13 ms·

William Binney: 80% of audio calls are recorded and stored in the US

329 points by cryptoz 12y ago

spacefight 12y ago
Between at least 80% and 100% lies the possibility, that this figure is even closer to 100% than anyone would love to admit...
lotsofmangos 12y ago
"Thank you for using the Influencing Machine. This call may be recorded for training purposes."
drcode 12y ago
“The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control” Scary shit...
- timdiggerm 12y ago
  [citation needed] though
  - sp332 12y ago
    What source would you trust for a citation?
    - theg2 12y ago
      That doesn't mean you shouldn't ask for sources. Otherwise it's just blind fear mongering.
      - sp332 12y ago
        Well, Binney was an NSA employee and is now on the record saying that their goal is population control. That is a source.
        josefresco 12y ago
        He was an (important) employee but did not speak for, or set the NSA agenda. He's also disgruntled. This makes the quality of the source less than ideal. Now if he had some sort of memo or recording that would change the source, and could provide more credibility.
        timdiggerm 12y ago
        Although that's true, I consider anything he says about the NSA's current activities and goals increasingly inaccurate the longer he's not there.
        fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
        I think it is fair to say that the NSA's activities and goals have not become "better" (from the perspective of civil liberties) since 2001.
      - cowardlydragon 12y ago
        Hey, how about you give me all the account numbers and information to access your bank accounts? It doesn't mean I will take your money in the future. That's just fear mongering.
  - GVIrish 12y ago
    Whether that is the NSA leadership's goal is anyone's guess. However, with the road they're going down, they will have the ability to exert considerable control over people around the world, particularly in the United States. Give that sort of capability it is inevitable that it will be abused. They're already abusing the power they have now.
    - Throwaway0812 12y ago
      They might not even have a specific goal. It could be one of those cases where they want to track and store the data, because it's available. It would be similar to being a developer, and wanting to track user information (user ip addresses, when they last logged in, which articles they viewed, how many times they viewed them, etc). Even if you don't have a need for that information now, it might be a key piece of data for an upcoming feature you develop a few years down the line. It's difficult to predict the future, but saving the data you have available is a good way to be prepared. Now, I don't agree with what they're doing, but I could easily see something like this happening.
- narrator 12y ago
  So that they can do what, exactly? Once they get total population control what kind of stuff will they be able to do that they couldn't do before?
  - EliRivers 12y ago
    They could ensure that everyone lives by the true religion and the true constitution.
  - fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
    Brave New World, basically.
  - sitkack 12y ago
    There isn't always a plan.
  - JabavuAdams 12y ago
    Make the world a better, safer place, as seen through the lens of the U.S. elite.
  - overLourde 12y ago
    Is that a serious question, or are you offering up a snarky "yeah, and so what if they did, who cares" style argument? The answer is: a lot But really you need to possess the capacity to conceive of at least one example of some selfish desirable evil, before you can grasp the vast potential this potent advantage of pervasive eavesdropping offers. The elementary starting point in all these eavesdropping shenanigans is to imagine someone cheating at a simple card game. If you're the dealer, and your opponent is betting real money on the outcome of the game, would it be fair for you to look at his hand, or worse, stack the deck in you favor before the game even starts? But population control goes way beyond the elementary sneaking of e-mails and phone calls. Total population control would carry profound and harsh realities with it, like eugenics, human experimentation, blood sports and human spectacle, secret prisons, human trafficking, sex slaves, disappearances. Trivial things like stock market manipulation become absurd, meaningless anachronisms, as corruption is endemic to the scenario. Extrajudicial killings, summary executions, sovereign leaders can wave their fingers and have people put to death. What's it like to be a slave? That's what the ass end of total poulation control looks like. It's like being an olympic athlete for Iraq, and then coming home to be tortured by Saddam junior when you lose. For those that benefit from total population control, every decadence awaits. But, perhaps your rhetorical question is something along the lines of the "human rights are inalienable, and it would be impossible for them to do special terrible things, beyond the terrible things we normally fear like chemical warfare and nuclear annihilation" Actually, no. Under a regime of technologically enabled total population control, there would emerge a class structure so rigid and inescapable that essentially a very small number of people would be born into a lavish, but paranoid existence, and the rest of the world would suffer a permanent crushing misery, that starts with ordinary poverty and gets worse. All of it enforced by geosynchronous satellites and atomic clocks with nearly the precision of spinning neutron stars. Keep in mind that this would be a new age of technologically enforced, drone enabled population control. A North Korean gulag is bad, and it probably doesn't get much worse than being an elderly uncle to the dear leader, and still meeting an end by kangaroo court trial and an execution where your ripped apart by dogs. Unless of course, the dogs are robot dogs manufactured by Boston Dynamics (oh, wait I mean Google). But maybe they're just drones armed with ever more accurate hellfire missiles. And that pretty much sums up the blue sky possibilities, if we fail to preserve the old-world checks and balances that are quickly disintegrating in the face of advances in modern technology. Completely obedient robotic systems enabling a truly air tight subjugation of humantity beneath an ever watchful panopticon. And wealth disparities that look like an abyssal cliff separating hollywood visions of the future from the stone age, and sociopaths enforcing the existence of the cliff perhaps for sheer amusement, narcissism, or whatever irrational human foible (bodily fluids, mandrake) worms it's way to the surface of the human factors that control these things that now influence our lives. How many drones can be controlled from a single data center? How many drones would we need to enforce a permanent world-wide police state, and surveillance apparatus? Technology is a force multiplier, and it permits fewer and fewer people to achieve a great deal, and possibly much more, far beyond what we've considered "super human" in the past. But worse yet, it can mutate innocuous well-meaning intentions in perverse ways. Thermonuclear bombs and missiles have kept a lid on serious global warfare for more than 50 years, but only by virtue of two psychotic power structures promising to vaporize each other at a twitch. Is that "good"? But let's say the worst happens, and an evil megalomaniacal cabal implements a true robot armageddon. Wouldn't such a terrible sociopathic technocratic regime just cut to the chase, and kill off every last human being that dissents? Probably yes. But only if artificial intelligence proves to be a stalwart companion, otherwise much of the general population of humanity would be permitted to live, if for no other reason than fear of lonliness and inbreeding, but undoubtedly humanity would still be subjugated at the whim of the technocracy. Anyway, to sum up, part of the story would be a short violent transistion phase, followed by a miserable but infinitely stable, robot-reinforced tyrrany. Like a marvel team-up of Kim Jong Il and son along with Saddam, Uday and Qusay all chanting "O'doyle rules!" while eating hot dogs and drinking Big Gulps and watching robots rape political disidents to death in a stadium filled with their genetically engineered clones and sex slaves. Dare to dream.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
eli 12y ago
"At least 80% of fibre-optic cables globally go via the US. This is no accident and allows the US to view all communication coming in. At least 80% of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the US. The NSA lies about what it stores." I think he meant that the NSA had access to the 80% of calls that are routed through the US, not the the NSA is recording and storing literally every single one of them. I think he was misquoted or misspoke. William Binney hasn't worked for the NSA since 2001. Were they recording all calls back then? Did someone still there leak new information to him?
- muaddirac 12y ago
  "At least 80% of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the US." It definitely seems like he meant that 80% of calls are recorded and stored. Whether that's true or not will (hopefully) come out in time.
  - eli 12y ago
    Sure, if you read just that sentence. If you read just the one before it, it definitely seems like he meant the US has visibility into 80% of calls.
- sp332 12y ago
  The NSA is recording every call in the Bahamas and Afghanistan. They can listen to any call made in the last 30 days. (Edit: Only cell phone calls, but still.) It's possible that a similar rolling-window system is in place for calls going through the USA. Bahamas: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/05/19/data-pirates-caribbean-nsa-recording-every-cell-phone-call-bahamas/ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/05/19/data-p... Afghanistan: https://wikileaks.org/WikiLeaks-statement-on-the-mass.html https://wikileaks.org/WikiLeaks-statement-on-the-mass.html
  - XorNot 12y ago
    Neither of those two places could be described as having a particularly high volume of calls though. Its an order of magnitude or more difference in sheer volume you'd be looking at.
r0h1n 12y ago
We're staring at the gradual but deliberate end of privacy and its scary. The large majority of the world's population either doesn't know or care how significant or dangerous this trend is, and those few who do will find their way into surveillance databases because they act "suspiciously" by encrypting their communications and guarding their privacy. I don't see a powerful enough counterforce against this insidious trend anywhere around the world. "Inspired" by the US, other countries are joining a competitive surveillance race stoked by private corporations selling everything from GSM monitoring to big data. </rant>
- opendais 12y ago
  More or less, yes. However, the danger is really only to people outside the safe herd majority who might draw the wrong sort of attention. So I don't see it being a huge danger. However, I don't think it'll ever devolve to the point where mass arrests or anything truly draconian takes place. There isn't any need in Democracy. You need to only control 51% of the engaged voters [e.g. the people who actually vote] and at least in the US the two party system controls that quite effectively. I'm worried about this because it will lead to people getting stepped on and crushed between the massive gears of the "State Security" apparatus.
  - rolux 12y ago
    > However, the danger is really only to people outside the safe herd majority who might draw the wrong sort of attention. So I don't see it being a huge danger. Unfortunately, you're wrong here. The first trivial counterexample that comes to mind: You cannot have a democratic society if a government agency secretly records the phone calls of all (current and prospective) political representatives.
    - opendais 12y ago
      Your trivial counterexample requires blackmail on a large scale. The problem with blackmail is it might work 75% of the time, but the other 25% end up in jail. In the case of a politician, from time to time, one of them would say "fuck it" and use their platform to say it to the world. The subtler approach would be to take dirt on Candidate A and give it to Candidate B so B could win the election. However, in the real world, slinging real mud is just as effective as slinging fake mud in an election. [e.g. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth had no actual evidence of their allegations and the majority of Kerry's unit said they were lying...but it still had a major effect on the election anyway] Tbh, the fake mud may be even more effective since you can create the best political narrative you can without being constrained by verifiable facts. So I'm really not that convinced that the costs of such political meddling [clearly exposed villainy that may force politicians to take action against the Security Apparatus or get voted out of office] is not cost effective. It is far, far more likely that the Security Services would simply behave themselves and make it clear that they wanted a large budget and virtually unlimited powers. They pretty much are at that point already.
pg_is_a_butt 12y ago
FUCK AMERICA. the government wants to declare war on the very citizens it represents?? BRING ONE TO THEM. bombs.
tokenadult 12y ago
The story in the Guardian by Antony Loewenstein certainly reports that William Binney's personal opinion as a former employee of NSA is that NSA is gathering up and recording whatever it can and that NSA has a "totalitarian mentality." That is a very important issue, if true, but it is at least debatable that NSA is really that thorough in its actual practices and really that generally blatant in disregarding the civil rights of Americans or even of people in other countries. For one thing, Binney also points to NSA intelligence failures in the same article, and if NSA is missing major activities of other countries (the Russian intervention in Ukraine) and nonstate terrorist groups (the "Islamic State" capture of much territory in Iraq), then surely NSA doesn't have the time and resources to analyze all of the data it gathers, and maybe it is not gathering as much data as some people claim. Several comments posted before I read all those comments and read the fine article write about NSA blackmailing politicians. I don't believe NSA blackmail can or will happen in general, for reasons I have mentioned before here on HN. One of the most common kinds of comments here on Hacker News about issues like this is a comment that ASSUMES that if government leaders are under pervasive surveillance they are all afraid of blackmail. But I don't believe that, because some government leaders and some political candidates are essentially shameless. Even after they are caught (by old-fashioned journalism, or by a jilted lover or some unrelated criminal investigation) doing something unsavory, they are still willing to run for office, and SOME ARE REELECTED. United States Senator David Vitter was reelected in 2010 even after a scandal involving behavior that I would consider shameful,[1] and the antics of former DC mayor Marion Barry[2] are probably still notorious enough that they don't need further discussion here. In short, I call baloney on the idea that NSA can keep politicians on its leash simply by knowing their secrets. Some politicians have PUBLIC lives full of dirt, and still get elected and influence policy anyway. The other reason I don't believe this HN hivemind theory of politics is that I by no means assume that everyone in politics lacks personal integrity. Some politicians, I am quite sure, could have all their secrets revealed only to have voters think "Why is that person such a straight-arrow? Why not have some fun once in a while?" The simple fact is that there is value system diversity in the United States electorate, and there is personal conduct probity variance among United States politicians, and there isn't any universal way to unduly influence politicians merely through even the most diligent efforts to discover personal secrets. If politicians think that NSA is going too far (as evidently several politicians from more than one party do think), then they will receive plenty of support from the general public to rein in the surveillance. (Obligatory disclaimer: Yes, I am a lawyer, who as a judicial clerk for my state's Supreme Court used to review case files on attorney misconduct, and, yes, some of my law school classmates are elected officials, including one member of Congress. I am absolutely certain that there are enough politicians ready to mobilize to roll back NSA surveillance programs if they really think the programs are excessive in their scope.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Vitter#D.C._Madam_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Vitter#D.C._Madam_scanda... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Barry#1990_arrest_.26_drug_conviction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Barry#1990_arrest_.26_d...
dbpokorny 12y ago
If this is legal, is legality meaningless?
- AlyssaRowan 12y ago
  There are not a lot of things they are not allowed to intercept, and it is very unclear (and classified!) what their interpretation of those rules are. And then they break them sometimes anyway. Same with GCHQ, really.
_pmf_ 12y ago
Why is this economically insane bullshit on HN? Who is assumes to pay for this?
JohnnyBuffalo 12y ago
But here's the rub - who still uses audio calls? Its a point of deminishing intelligence. That's like saying that 80% of all 8-tracks are now in 1970 cars (as a statement in 2014). Its just not relevant.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  Uh, essentially everyone? I have a small VoIP company and we were handling around a billion calls a week. You have a really terrible selection bias if you think people aren't using audio calls. In fact, audio calls are on the RISE because of easy and cheap international calling. We have clients that have customers that literally leave their phones open to their families 8 hours a day. Just on and walking around the house.
lifeisstillgood 12y ago
There have been at least 15-20 trillion constitutional violations It is an amusing, even throwaway line, but it has a horrific message - the US administration is happy to sail so close to the line of totalitarianism that it will possibly violate the constitution a trillion times. In the UK we jus found out similar legislation is unconstitutional and we are hurriedly writing another law to get round it. _sigh_ What happens when a country that really cares about it's constitution has to rush an amendment through or face civil rights violations from everyone?
PeterisP 12y ago
The land of the free and the home of the brave. Indeed.
- diminoten 12y ago
  Hey, you make jokes but where did the Guardian relocate when the UK was preventing them from publishing leak-related stories?
  - happyscrappy 12y ago
    The UK never claimed to be the land of the free. They willingly accept people doing jail time for offensive tweets and a host of other absurdities.

329 points by cryptoz 12y ago

Between at least 80% and 100% lies the possibility, that this figure is even closer to 100% than anyone would love to admit...

lotsofmangos 12y ago

"Thank you for using the Influencing Machine. This call may be recorded for training purposes."

drcode 12y ago

“The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control” Scary shit...

timdiggerm 12y ago
[citation needed] though
- sp332 12y ago
  What source would you trust for a citation?
  - theg2 12y ago
    That doesn't mean you shouldn't ask for sources. Otherwise it's just blind fear mongering.
    - sp332 12y ago
      Well, Binney was an NSA employee and is now on the record saying that their goal is population control. That is a source.
      - josefresco 12y ago
        He was an (important) employee but did not speak for, or set the NSA agenda. He's also disgruntled. This makes the quality of the source less than ideal. Now if he had some sort of memo or recording that would change the source, and could provide more credibility.
      - timdiggerm 12y ago
        Although that's true, I consider anything he says about the NSA's current activities and goals increasingly inaccurate the longer he's not there.
        fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
        I think it is fair to say that the NSA's activities and goals have not become "better" (from the perspective of civil liberties) since 2001.
    - cowardlydragon 12y ago
      Hey, how about you give me all the account numbers and information to access your bank accounts? It doesn't mean I will take your money in the future. That's just fear mongering.
- GVIrish 12y ago
  Whether that is the NSA leadership's goal is anyone's guess. However, with the road they're going down, they will have the ability to exert considerable control over people around the world, particularly in the United States. Give that sort of capability it is inevitable that it will be abused. They're already abusing the power they have now.
  - Throwaway0812 12y ago
    They might not even have a specific goal. It could be one of those cases where they want to track and store the data, because it's available. It would be similar to being a developer, and wanting to track user information (user ip addresses, when they last logged in, which articles they viewed, how many times they viewed them, etc). Even if you don't have a need for that information now, it might be a key piece of data for an upcoming feature you develop a few years down the line. It's difficult to predict the future, but saving the data you have available is a good way to be prepared. Now, I don't agree with what they're doing, but I could easily see something like this happening.
narrator 12y ago
So that they can do what, exactly? Once they get total population control what kind of stuff will they be able to do that they couldn't do before?
- EliRivers 12y ago
  They could ensure that everyone lives by the true religion and the true constitution.
- fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
  Brave New World, basically.
- sitkack 12y ago
  There isn't always a plan.
- JabavuAdams 12y ago
  Make the world a better, safer place, as seen through the lens of the U.S. elite.
- overLourde 12y ago
  Is that a serious question, or are you offering up a snarky "yeah, and so what if they did, who cares" style argument? The answer is: a lot But really you need to possess the capacity to conceive of at least one example of some selfish desirable evil, before you can grasp the vast potential this potent advantage of pervasive eavesdropping offers. The elementary starting point in all these eavesdropping shenanigans is to imagine someone cheating at a simple card game. If you're the dealer, and your opponent is betting real money on the outcome of the game, would it be fair for you to look at his hand, or worse, stack the deck in you favor before the game even starts? But population control goes way beyond the elementary sneaking of e-mails and phone calls. Total population control would carry profound and harsh realities with it, like eugenics, human experimentation, blood sports and human spectacle, secret prisons, human trafficking, sex slaves, disappearances. Trivial things like stock market manipulation become absurd, meaningless anachronisms, as corruption is endemic to the scenario. Extrajudicial killings, summary executions, sovereign leaders can wave their fingers and have people put to death. What's it like to be a slave? That's what the ass end of total poulation control looks like. It's like being an olympic athlete for Iraq, and then coming home to be tortured by Saddam junior when you lose. For those that benefit from total population control, every decadence awaits. But, perhaps your rhetorical question is something along the lines of the "human rights are inalienable, and it would be impossible for them to do special terrible things, beyond the terrible things we normally fear like chemical warfare and nuclear annihilation" Actually, no. Under a regime of technologically enabled total population control, there would emerge a class structure so rigid and inescapable that essentially a very small number of people would be born into a lavish, but paranoid existence, and the rest of the world would suffer a permanent crushing misery, that starts with ordinary poverty and gets worse. All of it enforced by geosynchronous satellites and atomic clocks with nearly the precision of spinning neutron stars. Keep in mind that this would be a new age of technologically enforced, drone enabled population control. A North Korean gulag is bad, and it probably doesn't get much worse than being an elderly uncle to the dear leader, and still meeting an end by kangaroo court trial and an execution where your ripped apart by dogs. Unless of course, the dogs are robot dogs manufactured by Boston Dynamics (oh, wait I mean Google). But maybe they're just drones armed with ever more accurate hellfire missiles. And that pretty much sums up the blue sky possibilities, if we fail to preserve the old-world checks and balances that are quickly disintegrating in the face of advances in modern technology. Completely obedient robotic systems enabling a truly air tight subjugation of humantity beneath an ever watchful panopticon. And wealth disparities that look like an abyssal cliff separating hollywood visions of the future from the stone age, and sociopaths enforcing the existence of the cliff perhaps for sheer amusement, narcissism, or whatever irrational human foible (bodily fluids, mandrake) worms it's way to the surface of the human factors that control these things that now influence our lives. How many drones can be controlled from a single data center? How many drones would we need to enforce a permanent world-wide police state, and surveillance apparatus? Technology is a force multiplier, and it permits fewer and fewer people to achieve a great deal, and possibly much more, far beyond what we've considered "super human" in the past. But worse yet, it can mutate innocuous well-meaning intentions in perverse ways. Thermonuclear bombs and missiles have kept a lid on serious global warfare for more than 50 years, but only by virtue of two psychotic power structures promising to vaporize each other at a twitch. Is that "good"? But let's say the worst happens, and an evil megalomaniacal cabal implements a true robot armageddon. Wouldn't such a terrible sociopathic technocratic regime just cut to the chase, and kill off every last human being that dissents? Probably yes. But only if artificial intelligence proves to be a stalwart companion, otherwise much of the general population of humanity would be permitted to live, if for no other reason than fear of lonliness and inbreeding, but undoubtedly humanity would still be subjugated at the whim of the technocracy. Anyway, to sum up, part of the story would be a short violent transistion phase, followed by a miserable but infinitely stable, robot-reinforced tyrrany. Like a marvel team-up of Kim Jong Il and son along with Saddam, Uday and Qusay all chanting "O'doyle rules!" while eating hot dogs and drinking Big Gulps and watching robots rape political disidents to death in a stadium filled with their genetically engineered clones and sex slaves. Dare to dream.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

eli 12y ago

"At least 80% of fibre-optic cables globally go via the US. This is no accident and allows the US to view all communication coming in. At least 80% of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the US. The NSA lies about what it stores." I think he meant that the NSA had access to the 80% of calls that are routed through the US, not the the NSA is recording and storing literally every single one of them. I think he was misquoted or misspoke. William Binney hasn't worked for the NSA since 2001. Were they recording all calls back then? Did someone still there leak new information to him?

muaddirac 12y ago
"At least 80% of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the US." It definitely seems like he meant that 80% of calls are recorded and stored. Whether that's true or not will (hopefully) come out in time.
- eli 12y ago
  Sure, if you read just that sentence. If you read just the one before it, it definitely seems like he meant the US has visibility into 80% of calls.
sp332 12y ago
The NSA is recording every call in the Bahamas and Afghanistan. They can listen to any call made in the last 30 days. (Edit: Only cell phone calls, but still.) It's possible that a similar rolling-window system is in place for calls going through the USA. Bahamas: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/05/19/data-pirates-caribbean-nsa-recording-every-cell-phone-call-bahamas/ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/05/19/data-p... Afghanistan: https://wikileaks.org/WikiLeaks-statement-on-the-mass.html https://wikileaks.org/WikiLeaks-statement-on-the-mass.html
- XorNot 12y ago
  Neither of those two places could be described as having a particularly high volume of calls though. Its an order of magnitude or more difference in sheer volume you'd be looking at.

r0h1n 12y ago

We're staring at the gradual but deliberate end of privacy and its scary. The large majority of the world's population either doesn't know or care how significant or dangerous this trend is, and those few who do will find their way into surveillance databases because they act "suspiciously" by encrypting their communications and guarding their privacy. I don't see a powerful enough counterforce against this insidious trend anywhere around the world. "Inspired" by the US, other countries are joining a competitive surveillance race stoked by private corporations selling everything from GSM monitoring to big data. </rant>

opendais 12y ago
More or less, yes. However, the danger is really only to people outside the safe herd majority who might draw the wrong sort of attention. So I don't see it being a huge danger. However, I don't think it'll ever devolve to the point where mass arrests or anything truly draconian takes place. There isn't any need in Democracy. You need to only control 51% of the engaged voters [e.g. the people who actually vote] and at least in the US the two party system controls that quite effectively. I'm worried about this because it will lead to people getting stepped on and crushed between the massive gears of the "State Security" apparatus.
- rolux 12y ago
  > However, the danger is really only to people outside the safe herd majority who might draw the wrong sort of attention. So I don't see it being a huge danger. Unfortunately, you're wrong here. The first trivial counterexample that comes to mind: You cannot have a democratic society if a government agency secretly records the phone calls of all (current and prospective) political representatives.
  - opendais 12y ago
    Your trivial counterexample requires blackmail on a large scale. The problem with blackmail is it might work 75% of the time, but the other 25% end up in jail. In the case of a politician, from time to time, one of them would say "fuck it" and use their platform to say it to the world. The subtler approach would be to take dirt on Candidate A and give it to Candidate B so B could win the election. However, in the real world, slinging real mud is just as effective as slinging fake mud in an election. [e.g. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth had no actual evidence of their allegations and the majority of Kerry's unit said they were lying...but it still had a major effect on the election anyway] Tbh, the fake mud may be even more effective since you can create the best political narrative you can without being constrained by verifiable facts. So I'm really not that convinced that the costs of such political meddling [clearly exposed villainy that may force politicians to take action against the Security Apparatus or get voted out of office] is not cost effective. It is far, far more likely that the Security Services would simply behave themselves and make it clear that they wanted a large budget and virtually unlimited powers. They pretty much are at that point already.

pg_is_a_butt 12y ago

FUCK AMERICA. the government wants to declare war on the very citizens it represents?? BRING ONE TO THEM. bombs.

tokenadult 12y ago

The story in the Guardian by Antony Loewenstein certainly reports that William Binney's personal opinion as a former employee of NSA is that NSA is gathering up and recording whatever it can and that NSA has a "totalitarian mentality." That is a very important issue, if true, but it is at least debatable that NSA is really that thorough in its actual practices and really that generally blatant in disregarding the civil rights of Americans or even of people in other countries. For one thing, Binney also points to NSA intelligence failures in the same article, and if NSA is missing major activities of other countries (the Russian intervention in Ukraine) and nonstate terrorist groups (the "Islamic State" capture of much territory in Iraq), then surely NSA doesn't have the time and resources to analyze all of the data it gathers, and maybe it is not gathering as much data as some people claim. Several comments posted before I read all those comments and read the fine article write about NSA blackmailing politicians. I don't believe NSA blackmail can or will happen in general, for reasons I have mentioned before here on HN. One of the most common kinds of comments here on Hacker News about issues like this is a comment that ASSUMES that if government leaders are under pervasive surveillance they are all afraid of blackmail. But I don't believe that, because some government leaders and some political candidates are essentially shameless. Even after they are caught (by old-fashioned journalism, or by a jilted lover or some unrelated criminal investigation) doing something unsavory, they are still willing to run for office, and SOME ARE REELECTED. United States Senator David Vitter was reelected in 2010 even after a scandal involving behavior that I would consider shameful,[1] and the antics of former DC mayor Marion Barry[2] are probably still notorious enough that they don't need further discussion here. In short, I call baloney on the idea that NSA can keep politicians on its leash simply by knowing their secrets. Some politicians have PUBLIC lives full of dirt, and still get elected and influence policy anyway. The other reason I don't believe this HN hivemind theory of politics is that I by no means assume that everyone in politics lacks personal integrity. Some politicians, I am quite sure, could have all their secrets revealed only to have voters think "Why is that person such a straight-arrow? Why not have some fun once in a while?" The simple fact is that there is value system diversity in the United States electorate, and there is personal conduct probity variance among United States politicians, and there isn't any universal way to unduly influence politicians merely through even the most diligent efforts to discover personal secrets. If politicians think that NSA is going too far (as evidently several politicians from more than one party do think), then they will receive plenty of support from the general public to rein in the surveillance. (Obligatory disclaimer: Yes, I am a lawyer, who as a judicial clerk for my state's Supreme Court used to review case files on attorney misconduct, and, yes, some of my law school classmates are elected officials, including one member of Congress. I am absolutely certain that there are enough politicians ready to mobilize to roll back NSA surveillance programs if they really think the programs are excessive in their scope.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Vitter#D.C._Madam_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Vitter#D.C._Madam_scanda... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Barry#1990_arrest_.26_drug_conviction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Barry#1990_arrest_.26_d...

dbpokorny 12y ago

If this is legal, is legality meaningless?

AlyssaRowan 12y ago
There are not a lot of things they are not allowed to intercept, and it is very unclear (and classified!) what their interpretation of those rules are. And then they break them sometimes anyway. Same with GCHQ, really.

_pmf_ 12y ago

Why is this economically insane bullshit on HN? Who is assumes to pay for this?

JohnnyBuffalo 12y ago

But here's the rub - who still uses audio calls? Its a point of deminishing intelligence. That's like saying that 80% of all 8-tracks are now in 1970 cars (as a statement in 2014). Its just not relevant.

MichaelGG 12y ago
Uh, essentially everyone? I have a small VoIP company and we were handling around a billion calls a week. You have a really terrible selection bias if you think people aren't using audio calls. In fact, audio calls are on the RISE because of easy and cheap international calling. We have clients that have customers that literally leave their phones open to their families 8 hours a day. Just on and walking around the house.

lifeisstillgood 12y ago

There have been at least 15-20 trillion constitutional violations It is an amusing, even throwaway line, but it has a horrific message - the US administration is happy to sail so close to the line of totalitarianism that it will possibly violate the constitution a trillion times. In the UK we jus found out similar legislation is unconstitutional and we are hurriedly writing another law to get round it. _sigh_ What happens when a country that really cares about it's constitution has to rush an amendment through or face civil rights violations from everyone?

PeterisP 12y ago

The land of the free and the home of the brave. Indeed.

diminoten 12y ago
Hey, you make jokes but where did the Guardian relocate when the UK was preventing them from publishing leak-related stories?
- happyscrappy 12y ago
  The UK never claimed to be the land of the free. They willingly accept people doing jail time for offensive tweets and a host of other absurdities.