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I'm curious as to what the EFF would propose as an alternative that both allows the NSA to conduct legitimate intelligence operations on the internet and provid

I'm curious as to what the EFF would propose as an alternative that both allows the NSA to conduct legitimate intelligence operations on the internet and provide acceptable privacy protections. I look at that diagram attached to the article with the two giant filters, the first of which says "filtering aimed at eliminating fully domestic transactions", but they consider it unconstitutional right from the beginning before it even hits the first filter. It strikes me as akin to giving someone a task like "implement grep, but don't read any lines from stdin which don't contain your search term."

AnthonyMouse 12y ago
If your goal is to stop engaging in domestic bulk surveillance, it's a pretty simple first step that you shouldn't be looking at any domestic bulk traffic that never crosses the national border. You don't have to look at the content of traffic to determine its geographical location.
- csandreasen 12y ago
  That's perfectly fine, but this case is built on testimony from Mark Klein concerning Room 641A, which is right on the coastline (it's in San Francisco). That seems to me to likely be an ideal place to capture international traffic.
  - AnthonyMouse 12y ago
    Well, I would argue the ideal place to capture international traffic would be... internationally. It's pretty hard to capture traffic between Iran and Pakistan from a room in California. But you're just avoiding the issue. The fact that there is an international peering point in San Francisco is no excuse for them to be capturing traffic between San Francisco and Houston or New York.
    - csandreasen 12y ago
      Yeah, it'd pretty hard to capture traffic between Iran and Pakistan, but not, say, Russia and Venezuela. The US is a huge hub for traffic transiting the globe, and the risks associated with setting up a foreign collections facility don't apply to a domestic facility. How am I avoiding the issue? I have absolutely no problem with the NSA intercepting foreign traffic - that's their job. The EFF page shows them filtering out domestic traffic in their diagram, and Mark Klein's testimony, on which the EFF is building their Jewel v. NSA case, doesn't actually demonstrate any interception of US traffic.
      - AnthonyMouse 12y ago
        You're avoiding the issue by talking about what Mark Klein revealed and ignoring what Edward Snowden revealed. The NSA is not capturing only traffic between Russia and Venezuela or only traffic that crosses a national border. They are sitting on the links into Google's data centers. Google is a domestic entity. So either they're sitting on a link and then filtering out 100% of the traffic (which is preposterous) or they're sitting on a link where 100% of the traffic goes to and from a domestic entity and not filtering it out.
        csandreasen 12y ago
        What Mark Klein revealed is the backbone for the case - the plaintiffs in Jewel v. NSA are claiming that they have standing because they are AT&T customers. Here is their argument[1]: "First, the government unconstitutionally seizes plaintiffs’ Internet communications. Technology at plaintiffs’ Internet service provider, AT&T, automatically creates and delivers to the government a copy of plaintiffs’ online activities, along with those of millions of other innocent Americans—including email, live chat, reading and interacting with websites, Internet searching, and social networking. Second, the government unconstitutionally searches the content of much of the communications stream it has seized. The government admits that it searches the content of the online communications that it has seized if it believes there is some indication that the origin or destination of the communication is outside the United States." As I scroll through the statement of facts, I see Mark Klein's testimony, the PCLOB 702 report and Barton Gellman's article from earlier this month cited. Klein's testimony is key to this case because that's how the EFF is establishing that the plaintiffs have standing. > The NSA is not capturing only traffic between Russia and Venezuela or only traffic that crosses a national border. The EFF itself is saying right in their article and court filing[2] that the NSA is discarding purely domestic traffic. > They are sitting on the links into Google's data centers. Google is a domestic entity. So either they're sitting on a link and then filtering out 100% of the traffic (which is preposterous) or they're sitting on a link where 100% of the traffic goes to and from a domestic entity and not filtering it out. There is absolutely no evidence of this. I assume you're making a reference to the Barton Gellman's MUSCULAR reporting[3], which claimed that the NSA was making use of GCHQ's tapping of international fiber to scan Google's unencrypted international communications for their targets. [1] https://www.eff.org/document/plaintiffs-jewel-knutzen-and-waltons-motion-partial-summary-judgment https://www.eff.org/document/plaintiffs-jewel-knutzen-and-wa... (see page 7) [2] Same as above, page 10 [3] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/04/how-we-know-the-nsa-had-access-to-internal-google-and-yahoo-cloud-data/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/04...
baddox 12y ago
There's no doubt that most supposed constitutional rights make law enforcement and public defense more difficult. The idea is that it doesn't matter, because these rights are more important than the alternative.
bediger4000 12y ago
I'm going to disagree at a tangent: the NSA cannot conduct legitimate surveillance. We shouldn't have an NSA. First, we don't even know what the contents of the executive order (!!!) that created the NSA are. Their very basis may be illegitimate. Second, evidence says that the complete secrecy they demand just grows like weeds until it encompasses everything. Then, the follow-on paranoia about the secrecy means they can't use the information they've got. I'll offer the DEA's "parallel construction" as support here. The NSA, as currently based and constituted, is utterly useless. It only supports a very rigid power structure in doing things that power structure shouldn't do in the first place.

AnthonyMouse 12y ago

If your goal is to stop engaging in domestic bulk surveillance, it's a pretty simple first step that you shouldn't be looking at any domestic bulk traffic that never crosses the national border. You don't have to look at the content of traffic to determine its geographical location.

csandreasen 12y ago
That's perfectly fine, but this case is built on testimony from Mark Klein concerning Room 641A, which is right on the coastline (it's in San Francisco). That seems to me to likely be an ideal place to capture international traffic.
- AnthonyMouse 12y ago
  Well, I would argue the ideal place to capture international traffic would be... internationally. It's pretty hard to capture traffic between Iran and Pakistan from a room in California. But you're just avoiding the issue. The fact that there is an international peering point in San Francisco is no excuse for them to be capturing traffic between San Francisco and Houston or New York.
  - csandreasen 12y ago
    Yeah, it'd pretty hard to capture traffic between Iran and Pakistan, but not, say, Russia and Venezuela. The US is a huge hub for traffic transiting the globe, and the risks associated with setting up a foreign collections facility don't apply to a domestic facility. How am I avoiding the issue? I have absolutely no problem with the NSA intercepting foreign traffic - that's their job. The EFF page shows them filtering out domestic traffic in their diagram, and Mark Klein's testimony, on which the EFF is building their Jewel v. NSA case, doesn't actually demonstrate any interception of US traffic.
    - AnthonyMouse 12y ago
      You're avoiding the issue by talking about what Mark Klein revealed and ignoring what Edward Snowden revealed. The NSA is not capturing only traffic between Russia and Venezuela or only traffic that crosses a national border. They are sitting on the links into Google's data centers. Google is a domestic entity. So either they're sitting on a link and then filtering out 100% of the traffic (which is preposterous) or they're sitting on a link where 100% of the traffic goes to and from a domestic entity and not filtering it out.
      - csandreasen 12y ago
        What Mark Klein revealed is the backbone for the case - the plaintiffs in Jewel v. NSA are claiming that they have standing because they are AT&T customers. Here is their argument[1]: "First, the government unconstitutionally seizes plaintiffs’ Internet communications. Technology at plaintiffs’ Internet service provider, AT&T, automatically creates and delivers to the government a copy of plaintiffs’ online activities, along with those of millions of other innocent Americans—including email, live chat, reading and interacting with websites, Internet searching, and social networking. Second, the government unconstitutionally searches the content of much of the communications stream it has seized. The government admits that it searches the content of the online communications that it has seized if it believes there is some indication that the origin or destination of the communication is outside the United States." As I scroll through the statement of facts, I see Mark Klein's testimony, the PCLOB 702 report and Barton Gellman's article from earlier this month cited. Klein's testimony is key to this case because that's how the EFF is establishing that the plaintiffs have standing. > The NSA is not capturing only traffic between Russia and Venezuela or only traffic that crosses a national border. The EFF itself is saying right in their article and court filing[2] that the NSA is discarding purely domestic traffic. > They are sitting on the links into Google's data centers. Google is a domestic entity. So either they're sitting on a link and then filtering out 100% of the traffic (which is preposterous) or they're sitting on a link where 100% of the traffic goes to and from a domestic entity and not filtering it out. There is absolutely no evidence of this. I assume you're making a reference to the Barton Gellman's MUSCULAR reporting[3], which claimed that the NSA was making use of GCHQ's tapping of international fiber to scan Google's unencrypted international communications for their targets. [1] https://www.eff.org/document/plaintiffs-jewel-knutzen-and-waltons-motion-partial-summary-judgment https://www.eff.org/document/plaintiffs-jewel-knutzen-and-wa... (see page 7) [2] Same as above, page 10 [3] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/04/how-we-know-the-nsa-had-access-to-internal-google-and-yahoo-cloud-data/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/04...

baddox 12y ago

There's no doubt that most supposed constitutional rights make law enforcement and public defense more difficult. The idea is that it doesn't matter, because these rights are more important than the alternative.

bediger4000 12y ago

I'm going to disagree at a tangent: the NSA cannot conduct legitimate surveillance. We shouldn't have an NSA. First, we don't even know what the contents of the executive order (!!!) that created the NSA are. Their very basis may be illegitimate. Second, evidence says that the complete secrecy they demand just grows like weeds until it encompasses everything. Then, the follow-on paranoia about the secrecy means they can't use the information they've got. I'll offer the DEA's "parallel construction" as support here. The NSA, as currently based and constituted, is utterly useless. It only supports a very rigid power structure in doing things that power structure shouldn't do in the first place.