8 ms·
I asked the NSA for its file on me, and here's what I got back
- twiceaday 13y agotldr: "nothing" Why am I not surprised?
- laxatives 13y agoSeriously, what a gimmick of a title. The whole article had no new information and his tone sounded like speculation and complaint that he didn't get some sort of special treatment.
- fetbaffe 13y agoMy Ghostery browser addon reports that blog has 18 trackers. I guess tracking is a one way street then.
- jacquesm 13y agoIndeed, but to be fair those are standard for dailydot pages, I don't think they have a way for an author to opt out of the tracking for any specific page.
- cheald 13y agoThere is a gulf of a difference between a private business tracking its users and customers for business purposes, which you may opt out of by not dealing with said business, and your government tracking its citizens for criminal purposes, which you don't have the option of electing out of.
- fetbaffe 13y agoWhere have you been the past few weeks? The US government uses private business to track people.
- cheald 13y agoSurely you're not suggesting that the government's secret tracking weapon is Google Analytics. The tracking that the government is doing is not going to be visible to or blockable by end users. But hey, if it makes you feel safe, use ghostery and clear your cookies every hour. There's no way they can track you then! Illicit tracking by the government is a definite problem. I think that even in these times, you have to have your tinfoil hat on a little too tight to think that advertising cookies are the bogeyman here.
- fetbaffe 13y agoDid I say it was the only tracking method they use? Of course the US government also uses non-blocking techniques like wire tapping, snooping, hacking etc. However, today Google has all the information about users that the US government can use as a good complement to an already vast spying organization. Google has information about your emails, friends, search queries, page you visit, documents and files you store, clips you watch, medical records etc. Are you telling me that the US government is not interested in this information and the reports of NSA plugging its system into private businesses was just a hoax? Is the secret FISA hearings just tin foil bait?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- bandushrew 13y agoI cannot speak for the OP, but it seems entirely clear to me that one of the government's secret tracking weapons is by acquiring access to data collected by facebook, google and every other US company out there. Are you suggesting that this is not the case? that seems to me to be a remarkable conclusion to draw?
- moens 13y agoSurely you're not suggesting that the government and corporate interests are completely unrelated, and no money ever goes back and forth for good or services? Wasn't it Google that optimized the NSA datacenters as early as 2005? I think its safe to assume that many of Google analytics' bigger customers are not corporate. Not to mention, of course, Google Earth which was developed with CIA money... but also needed some optimization (read, better developers). I am pretty sure that Google Earth was not a loss leader for the company ;) I think that, amazingly in these times, you're sucking down your naivety cool aid a little too plaicidly to think that advertising cookies are not the optimal tracking method for both corp and govt.
- Ankaios 13y agoWhile I agree that there is a "gulf of difference" between tracking people by private business and by the NSA, I trust private business much less than I trust the NSA. And I trust the NSA barely at all.
- Houshalter 13y agoMost users don't realize they are being tracked, and it's not trivial to opt out of it in any case.
- crdoconnor 13y agoHow many of them read your email?
- fetbaffe 13y agoHopefully zero, however everyone of them uses cookies and when I do read my email or use some other confidential service I can be sure that trackers is included there as well. That is how it works.
- throwaway2048 13y agogoogle/google analyitics does before sombody mentions that its not reading your email if an automatic script does it, that sounds suspiciously like the argument that the NSA is not intercepting communications until they are viewed.
- alan_cx 13y agoSuch web sites can not arrest, render, kidnap, or torture me. The US gov can. I get a little icon telling me when and how I'm being tracked by websites, I do not have one that tells me the NSA is tracking me. Somewhere in there is a bit of a difference.
- fetbaffe 13y agoOf course it is. That is why the US government goes to the private company to get your information instead of going to you directly, because that would be a violation of privacy. The economic model for this is called corporatism, which incidentally is the same as for fascism.
- dredmorbius 13y agoDepends on the site. Talk to Steve Jackson. Or Aaron Swartz (better hire a psychic, he's dead). Or Weev. And if you think that private companies and/or web sites didn't play a huge role in any of the above cases ... well, you and I inhabit different universes. As others have pointed out: private companies can collect and/or process information that governments uses. They're also susceptible to hacking by government or rogue agents: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Apple have all been targeted by Chinese government-related hackers (mostly looking for Faulun Gong and Tibetian activists). Other companies such as Cisco simply hand over the tools authoritarian states request.
- jacquesm 13y agoThe important thing to remember here is that the NSA was once started with noble goals in mind but it has since changed into an attack dog without much of a leash to hold it back. The NSA still has a useful function and indeed they'll compromise part of that function if their technical capabilities become too well known. But to stonewall the general public on legitimate requests like these will cause people to use their fantasy as to what those capabilities really are, and that will likely overshoot reality. In that case any information the NSA is likely interested in will go underground so far that they won't be able to get at it in time to prevent damage. On the other hand if they come clean and it will turn out to be (much) worse than people expected (and there is a good chance of this) then they will likely be reigned in diminishing their capability. So they are damned either way. Stonewalling is likely an indication that there is much more hidden than we know about today, otherwise coming clean would actually make them look better. The best thing for the NSA would be for this whole thing to go away, organizations like that only work when they can do so in comparative secrecy. As soon as the spotlight is aimed at them some of their effectiveness (and in the case of the NSA likely quite a bit of it) will evaporate. Those pesky foreign media and their relentless releases. Funny how the Guardian is the best place to get information about a United States institution, how Russian dissidents would move to the US and how a US whistleblower is now living in Russia. It seems our (the general public) best chance in getting some progress in these matters is to play out nation states against each other. I have no idea where this is all going but I could do with less surveillance in the name of (the war on) terror and a more constructive approach to geopolitical affairs to replace the 'might makes right' policy that we have today.
- derefr 13y ago> The NSA still has a useful function To emphasize this: I just spent most of the night reading about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EKMS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EKMS. It's really kind of fascinating how dependent US gov/mil communications security is on these guys. The foreign-spying stuff is pretty much ancillary.
- arcadeparade 13y agoA big function of the NSA is also corporate surveillance: http://williamblum.org/aer/read/118 http://williamblum.org/aer/read/118
- toble 13y agoI assumed from the title that it would be something other than a boilerplate, or at least a follow up, but it's just a commentary on said boilerplate.
- northwest 13y ago> "Were we to provide positive or negative responses to requests such as yours, our adversaries' compilation of the information provided would reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security." You just can't be more full of sh#t.
- alan_cx 13y agoOh, give it a week or so, and Im sure they will surpass that.
- pearjuice 13y agoPlease stop polluting the front page with Snowden and NSA related stuff unless it adds something new. This is just a fluff article which helps you read along an automated government response. At least link directly to the scribd document next time.
- bkor 13y agoHackers News works on basis of votes. The submitter added a link to something that the person thought was interesting. 69 other people agree. Thus there is no pollution, you're just do not want to see it. That's different.
- unicorn_1123 13y agoIsn't it be nice that the webpage contains a virus: "http://cdn0.dailydot.com/resources/20130808180232/js/dd-lazyload.js.gz" http://cdn0.dailydot.com/resources/20130808180232/js/dd-lazy... wurde ein Virus oder unerwünschtes Programm 'HTML/Infected.WebPage.Gen2' [virus] gefunden.
- fetbaffe 13y agoWhat antivirus software are you running? May I guess its Avira Antivirus based on the German you posted? Windows Defender in Windows 8 says nothing about it.
- D9u 13y agoNo AV on my FreeBSD setup, but this site says the questionable item is clean: http://sitecheck.sucuri.net/results/cdn0.dailydot.com/resources/20130808180232/js/dd-lazyload.js.gz http://sitecheck.sucuri.net/results/cdn0.dailydot.com/resour...
- nwh 13y agoNot sure where you got that from. VirusTotal doesn't seem to have a single issue with it — https://www.virustotal.com/en/url/07157ae478002d5ef29e5d57886b9e1bdd674df7081c2b3584af7c9d196d25f2/analysis/1376742518/ https://www.virustotal.com/en/url/07157ae478002d5ef29e5d5788...
- bobbo3 13y agoSecret spy agency keeps secrets secret. What's the story here?
- fastfade 13y agoIf we keep electing the same members of congress they'll eventually understand the problem & clean this mess up - right? - right?
- smoyer 13y agoI haven't heard of any of these requests being accepted ... Does anyone have a reference to one?
- laxatives 13y agoI saw a website that that was devoted to writing up a request, you just entered in your name, address, etc. and it would write up a formal request for you. They said they had a few hits, but at an extremely low success rate (maybe a dozen responses, after thousands or tens of thousands of requests) -- although the successful responses were self-reported, so they may or may not be legit. It was on hacker news a few months ago, but I can't seem to find it.
- bazillion 13y agoGoing to go ahead and be the voice of reason and state that: 1. The NSA does not keep a "file" on you. Domestic matters are the FBI's territory. The NSA is tasked with strictly foreign surveillance. If information is contained in databases that correspond to your communiques, it is not catalogued as "Kevin Collier", because that would be a direct FISA violation and trigger administrative removal of the data along with reporting about how the violation occurred. 2. I can almost say with complete confidence that our national security resources aren't being used to target white suburban bloggers. 3. By flooding NSA public relations with these useless requests, you're blocking potentially real requests from being processed. If you really cared about getting actual information about programs, you would back EFF, etc. efforts.
- uptown 13y agoAsk Laura Poitras if the NSA has a file on her. Read the article. It's worth the 20 minutes: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-snowden.html?ref=magazine http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-sno...
- bazillion 13y agoIt's still illegal to collect on her...she's a US citizen with no ties to terrorism.
- uptown 13y agoI agree. Do you disagree that it's likely that the NSA has a "file" on her?
- delinka 13y agoAnd with all the abuses admitted to by the executive branch of the federal government over the decades, do you honestly think that it being illegal actually prevents them from doing it?
- bazillion 13y ago
- nshepperd 13y ago> "Were we to provide positive or negative responses to requests such as yours, our adversaries' compilation of the information provided would reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security." Not surprising. They're obviously trying to prevent the situation where Mr Terrorist or Ms Spy makes a FOIA request for their file and—because the NSA has been handing out files containing non-compromising evidence to anyone who asks—the NSA has to either: - Lie, and say they don't have a file (probably not plausible, and maybe illegal under FOIA) - Construct a fake file (expensive, and similarly might be illegal) - Hand over the true file, revealing what they know about the bad guys - Refuse to hand over the file, revealing that they know something incriminating, and that it's time for Ms Spy to disappear for a while In information theory, and therefore espionage, you can't unask a question.
- pivnicek 13y agoThe important question regarding this whole mess is where are the equivalent of the Swiss banks for data?
- jacquesm 13y agoSwiss banks aren't all that safe either.
- dredmorbius 13y agoThe EFF publishes a Surveillance Self-Defense resource I'd strongly recommend. The tools page: https://ssd.eff.org/tech https://ssd.eff.org/tech Essentially: encryption, self-hosting, small-scale hosting (the NSA have scaling problems with vendors, though don't expect that to last), privacy tools including browser privacy (privoxy), tor, VPNs, the FreedomBox, and others.
- arbuge 13y ago<quote>The NSA has admitted, separately, that it employs a practice called "contact chaining." That means that if one of their targets calls someone, who in turn calls someone else, who in turn calls you, agency's checking you out.</quote> Ah. So when you get an appointment reminder from your dentist, you might just have been chained with a suspect who called that same dentist earlier. Or maybe your girl/boy-friend works at Domino's on the side and called you from there, and it so happens a suspect is one of their customers.... congrats, NSA file for you.
- tptacek 13y agoIf you follow the link the author set on the NSA asking "My NSA" to stop offering semi-automated filings, it's clear that the NSA isn't trying to coerce or intimidate, but rather is simply pointing out that the service doesn't actually work, because it generates noncompliant filings that NSA is prevented by law from even acknowledging. That's one hop away, on a link this author chose for the story, and yet I'm left wondering whether the author even read it.