21 ms·

Sorry, NSA, Terrorists Don't Use Verizon. Or Skype. Or Gmail

527 points by Libertatea 13y ago

ryguytilidie 13y ago
Article seems to kind of miss the point. While the NSA's STATED reasons for these programs is to "fight terror" that doesn't necessarily mean it is their actual reason. If they want to spy on activists and everyday citizens this seems like a pretty solid strategy.
- pjnewton 13y ago
  Agreed, however, what is the value in spying on activists (assuming you mean the non-extremist type)and everyday citizens?
  - Karunamon 13y ago
    Depends on your end goal. If the goal is actually what's stated, I.e. stopping terrorists, there is no value. If the actual goal is to produce a massive database of citizen activities for later (ab)use, then there is a huge benefit for the government. Since all of the evidence seems to point to scenario #2 (since there is no good reason that tracking those eeeevul turrists) requires all this information from innocent people, I think we can safely assume their excuse is a shitty facade.
    - pjnewton 13y ago
      I'm really hoping this is cloaked sarcasm...
      - Karunamon 13y ago
        ? The databases being collected are much more suited to harassing innocents than capturing terrorists. You disagree?
        pjnewton 13y ago
        I disagree that there is some anti-American nefariousness going on with this data collection mess.
        flyinRyan 13y ago
        Oh they very likely believe they are the best patriots. Just as Hoover did.
  - cookiecaper 13y ago
    One man's "activist" is another man's terrorist, basically. Activists are liable to convert to extremism with the right set of triggers. This can therefore qualify as "counterterrorism", because if they access all your communications they may be able to flag you as a potential clinic bomber, etc. Also, I seriously doubt the assertion in the headline that terrorists simply don't use common online services, and even if this were true, the ripples that can be correlated from their associates who do use these services would still be of interest to law enforcement.
    - pjnewton 13y ago
      Yup, I agree with you here... I was wondering if the person who made the comment had any educated reason for doing so...
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- da02 13y ago
  According to another whistleblower, it also means people who control budgets and power "...including senior Congressional leaders, the former White House Press Secretary, high-ranking military generals, the entire Supreme Court, and even then-Senator from Illinois and future President, Barack Obama." http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/06/24/bfp-report-whistleblower-nsa-wiretapped-obama-petraeus-alito-others-2/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/06/24/bfp-report-whistl...
seferphier 13y ago
Should post the original article that did the research: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-23/u-s-surveillance-is-not-aimed-at-terrorists.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-23/u-s-surveillance-is...
- leopoldo 13y ago
  Thanks! I have been trying to make this point to my friends in light of recent events
kghose 13y ago
Actually, they used to. Then they wised up and started using couriers. Both worked to the disadvantage of Al Quaida. When they stopped using electronic communications their organization suffered. Then, it was the movements of a courier that gave away Bin Laden. So, regardless of whether you think it's OK for the NSA to spy on everyone, this push did break down Al Quaida's organization. Whether it affects cell oriented terrorism (or 'lone wolf' terrorism) is another matter. For example, for the Boston bombers one of them did mention something about terrorism and came on the radar, but the FBI misjudged the threat.
- CaveTech 13y ago
  When you have a government throwing billions of dollars into locating you, how exactly are you supposed to hide? Especially since Osama's courrier was only discovered because he was sold out (or tortured out) by his associates. In security you can only be as strong as your weakest link, and when dealing with a global organization you will surely have weak links.
  - pjnewton 13y ago
    > In security you can only be as strong as your weakest link, and when dealing with a global organization you will surely have weak links. This is the point that this, bandwagon, article misses completely. They may be judging right, the smart criminals (or terrorists) understand tradecraft and how to avoid using obvious means of detection. However there are always many more low level folks that wil slip up due to lack of competence and lack of experience. When this happens we (non-terrorists) are able to establish a foothold at some, any, level of the organization and start to pick it apart.
- betterunix 13y ago
  "So, regardless of whether you think it's OK for the NSA to spy on everyone, this push did break down Al Quaida's organization." OK, so why are we continuing it? We broke Al Qaeda, we killed their leaders. We got revenge for the September 11th attacks. To put it another way, who is our enemy now?
mpyne 13y ago
Don't the people that the terrorists need to recruit use Skype, and GMail, and Facebook? Find the recruiters & PR types that have to be where the people are, and that's one more in you have with a nascent terror cell.
- nooneelse 13y ago
  Indeed. If the objection is that people drop off the easy to see communication systems and start having more shielded communications as they radicalize, then the objection carries within itself a description of very pattern that one can use such a internet traffic surveillance program to search for. A naive version would generate plenty of false positives, but following up on random entries in the list generated would quickly reveal classes of other reasons that people's comms go dark (having children, new job, moving to a new town, major injury or illness, depression, etc.), and one could start filtering using that. Also one might get some use out of looking for clusters of people going dark in various social-connection graphs, and commonalities of what people fitting the comms-going-dark pattern read and say online.
Kylekramer 13y ago
There seems to be two NSAs in the media right now: the extremely competent one that can access your email from a desktop without any oversight or trouble and the bumbling idiots who don't know more about terrorists than reporters. It doesn't mesh.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  Having worked in several large (public and private) organizations, I always find it amusing when people act like it is somehow inconceivable that an organization could demonstrate both extreme competence in one set of activities and extreme incompetence in a another set of activities whose domains overlap those addressed by the first set. IME, that's the norm in large organizations.
  - fixxer 13y ago
    It gets really fun when the incompetent ones get promoted and start dictating how the competent ones are supposed to work. (Sigh...)
    - Afforess 13y ago
      Peter Principle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle >The Peter Principle is a proposition that states that the members of an organization where promotion is based on achievement, success and merit will eventually be promoted beyond their level of ability.
    - marcosdumay 13y ago
      Yeah, and then the organization stays completely competent on all of its action... But those actions are incoherent. The organization acts like a completely incompetent being, despite all interations with it being competently handled.
- sjtgraham 13y ago
  What if it wasn't really about terrorism?
flipcoder 13y ago
Spoiler alert: It's not for terrorists at all. http://www.reddit.com/r/misc/comments/1gziqi/obamas_lobbyists_admit_to_wanting_webcam_spying/ http://www.reddit.com/r/misc/comments/1gziqi/obamas_lobbyist...
- mtgx 13y ago
  How fortunate for them that Xbox One exists now.
  - soundgecko 13y ago
    How is the Kinect any worse than every phone, tablet, laptop that have cameras and/or mics, which people carry with them 24/7, even to showers? For example, I would be much more embarassed by someone posting the video and voice feed from my phone on the internet than from my living room.
  - vittore 13y ago
    do you really think it is coinsidence?
  - Karunamon 13y ago
    Not this crap again.
vermontdevil 13y ago
Of course. It's all about the $$ and perceived security theater.
damoncali 13y ago
Criminals (I hate to use the word "terrorist" because it has a distracting political bias - we're talking about people doing bad things to other people) are not some sort of hyper-disciplined super spies. They do some pretty dumb things. A while back I met a guy looking to put together a Twitter system designed to combat drug cartels, who, yes, communicated via Twitter. This was several years ago, but still. The whole reason I'm so upset about what the NSA is doing is because it works, and over time it will work much better than it does today.
codex 13y ago
"In 2010, Google estimated that it had indexed just 0.004% of the internet." I don't believe this. Does anyone else?
- agilebyte 13y ago
  Infographic with source at the bottom here: http://urlm.co/blog/2010/10/28/the-awesome-size-of-the-internet-infographic/ http://urlm.co/blog/2010/10/28/the-awesome-size-of-the-inter...
  - codex 13y ago
    So Google has indexed 200TB? My cat pictures alone are 1TB!
- thebooktocome 13y ago
  There are some giant internet databases behind a "Disallow: /".
- p4bl0 13y ago
  This sentence made me bug too. One should not mix up the web and the internet. Google only indexes the web (well, and a part of usenet). Found this: http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/how-much-of-the-internet-is-indexed-by-google http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/how-much-of... which support the claim in the article.
- damoncali 13y ago
  A shockingly high percentage of the internet is spam or other junk that is never seen. I don't know about .004%, but I don't doubt that Google doesn't index the absolutely huge volumes of crap out there.
  - rz2k 13y ago
    Google may index a lot of the spam as relatively useless since it is often found at top levels. If the number is correct what it is probably missing is all of the content that lies in databases, easily accessible, but not necessarily on the front pages of web sites, or found without entering a query of some sort.
yeezusnice 13y ago
well they don't use it anymore, thanks to snowden We all better hope that Bloomberg/Vice is more authoritative on this subject than the intelligence community or else the NON-ZERO number of terrorism cases involving these types of comms just went dark. Btw, wasn't it UBLs courier who was caught through his cell phone?
- talmand 13y ago
  That's crap, anyone paying attention knew that modern communications have been compromised by various governments over a decade ago, if not longer. The smart ones never used such unsecured communications in the first place. Nothing Snowden released changes the fact that only stupid people communicate over third party services when they are trying to keep secrets. It would be like the US military issuing unencrypted cell phones to troops on the front-line.
  - yeezusnice 13y ago
    being smart doesn't preclude you from having someone stupid in your ranks. This applies to anyone trying to hide their activities. And im glad you're so sure about the comsec of all terrorist/spies/criminals.. totally separate, stand-alone communications networks, end-to-end encrypted, one-time pads, etc. why do anything at all? why? because its a ludicrous assertion and you know it. This goes to the point of the top comment.
    - talmand 13y ago
      Sure, there are stupid people in their ranks. That's why you have need-to-know rules for those people. If they get caught then only the things they know can be compromised. Such people are easily replaced. Why do you think such things go on forever? It's because the authorities are in a never-ending battle of dealing with underlings that know very little. It's the same principle with police dealing with organized crime or drug cartels. Most of the time the reason they can break up such a group is by getting someone on the inside that can get the info they need. I don't believe I said that terrorist organizations were building their own "totally separate, stand-alone communications networks, end-to-end encrypted, one-time pads". I said they are most likely not using an unsecured third party service. I fail to understand why people cannot comprehend the idea that a small group of people need not use fancy technology to communicate to each other. They can simply meet. I don't agree that it's a ludicrous assertion simply because I was arguing against the point of the top comment; that all the world's terrorists have suddenly dropped off easily compromised communications specifically because of Snowden. My assertion is that the top of the chain in the organizations have not used such communications for years and I fail to see how that is ludicrous.
nrivadeneira 13y ago
I'm undecided on the issue, however it seems completely logical to me that terrorists wouldn't use venues that are being monitored by the NSA. Would that still be the case if those lines of communications weren't monitored at all? In addition, if the NSA started monitoring whatever the terrorists use at present, would they continue to use it? Doubtful. I don't think this article comes to the clever conclusion that it thinks it does.
logn 13y ago
I think the next leak will show they've redefined 'terrorist' and that a terrorist these days is anyone who does anything the US doesn't like and is vaguely related ultimately back to national security. So, I think already we've established that any drug crimes (even low-level ones) are national security threats. Bitcoin miners will soon be terrorists I think. People encrypting email are highly suspect and probably a national security threat. People running free web hosting will soon be terrorists. It directly serves the interests of the government for everyone to be considered a terrorist. It's probably one of the biggest loopholes our country's seen.
culshaw 13y ago
Actually, they were using Gmail drafts to communicate with each other?
- hga 13y ago
  Exactly the point I was going to make. That's how Petraeus was communicating with his mistress, and they found her by cross referencing checkins at all the hotels revealed by IP addresses that were at the other end of the conversation.
hawkharris 13y ago
The author is focusing on the wrong issue. He is mostly concerned with whether or not the surveillance is effective. If effectiveness were the only consideration, he would have a weak argument. Even if most terrorists are smart enough to avoid Gmail, Skype and cellular networks, it might still make sense to eavesdrop in these places. After all, smart criminals sometimes get caught because they make dumb mistakes. For example, my understanding is that Sabu (a member of Anonymous) was caught because he forgot to use Tor in one instance when he logged into a social network. But we can argue all day about whether or not PRISM is effective. I think the author would have a stronger argument if he focused on the fact that the program is unconstitutional, regardless of how well it works.
- corin_ 13y ago
  Why limit your argument to one or the other? Some people will think PRISM is effective, others may not. Some people may think the privacy issues are important, others may not. But surely they balance each other out - if the NSA cannot catch any terrorists, then it doesn't matter if the privacy issues are not important, PRISM is clearly a waste of money, case over. And presumably somewhere along the line it could go the other way - if 50% of letters contain anthrax, would you not be happy sacrificing some privacy to let the NSA to screen them for you? Or a wider example, what if there was evidence that without PRISM, terrorists would be killing 1000s of Americans on a weekly basis - would we all be so against it still?
  - hawkharris 13y ago
    You're welcome to make any argument about PRISM. But if your goal is to discredit the program and ensure others like it won't be established, the legal argument is stronger and more direct: Government programs can't violate constitutional rights, regardless of their efficacy. Period. Why dance around your opponent when you know where to place a powerful right-hook?
    - corin_ 13y ago
      Clearly the right-hook hasn't knocked them out yet - which is perhaps why even the strongest boxers supplement their fist power with at least a little foot movement.
rdl 13y ago
Plenty use yahoo and MSN messenger, though, historically.
runarb 13y ago
Well apparently both Al-Qaeda and some CIA employees uses public email accounts like Gmail to communicate in secret.[0] The method is a little bit different than normally email. They used Gmail as a electronic dropbox by saving messages in the draft folder, but now that NSA have direct access that are probably picking up that also. So be careful not to make a draft with text like "the drunk monkey sings at midnight", or the NSA may come knocking :) 0: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/11/12/heres-the-e-mail-trick-petraeus-and-broadwell-used-to-communicate/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/11/12...
- dllthomas 13y ago
  Wasn't this 1) how Petraeus and his biographer carried on their affair, and 2) how they got caught?
  - mpyne 13y ago
    Yes and yes, though #2 didn't happen until the FBI had been tipped off for other reasons, IIRC.
    - dllthomas 13y ago
      Right, and I think it was correlated against other records (hotel stays?)
vacri 13y ago
For the definition of 'terrorist' that includes well-informed, trained cadres, and not the definition of 'terrorist' that includes rampant amateurs, the kind that get stopped before they do anything serious. The author has a fairly naive view of what a terrorist is
iagomr 13y ago
They don't use it because NSA monitors it
nslocum 13y ago
The NSA isn't focused exclusively on terrorism. It has ~40k employees who work on a wide range of areas, drug cartels, human trafficking, money laundering, counter intelligence, espionage, and hundreds of others. It's mighty presumptuous for people not "in the know" to speak on what is and isn't valuable to the NSA's missions. As for terrorists, if someone were a skilled terrorist their entire life, they probably wouldn't live digital traces within the US. But this isn't the case; people become terrorists, and some of those become skilled terrorists. There is immense value in having intelligence on people before they become a terrorist and needless to say, before they hone their tradecraft and drop from the grid.
- mikegioia 13y ago
  Yea, I think what some people are worried about though, are the (a) possibility of many false positives and (b) the collateral damage with "common crimes". In the latter I mean: how far into the realm of everyday rule-breaking will these agencies go? Will you get a ticket mailed to you because you rolled through a stop sign and your license plate was captured? Will you get police officer (with warrant) at your door to search your premises because you purchased a book about marijuana growing?
snaky 13y ago
>.. may only be good for gathering information on the stupidest, lowest-ranking of terrorists Yes, of course. And 99% of them are in stupidest, lowest-ranking part. As for the smartest and highest-ranking ones, there is undercover agents and informators.
runjake 13y ago
Some clearly terrorist elements have used all three of the services in the headline. It still doesn't make NSA's domestic surveillance, in violation of the Fourth Amendment, right.
ansible 13y ago
This reminds me of the Streetlight Effect, also known as observational bias. [1] I just find the whole situation quite disappointing. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect
dclowd9901 13y ago
I've really nothing more to say about the NSA at this point. I'd just like to give a shout out to Vice for being one of the most vital and relevant news organizations of the modern era. Whenever people say journalism is dead, I just point them to a Vice article. They make me proud to have a journo background.
- CrunchyJams 13y ago
  They certainly seem less beholden to whomever the mainstream media is trying not to upset.
  - dclowd9901 13y ago
    Indeed, but more than that, they cover some amazing material and actually put people in places and shed light on some really uncomfortable topics. They manage to make news as informative as it is enthralling. I can't imagine a better way to cover news.
    - selimthegrim 13y ago
      As someone whose mother was born and raised in Karachi and who visits the city with some frequency, my jaw dropped when I saw their reporting from there. The local media won't even go near half the people they managed to get interviews from. They were a bit jumpy but their brio more makes up for it. That and the Mexican Mormon drug war were the real kickers.
      - selimthegrim 13y ago
        Well to be a bit more accurate, the media will interview them but with kid gloves. The last time a TV station aired someone obliquely criticizing the MQM political party (as Vice did), all the cars in their parking lot got torched and the windows got shot out of their studio while they were broadcasting live.
- theklub 13y ago
  Yes, totally agree. I was very happy to learn they were producing a series for HBO simply for the fact that more people would become aware of them.
bazillion 13y ago
Well, I'll have to disagree in full with the points the author is trying to make. "A recent Bloomberg piece points to a 2012 report on terrorism which found that most serious terrorists steer clear of the most obvious platforms—major cell networks, Google, Skype, Facebook, etc." The 2012 report cited wasn't some senate oversight committee, a DIRNSA (director NSA) report, or a truly credible intelligence source. It was from the Dutch Intelligence agency, an agency focused on leftist activity vs. right-wing Islamic terrorism. "In 2010, Google estimated that it had indexed just 0.004% of the internet—meaning the vast majority of the web is open for surreptitious message-sending business. Terrorists simply aren't dumb enough to discuss their secret plans over Skype or to email each other confidential information on Gmail." Do you think that it's feasible for terrorists to use couriers/tradecraft to transmit all messages to their group members around the world? If I told you right now to get a message to your cousin in Connecticut within an hour without using Skype/email/phone or anything of the other means listed, could you do it? Let's say you answer that you'll just use steganography (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography) to hide the message. How are you going to communicate to your cousin where to look for the message and how to break it down? Armchair intelligence analysis is the same as armchair anything -- you have no basis for what you're talking about except a bunch of redacted reports, news articles, and spy movies. Intelligence analysis is a very straightforward thing, though, which a lot of folks working in tech would be really good at, but articles like this are the equivalent of commenting on the merits of using PHP having never written a line of code in your life. I understand peoples' frustration with what (if true) would be an egregious slight on the public trust. But, is it more likely that the 4+ million security clearance holders are in on some large conspiracy to take away our freedoms, or that a disgruntled worker wanted to watch the world burn a little. Having worked in every facet of the NSA as a linguist/intelligence analyst/programmer/many other things, and CIA contractor for a year, I tend to think the latter, and I'm very vocal about my thoughts on the intelligence community. Read my previous comments if you want to see my thoughts on how the media has been getting it wrong, and what the deal is from the perspective of someone who worked in this community.
- jessedhillon 13y ago
  Could you give an opinion as to whether or not the PRISM slides were made by a BAH contractor or by an NSA employee? So far we have seen very little in the way of corroboration from Snowden -- I'm inclined to believe that he may have made off with assets from BAH's internal network instead: four slides which look terrible if that's all you know of them.
mortehu 13y ago
From the original brochure: > Of course, jihadists are also active on the surface Web, where they use social media and various applications, such as email, Internet telephony and chat programmes, to name a few. They use these means of communication to actively spread jihadist ideas, recruit new jihadists and proactively distribute and promote propaganda material. Jihadists that are active on the surface Web are afraid of being detected, which is why there is no (or very limited) dynamic interaction, as opposed to what is observed on core forums. > "Your talk on YouTube can be monitored by the Kuffar. Many a brother were arrested based on intelligence from YouTube, they will not hesitate to handover your IP details to Kuffar. Therefore, it is NOT the place you should be social networking." The brochure in general seems light on science, and I'm not sure it "drew a convincing picture", although I admit I didn't read the whole thing.
ferdo 13y ago
> The NSA has to collect the metadata from all of our phone calls because terrorists, right? No. The NSA is keeping an eye on us. The National Security State has ossified into a cult. All non-members of the cult are viewed with suspicion. When the Inquisition made excuses for its excesses, it was in the name of the "salvation" of the flock. When the Church of the NSA makes excuses for its excesses, it's in the name of our "security". There are always people willing to be fooled by priests and bureaucrats. Priests and bureaucrats love those people.
sologoub 13y ago
This one made me chuckle: "So, essentially, the NSA is deeply compromising our privacy so that it can do an extremely shitty job of looking for terrorists. Nice." Would be so funny, if it wasn't so sad...
Arnor 13y ago
It's depressing that this article is so high on HN right now. It's another example of a poor report trivializing an important debate. Meanwhile, many of the comments here are snarky and sardonic which further degrades the dialog. This is a serious subject and should be treated as such. It's easy to shout hurray for your side. It's easy to demonize your enemy. According to the government, Snowden is a traitor. According to many frequent HN readers, the government is completely out of the control. Neither of these claims is true, but they are difficult to get past. Although Snowden is certainly not a traitor, the accusation is serious. His life and freedom hang in the balance. Politicians and political pundits are looking for an easy solution when they demonize Snowden. Making him out to be the enemy makes it easier to keep the country calm about the issues he unveiled. While Snowden isn't a monster, the surveillance programs are not evil either. They are shocking. They evoke emotional response. They can be frightening -- especially since we don't know how much deeper the programs go. Still, they are the largely the result of people trying to defend the country from terrorism. Regardless of the cynicism you bring to the topic, the primary goal of these programs is to save lives. Accept that, take a breath, then reevaluate your grievances. I'm not suggesting that there's nothing to be angry or worried about. I'm certainly not saying that the programs are right or benevolent. I'm saying that this is important and meaningful and needs to be treated as such rather than another opportunity to win points in some silly political game.
- tekromancr 13y ago
  Thank you.
- carlob 13y ago
  Just how many lives has terrorism claimed in the past decade? Smoking has probably claimed more lives just today than terrorist attacks on US soil in the past decade. So I don't think it warrants any action at all. Let's face it the aim of terrorism is to scare people and if we are so scared that we're giving away basic human rights (and correspondence secrecy is a basic human right) then the terrorist won.
  - hnriot 13y ago
    You're missing the first rule of any bureaucracy like the NSA, it has nothing to do with catching terrorists, but far more to do with perpetuating the bureaucracy and increasing it's budget. Catching anyone is a distant second.
cookiecaper 13y ago
I don't buy the concept that terrorists don't use common online services. Does anybody actually believe things are safer if you use HushMail et al as your provider? While it's unlikely that the NSA has asked HushMail to FTP up all of its account data as it apparently did with PRISM participants, one would be highly naive to assume that intelligence services have just decided to leave certain providers' data untouched just because they're unwilling to lay out the welcome mat. One would therefore logically conclude that with very basic steganographic measures, it's easier to hide among the hundreds of millions of mails that Google processes each day than the thousands processed by HushMail or other minor email providers (or even a fully-hosted custom mail server at "terrorists-r-us.com"). Furthermore, if you use any cryptography at all besides SSL you're probably already on an NSA list somewhere, but GnuPG alleviates all of these concerns and I'm sure that some terrorist organizations have discovered it. In this case, there should be no issue using Gmail or other services for your communication.
acmeyer9 13y ago
I also have to disagree with this statement and the article in general. It's very difficult to say what terrorists use when they are living in the US, let alone make a general statement that they don't use them because they'd be stupid to use these services. That actually makes the argument for why using these services might be advantageous for them even stronger. If you (the general population) doesn't think they'd use it, that makes it more of a reason for them to use it. Let me big clear that this is not an argument for NSA-type surveillance, however, I don't think we should be arguing against the surveillance using general statements or more accurately opinions like these. Argue against surveillance with more factual/strong cases.
rhokstar 13y ago
Don't they use snailmail, tin cans with strings, chalk marks on objects, and sign language? Lowbie tech.
joemcm 13y ago
I dislike this article because it asserts that the NSA has ever said "a lot of terrorists use X, Y and Z." In reality, the NSA has said "tracking this data w.r.t. terrorism doesn't always prevent terrorist crimes, but it has been successful in the past." It seems like nonsense to assert that none, zero, nil terrorists use these services... I agree with Arnor in his comment - this is a trivializing report.
pinaceae 13y ago
Pretty sure the Boston Bombers used exactly those services. And they were/are US citizens.
leoc 13y ago
I can think of three possible reasons (I claim no expertise here) to doubt that FISA orders and phone metadata are completely useless against terrorists even if (as seems likely) serious terrorists know to steer clear of Skype, Facebook and friends. 1) By monitoring Internet services like these, the NSA denies their use to the terrorists. It's not as if exclusively using couriers, dead drops and the like has no costs to an organisation (say, have you moved off GMail yet?) Apparently some fairly serious terrorists are using the Internet in more secure ways, but the spooks have some ability to go after those too. 2) Any big network or organisations is going to have slipups, no matter how good it is. It would be hard to imagine that no serious terrorist ever gets lazy, or decides to take a risk under time pressure. 3) There have to be a lot of guys who start out as Facebook jihadis, and only later get serious and realise (or have it explained to them) that they need to stop making it easy for the authorities to track them. But by that time they'll already have left a useful trail of contacts and activity through FB. (By the way, that's one reason why I think it's wrong to assume that PRISM has been useless even if it hasn't stopped any specific attacks. Realistically, that kind of intelligence is going to be less about discovering big plots just in time and more about gathering enough information to locate and move on terrorists - espcially if you can then turn them into informers. Running "touts" is central to effective counterterrorism, if history is any guide.)
siculars 13y ago
I often say, tongue firmly in cheek, that if Google doesn't know something it is not meant to be known - or exist. Obviously this is not true. I would hate to think that in the future if "intelligence" does not exist in an NSA database then it does not exist. Unfortunately, I feel this will be the case. Let's take the recent Boston Bombing, not only did the US get a tip off but certainly they had sigint from various sources. Were they able to connect the dots? No, they were not. "Intelligence" is more than just rows in a database.
blumentopf 13y ago
Is the rationale behind PRISM really terrorism? Here in Germany there's a lot of talk that PRISM is ultimately a tool for industry espionage. The Boundless Informant world map shows Germany in bright orange. People are wondering: Is Germany breeding terrorists or is NSA simply interested in trade secrets? Going by that logic, terrorism is a red herring. By making details about PRISM and NSA's hacking activities public, Snowden is undermining the US's ability to covertly vacuum up trade secrets, thus weakening the US industry. That's why the US government is freaking out. You can bet that German companies are now reconsidering using cloud services hosted in the US, or cloud services at all, or American (closed source / potentially backdoored) software at all.
- krapp 13y ago
  Don't be offended by this, please, but what could Germany in particular possibly be doing that's so awesome and advanced that the United States would have to resort to theft to replicate it? If it were the case, I would expect companies to be involved in corporate espionage, not the government.
  - L4mppu 13y ago
    Smart and innovative people live outside of us too. As for the theft, it could be as simple as stealing a patent idea and patenting it in us so no matter what the original inventor does some of his money wil go to us government.
    - krapp 13y ago
      Sure, but even so I would expect a competing American company to be concerned about that... there's no reason for the NSA to care, since it probably doesn't affect national security.
      - L4mppu 13y ago
        The thing that brings us security is money. Money is powe and power is safety. That's how it affects national security.
epicwon 13y ago
What about the Boston marathon bombers? One of them was on welfare. Strong assumption in the title.
InclinedPlane 13y ago
Even with the panic that has happened regarding the revelations of mass-surveillance I don't think the public at large truly realizes how screwed up this situation is. The common defense of sweeping surveillance is that it serves an important purpose, finding terrorists, and it has succeeded in that purpose. Ignoring the very serious problems with framing the debate in such a way it's also fundamentally misleading. There have been many cases of "terrorist plots" within the US having been foiled over the last few years, but many if not most of these are not as serious as most would believe. A stereotypical "foiled terrorist plot" begins with a radicalized individual who somehow comes to the attention of the authorities. Then the FBI spins up an elaborate sting to essentially entrap the radicalized individual into committing to some sort of attack, often providing fake bombs in the process. And just before they go through with their planned "attack" the FBI arrests them. Examples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amine_El_Khalifi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amine_El_Khalifi and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Osman_Mohamud http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Osman_Mohamud and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farooque_Ahmed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farooque_Ahmed and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_Osmakac http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_Osmakac Meanwhile, the FBI, NSA, TSA, et al have failed to foil many much more serious attacks, such as the Boston bombings, the Fort Hood shooting, the "underwear bomber", the failed 2010 Times Square bombing attempt, etc.
- Wingman4l7 13y ago
  Another example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rezwan_Ferdaus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rezwan_Ferdaus
  - dbbolton 13y ago
    This article doesn't really tell us much about the FBI's involvement other than they arrested him.
    - Wingman4l7 13y ago
      It's not a very good article. Google his name and you can find the FBI affidavit and more information; it's a textbook "entrapment" case as the OP described.
qwertzlcoatl 13y ago
I would just like to crosspost a comment from reddit user MarcusHalberstram88 which I found to be insightful : Ok, I feel I have to speak up. This is why I take issue with subs like /r/politics, and I would hope for more from /r/technology. Most people who see this post will only read the title and not follow the link to the article (even though the title sensationalizes the article). If someone does actually click, this post links to a Motherboard article, which basically just cites, summarizes, and links to a Bloomberg article. The Bloomberg article[1] cites, extrapolates, and links to AIVD UK (a Dutch website). Said Dutch website[2] (finally) links to the actual report that all these different sources are supposedly reporting on. That report was by the General Intelligence and Security Service for the Dutch Ministry of Interiors and Kingdom Relations. The actual report itself is just shy of 30 pages long and dedicates one of its four chapters of findings to "How does online Jihadism work?" (roughly 4 pages). I think 4 pages discussing where and how (it is thought) 25,000 Jihadists gather online is one thing. Making a blanket statement saying that terrorists do not use Verizon, Skype, or Gmail is another. But anyone who just reads the title of this post, or just reads the article that the post links to, or even the article that THAT article links to, may believe otherwise. [1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-23/u-s-surveillance-is-not-aimed-at-terrorists.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-23/u-s-surveillance-is... [2] https://www.aivd.nl/english/publications-press/@2873/jihadism-web/ https://www.aivd.nl/english/publications-press/@2873/jihadis...
rob22 13y ago
one thing i could tell,survilencing the people in USA is bearable(non-american). but other countries are.
- rob22 13y ago
  one thing i could tell,survilencing the people in USA is bearable(non-american). but other countries aren't

527 points by Libertatea 13y ago

Article seems to kind of miss the point. While the NSA's STATED reasons for these programs is to "fight terror" that doesn't necessarily mean it is their actual reason. If they want to spy on activists and everyday citizens this seems like a pretty solid strategy.

pjnewton 13y ago
Agreed, however, what is the value in spying on activists (assuming you mean the non-extremist type)and everyday citizens?
- Karunamon 13y ago
  Depends on your end goal. If the goal is actually what's stated, I.e. stopping terrorists, there is no value. If the actual goal is to produce a massive database of citizen activities for later (ab)use, then there is a huge benefit for the government. Since all of the evidence seems to point to scenario #2 (since there is no good reason that tracking those eeeevul turrists) requires all this information from innocent people, I think we can safely assume their excuse is a shitty facade.
  - pjnewton 13y ago
    I'm really hoping this is cloaked sarcasm...
    - Karunamon 13y ago
      ? The databases being collected are much more suited to harassing innocents than capturing terrorists. You disagree?
      - pjnewton 13y ago
        I disagree that there is some anti-American nefariousness going on with this data collection mess.
        flyinRyan 13y ago
        Oh they very likely believe they are the best patriots. Just as Hoover did.
- cookiecaper 13y ago
  One man's "activist" is another man's terrorist, basically. Activists are liable to convert to extremism with the right set of triggers. This can therefore qualify as "counterterrorism", because if they access all your communications they may be able to flag you as a potential clinic bomber, etc. Also, I seriously doubt the assertion in the headline that terrorists simply don't use common online services, and even if this were true, the ripples that can be correlated from their associates who do use these services would still be of interest to law enforcement.
  - pjnewton 13y ago
    Yup, I agree with you here... I was wondering if the person who made the comment had any educated reason for doing so...
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
da02 13y ago
According to another whistleblower, it also means people who control budgets and power "...including senior Congressional leaders, the former White House Press Secretary, high-ranking military generals, the entire Supreme Court, and even then-Senator from Illinois and future President, Barack Obama." http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/06/24/bfp-report-whistleblower-nsa-wiretapped-obama-petraeus-alito-others-2/ http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/06/24/bfp-report-whistl...

seferphier 13y ago

Should post the original article that did the research: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-23/u-s-surveillance-is-not-aimed-at-terrorists.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-23/u-s-surveillance-is...

leopoldo 13y ago
Thanks! I have been trying to make this point to my friends in light of recent events

kghose 13y ago

Actually, they used to. Then they wised up and started using couriers. Both worked to the disadvantage of Al Quaida. When they stopped using electronic communications their organization suffered. Then, it was the movements of a courier that gave away Bin Laden. So, regardless of whether you think it's OK for the NSA to spy on everyone, this push did break down Al Quaida's organization. Whether it affects cell oriented terrorism (or 'lone wolf' terrorism) is another matter. For example, for the Boston bombers one of them did mention something about terrorism and came on the radar, but the FBI misjudged the threat.

CaveTech 13y ago
When you have a government throwing billions of dollars into locating you, how exactly are you supposed to hide? Especially since Osama's courrier was only discovered because he was sold out (or tortured out) by his associates. In security you can only be as strong as your weakest link, and when dealing with a global organization you will surely have weak links.
- pjnewton 13y ago
  > In security you can only be as strong as your weakest link, and when dealing with a global organization you will surely have weak links. This is the point that this, bandwagon, article misses completely. They may be judging right, the smart criminals (or terrorists) understand tradecraft and how to avoid using obvious means of detection. However there are always many more low level folks that wil slip up due to lack of competence and lack of experience. When this happens we (non-terrorists) are able to establish a foothold at some, any, level of the organization and start to pick it apart.
betterunix 13y ago
"So, regardless of whether you think it's OK for the NSA to spy on everyone, this push did break down Al Quaida's organization." OK, so why are we continuing it? We broke Al Qaeda, we killed their leaders. We got revenge for the September 11th attacks. To put it another way, who is our enemy now?

mpyne 13y ago

Don't the people that the terrorists need to recruit use Skype, and GMail, and Facebook? Find the recruiters & PR types that have to be where the people are, and that's one more in you have with a nascent terror cell.

nooneelse 13y ago
Indeed. If the objection is that people drop off the easy to see communication systems and start having more shielded communications as they radicalize, then the objection carries within itself a description of very pattern that one can use such a internet traffic surveillance program to search for. A naive version would generate plenty of false positives, but following up on random entries in the list generated would quickly reveal classes of other reasons that people's comms go dark (having children, new job, moving to a new town, major injury or illness, depression, etc.), and one could start filtering using that. Also one might get some use out of looking for clusters of people going dark in various social-connection graphs, and commonalities of what people fitting the comms-going-dark pattern read and say online.

Kylekramer 13y ago

There seems to be two NSAs in the media right now: the extremely competent one that can access your email from a desktop without any oversight or trouble and the bumbling idiots who don't know more about terrorists than reporters. It doesn't mesh.

dragonwriter 13y ago
Having worked in several large (public and private) organizations, I always find it amusing when people act like it is somehow inconceivable that an organization could demonstrate both extreme competence in one set of activities and extreme incompetence in a another set of activities whose domains overlap those addressed by the first set. IME, that's the norm in large organizations.
- fixxer 13y ago
  It gets really fun when the incompetent ones get promoted and start dictating how the competent ones are supposed to work. (Sigh...)
  - Afforess 13y ago
    Peter Principle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle >The Peter Principle is a proposition that states that the members of an organization where promotion is based on achievement, success and merit will eventually be promoted beyond their level of ability.
  - marcosdumay 13y ago
    Yeah, and then the organization stays completely competent on all of its action... But those actions are incoherent. The organization acts like a completely incompetent being, despite all interations with it being competently handled.
sjtgraham 13y ago
What if it wasn't really about terrorism?

flipcoder 13y ago

Spoiler alert: It's not for terrorists at all. http://www.reddit.com/r/misc/comments/1gziqi/obamas_lobbyists_admit_to_wanting_webcam_spying/ http://www.reddit.com/r/misc/comments/1gziqi/obamas_lobbyist...

mtgx 13y ago
How fortunate for them that Xbox One exists now.
- soundgecko 13y ago
  How is the Kinect any worse than every phone, tablet, laptop that have cameras and/or mics, which people carry with them 24/7, even to showers? For example, I would be much more embarassed by someone posting the video and voice feed from my phone on the internet than from my living room.
- vittore 13y ago
  do you really think it is coinsidence?
- Karunamon 13y ago
  Not this crap again.

vermontdevil 13y ago

Of course. It's all about the $$ and perceived security theater.

damoncali 13y ago

Criminals (I hate to use the word "terrorist" because it has a distracting political bias - we're talking about people doing bad things to other people) are not some sort of hyper-disciplined super spies. They do some pretty dumb things. A while back I met a guy looking to put together a Twitter system designed to combat drug cartels, who, yes, communicated via Twitter. This was several years ago, but still. The whole reason I'm so upset about what the NSA is doing is because it works, and over time it will work much better than it does today.

codex 13y ago

"In 2010, Google estimated that it had indexed just 0.004% of the internet." I don't believe this. Does anyone else?

agilebyte 13y ago
Infographic with source at the bottom here: http://urlm.co/blog/2010/10/28/the-awesome-size-of-the-internet-infographic/ http://urlm.co/blog/2010/10/28/the-awesome-size-of-the-inter...
- codex 13y ago
  So Google has indexed 200TB? My cat pictures alone are 1TB!
thebooktocome 13y ago
There are some giant internet databases behind a "Disallow: /".
p4bl0 13y ago
This sentence made me bug too. One should not mix up the web and the internet. Google only indexes the web (well, and a part of usenet). Found this: http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/how-much-of-the-internet-is-indexed-by-google http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/how-much-of... which support the claim in the article.
damoncali 13y ago
A shockingly high percentage of the internet is spam or other junk that is never seen. I don't know about .004%, but I don't doubt that Google doesn't index the absolutely huge volumes of crap out there.
- rz2k 13y ago
  Google may index a lot of the spam as relatively useless since it is often found at top levels. If the number is correct what it is probably missing is all of the content that lies in databases, easily accessible, but not necessarily on the front pages of web sites, or found without entering a query of some sort.

yeezusnice 13y ago

well they don't use it anymore, thanks to snowden We all better hope that Bloomberg/Vice is more authoritative on this subject than the intelligence community or else the NON-ZERO number of terrorism cases involving these types of comms just went dark. Btw, wasn't it UBLs courier who was caught through his cell phone?

talmand 13y ago
That's crap, anyone paying attention knew that modern communications have been compromised by various governments over a decade ago, if not longer. The smart ones never used such unsecured communications in the first place. Nothing Snowden released changes the fact that only stupid people communicate over third party services when they are trying to keep secrets. It would be like the US military issuing unencrypted cell phones to troops on the front-line.
- yeezusnice 13y ago
  being smart doesn't preclude you from having someone stupid in your ranks. This applies to anyone trying to hide their activities. And im glad you're so sure about the comsec of all terrorist/spies/criminals.. totally separate, stand-alone communications networks, end-to-end encrypted, one-time pads, etc. why do anything at all? why? because its a ludicrous assertion and you know it. This goes to the point of the top comment.
  - talmand 13y ago
    Sure, there are stupid people in their ranks. That's why you have need-to-know rules for those people. If they get caught then only the things they know can be compromised. Such people are easily replaced. Why do you think such things go on forever? It's because the authorities are in a never-ending battle of dealing with underlings that know very little. It's the same principle with police dealing with organized crime or drug cartels. Most of the time the reason they can break up such a group is by getting someone on the inside that can get the info they need. I don't believe I said that terrorist organizations were building their own "totally separate, stand-alone communications networks, end-to-end encrypted, one-time pads". I said they are most likely not using an unsecured third party service. I fail to understand why people cannot comprehend the idea that a small group of people need not use fancy technology to communicate to each other. They can simply meet. I don't agree that it's a ludicrous assertion simply because I was arguing against the point of the top comment; that all the world's terrorists have suddenly dropped off easily compromised communications specifically because of Snowden. My assertion is that the top of the chain in the organizations have not used such communications for years and I fail to see how that is ludicrous.

nrivadeneira 13y ago

I'm undecided on the issue, however it seems completely logical to me that terrorists wouldn't use venues that are being monitored by the NSA. Would that still be the case if those lines of communications weren't monitored at all? In addition, if the NSA started monitoring whatever the terrorists use at present, would they continue to use it? Doubtful. I don't think this article comes to the clever conclusion that it thinks it does.

logn 13y ago

I think the next leak will show they've redefined 'terrorist' and that a terrorist these days is anyone who does anything the US doesn't like and is vaguely related ultimately back to national security. So, I think already we've established that any drug crimes (even low-level ones) are national security threats. Bitcoin miners will soon be terrorists I think. People encrypting email are highly suspect and probably a national security threat. People running free web hosting will soon be terrorists. It directly serves the interests of the government for everyone to be considered a terrorist. It's probably one of the biggest loopholes our country's seen.

culshaw 13y ago

Actually, they were using Gmail drafts to communicate with each other?

hga 13y ago
Exactly the point I was going to make. That's how Petraeus was communicating with his mistress, and they found her by cross referencing checkins at all the hotels revealed by IP addresses that were at the other end of the conversation.

hawkharris 13y ago

The author is focusing on the wrong issue. He is mostly concerned with whether or not the surveillance is effective. If effectiveness were the only consideration, he would have a weak argument. Even if most terrorists are smart enough to avoid Gmail, Skype and cellular networks, it might still make sense to eavesdrop in these places. After all, smart criminals sometimes get caught because they make dumb mistakes. For example, my understanding is that Sabu (a member of Anonymous) was caught because he forgot to use Tor in one instance when he logged into a social network. But we can argue all day about whether or not PRISM is effective. I think the author would have a stronger argument if he focused on the fact that the program is unconstitutional, regardless of how well it works.

corin_ 13y ago
Why limit your argument to one or the other? Some people will think PRISM is effective, others may not. Some people may think the privacy issues are important, others may not. But surely they balance each other out - if the NSA cannot catch any terrorists, then it doesn't matter if the privacy issues are not important, PRISM is clearly a waste of money, case over. And presumably somewhere along the line it could go the other way - if 50% of letters contain anthrax, would you not be happy sacrificing some privacy to let the NSA to screen them for you? Or a wider example, what if there was evidence that without PRISM, terrorists would be killing 1000s of Americans on a weekly basis - would we all be so against it still?
- hawkharris 13y ago
  You're welcome to make any argument about PRISM. But if your goal is to discredit the program and ensure others like it won't be established, the legal argument is stronger and more direct: Government programs can't violate constitutional rights, regardless of their efficacy. Period. Why dance around your opponent when you know where to place a powerful right-hook?
  - corin_ 13y ago
    Clearly the right-hook hasn't knocked them out yet - which is perhaps why even the strongest boxers supplement their fist power with at least a little foot movement.

rdl 13y ago

Plenty use yahoo and MSN messenger, though, historically.

runarb 13y ago

Well apparently both Al-Qaeda and some CIA employees uses public email accounts like Gmail to communicate in secret.[0] The method is a little bit different than normally email. They used Gmail as a electronic dropbox by saving messages in the draft folder, but now that NSA have direct access that are probably picking up that also. So be careful not to make a draft with text like "the drunk monkey sings at midnight", or the NSA may come knocking :) 0: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/11/12/heres-the-e-mail-trick-petraeus-and-broadwell-used-to-communicate/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/11/12...

dllthomas 13y ago
Wasn't this 1) how Petraeus and his biographer carried on their affair, and 2) how they got caught?
- mpyne 13y ago
  Yes and yes, though #2 didn't happen until the FBI had been tipped off for other reasons, IIRC.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    Right, and I think it was correlated against other records (hotel stays?)

vacri 13y ago

For the definition of 'terrorist' that includes well-informed, trained cadres, and not the definition of 'terrorist' that includes rampant amateurs, the kind that get stopped before they do anything serious. The author has a fairly naive view of what a terrorist is

iagomr 13y ago

They don't use it because NSA monitors it

nslocum 13y ago

The NSA isn't focused exclusively on terrorism. It has ~40k employees who work on a wide range of areas, drug cartels, human trafficking, money laundering, counter intelligence, espionage, and hundreds of others. It's mighty presumptuous for people not "in the know" to speak on what is and isn't valuable to the NSA's missions. As for terrorists, if someone were a skilled terrorist their entire life, they probably wouldn't live digital traces within the US. But this isn't the case; people become terrorists, and some of those become skilled terrorists. There is immense value in having intelligence on people before they become a terrorist and needless to say, before they hone their tradecraft and drop from the grid.

mikegioia 13y ago
Yea, I think what some people are worried about though, are the (a) possibility of many false positives and (b) the collateral damage with "common crimes". In the latter I mean: how far into the realm of everyday rule-breaking will these agencies go? Will you get a ticket mailed to you because you rolled through a stop sign and your license plate was captured? Will you get police officer (with warrant) at your door to search your premises because you purchased a book about marijuana growing?

snaky 13y ago

>.. may only be good for gathering information on the stupidest, lowest-ranking of terrorists Yes, of course. And 99% of them are in stupidest, lowest-ranking part. As for the smartest and highest-ranking ones, there is undercover agents and informators.

runjake 13y ago

Some clearly terrorist elements have used all three of the services in the headline. It still doesn't make NSA's domestic surveillance, in violation of the Fourth Amendment, right.

ansible 13y ago

This reminds me of the Streetlight Effect, also known as observational bias. [1] I just find the whole situation quite disappointing. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect

dclowd9901 13y ago

I've really nothing more to say about the NSA at this point. I'd just like to give a shout out to Vice for being one of the most vital and relevant news organizations of the modern era. Whenever people say journalism is dead, I just point them to a Vice article. They make me proud to have a journo background.

CrunchyJams 13y ago
They certainly seem less beholden to whomever the mainstream media is trying not to upset.
- dclowd9901 13y ago
  Indeed, but more than that, they cover some amazing material and actually put people in places and shed light on some really uncomfortable topics. They manage to make news as informative as it is enthralling. I can't imagine a better way to cover news.
  - selimthegrim 13y ago
    As someone whose mother was born and raised in Karachi and who visits the city with some frequency, my jaw dropped when I saw their reporting from there. The local media won't even go near half the people they managed to get interviews from. They were a bit jumpy but their brio more makes up for it. That and the Mexican Mormon drug war were the real kickers.
    - selimthegrim 13y ago
      Well to be a bit more accurate, the media will interview them but with kid gloves. The last time a TV station aired someone obliquely criticizing the MQM political party (as Vice did), all the cars in their parking lot got torched and the windows got shot out of their studio while they were broadcasting live.
theklub 13y ago
Yes, totally agree. I was very happy to learn they were producing a series for HBO simply for the fact that more people would become aware of them.

bazillion 13y ago

Well, I'll have to disagree in full with the points the author is trying to make. "A recent Bloomberg piece points to a 2012 report on terrorism which found that most serious terrorists steer clear of the most obvious platforms—major cell networks, Google, Skype, Facebook, etc." The 2012 report cited wasn't some senate oversight committee, a DIRNSA (director NSA) report, or a truly credible intelligence source. It was from the Dutch Intelligence agency, an agency focused on leftist activity vs. right-wing Islamic terrorism. "In 2010, Google estimated that it had indexed just 0.004% of the internet—meaning the vast majority of the web is open for surreptitious message-sending business. Terrorists simply aren't dumb enough to discuss their secret plans over Skype or to email each other confidential information on Gmail." Do you think that it's feasible for terrorists to use couriers/tradecraft to transmit all messages to their group members around the world? If I told you right now to get a message to your cousin in Connecticut within an hour without using Skype/email/phone or anything of the other means listed, could you do it? Let's say you answer that you'll just use steganography (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography) to hide the message. How are you going to communicate to your cousin where to look for the message and how to break it down? Armchair intelligence analysis is the same as armchair anything -- you have no basis for what you're talking about except a bunch of redacted reports, news articles, and spy movies. Intelligence analysis is a very straightforward thing, though, which a lot of folks working in tech would be really good at, but articles like this are the equivalent of commenting on the merits of using PHP having never written a line of code in your life. I understand peoples' frustration with what (if true) would be an egregious slight on the public trust. But, is it more likely that the 4+ million security clearance holders are in on some large conspiracy to take away our freedoms, or that a disgruntled worker wanted to watch the world burn a little. Having worked in every facet of the NSA as a linguist/intelligence analyst/programmer/many other things, and CIA contractor for a year, I tend to think the latter, and I'm very vocal about my thoughts on the intelligence community. Read my previous comments if you want to see my thoughts on how the media has been getting it wrong, and what the deal is from the perspective of someone who worked in this community.

jessedhillon 13y ago
Could you give an opinion as to whether or not the PRISM slides were made by a BAH contractor or by an NSA employee? So far we have seen very little in the way of corroboration from Snowden -- I'm inclined to believe that he may have made off with assets from BAH's internal network instead: four slides which look terrible if that's all you know of them.

mortehu 13y ago

From the original brochure: > Of course, jihadists are also active on the surface Web, where they use social media and various applications, such as email, Internet telephony and chat programmes, to name a few. They use these means of communication to actively spread jihadist ideas, recruit new jihadists and proactively distribute and promote propaganda material. Jihadists that are active on the surface Web are afraid of being detected, which is why there is no (or very limited) dynamic interaction, as opposed to what is observed on core forums. > "Your talk on YouTube can be monitored by the Kuffar. Many a brother were arrested based on intelligence from YouTube, they will not hesitate to handover your IP details to Kuffar. Therefore, it is NOT the place you should be social networking." The brochure in general seems light on science, and I'm not sure it "drew a convincing picture", although I admit I didn't read the whole thing.

ferdo 13y ago

> The NSA has to collect the metadata from all of our phone calls because terrorists, right? No. The NSA is keeping an eye on us. The National Security State has ossified into a cult. All non-members of the cult are viewed with suspicion. When the Inquisition made excuses for its excesses, it was in the name of the "salvation" of the flock. When the Church of the NSA makes excuses for its excesses, it's in the name of our "security". There are always people willing to be fooled by priests and bureaucrats. Priests and bureaucrats love those people.

sologoub 13y ago

This one made me chuckle: "So, essentially, the NSA is deeply compromising our privacy so that it can do an extremely shitty job of looking for terrorists. Nice." Would be so funny, if it wasn't so sad...

Arnor 13y ago

It's depressing that this article is so high on HN right now. It's another example of a poor report trivializing an important debate. Meanwhile, many of the comments here are snarky and sardonic which further degrades the dialog. This is a serious subject and should be treated as such. It's easy to shout hurray for your side. It's easy to demonize your enemy. According to the government, Snowden is a traitor. According to many frequent HN readers, the government is completely out of the control. Neither of these claims is true, but they are difficult to get past. Although Snowden is certainly not a traitor, the accusation is serious. His life and freedom hang in the balance. Politicians and political pundits are looking for an easy solution when they demonize Snowden. Making him out to be the enemy makes it easier to keep the country calm about the issues he unveiled. While Snowden isn't a monster, the surveillance programs are not evil either. They are shocking. They evoke emotional response. They can be frightening -- especially since we don't know how much deeper the programs go. Still, they are the largely the result of people trying to defend the country from terrorism. Regardless of the cynicism you bring to the topic, the primary goal of these programs is to save lives. Accept that, take a breath, then reevaluate your grievances. I'm not suggesting that there's nothing to be angry or worried about. I'm certainly not saying that the programs are right or benevolent. I'm saying that this is important and meaningful and needs to be treated as such rather than another opportunity to win points in some silly political game.

tekromancr 13y ago
Thank you.
carlob 13y ago
Just how many lives has terrorism claimed in the past decade? Smoking has probably claimed more lives just today than terrorist attacks on US soil in the past decade. So I don't think it warrants any action at all. Let's face it the aim of terrorism is to scare people and if we are so scared that we're giving away basic human rights (and correspondence secrecy is a basic human right) then the terrorist won.
- hnriot 13y ago
  You're missing the first rule of any bureaucracy like the NSA, it has nothing to do with catching terrorists, but far more to do with perpetuating the bureaucracy and increasing it's budget. Catching anyone is a distant second.

cookiecaper 13y ago

I don't buy the concept that terrorists don't use common online services. Does anybody actually believe things are safer if you use HushMail et al as your provider? While it's unlikely that the NSA has asked HushMail to FTP up all of its account data as it apparently did with PRISM participants, one would be highly naive to assume that intelligence services have just decided to leave certain providers' data untouched just because they're unwilling to lay out the welcome mat. One would therefore logically conclude that with very basic steganographic measures, it's easier to hide among the hundreds of millions of mails that Google processes each day than the thousands processed by HushMail or other minor email providers (or even a fully-hosted custom mail server at "terrorists-r-us.com"). Furthermore, if you use any cryptography at all besides SSL you're probably already on an NSA list somewhere, but GnuPG alleviates all of these concerns and I'm sure that some terrorist organizations have discovered it. In this case, there should be no issue using Gmail or other services for your communication.

acmeyer9 13y ago

I also have to disagree with this statement and the article in general. It's very difficult to say what terrorists use when they are living in the US, let alone make a general statement that they don't use them because they'd be stupid to use these services. That actually makes the argument for why using these services might be advantageous for them even stronger. If you (the general population) doesn't think they'd use it, that makes it more of a reason for them to use it. Let me big clear that this is not an argument for NSA-type surveillance, however, I don't think we should be arguing against the surveillance using general statements or more accurately opinions like these. Argue against surveillance with more factual/strong cases.

rhokstar 13y ago

Don't they use snailmail, tin cans with strings, chalk marks on objects, and sign language? Lowbie tech.

joemcm 13y ago

I dislike this article because it asserts that the NSA has ever said "a lot of terrorists use X, Y and Z." In reality, the NSA has said "tracking this data w.r.t. terrorism doesn't always prevent terrorist crimes, but it has been successful in the past." It seems like nonsense to assert that none, zero, nil terrorists use these services... I agree with Arnor in his comment - this is a trivializing report.

pinaceae 13y ago

Pretty sure the Boston Bombers used exactly those services. And they were/are US citizens.

leoc 13y ago

I can think of three possible reasons (I claim no expertise here) to doubt that FISA orders and phone metadata are completely useless against terrorists even if (as seems likely) serious terrorists know to steer clear of Skype, Facebook and friends. 1) By monitoring Internet services like these, the NSA denies their use to the terrorists. It's not as if exclusively using couriers, dead drops and the like has no costs to an organisation (say, have you moved off GMail yet?) Apparently some fairly serious terrorists are using the Internet in more secure ways, but the spooks have some ability to go after those too. 2) Any big network or organisations is going to have slipups, no matter how good it is. It would be hard to imagine that no serious terrorist ever gets lazy, or decides to take a risk under time pressure. 3) There have to be a lot of guys who start out as Facebook jihadis, and only later get serious and realise (or have it explained to them) that they need to stop making it easy for the authorities to track them. But by that time they'll already have left a useful trail of contacts and activity through FB. (By the way, that's one reason why I think it's wrong to assume that PRISM has been useless even if it hasn't stopped any specific attacks. Realistically, that kind of intelligence is going to be less about discovering big plots just in time and more about gathering enough information to locate and move on terrorists - espcially if you can then turn them into informers. Running "touts" is central to effective counterterrorism, if history is any guide.)

siculars 13y ago

I often say, tongue firmly in cheek, that if Google doesn't know something it is not meant to be known - or exist. Obviously this is not true. I would hate to think that in the future if "intelligence" does not exist in an NSA database then it does not exist. Unfortunately, I feel this will be the case. Let's take the recent Boston Bombing, not only did the US get a tip off but certainly they had sigint from various sources. Were they able to connect the dots? No, they were not. "Intelligence" is more than just rows in a database.

blumentopf 13y ago

Is the rationale behind PRISM really terrorism? Here in Germany there's a lot of talk that PRISM is ultimately a tool for industry espionage. The Boundless Informant world map shows Germany in bright orange. People are wondering: Is Germany breeding terrorists or is NSA simply interested in trade secrets? Going by that logic, terrorism is a red herring. By making details about PRISM and NSA's hacking activities public, Snowden is undermining the US's ability to covertly vacuum up trade secrets, thus weakening the US industry. That's why the US government is freaking out. You can bet that German companies are now reconsidering using cloud services hosted in the US, or cloud services at all, or American (closed source / potentially backdoored) software at all.

krapp 13y ago
Don't be offended by this, please, but what could Germany in particular possibly be doing that's so awesome and advanced that the United States would have to resort to theft to replicate it? If it were the case, I would expect companies to be involved in corporate espionage, not the government.
- L4mppu 13y ago
  Smart and innovative people live outside of us too. As for the theft, it could be as simple as stealing a patent idea and patenting it in us so no matter what the original inventor does some of his money wil go to us government.
  - krapp 13y ago
    Sure, but even so I would expect a competing American company to be concerned about that... there's no reason for the NSA to care, since it probably doesn't affect national security.
    - L4mppu 13y ago
      The thing that brings us security is money. Money is powe and power is safety. That's how it affects national security.

epicwon 13y ago

What about the Boston marathon bombers? One of them was on welfare. Strong assumption in the title.

InclinedPlane 13y ago

Even with the panic that has happened regarding the revelations of mass-surveillance I don't think the public at large truly realizes how screwed up this situation is. The common defense of sweeping surveillance is that it serves an important purpose, finding terrorists, and it has succeeded in that purpose. Ignoring the very serious problems with framing the debate in such a way it's also fundamentally misleading. There have been many cases of "terrorist plots" within the US having been foiled over the last few years, but many if not most of these are not as serious as most would believe. A stereotypical "foiled terrorist plot" begins with a radicalized individual who somehow comes to the attention of the authorities. Then the FBI spins up an elaborate sting to essentially entrap the radicalized individual into committing to some sort of attack, often providing fake bombs in the process. And just before they go through with their planned "attack" the FBI arrests them. Examples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amine_El_Khalifi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amine_El_Khalifi and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Osman_Mohamud http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Osman_Mohamud and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farooque_Ahmed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farooque_Ahmed and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_Osmakac http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_Osmakac Meanwhile, the FBI, NSA, TSA, et al have failed to foil many much more serious attacks, such as the Boston bombings, the Fort Hood shooting, the "underwear bomber", the failed 2010 Times Square bombing attempt, etc.

Wingman4l7 13y ago
Another example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rezwan_Ferdaus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rezwan_Ferdaus
- dbbolton 13y ago
  This article doesn't really tell us much about the FBI's involvement other than they arrested him.
  - Wingman4l7 13y ago
    It's not a very good article. Google his name and you can find the FBI affidavit and more information; it's a textbook "entrapment" case as the OP described.

qwertzlcoatl 13y ago

I would just like to crosspost a comment from reddit user MarcusHalberstram88 which I found to be insightful : Ok, I feel I have to speak up. This is why I take issue with subs like /r/politics, and I would hope for more from /r/technology. Most people who see this post will only read the title and not follow the link to the article (even though the title sensationalizes the article). If someone does actually click, this post links to a Motherboard article, which basically just cites, summarizes, and links to a Bloomberg article. The Bloomberg article[1] cites, extrapolates, and links to AIVD UK (a Dutch website). Said Dutch website[2] (finally) links to the actual report that all these different sources are supposedly reporting on. That report was by the General Intelligence and Security Service for the Dutch Ministry of Interiors and Kingdom Relations. The actual report itself is just shy of 30 pages long and dedicates one of its four chapters of findings to "How does online Jihadism work?" (roughly 4 pages). I think 4 pages discussing where and how (it is thought) 25,000 Jihadists gather online is one thing. Making a blanket statement saying that terrorists do not use Verizon, Skype, or Gmail is another. But anyone who just reads the title of this post, or just reads the article that the post links to, or even the article that THAT article links to, may believe otherwise. [1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-23/u-s-surveillance-is-not-aimed-at-terrorists.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-23/u-s-surveillance-is... [2] https://www.aivd.nl/english/publications-press/@2873/jihadism-web/ https://www.aivd.nl/english/publications-press/@2873/jihadis...

rob22 13y ago

one thing i could tell,survilencing the people in USA is bearable(non-american). but other countries are.

rob22 13y ago
one thing i could tell,survilencing the people in USA is bearable(non-american). but other countries aren't