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PRISM and Gig

$tinkle

$tinkle

Expert on blowing
Feb 12, 2003
14,591
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jonKranked said:
got any corroborating sources?
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now why would i do that?

if push came to shove, i'd play it off like "yeah, i was an egyptian brick maker; doesn't mean the pyramids would not have been built without my work"

pardon the obfuscatory triple-negative
 
dante

dante

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Feb 13, 2004
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Techno-babble...

tl;dr - It's Open Source, FFS.

The idea that NSA would add backdoors or vulnerabilities to its submissions, when all the source code is publicly accessible and is combed through by thousands of people, is simply ridiculous. It is just as preposterous to think that the best way to gain access to any operating system is to publicly announce that you are contributing to the OS, and make the tainted code accessible to anyone with an interest in it.
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$tinkle

$tinkle

Expert on blowing
Feb 12, 2003
14,591
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while true, there are other 'proprietary' technologies that are based on open source, but don't worry, we plebes will never be burdened by access to them
 
Pesqueeb

Pesqueeb

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Feb 2, 2007
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Paging Silver to the white courtesy phone:
Former Democratic Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel thinks lawmakers opposed to the National Security Agency's phone and Internet surveillance programs should have exposed them long before fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden provided NSA documents to reporters in June.

Unlike Snowden, who is seeking asylum abroad in lieu of a stiff prison sentence, the senators would have been immune from prosecution because of the Constitution's Speech or Debate Clause, Gravel told U.S. News.

"Any member of Congress can release any information that they think the public should see," Gravel said. "No member of Congress has availed themselves of that privilege since 1971. That's unfortunate."

Vague warnings to the public, such as those made by Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado were "not good enough," Gravel said.

Before Snowden disclosed the surveillance programs, skeptical senators argued against the 2012 passage of FISA provisions, questioned administration officials about snooping during public hearings and cautioned that Americans would be shocked if they knew the extent of government surveillance – but they did not disclose the programs.

"They're afraid of losing their prestige in the Senate," Gravel said. "That's a clear case and they're the best of the best, think of all the others. It's a clear case of putting your personal ambition above your responsibilities to the people as a leader of the nation."

In 1971 Gravel, then a freshman senator opposed to the Vietnam War, entered the so-called "Pentagon Papers" into the Congressional Record, making the top secret cache of documents public. The action prompted a court battle that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that congressional staffers are also protected by the Speech or Debate Clause.

"Nixon sent the Pentagon Papers to Congress, where the members could read them, but not take notes. I made that process moot by releasing them," Gravel recalled. Before entering the documents into the record, he met leaker Daniel Ellsberg at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., to acquire the records.

Gravel, 83, left office in 1981. He returned to politics with a 2008 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Despite his disappointment in senators who oppose the NSA programs, Gravel's disdain for President Barack Obama is even more apparent.

Obama, he says, is "a total fraud" and should be put on trial for murder by the International Court of Justice, a branch of the United Nations commonly known as the World Court. Gravel is confident that Obama would be found guilty.

"Let the World Court prosecute Obama and Bush for the crimes and murders they've committed," he said. "When you take the whole program of the drones, it's unconscionable the number of people killed innocently."

Gravel sees leakers as an essential part of democracy who are, in his view, unjustly persecuted by tyrants posing as democrats. All three branches of government, he said, collaborated in keeping secret for years the NSA programs exposed by Snowden.

"From my point of view Snowden, Manning and the other whistleblowers are people who are following the law a lot more closely than the people who prosecute them," he says. "If you see a crime being committed you have a responsibility to report it."
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2013/07/09/former-sen-gravel-nsa-leaks-should-have-come-from-senators
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$tinkle

$tinkle

Expert on blowing
Feb 12, 2003
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saw that yesterday, and my only objection is if it scans plates parked on private property (which i assume would include not just residences, but shopping malls & other commerce)
 
syadasti

syadasti

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$tinkle said:
saw that yesterday, and my only objection is if it scans plates parked on private property (which i assume would include not just residences, but shopping malls & other commerce)
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If you don't have an expectation of privacy, you can be recorded in public or private places which is why fly overs, video surveillance, etc are all legal on private property. If they're taken from public locations/airspace were you are provided visual access without trespassing, its no problem too.
 
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$tinkle

$tinkle

Expert on blowing
Feb 12, 2003
14,591
6
syadasti said:
If you don't have an expectation of privacy, you can be recorded in public or private places which is why fly overs, video surveillance, etc are all legal on private property. If they're taken from public locations/airspace were you are provided visual access without trespassing, its no problem too.
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the rub here is this: if (when!) technology advances such that communications can be collected using clever methods that are also legal (or more accurately: not explicitely banned), it's going to simply be an arms race.

so a parabolic mic is a buggy whip in this allegory
 
jonKranked

jonKranked

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also, i think the real issue here isn't that the data is being collected - but how its being stored (specifically retention periods), who has access to it, and what's being done with it.
 
syadasti

syadasti

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jonKranked said:
also, i think the real issue here isn't that the data is being collected - but how its being stored (specifically retention periods), who has access to it, and what's being done with it.
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Exactly. Airplanes, telescopes, and cameras have been in use for over a hundred years now. The laws for flyovers are established.
 
$tinkle

$tinkle

Expert on blowing
Feb 12, 2003
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i'm surprised this do-nothing congress actually held a vote (on what turned out to be a largely symbolic measure)
 
jonKranked

jonKranked

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true, but what's so surprising is how close it was.

[edit] and that the original author of the patriot act is in support of ending the NSA dragnet surveillance
 
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MikeD

MikeD

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Oct 26, 2001
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syadasti said:
If you don't have an expectation of privacy, you can be recorded in public or private places which is why fly overs, video surveillance, etc are all legal on private property. If they're taken from public locations/airspace were you are provided visual access without trespassing, its no problem too.
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It's an interesting time, though, esp. vis-a-vis GPS or other warrantless, potentially universal monitoring.

SCOTUS has generally, and quite reasonably, upheld the constitutionality of law enforcement to be more efficient within its contemporary bounds, but every once in a while, technology changes stuff. (Like when the 4th amendment was re-interpreted to create "reasonable expectation of privacy" in telecommunications and other places/situations external to the home, which are not part of the literalist "secure in their persons and papers" reading of the 4th Amendment)

As of now, the idea that cops can legally follow you in public without need for special permission, just like any member of the public could (say, George Zimmerman, but I digress) has made great sense. The use of a beeper-tracker or the like made them more efficient but didn't change the game. More efficient, but there's still a manpower limitation on what they can do, and they're generally forced to focus limited resources where there is a suspicion of crime.

But if cops can suddenly toss a GPS on every and any car without a warrant, and have electronic systems filter through addresses we all visit, it's suddenly like everybody in America potentially has a cop shadowing them once they leave their front gate. (Or, say, if our license plate numbers were tracked through every intersection we passed through...) If we all had government minders waiting outside our driveways, we'd feel differently about granting the government power to perform public surveillance.

Food for my thought, anyhow. Economies of scale change stuff.
 
syadasti

syadasti

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IH8Rice said:
c'mon, its the u.s. government we're talking about. theyll keep pushing the envelope until they cant...and im sure theyll still go past that point.
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How often is the government ahead of the private sector?
 
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$tinkle

$tinkle

Expert on blowing
Feb 12, 2003
14,591
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related, key escrow in various forms has been widely used for about a decade.

what troubles me most is no one has fixed 'referer' in all this time. smh...
 
syadasti

syadasti

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IH8Rice said:
theyre not. thats why they use people like Snowden to develop and implement what they want/need. the private sector is doing their dirty work
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Its naive to ignore the private sector has been tracking people for longer. Why is that acceptable?
 
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