7 ms·

Obama's Secret Terrorist-Tracking System, by the Numbers

176 points by couchand 12y ago

undata 12y ago
How depressing.
pvnick 12y ago
I just love the label they used for the No Recognized Terrorist Group Affiliation on that graph.
- cranklin 12y ago
  UTF-8 art
pserwylo 12y ago
And yesterday Australia announced that it will be pushing ahead with an ISP level data retention scheme in the name of fighting terrorism [0]. This is after last year explicitly asking for feedback on the proposal to retain Australian's internet history, and receiving countless concerned letters from the community (along with security agencies who were pushing for data retention) [1]. I suspect in a decade or so that we will also have a similar chart as this post [2]. [0] - http://www.zdnet.com/abbott-brings-on-mandatory-data-retention-in-australia-7000032324/ http://www.zdnet.com/abbott-brings-on-mandatory-data-retenti... [1] - http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House_of_Representatives_Committees?url=pjcis/nsl2012/report.htm http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Hous... [2] - Only an order of magnitude smaller due to our population difference.
- contingencies 12y ago
  Yes. Results of the poll on the Sydney Morning Herland article http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/data-storage-could-be-used-to-fight-general-crime-tony-abbott-says-20140806-3d78h.html#poll http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/data-s... visible at http://imgur.com/u71Keqs http://imgur.com/u71Keqs - 97% oppose mass surveillance. Our 'democracy' has become non-representational. I'm honestly considering quitting my job, returning to Australia and joining the Wikileaks party.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
angersock 12y ago
thanks obama
frede 12y ago
These revelations are too new to be from Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald and Bruce Schneier suspect a second leaker. https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/485081861119832064 https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/485081861119832064
- ser_ocelot 12y ago
  The article never claims that the documents are from Snowden. There is likely one or more new whistleblowers leaking documents post-Snowden: this series of articles from The Intercept, the stories in the German press last month, and Jacob Applebaum's TAO Catalog presentation last year.
- Justen 12y ago
  So does the gov't: http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/05/politics/u-s-new-leaker/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/05/politics/u-s-new-leaker/index....
- rdtsc 12y ago
  Yap. This is exciting. Just like one bad thing about Snowden (and Binney) was that if public was not outraged enough, it would actually make things worse. As those who administer these programs will just get bolder and expand them. It it a little too early to decide if this effect it taking place. But one good thing is (and I've said this before in relation to the whistleblowers) is that it will encourage more whistleblowers. One of the apparent requirements for working at many of these 3 letter agencies is patriotism. If you show patriotism, you are a good candidate. They will spend money training you technical things, but they can't train you to be a patriot and love your country. The "problem" with such patriots is that they actually take to heart things like "Constitution", "Privacy", "Freedom" and so on. The hope of the agency is that with enough brainwashing and threats of loss of job, imprisonment, etc., these values would move to the background. The "pragmatics" on top understand that those concepts are just there for propaganda. It is the sys admins and other mid-level analysts that might actually believe, and might just pull a Snowden so to speak once in a while. NSA understood this and immediately went into self-preservation mode. They probably never even thought along the lines of "OMG we have let the public down, we have screwed up, etc etc.", rather they saw it as, we are not threatening and controlling our employees enough. So instead of spying less on our own citizens, we should institute "no-lone-zones" (like nuclear silos have), so you are together with an accountabil-a-buddy who is supposed to snitch on you if you do something silly.
infinotize 12y ago
The article indicates many states are beginning to supply federal agencies with biometric data including driver's license photographs. It also states a local police force (the NYPD) was a customer of a facial recognition system. How long until central databases are collecting datapoints on our whereabouts at all times, not only from mobile devices, but just the image of our faces? I don't think the founders [US-centric post, but I think this applies to most technologically-advanced nations] envisioned this type of surveillance, and thus offered little protection against it. As the technology to employ this type of capability becomes simpler and cheaper, potential resistance in the form of court processes and public opinion will be comparitively slow to form. This will get a lot worse before it gets better.
- justizin 12y ago
  "How long until central databases are collecting datapoints on our whereabouts at all times, not only from mobile devices, but just the image of our faces?" this is a fine question - the DHS has proposed a project with the City of Oakland to prototype just such a thing, described as a combination of NSA surveillance and stop & frisk, which they call the Domain Awareness Center. Originally targeted at the port post 9/11, it has grown to be a prototype of a citywide surveillance system that ties local and national authorities together closer than ever before. It's not in place yet, and stopping it in Oakland, where all politics are driven by law enforcement / public safety policy, despite decades of data that show pouring money into the police department has not reduced crime, may be a good way to at least delay this across the country.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    You're a few months out of date. Plans for this have been scaled back to the portage areas: http://www.eastbayexpress.com/SevenDays/archives/2014/03/05/oakland-city-council-rolls-back-the-dac http://www.eastbayexpress.com/SevenDays/archives/2014/03/05/... While I share your dislike of the program, it's important to look at the overall scope rather just the government one. After all, you could build a pretty good automatic photo identification system on top of Facebook.
jessaustin 12y ago
The CIA uses a previously unknown program, code-named Hydra, to secretly access databases maintained by foreign countries and extract data to add to the watchlists. Hmmm, this seems like a pretty obvious vulnerability. When's the last time the CIA actually did something "secretly"? (Oooh, how would we know? Actually the last time they did something un-secretly was like a month ago, so there's a bound of sorts.) So if you do something to piss off the spooks in e.g. Russia or Israel, expect to be entered into their troll-the-CIA database, soon thereafter to be Hydra-ed into Obama's special uncategorizable tracking system.
diafygi 12y ago
https://prod01-cdn02.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2014/08/shrug_chart_final1.jpg https://prod01-cdn02.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/20... ¯\(ツ)/¯
colinbartlett 12y ago
"Directorate of Terrorist Identities (DTI)" sounds like something right out of a dystopian novel.
- chopin 12y ago
  Like "Ministry of Truth"?
  - chiph 12y ago
    Minitrue prevents crimethink.
padobson 12y ago
Well this is no big deal, I'll just vote for a guy in the next election who will dismantle this system... oh wait.
rickisen 12y ago
They called the system Hydra? Really? Seams like some agents read too much Marvell comics
- pessimizer 12y ago
  Or Greek mythology, rather.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  At least they're showing us their true faces.

176 points by couchand 12y ago

undata 12y ago

How depressing.

pvnick 12y ago

I just love the label they used for the No Recognized Terrorist Group Affiliation on that graph.

cranklin 12y ago
UTF-8 art

pserwylo 12y ago

And yesterday Australia announced that it will be pushing ahead with an ISP level data retention scheme in the name of fighting terrorism [0]. This is after last year explicitly asking for feedback on the proposal to retain Australian's internet history, and receiving countless concerned letters from the community (along with security agencies who were pushing for data retention) [1]. I suspect in a decade or so that we will also have a similar chart as this post [2]. [0] - http://www.zdnet.com/abbott-brings-on-mandatory-data-retention-in-australia-7000032324/ http://www.zdnet.com/abbott-brings-on-mandatory-data-retenti... [1] - http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House_of_Representatives_Committees?url=pjcis/nsl2012/report.htm http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Hous... [2] - Only an order of magnitude smaller due to our population difference.

contingencies 12y ago
Yes. Results of the poll on the Sydney Morning Herland article http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/data-storage-could-be-used-to-fight-general-crime-tony-abbott-says-20140806-3d78h.html#poll http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/data-s... visible at http://imgur.com/u71Keqs http://imgur.com/u71Keqs - 97% oppose mass surveillance. Our 'democracy' has become non-representational. I'm honestly considering quitting my job, returning to Australia and joining the Wikileaks party.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

angersock 12y ago

thanks obama

frede 12y ago

These revelations are too new to be from Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald and Bruce Schneier suspect a second leaker. https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/485081861119832064 https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/485081861119832064

ser_ocelot 12y ago
The article never claims that the documents are from Snowden. There is likely one or more new whistleblowers leaking documents post-Snowden: this series of articles from The Intercept, the stories in the German press last month, and Jacob Applebaum's TAO Catalog presentation last year.
Justen 12y ago
So does the gov't: http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/05/politics/u-s-new-leaker/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/05/politics/u-s-new-leaker/index....
rdtsc 12y ago
Yap. This is exciting. Just like one bad thing about Snowden (and Binney) was that if public was not outraged enough, it would actually make things worse. As those who administer these programs will just get bolder and expand them. It it a little too early to decide if this effect it taking place. But one good thing is (and I've said this before in relation to the whistleblowers) is that it will encourage more whistleblowers. One of the apparent requirements for working at many of these 3 letter agencies is patriotism. If you show patriotism, you are a good candidate. They will spend money training you technical things, but they can't train you to be a patriot and love your country. The "problem" with such patriots is that they actually take to heart things like "Constitution", "Privacy", "Freedom" and so on. The hope of the agency is that with enough brainwashing and threats of loss of job, imprisonment, etc., these values would move to the background. The "pragmatics" on top understand that those concepts are just there for propaganda. It is the sys admins and other mid-level analysts that might actually believe, and might just pull a Snowden so to speak once in a while. NSA understood this and immediately went into self-preservation mode. They probably never even thought along the lines of "OMG we have let the public down, we have screwed up, etc etc.", rather they saw it as, we are not threatening and controlling our employees enough. So instead of spying less on our own citizens, we should institute "no-lone-zones" (like nuclear silos have), so you are together with an accountabil-a-buddy who is supposed to snitch on you if you do something silly.

infinotize 12y ago

The article indicates many states are beginning to supply federal agencies with biometric data including driver's license photographs. It also states a local police force (the NYPD) was a customer of a facial recognition system. How long until central databases are collecting datapoints on our whereabouts at all times, not only from mobile devices, but just the image of our faces? I don't think the founders [US-centric post, but I think this applies to most technologically-advanced nations] envisioned this type of surveillance, and thus offered little protection against it. As the technology to employ this type of capability becomes simpler and cheaper, potential resistance in the form of court processes and public opinion will be comparitively slow to form. This will get a lot worse before it gets better.

justizin 12y ago
"How long until central databases are collecting datapoints on our whereabouts at all times, not only from mobile devices, but just the image of our faces?" this is a fine question - the DHS has proposed a project with the City of Oakland to prototype just such a thing, described as a combination of NSA surveillance and stop & frisk, which they call the Domain Awareness Center. Originally targeted at the port post 9/11, it has grown to be a prototype of a citywide surveillance system that ties local and national authorities together closer than ever before. It's not in place yet, and stopping it in Oakland, where all politics are driven by law enforcement / public safety policy, despite decades of data that show pouring money into the police department has not reduced crime, may be a good way to at least delay this across the country.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  You're a few months out of date. Plans for this have been scaled back to the portage areas: http://www.eastbayexpress.com/SevenDays/archives/2014/03/05/oakland-city-council-rolls-back-the-dac http://www.eastbayexpress.com/SevenDays/archives/2014/03/05/... While I share your dislike of the program, it's important to look at the overall scope rather just the government one. After all, you could build a pretty good automatic photo identification system on top of Facebook.

jessaustin 12y ago

The CIA uses a previously unknown program, code-named Hydra, to secretly access databases maintained by foreign countries and extract data to add to the watchlists. Hmmm, this seems like a pretty obvious vulnerability. When's the last time the CIA actually did something "secretly"? (Oooh, how would we know? Actually the last time they did something un-secretly was like a month ago, so there's a bound of sorts.) So if you do something to piss off the spooks in e.g. Russia or Israel, expect to be entered into their troll-the-CIA database, soon thereafter to be Hydra-ed into Obama's special uncategorizable tracking system.

diafygi 12y ago

https://prod01-cdn02.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2014/08/shrug_chart_final1.jpg https://prod01-cdn02.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/20... ¯\(ツ)/¯

colinbartlett 12y ago

"Directorate of Terrorist Identities (DTI)" sounds like something right out of a dystopian novel.

chopin 12y ago
Like "Ministry of Truth"?
- chiph 12y ago
  Minitrue prevents crimethink.

padobson 12y ago

Well this is no big deal, I'll just vote for a guy in the next election who will dismantle this system... oh wait.

rickisen 12y ago

They called the system Hydra? Really? Seams like some agents read too much Marvell comics

pessimizer 12y ago
Or Greek mythology, rather.
TeMPOraL 12y ago
At least they're showing us their true faces.