org/articles/three-felonies-a-day-how-the-feds-target-the-innocent/ http://fee.org/articles/three-felonies-a-day-how-the-feds-ta... > Perhaps the most chilling quote of the Soviet era came from Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin’s head of the secret police, who bragged, “Show me the man, and I will find you the crime.” Surely, that never could be the case in America; we’re committed to the rule of law and have the fairest justice system in the world. > This should make everyone fearful. Silverglate declares that federal prosecutors don’t care about guilt or innocence. Instead, many subscribe to a “win at all costs” mentality, and there is little to stop them. > The very expansiveness of federal law turns nearly everyone into lawbreakers. Like the poor Soviet citizen who, on average, broke about three laws a day, a typical American will unwittingly break federal law several times daily. Many go to prison for things that historically never have been seen as criminal. http://mic.com/articles/86797/8-ways-we-regularly-commit-felonies-without-realizing-it#.OsdEK5bhZ http://mic.com/articles/86797/8-ways-we-regularly-commit-fel... http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/11/04/david-barton-explains-how-you-could-be-committing-three-felonies-a-day/ http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/11/04/david-barton-expl... > John Baker, a retired Louisiana State University law professor, made a similar comment to the Wall Street Journal: “There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime. … That is not an exaggeration.” https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/statistics https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/statistics Do you even know the 134 laws passed by the current Congress are? I know I don't and you just have to fall afoul of 1.

andreyf 11y ago
John Baker's quote makes more sense if you realize there is no judge or trial or defense in a grand jury indictment. A prosecutor just makes their case and presents their best evidence. One hopes the majority of the indictments he refers to would be foolish to actually prosecute.
- fweespee_ch 11y ago
  > One hopes the majority of the indictments he refers to would be foolish to actually prosecute. https://www.bja.gov/Publications/PleaBargainingResearchSummary.pdf https://www.bja.gov/Publications/PleaBargainingResearchSumma... > According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (2005), in 2003 there were 75,573 cases disposed of in federal district court by trial or plea. Of these, about 95 percent were disposed of by a guilty plea (Pastore and Maguire, 2003). While there are no exact estimates of the proportion of cases that are resolved through plea bargaining, scholars estimate that about 90 to 95 percent of both federal and state court cases are resolved through this process (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2005; Flanagan and Maguire, 1990). A 95% plea rate makes indictment almost always a conviction [effectively]. If they don't plea, the prosecutor can drop the case. The only people who can defend this are the upper middle class [6 figure incomes] and the wealthy. http://www.reulandlaw.com/about/fee/ http://www.reulandlaw.com/about/fee/ For an example of rates, its 35-75k for a federal case.

dombili 11y ago

This sounds awfully familiar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MINARET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MINARET

anocendi 11y ago

"What is your hue?" The question will become relevant soon enough.

Theodores 11y ago

I think they are a few organisational steps away from something truly terrifying. That will be when the NSA just hand over the 'graph' dataset of all the drug dealers to the FBI/local police. As it stands they have to have a clue, e.g. a name before they can get particulars. So policing is still 'hampered' conveniently for those that use drugs. So long as their network does not arouse the suspicions of the police then there need not be any suspicions. However, if the complete 'graph' is just handed over then even the most discreet of networks could be uprooted, all chains and links identified, geolocated too. This could be done. All it would take is a Donald Trump to take it up another level. He could get a lot of votes by promising to use NSA data to eradicate drugs from America once and for all, with no drug-dealer left behind... Aside from the 'where next' aspects, as it is, I found this article to be quite shocking. So much for the 'land of the free'.

rand1012 11y ago
Like Hillary wouldn't. She has Drug Warrior in her blood.
- duncan_bayne 11y ago
  She would turn from that position the moment it became financially or politically expedient to do so. Edited: for those downvoting, I invite you to consider how her (stated) positions on abortion and the black community have changed over the years. Everyone learns and changes their opinions over time, but her changes are too politically convenient to be simply personal development.
anexprogrammer 11y ago
Most of the developed world is discovering freedom is something we (the public) don't much care about. So the "land of the free" (and everywhere else) is free to give away all the hard-won freedoms to all and sundry. And they are. Because terrorism.

matt_wulfeck 11y ago

You when you get paid to find terrorist, and your job depends on you finding terrorists, well then, everybody starts to look like a terrorist.

ProAm 11y ago
"I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail." - Manslow
dredmorbius 11y ago
I've considered before that overzealous police forces are in certain respects analogues of auto-immune diseases. Host rejecting/attacking itself.
- npunt 11y ago
  Yes! I've thought the exact same thing, thought I was the only one.
  - dredmorbius 11y ago
    I'm trying to remember where I saw the idea developed. Possibly by Andreas Schou at Google+. Basically: if you've got some discriminating test with Type 1 and Type 2 error (false positive, false negative, don't ask me which is which), then as the actual rate of incidence falls, no matter how sensitive your test, at some point it's mostly making false positive rather than true positive selections. Cue a system which rewards based on, say, arrests, rather than on correct convictions, and doesn't penalise on false arrests or wrongful convictions. You're going to see a lot of false/wrongful arrests and convictions. Makes me think if part of what happens within immune systems isn't similar. Bruce Schneier probably covers similar ground, now that I think of it.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

maerF0x0 11y ago

> It’ll be Black, Brown, poor, immigrant, Muslim, and dissident Americans: the same people who are always targeted by law enforcement for extra “special” attention. .. Another Quote. > First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. > Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a Trade Unionist. > Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Jew > Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. I guess i'm on that list now.

bobby_9x 11y ago

This sounds exactly like what is happening right now. "All lives matter" gets you harassed and possibly fired.

integraton 11y ago
And punished for even mentioning it, as the votes on your comment demonstrate.
- api 11y ago
  These days everyone smart and educated wants to be a 'no-BS' skeptic type person. That means categorically rejecting anything that smells like certain kinds of "low-brow" thought. What I wrote trips the "conspiracy theory" heuristic, so it gets tossed. It's a lazy cheap heuristic. If you took what's happening today and went back in time 20 years and posted about it on the 1990s Internet, even the wacko conspiracy nuts would call you crazy.
  - brbsix 11y ago
    You don't even need a time machine to see the truth in what you've said. Remember the seemingly absurd "silent black helicopters" of conspiracy lore? Then look what was revealed during the bin Laden raid. Of course plenty of people were calling 1984 conspiratorial drivel as well. The world of today puts that to shame.
  - mirimir 11y ago
    We knew about the NSA over 30 years ago. We knew about Echelon over 20 years ago. Nothing in the Snowden dump was a surprise. Only confirmation.
- chillwaves 11y ago
  Will the punishment never cease??
trill1 11y ago
It's not that anyone disagrees that all lives matter, it's that your intention in saying "all lives matter" is to undermine a legitimate social cause. "Black Lives Matter" supporters aren't saying that other lives don't matter, they're saying that black lives matter too -- and that's a valid point in a country where blacks, for example, are much more likely to receive the death penalty for committing the same offences.

api 11y ago

Meanwhile the leading Republican presidential nominee is a right-populist (a.k.a. fascist), and the Democratic presidential nominee was almost a left-populist (socialist). We are literally one economic crisis or major terrorist attack away from some form of significantly more authoritarian if not outright totalitarian government. Whether it would be "left" or "right" is sort of up in the air, and might depend on which side is able to produce a more compelling demagogue at the right time. In any case if history is any guide it doesn't matter much. Totalitarianism is totalitarianism. If that comes to pass, we're going to find out what "turn-key totalitarian state" means. The infrastructure is in place. The only barriers are legal and social/cultural.

diyorgasms 11y ago
While I agree that the US is becoming a "turn-key totalitarian state" it is patently absurd to compare Sanders' brand of social democracy (an ideology incredibly far from Socialism) with Trump's fascism. Social democracy coexists with Western values in basically the entirety of Europe. It has not led to the collapse of the continent into some totalitarian nightmare. The fascism being advocated by Trump and members of the alt-right however draws a lot of comparisons to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, and not because the right is unpopular with academics or journalists but because Trump and his supporters are using violent and xenophobic/racist language while they scapegoat ethnic and religious out-groups.
- api 11y ago
  Off topic but: while I do sympathize with Sanders a bit and I agree with most of what you wrote, I also think his popularity is being driven by the same populist wellspring as Trump. That makes me a bit afraid that we might end up with something more like Hugo Chavez's Venezuela than Denmark. I also agree that Trump is scarier. I just wanted to be an equal opportunity hater of authoritarian ideologies and to make the point that the "key" that turns our "turn-key totalitarian state" to the "on" position could come from either side of the normal political continuum.
JetSpiegel 11y ago
Socialists in the US Democratic party? Where?

danenania 11y ago

With low level bureaucrats getting access to this data, isn't it inevitable that we'll start seeing massive security breaches on a routine basis? I suppose we'll just have to start assuming that anything said or written or looked up online will eventually be accessible to anyone who's interested.

caf 11y ago
Yes - aside from the inevitable LOVINT abuses, it seems likely that this will end up compromising even more sources and methods.
adventured 11y ago
We're also about to witness an explosion of blackmailing by local law enforcement against the citizens they're supposed to be protecting. It'll make the police property confiscation / theft racket look tiny by comparison.

beedogs 11y ago

It's time to shut down the NSA for good.

brbsix 11y ago
I wonder why you're being downvoted? Perhaps they know something we don't about the terrorist attacks averted and Constitutional protections upheld due to the NSA's virtuous efforts?

rubyfan 11y ago

In related news, I heard on NPR today people are complaining that the TSA no-fly list didn't catch a man who was a wanted shooting suspect. The insinuation is the no-fly list should be expanded to catch domestic criminals. You know, the no-fly list that you can't be removed from and don't have to have committed a crime to get yourself listed on. The no-fly list that is unconstitutional, yeah that one. http://abcnews.go.com/US/idaho-shooting-suspect-kyle-odom-fly-dc/story?id=37533421 http://abcnews.go.com/US/idaho-shooting-suspect-kyle-odom-fl...

kough 11y ago
That response is deeply fucked. It also gives further evidence to the fact that most people simply want to live a good life, and are happy to give power to any authority that can promise them that. The thinking here is: the government created the no fly list to catch bad guys, these are bad guys, why aren't they on the list?
- rubyfan 11y ago
  My fear with all this is that we all think Snowden was great because it put a spotlight on this stuff. But the reality is Joe Average is perfectly ambivalent and powers in the government can use that to push this far beyond secret programs ostensibly created to protect us from terrorists.
  - s_q_b 11y ago
    I tell people I work for Booz | Allen | Hamilton, and the vast vast majority outside the beltway don't recognize the name at all.
- Umn44 11y ago
  "It also gives further evidence to the fact that most people simply want to live a good life" The nature of capitalist society produces shitty people, you can't have a culture with a common good if the culture is shit. You need to give people time off enough to be citizens but the nature of the american empire and the culture that runs it is hostile to the people. So you get a fucked up culture of fuck you I got mine. First, our brains are much worse at reality and thinking than thought. AKA we can be manipulated to believe things against our interest. Science on reasoning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ "Intended as an internal document. Good reading to understand the nature of rich democracies and the fact that the common people are not allowed to play a role." Crisis of democracy http://trilateral.org/download/doc/crisis_of_democracy.pdf http://trilateral.org/download/doc/crisis_of_democracy.pdf

losteric 11y ago

So how many candidates in the upcoming election are publicly against this kind of data mining?

awqrre 11y ago
Publicly against it doesn't really mean anything for politicians (look at Obama)... I think that looking at their voting history is probably more reliable (in Congress or Senate, if available).
quadrangle 11y ago
Bernie Sanders is probably the only one even debatably supportive of privacy sincerely.

kii9mplppmfh 11y ago

The singularity is coming... It just turns out it's fascism.

tehmillhouse 11y ago

As someone who doesn't live in the US, I am awestruck by how big of a deal this seems to be for people. Are you really trying to tell me that surveillance of ~the rest of the world~ is somehow less bad?

brbsix 11y ago
Yes. We have Constitutional rights that protect us from such surveillance. Foreigners have no such protections from the U.S. government. This has essentially "lifted the veil" and made it abundantly clear that our government will no longer respect the rights of it's citizen's, even in a formal official capacity. This is no surprise to me, as such abuses tend to go hand in hand, but it definitely takes things to a new level.
- drjesusphd 11y ago
  > We have Constitutional rights that protect us from such surveillance. Foreigners have no such protections from the U.S. government. This is an example of a lie that has repeated often enough to have become the truth. The Bill of Rights limits what the government can and can't do, period.
Steuard 11y ago
Yes! To a first approximation, my government doesn't have the power to put you in jail for, say, hacking into a local server in your hometown. (Yours doesn't have that power over me, either.) So (again to a first approximation) the files that my government collects on you are only available to be used in cases with some sort of international significance. (And the same with the files that your government collects on me.) I see a vast difference between that situation and the situation where a local cop can casually dig through these vast databases to find out if I've ever been associated with anything at all potentially illegal.
- mirimir 11y ago
  Yes! So for those who value privacy, it's important to route traffic among jurisdictions that don't readily collaborate.

marcusgarvey 11y ago

http://www.isittimetomovetocanadayet.com/ http://www.isittimetomovetocanadayet.com/

datashovel 11y ago

I would not be surprised if there are crowdfunding sites that help fund lawsuits or other legal matters. Are there crowdfunding sites that help fund civil rights cases? Edit: In other words, I'm beginning to think the only way to chip away at this sort of massive government overreach is to crowdfund the hell out of a ton of legitimate civil rights cases. Eventually maybe our government(s) (since I imagine US is not the only one to be concerned about) will get the hint.

maerF0x0 11y ago
They do not need to get the hint. All taxpayers are already "Crowdfunding" the govts lawyers. They lose nothing by fighting you in court.
- datashovel 11y ago
  They lose nothing by fighting you in court. I am 100% certain you are wrong about that.

SwimAway 11y ago

We need to stop this bullshit from happening. We the people.

benevol 11y ago

Sorry in advance if this is somehow not a "substantive" comment, but it really needs to be said very clearly: This country is so f#cked now. What are the remaining options? 1. Those who accept the new reality will be forced to behave like sheep. 2. Those who speak up will be silenced even before they will have organized some kind of serious movement (see: OWS + parallel construction). 3. Leave.

zo1 11y ago
I think you should expand point 3. At the very least, consider "where" you'd leave to. I came to the conclusion that pretty much everywhere on the globe, you'll find the same problem you're trying to escape.

cha5m 11y ago

This is honestly the road to 1984.

walid 11y ago

If that is true then that I think is a violation of due process. If proven to have happened then many people can simply go free due to technicalities of the law. Awkward for the FBI.

LinuxBender 11y ago

In my humble opinion, something that folks may want to think about is existing NSA data retention plus the statutes of limitations. Now various agencies can trawl back through decades of data collection and see what people can still be prosecuted for, extorted with, etc.

s_q_b 11y ago

More doors in, more doors out. Bad OPSEC.

s_q_b 11y ago

Public announcement of these programs is good. It opens the door to Constitutional scrutiny. These actions were happening anyway. Aren't we better off now that they're acknowledged and can be challenged?