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The NSA Admits It Analyzes More People's Data Than Previously Revealed

358 points by j_baker 13y ago

mrt0mat0 13y ago
response offered by DNI counsel Robert Litt. Asked by committee chairman Bob Goodlatte if the government really thought the massive collection of phone records could be kept from the American people, Litt replied, "Well, um, we tried." I don't get why they are so "shoulder shruggy" about all of this.
- scottshea 13y ago
  I think it is because they live in a world where secrets are to be kept no matter the cost in the end. This article is just another step in the progressive revelations that have totally destroyed their credibility yet they do not care.
  - Karunamon 13y ago
    Silly question- do any of these comments count as perjury? If you say you're not doing $thing, then it's later revealed that you indeed did $thing, then you come out and say "Yeah, we do $thing" How.. how do we not penalize and punish people for this? When they make knowingly false statements in official government capacity?
    - TillE 13y ago
      Yes, almost certainly. The problem is that the government which endorses these programs is the same government that decides who to prosecute. This is why nobody involved with the Bush torture programs was ever prosecuted, not then and not now (Obama: "look forward, not backward").
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
      - j_baker 13y ago
        I think those are two separate issues. I think the key difference is public support. Once all the facts about the NSA have come out, I think the public will be against what the NSA is doing. Bush's torture program divided the country more, and I suspect it's largely because 9/11 isn't as fresh on our minds now. Truthfully, I think that the torture programs are to Prism as the McCarthy Committee is to the Vietnam War.
        Karunamon 13y ago
        That last bit is what worries me (9/11 not fresh in people's minds). A disaster any day now facilit^H^H^H^H^H^H allowed to happen would serve the political status quo very well. Am I being overly paranoid? I don't think the people in charge of the NSA shenanigans care one whit for loss of life if it would consolidate their power further.
        checker 13y ago
        There is a difference in separation too. Prism could be spying on you or me, while the torture programs are torturing someone somewhere. Not saying this is right, but direct impact tends to motivate people more.
    - eksith 13y ago
      That's not how justice works. Unless you're found with a dead prostitute covered in blood, you don't owe anything to anyone if you're already powerful.
      - mynameishere 13y ago
        Well, politics can intervene. Nixon and Clinton were so detested by their opposing parties that they were (or nearly were) impeached for fairly trivial reasons.
        eksith 13y ago
        That's very true. But look at the political atmosphere now. I feel that there's opposition theater rather than true opposition. Some of the things in opposition don't even make sense. People bicker over trite best left to late night "reality" TV, and how many actually believe the things they spout? Nixon, though he's one of my least favorite politicians, and Clinton actually believed in something; what do today's career politicians truly believe now? With the rise for 24/7 news and the internet, live performance to an ever vigilant target demographic is taking precedence over substantive action. I don't blame the politicians. I blame the people.
        rodgerd 13y ago
        Characterisimg illegal espionage for political advantage as "trivial reasons" is a remarkable piece of false equivocation.
        eksith 13y ago
        I think what was meant was the opposition can play a large part in an intervention for trivial reasons so a grave reason should be more than enough motivation. ...If there is true opposition.
        LoganCale 13y ago
        I think he was referring to Nixon's illegal espionage not being trivial.
    - Fuzzwah 13y ago
      The words "[not] under this program" are crucial.
      - mhurron 13y ago
        Exactly. Most likely, unless someone really goofed, no one has perjured themselves because they answered questions very specifically.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      Its only perjury if you're testifying under oath.
      - mrt0mat0 13y ago
        all testimonies before congress are under oath, i believe
        Kylekramer 13y ago
        Nope: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2006/02/when_congress_makes_you_swear.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20...
        mrt0mat0 13y ago
        good catch. I know i had heard that there was someone testifying to congress under oath, so I made the assumption that that was the process. It's interesting that there is no true reason to stop congress from always having people offer a testimony under oath, yet they allow it. another blatant loop hole.
    - j_baker 13y ago
      Justice takes time sometimes, especially when we're talking about powerful people who can claim "national secrets" at the drop of a hat. Think about how much work federal prosecutors have to do to convict someone like James Clapper (or anybody else that's lied to Congress). For reference, the Enron scandal was revealed in 2001, but it wasn't until 2006 that Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were found guilty. And they didn't even have a national security excuse. Truthfully, now that public opinion has come out against Prism, I think that the politicians are going to do everything in their power to publicly punish the people responsible. We just need to be patient.
repdetec 13y ago
Shocking. SHOCKING
darkarmani 13y ago
> The author of the Patriot Act, Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, reminded the government that the act was up for renewal in 2015. The provisions for phone metadata collection, he warned, have "got to be changed … otherwise in a year or year and a half you're not going to have it any more." Wait? That's the threat? Shouldn't they have to prove that they have sensible "provisions" before they get to keep doing it? Or how about, we are going to take immediate action and you come back to us when you have sensible provisions.
- mtgx 13y ago
  How about we repeal (or at least let expire) both the Patriot Act and FISA Amendments Act, and then we start over from scratch, and have a real 2+ year national debate on what NSA's job should be and what level of oversight they need to have. Also, don't even think about putting back the "general warrant" provision in the laws. That is and will always be unconstitutional. You have a target? Ask a judge to give you a normal warrant, for that target, or for several targets at most - not a whole country.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    You're not going to get anywhere with the argument that the NSA needs to get a regular warrant for all investigations. The specific warrant requirement has never applied to their purely foreign intelligence activities.
- j_baker 13y ago
  Who determines what provisions are sensible? Clearly the intelligence community can't do it unilaterally, because nobody would buy it. And we're talking about years before Congress or god forbid the courts can take any actions. Do you think it's a good idea to shut the NSA down until then?
  - drcube 13y ago
    Yes.
Kapura 13y ago
I don't care about if it's two hops or three; they're collecting a metric shit-tonne of info. It's like really large amounts of money: if a corporation makes a million dollars or five million dollars, it's all just numbers on a page for me. This "revelation" doesn't change the game at all, because I know that there's still a lot of shit that the NSA isn't telling us about their activities. Feels like hit bait (and it's worked).
- marshray 13y ago
  Regardless of the general concepts of lies, collect-it-all, and "metric shit-tonne of info", the difference between two hops or three is literally "exponentially more".
- j_baker 13y ago
  The difference between 2 and 3 hops is immense. The size of the data they collect grows exponentially between hops.
  - Kapura 13y ago
    It's not lost on me that it's a lot more. Trust me; I've done math before. But really, once a dataset is sufficiently huge, it's just "big." Could it be bigger? Sure. But it'll still be big. Again, five million dollars is five times more than a million dollars, but it's still just a bunch of money. To put it another way, it'd be foolish to assume that there are limits on how much data they're collecting. Those limits on what can be collected and from whom probably exist somewhere, but it should not surprise anybody any more that the NSA is collecting x data from y userset. We're in the future now; you should operate under the assumption that any and all data is being logged by somebody, and that the walls that keep that data from others are only so strong.
    - j_baker 13y ago
      The comparison isn't between one million and 5 million. The comparison is between one million and 5 trillion dollars.
nateabele 13y ago
"We are not collecting [geolocation] data," Inglis said, "under this program." (emphasis added)
- lcampbell 13y ago
  Not to mention "collection" seems to be used to describe the act of an analyst using the data, not storing it for future use[1]. I interpreted this quote as, "We are not currently using geolocation data, just storing it for future use". -- [1] Based off Clapper's explanation, "To me, collection of a U.S. person's data would mean taking the books off the shelf, opening it up and reading it"[2] [2] http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/intel-dir-james-clapper-lie-congress-complicated/story?id=19390786 http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/intel-dir-james-clapper-lie-c... (couldn't find a better source).
  - ihsw 13y ago
    How can we refute the NSA's policies when they change definitions of words? If we attack "collection" then they redefine it as analysts' having queried for the data, but what about when we attack "storage"? Would they redefine how data is "in storage" to include only when it's stored in a web browser cache (for example)? What do they call it when data is re-routed to their data centers for indexing and storage?
    - joeyh 13y ago
      Normal operation of the Internet backbone.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - nateabele 13y ago
      > How can we refute the NSA's policies when they change definitions of words? Incorporate by reference an introduction to formal logic into the NSA Policy Manual and Employee Handbook? :-)
  - lawnchair_larry 13y ago
vijayboyapati 13y ago
Hoocuddanowed
ChrisAntaki 13y ago
Rep. Justin Amash has brought forth a bill to defund the NSA. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130715/17333823810/rep-justin-amash-pushing-to-strip-nsas-funding-with-amendment-to-defense-appropriations-bill.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130715/17333823810/rep-ju...
- fixxer 13y ago
  Awesome. I'm wondering if the NSA is willing to self-fund? I'm sure, given their omnipotence and excellent ears, they could, perhaps, make a few ticks in the stock market. ;) Before I get labelled tin-foily, let us recall Iran-Contra and longstanding allegations regarding the CIA's drug trafficking... there is precedence.
  - mindcrime 13y ago
    I don't think there's anything tin-foil about what you're suggesting. The Iran-Contra affair speaks for itself, IMO.
    - D9u 13y ago
      I agree, especially after reading about the NSA basically "Hoovering" all electronic communications since before I was born. (mid 1960's)
    - samstave 13y ago
      Here is some tin-foil: So does the CIA drug trafficking. However - the country is done-for. The presidency is a CIA-bankster puppet position. The CIA (GW Bush++) took over starting in the 70s (when Cheney and Rumsfeld were lurking behind Ford and Carter. Clinton's got rise to power after allowing the CIA to run everything through Mena Arkansas. (look into it). The banksters launder everything for the CIA (Wachovia, HSBC, et al) The coup happened already.
      - pstuart 13y ago
        Those cocaine shipments were for inner-city youths that couldn't afford drugs. It was for the kids!
famousactress 13y ago
I wonder (and would not be surprised) if the nodes are always defined by phone number alone. Meaning, if you made a restaurant reservation at the italian place by your house, you're two hops from everyone who's ever called or been called by them.
- mayank 13y ago
  It's probably a directed graph, and the hops are directed paths.
  - moyix 13y ago
    That seems unlikely; otherwise you could stay off the radar by just establishing a protocol of only calling your terrorist friends, rather than having them call you (or vice versa, if that's the direction a "hop" indicates).
    - mayank 13y ago
      The scenario you describe wouldn't be helped by using an undirected graph, since common hubs (technical support, sex chat lines, sales cold calls, etc.) would connect almost everything with very short path lengths. A common compromise is to throw away all non-reciprocated edges and then use an undirected graph. Your protocol would still keep you off the radar, which illustrates some of the difficulties of the approach.
  - brown9-2 13y ago
    Why would direction make a good filter?
    - mayank 13y ago
      It's not a filter, but you're losing a lot of information by discarding direction. Without direction, most nodes will likely be part of a giant connected component with small diameter, due to the presence of hubs. See my other comment in this thread.
- 13y ago
late2part 13y ago
"Oooops, our bad." -NSA
300bps 13y ago
Analysts look "two or three hops" from terror suspects when evaluating terror activity I bet they investigate Kevin Bacon a LOT.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
spikels 13y ago
This is even worse than it seems. A "hop" can go both ways. So if a terror suspect calls Comcast's main 800 number (or any other high volume number) they can track everyone who ever called that number. And obviously they have to deal with the fact that many people have multiple numbers and treat them as a single node. Three hops from a few thousand suspected terrorists each with multiple phone numbers might include a large fraction of the US population. Not sure how this could possibly be helpful in an investigation if everyone is a suspect. At some point you have to narrow it down. Edit: Apparently there are 875,000 names in the "Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment" (TIDE) [1] So if each of those suspects can be connected to 20 people (hop 1 - 20 people) and each those people can be connected to an additional 20 people (hop 2 - 400 people) and connected again to 21 more (hop 3 - 8,000 people) you could reach the entire world's population. 875,000 x 8,000 = 7 billion [1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/03/us-usa-security-database-idUSBRE94200720130503 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/03/us-usa-security-da...
- jlgreco 13y ago
  I wonder how many "hops" the average American is away from Kevin Bacon. My guess is that 3 is on the low end of it. Just a guess: Me<->Senator<->Movie Exec<->Kevin Bacon With 4 or more hops it surely becomes pretty trivial. "Phonecall hops" are a much lower bar than "worked with" hops.
  - s_q_b 13y ago
    If you have a nearly universal database, you can probably get pretty close to covering the entire population of the country with 3 hops.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      marshray downthread brings up a great point (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6059864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6059864) Even if you assume a low chance of everyone getting hit in 3 hops from one Kevin Bacon, there of course isn't just one Kevin Bacon. That "terrorist watch list" is pretty damn long.
babesh 13y ago
Synopsis: The NSA analyzes EVERYONE'S data.
marshray 13y ago
It's like playing the Kevin Bacon game except with an 864,999 additional Kevin Bacons in the mix. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2318728/Number-names-U-S-suspect-terrorist-list-TIDE-jumps-400-000-5-years.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2318728/Number-names...
D9u 13y ago
It's not about "terrorism," it's about control.
waivej 13y ago
From "The Tipping Point" on page 47: "Tjaden actually sat down and figured out what the average Bacon number is for the quarter million or so actors and actresses who have played in television films or major motion pictures and came up with 2.8312 steps. Anyone who has ever acted, in other words, can be linked to Bacon in an average of under three steps."
- igravious 13y ago
  Are you saying that if Bacon gets flagged because he takes part in a peace protest then all the quarter million or so actors (i think it's just actor these days, not actress, women's lib and all that) who played in television films or major motion pictures will have their numbers run by you know who? Thanks a lot Bacon.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    Hmm... a sort of witch hunt in across the entertainment industry for commun^W terrorists and terrorist sympathizers. Why does that seem familiar?
nobodysfool 13y ago
I think it's more people than people think... 10% of people living in america are not citizens. 90% of people are. If their definition of 'foreign' is 'non-citizen' and they only have to be 51% certain that someone is foreign, that is a 49% error rate, which means (at a maximum) 90% of the people they have in their databases and are tracking are american citizens. If they had to be 91% certain, that's a 9% error rate, and they would have a database that 52% are american citizens...
lawnchair_larry 13y ago
The longstanding question of whether or not phone metadata collected by NSA includes geolocation data has been answered. "We are not collecting that data," Inglis said, "under this program." Well that's a relief. ;)
- krapp 13y ago
  NSA confirmed to be running an as-yet unnamed geolocation collection program...
e3pi 13y ago
Guardian's take: "....."The statute says 'collection'," congressman Jerrold Nadler told Cole. "You're trying to confuse us by talking use." "...One senior member of the panel, congressman James Sensenbrenner, the author of the 2001 Patriot Act, warned the officials that unless they rein in the scope of their surveillance on Americans' phone records, "There are not the votes in the House of Representatives" to renew the provision after its 2015 expiration." "You're going to lose it entirely," Sensenbrenner said. NSA warned to rein in surveillance as agency reveals even greater scope NSA officials testify to angry House panel that agency can perform 'three-hop queries' through Americans' data and records http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/17/nsa-surveillance-house-hearing http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/17/nsa-surveillance...
DigitalSea 13y ago
3 hops is a lot of data. For example I have about 100 friends on Facebook. One of my friends I know has around 500 friends on Facebook and if they're friends have a lot of friends that is a ridiculous and unnecessary amount of data being harvested about people I have never met, have nothing to do with and will never meet. How can Obama keep on allowing this to happen? This is just getting ridiculous now and if it weren't for Snowden leaking the information, we wouldn't even know it was happening...
bane 13y ago
Since I met Dennis Rodman on his way back from North Korea, does that make everybody on HN 3 hops from Kim Jong Un?
sdoering 13y ago
Using a German Business-Social-network, I do have 120 contacts (first hop and I am not a power-user there). After the third hop there are about 1.1 million people. And that is just one network. Use telephone, other social networks, snail-mail, et al. Might be massive...
Mordor 13y ago
"two or three" is the same as "at least three", in other words "everyone".

358 points by j_baker 13y ago

response offered by DNI counsel Robert Litt. Asked by committee chairman Bob Goodlatte if the government really thought the massive collection of phone records could be kept from the American people, Litt replied, "Well, um, we tried." I don't get why they are so "shoulder shruggy" about all of this.

scottshea 13y ago
I think it is because they live in a world where secrets are to be kept no matter the cost in the end. This article is just another step in the progressive revelations that have totally destroyed their credibility yet they do not care.
- Karunamon 13y ago
  Silly question- do any of these comments count as perjury? If you say you're not doing $thing, then it's later revealed that you indeed did $thing, then you come out and say "Yeah, we do $thing" How.. how do we not penalize and punish people for this? When they make knowingly false statements in official government capacity?
  - TillE 13y ago
    Yes, almost certainly. The problem is that the government which endorses these programs is the same government that decides who to prosecute. This is why nobody involved with the Bush torture programs was ever prosecuted, not then and not now (Obama: "look forward, not backward").
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - j_baker 13y ago
      I think those are two separate issues. I think the key difference is public support. Once all the facts about the NSA have come out, I think the public will be against what the NSA is doing. Bush's torture program divided the country more, and I suspect it's largely because 9/11 isn't as fresh on our minds now. Truthfully, I think that the torture programs are to Prism as the McCarthy Committee is to the Vietnam War.
      - Karunamon 13y ago
        That last bit is what worries me (9/11 not fresh in people's minds). A disaster any day now facilit^H^H^H^H^H^H allowed to happen would serve the political status quo very well. Am I being overly paranoid? I don't think the people in charge of the NSA shenanigans care one whit for loss of life if it would consolidate their power further.
      - checker 13y ago
        There is a difference in separation too. Prism could be spying on you or me, while the torture programs are torturing someone somewhere. Not saying this is right, but direct impact tends to motivate people more.
  - eksith 13y ago
    That's not how justice works. Unless you're found with a dead prostitute covered in blood, you don't owe anything to anyone if you're already powerful.
    - mynameishere 13y ago
      Well, politics can intervene. Nixon and Clinton were so detested by their opposing parties that they were (or nearly were) impeached for fairly trivial reasons.
      - eksith 13y ago
        That's very true. But look at the political atmosphere now. I feel that there's opposition theater rather than true opposition. Some of the things in opposition don't even make sense. People bicker over trite best left to late night "reality" TV, and how many actually believe the things they spout? Nixon, though he's one of my least favorite politicians, and Clinton actually believed in something; what do today's career politicians truly believe now? With the rise for 24/7 news and the internet, live performance to an ever vigilant target demographic is taking precedence over substantive action. I don't blame the politicians. I blame the people.
      - rodgerd 13y ago
        Characterisimg illegal espionage for political advantage as "trivial reasons" is a remarkable piece of false equivocation.
        eksith 13y ago
        I think what was meant was the opposition can play a large part in an intervention for trivial reasons so a grave reason should be more than enough motivation. ...If there is true opposition.
        LoganCale 13y ago
        I think he was referring to Nixon's illegal espionage not being trivial.
  - Fuzzwah 13y ago
    The words "[not] under this program" are crucial.
    - mhurron 13y ago
      Exactly. Most likely, unless someone really goofed, no one has perjured themselves because they answered questions very specifically.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    Its only perjury if you're testifying under oath.
    - mrt0mat0 13y ago
      all testimonies before congress are under oath, i believe
      - Kylekramer 13y ago
        Nope: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2006/02/when_congress_makes_you_swear.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20...
        mrt0mat0 13y ago
        good catch. I know i had heard that there was someone testifying to congress under oath, so I made the assumption that that was the process. It's interesting that there is no true reason to stop congress from always having people offer a testimony under oath, yet they allow it. another blatant loop hole.
  - j_baker 13y ago
    Justice takes time sometimes, especially when we're talking about powerful people who can claim "national secrets" at the drop of a hat. Think about how much work federal prosecutors have to do to convict someone like James Clapper (or anybody else that's lied to Congress). For reference, the Enron scandal was revealed in 2001, but it wasn't until 2006 that Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were found guilty. And they didn't even have a national security excuse. Truthfully, now that public opinion has come out against Prism, I think that the politicians are going to do everything in their power to publicly punish the people responsible. We just need to be patient.

repdetec 13y ago

Shocking. SHOCKING

darkarmani 13y ago

> The author of the Patriot Act, Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, reminded the government that the act was up for renewal in 2015. The provisions for phone metadata collection, he warned, have "got to be changed … otherwise in a year or year and a half you're not going to have it any more." Wait? That's the threat? Shouldn't they have to prove that they have sensible "provisions" before they get to keep doing it? Or how about, we are going to take immediate action and you come back to us when you have sensible provisions.

mtgx 13y ago
How about we repeal (or at least let expire) both the Patriot Act and FISA Amendments Act, and then we start over from scratch, and have a real 2+ year national debate on what NSA's job should be and what level of oversight they need to have. Also, don't even think about putting back the "general warrant" provision in the laws. That is and will always be unconstitutional. You have a target? Ask a judge to give you a normal warrant, for that target, or for several targets at most - not a whole country.
- rayiner 13y ago
  You're not going to get anywhere with the argument that the NSA needs to get a regular warrant for all investigations. The specific warrant requirement has never applied to their purely foreign intelligence activities.
j_baker 13y ago
Who determines what provisions are sensible? Clearly the intelligence community can't do it unilaterally, because nobody would buy it. And we're talking about years before Congress or god forbid the courts can take any actions. Do you think it's a good idea to shut the NSA down until then?
- drcube 13y ago
  Yes.

Kapura 13y ago

I don't care about if it's two hops or three; they're collecting a metric shit-tonne of info. It's like really large amounts of money: if a corporation makes a million dollars or five million dollars, it's all just numbers on a page for me. This "revelation" doesn't change the game at all, because I know that there's still a lot of shit that the NSA isn't telling us about their activities. Feels like hit bait (and it's worked).

marshray 13y ago
Regardless of the general concepts of lies, collect-it-all, and "metric shit-tonne of info", the difference between two hops or three is literally "exponentially more".
j_baker 13y ago
The difference between 2 and 3 hops is immense. The size of the data they collect grows exponentially between hops.
- Kapura 13y ago
  It's not lost on me that it's a lot more. Trust me; I've done math before. But really, once a dataset is sufficiently huge, it's just "big." Could it be bigger? Sure. But it'll still be big. Again, five million dollars is five times more than a million dollars, but it's still just a bunch of money. To put it another way, it'd be foolish to assume that there are limits on how much data they're collecting. Those limits on what can be collected and from whom probably exist somewhere, but it should not surprise anybody any more that the NSA is collecting x data from y userset. We're in the future now; you should operate under the assumption that any and all data is being logged by somebody, and that the walls that keep that data from others are only so strong.
  - j_baker 13y ago
    The comparison isn't between one million and 5 million. The comparison is between one million and 5 trillion dollars.

nateabele 13y ago

"We are not collecting [geolocation] data," Inglis said, "under this program." (emphasis added)

lcampbell 13y ago
Not to mention "collection" seems to be used to describe the act of an analyst using the data, not storing it for future use[1]. I interpreted this quote as, "We are not currently using geolocation data, just storing it for future use". -- [1] Based off Clapper's explanation, "To me, collection of a U.S. person's data would mean taking the books off the shelf, opening it up and reading it"[2] [2] http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/intel-dir-james-clapper-lie-congress-complicated/story?id=19390786 http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/intel-dir-james-clapper-lie-c... (couldn't find a better source).
- ihsw 13y ago
  How can we refute the NSA's policies when they change definitions of words? If we attack "collection" then they redefine it as analysts' having queried for the data, but what about when we attack "storage"? Would they redefine how data is "in storage" to include only when it's stored in a web browser cache (for example)? What do they call it when data is re-routed to their data centers for indexing and storage?
  - joeyh 13y ago
    Normal operation of the Internet backbone.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - nateabele 13y ago
    > How can we refute the NSA's policies when they change definitions of words? Incorporate by reference an introduction to formal logic into the NSA Policy Manual and Employee Handbook? :-)
- lawnchair_larry 13y ago

vijayboyapati 13y ago

Hoocuddanowed

ChrisAntaki 13y ago

Rep. Justin Amash has brought forth a bill to defund the NSA. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130715/17333823810/rep-justin-amash-pushing-to-strip-nsas-funding-with-amendment-to-defense-appropriations-bill.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130715/17333823810/rep-ju...

fixxer 13y ago
Awesome. I'm wondering if the NSA is willing to self-fund? I'm sure, given their omnipotence and excellent ears, they could, perhaps, make a few ticks in the stock market. ;) Before I get labelled tin-foily, let us recall Iran-Contra and longstanding allegations regarding the CIA's drug trafficking... there is precedence.
- mindcrime 13y ago
  I don't think there's anything tin-foil about what you're suggesting. The Iran-Contra affair speaks for itself, IMO.
  - D9u 13y ago
    I agree, especially after reading about the NSA basically "Hoovering" all electronic communications since before I was born. (mid 1960's)
  - samstave 13y ago
    Here is some tin-foil: So does the CIA drug trafficking. However - the country is done-for. The presidency is a CIA-bankster puppet position. The CIA (GW Bush++) took over starting in the 70s (when Cheney and Rumsfeld were lurking behind Ford and Carter. Clinton's got rise to power after allowing the CIA to run everything through Mena Arkansas. (look into it). The banksters launder everything for the CIA (Wachovia, HSBC, et al) The coup happened already.
    - pstuart 13y ago
      Those cocaine shipments were for inner-city youths that couldn't afford drugs. It was for the kids!

famousactress 13y ago

I wonder (and would not be surprised) if the nodes are always defined by phone number alone. Meaning, if you made a restaurant reservation at the italian place by your house, you're two hops from everyone who's ever called or been called by them.

mayank 13y ago
It's probably a directed graph, and the hops are directed paths.
- moyix 13y ago
  That seems unlikely; otherwise you could stay off the radar by just establishing a protocol of only calling your terrorist friends, rather than having them call you (or vice versa, if that's the direction a "hop" indicates).
  - mayank 13y ago
    The scenario you describe wouldn't be helped by using an undirected graph, since common hubs (technical support, sex chat lines, sales cold calls, etc.) would connect almost everything with very short path lengths. A common compromise is to throw away all non-reciprocated edges and then use an undirected graph. Your protocol would still keep you off the radar, which illustrates some of the difficulties of the approach.
- brown9-2 13y ago
  Why would direction make a good filter?
  - mayank 13y ago
    It's not a filter, but you're losing a lot of information by discarding direction. Without direction, most nodes will likely be part of a giant connected component with small diameter, due to the presence of hubs. See my other comment in this thread.
13y ago

late2part 13y ago

"Oooops, our bad." -NSA

300bps 13y ago

Analysts look "two or three hops" from terror suspects when evaluating terror activity I bet they investigate Kevin Bacon a LOT.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

spikels 13y ago

This is even worse than it seems. A "hop" can go both ways. So if a terror suspect calls Comcast's main 800 number (or any other high volume number) they can track everyone who ever called that number. And obviously they have to deal with the fact that many people have multiple numbers and treat them as a single node. Three hops from a few thousand suspected terrorists each with multiple phone numbers might include a large fraction of the US population. Not sure how this could possibly be helpful in an investigation if everyone is a suspect. At some point you have to narrow it down. Edit: Apparently there are 875,000 names in the "Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment" (TIDE) [1] So if each of those suspects can be connected to 20 people (hop 1 - 20 people) and each those people can be connected to an additional 20 people (hop 2 - 400 people) and connected again to 21 more (hop 3 - 8,000 people) you could reach the entire world's population. 875,000 x 8,000 = 7 billion [1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/03/us-usa-security-database-idUSBRE94200720130503 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/03/us-usa-security-da...

jlgreco 13y ago
I wonder how many "hops" the average American is away from Kevin Bacon. My guess is that 3 is on the low end of it. Just a guess: Me<->Senator<->Movie Exec<->Kevin Bacon With 4 or more hops it surely becomes pretty trivial. "Phonecall hops" are a much lower bar than "worked with" hops.
- s_q_b 13y ago
  If you have a nearly universal database, you can probably get pretty close to covering the entire population of the country with 3 hops.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    marshray downthread brings up a great point (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6059864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6059864) Even if you assume a low chance of everyone getting hit in 3 hops from one Kevin Bacon, there of course isn't just one Kevin Bacon. That "terrorist watch list" is pretty damn long.

babesh 13y ago

Synopsis: The NSA analyzes EVERYONE'S data.

marshray 13y ago

It's like playing the Kevin Bacon game except with an 864,999 additional Kevin Bacons in the mix. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2318728/Number-names-U-S-suspect-terrorist-list-TIDE-jumps-400-000-5-years.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2318728/Number-names...

D9u 13y ago

It's not about "terrorism," it's about control.

waivej 13y ago

From "The Tipping Point" on page 47: "Tjaden actually sat down and figured out what the average Bacon number is for the quarter million or so actors and actresses who have played in television films or major motion pictures and came up with 2.8312 steps. Anyone who has ever acted, in other words, can be linked to Bacon in an average of under three steps."

igravious 13y ago
Are you saying that if Bacon gets flagged because he takes part in a peace protest then all the quarter million or so actors (i think it's just actor these days, not actress, women's lib and all that) who played in television films or major motion pictures will have their numbers run by you know who? Thanks a lot Bacon.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  Hmm... a sort of witch hunt in across the entertainment industry for commun^W terrorists and terrorist sympathizers. Why does that seem familiar?

nobodysfool 13y ago

I think it's more people than people think... 10% of people living in america are not citizens. 90% of people are. If their definition of 'foreign' is 'non-citizen' and they only have to be 51% certain that someone is foreign, that is a 49% error rate, which means (at a maximum) 90% of the people they have in their databases and are tracking are american citizens. If they had to be 91% certain, that's a 9% error rate, and they would have a database that 52% are american citizens...

lawnchair_larry 13y ago

The longstanding question of whether or not phone metadata collected by NSA includes geolocation data has been answered. "We are not collecting that data," Inglis said, "under this program." Well that's a relief. ;)

krapp 13y ago
NSA confirmed to be running an as-yet unnamed geolocation collection program...

e3pi 13y ago

Guardian's take: "....."The statute says 'collection'," congressman Jerrold Nadler told Cole. "You're trying to confuse us by talking use." "...One senior member of the panel, congressman James Sensenbrenner, the author of the 2001 Patriot Act, warned the officials that unless they rein in the scope of their surveillance on Americans' phone records, "There are not the votes in the House of Representatives" to renew the provision after its 2015 expiration." "You're going to lose it entirely," Sensenbrenner said. NSA warned to rein in surveillance as agency reveals even greater scope NSA officials testify to angry House panel that agency can perform 'three-hop queries' through Americans' data and records http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/17/nsa-surveillance-house-hearing http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/17/nsa-surveillance...

DigitalSea 13y ago

3 hops is a lot of data. For example I have about 100 friends on Facebook. One of my friends I know has around 500 friends on Facebook and if they're friends have a lot of friends that is a ridiculous and unnecessary amount of data being harvested about people I have never met, have nothing to do with and will never meet. How can Obama keep on allowing this to happen? This is just getting ridiculous now and if it weren't for Snowden leaking the information, we wouldn't even know it was happening...

bane 13y ago

Since I met Dennis Rodman on his way back from North Korea, does that make everybody on HN 3 hops from Kim Jong Un?

sdoering 13y ago

Using a German Business-Social-network, I do have 120 contacts (first hop and I am not a power-user there). After the third hop there are about 1.1 million people. And that is just one network. Use telephone, other social networks, snail-mail, et al. Might be massive...

Mordor 13y ago

"two or three" is the same as "at least three", in other words "everyone".