9 ms·

NSA collects millions of text messages daily in 'untargeted' global sweep

272 points by weu 13y ago

vermontdevil 13y ago
By now there's pretty much nothing NSA is not doing to collect information from everyone. Now I wonder if NSA is able to penetrate services like WhatsApp, Snapchat, etc.
- higherpurpose 13y ago
  You're kidding, right? Whatsapp especially is known for having a ton of security issues over the past year or two, and Snapchat is no better. The snaps still go through their servers, which means the NSA can still intercept them, and Snapchat has even admitted they keep the "unnopened" ones, and they even give them to authorities (decrypted).
- sitkack 13y ago
  Since the NSA taps the backbone, they have protocol analyzers that reverse engineer wire traffic to put it into semistructured form for processing with MapReduce. Nothing escaped them since the collection and the data deconstruction is separate.
- tP5n 13y ago
  you probably weren't serious, but in the case anyone else is unsure about this: whatsapp is and always has been broken from a security standpoint and there is no need for the/a NSA to penetrate anything in their case. i wonder how you could've missed out on what happened to snapchat lately though, two links as some sort of a short introduction: from late 2012, but a worthwhile read on whatsapp http://fileperms.org/whatsapp-is-broken-really-broken/ http://fileperms.org/whatsapp-is-broken-really-broken/ and in the case anyone missed the snapchat debacle http://lookup.gibsonsec.org/ http://lookup.gibsonsec.org/
  - vermontdevil 13y ago
    Of course not I'm not serious. But what is not accessible to NSA? However the fact that WhatsApp and Snapchat's popularity tells me that people are not really educated about their true privacy and how completely broken it is.
elwell 13y ago
Use iMessage instead if you care. I for one welcome our new overlords.
- uptown 13y ago
  It's implausible that they've decided to capture text-messages, but turned a blind-eye to iMessage.
  - elwell 13y ago
    But they may not be able to crack iMessage.
    - angersock 13y ago
      I like your world--let's live there instead.
    - doc_holliday 13y ago
      I think it has got to the point, all revelations considered, where we can't hope or assume any encryption is safe. Technology can't prevent this, we must change laws. Which at present, seems almost as unlikely.
      - benmanns 13y ago
        Technology can help to a certain extent, but only if open source and handled client side. No amount of encryption on Apple's (or any company's) end will matter, because users can no longer trust them.
- brightsize 13y ago
  Or wickr, "snapchat for adults". https://www.mywickr.com/ https://www.mywickr.com/
- mullingitover 13y ago
  Because there's one thing the NSA isn't tapping: the internet.
vavoida 13y ago
metacontent (message content) & metadata -> smiley face, slide 2 interesting definition of metacontent
- jsmeaton 13y ago
  That was the first thing I picked out too. From wikipedia (I know..): > Meta ... is a prefix used in English ... to indicate a concept which is an abstraction from another concept, used to complete or add to the latter. How is the entire message content abstract to the entire message content? It seems like they've just added the prefix to get around some legal obligation. What the fuck.
  - grkvlt 13y ago
    It's a bit more nuanced than that. What they seem to be doing is looking at the contents for automated text messages such as missed call alerts or texts sent with international roaming, and using that to generate metadata such as call data or geo-location data, called 'content-derived metadata'. So it's generating new metadata records by analysing the content.
jonhmchan 13y ago
Good god.
angersock 13y ago
From the slide, a subtitle: SMS Text Messages: A Goldmine to Exploit Oy vey--they don't even care anymore, do they? They're not even trying. Fuck it, have a friendly octopus: http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/52a3bb30eab8ea8a2d3aff04-480/nrol-39-nothing-beyond-our-reach.jpg http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/52a3bb30eab8ea8a2d3...
- ogreyonder 13y ago
  I looked that logo up thinking it probably came from some sort of 70's science fiction book about a dystopian future. Nope, National Reconnaissance Office. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_Launches http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_Launches I mean, at least they're being honest!
  - joering2 13y ago
    Why "at least"? The couldn't before because public would be sensitive. Now with checkpoints everywhere, NSA spying, cavity searches, homeless people beaten down to death by cops getting away with it, DOJ declining to investigate bank scandals, IRS, Benghazi, Fast and Furious, they do not need logos with pink teddy bears and stills of a happy family holding hands with smiling children on the beach. The majority of public IS already got used to this tyranny. Coming forward with less PR is a next, obvious and logical step. After that: huge military boot on your face!
  - kafkaesque 13y ago
    "NROL-39 is represented by the octopus, a versatile, adaptable, and highly intelligent creature. Emblematically, enemies of the United States can be reached no matter where they choose to hide. 'Nothing is beyond our reach' defines this mission and the value it brings to our nation and the warfighters it supports, who serve valiantly all over the globe, protecting our nation". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-247 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-247
fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
> "The note warns analysts they must be careful to make sure they use the form’s toggle before searching, as otherwise the database will return the content of the UK messages – which would, without a warrant, cause the analyst to “unlawfully be seeing the content of the SMS”."
fit2rule 13y ago
Time to turn the tools on these traitors.
- easy_rider 13y ago
  You also re-watched Enemy of the state (1998) last night?
  - samstave 13y ago
    Heh, I have been! I downloaded it (For the NSA, that means I torrented it from thepiratebay, just so we are clear) And I have been watching it... One of the best documentaries I have seen in a while...
    - whatevsbro 13y ago
      > I downloaded it (For the NSA, that means I torrented it from thepiratebay, just so we are clear) Oh you don't have to tell them that :p
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
easy_rider 13y ago
NSA sure love their double forward slash and smiley faces
cryoshon 13y ago
Great, let's start doing something about it instead of complaining. Here's my cynical take on a back of the napkin recipe for political change: 1. Call, write, tweet, and facebook your representatives, both local and federal, and tell them what you think- be sure to inflate your credentials and threaten to give money/votes/accolades to their political enemies. For bonus points, tell their enemies the same thing. For even more bonus points, run as a candidate yourself. 2. Write/speak/act out in the public sphere, make sure to get as much attention as possible and to be moderately vitriolic and abundantly populist in your rhetoric. Use only words, concepts, and rhetoric that a dim 9th grader would understand. 3. Join a physical protest- if there isn't one near you, it's your job to start one. I'd keep it nonviolent if I were you. I know that this isn't the cup of tea for most HN readers, but there's no way around it: physical presence matters, and the numbers of people who have protested surveillance thus far have been extremely paltry. We don't have the luxury of waiting for someone else to do it for us. 4. Convince your less-enlightened friends and relatives to do items 1-5, or at least be terrified of the government. 5. Start again from 1; repeat until successful.
- doc_holliday 13y ago
  Your right, action is what is needed. We cannot expect most ordinary citizens to use by default the most secure communications or private setup. Therefore the law needs to fall in favour of privacy for ordinary communications (SMS, calls, email). Our future politicians, representatives and all citizens are far from likely to be users of the most secure communication methods during their lives and the holding of their information is a complete affront to the democratic process.
- glomph 13y ago
  I don't think your take is particularly cynical. You seem to believe we can still stop this stuff. I think a cynic would have promoting encrypted communication as at least one of their bullet points.
  - afterburner 13y ago
    Cynicism can cut both ways. You can be too cynical to believe a technical solution is possible, that legal action is the only thing left.
pvnick 13y ago
"Communications from US phone numbers, the documents suggest, were removed (or “minimized”) from the database – but those of other countries, including the UK, were retained." I'm interested in knowing the specifics on this. US data goes into a database and is then proactively removed? Minimization procedures [1] allow the nsa to keep US data up to 5 years to determine where it's coming from. It's also kept if "they contain usable intelligence, information on criminal activity, threat of harm to people or property, are encrypted, or are believed to contain any information relevant to cybersecurity." So until the documents show otherwise, I assume that most of my text messages from the past 5 years are in an nsa database, and all messages that my friends sent to buy weed are there, perhaps being used to parallel construct criminal cases [2]. And at the very least, all of it would be visible to the systems administrators... [1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/20/fisa-court-nsa-without-warrant http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/20/fisa-court-nsa-... [2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/dea-and-nsa-team-intelligence-laundering https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/dea-and-nsa-team-intel...
- grkvlt 13y ago
  Your weed-buying friends are quite safe from the full power of the NSA and 'parallel construction' being brought to bear on them and their petty crimes. I can't really understand why anyone would even _think_ that would be the case? In fact, I just don't understand the problem people have with the 'parallel construction' of evidence. By its very nature, if the original evidence existed, and new alternative sources can be found, these it must be believed that they point to the fact a crime has been committed. In which case it should be prosecuted, and the criminals brought to justice. Or are people suggesting that if the NSA finds evidence of a crime, that crime can no longer be prosecuted even using alternative, non-NSA sourced evidence? That we should just wait until investigators stumble across the crime by accident, and allow many criminals to avoid prosecution? My feeling is that if a valid and uncontested, un-tainted evidence trail exists, showing that a crime has been committed, then morally there is no problem. We are not talking about the use of torture to obtain the original evidence, for example, rather it is a side effect of the intelligence gathering process. This sort of cross-pollination between intelligence agencies and law enforcement has always been present, and the source of the original 'tip off' was generally inadmissible due to classification or to protect sources. This is not even a new idea. Law enforcement has to deal with 'tainted' and inadmissible evidence all the time, from protected sources, conversations overheard in bars and so on... Sometimes the evidence has even been allowable at the time it was collected, but circumstances change later. Anyway, in these situations it is standard practice to try and obtain different, non-tainted and admissible evidence pointing to the same outcome. We now have a new word for this, in 'parallel construction' but the outcome is no different.
dangayle 13y ago
No mas
WalterBright 13y ago
Notice in the Arod scandal that all his text messages have been made public? Was there a warrant for that?
- greenyoda 13y ago
  I'd assume that if government investigators got his text messages, they had a warrant. If they didn't, the messages wouldn't be admissible evidence in court. And if the messages were presented in court, they're now a matter of public record. But what does that have to do with the NSA?
- adestefan 13y ago
  The A Rod investigation is being done by private entities. Most of their "evidence" either comes from an individual or was bought. In the end he's taking MLB to Federal court in a civil action. It has nothing up do with the government.
fdc123 13y ago
seriously every member of congress and the president should be taken out back and shot dead
Tycho 13y ago
I liked the NSA better when they were just called the Illuminati.
gathly 13y ago
this is shocking news back in July.
zacinbusiness 13y ago
Who is making these piss poor presentations? They're hideous and terrible. I could look past the gross invasion of privacy if they would at least spend 10 minutes building some decent designs. Get it together, NSA!
sinak 13y ago
This is very clearly collection of the contents of messages, and not simply metadata. The fact that US messages may later be "minimized" from the database is vaguely helpful, but not much of a reassurance. That data should never be collected in the first place, and bulk collection of international data is also an unnecessary practice. If this helps motivate you, we need all the help we can get with https://thedaywefightback.org https://thedaywefightback.org. If you're a designer, developer (including frontend, backend, devops, mobile app), get in touch by emailing contact@thedaywefightback.org and we'll write back and let you know when we need your skillset the most.
- maqr 13y ago
  I'm curious why they labeled it "METACONTENT: Message Content". So it's content about the content's content?
  - samstave 13y ago
    I'm picturing where they summarize or rpg raze the content of a message and then label this rephrasing as "metadata" so as to deny they don't have the actual content. As if they were to compress the content then claim they do the the original content because it has been compressed. I wouldn't put such lunacy past them. Fuck the NSA.
exo762 13y ago
While NSA is busy being menace, you can mitigate damage by using TextSecure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian_Project_%28software%29#TextSecure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian_Project_%28softwa...
moxie 13y ago
I help develop TextSecure, an Android app which allows users encrypt their text messages: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.thoughtcrime.securesms https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.thoughtcri... It's fully open source: https://github.com/whispersystems/textsecure https://github.com/whispersystems/textsecure You can also sign up to be notified when it's released for iOS: https://whispersystems.org/blog/iphone-rsn/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/iphone-rsn/
- pilooch 13y ago
  I love textsecure. My problems is twofold: I don't know in advance who is using it from my contacts, and I know for sure none of my non geek relations is using it, not even for business stuff, which could make sense. And so as much as I like it (thanks!!!) I am not convinced this is the solution. Am I wrong ?
  - r0h1n 13y ago
    As I understand, you can use Textsecure as your default SMS app which means it will automatically send either a plain or encrypted message to a recipient depending on whether they have the app installed or not. Of course if you use a non-stock messaging app, like Handcent for instance, you may not want to switch to Textsecure for other features/reasons.
    - hdevalence 13y ago
      No, you need to initiate a secure session manually, and my experience was that unless you knew the other person was for sure using text secure, this could cause problems, since of you tried to handshake with the other person using a stock app, it could get stuck in the handshake. This was a while ago, so I don't know if the problem still exists. Text secure is great, though. Really, really great.
      - r0h1n 13y ago
        Maybe its a Cyanogenmod-only feature then. Because they do claim the app can make the choice transparently without user involvement: https://whispersystems.org/blog/cyanogen-integration/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/cyanogen-integration/
jrochkind1 13y ago
It's become like science fiction, or a bad joke. Whatever you can imagine the most powerful intelligence agency imaginable doing, the NSA is doing. I am literally unable to think of anything that the NSA is _not_ collecting or controlling. Every SMS message sent? Yep. Location data on every cell phone? Yep. Controlling a 100k-computer botnet, including via radio transmitter to contact computers not on the internet? Yep. I admit I can't keep track of it all; at this point I just assume that anything I can imagine the NSA doing, it's either already been revealed that they're doing it and I just haven't managed to keep track, or they're doing it even though it hasn't been revealed yet.
- tripzilch 13y ago
  How about that thing in the Dark Knight Batman film, where he hacks into all the cell phones and then uses reverb / echo analysis to somehow create a 3D volume rendering of the space. They can't do that yet, right? Right?
  - jrochkind1 13y ago
    You know, honestly, thinking about it, I'm not feeling certain to say no. First, could they get an audio feed of all or many of the cell phones in a given cell? Second, can, you know, Science, or science the NSA has, do that 'reverb / echo analysis' thing? I don't really know either way, but find the second one more dubious than the first.
VexXtreme 13y ago
I still don't understand something. If they are intercepting text messages globally, how do they do that if two people are texting each other in within the borders of their own country using their national carrier? Their texts never leave the country. Has the NSA somehow compromised or coerced various carriers around the world to provide them with this data?
- Tharkun 13y ago
  NSA and GHCQ apparently routinely backdoor international carriers. I vaguely remember something about a Belgian carrier stumbling upon the backdoor and struggling to remove it for months.
peterkelly 13y ago
"Content derived metadata" Nice.

272 points by weu 13y ago

By now there's pretty much nothing NSA is not doing to collect information from everyone. Now I wonder if NSA is able to penetrate services like WhatsApp, Snapchat, etc.

higherpurpose 13y ago
You're kidding, right? Whatsapp especially is known for having a ton of security issues over the past year or two, and Snapchat is no better. The snaps still go through their servers, which means the NSA can still intercept them, and Snapchat has even admitted they keep the "unnopened" ones, and they even give them to authorities (decrypted).
sitkack 13y ago
Since the NSA taps the backbone, they have protocol analyzers that reverse engineer wire traffic to put it into semistructured form for processing with MapReduce. Nothing escaped them since the collection and the data deconstruction is separate.
tP5n 13y ago
you probably weren't serious, but in the case anyone else is unsure about this: whatsapp is and always has been broken from a security standpoint and there is no need for the/a NSA to penetrate anything in their case. i wonder how you could've missed out on what happened to snapchat lately though, two links as some sort of a short introduction: from late 2012, but a worthwhile read on whatsapp http://fileperms.org/whatsapp-is-broken-really-broken/ http://fileperms.org/whatsapp-is-broken-really-broken/ and in the case anyone missed the snapchat debacle http://lookup.gibsonsec.org/ http://lookup.gibsonsec.org/
- vermontdevil 13y ago
  Of course not I'm not serious. But what is not accessible to NSA? However the fact that WhatsApp and Snapchat's popularity tells me that people are not really educated about their true privacy and how completely broken it is.

elwell 13y ago

Use iMessage instead if you care. I for one welcome our new overlords.

uptown 13y ago
It's implausible that they've decided to capture text-messages, but turned a blind-eye to iMessage.
- elwell 13y ago
  But they may not be able to crack iMessage.
  - angersock 13y ago
    I like your world--let's live there instead.
  - doc_holliday 13y ago
    I think it has got to the point, all revelations considered, where we can't hope or assume any encryption is safe. Technology can't prevent this, we must change laws. Which at present, seems almost as unlikely.
    - benmanns 13y ago
      Technology can help to a certain extent, but only if open source and handled client side. No amount of encryption on Apple's (or any company's) end will matter, because users can no longer trust them.
brightsize 13y ago
Or wickr, "snapchat for adults". https://www.mywickr.com/ https://www.mywickr.com/
mullingitover 13y ago
Because there's one thing the NSA isn't tapping: the internet.

vavoida 13y ago

metacontent (message content) & metadata -> smiley face, slide 2 interesting definition of metacontent

jsmeaton 13y ago
That was the first thing I picked out too. From wikipedia (I know..): > Meta ... is a prefix used in English ... to indicate a concept which is an abstraction from another concept, used to complete or add to the latter. How is the entire message content abstract to the entire message content? It seems like they've just added the prefix to get around some legal obligation. What the fuck.
- grkvlt 13y ago
  It's a bit more nuanced than that. What they seem to be doing is looking at the contents for automated text messages such as missed call alerts or texts sent with international roaming, and using that to generate metadata such as call data or geo-location data, called 'content-derived metadata'. So it's generating new metadata records by analysing the content.

jonhmchan 13y ago

Good god.

angersock 13y ago

From the slide, a subtitle: SMS Text Messages: A Goldmine to Exploit Oy vey--they don't even care anymore, do they? They're not even trying. Fuck it, have a friendly octopus: http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/52a3bb30eab8ea8a2d3aff04-480/nrol-39-nothing-beyond-our-reach.jpg http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/52a3bb30eab8ea8a2d3...

ogreyonder 13y ago
I looked that logo up thinking it probably came from some sort of 70's science fiction book about a dystopian future. Nope, National Reconnaissance Office. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_Launches http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_Launches I mean, at least they're being honest!
- joering2 13y ago
  Why "at least"? The couldn't before because public would be sensitive. Now with checkpoints everywhere, NSA spying, cavity searches, homeless people beaten down to death by cops getting away with it, DOJ declining to investigate bank scandals, IRS, Benghazi, Fast and Furious, they do not need logos with pink teddy bears and stills of a happy family holding hands with smiling children on the beach. The majority of public IS already got used to this tyranny. Coming forward with less PR is a next, obvious and logical step. After that: huge military boot on your face!
- kafkaesque 13y ago
  "NROL-39 is represented by the octopus, a versatile, adaptable, and highly intelligent creature. Emblematically, enemies of the United States can be reached no matter where they choose to hide. 'Nothing is beyond our reach' defines this mission and the value it brings to our nation and the warfighters it supports, who serve valiantly all over the globe, protecting our nation". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-247 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-247

fnordfnordfnord 13y ago

> "The note warns analysts they must be careful to make sure they use the form’s toggle before searching, as otherwise the database will return the content of the UK messages – which would, without a warrant, cause the analyst to “unlawfully be seeing the content of the SMS”."

fit2rule 13y ago

Time to turn the tools on these traitors.

easy_rider 13y ago
You also re-watched Enemy of the state (1998) last night?
- samstave 13y ago
  Heh, I have been! I downloaded it (For the NSA, that means I torrented it from thepiratebay, just so we are clear) And I have been watching it... One of the best documentaries I have seen in a while...
  - whatevsbro 13y ago
    > I downloaded it (For the NSA, that means I torrented it from thepiratebay, just so we are clear) Oh you don't have to tell them that :p

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

easy_rider 13y ago

NSA sure love their double forward slash and smiley faces

cryoshon 13y ago

Great, let's start doing something about it instead of complaining. Here's my cynical take on a back of the napkin recipe for political change: 1. Call, write, tweet, and facebook your representatives, both local and federal, and tell them what you think- be sure to inflate your credentials and threaten to give money/votes/accolades to their political enemies. For bonus points, tell their enemies the same thing. For even more bonus points, run as a candidate yourself. 2. Write/speak/act out in the public sphere, make sure to get as much attention as possible and to be moderately vitriolic and abundantly populist in your rhetoric. Use only words, concepts, and rhetoric that a dim 9th grader would understand. 3. Join a physical protest- if there isn't one near you, it's your job to start one. I'd keep it nonviolent if I were you. I know that this isn't the cup of tea for most HN readers, but there's no way around it: physical presence matters, and the numbers of people who have protested surveillance thus far have been extremely paltry. We don't have the luxury of waiting for someone else to do it for us. 4. Convince your less-enlightened friends and relatives to do items 1-5, or at least be terrified of the government. 5. Start again from 1; repeat until successful.

doc_holliday 13y ago
Your right, action is what is needed. We cannot expect most ordinary citizens to use by default the most secure communications or private setup. Therefore the law needs to fall in favour of privacy for ordinary communications (SMS, calls, email). Our future politicians, representatives and all citizens are far from likely to be users of the most secure communication methods during their lives and the holding of their information is a complete affront to the democratic process.
glomph 13y ago
I don't think your take is particularly cynical. You seem to believe we can still stop this stuff. I think a cynic would have promoting encrypted communication as at least one of their bullet points.
- afterburner 13y ago
  Cynicism can cut both ways. You can be too cynical to believe a technical solution is possible, that legal action is the only thing left.

pvnick 13y ago

"Communications from US phone numbers, the documents suggest, were removed (or “minimized”) from the database – but those of other countries, including the UK, were retained." I'm interested in knowing the specifics on this. US data goes into a database and is then proactively removed? Minimization procedures [1] allow the nsa to keep US data up to 5 years to determine where it's coming from. It's also kept if "they contain usable intelligence, information on criminal activity, threat of harm to people or property, are encrypted, or are believed to contain any information relevant to cybersecurity." So until the documents show otherwise, I assume that most of my text messages from the past 5 years are in an nsa database, and all messages that my friends sent to buy weed are there, perhaps being used to parallel construct criminal cases [2]. And at the very least, all of it would be visible to the systems administrators... [1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/20/fisa-court-nsa-without-warrant http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/20/fisa-court-nsa-... [2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/dea-and-nsa-team-intelligence-laundering https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/dea-and-nsa-team-intel...

grkvlt 13y ago
Your weed-buying friends are quite safe from the full power of the NSA and 'parallel construction' being brought to bear on them and their petty crimes. I can't really understand why anyone would even _think_ that would be the case? In fact, I just don't understand the problem people have with the 'parallel construction' of evidence. By its very nature, if the original evidence existed, and new alternative sources can be found, these it must be believed that they point to the fact a crime has been committed. In which case it should be prosecuted, and the criminals brought to justice. Or are people suggesting that if the NSA finds evidence of a crime, that crime can no longer be prosecuted even using alternative, non-NSA sourced evidence? That we should just wait until investigators stumble across the crime by accident, and allow many criminals to avoid prosecution? My feeling is that if a valid and uncontested, un-tainted evidence trail exists, showing that a crime has been committed, then morally there is no problem. We are not talking about the use of torture to obtain the original evidence, for example, rather it is a side effect of the intelligence gathering process. This sort of cross-pollination between intelligence agencies and law enforcement has always been present, and the source of the original 'tip off' was generally inadmissible due to classification or to protect sources. This is not even a new idea. Law enforcement has to deal with 'tainted' and inadmissible evidence all the time, from protected sources, conversations overheard in bars and so on... Sometimes the evidence has even been allowable at the time it was collected, but circumstances change later. Anyway, in these situations it is standard practice to try and obtain different, non-tainted and admissible evidence pointing to the same outcome. We now have a new word for this, in 'parallel construction' but the outcome is no different.

dangayle 13y ago

No mas

WalterBright 13y ago

Notice in the Arod scandal that all his text messages have been made public? Was there a warrant for that?

greenyoda 13y ago
I'd assume that if government investigators got his text messages, they had a warrant. If they didn't, the messages wouldn't be admissible evidence in court. And if the messages were presented in court, they're now a matter of public record. But what does that have to do with the NSA?
adestefan 13y ago
The A Rod investigation is being done by private entities. Most of their "evidence" either comes from an individual or was bought. In the end he's taking MLB to Federal court in a civil action. It has nothing up do with the government.

fdc123 13y ago

seriously every member of congress and the president should be taken out back and shot dead

Tycho 13y ago

I liked the NSA better when they were just called the Illuminati.

gathly 13y ago

this is shocking news back in July.

zacinbusiness 13y ago

Who is making these piss poor presentations? They're hideous and terrible. I could look past the gross invasion of privacy if they would at least spend 10 minutes building some decent designs. Get it together, NSA!

sinak 13y ago

This is very clearly collection of the contents of messages, and not simply metadata. The fact that US messages may later be "minimized" from the database is vaguely helpful, but not much of a reassurance. That data should never be collected in the first place, and bulk collection of international data is also an unnecessary practice. If this helps motivate you, we need all the help we can get with https://thedaywefightback.org https://thedaywefightback.org. If you're a designer, developer (including frontend, backend, devops, mobile app), get in touch by emailing contact@thedaywefightback.org and we'll write back and let you know when we need your skillset the most.

maqr 13y ago
I'm curious why they labeled it "METACONTENT: Message Content". So it's content about the content's content?
- samstave 13y ago
  I'm picturing where they summarize or rpg raze the content of a message and then label this rephrasing as "metadata" so as to deny they don't have the actual content. As if they were to compress the content then claim they do the the original content because it has been compressed. I wouldn't put such lunacy past them. Fuck the NSA.

exo762 13y ago

While NSA is busy being menace, you can mitigate damage by using TextSecure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian_Project_%28software%29#TextSecure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian_Project_%28softwa...

moxie 13y ago

I help develop TextSecure, an Android app which allows users encrypt their text messages: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.thoughtcrime.securesms https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.thoughtcri... It's fully open source: https://github.com/whispersystems/textsecure https://github.com/whispersystems/textsecure You can also sign up to be notified when it's released for iOS: https://whispersystems.org/blog/iphone-rsn/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/iphone-rsn/

pilooch 13y ago
I love textsecure. My problems is twofold: I don't know in advance who is using it from my contacts, and I know for sure none of my non geek relations is using it, not even for business stuff, which could make sense. And so as much as I like it (thanks!!!) I am not convinced this is the solution. Am I wrong ?
- r0h1n 13y ago
  As I understand, you can use Textsecure as your default SMS app which means it will automatically send either a plain or encrypted message to a recipient depending on whether they have the app installed or not. Of course if you use a non-stock messaging app, like Handcent for instance, you may not want to switch to Textsecure for other features/reasons.
  - hdevalence 13y ago
    No, you need to initiate a secure session manually, and my experience was that unless you knew the other person was for sure using text secure, this could cause problems, since of you tried to handshake with the other person using a stock app, it could get stuck in the handshake. This was a while ago, so I don't know if the problem still exists. Text secure is great, though. Really, really great.
    - r0h1n 13y ago
      Maybe its a Cyanogenmod-only feature then. Because they do claim the app can make the choice transparently without user involvement: https://whispersystems.org/blog/cyanogen-integration/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/cyanogen-integration/

jrochkind1 13y ago

It's become like science fiction, or a bad joke. Whatever you can imagine the most powerful intelligence agency imaginable doing, the NSA is doing. I am literally unable to think of anything that the NSA is _not_ collecting or controlling. Every SMS message sent? Yep. Location data on every cell phone? Yep. Controlling a 100k-computer botnet, including via radio transmitter to contact computers not on the internet? Yep. I admit I can't keep track of it all; at this point I just assume that anything I can imagine the NSA doing, it's either already been revealed that they're doing it and I just haven't managed to keep track, or they're doing it even though it hasn't been revealed yet.

tripzilch 13y ago
How about that thing in the Dark Knight Batman film, where he hacks into all the cell phones and then uses reverb / echo analysis to somehow create a 3D volume rendering of the space. They can't do that yet, right? Right?
- jrochkind1 13y ago
  You know, honestly, thinking about it, I'm not feeling certain to say no. First, could they get an audio feed of all or many of the cell phones in a given cell? Second, can, you know, Science, or science the NSA has, do that 'reverb / echo analysis' thing? I don't really know either way, but find the second one more dubious than the first.

VexXtreme 13y ago

I still don't understand something. If they are intercepting text messages globally, how do they do that if two people are texting each other in within the borders of their own country using their national carrier? Their texts never leave the country. Has the NSA somehow compromised or coerced various carriers around the world to provide them with this data?

Tharkun 13y ago
NSA and GHCQ apparently routinely backdoor international carriers. I vaguely remember something about a Belgian carrier stumbling upon the backdoor and struggling to remove it for months.

peterkelly 13y ago

"Content derived metadata" Nice.