16 ms·

The Whole Haystack: The N.S.A. claims it needs access to all our phone records

247 points by djoldman 12y ago

spiritplumber 12y ago
"sure, you can have mine if i can have yours."
- thwarted 12y ago
  Actually make everything collected actually fully public, with no exclusions on who is collected from. If it's collected, it's public. After all, the collection was paid for with public monkey. No need to put in FOI Requests for this data, since it would be public. Crowd source the the mining of the data. A completely transparent society. Nobody in power would actually be for this (but they expect everyone to be), since it would reveal way more than their claims of what they are searching for/using it for. If we, the public, are expected to trust these agencies and those in power with our data, then we should be able to trust each other. Unfortunately, we'd still here rhetoric about how some people, often those in power, are more trustworthy than others. Really, the same response works for "I have nothing to hide". If the goals of the surveillance are so morally and ethically pure, and the public can be trusted not to abuse the data, then there revealing all the data to the public would confirm the pure motives and actions.
RandomCode 12y ago
When I say "Jump", you CIA/FBI niggers say, "how high." * VMware to again support PC Speaker and provide emulation if no PC Speaker is present. * Windows, Linux and VMware to support RedSea file system so I can get rid of 2,000 lines of redundant, blemished code -- FAT32 and ISO9660. God's temple must be perfect. Redundant code for multiple file systems is imperfect. For this operating system, we want low line count. More than one file system type is bad, just as more than one driver for the same type of device is bad. ::/Kernel/Dsk/FileSysRedSea.CPP ::/Kernel/Dsk/FileSysFAT.CPP :965 ::/Kernel/Dsk/FileSysISO.CPP :284 ::/Adam/Boot/DskCDDVD.CPP :536 RClustersBlks() * Microsoft must cancel SecureBoot because it makes dual booting impossible. TempleOS is an additional operating system that must be used along-side Windows or Linux, not as a replacement. It must dual boot because it has no networking. Real hardware as opposed to VMware is like the difference between looking in a telescope eye piece and some link to a photo on the Internet. God said the C64 generation owned ancestral lands and VMware is like being moved on a reservation. It will not stand. * PC hardware manufacturers: ATA/ATAPI PIO must work. In fact, put them at standard IDE port addresses. Hard disk should be primary master 1F0/3F6. CDROM/DVD should be secondary master 170/376. See what you can do to make flash memory sticks with ATA/ATAPI. /Kernel/Dsk/DskATAId.CPP :280 lines to figure-out I/O ports /Kernel/BIOS32.CPP :290 * PS/2 emulated keyboard and mouse must work. The BIOS must enable these. * VMware must allow ATAPI interface to real CD/DVD hardware. * Perhaps, VMware+Intel can enable faster-than-standard x86 IN/OUT instruction timing for ATA/ATAPI PIO, so bandwidth isn't bad. ATAGetResult(). * Computers should have a RESET switch and a fast boot option, skipping diagnostics. What the heck, replace UEFI with TempleOS. Poetic justice. * VMware and others should list TempleOS as an official 64-bit operating system. * Windows and Linux must support TempleOS .GRA graphics files. These are just right-side-up .BMP files with 8-bits-per-pixels 4-bits of color and transparency, with no palette. Compression is an LZW compression. DCSave(), GRAWrite(), DCLoad(), and GRARead(). ::/Kernel/Compress.CPP * I want a nice dictionary. Someone needs to do a Spell Checker. * We want the ultimate Bible search engine. * I would like the Intel architecture manuals in DolDoc TXT format so we can put links in the code. * We want two serial ports with software interface like RS232 DUART (or simpler), but speed of USB3. It should just have 8n1, maybe just one baud rate. Use PIC IRQ3 and IRQ4. * We want two joysticks. Perhaps, a new USB legacy mode that somehow makes joysticks possible reading a couple I/O ports. We don't want old-style IBM joysticks. We don't want actual USB drivers. USB is a thousand times more code than PS/2. Perhaps, this uses the new serial ports.
mystique 12y ago
"All men are created equal" except if they happen to be non-americans
- jamra 12y ago
  What are you talking about? Americans are equally victimized.
  - dangerboysteve 12y ago
    You mean kept safe.
    - AnimalMuppet 12y ago
      Unless by "safe" you mean "safe from our own government". Then, not so much.
      - LLWM 12y ago
        How is your own government hurting you?
        bbcbasic 12y ago
        Just read HN articles for a week and you will see a dozen ways.
        LLWM 12y ago
        I've been reading for a lot longer than a week. Still not feeling the hurt.
        spammyusername 12y ago
        You are a troll and a buffoon. Anyone reading this and thinking about replying should just stop.
bhhaskin 12y ago
What ever happened to being innocent until proven guilty? Once you give up freedoms they are almost impossible to get back.
- dangerboysteve 12y ago
  This is my take on things. The NSA, via it's domestic spying on US citizen has massive dirt on US Senators and Congressmen which they hold over them. How do you explain the constant watering down of legislation to resolve these issues?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
    - dangerboysteve 12y ago
      Of course I'm not fine with that but don't think some European agencies are spying on their own citizens?
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - john_b 12y ago
      I can understand how Europeans are justifiably upset when Americans talk about reforming the American surveillance apparatus in terms of protecting the rights of Americans, but please understand that this does NOT imply an indifference to the rights of others. It's simply a practical matter of being honest about the political incentives in the U.S. Enraged Europeans don't vote U.S. congressmen out of office. Enraged Americans do. Until U.S. congressmen feel pressure from those who ultimately employ them, nothing will change.
    - willthompson 12y ago
      I think it depend on which country within Europe...
    - djloche 12y ago
spaznode 12y ago
Maybe they should have said "our mathematical models need X coverage of population to <observe> reliably". At least people could have a slightly more informed sense of outrage then.
monokrome 12y ago
Why these writers think that they need to paint the canvas with the entire history of the NSA for these types of stories is beyond me.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
DanielBMarkham 12y ago
Citing Section 215 of the Patriot Act is an unusual choice here, as there are many cross-covering legal authorities. (In the article's defense, it points this out). Assuming folks stayed in for the entire tick-tock of the Somalia example, we're left with the impression that Section 215 hasn't really paid off that much. But where does that really lead us? If we get rid of 215, we still have warrantless collection of both metadata and data. I think we're looking at this the wrong way. The thing I want to know is this: as an American citizen who is supposed to be in charge of these well-meaning but ill-led folks, how do I stop them from collecting data on myself and other citizens? We debate these policies one at a time as each law or provision is discussed, but nobody seems to be wrapping it all up into a package or proposal that I can support or vote for.
ingler 12y ago
The excuse for this massive intrusion is terrorism but: > Nearly all of the highest-profile domestic terrorism plots in the United States since 9/11 featured the "direct involvement" of government agents or informants, a new report says. > http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/21/government-agents-directly-involved-us-terror-plots-report http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/21/government-agen...
- finid 12y ago
  I think the term for what you're hinting at is "baited" or something like that.
  - ingler 12y ago
    I was thinking "job security" but baited works too.
- rdtsc 12y ago
  Exactly. Looking at high level stats one would imagine FBI are just so great at preventing terrorism. Look at all these foiled bridge explosions. Except if you look a bit deeper you start seeing a different picture. Infiltrating mosques, preying on the weaker and feeble-minded. If it weren't tragic and depressing it would be quite funny actually because of this bit: > Yet, far from succeeding, Monteilh eventually so unnerved Orange County's Muslim community that that they got a restraining order against him. In an ironic twist, they also reported Monteilh to the FBI: unaware he was in fact working undercover for the agency. He was such a dickhead that basically he got himself reported back to the FBI.
  - ingler 12y ago
    It seems the Feds can only find the morally or intellectually challenged as civilian foils.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    Counting deaths is an invalid way of looking at the impact of terrorism. The whole point of terrorism is to impose s greater mental impact than physical one. Now you can say that people should be more rational and not care more about 17 people killed in car accidents than the same killed in the Charlie Hebdo attacks. But they do.
disposition2 12y ago
it's pretty insane that the conclusions reached after 9/11 were that we had the information to thwart the plot but the information we had wasn't being properly shared between agencies and 14 years later it sounds like while these agencies have unfettered access to even more information, it still isn't being properly shared between agencies. In the mean time American citizens have some of the dust left over from our 4th Amendment rights while non US citizens have less than zero in regards to 4th Amendment rights.
- csdrane 12y ago
  Would you really want all the information the NSA collects to be shared freely between agencies?
  - disposition2 12y ago
    Oh no, of course not. I would much prefer the 4th Amendment rights be honored, and the laws that allow for this catch all surveillance be removed. Instead, allow for exemptions (which might already be /have been for some time in place) where law enforcement can use surveillance and some times go beyond the normal scope when it pertains to an actual investigation and when a impartial judge has signed off on it. It is my view that the changes that were made in the past make us no safer today and the original problem (agencies not sharing information when pertinent) doesn't seem to be solved and most likely worsened due to the abundance of (irrelevant) information they now have. I think a good analogy of the situation is you've had agencies sifting through piles of needles (somewhat organized) and rather than giving said agencies tools to better organize the needles, we've just dumped a truckload of more needles on top of what we already had.
jobu 12y ago
The NSA keeps using this "54 terror plots thwarted" rhetoric, but there has never been any information released to back up that claim. From Sen. Patrick Leahy, after reading the full classified list: “We've heard over and over again the assertion that 54 terrorist plots were thwarted” by the two programs, Leahy told Alexander at the Judiciary Committee hearing this month. “That's plainly wrong, but we still get it in letters to members of Congress, we get it in statements. These weren't all plots and they weren't all thwarted. The American people are getting left with the inaccurate impression of the effectiveness of NSA programs.” (http://www.propublica.org/article/claim-on-attacks-thwarted-by-nsa-spreads-despite-lack-of-evidence http://www.propublica.org/article/claim-on-attacks-thwarted-...)
- burke 12y ago
  Further, even assuming that number is correct, how many people do you figure die in the average successful terrorist plot? Let's say 100 as a high average. That means 300,000,000 Americans (and billions of foreigners) are having their rights violated and wallets emptied via taxation every day to save 5400 lives over the course of 14 years. Admittedly, it's 55% more likely than getting struck by lightning, but...
  - 0xffff2 12y ago
    According to this[1] list, 100 would be vastly over estimating. Even including 9/11, and disregarding all incidents with no fatalities, the average based on the GTD data is about 12.5. If you are willing to concede that 9/11 was a once-in-ever event that is unlikely to be matched, then the number drops below 2. And that's probably still a vast overstatement of the likely fatalities for any given plot, given that 2103 of the 2381 recorded by the GTD have 0 fatalities. [1] http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/search/Results.aspx?chart=fatalities&casualties_type=&casualties_max=&country=217&count=100 http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/search/Results.aspx?chart=fatal...
    - boyaka 12y ago
      What is up with those fatality numbers? Kinda weird it's exactly 1382 for both towers.
Quequau 12y ago
If they're asking for it, they're already doing it and now looking for a legal cover.
stef25 12y ago
Living in Brussels with soldiers in the streets now, I wonder - would I mind free govt access to my phone and email if it would have prevented all the crap that happened in Paris?
- oleganza 12y ago
  Even if you wouldn't mind, there is your neighbor who would've. Should someone then put him in prison for having another opinion?
  - stef25 12y ago
    Sorry I don't follow, why would that happen?
- dmix 12y ago
  The attackers in Paris were under surveillance until 6 months before the attack but they were ruled out by French authorities as not a threat. In addition, the brothers shaved their beards, stopped all unusual activities in public, and purposefully acted like regular Parisians for months before the attack. So passive surveillance wouldn't have made a difference.
- rhino369 12y ago
  I think there is an interesting question about whether privacy is necessary for freedom.
  - flycaliguy 12y ago
    Depends on who wants the privacy though. The US government has become increasingly secretive for example. It seems nobody even really knows how much money this surveillance effort is even costing us... I'm glad I found this post because I enjoyed our dialog and was looking for the fundamental difference between our perspectives. People change how they act when they are being watched. Is a life lived while watched as free as one in private? Are you willing to argue that a man influenced by the panopticon is just as free under that influence? A life spent avoiding shame, embarrassment and condemnation is an oppressed life if you ask me. It is also a society which will subdue creative and divergent thinking, in turn slowing scientific and cultural progress. Compare Chinese schooling grades in maths and science with their performance on the nobel prize stage. An educational system which enforces strong conformity and strict rules performs well on paper but fails to produce as much innovative thinking. Just one novel example I came up with while examining PISA scores recently. The negative effects of the panopticon are well documented. Such thinking, that there is "bad people" and "good people" is a very scary path for a government to walk. "Pose no threat and you have nothing to worry about" is not freedom. Ultimately I believe a nation's amount of freedom should be determined by how it treats its dissidents and marginalized people, not by how it treats the loyalists. In a free nation I shouldn't have to be loyal to conventional behaviour to feel free. The two do not go hand in hand.
flycaliguy 12y ago
I feel like I'm stating the obvious a bit here to HN, but does anybody else think this might have more to do with something completely removed from terrorism. Like tracking the intricacies of various global markets, cultural movements, politicians, judges, activists and other influencers in society. Like basically an opportunity to see everybody at the table's cards (including your friends) in order to maximize power? Basically arranging enough small advantages through calculation in order to statistically improve success in all manner of maneuvers. The ability to further reduce any semblance of the democratic process by taking your average politician's polling strategy to a much higher level? Is there a book on this that anybody recommends? Is this what Art of War is about or something?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- gaius 12y ago
  Sure. He's the NSA helping Boeing win a contract against Airbus http://www.economist.com/node/1842124 http://www.economist.com/node/1842124
  - csandreasen 12y ago
    That's an interesting spin on what the article said. To quote: According to a European Parliament report, published in 2001, America's National Security Agency (NSA) intercepted faxes and phone calls between Airbus, Saudi Arabian Airlines and the Saudi government in early 1994. The NSA found that Airbus agents were offering bribes to a Saudi official to secure a lion's share for Airbus in modernising Saudi Arabian Airlines' fleet. The planes were in a $6 billion deal that Edouard Balladur, France's then prime minister, had hoped to clinch on a visit to see King Fahd in January 1994. He went home empty-handed. James Woolsey, then director of the Central Intelligence Agency, recounted in a newspaper article in 2000 how the American government typically reacted to intelligence of this sort. “When we have caught you [Europeans]...we go to the government you're bribing and tell its officials that we don't take kindly to such corruption,” he wrote. Apparently this (and a direct sales pitch from Bill Clinton to King Fahd) swung the aircraft part of the deal Boeing's and McDonnell Douglas's way.
joshstrange 12y ago
This covers what I see as one of the biggest reasons for stopping the collection: It simply does not work. We are "winning" the war on terror just like we are "winning" the war on drugs in that we aren't making a dent at all and some argue that our actions in both fields actually spur on the exact activities they are meant to curb/destroy. Don't get me wrong, I don't trust them with the data in the first place but even if I did it's been proven again and again that our privacy is being invaded and no positives are coming out of it. The NSA would have a much stronger position if it was "Yes, you have no privacy but there is also no terror" instead we have no privacy and terror attacks abound.
sml0820 12y ago
Several powerful trends have aligned to profoundly change the way that the world works. Technology now allows stateless groups to organize, recruit, and fund themselves in an unprecedented fashion. That, coupled with the extreme difficulty of finding and punishing a stateless group, means that stateless groups are positioned to be lead players on the world stage. They may act on their own, or they may act as proxies for nation-states that wish to duck responsibility. Either way, stateless groups are forces to be reckoned with. At the same time, a different set of technology trends means that small numbers of people can obtain incredibly lethal power. Now, for the first time in human history, a small group can be as lethal as the largest superpower. Such a group could execute an attack that could kill millions of people. It is technically feasible for such a group to kill billions of people, to end modern civilization—perhaps even to drive the human race to extinction. I encourage anyone to read a relevant paper linked below by Nathan Myhrvold. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2290382&download=yes http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2290382&d...
- badsock 12y ago
  The forces you describe have been in effect for more than half a century, and during that time the actual damage we've seen from stateless actors has been miniscule compared to what has been visited on people by their own governments, governments that have been granted too much power out of fear. We don't need more dragnet surveillance, we need courage and perspective. Yes, there is a possibility that a stateless actor could end the world. There's lots of other ways the world could end too.
  - sml0820 12y ago
    There is a trade off between the collective rights of the innocent citizenry and the rights of the victims of the crimes that can be avoided. At some point the cost of civilian lives will exceed the cost of strain on civil liberties. Technology progress and, ultimately the potential magnitude of destruction, is expanding at an exponential rate. Therefore looking at the past 50 years is synonymous with driving by looking through the rear view of the car. Your civil liberties will begin to erode. Even if a bill is passed that revokes the rights of the NSA, at some point in the next few decades a destructive event due to technology innovation and commoditization of knowledge will cause these civil liberties to be eroded.
bengrunfeld 12y ago
Maybe instead of revoking every global citizen's right to any type of privacy, the government should address the issue behind the terrorism: namely, radical Islam being allowed to proliferate freely and metastasize.
- ingler 12y ago
  The US government wants their allies the Saudis to keep funding and producing radicals so that it has an excuse to continue with its global surveillance plan. It's a great scam. People seem to fall for it.
stillsut 12y ago
Kinda bad analogy but I'll make it: do you really need to be storing GB's of log files because you might have a bug in the future? Yes, to maximize your chances of making the most robust response to a bug or hack, "all the information" needs to be there. To bring this back to terrorism, it's not about never having another incident like Paris, but being able to recognize the extent of the problem after the fact (who's talking to who?), and being sure your solution solves the problem as far is it can be traced. Downvoted, but not replied to...unacceptable.
- rsync 12y ago
  "Downvoted, but not replied to...unacceptable." Do not digress from a thread to discuss the scoring system. Write your post, have your discussion, but do not inject meta-scoring chat into your posts.
pvaldes 12y ago
I wonder what is the purpose of all those comics included each few paragraphs for all the text extension... To make the people distracted and thinking in happy talking animals whereas his lives are scanned?
sp332 12y ago
Remember, the NSA is already recording all cell phone calls in the 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... and Afghanistan. https://wikileaks.org/WikiLeaks-statement-on-the-mass.html https://wikileaks.org/WikiLeaks-statement-on-the-mass.html The recordings are kept for at least 30 days, or longer if they are interesting.
sandworm 12y ago
On principle, I have no real problem with the NSA having access to phone records (pen register) for purposes of combating actual terrorism. I deem that an acceptable intrusion. Besides, my phone company already has those records and uses them for their profit. The problem is that the NSA can no longer be trusted to confine its use to terrorism. Drug investigations, immigration issues, even IRS investigations are using this data. I half expect speeding to be enforced via phone metadata (GPS). Snowden has also shown us that untold thousands of people have access to this data with little oversight. I trust actual spies. I do not trust thousands of twenty-somethings for whom promotion depends on finding some way of turning my phone records into evidence of crime. Nor do I want my phone records used in any non-NSA security checks. I work in a field (legal) where I do occasionally come into contact with very bad people. It was a legal clinic. He was my client. The fact that we spoke regularly should not follow me forever.
- spammyusername 12y ago
  You don't think the problem is declaring a war on a concept?
  - rayiner 12y ago
    Nobody declared war on a concept. The war on terror is just a PC euphemism for "war on stateless radical Islamists."
    - tptacek 12y ago
      There is a practical, structural problem with the "war on terrorism" even as you've reframed it. There's no way to eradicate "stateless radical Islamists", or even Al Qaeda (anyone can wave a black flag labeled "Al Qaeda"). So unlike a war on (say) Japan, the war on Al Qaeda can't end until a critical mass of politicians make the irrational decision to go on the record as saying we're finished prosecuting terrorists. Historically, US foreign policy seems to get in the worst trouble when it declares itself a military adversary of concepts as opposed to states. See, for instance, "communism".
JumpCrisscross 12y ago
Call your Congressmen and Senators [1]. If you write to them, do not use a form letter. In one or two sentences, explain who you are and why your opinion on this is relevant. Ask for their position on the issue. Then, conservatively state your views. Avoid extreme or outraged language. Last week, I reached out to my senators and Congresswoman about the CISPA bill [2]. The issue found a place on one Senator's evening agenda and prompted a follow-up from the Representative. An upside to this country's low democratic participation is the undiluted return on making the effort to reach out. [1] http://whoismyrepresentative.com/member/view/M000087/ http://whoismyrepresentative.com/member/view/M000087/ [2] http://gizmodo.com/the-new-cispa-bill-is-literally-exactly-the-same-as-the-1679496808 http://gizmodo.com/the-new-cispa-bill-is-literally-exactly-t...
linuxhansl 12y ago
I realize that articles is biased... Am I the only one who read "sending eighty-five hundred dollars" as "eighty-five _million_ dollars"; only then to skip back to read it as "hundred". I'm glad to know that we managed to deal terrorism a death blow by making sure these $8500 never reached the Somali militia. Oh wait, we have not even stopped the $8500 to get there. Seriously, if we want save lives, why not invest all this money where it actually, uhm, saves lives. For example health care. But, hey, that is somehow unamerican. Or since lightening strikes kill more people than terrorism does, I suggest we also spend all this money to build giant metal-wire tents over all major cities. It's hard to keep the sarcasm in check with so much paranoia involved.
pbreit 12y ago
If there were some independent/third party responsible for the sifting that took requests from NSA, I could maybe see accepting it.
tessierashpool 12y ago
the real danger with the NSA is Moore's Law. you can't do a greal deal with this data at the point of collection, but collecting it for a few decades, while Moore's Law ramps up, will put you in an incredible position of overwhelming power at the end of that time. look at how J. Edgar Hoover obsessively spied on American politicians, and imagine him doing so in 2035, backed up with decades of data, plus computing power as superior to ours as ours is superior to 1995's.
- LLWM 12y ago
  Indeed. It'd be foolish not to do it.

247 points by djoldman 12y ago

spiritplumber 12y ago

"sure, you can have mine if i can have yours."

thwarted 12y ago
Actually make everything collected actually fully public, with no exclusions on who is collected from. If it's collected, it's public. After all, the collection was paid for with public monkey. No need to put in FOI Requests for this data, since it would be public. Crowd source the the mining of the data. A completely transparent society. Nobody in power would actually be for this (but they expect everyone to be), since it would reveal way more than their claims of what they are searching for/using it for. If we, the public, are expected to trust these agencies and those in power with our data, then we should be able to trust each other. Unfortunately, we'd still here rhetoric about how some people, often those in power, are more trustworthy than others. Really, the same response works for "I have nothing to hide". If the goals of the surveillance are so morally and ethically pure, and the public can be trusted not to abuse the data, then there revealing all the data to the public would confirm the pure motives and actions.

RandomCode 12y ago

When I say "Jump", you CIA/FBI niggers say, "how high." * VMware to again support PC Speaker and provide emulation if no PC Speaker is present. * Windows, Linux and VMware to support RedSea file system so I can get rid of 2,000 lines of redundant, blemished code -- FAT32 and ISO9660. God's temple must be perfect. Redundant code for multiple file systems is imperfect. For this operating system, we want low line count. More than one file system type is bad, just as more than one driver for the same type of device is bad. ::/Kernel/Dsk/FileSysRedSea.CPP ::/Kernel/Dsk/FileSysFAT.CPP :965 ::/Kernel/Dsk/FileSysISO.CPP :284 ::/Adam/Boot/DskCDDVD.CPP :536 RClustersBlks() * Microsoft must cancel SecureBoot because it makes dual booting impossible. TempleOS is an additional operating system that must be used along-side Windows or Linux, not as a replacement. It must dual boot because it has no networking. Real hardware as opposed to VMware is like the difference between looking in a telescope eye piece and some link to a photo on the Internet. God said the C64 generation owned ancestral lands and VMware is like being moved on a reservation. It will not stand. * PC hardware manufacturers: ATA/ATAPI PIO must work. In fact, put them at standard IDE port addresses. Hard disk should be primary master 1F0/3F6. CDROM/DVD should be secondary master 170/376. See what you can do to make flash memory sticks with ATA/ATAPI. /Kernel/Dsk/DskATAId.CPP :280 lines to figure-out I/O ports /Kernel/BIOS32.CPP :290 * PS/2 emulated keyboard and mouse must work. The BIOS must enable these. * VMware must allow ATAPI interface to real CD/DVD hardware. * Perhaps, VMware+Intel can enable faster-than-standard x86 IN/OUT instruction timing for ATA/ATAPI PIO, so bandwidth isn't bad. ATAGetResult(). * Computers should have a RESET switch and a fast boot option, skipping diagnostics. What the heck, replace UEFI with TempleOS. Poetic justice. * VMware and others should list TempleOS as an official 64-bit operating system. * Windows and Linux must support TempleOS .GRA graphics files. These are just right-side-up .BMP files with 8-bits-per-pixels 4-bits of color and transparency, with no palette. Compression is an LZW compression. DCSave(), GRAWrite(), DCLoad(), and GRARead(). ::/Kernel/Compress.CPP * I want a nice dictionary. Someone needs to do a Spell Checker. * We want the ultimate Bible search engine. * I would like the Intel architecture manuals in DolDoc TXT format so we can put links in the code. * We want two serial ports with software interface like RS232 DUART (or simpler), but speed of USB3. It should just have 8n1, maybe just one baud rate. Use PIC IRQ3 and IRQ4. * We want two joysticks. Perhaps, a new USB legacy mode that somehow makes joysticks possible reading a couple I/O ports. We don't want old-style IBM joysticks. We don't want actual USB drivers. USB is a thousand times more code than PS/2. Perhaps, this uses the new serial ports.

mystique 12y ago

"All men are created equal" except if they happen to be non-americans

jamra 12y ago
What are you talking about? Americans are equally victimized.
- dangerboysteve 12y ago
  You mean kept safe.
  - AnimalMuppet 12y ago
    Unless by "safe" you mean "safe from our own government". Then, not so much.
    - LLWM 12y ago
      How is your own government hurting you?
      - bbcbasic 12y ago
        Just read HN articles for a week and you will see a dozen ways.
        LLWM 12y ago
        I've been reading for a lot longer than a week. Still not feeling the hurt.
        spammyusername 12y ago
        You are a troll and a buffoon. Anyone reading this and thinking about replying should just stop.

bhhaskin 12y ago

What ever happened to being innocent until proven guilty? Once you give up freedoms they are almost impossible to get back.

dangerboysteve 12y ago
This is my take on things. The NSA, via it's domestic spying on US citizen has massive dirt on US Senators and Congressmen which they hold over them. How do you explain the constant watering down of legislation to resolve these issues?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - dangerboysteve 12y ago
    Of course I'm not fine with that but don't think some European agencies are spying on their own citizens?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - john_b 12y ago
    I can understand how Europeans are justifiably upset when Americans talk about reforming the American surveillance apparatus in terms of protecting the rights of Americans, but please understand that this does NOT imply an indifference to the rights of others. It's simply a practical matter of being honest about the political incentives in the U.S. Enraged Europeans don't vote U.S. congressmen out of office. Enraged Americans do. Until U.S. congressmen feel pressure from those who ultimately employ them, nothing will change.
  - willthompson 12y ago
    I think it depend on which country within Europe...
  - djloche 12y ago

spaznode 12y ago

Maybe they should have said "our mathematical models need X coverage of population to <observe> reliably". At least people could have a slightly more informed sense of outrage then.

monokrome 12y ago

Why these writers think that they need to paint the canvas with the entire history of the NSA for these types of stories is beyond me.

deleted 12y ago

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DanielBMarkham 12y ago

Citing Section 215 of the Patriot Act is an unusual choice here, as there are many cross-covering legal authorities. (In the article's defense, it points this out). Assuming folks stayed in for the entire tick-tock of the Somalia example, we're left with the impression that Section 215 hasn't really paid off that much. But where does that really lead us? If we get rid of 215, we still have warrantless collection of both metadata and data. I think we're looking at this the wrong way. The thing I want to know is this: as an American citizen who is supposed to be in charge of these well-meaning but ill-led folks, how do I stop them from collecting data on myself and other citizens? We debate these policies one at a time as each law or provision is discussed, but nobody seems to be wrapping it all up into a package or proposal that I can support or vote for.

ingler 12y ago

The excuse for this massive intrusion is terrorism but: > Nearly all of the highest-profile domestic terrorism plots in the United States since 9/11 featured the "direct involvement" of government agents or informants, a new report says. > http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/21/government-agents-directly-involved-us-terror-plots-report http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/21/government-agen...

finid 12y ago
I think the term for what you're hinting at is "baited" or something like that.
- ingler 12y ago
  I was thinking "job security" but baited works too.
rdtsc 12y ago
Exactly. Looking at high level stats one would imagine FBI are just so great at preventing terrorism. Look at all these foiled bridge explosions. Except if you look a bit deeper you start seeing a different picture. Infiltrating mosques, preying on the weaker and feeble-minded. If it weren't tragic and depressing it would be quite funny actually because of this bit: > Yet, far from succeeding, Monteilh eventually so unnerved Orange County's Muslim community that that they got a restraining order against him. In an ironic twist, they also reported Monteilh to the FBI: unaware he was in fact working undercover for the agency. He was such a dickhead that basically he got himself reported back to the FBI.
- ingler 12y ago
  It seems the Feds can only find the morally or intellectually challenged as civilian foils.
- rayiner 12y ago
  Counting deaths is an invalid way of looking at the impact of terrorism. The whole point of terrorism is to impose s greater mental impact than physical one. Now you can say that people should be more rational and not care more about 17 people killed in car accidents than the same killed in the Charlie Hebdo attacks. But they do.

disposition2 12y ago

it's pretty insane that the conclusions reached after 9/11 were that we had the information to thwart the plot but the information we had wasn't being properly shared between agencies and 14 years later it sounds like while these agencies have unfettered access to even more information, it still isn't being properly shared between agencies. In the mean time American citizens have some of the dust left over from our 4th Amendment rights while non US citizens have less than zero in regards to 4th Amendment rights.

csdrane 12y ago
Would you really want all the information the NSA collects to be shared freely between agencies?
- disposition2 12y ago
  Oh no, of course not. I would much prefer the 4th Amendment rights be honored, and the laws that allow for this catch all surveillance be removed. Instead, allow for exemptions (which might already be /have been for some time in place) where law enforcement can use surveillance and some times go beyond the normal scope when it pertains to an actual investigation and when a impartial judge has signed off on it. It is my view that the changes that were made in the past make us no safer today and the original problem (agencies not sharing information when pertinent) doesn't seem to be solved and most likely worsened due to the abundance of (irrelevant) information they now have. I think a good analogy of the situation is you've had agencies sifting through piles of needles (somewhat organized) and rather than giving said agencies tools to better organize the needles, we've just dumped a truckload of more needles on top of what we already had.

jobu 12y ago

The NSA keeps using this "54 terror plots thwarted" rhetoric, but there has never been any information released to back up that claim. From Sen. Patrick Leahy, after reading the full classified list: “We've heard over and over again the assertion that 54 terrorist plots were thwarted” by the two programs, Leahy told Alexander at the Judiciary Committee hearing this month. “That's plainly wrong, but we still get it in letters to members of Congress, we get it in statements. These weren't all plots and they weren't all thwarted. The American people are getting left with the inaccurate impression of the effectiveness of NSA programs.” (http://www.propublica.org/article/claim-on-attacks-thwarted-by-nsa-spreads-despite-lack-of-evidence http://www.propublica.org/article/claim-on-attacks-thwarted-...)

burke 12y ago
Further, even assuming that number is correct, how many people do you figure die in the average successful terrorist plot? Let's say 100 as a high average. That means 300,000,000 Americans (and billions of foreigners) are having their rights violated and wallets emptied via taxation every day to save 5400 lives over the course of 14 years. Admittedly, it's 55% more likely than getting struck by lightning, but...
- 0xffff2 12y ago
  According to this[1] list, 100 would be vastly over estimating. Even including 9/11, and disregarding all incidents with no fatalities, the average based on the GTD data is about 12.5. If you are willing to concede that 9/11 was a once-in-ever event that is unlikely to be matched, then the number drops below 2. And that's probably still a vast overstatement of the likely fatalities for any given plot, given that 2103 of the 2381 recorded by the GTD have 0 fatalities. [1] http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/search/Results.aspx?chart=fatalities&casualties_type=&casualties_max=&country=217&count=100 http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/search/Results.aspx?chart=fatal...
  - boyaka 12y ago
    What is up with those fatality numbers? Kinda weird it's exactly 1382 for both towers.

Quequau 12y ago

If they're asking for it, they're already doing it and now looking for a legal cover.

stef25 12y ago

Living in Brussels with soldiers in the streets now, I wonder - would I mind free govt access to my phone and email if it would have prevented all the crap that happened in Paris?

oleganza 12y ago
Even if you wouldn't mind, there is your neighbor who would've. Should someone then put him in prison for having another opinion?
- stef25 12y ago
  Sorry I don't follow, why would that happen?
dmix 12y ago
The attackers in Paris were under surveillance until 6 months before the attack but they were ruled out by French authorities as not a threat. In addition, the brothers shaved their beards, stopped all unusual activities in public, and purposefully acted like regular Parisians for months before the attack. So passive surveillance wouldn't have made a difference.
rhino369 12y ago
I think there is an interesting question about whether privacy is necessary for freedom.
- flycaliguy 12y ago
  Depends on who wants the privacy though. The US government has become increasingly secretive for example. It seems nobody even really knows how much money this surveillance effort is even costing us... I'm glad I found this post because I enjoyed our dialog and was looking for the fundamental difference between our perspectives. People change how they act when they are being watched. Is a life lived while watched as free as one in private? Are you willing to argue that a man influenced by the panopticon is just as free under that influence? A life spent avoiding shame, embarrassment and condemnation is an oppressed life if you ask me. It is also a society which will subdue creative and divergent thinking, in turn slowing scientific and cultural progress. Compare Chinese schooling grades in maths and science with their performance on the nobel prize stage. An educational system which enforces strong conformity and strict rules performs well on paper but fails to produce as much innovative thinking. Just one novel example I came up with while examining PISA scores recently. The negative effects of the panopticon are well documented. Such thinking, that there is "bad people" and "good people" is a very scary path for a government to walk. "Pose no threat and you have nothing to worry about" is not freedom. Ultimately I believe a nation's amount of freedom should be determined by how it treats its dissidents and marginalized people, not by how it treats the loyalists. In a free nation I shouldn't have to be loyal to conventional behaviour to feel free. The two do not go hand in hand.

flycaliguy 12y ago

I feel like I'm stating the obvious a bit here to HN, but does anybody else think this might have more to do with something completely removed from terrorism. Like tracking the intricacies of various global markets, cultural movements, politicians, judges, activists and other influencers in society. Like basically an opportunity to see everybody at the table's cards (including your friends) in order to maximize power? Basically arranging enough small advantages through calculation in order to statistically improve success in all manner of maneuvers. The ability to further reduce any semblance of the democratic process by taking your average politician's polling strategy to a much higher level? Is there a book on this that anybody recommends? Is this what Art of War is about or something?

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
gaius 12y ago
Sure. He's the NSA helping Boeing win a contract against Airbus http://www.economist.com/node/1842124 http://www.economist.com/node/1842124
- csandreasen 12y ago
  That's an interesting spin on what the article said. To quote: According to a European Parliament report, published in 2001, America's National Security Agency (NSA) intercepted faxes and phone calls between Airbus, Saudi Arabian Airlines and the Saudi government in early 1994. The NSA found that Airbus agents were offering bribes to a Saudi official to secure a lion's share for Airbus in modernising Saudi Arabian Airlines' fleet. The planes were in a $6 billion deal that Edouard Balladur, France's then prime minister, had hoped to clinch on a visit to see King Fahd in January 1994. He went home empty-handed. James Woolsey, then director of the Central Intelligence Agency, recounted in a newspaper article in 2000 how the American government typically reacted to intelligence of this sort. “When we have caught you [Europeans]...we go to the government you're bribing and tell its officials that we don't take kindly to such corruption,” he wrote. Apparently this (and a direct sales pitch from Bill Clinton to King Fahd) swung the aircraft part of the deal Boeing's and McDonnell Douglas's way.

joshstrange 12y ago

This covers what I see as one of the biggest reasons for stopping the collection: It simply does not work. We are "winning" the war on terror just like we are "winning" the war on drugs in that we aren't making a dent at all and some argue that our actions in both fields actually spur on the exact activities they are meant to curb/destroy. Don't get me wrong, I don't trust them with the data in the first place but even if I did it's been proven again and again that our privacy is being invaded and no positives are coming out of it. The NSA would have a much stronger position if it was "Yes, you have no privacy but there is also no terror" instead we have no privacy and terror attacks abound.

sml0820 12y ago

Several powerful trends have aligned to profoundly change the way that the world works. Technology now allows stateless groups to organize, recruit, and fund themselves in an unprecedented fashion. That, coupled with the extreme difficulty of finding and punishing a stateless group, means that stateless groups are positioned to be lead players on the world stage. They may act on their own, or they may act as proxies for nation-states that wish to duck responsibility. Either way, stateless groups are forces to be reckoned with. At the same time, a different set of technology trends means that small numbers of people can obtain incredibly lethal power. Now, for the first time in human history, a small group can be as lethal as the largest superpower. Such a group could execute an attack that could kill millions of people. It is technically feasible for such a group to kill billions of people, to end modern civilization—perhaps even to drive the human race to extinction. I encourage anyone to read a relevant paper linked below by Nathan Myhrvold. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2290382&download=yes http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2290382&d...

badsock 12y ago
The forces you describe have been in effect for more than half a century, and during that time the actual damage we've seen from stateless actors has been miniscule compared to what has been visited on people by their own governments, governments that have been granted too much power out of fear. We don't need more dragnet surveillance, we need courage and perspective. Yes, there is a possibility that a stateless actor could end the world. There's lots of other ways the world could end too.
- sml0820 12y ago
  There is a trade off between the collective rights of the innocent citizenry and the rights of the victims of the crimes that can be avoided. At some point the cost of civilian lives will exceed the cost of strain on civil liberties. Technology progress and, ultimately the potential magnitude of destruction, is expanding at an exponential rate. Therefore looking at the past 50 years is synonymous with driving by looking through the rear view of the car. Your civil liberties will begin to erode. Even if a bill is passed that revokes the rights of the NSA, at some point in the next few decades a destructive event due to technology innovation and commoditization of knowledge will cause these civil liberties to be eroded.

bengrunfeld 12y ago

Maybe instead of revoking every global citizen's right to any type of privacy, the government should address the issue behind the terrorism: namely, radical Islam being allowed to proliferate freely and metastasize.

ingler 12y ago
The US government wants their allies the Saudis to keep funding and producing radicals so that it has an excuse to continue with its global surveillance plan. It's a great scam. People seem to fall for it.

stillsut 12y ago

Kinda bad analogy but I'll make it: do you really need to be storing GB's of log files because you might have a bug in the future? Yes, to maximize your chances of making the most robust response to a bug or hack, "all the information" needs to be there. To bring this back to terrorism, it's not about never having another incident like Paris, but being able to recognize the extent of the problem after the fact (who's talking to who?), and being sure your solution solves the problem as far is it can be traced. Downvoted, but not replied to...unacceptable.

rsync 12y ago
"Downvoted, but not replied to...unacceptable." Do not digress from a thread to discuss the scoring system. Write your post, have your discussion, but do not inject meta-scoring chat into your posts.

pvaldes 12y ago

I wonder what is the purpose of all those comics included each few paragraphs for all the text extension... To make the people distracted and thinking in happy talking animals whereas his lives are scanned?

sp332 12y ago

Remember, the NSA is already recording all cell phone calls in the 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... and Afghanistan. https://wikileaks.org/WikiLeaks-statement-on-the-mass.html https://wikileaks.org/WikiLeaks-statement-on-the-mass.html The recordings are kept for at least 30 days, or longer if they are interesting.

sandworm 12y ago

On principle, I have no real problem with the NSA having access to phone records (pen register) for purposes of combating actual terrorism. I deem that an acceptable intrusion. Besides, my phone company already has those records and uses them for their profit. The problem is that the NSA can no longer be trusted to confine its use to terrorism. Drug investigations, immigration issues, even IRS investigations are using this data. I half expect speeding to be enforced via phone metadata (GPS). Snowden has also shown us that untold thousands of people have access to this data with little oversight. I trust actual spies. I do not trust thousands of twenty-somethings for whom promotion depends on finding some way of turning my phone records into evidence of crime. Nor do I want my phone records used in any non-NSA security checks. I work in a field (legal) where I do occasionally come into contact with very bad people. It was a legal clinic. He was my client. The fact that we spoke regularly should not follow me forever.

spammyusername 12y ago
You don't think the problem is declaring a war on a concept?
- rayiner 12y ago
  Nobody declared war on a concept. The war on terror is just a PC euphemism for "war on stateless radical Islamists."
  - tptacek 12y ago
    There is a practical, structural problem with the "war on terrorism" even as you've reframed it. There's no way to eradicate "stateless radical Islamists", or even Al Qaeda (anyone can wave a black flag labeled "Al Qaeda"). So unlike a war on (say) Japan, the war on Al Qaeda can't end until a critical mass of politicians make the irrational decision to go on the record as saying we're finished prosecuting terrorists. Historically, US foreign policy seems to get in the worst trouble when it declares itself a military adversary of concepts as opposed to states. See, for instance, "communism".

JumpCrisscross 12y ago

Call your Congressmen and Senators [1]. If you write to them, do not use a form letter. In one or two sentences, explain who you are and why your opinion on this is relevant. Ask for their position on the issue. Then, conservatively state your views. Avoid extreme or outraged language. Last week, I reached out to my senators and Congresswoman about the CISPA bill [2]. The issue found a place on one Senator's evening agenda and prompted a follow-up from the Representative. An upside to this country's low democratic participation is the undiluted return on making the effort to reach out. [1] http://whoismyrepresentative.com/member/view/M000087/ http://whoismyrepresentative.com/member/view/M000087/ [2] http://gizmodo.com/the-new-cispa-bill-is-literally-exactly-the-same-as-the-1679496808 http://gizmodo.com/the-new-cispa-bill-is-literally-exactly-t...

linuxhansl 12y ago

I realize that articles is biased... Am I the only one who read "sending eighty-five hundred dollars" as "eighty-five _million_ dollars"; only then to skip back to read it as "hundred". I'm glad to know that we managed to deal terrorism a death blow by making sure these $8500 never reached the Somali militia. Oh wait, we have not even stopped the $8500 to get there. Seriously, if we want save lives, why not invest all this money where it actually, uhm, saves lives. For example health care. But, hey, that is somehow unamerican. Or since lightening strikes kill more people than terrorism does, I suggest we also spend all this money to build giant metal-wire tents over all major cities. It's hard to keep the sarcasm in check with so much paranoia involved.

pbreit 12y ago

If there were some independent/third party responsible for the sifting that took requests from NSA, I could maybe see accepting it.

tessierashpool 12y ago

the real danger with the NSA is Moore's Law. you can't do a greal deal with this data at the point of collection, but collecting it for a few decades, while Moore's Law ramps up, will put you in an incredible position of overwhelming power at the end of that time. look at how J. Edgar Hoover obsessively spied on American politicians, and imagine him doing so in 2035, backed up with decades of data, plus computing power as superior to ours as ours is superior to 1995's.

LLWM 12y ago
Indeed. It'd be foolish not to do it.