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Which programs do you mean specifically? We know the nature of the mass surveillance changed and expanded immensely after 9/11 in a major way, especially domes
by throwaway654329 4y ago
Which programs do you mean specifically?
We know the nature of the mass surveillance changed and expanded immensely after 9/11 in a major way, especially domestically.
- KennyBlanken 4y agoEvery piece of mail that passes through a high-speed sorting machine is scanned, front and back, OCR'd, and stored - as far as we know, indefinitely. That's how they deliver the "what's coming in your mailbox" images you can sign up to receive via email. Those images very often show the contents of the envelope clearly enough to recognize and even read the contents, which I'm quite positive isn't an accident. The USPS is literally reading and storing at least part of nearly every letter mailed in the United States. The USPS inspectors have a long history of being used as a morality enforcement agency, so yes, this should be of concern.
- greyface- 4y agoSome more details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_Isolation_Control_and_Tracking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_Isolation_Control_and_Tra...
- UpstandingUser 4y agoI've heard rumors that this was going on for a long time before it's been publicly acknowledged to have -- before OCR should have been able to handle that sort of variety of handwriting (reliably), let alone at scale. Like a snail-mail version of the NSA metadata collection program.
- nuclearnice1 4y agoWikipedia gives the impression the modern incarnation of photographing the US mail at scale began in 2001: “created in the aftermath of the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people, including two postal workers” [0] However research on photographs of mail was already taking place as far back as 1986 [1] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_Isolation_Control_and_Tracking https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_Isolation_Control_and_T... [1] https://cedar.buffalo.edu/papers/articles/Framework_Object_1988.pdf https://cedar.buffalo.edu/papers/articles/Framework_Object_1...
- throwaway654329 4y agoAgreed. It’s even worse: they also have the capability with the “mail covers” program to divert and tamper with mail. This happens to Americans on U.S. soil and I’m not just talking about suspects of terrorism.
- nuclearnice1 4y agoApparently not a pre 9/11 program, if Wikipedia is correct. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_Isolation_Control_and_Tracking https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_Isolation_Control_and_T...
- fanf2 4y agoTFA says: «The European Parliament already issued a 194-page "Report on the existence of a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications (ECHELON interception system)" in 2001» (July 2001, that is)
- throwaway654329 4y agoYes, Duncan Campbell’s report is legendary ( https://www.duncancampbell.org/menu/surveillance/echelon/IC2000_Report%20.pdf https://www.duncancampbell.org/menu/surveillance/echelon/IC2... ). This is the same guy who revealed the existence of GCHQ, and was arrested for this gift to the public. To clarify, I was asking them for their specific favorite programs as they didn’t indicate they only meant the ones in the blog post.
- michaelt 4y agoThere was the Clipper Chip [2] and the super-weak 40-bit 'export strength' cryptography [3] and the investigation of PGP author Phil Zimmerman for 'munitions export without a license' [4]. So there was a substantial effort to weaken cryptography, decades before 9/11. On the dragnet surveillance front, there have long been rumours of things like ECHELON [1] being used for mass surveillance and industrial espionage. And the simple fact US spies were interested in weakening export SSL rather implied, to a lot of people, they had easy access to the ciphertext. Of course, this was before so much stuff had moved online, so it was a different world. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_the_United_States#PC_era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy#Criminal_investigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy#Criminal_i...
- throwaway654329 4y ago> there was a substantial effort to weaken cryptography, decades before 9/11. Yes, agreed. Everyone should dig up their favorite programs and discuss them openly.