17 ms·

Declassified memos show FBI illegally shared spy data with private parties

225 points by shawndumas 9y ago

exabrial 9y ago
"This same declassified FISA ruling also held that Obama’s NSA conducted improper searches of “upstream” surveillance data on Americans for years" -FTA
killin_dan 9y ago
Oh lord, this is so shocking! /s Why is state intelligence even a thing? The military is capable of gathering all of the defensive intelligence that we need to protect ourselves. These state cowboys are out there making deals and cracking my WiFi to see what porn I'm watching in the name of counter-terror. Nonviolent threats do not necessitate or validate state intelligence imo.
- lightbyte 9y ago
  >Why is state intelligence even a thing? The military is capable of gathering all of the defensive intelligence that we need to protect ourselves. What are you saying? The military IS the state.
  - killin_dan 9y ago
    Not even close to the actual intelligence structure. The nsa doesn't have to answer to dod at ALL. Hurr durr the military is the state, you have no clue what you're talking about. I served for 6 years doing naval intelligence, sigint, and we never once heard from nsa, cia, fbi, etc. All our orders came from one of two generals in charge of our task force. Nuclear subs night have to work with intel agencies for technical purposes, but I never served on one.
    - narrowrail 9y ago
      I don't have the experience you do, but all of the big violent acts we have had over the last 20 years that I remember were perpetrated by US citizens (except 9/11). I agree that we should not shape our laws based on edge-case criteria (e.g comic book villains), but their has to be some cross-state law enforcement.
      - killin_dan 9y ago
        Then it should be a job for public servants and law enforcement, not a bunch of cowboys with unlimited xkeyscore power with nobody to answer to.
- SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
  Because the military isn't supposed to act domestically under normal circumstances, to prevent other kinds of abuses. So we have a federal police organization separate from the military, theoretically trained to obey the rules of domestic operations (eg, constitutional protections). And it is that police organization which handles intelligence about, eg, terrorism and foreign spies that originates inside of the country. There are some caveats about cooperation between different agencies, but I'm not going to try and defend those as they currently exist -- the domestic police shouldn't have access to some of our spy apparatus that doesn't obey domestic laws. However, there is a legitimate reason to have a domestic police force separate from the military, and a legitimate need for them to have some intelligence operations, to eg crack terrorist rings and track spies.
  - nickpsecurity 9y ago
    "So we have a federal police organization separate from the military, theoretically trained to obey the rules of domestic operations " Interesting enough, its power came from public relations, military and intelligence-style operations against its opponents under J Edgar Hoover. The story you told came as propaganda supporting that. I agree with separating military and law enforcement plus different procedures. It's just that the FBI was more like a foreign opponent shoring up power for itself, esp its leader, than a traditional LEO w/ federal power given for legitimate reasons. Then, it kept and expanded on that power despite how it achieved it in the first place.
- MrZongle2 9y ago
  "The military is capable of gathering all of the defensive intelligence that we need to protect ourselves." In theory, yes. In practice, no. Military intelligence focuses on identifying and tracking threats to military forces. During the Cold War, for instance, this meant having a decent understanding of Soviet doctrine, equipment, and tactics. Civilian intelligence agencies focused on government operations, infrastructure, and the like. Overlap existed (and still exists), but their focus was different. But let's say, for the sake of argument, that you wanted to close civilian-run intelligence agencies and turn it all over to the military. How do you get enough green-suiters to fill all those chairs previously filled by civilians and, more importantly, keep those chairs filled by qualified individuals? Enlistments end, and soldiers/airmen/sailors are generally given other duty assignments on a routine basis. That's institutional knowledge that walks right out the door, that doesn't necessarily happen if you've got civilian employees. What you may be saving budget-wise (military personnel being cheaper than civilian), you're spending on training and retention. Why would an E-6 with plenty of analysis and personnel management experience stick around when he or she could make a lot more in the private sector? And when all is said and done, does this really prevent the kind of abuses we're already seeing with civilian-run agencies?
  - killin_dan 9y ago
    I was in military intelligence. I am qualified to make the evaluation I made. Violent citizens can be dealt with through police channels and public servants, not lawless shadows in the dark in a giant data center somewhere. How many civilian whistleblowers have there been compared to how many enlisted whistleblowers there have been? I myself once spoke up about an unscrupulous sailor, but I went to an E-8 and asked him for his advice (hey, a friend of a friend is doing something wrong, blah blah) and he pointed me in the right direction to handle it without fucking this guy over, and the behavior was corrected and we all went happily about our missions, no harm, no foul. It's easy to do. Civilians don't have as much of a moral obligation to the rest of the country, they aren't ready to die to serve it. Your argument is basically, "well, private sector is going to do this shit anyways" but that's ridiculous to say that we should continue to be complicit in letting the NSA exist just because if we don't let them do it, someone else will. Citizen's hands are dirty for being complicit, and more people need to realize that a unified effort of enough magnitude could make HUGE cuts to state intel sector a reality, and we could pump that money into better police training, better resources for investigators and people who are invested in their communities rather than some asshole with an xkeyscore login and a name on a screen. I'm not saying state intel agencies don't contribute to ethical sources like infrastructure and civ eng stuff, of course they do, but it doesn't excuse all the other terrible things they do, and it'd be possible to redirect that talent and those resources into those areas through other agencies. DOT could offer special hire credits for intel workers with infra design experience, for example. That could be made possible by NOT running $10-digit datacenters full of civilian facebook messages with tax payer money.
- AlexCoventry 9y ago
  If you're relying on your Wifi encryption to protect your privacy, there are easier ways to spy on you.
djjdiud 9y ago
52 points 2 hours and this is on page two. Not a big surprise given how pro Government HN commenters can be.
- dang 9y ago
  That of course has little to do with it. You sound familiar enough with HN to know how many major threads about surveillance this site has hosted in the last 4 years. Probably hundreds of them by now. The original site was penalized the way all partisan/political sites are penalized here. We changed the URL to the article it pointed to.
- Shivetya 9y ago
  I would not claim HN readers are pro government, they are frighteningly pro government when those they do not agree with are in the cross hairs. this is exactly how the system gets to be so abusive. government, politicians and those in power, manipulate the system by playing off the fears, desires, and hatred, of the constituency. what those who frequent sites like this need to learn is to see that manipulation for what it is and stand firm against it regardless of who is the target. wrong is wrong, it does not become magically right if someone you don't like gets taken down. when they go we all go. the danger specific to FBI is that it has become way to political in recent years due in part with how the Department of Justice has. Organizations with powers such as these should have all political leanings minimized if not actively sought out and ended.
  - narrowrail 9y ago
    Sure, you have the tribal-ists that are anti-Trump or anti-Obama, but I find there are many civil libertarians on HN. In 2013, during the wake of the Snowden release there must have been 3-5 threads per day. I don't feel qualified to assess the inner workings of the FBI, but there appear to be no checks on this surveillance power with any teeth. We need to fix this immediately. It should not be a partisan issue.
- mindcrime 9y ago
  FWIW, there are 2 or 3 libertarians / voluntaryists / anarcho-capitalists / whatever left hanging around... so not everybody is pro-government here.
ak4g 9y ago
Here's the actual source document. https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/icotr/51117/2016_Cert_FISC_Memo_Opin_Order_Apr_2017.pdf https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/icotr/51117/2016_Cert_FI... It appears to be proper judicial oversight of national security operations. Unsurprisingly, having the rule of law applied even in the pursuit of those who seek to end it is smeared by those who would prefer to weaken the United States' national security and the institutions of liberal democracies the world over.
- letmein 9y ago
  You obviously didn't read the pdf. Your pro-NSA shilling is so flatly contradicted by what's in that document, that your opinions are total garbage. You should be so embarrassed at flaunting your ignorance in public that I recommend you delete your account. Let's examine the pdf page by page. NSA admits it broke its own rules and spied on Americans. This is no longer theoretical or a "smear" by "those who would prefer to weaken the US" (LOL I can't believe you said that). https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAukw6RU0AAuf-y.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAukw6RU0AAuf-y.jpg NSA admits that it has no idea how many ways its own analysts can access UPSTREAM in order to perform the abuse mention in my previous screencap. Think about that. UPSTREAM is over 10 years old. They had all the time is the world to lock it down, to shore up their defenses, to comply with some basic fucking rules that they set for themselves. They totally failed. What if $MEGA_BILLION Corporation out there had no idea how its employees were logging into the ERP as root and poking around whatever they felt like for a decade? What if it was a HIPAA business? What if it was one of the top 5 accounting firms? UPSTREAM is one of the most powerful cyberweapons ever built, and here NSA themselves tell the FISA judge that they lost control of it. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAumAKSUMAA8BIN.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAumAKSUMAA8BIN.jpg They first told FISA about these problems back in 2015. They told the judge in 2015 that they found abuses going back to 2011. Well here we are 3 years later and NSA is still telling FISA "we're working on it." What if the National Nuclear Security Agency lost a nuke 6 years ago? You'd think the world would stop immediately, top dogs would be severely punished and the most severe remedies would be applied to fix the problem. How is UPSTREAM any different? https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAumAKSUMAA8BIN.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAumAKSUMAA8BIN.jpg Right there NSA admits they have no way to audit UPSTREAM access. Remember when the Snowden leaks began? Remember The Clap and all the 17 Nazgul swearing up and down to everyone that it's not as bad as it seems, they have elaborate comprehensive compliance rules, random auditing, and log trails of everything. "Trust Us, we're the Good Guys, Marty!" Bullshit. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAulnpzUMAIgoAY.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAulnpzUMAIgoAY.jpg Right there NSA admits they spy on all Americans in order to put us all on a "Master Purge List", which they share with all the other 16 SpyTels and everyone who gets access to raw, unminimized UPSTREAM SIGINT. NSA says they have to spy on Americans in order to know which IP addresses, which traffic, which connections, which metadata, which Content belongs to Americans, in order for them to filter it out of UPSTREAM. This is the most perverted twisting of Surveillance State logic I can imagine. Like the saying in Vietnam "we had to destroy the village to save it." NSA had to spy on Americans in order to not spy on Americans. So what's your smarmy uninformed reaction to that one? Still best buddies with Deep State? How much do you trust FBI or the Dept of Agriculture with your UPSTREAM data to abide by the honor system and obey NSA's Master Purge List and not read your home Internet traffic, the websites you visit, your emails, texts, all of it? Remember when Snowden first leaked and all the "Infosec" poseurs and "Thot Leaders" (none of whom can code) gave TED talks and conference keynotes advising everyone to "HTTPS All The Things! 2FA Brah! E2E! Trust The Math!" then patted each other on the backs on stage when receiving their Humanitarian Awards for Fierce Intrepid Journalism, Speaking Truth to Power and all that circle jerking off to look like Heroes who stood up to the NSA and empowered the People and now everything's fine, let's go shopping Barbie, we defeated the Big Bad NSA. Bullshit. Right here NSA admits to FISA that FBI keeps all encrypted traffic forever. You used to use HTTP for most traffic, but now you use HTTPS and Signal and Tor and Keybase and you're a Good Cypherpunk cosplaying at "changing the world." If you ever believed that load of bull, you are the problem. Your idiocracy just led millions of non-coder sheep into allowing FBI to save everyone's encrypted traffic forever. At least when they spied on unencrypted traffic they would delete it after seeing that your lolcats are not steganographic messages to your ISIS sleeper cell about your next bomb plot. Now that everyone uses encryption, everyone is a suspect, forever. FBI says they only apply their retention deletion rules after the moment it is decrypted. Which could be 5 years from now, or 20. Great job Cypherpunk Beliebers, instead of directly challenging NSA on policy, you fucked us all with your ridiculous Larpfest about beating the Govt by using encryption. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAunKM5U0AA-zBV.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAunKM5U0AA-zBV.jpg The worst part about this declassified pdf is that NSA even admits to FISA that all of these rules and oversight and compliance are just a stage show and they don't have to tell FISA anything about what they do! Remember how John Yoo wrote the secret memoes that approved Bush to unleash NSA from rules and "Collect It All", memoes which we little people didn't even get to know existed just until 2015? The President's Inherent Constitutional Authority means his privacy to use his powers trumps every right you thought you had in the Bill of Rights. Free Speech? Nope, not for you. The President gets that. Unreasonable search and seizure? Nope, the President trumps you. It's not a "physical search", it's an "electronic search", which you don't know yet, but this is the most important Secret Law that you still don't know about. An "electronic search" is not a wiretap, so no rules apply to it going back to Nixon's 1969 Omnibus Crime Act which established the first rules for wiretaps. Quartering soldiers in your home? Wrong again bucko. The President can quarter the entire NSA virus arsenal on your home router and infect every computer you own and you can't do jack shit. And if you discover you have been hacked and if you talked about it, then you go to jail for leaking National Security secrets. General Warrants? The President can rendition, disappear and assassinate anyone he wants and you have no right to know, and even if you did know, you can't prove it effects you personally, so you have zero standing in any Court in the nation. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAuneIrUAAAQE2-.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAuneIrUAAAQE2-.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAumaaYUAAMAars.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAumaaYUAAMAars.jpg But wait it gets worse, if such a thing is possible. You think you know what UPSTREAM is? You read The Intercept, you respect Greenwald, and maybe you glanced at a few Snowden docs to see what the fuss was for yourself. Oh, NSA is wiretapping 100's of undersea cables, 10's of thousands of Satellite uplink stations, and 800,000 cell phone towers all over the planet, exfiltrating all of your data, so the entire Internet backbone is siphoned back to Bluffdale. You're probably a smart guy and you smirk and say to yourself "well of course, I always KNEW they did that, what's the big deal?" Well right there NSA says there is another source feeding into 702 that is NOT UPSTREAM. Do you get butterflies in your stomach when you realize for the past 10 years NSA has lied to FISA about what 702 and UPSTREAM even is? Why are they only now telling FISA there is more access to more data outside of UPSTREAM? "If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear"... isn't that what all the Good Germans and idiots say when they go along with whatever NSA is doing? Well if NSA had nothing to fear from FISA, why did they hide it? https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAuoTMBVYAA-5ZQ.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAuoTMBVYAA-5ZQ.jpg
dang 9y ago
Url changed from http://hotair.com/archives/2017/05/26/fbi-illegally-shared-surveillance-data-americans-unauthorized-third-parties-federal-contractors/ http://hotair.com/archives/2017/05/26/fbi-illegally-shared-s..., which points to this.
CWuestefeld 9y ago
One wonders: is there ANY point at which the Congress or even the Courts will step in and say that the abuse has been excessive? Is there really any threshold, and they're just waiting to see if we reach it? I'm really starting to believe that there's no limit at all. It's the proverbial frog in hot water.
- ypeterholmes 9y ago
  This is what a broken system looks like- the people are no longer represented, and corruption has no check or balance. Question is, what do we do about it? Side note: it would be foolish to think that these two things are not related. The motivations for removing our civil rights dovetail with the goals for keeping us under control.
  - matt4077 9y ago
    I really don't see how anybody is actually being kept under control, so far. Not disputing the overreach of many of these transgressions that have become public over the last years. But to suggest that they are actively used to influence US domestic politics and elections just doesn't seem plausible. Even if the theory is that the two parties act as a duopoly and protect their shared interests, which seems unlikely given they barely contain their mutual hatred in public–wouldn't they have used such subversion to avoid the current president?
    - _jal 9y ago
      > But to suggest that they are actively used to influence US domestic politics and elections just doesn't seem plausible Have you heard the name J. Edgar Hoover[1]? Have you read about the FBI's, ah, interactions, with MLK[2]? If so, on what grounds do you believe that such things don't happen today? With more subtlety, of course; things change, and the FBI has had a long time to refine technique. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.#FBI_and_King.27s_personal_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.#FBI_and...
    - 9y ago
Nursie 9y ago
Are we ready yet, to say that everything that's been predicted about this stuff has come true? Mass information gathering and mass classification of government information has led to, AFAICT, every accide tal breach and malicious actor scenario the "paranoid" privacy advocates said it would.
adrian1973 9y ago
'“If we require our agents to write a full justification every time think about if you wrote a full justification every time you used Google. Among other things, you would use Google a lot less,” a lawyer told the court.' Wow. Of course performing a search through such private information should be done with far more care than is taken in a typical Google search. Except to this guy.
micheljones 9y ago
HIS NAME WAS SETH RICH
redleggedfrog 9y ago
And...no one goes to prison.
Mendenhall 9y ago
Whats interesting and very telling is the medias coverage of this.
- narrowrail 9y ago
  Or lack there of. They're busy getting hysterical over the highly damning allegations of the day that is our current 'NightmareTV' political situation. Because the Obama admin was implicated in it, the coverage seems to be broad in Republican circles (i.e. Fox News). I wish us non-tribal people could form some common-sense, bipartisan group. Edit: added less ambiguous descriptors.
  - tehwebguy 9y ago
    No one outside HN and reddit ever seemed to give a shit about this stuff, even in the Bush years. All the noise I've tried to make about this and no one ever cares. The South Park episode about this was painfully dead on.
    - mercer 9y ago
      Which episode was that? I don't generally follow South Park but occasionally watch particular episodes.
      - tehwebguy 9y ago
        "Let Go, Let Gov" - S17E1 on Hulu (Plus?) here https://www.hulu.com/watch/538488 https://www.hulu.com/watch/538488
nstj 9y ago
I'd never heard of Circa (circa.com, the publisher of the story) before, so did a little digging. Apparently it's owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group [0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group
- tnakjtn9 9y ago
  Which it should be noted is a fairly politically conservative organization. [1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group#Political_views https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group#Polit...
- PKop 9y ago
  http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article152948259.html http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/articl... (Yes they are citing the circa article... but hey, they think it's legit enough to cover)
haltingthoughts 9y ago
Great, now we can sue them. Oh wait, there's that whole sovereign immunity and standing problem

225 points by shawndumas 9y ago

"This same declassified FISA ruling also held that Obama’s NSA conducted improper searches of “upstream” surveillance data on Americans for years" -FTA

killin_dan 9y ago

Oh lord, this is so shocking! /s Why is state intelligence even a thing? The military is capable of gathering all of the defensive intelligence that we need to protect ourselves. These state cowboys are out there making deals and cracking my WiFi to see what porn I'm watching in the name of counter-terror. Nonviolent threats do not necessitate or validate state intelligence imo.

lightbyte 9y ago
>Why is state intelligence even a thing? The military is capable of gathering all of the defensive intelligence that we need to protect ourselves. What are you saying? The military IS the state.
- killin_dan 9y ago
  Not even close to the actual intelligence structure. The nsa doesn't have to answer to dod at ALL. Hurr durr the military is the state, you have no clue what you're talking about. I served for 6 years doing naval intelligence, sigint, and we never once heard from nsa, cia, fbi, etc. All our orders came from one of two generals in charge of our task force. Nuclear subs night have to work with intel agencies for technical purposes, but I never served on one.
  - narrowrail 9y ago
    I don't have the experience you do, but all of the big violent acts we have had over the last 20 years that I remember were perpetrated by US citizens (except 9/11). I agree that we should not shape our laws based on edge-case criteria (e.g comic book villains), but their has to be some cross-state law enforcement.
    - killin_dan 9y ago
      Then it should be a job for public servants and law enforcement, not a bunch of cowboys with unlimited xkeyscore power with nobody to answer to.
SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
Because the military isn't supposed to act domestically under normal circumstances, to prevent other kinds of abuses. So we have a federal police organization separate from the military, theoretically trained to obey the rules of domestic operations (eg, constitutional protections). And it is that police organization which handles intelligence about, eg, terrorism and foreign spies that originates inside of the country. There are some caveats about cooperation between different agencies, but I'm not going to try and defend those as they currently exist -- the domestic police shouldn't have access to some of our spy apparatus that doesn't obey domestic laws. However, there is a legitimate reason to have a domestic police force separate from the military, and a legitimate need for them to have some intelligence operations, to eg crack terrorist rings and track spies.
- nickpsecurity 9y ago
  "So we have a federal police organization separate from the military, theoretically trained to obey the rules of domestic operations " Interesting enough, its power came from public relations, military and intelligence-style operations against its opponents under J Edgar Hoover. The story you told came as propaganda supporting that. I agree with separating military and law enforcement plus different procedures. It's just that the FBI was more like a foreign opponent shoring up power for itself, esp its leader, than a traditional LEO w/ federal power given for legitimate reasons. Then, it kept and expanded on that power despite how it achieved it in the first place.
MrZongle2 9y ago
"The military is capable of gathering all of the defensive intelligence that we need to protect ourselves." In theory, yes. In practice, no. Military intelligence focuses on identifying and tracking threats to military forces. During the Cold War, for instance, this meant having a decent understanding of Soviet doctrine, equipment, and tactics. Civilian intelligence agencies focused on government operations, infrastructure, and the like. Overlap existed (and still exists), but their focus was different. But let's say, for the sake of argument, that you wanted to close civilian-run intelligence agencies and turn it all over to the military. How do you get enough green-suiters to fill all those chairs previously filled by civilians and, more importantly, keep those chairs filled by qualified individuals? Enlistments end, and soldiers/airmen/sailors are generally given other duty assignments on a routine basis. That's institutional knowledge that walks right out the door, that doesn't necessarily happen if you've got civilian employees. What you may be saving budget-wise (military personnel being cheaper than civilian), you're spending on training and retention. Why would an E-6 with plenty of analysis and personnel management experience stick around when he or she could make a lot more in the private sector? And when all is said and done, does this really prevent the kind of abuses we're already seeing with civilian-run agencies?
- killin_dan 9y ago
  I was in military intelligence. I am qualified to make the evaluation I made. Violent citizens can be dealt with through police channels and public servants, not lawless shadows in the dark in a giant data center somewhere. How many civilian whistleblowers have there been compared to how many enlisted whistleblowers there have been? I myself once spoke up about an unscrupulous sailor, but I went to an E-8 and asked him for his advice (hey, a friend of a friend is doing something wrong, blah blah) and he pointed me in the right direction to handle it without fucking this guy over, and the behavior was corrected and we all went happily about our missions, no harm, no foul. It's easy to do. Civilians don't have as much of a moral obligation to the rest of the country, they aren't ready to die to serve it. Your argument is basically, "well, private sector is going to do this shit anyways" but that's ridiculous to say that we should continue to be complicit in letting the NSA exist just because if we don't let them do it, someone else will. Citizen's hands are dirty for being complicit, and more people need to realize that a unified effort of enough magnitude could make HUGE cuts to state intel sector a reality, and we could pump that money into better police training, better resources for investigators and people who are invested in their communities rather than some asshole with an xkeyscore login and a name on a screen. I'm not saying state intel agencies don't contribute to ethical sources like infrastructure and civ eng stuff, of course they do, but it doesn't excuse all the other terrible things they do, and it'd be possible to redirect that talent and those resources into those areas through other agencies. DOT could offer special hire credits for intel workers with infra design experience, for example. That could be made possible by NOT running $10-digit datacenters full of civilian facebook messages with tax payer money.
AlexCoventry 9y ago
If you're relying on your Wifi encryption to protect your privacy, there are easier ways to spy on you.

djjdiud 9y ago

52 points 2 hours and this is on page two. Not a big surprise given how pro Government HN commenters can be.

dang 9y ago
That of course has little to do with it. You sound familiar enough with HN to know how many major threads about surveillance this site has hosted in the last 4 years. Probably hundreds of them by now. The original site was penalized the way all partisan/political sites are penalized here. We changed the URL to the article it pointed to.
Shivetya 9y ago
I would not claim HN readers are pro government, they are frighteningly pro government when those they do not agree with are in the cross hairs. this is exactly how the system gets to be so abusive. government, politicians and those in power, manipulate the system by playing off the fears, desires, and hatred, of the constituency. what those who frequent sites like this need to learn is to see that manipulation for what it is and stand firm against it regardless of who is the target. wrong is wrong, it does not become magically right if someone you don't like gets taken down. when they go we all go. the danger specific to FBI is that it has become way to political in recent years due in part with how the Department of Justice has. Organizations with powers such as these should have all political leanings minimized if not actively sought out and ended.
- narrowrail 9y ago
  Sure, you have the tribal-ists that are anti-Trump or anti-Obama, but I find there are many civil libertarians on HN. In 2013, during the wake of the Snowden release there must have been 3-5 threads per day. I don't feel qualified to assess the inner workings of the FBI, but there appear to be no checks on this surveillance power with any teeth. We need to fix this immediately. It should not be a partisan issue.
mindcrime 9y ago
FWIW, there are 2 or 3 libertarians / voluntaryists / anarcho-capitalists / whatever left hanging around... so not everybody is pro-government here.

ak4g 9y ago

Here's the actual source document. https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/icotr/51117/2016_Cert_FISC_Memo_Opin_Order_Apr_2017.pdf https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/icotr/51117/2016_Cert_FI... It appears to be proper judicial oversight of national security operations. Unsurprisingly, having the rule of law applied even in the pursuit of those who seek to end it is smeared by those who would prefer to weaken the United States' national security and the institutions of liberal democracies the world over.

letmein 9y ago
You obviously didn't read the pdf. Your pro-NSA shilling is so flatly contradicted by what's in that document, that your opinions are total garbage. You should be so embarrassed at flaunting your ignorance in public that I recommend you delete your account. Let's examine the pdf page by page. NSA admits it broke its own rules and spied on Americans. This is no longer theoretical or a "smear" by "those who would prefer to weaken the US" (LOL I can't believe you said that). https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAukw6RU0AAuf-y.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAukw6RU0AAuf-y.jpg NSA admits that it has no idea how many ways its own analysts can access UPSTREAM in order to perform the abuse mention in my previous screencap. Think about that. UPSTREAM is over 10 years old. They had all the time is the world to lock it down, to shore up their defenses, to comply with some basic fucking rules that they set for themselves. They totally failed. What if $MEGA_BILLION Corporation out there had no idea how its employees were logging into the ERP as root and poking around whatever they felt like for a decade? What if it was a HIPAA business? What if it was one of the top 5 accounting firms? UPSTREAM is one of the most powerful cyberweapons ever built, and here NSA themselves tell the FISA judge that they lost control of it. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAumAKSUMAA8BIN.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAumAKSUMAA8BIN.jpg They first told FISA about these problems back in 2015. They told the judge in 2015 that they found abuses going back to 2011. Well here we are 3 years later and NSA is still telling FISA "we're working on it." What if the National Nuclear Security Agency lost a nuke 6 years ago? You'd think the world would stop immediately, top dogs would be severely punished and the most severe remedies would be applied to fix the problem. How is UPSTREAM any different? https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAumAKSUMAA8BIN.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAumAKSUMAA8BIN.jpg Right there NSA admits they have no way to audit UPSTREAM access. Remember when the Snowden leaks began? Remember The Clap and all the 17 Nazgul swearing up and down to everyone that it's not as bad as it seems, they have elaborate comprehensive compliance rules, random auditing, and log trails of everything. "Trust Us, we're the Good Guys, Marty!" Bullshit. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAulnpzUMAIgoAY.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAulnpzUMAIgoAY.jpg Right there NSA admits they spy on all Americans in order to put us all on a "Master Purge List", which they share with all the other 16 SpyTels and everyone who gets access to raw, unminimized UPSTREAM SIGINT. NSA says they have to spy on Americans in order to know which IP addresses, which traffic, which connections, which metadata, which Content belongs to Americans, in order for them to filter it out of UPSTREAM. This is the most perverted twisting of Surveillance State logic I can imagine. Like the saying in Vietnam "we had to destroy the village to save it." NSA had to spy on Americans in order to not spy on Americans. So what's your smarmy uninformed reaction to that one? Still best buddies with Deep State? How much do you trust FBI or the Dept of Agriculture with your UPSTREAM data to abide by the honor system and obey NSA's Master Purge List and not read your home Internet traffic, the websites you visit, your emails, texts, all of it? Remember when Snowden first leaked and all the "Infosec" poseurs and "Thot Leaders" (none of whom can code) gave TED talks and conference keynotes advising everyone to "HTTPS All The Things! 2FA Brah! E2E! Trust The Math!" then patted each other on the backs on stage when receiving their Humanitarian Awards for Fierce Intrepid Journalism, Speaking Truth to Power and all that circle jerking off to look like Heroes who stood up to the NSA and empowered the People and now everything's fine, let's go shopping Barbie, we defeated the Big Bad NSA. Bullshit. Right here NSA admits to FISA that FBI keeps all encrypted traffic forever. You used to use HTTP for most traffic, but now you use HTTPS and Signal and Tor and Keybase and you're a Good Cypherpunk cosplaying at "changing the world." If you ever believed that load of bull, you are the problem. Your idiocracy just led millions of non-coder sheep into allowing FBI to save everyone's encrypted traffic forever. At least when they spied on unencrypted traffic they would delete it after seeing that your lolcats are not steganographic messages to your ISIS sleeper cell about your next bomb plot. Now that everyone uses encryption, everyone is a suspect, forever. FBI says they only apply their retention deletion rules after the moment it is decrypted. Which could be 5 years from now, or 20. Great job Cypherpunk Beliebers, instead of directly challenging NSA on policy, you fucked us all with your ridiculous Larpfest about beating the Govt by using encryption. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAunKM5U0AA-zBV.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAunKM5U0AA-zBV.jpg The worst part about this declassified pdf is that NSA even admits to FISA that all of these rules and oversight and compliance are just a stage show and they don't have to tell FISA anything about what they do! Remember how John Yoo wrote the secret memoes that approved Bush to unleash NSA from rules and "Collect It All", memoes which we little people didn't even get to know existed just until 2015? The President's Inherent Constitutional Authority means his privacy to use his powers trumps every right you thought you had in the Bill of Rights. Free Speech? Nope, not for you. The President gets that. Unreasonable search and seizure? Nope, the President trumps you. It's not a "physical search", it's an "electronic search", which you don't know yet, but this is the most important Secret Law that you still don't know about. An "electronic search" is not a wiretap, so no rules apply to it going back to Nixon's 1969 Omnibus Crime Act which established the first rules for wiretaps. Quartering soldiers in your home? Wrong again bucko. The President can quarter the entire NSA virus arsenal on your home router and infect every computer you own and you can't do jack shit. And if you discover you have been hacked and if you talked about it, then you go to jail for leaking National Security secrets. General Warrants? The President can rendition, disappear and assassinate anyone he wants and you have no right to know, and even if you did know, you can't prove it effects you personally, so you have zero standing in any Court in the nation. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAuneIrUAAAQE2-.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAuneIrUAAAQE2-.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAumaaYUAAMAars.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAumaaYUAAMAars.jpg But wait it gets worse, if such a thing is possible. You think you know what UPSTREAM is? You read The Intercept, you respect Greenwald, and maybe you glanced at a few Snowden docs to see what the fuss was for yourself. Oh, NSA is wiretapping 100's of undersea cables, 10's of thousands of Satellite uplink stations, and 800,000 cell phone towers all over the planet, exfiltrating all of your data, so the entire Internet backbone is siphoned back to Bluffdale. You're probably a smart guy and you smirk and say to yourself "well of course, I always KNEW they did that, what's the big deal?" Well right there NSA says there is another source feeding into 702 that is NOT UPSTREAM. Do you get butterflies in your stomach when you realize for the past 10 years NSA has lied to FISA about what 702 and UPSTREAM even is? Why are they only now telling FISA there is more access to more data outside of UPSTREAM? "If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear"... isn't that what all the Good Germans and idiots say when they go along with whatever NSA is doing? Well if NSA had nothing to fear from FISA, why did they hide it? https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAuoTMBVYAA-5ZQ.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAuoTMBVYAA-5ZQ.jpg

dang 9y ago

Url changed from http://hotair.com/archives/2017/05/26/fbi-illegally-shared-surveillance-data-americans-unauthorized-third-parties-federal-contractors/ http://hotair.com/archives/2017/05/26/fbi-illegally-shared-s..., which points to this.

CWuestefeld 9y ago

One wonders: is there ANY point at which the Congress or even the Courts will step in and say that the abuse has been excessive? Is there really any threshold, and they're just waiting to see if we reach it? I'm really starting to believe that there's no limit at all. It's the proverbial frog in hot water.

ypeterholmes 9y ago
This is what a broken system looks like- the people are no longer represented, and corruption has no check or balance. Question is, what do we do about it? Side note: it would be foolish to think that these two things are not related. The motivations for removing our civil rights dovetail with the goals for keeping us under control.
- matt4077 9y ago
  I really don't see how anybody is actually being kept under control, so far. Not disputing the overreach of many of these transgressions that have become public over the last years. But to suggest that they are actively used to influence US domestic politics and elections just doesn't seem plausible. Even if the theory is that the two parties act as a duopoly and protect their shared interests, which seems unlikely given they barely contain their mutual hatred in public–wouldn't they have used such subversion to avoid the current president?
  - _jal 9y ago
    > But to suggest that they are actively used to influence US domestic politics and elections just doesn't seem plausible Have you heard the name J. Edgar Hoover[1]? Have you read about the FBI's, ah, interactions, with MLK[2]? If so, on what grounds do you believe that such things don't happen today? With more subtlety, of course; things change, and the FBI has had a long time to refine technique. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.#FBI_and_King.27s_personal_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.#FBI_and...
  - 9y ago

Nursie 9y ago

Are we ready yet, to say that everything that's been predicted about this stuff has come true? Mass information gathering and mass classification of government information has led to, AFAICT, every accide tal breach and malicious actor scenario the "paranoid" privacy advocates said it would.

adrian1973 9y ago

'“If we require our agents to write a full justification every time think about if you wrote a full justification every time you used Google. Among other things, you would use Google a lot less,” a lawyer told the court.' Wow. Of course performing a search through such private information should be done with far more care than is taken in a typical Google search. Except to this guy.

micheljones 9y ago

HIS NAME WAS SETH RICH

redleggedfrog 9y ago

And...no one goes to prison.

Mendenhall 9y ago

Whats interesting and very telling is the medias coverage of this.

narrowrail 9y ago
Or lack there of. They're busy getting hysterical over the highly damning allegations of the day that is our current 'NightmareTV' political situation. Because the Obama admin was implicated in it, the coverage seems to be broad in Republican circles (i.e. Fox News). I wish us non-tribal people could form some common-sense, bipartisan group. Edit: added less ambiguous descriptors.
- tehwebguy 9y ago
  No one outside HN and reddit ever seemed to give a shit about this stuff, even in the Bush years. All the noise I've tried to make about this and no one ever cares. The South Park episode about this was painfully dead on.
  - mercer 9y ago
    Which episode was that? I don't generally follow South Park but occasionally watch particular episodes.
    - tehwebguy 9y ago
      "Let Go, Let Gov" - S17E1 on Hulu (Plus?) here https://www.hulu.com/watch/538488 https://www.hulu.com/watch/538488

nstj 9y ago

I'd never heard of Circa (circa.com, the publisher of the story) before, so did a little digging. Apparently it's owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group [0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group

tnakjtn9 9y ago
Which it should be noted is a fairly politically conservative organization. [1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group#Political_views https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group#Polit...
PKop 9y ago
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article152948259.html http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/articl... (Yes they are citing the circa article... but hey, they think it's legit enough to cover)

haltingthoughts 9y ago

Great, now we can sue them. Oh wait, there's that whole sovereign immunity and standing problem