16 ms·

Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

340 points by gasull 14y ago

rorrr 14y ago
Well of course they do. I would be really surprised if they didn't. That's why we should ENCRYPT EVERYTHING possible. Use HTTPS as much as you can.
- WestCoastJustin 14y ago
  I have a question about this -- maybe I'm ignorant. But using https without self-signed keys actually allows the government to peer into your communications, doesn't it? We are worried about third parties stealing your data between you and your bank for example. A bank might be a bad example as they probably already have access to their databases for compliance reasons. Can't the US government ask for the keys of these US based certificate authorities? My point being is that https is probably equivalent to plain text when it comes to government surveillance.
  - gojomo 14y ago
    Having the Certificate Authority private keys would allow an attacker to sign certificates allowing the impersonation of any entity... but it does not make other sessions, boostrapped from other legitimate certificates, transparent to passive eavesdropping. So no, government pressure on CAs wouldn't make all https like plaintext, but it does make active impersonation possible. Some initiatives like the 'SSL Observatory' or the EFF's 'Sovereign Keys' proposal could make it possible for clients to notice when a fishy new certificate is introduced for a previously-known identity -- much like the 'key has changed' warnings you may have seen when SSHing to a host whose keys have changed since your last session.
  - rictic 14y ago
    It's not quite that bad. Even with a compromised certificate authority, it's not an invisible attack to do a man in the middle and inject their own certificate. Someone knowledgable could notice this discrepancy and raise a stink. Furthermore, Chrome (and soon Firefox) ships some known certificates for privacy important widely used sites (e.g. the major webmail services, torproject, etc) which prevents even this attack. This defense has already caught Iran using a compromised CA. (I'm not a cryptographer though, so please correct me if I'm wrong.)
    - mkjones 14y ago
      I think it's only a handful of certificats that are pinned (they call it "HSTS preloading" here: http://www.imperialviolet.org/2011/05/04/pinning.html http://www.imperialviolet.org/2011/05/04/pinning.html). While this does include gmail and some other Google properties, it doesn't seem to include any other major webmail services. Check out http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/net/base/transport_security_state_static.json?view=markup http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/net/base/tra... for the list of what's in there (linked to indirectly from http://dev.chromium.org/sts http://dev.chromium.org/sts).
      - rictic 14y ago
        Ah dang, for some reason I thought that hotmail and y!mail were in there too. It looks like there's a commitment (which CAs you'll allow to sign your cert) that's needed from the site owner for HSTS to work. I hope they get in there one way or another soon.
  - agwa 14y ago
    No, it's not equivalent to plain text. If they had access to certificate authority keys (or the ability to compel CAs to issue certificates on demand), they would still need to pull off an active man-in-the-middle attack to be able to decrypt communications. Practically speaking, it seems like this would be harder to accomplish on an Internet scale than simply intercepting communications. So using HTTPS as much as possible probably helps, though you're correct that if you want to be completely certain your communications are secure you should not trust the certificate authorities.
  - tlrobinson 14y ago
    They don't even need to ask for the keys. Pretty much every OS/browser comes with root CAs belonging to the U.S. government (on OS X I see "DoD Root CA 2" and "DoD CLASS 3 Root CA", see also http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4415 http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4415). As I understand it, if they wanted to, they could MITM any HTTPS connection by forging a certificate using their root CAs. This is why people were upset when a root CA for some Chinese government agency was added to certain browsers. We don't trust the Chinese government, but we do trust the US government, I guess. Of course, if they regularly forged certificates someone would notice. Right? Which begs the question, how would we notice? If you diligently check certificates for sites you visit you might happen to notice facebook.com's CA suddenly changes from Verisign to the U.S. DoD. Is there a better way? How can we automatically check that the certificates we get are legitimate? At a minimum it would be nice if there was a warning when a cert doesn't match a previously seen one (similar to SSH) I feel like a "web of trust" needs to be layered on top of the certificate authorities to really solve this problem. If 10 of my friends have seen the same certificate for a given website I'm inclined to believe it's legitimate. I'm also likely to trust certain organizations (EFF, etc) Of course it's also a user interface issue. The average user wouldn't understand a single sentence I wrote above.
    - walexander 14y ago
      Just remove DoD certs from your trust list if you don't want to accept them. This might not be a laymen solution, but it's a very simple procedure in most browsers.
    - gasull 14y ago
      Try Perspectives addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/perspectives/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/perspectives/
      - chokma 14y ago
        And Certificate Patrol: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/certificate-patrol/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/certificate-p...
- carsongross 14y ago
  That's bringing a knife to a tank fight, my man. Better, IMO, to just assume they read and listen to everything digital, and work around it.
  - ars 14y ago
    Remember "BEGIN ECHELON BLOCK"? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/05/31/what_are_those_words/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/05/31/what_are_those_words... http://ben.reser.org/echelon/ http://ben.reser.org/echelon/ http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:drmJsXDozE4J:ben.reser.org/echelon/echelonarmor-cgi.pl+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:drmJsXD...
- ams6110 14y ago
  The problem with encryption is that the data still have to be in the clear at the endpoints to be useful. That's where it'll be nabbed, by surreptitious keyloggers, screen scrapers, filesystem scanners, etc. Decrypting data in transit is still a very difficult if not impossible proposition as far as I know.
waterlesscloud 14y ago
I'm sure these would never be used for political gain.
bluestix 14y ago
Of course they do. The job of the National Slavery Agency is to keep track of all the slaves. They keep the plantation running smoothly.
snambi 14y ago
Sure, they have all data about someone. But, what is the use? It is like searching a needle in a haystack.
- carsongross 14y ago
  Until you piss off or catch the eye of someone with access to it. Then you'll find out just how quickly your particular needle can be found in that haystack.
- tikhonj 14y ago
  Or like searching for a web page on the internet! Not to mention all the fun machine learning and analysis that could be done.
- mcantelon 14y ago
  The NSA likely has more advanced tech than we do.
- dredmorbius 14y ago
  ""If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." - Cardinal Richelieu
  - dman 14y ago
    What if every sentence began with - "Hypothetically speaking"
    - dredmorbius 14y ago
      Hypothetically speaking, I think the good Cardinal would say "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."
  - re_todd 14y ago
    I think my ex-girlfriend studied under this Richelieu guy.
- 14y ago
waiwai933 14y ago
Ethics, morality and legality aside, I'd be really curious to see what information is actually stored in these "dossiers", besides (presumably) one's name, address, and other details that other branches of the government legitimately have.
- carsongross 14y ago
  Oh, don't worry: ethics, morality and legality are being very much set aside.
  - waiwai933 14y ago
    Well, yes, I know that. ;) I meant that ethically, morally, and legally, I wouldn't want to know what they have (the NSA knowing is enough; better to destroy it than make it all public, probably), but I'm curious nonetheless.
- tikhonj 14y ago
  Is that the sort of thing you can ask for with a FOIA request? If you have some spare time it might be worth trying--it certainly couldn't hurt. I'm not familiar enough with the actual procedure to say if it would be particularly difficult or not.
  - waiwai933 14y ago
    Not really, unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, if one is speaking practically and not philosophically, since I'd rather terrorists not know what intelligence agencies have on them). FOIA has an extensive list of exemptions, and pretty much anything relating to do with national security is exempt from FOIA requests. And well, it's called the National Security Agency for a reason; even though the information probably isn't legitimately related to national security, can you prove that it isn't, keeping in mind that you can't see it until you've proven that it's not?
  - jberryman 14y ago
    If you try you will get a form letter basically saying that spying on Americans is not in the NSA charter, so they don't have any info on you. Tried it in 2005-ish myself.
smokeyj 14y ago
I wonder if MLK would exist if this were around 50 years ago.
- mjwalshe 14y ago
  the FBI collected a lot of dirt on MLK - Hoover was obsesed
saraid216 14y ago
Out of curiosity, how many other people had the gut reaction of, "Awesome! I have a dossier!"
- dredmorbius 14y ago
  Are my eyes really brown?
- javert 14y ago
  I would like to ask them my hair color, because it's a weird color and I honestly don't know what it is.
bobsy 14y ago
If this is true doesn't it mean that Bin Laden won the war on terror? Every time I go to the airport I think this. Those full body scanners? Thanks to Bin Laden, now you practically get strip searched for every flight. You have to take off your shoes. You cannot take drinks on a plane. You then have everyone on edge no matter where you go. You and a friend play CounterStrike. You get on the bus and start talking about good locations to plant the bomb. You will probably be wrestled to the floor by some over-zealous commuter. It doesn't surprise me if this is true. The US attitude to privacy and civil rights have been becoming more like China's every year since 2001.
- conradfr 14y ago
  The U.S (or the West) did not change its politics in the Middle-East and is still not an Islamic country so I don't think Bin Laden won. Now maybe the U.S citizens lost ...
  - cstavish 14y ago
    It's true that the US hasn't changed its Middle-East policies (although I'd argue that's the only way to eradicate Islamic terrorism), but it's important to note that bin Laden did not target the US due to its secularism, but for its foreign policy. He even said that if he wanted to attack a country just for being secular, he'd have attacked Sweden.
  - toyg 14y ago
    I don't think Bin Laden ever wanted to "convert" his "enemies", but rather to destroy or frighten them. Considering the amount of money thrown into the Afghan pit (which still is a factor affecting the ability of Western countries to sustain periods of economic turmoil, and even to replenish their own arsenals -- see UK defence cuts) and the hysteric approach to public spaces since 2001, I'd say he's been fairly successful in his endeavours. Which is not that surprising, to be fair. After all, he was originally trained by the CIA, and was backed by Saudi money and the Pakistani military.
- biomechanica 14y ago
  What I think it actually means is this: It has given the United States an excuse to do that they are doing to its people. The whole system is based upon fear, which is exactly what the so called "terrorists" wanted to do. The government(s) of this world don't particularly enjoy the thought of its population having to ability to think for themselves. How can they (temporarily) suspend this? Fear.
hooande 14y ago
About ten years ago, the NSA got direct access to every phone call, text and email sent via AT&T from the west coast to asia. Every. Single. Message. Set up shop next to the servers and just copied all of the data coming across. I think that by "dossiers" this guy meant "social network information from communication logs". They can start with your number (any number) and see who communicates with it. And then see who communicates with those people, and so on until they find a link to a terrorist or whatever. If you're doing something that the government doesn't want you to do, use a burner phone. And drive 30 minutes from your home, and use a proxy server to connect to the internet. Any federal agent can get a record of every call you make with a boilerplate warrant. The NSA can dig up the full text of all of your conversations with a tech support ticket. Welcome to 2012. If it makes you feel any better, facebook has a similar level of information about you and they haven't done much harm with it.
- nl 14y ago
  And drive 30 minutes from your home, and use a proxy server to connect to the internet I'd love to hear some details of what you are proposing here. Because right now it doesn't sound like you know what you are talking about. If it makes you feel any better, facebook has a similar level of information about you and they haven't done much harm with it. Um. No they don't.
  - zcid 14y ago
    Your location can be triangulated even if you don't use a cell phone registered to yourself. Using a VPN, you reduce the chances that your internet use will be traced back to you. Facebook has a staggering amount of personal information about most of their users. While not necessarily on the same level as personal phone calls, it should still be a concern of anyone that uses social networks. Try to actually make a case next time you post. Saying "Nuh uh, nuh uh" over and over makes you look like an ass.
    - nl 14y ago
      Your location can be triangulated even if you don't use a cell phone registered to yourself. My point exactly. Using a VPN, you reduce the chances that your internet use will be traced back to you. That has some truth in it, but isn't what the OP is proposing. Try to actually make a case next time you post. Fair enough. It's worth noting that when I wrote this, the OP was the highest voted comment on this thread. The NSA has complete financial history of everyone who submits tax returns or uses a credit card, logs of every phone call and email message, and it seems likely they have location data from cell phone providers as well. In the UK their agencies track car movements via registration plates, and it would be surprising if the NSA didn't have similar capabilities. Saying that is the same as what Facebook has is misleading - it makes the NSA seem like they aren't doing anything extraordinary, and it makes Facebook seem like they are doing things they don't have the right to do.
gregcmartin 14y ago
Yeah it's called Facebook
- mtgx 14y ago
  You're probably not too far from the truth: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57471570-93/facebook-scans-chats-and-posts-for-criminal-activity/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57471570-93/facebook-scans-...
- david927 14y ago
  CIA's Facebook Program Dramatically Cuts Agency's Costs [The Onion]: http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-cut-agencys-cos,19753 http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatic...
mariuolo 14y ago
Anyone surprised?
bfung 14y ago
If this were true, we wouldn't really need to conduct the census (http://www.census.gov/ http://www.census.gov/), right? Perhaps the NSA has tools like pipl or spokeo to build dossiers, but not that it has every person on file, right now.
mjwalshe 14y ago
Depends what you mean by dossier I am sure the NSA has a definative list of all Us residents names and SSN's but thats not a dossier in the same way That the FBI under hover had about anyone even sligtly progressive. Id be more worried by the fact the in the USA its common practice to register with the govenment what political party you support.
- saryant 14y ago
  Registering your political party is a state thing, not federal. Nor does every state require it. My state, Texas, does not. You can see all the information asked for when registering to vote here: https://webservices.sos.state.tx.us/vrapp/index.asp https://webservices.sos.state.tx.us/vrapp/index.asp
  - mjwalshe 14y ago
    So I am registering with "local" govenment FFS that is even worse at least at the national level there is some oversight and Journalists holding teh executive to account.
    - saryant 14y ago
      I have a pretty dim outlook on the state of civil rights in this country but I think you're going too far. States which ask for this information do so in order to give you your party's ballot during primary elections. I think you're reading too much into this one. The fact that not every state asks should also point to a lack of any grand conspiriacy here.
      - politician 14y ago
        Statistically speaking, you give up your right to vote anonymously by registering your political party with the state in return for the convenience of getting one of two ballots instead of both. "There are two ballots here which one am I interested in again? Better ask the State which one I registered for.." Seems like a stretch.
chao- 14y ago
Speaking as a youngin' who grew up with the internet (US citizen and just now 24), I've never expected any privacy for as long as I can remember. Of any sort. Only an odd sense of my insignificance providing a minor smokescreen. I accept that if I ever obtained any real notoriety, all would be laid bare in due course. When I read articles like this, I don't wonder if anyone is surprised by these things anymore. I would hope it's understood. My mind instead turns to these questions: "Who out there expects some eventual return of privacy?" and "What degree of effort do they expect it to require, relative to what they gain?" Surely at some point it is not worth the time/effort to reform "the system", and personal mitigation strategies are more feasible. I rarely find myself in the role of doomsayer, but I've never lived in a world where the word "privacy" didn't already have an implicit asterisk following it. So my stance doesn't feel apocalyptic, it just feels like the way the world has always been.
- javert 14y ago
  I'm probably about a year and a half older than you, a US citizen, and I don't feel that way at all. The government used to not be spying on me. Then, in the last decade, the chance that it would started to rise. In the last 5 years, it became likely. Now, with this story, if it's true, we know that it's almost certainly spying on me. (And to clarify, I'm not a criminal or anything remotely criminal in any way, shape or form.) Right now, spying on me. Now, it may just be recording the info and looking for triggers. Wonder if this post will be a trigger. It's definitely possible. So there has been a massive ramp-up in unethical electronic spying, and unlike you, I have (for some reason) been alert to it.
  - chao- 14y ago
    The government used to not be spying on me... In the last 5 years, it became likely. I'm going to pick on the 5 years & 10 years estimate, if you don't mind. If no one was spying on you then, it was because you were a child or teenager, and presumably not very interesting. If you were someone of major consequence five years ago (2007, to keep things in perspective), or even a decade ago (2002), you'd surely have at least a minor notation, blurb or profile somewhere. If our government wasted time and money tracking John Lennon in the 60's, it's hard to imagine that by 2007 there wasn't at least cursory analysis available about anyone with a job and credit card. Never mind anyone who attended college/university, purchased car insurance or signed up for a grocery store rewards card. Let me be clear: I'm not saying the government is specifically tracking on your grocery bill. Instead, you're letting someone else do so, and the data is simply available upon request from most reasonable actors. Further temporal perspective: Google had long gone public by 2007, and people were long crying foul on privacy with respect to it. So the government may not have even been the first to open some unbeknownst profile on you. It may have just been some data aggregator who put your SSN, DoB and address up for sale after your general practitioner's secretary got some malware (I'm being hypothetical of course, but hopefully you understand the premise). A counterpoint to my argument is that this is the government, not corporation X or shady data reseller Y. I concede that there is a different feeling associated with the government spying on you (with the assumption of legality), and some third-party actor who maybe, some day, could be brought to trial (we hope?). Yet the practical result is the same: there are people building profiles of us which we will never see, and judging how best to relate to us based on them. They have been doing it for a lot longer than five years, and I don't see the trend reversing any time soon. It doesn't really freak me out, either. In a way, it just makes sense.
fierarul 14y ago
The NSA probably has "dossiers" on the whole world. For example, in order to get an US Visa from the embassy they take your fingerprints. Your visa form also has a lot of data. At least that has to be centralized somewhere. Add your online accounts to the mix and it's safe to say they have enough info about everybody.
jayfuerstenberg 14y ago
Might I suggest having some fun with one's dossier? Like randomly doing the exact opposite of what you would ordinarily do on a daily basis. Here are some ideas... 1. Take the bus instead of driving your car. 2. Buy a pack of cigarettes if you're not a smoker. 3. Buy magazines you would never normally buy. 4. Attend a political meeting of the party you typically oppose. 5. Buy vegetarian food for a week if you're a meat eater. etc... If the dossier is dry and not a useful tool for profiling you then you don't have anything to worry about. If on the other hand the dossier is more sinister in nature you can dilute its usefulness by being a different person every now and then to throw it off track.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- JonnieCache 14y ago
  Or you could just do all those things anyway, because it will improve your life. Maybe not the cigarettes.
- Mesmoria 14y ago
  You would have to do this enough for it to be statistically significant otherwise it probably just averaged away. OTOH....once might be seen as smoke-screening, making you more suspicious.
- law 14y ago
  Apple has a patent on this.[1] [1] http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=8205265.PN.&OS=PN/8205265&RS=PN/8205265 http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...
  - jayfuerstenberg 14y ago
    I wonder if the wiping techniques used to securely erase data from government HDDs would count as prior art here.
keithpeter 14y ago
"Domestically, they're pulling together all the data about virtually every U.S. citizen in the country and assembling that information, building communities that you have relationships with, and knowledge about you; what your activities are; what you're doing." A plot for a novel: NSA operative comes across an identity with no links to any other identity, no social network history. Just an isolated node... curious, she starts investigating and finds all avenues blocked, and her boss asks her to stop. Intrigued, Agent Hernandez continues on her own time...
- freehunter 14y ago
  Mulder, is this another X file?
- lubujackson 14y ago
  Surprise ending, it is a "Forever Alone" guy.
minikomi 14y ago
Where's little bobby tables when you need him?
alan_cx 14y ago
Remember people, its you who are the real enemy of the state. Its you they fear more than anything else.
kitsune_ 14y ago
Switzerland had a huge surveillance scandal during the 80's. It was named "Fichenskandal" or in English, "Secret files scandal". More than 700'000 people or organizations were targeted, usually people on the left: unions, feminists, environmentalists etc. A friend of my father runs an independent book store and he requested his files after the scandal was made public. He received a stack of paper over 10 inches high. The government pretty much had every part of his life on file. From mundane stuff to him participating in demonstrations (protesting for women's suffrage * , environmental issues). This is a guy who was never arrested in his life. Yet they had a record of pretty much everything. This was in a time with limited technological capabilities. In the 70's, the police probably took photographs of public gatherings and sent them to a special group which in turn had to identify the participants with the help of a magnifying glass and reference files. Nowadays with have facial recognition techniques, cameras everywhere. Yes, this is some Public Enemy No. 1 shit, but it's a good time to be paranoid. You can be sure that every form of electronic communication is in some form or another under surveillance by governments around the globe. * Switzerland finally allowed women to vote in... drum roll... 1971.
- Iv 14y ago
  I wanted to work for Cyc Corp. several years ago. They have an interesting software and before Watson, maybe the closest thing to AI that there is out there. IT took me some time to understand why it was so hard to be a candidate as a non-US citizen : it was later disclosed that they were participants in the Total Information Awareness project. Its purported goal was to have a ten-pages file on every human on the planet. It is not clear that it has been discontinued.
- mtgx 14y ago
  Is there a good reason for any country to have spies at all, especially for internal matters? I feel that spying on other countries (let alone on own citizens) shouldn't exist at all, but it has become accepted by societies as something that the Governments just have to do, to "make their job easier", just like even FBI said recently that they'd prefer if they didn't need to get warrants, because it would make their job easier. Having a democracy and rights for people must be really tough on authorities, or at least that's how they sound.
beedogs 14y ago
I really fucking hate the right wing and its authoritarian ideology. It's like there are two separate and distinct species of people on this planet: those with empathy and compassion for their fellow man, and these kinds of assholes who just want nothing but control. It's one of the reasons I got out of the US. My worry is I won't be allowed to return one day.
- dfischer 14y ago
  If you really think this is the result of the right wing politicians you're kidding yourself.
  - law 14y ago
    I'd even claim that the left wing has a greater propensity to engage in this conduct, albeit more subtly. For example, one side effect of the Affordable Care Act is the federal government knowing which Americans have health insurance. While this doesn't prove they have access to your health records, it's nevertheless troubling that they have direct evidence of whether you're insured (and whether it's ``Cadillac'' insurance) simply by examining tax returns.
    - fourmii 14y ago
      Sheesh, really? You're going to bring the Affordable Care Act into this? If wanting every citizen to have access to affordable health care and insurance and spreading the costs is some subtle way of intruding into their privacy, then I guess all they want to do is spy on you...
      - law 14y ago
        I spoke precisely, yet you managed to contort my statement into something that it's not: an expression of my opinion on universal health care. What I said was that other approaches exist that do not require marking tax returns in a way that reveals the existence of health insurance...
    - 14y ago
twoodfin 14y ago
Everyone in this thread seems to miss the fact that if the NSA were deliberately keeping files on communications between Americans in America that would be a really big deal. But AFAIK, no one in a position to know anything has even alleged this.
treelovinhippie 14y ago
I think soon people will realize that the only defense against this kind of data collection (and it's subsequent uses - which grow more powerful everyday) is to record your own life and know the same (if not more than) what governments and corporations know about you.
- boronine 14y ago
  How will that work as a defense?
  - treelovinhippie 14y ago
    Record your entire life (everything). Encrypt and store the data. Workout some way for data scientists to anonymously and securely experiment on the data such that privacy is maintained and the data remains in your control and ownership. The idea is that there are big companies out there now (including the government) that have huge databases of information on you, and they've been working hard for many years now in the background to find useful patterns in the data in order to sell-to/manipulate/control you. If you can do the same research with your own data, you can know in advance (or catch-up to) what those companies already know about you. With that knowledge, you could perhaps develop something like an anti-malware application for "you". So if sometime in the future, you begin seeing very targeted ads that begin manipulating your purchasing behaviour or even manipulating your opinions and thoughts... then the system could notice these attacks and warn you (because it knows your data, your interests and your weaknesses). The end-game of what these companies are doing is to have so much data on individuals (and the distribution channels), that they are able to subtly manipulate and program their minds without the individual even noticing. If you know the algorithms they've discovered within your data, you can protect your mind. Anyway, that's just one advantage. I'm working on a startup now that does this.
jakeonthemove 14y ago
Why is this a surprise to anyone? Governments will always want to have as much info as possible on anyone, especially their own citizens, and the US has been number 1 for a long time. With Facebook, Twitter and face recognition, privacy is truly dead. Heck, even from public records you can get a lot of information about anyone, and if you have their SSN, you can increase that to a metric sheet ton. Any database and method of communication can be easily tapped for surveillance, too, so if they really want you, they're gonna get you.
locusm 14y ago
I live in the Southern Hemisphere and like most 40 something year olds I follow whats happening in the States from a distance. I've been reading and watching a fair bit of Jacob Appelbaum and reading Glenn Greenwald's posts which seem to be fair and well written. Democracy Now also does some interesting interviews with Jacob and William Binney. Some stuff I recommend to have a look at... in no particular order. Challenging the Surveillance State - Pt. 1 to Pt.4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VCTvs7UXa4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VCTvs7UXa4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueDTOfEqey8&feature=relmfu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueDTOfEqey8&feature=relmf... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwm6VeYFdKM&feature=relmfu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwm6VeYFdKM&feature=relmf... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fao4Z8JooxY&feature=relmfu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fao4Z8JooxY&feature=relmf... http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/exclusive_national_security_agency_whistleblower_william http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/exclusive_national_sec... Jacob Appelbaum (Part 1 & 2) Digital Anti-Repression Workshop - April 26 2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHoJ9pQ0cn8&feature=relmfu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHoJ9pQ0cn8&feature=relmf... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9fByRmAHgU&feature=relmfu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9fByRmAHgU&feature=relmf... Glenn's Salon Posts http://www.salon.com/writer/glenn_greenwald/ http://www.salon.com/writer/glenn_greenwald/
Freestyler_3 14y ago
Just lifting the curtain will hopefully be enough, if you really need to say anything after doing that... We are sitting in the theater and the curtains are closed, we are reading the program. The program says "It's okay, nothing is happening behind the curtain." After everyone read their program 99% of the crowd leaves because they think they know enough. Then that 1% is eagerly waiting to see the show. And there are a few people trying to sabotage the place and open the curtains so that the people can see the show. Those curtains are not going to open themselves.
lwhi 14y ago
I suppose a Facebook profile could correspond to 'dossier' in most senses of the word.
rglover 14y ago
I've always assumed when talking online, over the phone, wherever, that even if they (this is ambiguously referencing the government as a whole) weren't at that moment: someone could listen in if they wanted to. It's surprising to think that people still believe in the existence of total privacy (albeit any form of privacy).
tomjen3 14y ago
This is going to be embarasing the next time there is a major terror attack (hopefully it won't happen, but statistically it is likely eventually) when it turns out that they had the data on everybody but somehow didn't act on it.
- ams6110 14y ago
  It's far easier, after you know what happened, to go back to the data and "connect the dots" to claim it should have been foreseen and acted upon. But beforehand, the dots could have been connected in any number of permutations and paths, so it becomes impossible to act on every possibility that can be forecast in advance.
  - tomjen3 14y ago
    Which will properly be their excuse too. Won't stop them from being flayed in the media.
BlackNapoleon 14y ago
In-Q-Tel was one of the first investors in Google anyways
VikingCoder 14y ago
Math is fun! You can buy a 2 TB HD for $99.99 right now. The population of the United States is 311,591,917. That's 7057 bytes per citizen, for a penny under a Franklin. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg in EPUB format, in 2.3 MB. Therefore, if you wanted to have William Shakespeare write as much text about every single citizen in the United States, as he wrote in all of his Complete Works, you would need 341.74 of those HDs. Therefore, the raw storage would cost you $34,196.58. The NSA's annual budget is around $3.6 billion. Every year, the NSA could buy enough hard drive space to store 105,273 times as much text as the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, on every single U.S. citizen.
- thereallurch 14y ago
  While you make a good point, your end number is wildly inaccurate. 1) I highly doubt the NSA is buying $100 dollar low grade hard drives. I bet this data is backed up at least twice per site, at multiple sites. 2) The data is not unstructured, it will be structured in some sort of database. Storing your facebook photos alone will be potentially hundreds of megabytes. 3) I doubt NSA is spending it's entire budget every year on hard drives.
  - VikingCoder 14y ago
    Yes, that's why I quite carefully said, "Every year, the NSA COULD..." Emphasis on the COULD. It's to emphasize how cheap storage is, and how relatively few U.S. Citizens there are. In our day-to-day lives, we think 311 Million is an enormous number. But in the scale of computing, it's actually quite small. My real point is: storing the data is no longer a challenge. If you want someone (businesses, governments, etc.) to not store data about every citizen of the U.S., you need laws, regulations, and checks and balances.
  - pessimizer 14y ago
    1) If he's three or four orders of magnitude off, his point still stands. 2) Also, the data could be almost completely unstructured. You mine the data that you have to create structure. If you toss anything, or prematurely optimize things, you're missing out on what the algorithms that you come up with 10 years from now will give you. 3) If you're using enough redundancy to multiply $35,000 into $3,000,000,000, you're insane.
ck2 14y ago
If this is true, the NSA knows which of every cop is dirty in the country because they have full access to financial, voice and email records. And doesn't do anything about it.
elorant 14y ago
If they have records for every US citizen, they'd probably have records also for anyone visiting the country.
toomuchcoffee 14y ago
TL;DR - The Committee is outraged that the NSA is developing expensive software in house, rather than from Google or Oracle. But no one raises an eyebrow at what that software is being used for domestically.
- Create 14y ago
  they had to demonstrate, that they "gave up" in-house dev http://accumulo.apache.org/ http://accumulo.apache.org/
guscost 14y ago
For the record, I'd be surprised if mine is less than five years old.
bhaile 14y ago
From the article: "In the short video interview, Binney explained a bit more about the NSA spying on Americans: "Domestically, they're pulling together all the data about virtually every U.S. citizen in the country and assembling that information, building communities that you have relationships with, and knowledge about you; what your activities are; what you're doing. So the government is accumulating that kind of information about every individual person and it's a very dangerous process."" I imagine this is where Palantir is being used. About building the connections through large data sets on the science of ontology.
aidenn0 14y ago
Bishop: Ah. You're the guys I hear breathing on the other end of my phone. Dick Gordon: No, that's the FBI. We're not chartered for domestic surveillance. Bishop: Oh, I see. You just overthrow governments. Set up friendly dictators. Dick Gordon: No, that's the CIA. We protect our government's communications, we try to break the other fella's codes. We're the good guys, Marty. Bishop: Gee, I can't tell you what a relief that is...Dick.
dean 14y ago
When I was in school, there was a girl in one of my classes who highlighted every line of every page in the textbook. I told her that highlighting every page was the same as highlighting no pages. You end up with undifferentiated information. You're no further ahead than when you started. In the same way, the NSA having a dossier on everyone is the same as them having a dossier on no one.
locusm 14y ago
My Binney delivered a keynote at Hope9 too recently http://privacysos.org/node/759 http://privacysos.org/node/759
antidoh 14y ago
I'm beginning to believe that all governments and their security/intelligence forces tend toward a Stazi mean. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stazi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stazi

340 points by gasull 14y ago

rorrr 14y ago

Well of course they do. I would be really surprised if they didn't. That's why we should ENCRYPT EVERYTHING possible. Use HTTPS as much as you can.

WestCoastJustin 14y ago
I have a question about this -- maybe I'm ignorant. But using https without self-signed keys actually allows the government to peer into your communications, doesn't it? We are worried about third parties stealing your data between you and your bank for example. A bank might be a bad example as they probably already have access to their databases for compliance reasons. Can't the US government ask for the keys of these US based certificate authorities? My point being is that https is probably equivalent to plain text when it comes to government surveillance.
- gojomo 14y ago
  Having the Certificate Authority private keys would allow an attacker to sign certificates allowing the impersonation of any entity... but it does not make other sessions, boostrapped from other legitimate certificates, transparent to passive eavesdropping. So no, government pressure on CAs wouldn't make all https like plaintext, but it does make active impersonation possible. Some initiatives like the 'SSL Observatory' or the EFF's 'Sovereign Keys' proposal could make it possible for clients to notice when a fishy new certificate is introduced for a previously-known identity -- much like the 'key has changed' warnings you may have seen when SSHing to a host whose keys have changed since your last session.
- rictic 14y ago
  It's not quite that bad. Even with a compromised certificate authority, it's not an invisible attack to do a man in the middle and inject their own certificate. Someone knowledgable could notice this discrepancy and raise a stink. Furthermore, Chrome (and soon Firefox) ships some known certificates for privacy important widely used sites (e.g. the major webmail services, torproject, etc) which prevents even this attack. This defense has already caught Iran using a compromised CA. (I'm not a cryptographer though, so please correct me if I'm wrong.)
  - mkjones 14y ago
    I think it's only a handful of certificats that are pinned (they call it "HSTS preloading" here: http://www.imperialviolet.org/2011/05/04/pinning.html http://www.imperialviolet.org/2011/05/04/pinning.html). While this does include gmail and some other Google properties, it doesn't seem to include any other major webmail services. Check out http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/net/base/transport_security_state_static.json?view=markup http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/net/base/tra... for the list of what's in there (linked to indirectly from http://dev.chromium.org/sts http://dev.chromium.org/sts).
    - rictic 14y ago
      Ah dang, for some reason I thought that hotmail and y!mail were in there too. It looks like there's a commitment (which CAs you'll allow to sign your cert) that's needed from the site owner for HSTS to work. I hope they get in there one way or another soon.
- agwa 14y ago
  No, it's not equivalent to plain text. If they had access to certificate authority keys (or the ability to compel CAs to issue certificates on demand), they would still need to pull off an active man-in-the-middle attack to be able to decrypt communications. Practically speaking, it seems like this would be harder to accomplish on an Internet scale than simply intercepting communications. So using HTTPS as much as possible probably helps, though you're correct that if you want to be completely certain your communications are secure you should not trust the certificate authorities.
- tlrobinson 14y ago
  They don't even need to ask for the keys. Pretty much every OS/browser comes with root CAs belonging to the U.S. government (on OS X I see "DoD Root CA 2" and "DoD CLASS 3 Root CA", see also http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4415 http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4415). As I understand it, if they wanted to, they could MITM any HTTPS connection by forging a certificate using their root CAs. This is why people were upset when a root CA for some Chinese government agency was added to certain browsers. We don't trust the Chinese government, but we do trust the US government, I guess. Of course, if they regularly forged certificates someone would notice. Right? Which begs the question, how would we notice? If you diligently check certificates for sites you visit you might happen to notice facebook.com's CA suddenly changes from Verisign to the U.S. DoD. Is there a better way? How can we automatically check that the certificates we get are legitimate? At a minimum it would be nice if there was a warning when a cert doesn't match a previously seen one (similar to SSH) I feel like a "web of trust" needs to be layered on top of the certificate authorities to really solve this problem. If 10 of my friends have seen the same certificate for a given website I'm inclined to believe it's legitimate. I'm also likely to trust certain organizations (EFF, etc) Of course it's also a user interface issue. The average user wouldn't understand a single sentence I wrote above.
  - walexander 14y ago
    Just remove DoD certs from your trust list if you don't want to accept them. This might not be a laymen solution, but it's a very simple procedure in most browsers.
  - gasull 14y ago
    Try Perspectives addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/perspectives/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/perspectives/
    - chokma 14y ago
      And Certificate Patrol: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/certificate-patrol/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/certificate-p...
carsongross 14y ago
That's bringing a knife to a tank fight, my man. Better, IMO, to just assume they read and listen to everything digital, and work around it.
- ars 14y ago
  Remember "BEGIN ECHELON BLOCK"? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/05/31/what_are_those_words/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/05/31/what_are_those_words... http://ben.reser.org/echelon/ http://ben.reser.org/echelon/ http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:drmJsXDozE4J:ben.reser.org/echelon/echelonarmor-cgi.pl+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:drmJsXD...
ams6110 14y ago
The problem with encryption is that the data still have to be in the clear at the endpoints to be useful. That's where it'll be nabbed, by surreptitious keyloggers, screen scrapers, filesystem scanners, etc. Decrypting data in transit is still a very difficult if not impossible proposition as far as I know.

waterlesscloud 14y ago

I'm sure these would never be used for political gain.

bluestix 14y ago

Of course they do. The job of the National Slavery Agency is to keep track of all the slaves. They keep the plantation running smoothly.

snambi 14y ago

Sure, they have all data about someone. But, what is the use? It is like searching a needle in a haystack.

carsongross 14y ago
Until you piss off or catch the eye of someone with access to it. Then you'll find out just how quickly your particular needle can be found in that haystack.
tikhonj 14y ago
Or like searching for a web page on the internet! Not to mention all the fun machine learning and analysis that could be done.
mcantelon 14y ago
The NSA likely has more advanced tech than we do.
dredmorbius 14y ago
""If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." - Cardinal Richelieu
- dman 14y ago
  What if every sentence began with - "Hypothetically speaking"
  - dredmorbius 14y ago
    Hypothetically speaking, I think the good Cardinal would say "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."
- re_todd 14y ago
  I think my ex-girlfriend studied under this Richelieu guy.
14y ago

waiwai933 14y ago

Ethics, morality and legality aside, I'd be really curious to see what information is actually stored in these "dossiers", besides (presumably) one's name, address, and other details that other branches of the government legitimately have.

carsongross 14y ago
Oh, don't worry: ethics, morality and legality are being very much set aside.
- waiwai933 14y ago
  Well, yes, I know that. ;) I meant that ethically, morally, and legally, I wouldn't want to know what they have (the NSA knowing is enough; better to destroy it than make it all public, probably), but I'm curious nonetheless.
tikhonj 14y ago
Is that the sort of thing you can ask for with a FOIA request? If you have some spare time it might be worth trying--it certainly couldn't hurt. I'm not familiar enough with the actual procedure to say if it would be particularly difficult or not.
- waiwai933 14y ago
  Not really, unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, if one is speaking practically and not philosophically, since I'd rather terrorists not know what intelligence agencies have on them). FOIA has an extensive list of exemptions, and pretty much anything relating to do with national security is exempt from FOIA requests. And well, it's called the National Security Agency for a reason; even though the information probably isn't legitimately related to national security, can you prove that it isn't, keeping in mind that you can't see it until you've proven that it's not?
- jberryman 14y ago
  If you try you will get a form letter basically saying that spying on Americans is not in the NSA charter, so they don't have any info on you. Tried it in 2005-ish myself.

smokeyj 14y ago

I wonder if MLK would exist if this were around 50 years ago.

mjwalshe 14y ago
the FBI collected a lot of dirt on MLK - Hoover was obsesed

saraid216 14y ago

Out of curiosity, how many other people had the gut reaction of, "Awesome! I have a dossier!"

dredmorbius 14y ago
Are my eyes really brown?
javert 14y ago
I would like to ask them my hair color, because it's a weird color and I honestly don't know what it is.

bobsy 14y ago

If this is true doesn't it mean that Bin Laden won the war on terror? Every time I go to the airport I think this. Those full body scanners? Thanks to Bin Laden, now you practically get strip searched for every flight. You have to take off your shoes. You cannot take drinks on a plane. You then have everyone on edge no matter where you go. You and a friend play CounterStrike. You get on the bus and start talking about good locations to plant the bomb. You will probably be wrestled to the floor by some over-zealous commuter. It doesn't surprise me if this is true. The US attitude to privacy and civil rights have been becoming more like China's every year since 2001.

conradfr 14y ago
The U.S (or the West) did not change its politics in the Middle-East and is still not an Islamic country so I don't think Bin Laden won. Now maybe the U.S citizens lost ...
- cstavish 14y ago
  It's true that the US hasn't changed its Middle-East policies (although I'd argue that's the only way to eradicate Islamic terrorism), but it's important to note that bin Laden did not target the US due to its secularism, but for its foreign policy. He even said that if he wanted to attack a country just for being secular, he'd have attacked Sweden.
- toyg 14y ago
  I don't think Bin Laden ever wanted to "convert" his "enemies", but rather to destroy or frighten them. Considering the amount of money thrown into the Afghan pit (which still is a factor affecting the ability of Western countries to sustain periods of economic turmoil, and even to replenish their own arsenals -- see UK defence cuts) and the hysteric approach to public spaces since 2001, I'd say he's been fairly successful in his endeavours. Which is not that surprising, to be fair. After all, he was originally trained by the CIA, and was backed by Saudi money and the Pakistani military.
biomechanica 14y ago
What I think it actually means is this: It has given the United States an excuse to do that they are doing to its people. The whole system is based upon fear, which is exactly what the so called "terrorists" wanted to do. The government(s) of this world don't particularly enjoy the thought of its population having to ability to think for themselves. How can they (temporarily) suspend this? Fear.

hooande 14y ago

About ten years ago, the NSA got direct access to every phone call, text and email sent via AT&T from the west coast to asia. Every. Single. Message. Set up shop next to the servers and just copied all of the data coming across. I think that by "dossiers" this guy meant "social network information from communication logs". They can start with your number (any number) and see who communicates with it. And then see who communicates with those people, and so on until they find a link to a terrorist or whatever. If you're doing something that the government doesn't want you to do, use a burner phone. And drive 30 minutes from your home, and use a proxy server to connect to the internet. Any federal agent can get a record of every call you make with a boilerplate warrant. The NSA can dig up the full text of all of your conversations with a tech support ticket. Welcome to 2012. If it makes you feel any better, facebook has a similar level of information about you and they haven't done much harm with it.

nl 14y ago
And drive 30 minutes from your home, and use a proxy server to connect to the internet I'd love to hear some details of what you are proposing here. Because right now it doesn't sound like you know what you are talking about. If it makes you feel any better, facebook has a similar level of information about you and they haven't done much harm with it. Um. No they don't.
- zcid 14y ago
  Your location can be triangulated even if you don't use a cell phone registered to yourself. Using a VPN, you reduce the chances that your internet use will be traced back to you. Facebook has a staggering amount of personal information about most of their users. While not necessarily on the same level as personal phone calls, it should still be a concern of anyone that uses social networks. Try to actually make a case next time you post. Saying "Nuh uh, nuh uh" over and over makes you look like an ass.
  - nl 14y ago
    Your location can be triangulated even if you don't use a cell phone registered to yourself. My point exactly. Using a VPN, you reduce the chances that your internet use will be traced back to you. That has some truth in it, but isn't what the OP is proposing. Try to actually make a case next time you post. Fair enough. It's worth noting that when I wrote this, the OP was the highest voted comment on this thread. The NSA has complete financial history of everyone who submits tax returns or uses a credit card, logs of every phone call and email message, and it seems likely they have location data from cell phone providers as well. In the UK their agencies track car movements via registration plates, and it would be surprising if the NSA didn't have similar capabilities. Saying that is the same as what Facebook has is misleading - it makes the NSA seem like they aren't doing anything extraordinary, and it makes Facebook seem like they are doing things they don't have the right to do.

gregcmartin 14y ago

Yeah it's called Facebook

mtgx 14y ago
You're probably not too far from the truth: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57471570-93/facebook-scans-chats-and-posts-for-criminal-activity/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57471570-93/facebook-scans-...
david927 14y ago
CIA's Facebook Program Dramatically Cuts Agency's Costs [The Onion]: http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-cut-agencys-cos,19753 http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatic...

mariuolo 14y ago

Anyone surprised?

bfung 14y ago

If this were true, we wouldn't really need to conduct the census (http://www.census.gov/ http://www.census.gov/), right? Perhaps the NSA has tools like pipl or spokeo to build dossiers, but not that it has every person on file, right now.

mjwalshe 14y ago

Depends what you mean by dossier I am sure the NSA has a definative list of all Us residents names and SSN's but thats not a dossier in the same way That the FBI under hover had about anyone even sligtly progressive. Id be more worried by the fact the in the USA its common practice to register with the govenment what political party you support.

saryant 14y ago
Registering your political party is a state thing, not federal. Nor does every state require it. My state, Texas, does not. You can see all the information asked for when registering to vote here: https://webservices.sos.state.tx.us/vrapp/index.asp https://webservices.sos.state.tx.us/vrapp/index.asp
- mjwalshe 14y ago
  So I am registering with "local" govenment FFS that is even worse at least at the national level there is some oversight and Journalists holding teh executive to account.
  - saryant 14y ago
    I have a pretty dim outlook on the state of civil rights in this country but I think you're going too far. States which ask for this information do so in order to give you your party's ballot during primary elections. I think you're reading too much into this one. The fact that not every state asks should also point to a lack of any grand conspiriacy here.
    - politician 14y ago
      Statistically speaking, you give up your right to vote anonymously by registering your political party with the state in return for the convenience of getting one of two ballots instead of both. "There are two ballots here which one am I interested in again? Better ask the State which one I registered for.." Seems like a stretch.

chao- 14y ago

Speaking as a youngin' who grew up with the internet (US citizen and just now 24), I've never expected any privacy for as long as I can remember. Of any sort. Only an odd sense of my insignificance providing a minor smokescreen. I accept that if I ever obtained any real notoriety, all would be laid bare in due course. When I read articles like this, I don't wonder if anyone is surprised by these things anymore. I would hope it's understood. My mind instead turns to these questions: "Who out there expects some eventual return of privacy?" and "What degree of effort do they expect it to require, relative to what they gain?" Surely at some point it is not worth the time/effort to reform "the system", and personal mitigation strategies are more feasible. I rarely find myself in the role of doomsayer, but I've never lived in a world where the word "privacy" didn't already have an implicit asterisk following it. So my stance doesn't feel apocalyptic, it just feels like the way the world has always been.

javert 14y ago
I'm probably about a year and a half older than you, a US citizen, and I don't feel that way at all. The government used to not be spying on me. Then, in the last decade, the chance that it would started to rise. In the last 5 years, it became likely. Now, with this story, if it's true, we know that it's almost certainly spying on me. (And to clarify, I'm not a criminal or anything remotely criminal in any way, shape or form.) Right now, spying on me. Now, it may just be recording the info and looking for triggers. Wonder if this post will be a trigger. It's definitely possible. So there has been a massive ramp-up in unethical electronic spying, and unlike you, I have (for some reason) been alert to it.
- chao- 14y ago
  The government used to not be spying on me... In the last 5 years, it became likely. I'm going to pick on the 5 years & 10 years estimate, if you don't mind. If no one was spying on you then, it was because you were a child or teenager, and presumably not very interesting. If you were someone of major consequence five years ago (2007, to keep things in perspective), or even a decade ago (2002), you'd surely have at least a minor notation, blurb or profile somewhere. If our government wasted time and money tracking John Lennon in the 60's, it's hard to imagine that by 2007 there wasn't at least cursory analysis available about anyone with a job and credit card. Never mind anyone who attended college/university, purchased car insurance or signed up for a grocery store rewards card. Let me be clear: I'm not saying the government is specifically tracking on your grocery bill. Instead, you're letting someone else do so, and the data is simply available upon request from most reasonable actors. Further temporal perspective: Google had long gone public by 2007, and people were long crying foul on privacy with respect to it. So the government may not have even been the first to open some unbeknownst profile on you. It may have just been some data aggregator who put your SSN, DoB and address up for sale after your general practitioner's secretary got some malware (I'm being hypothetical of course, but hopefully you understand the premise). A counterpoint to my argument is that this is the government, not corporation X or shady data reseller Y. I concede that there is a different feeling associated with the government spying on you (with the assumption of legality), and some third-party actor who maybe, some day, could be brought to trial (we hope?). Yet the practical result is the same: there are people building profiles of us which we will never see, and judging how best to relate to us based on them. They have been doing it for a lot longer than five years, and I don't see the trend reversing any time soon. It doesn't really freak me out, either. In a way, it just makes sense.

fierarul 14y ago

The NSA probably has "dossiers" on the whole world. For example, in order to get an US Visa from the embassy they take your fingerprints. Your visa form also has a lot of data. At least that has to be centralized somewhere. Add your online accounts to the mix and it's safe to say they have enough info about everybody.

jayfuerstenberg 14y ago

Might I suggest having some fun with one's dossier? Like randomly doing the exact opposite of what you would ordinarily do on a daily basis. Here are some ideas... 1. Take the bus instead of driving your car. 2. Buy a pack of cigarettes if you're not a smoker. 3. Buy magazines you would never normally buy. 4. Attend a political meeting of the party you typically oppose. 5. Buy vegetarian food for a week if you're a meat eater. etc... If the dossier is dry and not a useful tool for profiling you then you don't have anything to worry about. If on the other hand the dossier is more sinister in nature you can dilute its usefulness by being a different person every now and then to throw it off track.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
JonnieCache 14y ago
Or you could just do all those things anyway, because it will improve your life. Maybe not the cigarettes.
Mesmoria 14y ago
You would have to do this enough for it to be statistically significant otherwise it probably just averaged away. OTOH....once might be seen as smoke-screening, making you more suspicious.
law 14y ago
Apple has a patent on this.[1] [1] http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=8205265.PN.&OS=PN/8205265&RS=PN/8205265 http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...
- jayfuerstenberg 14y ago
  I wonder if the wiping techniques used to securely erase data from government HDDs would count as prior art here.

keithpeter 14y ago

"Domestically, they're pulling together all the data about virtually every U.S. citizen in the country and assembling that information, building communities that you have relationships with, and knowledge about you; what your activities are; what you're doing." A plot for a novel: NSA operative comes across an identity with no links to any other identity, no social network history. Just an isolated node... curious, she starts investigating and finds all avenues blocked, and her boss asks her to stop. Intrigued, Agent Hernandez continues on her own time...

freehunter 14y ago
Mulder, is this another X file?
lubujackson 14y ago
Surprise ending, it is a "Forever Alone" guy.

minikomi 14y ago

Where's little bobby tables when you need him?

alan_cx 14y ago

Remember people, its you who are the real enemy of the state. Its you they fear more than anything else.

kitsune_ 14y ago

Switzerland had a huge surveillance scandal during the 80's. It was named "Fichenskandal" or in English, "Secret files scandal". More than 700'000 people or organizations were targeted, usually people on the left: unions, feminists, environmentalists etc. A friend of my father runs an independent book store and he requested his files after the scandal was made public. He received a stack of paper over 10 inches high. The government pretty much had every part of his life on file. From mundane stuff to him participating in demonstrations (protesting for women's suffrage * , environmental issues). This is a guy who was never arrested in his life. Yet they had a record of pretty much everything. This was in a time with limited technological capabilities. In the 70's, the police probably took photographs of public gatherings and sent them to a special group which in turn had to identify the participants with the help of a magnifying glass and reference files. Nowadays with have facial recognition techniques, cameras everywhere. Yes, this is some Public Enemy No. 1 shit, but it's a good time to be paranoid. You can be sure that every form of electronic communication is in some form or another under surveillance by governments around the globe. * Switzerland finally allowed women to vote in... drum roll... 1971.

Iv 14y ago
I wanted to work for Cyc Corp. several years ago. They have an interesting software and before Watson, maybe the closest thing to AI that there is out there. IT took me some time to understand why it was so hard to be a candidate as a non-US citizen : it was later disclosed that they were participants in the Total Information Awareness project. Its purported goal was to have a ten-pages file on every human on the planet. It is not clear that it has been discontinued.
mtgx 14y ago
Is there a good reason for any country to have spies at all, especially for internal matters? I feel that spying on other countries (let alone on own citizens) shouldn't exist at all, but it has become accepted by societies as something that the Governments just have to do, to "make their job easier", just like even FBI said recently that they'd prefer if they didn't need to get warrants, because it would make their job easier. Having a democracy and rights for people must be really tough on authorities, or at least that's how they sound.

beedogs 14y ago

I really fucking hate the right wing and its authoritarian ideology. It's like there are two separate and distinct species of people on this planet: those with empathy and compassion for their fellow man, and these kinds of assholes who just want nothing but control. It's one of the reasons I got out of the US. My worry is I won't be allowed to return one day.

dfischer 14y ago
If you really think this is the result of the right wing politicians you're kidding yourself.
- law 14y ago
  I'd even claim that the left wing has a greater propensity to engage in this conduct, albeit more subtly. For example, one side effect of the Affordable Care Act is the federal government knowing which Americans have health insurance. While this doesn't prove they have access to your health records, it's nevertheless troubling that they have direct evidence of whether you're insured (and whether it's ``Cadillac'' insurance) simply by examining tax returns.
  - fourmii 14y ago
    Sheesh, really? You're going to bring the Affordable Care Act into this? If wanting every citizen to have access to affordable health care and insurance and spreading the costs is some subtle way of intruding into their privacy, then I guess all they want to do is spy on you...
    - law 14y ago
      I spoke precisely, yet you managed to contort my statement into something that it's not: an expression of my opinion on universal health care. What I said was that other approaches exist that do not require marking tax returns in a way that reveals the existence of health insurance...
  - 14y ago

twoodfin 14y ago

Everyone in this thread seems to miss the fact that if the NSA were deliberately keeping files on communications between Americans in America that would be a really big deal. But AFAIK, no one in a position to know anything has even alleged this.

treelovinhippie 14y ago

I think soon people will realize that the only defense against this kind of data collection (and it's subsequent uses - which grow more powerful everyday) is to record your own life and know the same (if not more than) what governments and corporations know about you.

boronine 14y ago
How will that work as a defense?
- treelovinhippie 14y ago
  Record your entire life (everything). Encrypt and store the data. Workout some way for data scientists to anonymously and securely experiment on the data such that privacy is maintained and the data remains in your control and ownership. The idea is that there are big companies out there now (including the government) that have huge databases of information on you, and they've been working hard for many years now in the background to find useful patterns in the data in order to sell-to/manipulate/control you. If you can do the same research with your own data, you can know in advance (or catch-up to) what those companies already know about you. With that knowledge, you could perhaps develop something like an anti-malware application for "you". So if sometime in the future, you begin seeing very targeted ads that begin manipulating your purchasing behaviour or even manipulating your opinions and thoughts... then the system could notice these attacks and warn you (because it knows your data, your interests and your weaknesses). The end-game of what these companies are doing is to have so much data on individuals (and the distribution channels), that they are able to subtly manipulate and program their minds without the individual even noticing. If you know the algorithms they've discovered within your data, you can protect your mind. Anyway, that's just one advantage. I'm working on a startup now that does this.

jakeonthemove 14y ago

Why is this a surprise to anyone? Governments will always want to have as much info as possible on anyone, especially their own citizens, and the US has been number 1 for a long time. With Facebook, Twitter and face recognition, privacy is truly dead. Heck, even from public records you can get a lot of information about anyone, and if you have their SSN, you can increase that to a metric sheet ton. Any database and method of communication can be easily tapped for surveillance, too, so if they really want you, they're gonna get you.

locusm 14y ago

I live in the Southern Hemisphere and like most 40 something year olds I follow whats happening in the States from a distance. I've been reading and watching a fair bit of Jacob Appelbaum and reading Glenn Greenwald's posts which seem to be fair and well written. Democracy Now also does some interesting interviews with Jacob and William Binney. Some stuff I recommend to have a look at... in no particular order. Challenging the Surveillance State - Pt. 1 to Pt.4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VCTvs7UXa4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VCTvs7UXa4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueDTOfEqey8&feature=relmfu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueDTOfEqey8&feature=relmf... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwm6VeYFdKM&feature=relmfu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwm6VeYFdKM&feature=relmf... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fao4Z8JooxY&feature=relmfu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fao4Z8JooxY&feature=relmf... http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/exclusive_national_security_agency_whistleblower_william http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/exclusive_national_sec... Jacob Appelbaum (Part 1 & 2) Digital Anti-Repression Workshop - April 26 2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHoJ9pQ0cn8&feature=relmfu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHoJ9pQ0cn8&feature=relmf... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9fByRmAHgU&feature=relmfu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9fByRmAHgU&feature=relmf... Glenn's Salon Posts http://www.salon.com/writer/glenn_greenwald/ http://www.salon.com/writer/glenn_greenwald/

Freestyler_3 14y ago

Just lifting the curtain will hopefully be enough, if you really need to say anything after doing that... We are sitting in the theater and the curtains are closed, we are reading the program. The program says "It's okay, nothing is happening behind the curtain." After everyone read their program 99% of the crowd leaves because they think they know enough. Then that 1% is eagerly waiting to see the show. And there are a few people trying to sabotage the place and open the curtains so that the people can see the show. Those curtains are not going to open themselves.

lwhi 14y ago

I suppose a Facebook profile could correspond to 'dossier' in most senses of the word.

rglover 14y ago

I've always assumed when talking online, over the phone, wherever, that even if they (this is ambiguously referencing the government as a whole) weren't at that moment: someone could listen in if they wanted to. It's surprising to think that people still believe in the existence of total privacy (albeit any form of privacy).

tomjen3 14y ago

This is going to be embarasing the next time there is a major terror attack (hopefully it won't happen, but statistically it is likely eventually) when it turns out that they had the data on everybody but somehow didn't act on it.

ams6110 14y ago
It's far easier, after you know what happened, to go back to the data and "connect the dots" to claim it should have been foreseen and acted upon. But beforehand, the dots could have been connected in any number of permutations and paths, so it becomes impossible to act on every possibility that can be forecast in advance.
- tomjen3 14y ago
  Which will properly be their excuse too. Won't stop them from being flayed in the media.

BlackNapoleon 14y ago

In-Q-Tel was one of the first investors in Google anyways

VikingCoder 14y ago

Math is fun! You can buy a 2 TB HD for $99.99 right now. The population of the United States is 311,591,917. That's 7057 bytes per citizen, for a penny under a Franklin. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg in EPUB format, in 2.3 MB. Therefore, if you wanted to have William Shakespeare write as much text about every single citizen in the United States, as he wrote in all of his Complete Works, you would need 341.74 of those HDs. Therefore, the raw storage would cost you $34,196.58. The NSA's annual budget is around $3.6 billion. Every year, the NSA could buy enough hard drive space to store 105,273 times as much text as the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, on every single U.S. citizen.

thereallurch 14y ago
While you make a good point, your end number is wildly inaccurate. 1) I highly doubt the NSA is buying $100 dollar low grade hard drives. I bet this data is backed up at least twice per site, at multiple sites. 2) The data is not unstructured, it will be structured in some sort of database. Storing your facebook photos alone will be potentially hundreds of megabytes. 3) I doubt NSA is spending it's entire budget every year on hard drives.
- VikingCoder 14y ago
  Yes, that's why I quite carefully said, "Every year, the NSA COULD..." Emphasis on the COULD. It's to emphasize how cheap storage is, and how relatively few U.S. Citizens there are. In our day-to-day lives, we think 311 Million is an enormous number. But in the scale of computing, it's actually quite small. My real point is: storing the data is no longer a challenge. If you want someone (businesses, governments, etc.) to not store data about every citizen of the U.S., you need laws, regulations, and checks and balances.
- pessimizer 14y ago
  1) If he's three or four orders of magnitude off, his point still stands. 2) Also, the data could be almost completely unstructured. You mine the data that you have to create structure. If you toss anything, or prematurely optimize things, you're missing out on what the algorithms that you come up with 10 years from now will give you. 3) If you're using enough redundancy to multiply $35,000 into $3,000,000,000, you're insane.

ck2 14y ago

If this is true, the NSA knows which of every cop is dirty in the country because they have full access to financial, voice and email records. And doesn't do anything about it.

elorant 14y ago

If they have records for every US citizen, they'd probably have records also for anyone visiting the country.

toomuchcoffee 14y ago

TL;DR - The Committee is outraged that the NSA is developing expensive software in house, rather than from Google or Oracle. But no one raises an eyebrow at what that software is being used for domestically.

Create 14y ago
they had to demonstrate, that they "gave up" in-house dev http://accumulo.apache.org/ http://accumulo.apache.org/

guscost 14y ago

For the record, I'd be surprised if mine is less than five years old.

bhaile 14y ago

From the article: "In the short video interview, Binney explained a bit more about the NSA spying on Americans: "Domestically, they're pulling together all the data about virtually every U.S. citizen in the country and assembling that information, building communities that you have relationships with, and knowledge about you; what your activities are; what you're doing. So the government is accumulating that kind of information about every individual person and it's a very dangerous process."" I imagine this is where Palantir is being used. About building the connections through large data sets on the science of ontology.

aidenn0 14y ago

Bishop: Ah. You're the guys I hear breathing on the other end of my phone. Dick Gordon: No, that's the FBI. We're not chartered for domestic surveillance. Bishop: Oh, I see. You just overthrow governments. Set up friendly dictators. Dick Gordon: No, that's the CIA. We protect our government's communications, we try to break the other fella's codes. We're the good guys, Marty. Bishop: Gee, I can't tell you what a relief that is...Dick.

dean 14y ago

When I was in school, there was a girl in one of my classes who highlighted every line of every page in the textbook. I told her that highlighting every page was the same as highlighting no pages. You end up with undifferentiated information. You're no further ahead than when you started. In the same way, the NSA having a dossier on everyone is the same as them having a dossier on no one.

locusm 14y ago

My Binney delivered a keynote at Hope9 too recently http://privacysos.org/node/759 http://privacysos.org/node/759

antidoh 14y ago

I'm beginning to believe that all governments and their security/intelligence forces tend toward a Stazi mean. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stazi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stazi