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Author Topic: RING RING RING TAP YOUR PHONE  (Read 16952 times)

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Mongrel

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Re: Re: Culture Wars
« Reply #60 on: June 09, 2013, 04:44:31 AM »

Yeah, I definitely took that away as well - that a lot of people who aren't even really that old have drastically underestimated the power of modern data-mining tools (and how quickly they grow in power).

But it IS relevant to point out that most law enforcement is still working with that idea, that the real "meat" is in the actual phone calls themselves. The goalposts are shifting and we need very much to discuss where the new line will be drawn.
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Mongrel

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Re: Re: Culture Wars
« Reply #61 on: June 09, 2013, 06:56:33 AM »

A sobering profile of the whistleblower

This is a hell of a thing.

Arguably, he's revealing himself now because self-preservation, but even so, he'd better be careful not to crush any agents tailing him with those boulders danging between his legs. 
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Mongrel

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Re: Re: Culture Wars
« Reply #62 on: June 09, 2013, 07:06:17 AM »

Also, this is probably going to merit a threadsplit. Or perhaps a splitmerge.
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Classic

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Re: Re: Culture Wars
« Reply #63 on: June 09, 2013, 07:11:12 AM »

Huh. Rather more optimistic than I'd have thought.
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Rico

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Re: RING RING RING TAP YOUR PHONE
« Reply #64 on: June 10, 2013, 10:32:18 AM »

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Classic

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Re: RING RING RING TAP YOUR PHONE
« Reply #65 on: June 10, 2013, 10:47:47 AM »

Fix?
http://www.zdnet.com/the-real-story-in-the-nsa-scandal-is-the-collapse-of-journalism-7000016570/ ]Pretty good breakdown of the Post's lack of integrity in rushing the PRISM story to press with huge amounts of unresearched conjecture.
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Thad

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Ted Belmont

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Re: RING RING RING TAP YOUR PHONE
« Reply #67 on: June 12, 2013, 12:44:31 AM »

Seriously, for a guy whose entire job is pretty much about lying, he's really terrible at it. I saw an interview with him the other day, and he never once looked straight at the camera or the person who was interviewing him. It was like he was just making it up there on the spot.
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Smiler

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Re: RING RING RING TAP YOUR PHONE
« Reply #68 on: June 12, 2013, 03:33:17 AM »

I really like how in some news reports they are turning the Snowden thing into "WHY WAS AN UNEDUCATED GUY GIVEN TOP SECRET INFORMATION!?" as if we don't let college dropouts become senators.
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Büge

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Re: RING RING RING TAP YOUR PHONE
« Reply #69 on: June 12, 2013, 03:56:58 AM »

Or let cokeheads become president.
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Rico

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Re: RING RING RING TAP YOUR PHONE
« Reply #70 on: June 12, 2013, 04:04:29 AM »

Seriously, for a guy whose entire job is pretty much about lying, he's really terrible at it. I saw an interview with him the other day, and he never once looked straight at the camera or the person who was interviewing him. It was like he was just making it up there on the spot.
I call this the Xbone effect; a train wreck caused by complete surprise about there being outrage.
"Sure, all this stuff is pretty fucked up, but you can play Madden it's for fighting terrorism. What? That worked for the last 12 years!"
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Thad

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Re: RING RING RING TAP YOUR PHONE
« Reply #71 on: June 12, 2013, 04:00:40 PM »

I really like how in some news reports they are turning the Snowden thing into "WHY WAS AN UNEDUCATED GUY GIVEN TOP SECRET INFORMATION!?" as if we don't let college dropouts become senators.

Yeah, I'd noticed that -- and it's the inevitable result of what I'm talking about, about making the story about the messenger instead of the message.

It IS interesting that the worst thing they've been able to dig up on Snowden is that he doesn't have a college degree.  It's rather a less effective smear than all the stuff about Manning's gender identity.  On the whole it seems like Snowden did take a good long look at Manning and did everything he could to avoid those pitfalls -- disclosing a limited, carefully-selected sample of information to respected media outlets, and outing himself rather than waiting to get caught, to name the major examples.

I caught the lede of Diane Rehm's show this morning and was worried for a second that she was falling into the same "Is Snowden a hero or a traitor?" nonsense, but from what I heard it sounded like she was asking the much more important GENERAL question of what the difference is, legally and ethically, between blowing the whistle and compromising national security.  That, of course, IS a worthwhile issue to consider -- and it calls attention TO the material he disclosed instead of distracting away from it, because the nature of the disclosure is integral to the question.
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Büge

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Mongrel

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Thad

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Re: RING RING RING TAP YOUR PHONE
« Reply #74 on: June 15, 2013, 05:57:26 PM »

AP: Secret to Prism program: Even bigger data seizure

Ars: Details emerge about PRISM, big tech companies release data request reports

Quote
After Facebook, Google, and Apple among other companies issued blanket refutations of that "direct access" claim, it was difficult to parse what PRISM really entailed. This morning, however, the AP published a long article with more details about how that program works.

The AP interviewed "more than a dozen current and former government and technology officials and outside experts," all of whom confirmed that PRISM was more of a mechanism to hone the waterhose of data that the NSA has been gathering. In fact, the AP reports that the NSA is tapping directly into international fiber optic cables and collecting all that information. PRISM, on the other hand, is used to “narrow and focus” that massive stream of information. Once the NSA decides on a target, it will contact Internet companies like Facebook and Google to pinpoint the suspect.

Haven't gone through the whole piece yet but if I read that right, it suggests they don't really need the companies' compliance at all unless there's encrypted information they want to access.

So if you're using HTTPS connections wherever possible (friendly reminder: EFF offers an extension for Firefox and Chrome that will always request HTTPS if available), they'll be able to see what sites you're visiting but not what information you're sending through them.  Useful for private messages on social networking sites and the like; they probably won't see your private messages on those sites unless you're specifically targeted for some other reason.

If you combine HTTPS Everywhere with a VPN, that'll make it harder for them to monitor what sites you're accessing as well as what you're doing on them.

As far as E-Mail, though: realistically, you're pretty much fucked.  E-Mail is based on a series of 30-year-old standards and has no built-in mechanism for encryption; even if you store your E-Mails on an encrypted server (or delete them from the server when you download them, though that's becoming a less and less feasible option in an age where most people access their E-Mail from multiple devices) they're still cleartext in transit.  And if you're storing E-Mail on a server you don't personally control, well, it's far too trivial for law enforcement to get incredibly broad warrants to access everything in your inbox.  (While, as I noted, fewer and fewer people are downloading their mail and then deleting it from the server, the laws were written when that was common practice, and give a lot more leeway to access months- or even years-old E-Mail still stored on a server than they would if they'd been written with the assumption that everybody's entire E-Mail history would be stored server-side in perpetuity.)

And if you're not sending in cleartext, if you want to actually communicate via encrypted E-Mail, well, the recipient has to have the same encryption software set up on their computer too.  If you really want your E-Mail to be secure, you're going to have to get every single person you correspond with to go along with it.

Depressingly, your private communications on Facebook and Google+ are probably more private than if you're using SMTP and POP/IMAP (or using Webmail which acts as a frontend to SMTP and POP/IMAP).
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Rico

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Re: RING RING RING TAP YOUR PHONE
« Reply #75 on: June 17, 2013, 05:57:57 PM »

Snowden answers questions.

A couple answers that particularly resonate with me:
"Journalists should ask a specific question: since these programs began operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicionless surveillance that could not be gained via any other source? Then ask how many individual communications were ingested to acheive that, and ask yourself if it was worth it. Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it."

" Unfortunately, the mainstream media now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history."
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Thad

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Re: RING RING RING TAP YOUR PHONE
« Reply #76 on: June 18, 2013, 02:23:39 AM »

"Journalists should ask a specific question: since these programs began operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicionless surveillance that could not be gained via any other source? Then ask how many individual communications were ingested to acheive that, and ask yourself if it was worth it. Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it."

I've used that one, almost verbatim, in criticism of the TSA.  It's a good one and more people should be thinking in terms like those.
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Mongrel

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Re: RING RING RING TAP YOUR PHONE
« Reply #77 on: June 20, 2013, 06:49:11 AM »

FBI admits that obeying the consitution just takes too much gosh darn time.

Well consarn it, what a pickle!

Also, I heard in the news on the way to work that they've admitted to using drones to do domestic surveillance, but I don't actually think that news is new?
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Thad

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Re: RING RING RING TAP YOUR PHONE
« Reply #78 on: June 20, 2013, 03:53:29 PM »

Haven't gone through the whole piece yet but if I read that right, it suggests they don't really need the companies' compliance at all unless there's encrypted information they want to access.

Of course, if you DO use encryption, the NSA will use that in and of itself as justification for spying on you.
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François

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Re: RING RING RING TAP YOUR PHONE
« Reply #79 on: June 23, 2013, 12:55:41 AM »

Snowden was flown out of Hong Kong by Wikileaks people on an Aeroflot plane earlier today. He's gonna land in Moscow first, but that's not his final destination; apparently he might find asylum in Iceland.

Check out this press release from the Hong Kong government. Juiciest bits on there:

Quote
Mr Edward Snowden left Hong Kong today (June 23) on his own accord for a third country through a lawful and normal channel. [...] The HKSAR Government has already informed the US Government of Mr Snowden's departure.

     Meanwhile, the HKSAR Government has formally written to the US Government requesting clarification on earlier reports about the hacking of computer systems in Hong Kong by US government agencies. The HKSAR Government will continue to follow up on the matter so as to protect the legal rights of the people of Hong Kong.

oh snap son look at the brass ones on hong kong
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