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> I suspect that US tech companies who are complicit in dragnet surveillance - and PRISM specifically - are already understanding this. Absolutely. Just as 201

by rolux 13y ago

> I suspect that US tech companies who are complicit in dragnet surveillance - and PRISM specifically - are already understanding this. Absolutely. Just as 2013 is the year where "ordinary people" have begun to understand that "the cloud" is a scam. (And that is doesn't make that much of a difference if they store their data with Google, Apple, or directly with the NSA. If the blueprints of PRISM can't be kept from leaking, then subsets of the actual data will leak as well. Five or ten years from know, you'll have a huge grey market of -- medium to low quality, outdated, etc. -- surveillance data.)

ENOTTY 13y ago
There's no evidence the blueprints of PRISM were leaked, just training slides for analysts. There's also no evidence that actual surveillance data was leaked. This particular slippery slope argument seems weaker because one would expect the government to place tighter controls on the data or the blueprints.
- rolux 13y ago
  I was using the term "blueprints" colloquially, meaning "plans" or "details". Quite a few of the leaked slides are exactly the type of material that one would expect the government to have "tighter controls on", compared to petabytes of mostly useless data.
  - ENOTTY 13y ago
    I disagree. Training documents are meant to be shared to a much wider audience than the developers of the system. Data coming from the system is meant to be used in a report.
- kalkin 13y ago
  If no actual surveillance data was leaked, though, that's likely because Snowden is an idealist. It seems that he had access to that data. If the next leaker just wants some cash, things could change. (Or, hell, maybe the previous leaker--maybe spy is a better word here--who didn't get caught because s/he didn't go public, or was purely the victim of an ultra-sophisticated phishing attempt!)
  - rolux 13y ago
    Which is precisely what I was hinting at. The idea that the NSA would be capable of keeping this data absolutely confidential is ludicrous. And that's why in the future (most likely already today) it will be relatively safe to assume that there are other parties, be it individuals or organizations, that have access to some aspect of your private communication.
    - dobbsbob 13y ago
      Bruce Schneier already posted last week on how the NSA 'slipped up' thousands of times every year since 2008 leaking this wholesale vacuumed data all over the place. He advocates for corporations to fight the NSA instead of bending over for them because it's them who will get screwed in the end when their data ends up leaked too http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/08/the_nsa_is_comm.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/08/the_nsa_is_com... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10246617/Edward-Snowden-leaks-documents-showing-thousands-of-breaches-of-NSA-privacy-rules.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1... ..
  - ENOTTY 13y ago
    At this point, you and I are just speculating on which outcome is more likely. I'm arguing there are probably significant data controls. You're arguing that the data was accessible but not leaked because he was an idealist. Until there's evidence pointing either way, this is just speculation. I would argue that the most direct way to prove the extent of spying would be to actually expose the data that was gathered. Therefore, after weighing the privacy of the unfortunate soul versus demonstrating to the world the power and pervasiveness of this system, he might have an incentive to leak the actual data, if he had access to it.
wslh 13y ago
Just as 2013 is the year where "ordinary people" have begun to understand that "the cloud" is a scam. And the year when we understand that we are all lemmings. I remember the 90s when people were afraid of putting their credit cards on ecommerce sites, and now they put their whole lifes and assets online.
- rolux 13y ago
  My hope would be that at least corporations are not lemmings. For a non-US company that does anything remotely sensitive or competitive on an international level, it's simply insane to use, say, Google's cloud services. I don't know to what extent Google depends on foreign corporate clients -- but I'd be surprised if this wasn't something they were very seriously concerned about. (And the recent revelations about the NSA are really just the icing on the cake. If there is high demand for some confidential data, it's likely that there will be supply.)
- malandrew 13y ago
  The beauty of corporations is that they are still accountable to a much greater degree than than the NSA. Those who run Google have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders. Up until a few months ago this always meant to many that if there was anything fishy going on at Google that they would quickly resolve the problem by firing the individuals guilty of any transgression and quickly instituting security policies to make sure something like that doesn't happen again. After all, individuals can mount class action suits, as can shareholders and the FTC or other some other regulator can come down on them. The problem with what we discovered a few months ago is that the government can use fiduciary duty of the officers of these companies against the companies and they can do so in a way that guarantees that the executives won't talk about the abuse. They made demands for access and every corporation in the world knows that when push comes to shove, you don't want to piss off any organization that can unleash the IRS on your bookkeeping. And if someone does push back, its possible that there were additional threats of jail time for obstructing justice or contempt of court. Add to that the ability to gag anyone with an NSL and you have a situation that is wide open to abuse. Unlike corporations, the people don't really have real recourse for transgressions of the NSA, CIA or LEO in general when it involves secrets that we are not privileged to, especially not any recourse within the capabilities of the common man (unless you are a common man within those institutions and you're willing to give up everything to whistleblow). Most attempts to sue get thrown out on state secrets grounds. All we have left is the ability to vote, but its pretty clear from some of the facts that that is unlikely to make any difference for most voters since the only people who knew what was going on were on the intelligence committees and even then both the ICs in both houses and the FISA court have admitted that they don't have any real oversight. Facing this reality, I'm not entirely surprised people like pj at groklaw and ll at lavabit are checking out.
JonFish85 13y ago
"Just as 2013 is the year where "ordinary people" have begun to understand that "the cloud" is a scam." Disagree. So-called "ordinary people" don't really know or care about this issue. They care that "hey, my phone calendar syncs with my Google calendar!". They care that "hey, I can listen to my music on my computer, my phone AND my tablet". They care that they don't have to worry about backing up some things (Google Docs / Microsoft Office 365). They care that their pictures can be accessed by their friends without having to attach them to email. No average person is running away from the cloud for this reason--they're running towards it because overall, they still feel it makes their lives easier.
- Zelphyr 13y ago
  This, sadly, is the ultimate truth. We may have already lost this battle for one simple reason: the average person is too apathetic to care what their Government is doing to them. Its not "By the people For the people" anymore. Its By those in power (who aren't elected, by the way) For those in power.
  - mahyarm 13y ago
    When hasn't it really been like that?
    - raintrees 13y ago
      I agree. I start getting wound up, only to be gently reminded by my wife that just because I am only now discovering it for myself does not mean it hasn't been there all along...
- drivingmenuts 13y ago
  > So-called "ordinary people" don't really know or care about this issue. In one sense, they're right. For the most part, they really don't have anything to hide except maybe a few naughty pictures taken at a less-than-sober moment. What people don't get (and I do not claim to be an expert, just a cynic) is the ability for others to take two pieces of information and form a previously-unthought-of conclusion. They aren't mean, nasty or suspicious enough to even think that is a possibility. I still hew to the idea that this isn't a technical issue. We can come up with all kinds of secure protocols and systems until we're drowning in them but it still won't fix the problem that large parts of our society are just plain broken at some fundamental level. We passed the laws that allowed this. We hired the nosy bastards that are doing this. Hell, we made the terrorists that required us to pass the laws and hire the nosy bastards. Somewhere along the line, we decided it was more profitable to set countries on fire than it was to work on conflict resolution. We didn't need a computer to do that. Fix the philosophical issue because all the tech in the world is just a bandaid.
mncolinlee 13y ago
At this point, it would make more sense to store data with the NSA. They have that entire, taxpayer-funded Utah Data Center full of storage. Why not just open it up for people to backup their files cheaply? The slogan could be "It all ends up here anyway."
- agilebyte 13y ago
  Absolutely, I bet someone in the govt is thinking about giving each citizen say 10GB of free space that is secure from: hackers, identity theft, foreign espionage etc. All the ones that won't use this offer can then be even more meticulously monitored.
  - samstave 13y ago
    Dear lord. This is the darkest comment I have read in a really long time.
    - agilebyte 13y ago
      ...and sell it as part of a internet is a right campaign. Yeah. http://www.payer.de/kommkulturen/kultur0413.wav http://www.payer.de/kommkulturen/kultur0413.wav
  - chris_mahan 13y ago
    10 GB? How about a terabyte. Between the photos, the movies and the music, 10 GB is much too little. Heck, make it 10 TB, then you're talking.
    - agilebyte 13y ago
      That reminds me of the prostitute quote "Now We're Just Haggling Over the Price" by Winston Churchill.
      - Dylan16807 13y ago
        Just don't pretend it actually applies. You replied to a comment talking about whether such a service would actually be capable of backing up people's data, not in the slightest a discussion of price.
hershel 13y ago
My guess is that that hard part in PRISM is actually building it. You have to have tons of money and cooperation from big powerful companies and government because it's illegal(unless you're NSA). The blueprints are probably the easy part.

by rolux 13y ago

ENOTTY 13y ago

There's no evidence the blueprints of PRISM were leaked, just training slides for analysts. There's also no evidence that actual surveillance data was leaked. This particular slippery slope argument seems weaker because one would expect the government to place tighter controls on the data or the blueprints.

rolux 13y ago
I was using the term "blueprints" colloquially, meaning "plans" or "details". Quite a few of the leaked slides are exactly the type of material that one would expect the government to have "tighter controls on", compared to petabytes of mostly useless data.
- ENOTTY 13y ago
  I disagree. Training documents are meant to be shared to a much wider audience than the developers of the system. Data coming from the system is meant to be used in a report.
kalkin 13y ago
If no actual surveillance data was leaked, though, that's likely because Snowden is an idealist. It seems that he had access to that data. If the next leaker just wants some cash, things could change. (Or, hell, maybe the previous leaker--maybe spy is a better word here--who didn't get caught because s/he didn't go public, or was purely the victim of an ultra-sophisticated phishing attempt!)
- rolux 13y ago
  Which is precisely what I was hinting at. The idea that the NSA would be capable of keeping this data absolutely confidential is ludicrous. And that's why in the future (most likely already today) it will be relatively safe to assume that there are other parties, be it individuals or organizations, that have access to some aspect of your private communication.
  - dobbsbob 13y ago
    Bruce Schneier already posted last week on how the NSA 'slipped up' thousands of times every year since 2008 leaking this wholesale vacuumed data all over the place. He advocates for corporations to fight the NSA instead of bending over for them because it's them who will get screwed in the end when their data ends up leaked too http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/08/the_nsa_is_comm.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/08/the_nsa_is_com... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10246617/Edward-Snowden-leaks-documents-showing-thousands-of-breaches-of-NSA-privacy-rules.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1... ..
- ENOTTY 13y ago
  At this point, you and I are just speculating on which outcome is more likely. I'm arguing there are probably significant data controls. You're arguing that the data was accessible but not leaked because he was an idealist. Until there's evidence pointing either way, this is just speculation. I would argue that the most direct way to prove the extent of spying would be to actually expose the data that was gathered. Therefore, after weighing the privacy of the unfortunate soul versus demonstrating to the world the power and pervasiveness of this system, he might have an incentive to leak the actual data, if he had access to it.

wslh 13y ago

Just as 2013 is the year where "ordinary people" have begun to understand that "the cloud" is a scam. And the year when we understand that we are all lemmings. I remember the 90s when people were afraid of putting their credit cards on ecommerce sites, and now they put their whole lifes and assets online.

rolux 13y ago
My hope would be that at least corporations are not lemmings. For a non-US company that does anything remotely sensitive or competitive on an international level, it's simply insane to use, say, Google's cloud services. I don't know to what extent Google depends on foreign corporate clients -- but I'd be surprised if this wasn't something they were very seriously concerned about. (And the recent revelations about the NSA are really just the icing on the cake. If there is high demand for some confidential data, it's likely that there will be supply.)
malandrew 13y ago
The beauty of corporations is that they are still accountable to a much greater degree than than the NSA. Those who run Google have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders. Up until a few months ago this always meant to many that if there was anything fishy going on at Google that they would quickly resolve the problem by firing the individuals guilty of any transgression and quickly instituting security policies to make sure something like that doesn't happen again. After all, individuals can mount class action suits, as can shareholders and the FTC or other some other regulator can come down on them. The problem with what we discovered a few months ago is that the government can use fiduciary duty of the officers of these companies against the companies and they can do so in a way that guarantees that the executives won't talk about the abuse. They made demands for access and every corporation in the world knows that when push comes to shove, you don't want to piss off any organization that can unleash the IRS on your bookkeeping. And if someone does push back, its possible that there were additional threats of jail time for obstructing justice or contempt of court. Add to that the ability to gag anyone with an NSL and you have a situation that is wide open to abuse. Unlike corporations, the people don't really have real recourse for transgressions of the NSA, CIA or LEO in general when it involves secrets that we are not privileged to, especially not any recourse within the capabilities of the common man (unless you are a common man within those institutions and you're willing to give up everything to whistleblow). Most attempts to sue get thrown out on state secrets grounds. All we have left is the ability to vote, but its pretty clear from some of the facts that that is unlikely to make any difference for most voters since the only people who knew what was going on were on the intelligence committees and even then both the ICs in both houses and the FISA court have admitted that they don't have any real oversight. Facing this reality, I'm not entirely surprised people like pj at groklaw and ll at lavabit are checking out.

JonFish85 13y ago

"Just as 2013 is the year where "ordinary people" have begun to understand that "the cloud" is a scam." Disagree. So-called "ordinary people" don't really know or care about this issue. They care that "hey, my phone calendar syncs with my Google calendar!". They care that "hey, I can listen to my music on my computer, my phone AND my tablet". They care that they don't have to worry about backing up some things (Google Docs / Microsoft Office 365). They care that their pictures can be accessed by their friends without having to attach them to email. No average person is running away from the cloud for this reason--they're running towards it because overall, they still feel it makes their lives easier.

Zelphyr 13y ago
This, sadly, is the ultimate truth. We may have already lost this battle for one simple reason: the average person is too apathetic to care what their Government is doing to them. Its not "By the people For the people" anymore. Its By those in power (who aren't elected, by the way) For those in power.
- mahyarm 13y ago
  When hasn't it really been like that?
  - raintrees 13y ago
    I agree. I start getting wound up, only to be gently reminded by my wife that just because I am only now discovering it for myself does not mean it hasn't been there all along...
drivingmenuts 13y ago
> So-called "ordinary people" don't really know or care about this issue. In one sense, they're right. For the most part, they really don't have anything to hide except maybe a few naughty pictures taken at a less-than-sober moment. What people don't get (and I do not claim to be an expert, just a cynic) is the ability for others to take two pieces of information and form a previously-unthought-of conclusion. They aren't mean, nasty or suspicious enough to even think that is a possibility. I still hew to the idea that this isn't a technical issue. We can come up with all kinds of secure protocols and systems until we're drowning in them but it still won't fix the problem that large parts of our society are just plain broken at some fundamental level. We passed the laws that allowed this. We hired the nosy bastards that are doing this. Hell, we made the terrorists that required us to pass the laws and hire the nosy bastards. Somewhere along the line, we decided it was more profitable to set countries on fire than it was to work on conflict resolution. We didn't need a computer to do that. Fix the philosophical issue because all the tech in the world is just a bandaid.

mncolinlee 13y ago

At this point, it would make more sense to store data with the NSA. They have that entire, taxpayer-funded Utah Data Center full of storage. Why not just open it up for people to backup their files cheaply? The slogan could be "It all ends up here anyway."

agilebyte 13y ago
Absolutely, I bet someone in the govt is thinking about giving each citizen say 10GB of free space that is secure from: hackers, identity theft, foreign espionage etc. All the ones that won't use this offer can then be even more meticulously monitored.
- samstave 13y ago
  Dear lord. This is the darkest comment I have read in a really long time.
  - agilebyte 13y ago
    ...and sell it as part of a internet is a right campaign. Yeah. http://www.payer.de/kommkulturen/kultur0413.wav http://www.payer.de/kommkulturen/kultur0413.wav
- chris_mahan 13y ago
  10 GB? How about a terabyte. Between the photos, the movies and the music, 10 GB is much too little. Heck, make it 10 TB, then you're talking.
  - agilebyte 13y ago
    That reminds me of the prostitute quote "Now We're Just Haggling Over the Price" by Winston Churchill.
    - Dylan16807 13y ago
      Just don't pretend it actually applies. You replied to a comment talking about whether such a service would actually be capable of backing up people's data, not in the slightest a discussion of price.

hershel 13y ago

My guess is that that hard part in PRISM is actually building it. You have to have tons of money and cooperation from big powerful companies and government because it's illegal(unless you're NSA). The blueprints are probably the easy part.