9 ms·

Everyone should assume that text messages are analyzed by a computer and flagged as necessary. Only select people under investigation would have their entire t

by dm2 13y ago

Everyone should assume that text messages are analyzed by a computer and flagged as necessary. Only select people under investigation would have their entire text message conversations read by a human. Does the NSA store all text messages? Yes, more than likely. Do their employees snoop on US citizens? Nope. Can other agencies have access to this data? Yes, Patriot Act. There is a very easy way to test their capabilities. Send a text message with keywords involving bombs and political figures and see what happens. I'm not going to do it, but it would be an interesting experiment. Information is critical in the world we live in. It's troubling that any secretive organizations would be able to have this much power over citizens, but the alternative is much scarier. The US has to maintain information dominance on the internet. Allowing other countries to dominate the internet could tip the scales of power. The US carries the big stick right now, if China gets the upper hand (and they are trying unimaginably hard) then what? What will the sleeping dragon do? I have nothing against China at all, but the unknown is scary and I simply would rather the US maintain indisputable dominance.

defilade 13y ago
I believe the issue is what happens to all the other data that's not related to the intent of the surveillance. For example, if you're talking to your spouse about a health issue, your sex life, etc. If that's not the target of the surveillance, the government shouldn't be retaining it.
- dm2 13y ago
  More than likely they are. It is never read by humans though unless flagged. And hopefully there are checks-and-balances in place to alert others if a government employee is accessing data about someone that he personally knows. It's not as easy as "only save texts with the words bomb and weed in them". It's all saved, then analyzed, then retained a few years, then eventually deleted. Is that acceptable for the US government to do?
  - jlarocco 13y ago
    No, it's not. If a person isn't suspected of a crime the government shouldn't be searching or collecting any of their information. This isn't China or North Korea, we're supposed to be a free country. It's also amusing how sure you seem about some things, while also adding in a few "hopefully"-s here and there. The truth is, you don't have any idea what they're doing because they don't tell anybody.
    - D9u 13y ago
      The truth is, you don't have any idea what they're doing because they don't tell anybody. Well, the US government did grant immunity to the big TelComs for their participation in the "Domestic" surveillance program a few years ago... That tells me all I need to know. RedPhone anyone? http://www.whispersystems.org/ http://www.whispersystems.org/
  - betterunix 13y ago
    "It is never read by humans though unless flagged." With the criteria for being "flagged" remaining secret. Are you a dissident? Now the government can make your life difficult by leaking information about your brief extramarital affair. Maybe the government will concoct a sexual assault case against you to shut you up.
    - dm2 13y ago
      Maybe there should be government whistle-blower laws to try to prevent these kinds of things from happening.
      - betterunix 13y ago
        It's not just about whistleblowers or Wikileaks. What about the guy who is critical of US government policies and is gaining a large following? What about the guy who organizes a boycott against a well-connected corporation or industry? What about independent politicians? What about protesters and activists? Almost all adults have some embarrassing secret that might undermine their credibility in the court of public opinion.
jlarocco 13y ago
> Do their employees snoop of US citizens? Nope. I'm glad you're so certain. > Information is critical in the world we live in. It's troubling that any secretive organizations would be able to have this much power over citizens, BUT the alternative is much scarier. That's just scare mongering. As a country we got by for over 200 years without government surveillance, and nothing has changed to make it necessary now.
- rayiner 13y ago
  > That's just scare mongering. As a country we got by for over 200 years without government surveillance, and nothing has changed to make it necessary now. I'd argue a lot has changed. The U.S. has always militarily dominated everything that could hurt it. Soon after our independence, we were intervening in Latin America because in the 1800's, set off from the Old World by two huge oceans, Latin America is what could have hurt us. As the world became smaller, we built a bigger Navy, and by World War I we had the largest in the world. Ever since World War I we have maintained military supremacy in any domain that mattered (naval, air, nuclear, space, etc). Arguably this is just a continuation of the trend onto the internet, now that the digital sphere matters.
  - dm2 13y ago
    Yep, Information Dominance is a real concept and we have to allow our government to maintain it. There is a very delicate balancing act being preformed with peoples "rights" to privacy, but the US government is not going to stop monitoring because people want a false sense of privacy.
    - moens 13y ago
      ...and they especially won't stop just because people want a REAL sense of privacy!
  - jlarocco 13y ago
    I disagree. By that logic the government should have been reading our mail and recording telegraphs, phone calls, and faxes. I'm also curious what "threat" this is supposed to protect us from. There are enough communication mediums to choose from that it's pointless to monitor any of them. It's trivial to find or create one that isn't being monitored. It's not stopping criminals, it's just taking freedom from normal citizens.
pilif 13y ago
>There is a very easy way to test their capabilities. Send a text message with keywords involving bombs and political figures and see what happens. I'm not going to do it, but it would be an interesting experiment. See how far "they" have gotten? They made us afraid of texting certain keywords to other people using a medium that's supposed to be usable for private one-on-one communications. In a country that values freedom of speech over nearly everything else. Free to say what you want as long as no government has an issue with it I guess. Of course we don't know whether SMSes are actually monitored. Of course it's very well possible that nothing might happen if you text your buddy something involving bombs. But the fact that something might happen was so convincing to you (and me, honestly and I don't even live in the US) that you decided not to do it. To me, that's greatly concerning as it shows that the oppression is already happening and we are already censoring ourselves even over private media.
- greenyoda 13y ago
  But even if the government does monitor all SMS messages and people do censor themselves out of fear, that does nothing to stop a determined terrorist from communicating over SMS: they just need to devise a code in advance, which is what criminals have been doing for ages. Instead of saying "go ahead and plant the bomb" they could say "my hamster has been feeling very ill".
seyfarth 13y ago
Just text someone "Hey, so I'm going to get a pistol, and rob the US Bank on <street> in <my city>. Then I think I'll make a trip to Washington to bomb the white house, maybe send a few ricen-laced letters to US Senators on the way. Wanna tag along? Allahu akbar." Pretty sure that trips a few flags. I feel sorry for the poor NSA guy having to read through all my texts. Worst. Afternoon. Ever.
stfu 13y ago
Do their employees snoop on US citizens? Nope. I find it highly ironic that you are making this statement today. Today, where it came out that the IRS leaked confidential infos on one political group to their political enemies [1]. I have no idea how you can make such a statement. Is it just naivety or what are your intentions? If information "is there" it is going to be used. No matter how sophisticated the flagging system is, the data is not stored in some secret vault only accessible to the great inquisitor. The recent IRS events clearly demonstrate that government institutions are absolutely unafraid to abuse available data for intimidation if necessary. These are no just a rogue employee stalking his ex, but actions on a targeted, ideological level. The only data that can not be abused is the data that does not exist. [1] http://www.propublica.org/article/irs-office-that-targeted-tea-party-also-disclosed-confidential-docs http://www.propublica.org/article/irs-office-that-targeted-t...
- dm2 13y ago
  Is that really a broken system or just a few bad apples? Hopefully we can pinpoint the leaks, identify why they occurred, and develop safeguards to prevent abuses of highly confidential data in the future. Send the assholes who used their government position for evil to prison and make THAT the top news story. EDIT: The system will repeatedly be broken in an ever-changing environment. That doesn't mean that we should turn against our government as a whole. Patch the holes, prevent it from happening in the future, do our best to allow the right amount of transparency, and move on.
  - moens 13y ago
    Its a broken system when that does not happen. So, I agree with you, its a broken system.
  - fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
    just a few bad apples? Yeah, 95% of them are making all the rest look bad.
  - wasd 13y ago
    The problem is always bad apples taking advantage of the system. It feels like you're making the argument, "If you have nothing to hide, you shouldn't be worried."
moens 13y ago
"It's troubling that any secretive organizations would be able to have this much power over citizens, but the alternative is much scarier. [...] if China gets the upper hand (and they are trying unimaginably hard) then what? What will the sleeping dragon do?" I guess it would exert secretive power over its citizens? What point are you trying to make? America has finally realized the Maoist ideal it always wanted to achieve?
joshuahedlund 13y ago
> Does the NSA store all text messages? Yes, more than likely. If the NSA is already storing all of the things, why do we keep having scandals about government breaking rules to get records of things? Google publishes specific numbers of requests for records... There was a story a month or so ago about feds reprogramming a guy's smart card specifically to track him... AP just broke the story about the subpoena for two months of phone records... if the NSA already has all this stuff, why doesn't everyone in the government just secretly get it from them instead of going to all this extra trouble to get records from companies all the time? I'm concerned about all the above abusive surveillance stories, but doesn't the fact that we're having all these stories prove that they don't have total surveillance yet?
- dm2 13y ago
  Partially because that kind of information can't be used in court. The fact is that text messages are extremely insecure. If the US govt is willing to spend hundreds of billions on spy satellites and submarines, isn't it reasonable to assume that they would spend a couple million to gather all text messages? They're not supposed to spy on US citizens, but there are enough loopholes to allow it. Just because the NSA has huge amounts of data doesn't mean that the FBI has unlimited access to that data. The NSA historically doesn't share information with other agencies. Many claim that the NSA knew the details of 9/11 but were not allowed to share this information. Then the Patriot act and "secret patriot act" came along and more information is allowed to be shared between agencies, but not unlimited information, as far as the public knows.
newman314 13y ago
Want to lay off the "Fuck Yeah, 'Murica!"? Because you are laying it on just a little thick along with scaremongering. Provide proof that China is evil. Different != evil. "the unknown is scary" That's just a stupid statement. If all you knew was Nazi Germany, would you maintain the status quo?
- dm2 13y ago
  I have nothing against China. But if the balance of power evens out through electronic warfare, then real and very deadly war might be the end result. The US doesn't spend half of our GDP on the military for shits and giggles. Regarding your Nazi Germany comparison, I don't know enough about the holocaust to speculate on the reasons why it happened or what could have been done to prevent it. I wouldn't kill any innocent human, no matter their religion or race. Groupthink, racism, fear, and ignorance might be partially to blame but it would be difficult to be in a position to actually make a difference during those times. Electronic warfare is not comparable to the holocaust. But the potential of power changing hands after 50+ years of control isn't something that shouldn't at least be discussed.
  - newman314 13y ago
    War is more profitable than peace. Don't believe all the propaganda that war is always necessary. But there's always the refrain that war is a job creation machine and any attempt to dial it down is met with accusations of being unpatriotic (case in point, whoever downvoted me). Not quite that simple.
- tptacek 13y ago
  One way that China is "different" is that the police in China can summarily sentence arbitrary Chinese citizens to "Rehabilitation Through Labor" for as long as a year without trial (trials are available as a formality but are apparently so delayed that their practical impact is negligible). You can be a Chinese citizen and plucked off the street and put into a labor camp for a year with no recourse. Your call whether that's just a cultural difference. I don't know what "evil" means here.
rhizome 13y ago
Does the NSA store all text messages? Yes, more than likely. Do their employees snoop on US citizens? Nope. Correct. Since the NSA is prohibited from operating within US borders, it's the FBI who snoops on US citizens.
ppod 13y ago
>Does the NSA store all text messages? Yes, more than likely. Do you have any evidence for this? The Wiretap Act clearly prohibits it, if they are doing it, it's definitely illegal.
- dm2 13y ago
  https://www.google.com/search?q=NSA+wiretap https://www.google.com/search?q=NSA+wiretap http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_co... http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2006/04/6585-2/ http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2006/04/6585-2/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_Law_Enforcement_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_L... http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/13164-supreme-court-allows-nsas-warrantless-wiretapping-to-continue http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/13164... Of course, smart criminals would not use unencrypted text messages that could be intercepted. But catching the low-hanging fruit is better than nothing.
  - ppod 13y ago
    Thanks for your helpful link to a google search for "NSA wiretap". None of the links you post have anything to do with "storing all text messages". Exaggeration like this just turns people cold to bothering to read about genuine privacy concerns. The issues you post are real and probably wrong and should be challenged legally, where evidence exists (a lot of the AT&T stuff is based on evidence from a single former employee), but when you confuse Warrentless Wiretapping with "storing all text messages", it makes me want to not listen to what you're saying.
jrockway 13y ago
I've posted about this before, but I'll post it again. A few months before the first Obama election, there was a thread on Slashdot about things you couldn't say on the Internet. I humorously contributed "I am going to kill the president" to the discussion. A few months later, the Secret Service showed up at my house, with guns, to question me about it. (The agents were quite reasonable about the whole thing, FWIW, but they did need to follow up after reading that comment.) People are watching you, so be careful what you say.
- orblivion 13y ago
  I'd be worried if I were the president too, if perceived threats are dealt with a few months later.

by dm2 13y ago

defilade 13y ago

I believe the issue is what happens to all the other data that's not related to the intent of the surveillance. For example, if you're talking to your spouse about a health issue, your sex life, etc. If that's not the target of the surveillance, the government shouldn't be retaining it.

dm2 13y ago
More than likely they are. It is never read by humans though unless flagged. And hopefully there are checks-and-balances in place to alert others if a government employee is accessing data about someone that he personally knows. It's not as easy as "only save texts with the words bomb and weed in them". It's all saved, then analyzed, then retained a few years, then eventually deleted. Is that acceptable for the US government to do?
- jlarocco 13y ago
  No, it's not. If a person isn't suspected of a crime the government shouldn't be searching or collecting any of their information. This isn't China or North Korea, we're supposed to be a free country. It's also amusing how sure you seem about some things, while also adding in a few "hopefully"-s here and there. The truth is, you don't have any idea what they're doing because they don't tell anybody.
  - D9u 13y ago
    The truth is, you don't have any idea what they're doing because they don't tell anybody. Well, the US government did grant immunity to the big TelComs for their participation in the "Domestic" surveillance program a few years ago... That tells me all I need to know. RedPhone anyone? http://www.whispersystems.org/ http://www.whispersystems.org/
- betterunix 13y ago
  "It is never read by humans though unless flagged." With the criteria for being "flagged" remaining secret. Are you a dissident? Now the government can make your life difficult by leaking information about your brief extramarital affair. Maybe the government will concoct a sexual assault case against you to shut you up.
  - dm2 13y ago
    Maybe there should be government whistle-blower laws to try to prevent these kinds of things from happening.
    - betterunix 13y ago
      It's not just about whistleblowers or Wikileaks. What about the guy who is critical of US government policies and is gaining a large following? What about the guy who organizes a boycott against a well-connected corporation or industry? What about independent politicians? What about protesters and activists? Almost all adults have some embarrassing secret that might undermine their credibility in the court of public opinion.

jlarocco 13y ago

> Do their employees snoop of US citizens? Nope. I'm glad you're so certain. > Information is critical in the world we live in. It's troubling that any secretive organizations would be able to have this much power over citizens, BUT the alternative is much scarier. That's just scare mongering. As a country we got by for over 200 years without government surveillance, and nothing has changed to make it necessary now.

rayiner 13y ago
> That's just scare mongering. As a country we got by for over 200 years without government surveillance, and nothing has changed to make it necessary now. I'd argue a lot has changed. The U.S. has always militarily dominated everything that could hurt it. Soon after our independence, we were intervening in Latin America because in the 1800's, set off from the Old World by two huge oceans, Latin America is what could have hurt us. As the world became smaller, we built a bigger Navy, and by World War I we had the largest in the world. Ever since World War I we have maintained military supremacy in any domain that mattered (naval, air, nuclear, space, etc). Arguably this is just a continuation of the trend onto the internet, now that the digital sphere matters.
- dm2 13y ago
  Yep, Information Dominance is a real concept and we have to allow our government to maintain it. There is a very delicate balancing act being preformed with peoples "rights" to privacy, but the US government is not going to stop monitoring because people want a false sense of privacy.
  - moens 13y ago
    ...and they especially won't stop just because people want a REAL sense of privacy!
- jlarocco 13y ago
  I disagree. By that logic the government should have been reading our mail and recording telegraphs, phone calls, and faxes. I'm also curious what "threat" this is supposed to protect us from. There are enough communication mediums to choose from that it's pointless to monitor any of them. It's trivial to find or create one that isn't being monitored. It's not stopping criminals, it's just taking freedom from normal citizens.

pilif 13y ago

>There is a very easy way to test their capabilities. Send a text message with keywords involving bombs and political figures and see what happens. I'm not going to do it, but it would be an interesting experiment. See how far "they" have gotten? They made us afraid of texting certain keywords to other people using a medium that's supposed to be usable for private one-on-one communications. In a country that values freedom of speech over nearly everything else. Free to say what you want as long as no government has an issue with it I guess. Of course we don't know whether SMSes are actually monitored. Of course it's very well possible that nothing might happen if you text your buddy something involving bombs. But the fact that something might happen was so convincing to you (and me, honestly and I don't even live in the US) that you decided not to do it. To me, that's greatly concerning as it shows that the oppression is already happening and we are already censoring ourselves even over private media.

greenyoda 13y ago
But even if the government does monitor all SMS messages and people do censor themselves out of fear, that does nothing to stop a determined terrorist from communicating over SMS: they just need to devise a code in advance, which is what criminals have been doing for ages. Instead of saying "go ahead and plant the bomb" they could say "my hamster has been feeling very ill".

seyfarth 13y ago

Just text someone "Hey, so I'm going to get a pistol, and rob the US Bank on <street> in <my city>. Then I think I'll make a trip to Washington to bomb the white house, maybe send a few ricen-laced letters to US Senators on the way. Wanna tag along? Allahu akbar." Pretty sure that trips a few flags. I feel sorry for the poor NSA guy having to read through all my texts. Worst. Afternoon. Ever.

stfu 13y ago

Do their employees snoop on US citizens? Nope. I find it highly ironic that you are making this statement today. Today, where it came out that the IRS leaked confidential infos on one political group to their political enemies [1]. I have no idea how you can make such a statement. Is it just naivety or what are your intentions? If information "is there" it is going to be used. No matter how sophisticated the flagging system is, the data is not stored in some secret vault only accessible to the great inquisitor. The recent IRS events clearly demonstrate that government institutions are absolutely unafraid to abuse available data for intimidation if necessary. These are no just a rogue employee stalking his ex, but actions on a targeted, ideological level. The only data that can not be abused is the data that does not exist. [1] http://www.propublica.org/article/irs-office-that-targeted-tea-party-also-disclosed-confidential-docs http://www.propublica.org/article/irs-office-that-targeted-t...

dm2 13y ago
Is that really a broken system or just a few bad apples? Hopefully we can pinpoint the leaks, identify why they occurred, and develop safeguards to prevent abuses of highly confidential data in the future. Send the assholes who used their government position for evil to prison and make THAT the top news story. EDIT: The system will repeatedly be broken in an ever-changing environment. That doesn't mean that we should turn against our government as a whole. Patch the holes, prevent it from happening in the future, do our best to allow the right amount of transparency, and move on.
- moens 13y ago
  Its a broken system when that does not happen. So, I agree with you, its a broken system.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
  just a few bad apples? Yeah, 95% of them are making all the rest look bad.
- wasd 13y ago
  The problem is always bad apples taking advantage of the system. It feels like you're making the argument, "If you have nothing to hide, you shouldn't be worried."

moens 13y ago

"It's troubling that any secretive organizations would be able to have this much power over citizens, but the alternative is much scarier. [...] if China gets the upper hand (and they are trying unimaginably hard) then what? What will the sleeping dragon do?" I guess it would exert secretive power over its citizens? What point are you trying to make? America has finally realized the Maoist ideal it always wanted to achieve?

joshuahedlund 13y ago

> Does the NSA store all text messages? Yes, more than likely. If the NSA is already storing all of the things, why do we keep having scandals about government breaking rules to get records of things? Google publishes specific numbers of requests for records... There was a story a month or so ago about feds reprogramming a guy's smart card specifically to track him... AP just broke the story about the subpoena for two months of phone records... if the NSA already has all this stuff, why doesn't everyone in the government just secretly get it from them instead of going to all this extra trouble to get records from companies all the time? I'm concerned about all the above abusive surveillance stories, but doesn't the fact that we're having all these stories prove that they don't have total surveillance yet?

dm2 13y ago
Partially because that kind of information can't be used in court. The fact is that text messages are extremely insecure. If the US govt is willing to spend hundreds of billions on spy satellites and submarines, isn't it reasonable to assume that they would spend a couple million to gather all text messages? They're not supposed to spy on US citizens, but there are enough loopholes to allow it. Just because the NSA has huge amounts of data doesn't mean that the FBI has unlimited access to that data. The NSA historically doesn't share information with other agencies. Many claim that the NSA knew the details of 9/11 but were not allowed to share this information. Then the Patriot act and "secret patriot act" came along and more information is allowed to be shared between agencies, but not unlimited information, as far as the public knows.

newman314 13y ago

Want to lay off the "Fuck Yeah, 'Murica!"? Because you are laying it on just a little thick along with scaremongering. Provide proof that China is evil. Different != evil. "the unknown is scary" That's just a stupid statement. If all you knew was Nazi Germany, would you maintain the status quo?

dm2 13y ago
I have nothing against China. But if the balance of power evens out through electronic warfare, then real and very deadly war might be the end result. The US doesn't spend half of our GDP on the military for shits and giggles. Regarding your Nazi Germany comparison, I don't know enough about the holocaust to speculate on the reasons why it happened or what could have been done to prevent it. I wouldn't kill any innocent human, no matter their religion or race. Groupthink, racism, fear, and ignorance might be partially to blame but it would be difficult to be in a position to actually make a difference during those times. Electronic warfare is not comparable to the holocaust. But the potential of power changing hands after 50+ years of control isn't something that shouldn't at least be discussed.
- newman314 13y ago
  War is more profitable than peace. Don't believe all the propaganda that war is always necessary. But there's always the refrain that war is a job creation machine and any attempt to dial it down is met with accusations of being unpatriotic (case in point, whoever downvoted me). Not quite that simple.
tptacek 13y ago
One way that China is "different" is that the police in China can summarily sentence arbitrary Chinese citizens to "Rehabilitation Through Labor" for as long as a year without trial (trials are available as a formality but are apparently so delayed that their practical impact is negligible). You can be a Chinese citizen and plucked off the street and put into a labor camp for a year with no recourse. Your call whether that's just a cultural difference. I don't know what "evil" means here.

rhizome 13y ago

Does the NSA store all text messages? Yes, more than likely. Do their employees snoop on US citizens? Nope. Correct. Since the NSA is prohibited from operating within US borders, it's the FBI who snoops on US citizens.

ppod 13y ago

>Does the NSA store all text messages? Yes, more than likely. Do you have any evidence for this? The Wiretap Act clearly prohibits it, if they are doing it, it's definitely illegal.

dm2 13y ago
https://www.google.com/search?q=NSA+wiretap https://www.google.com/search?q=NSA+wiretap http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_co... http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2006/04/6585-2/ http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2006/04/6585-2/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_Law_Enforcement_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_L... http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/13164-supreme-court-allows-nsas-warrantless-wiretapping-to-continue http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/13164... Of course, smart criminals would not use unencrypted text messages that could be intercepted. But catching the low-hanging fruit is better than nothing.
- ppod 13y ago
  Thanks for your helpful link to a google search for "NSA wiretap". None of the links you post have anything to do with "storing all text messages". Exaggeration like this just turns people cold to bothering to read about genuine privacy concerns. The issues you post are real and probably wrong and should be challenged legally, where evidence exists (a lot of the AT&T stuff is based on evidence from a single former employee), but when you confuse Warrentless Wiretapping with "storing all text messages", it makes me want to not listen to what you're saying.

jrockway 13y ago

I've posted about this before, but I'll post it again. A few months before the first Obama election, there was a thread on Slashdot about things you couldn't say on the Internet. I humorously contributed "I am going to kill the president" to the discussion. A few months later, the Secret Service showed up at my house, with guns, to question me about it. (The agents were quite reasonable about the whole thing, FWIW, but they did need to follow up after reading that comment.) People are watching you, so be careful what you say.

orblivion 13y ago
I'd be worried if I were the president too, if perceived threats are dealt with a few months later.