When Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA was secretly recording massive amounts of data from US citizens, including copies of phone call metadata and online activities, a lot of folks shrugged. "What's the big deal? It helps catch terrorists, right? And what's the worst that can happen, a little embarrassment, right?"

Then it got worse. More documents revealed that the NSA was intercepting enormous amounts of online data, including nearly every email, blog post, online instant messenger session, and more from nearly all Americans.

And some people still shrugged. What's the worst that can happen about that, right?

Well, it has gotten worse.

In new documents just revealed, it turns out that the NSA has been feeding information that it uncovers from this massive surveillance to the Drug Enforcement Agency.

There are just two catch: Federal law forbids the NSA from spying on Americans, and the law says that information that is uncovered without a warrant or probable cause can't be used in court.

So the Federal agents are trained to "re-create probable cause." That is, they turn information over to the DEA, who turns it over to law enforcement, and then if an arrest is made, they make up a phony chain of events to conceal the NSA involvement and to manufacture fake probable cause where none existed.

In one example a DEA agent talked about, the NSA told the DEA to tell local law enforcement to look for a certain truck at a certain time. Local law enforcement was then instructed to make up a reason to pull the truck over and search it. When the search turned up contraband, the traffic stop was used as the probable cause; the judge, the prosecutor, and the defense attorney were not told about the NSA involvement (since that would make the evidence inadmissible in court) and were not told that local police were instructed to make up a reason for the traffic stop.

I'm sure some folks will probably still say that's OK. Federal laws are being broken and the guarantees in the Constitution are being overridden, judges and prosecutors are being misled, and the chain of events in criminal court cases is being fabricated--but it's okay because it's all to catch bad guys, right?

I read that earlier this evening, and really just thought, wtf do we do now? pretty damn scary country this is becoming.

I'm not an American but it seems fairly straightforward to me: If you have evidence of serious wrongdoing in any government agency, you take it to your Senator who cannot be prosecuted for anything her or she says on the record in the Senate.

If you do not believe your Senator will be sympathetic, or if you don't believe you can find any other Senator(s) who will help, you can go to the American Bar Association and, under the protection of attorney/client privilege, ask the ABA to get the information to the Senate.

You do not reveal stolen classified information publicly, allowing the enemies of your country to change their methods of operation and jeopardize the safety of your military and your fellow citizens. I'm sure some folks will probably still say that's OK but, in my opinion, that's treason.

Sorry, I still think there's far more malevolence behind Corporate America's data-gathering efforts. Maybe some realize that, but think, so what?

"Corporate America's data-gathering efforts", generally speaking, don't have the potential of literally taking you out with prejudice.

RE "wtf do we do now?"

The motto of your neighbor to the east answers that question.

Private militias are looking better and better, aren't they?

Yes, that's the answer. The U.S. needs more people like Timothy McVeigh who think that living free means killing innocent Americans 168 at a time.

This is a good example of what I meant in the original Snowden thread with 'as soon as the various datasets and capabilities are linked, there is virtually no privacy left'. In this case the problem is caused by willfully ignoring sensible legal and procedural restrictions by the NSA and other government agencies. In other cases, database combination is (or should be) limited by law for equally important reasons. But breaking or bypassing these restrictions invariably diminish privacy and freedom, of which there is only so much to go around.

Facetious on top of sarcastic. Aye, that's the ticket.

I bet you're rootin' for the Vancouver Island Province Movement.

Another productive way to spend the day.

*scratches head*

Which, exactly, do you imagine are the "enemies" of the country who have "changed their methods of operation"? You've totally lost me.

All our enemies expect the NSA to try to spy on them. That's what the NSA does. That's why they use disposable cell phones and encrypted satellite phones and carry sensitive data around on Flash drives. They know we're listening.

The revelations that the NSA spies on Americans in violation of Federal law is not helpful to our enemies, real or imagined. It doesn't change anything from their perspective. It's not treason; it's just embarrassing. Embarrassing the government by revealing that it is breaking its own laws isn't treason.

I think the word "treason" might better be applied to, oh, I don't know, Federal agents who swear to uphold the law and the Constitution and then violate the law and create phony evidence and fake probable cause to prosecute American citizens. What would you call that?



Wait, what? Corporate data-gatherers can fake evidence in court cases? Since when?

But that's beside the point. Does it matter which is worse? "Look, look, the government is drowning people!" "So what? This company is setting people on fire. That's much worse. Who cares about people being drowned?"

I mean, seriously, is that what you're saying? Ho-hum, it's OK for the Federal government to spy on American citizens and use illegally gathered evidence to fake probable cause in court proceedings, because Google tracking your Web surfing is worse?

You excel at twisting words.

I don't believe that the government has been half as intrusive as business has been. Besides, the government is not trying to defraud and otherwise separate people from their money and possessions. Having been a target in an AT&T saturation telemarketing effort that lasted close to 2 years, I can attest that business's intentions are far from benevolent. And if that's not enough, they're making all kinds of money off our information.

Do I like government surveillance? Not particularly, but I do have all kinds of issues with companies' violation of my privacy, which impacts me much more so than the NSA.

Haha. Good one. No, I like the idea of being able to travel off the island, which would be a bit difficult if the Provincial Government was to pack up and take the ferry system with them.

I would call that your cue to do something meaningful about it if you really feel so strongly. You have a keyboard, you have a talent for assembling words, and you have representatives in government to whom you can write with your concerns. And, of course, there are still plenty of Op Ed pages in the U.S..

Two American ISPs (Lavabit and Silent Circle) have announced they are shutting down and laying off all their workers, because they have been hit by NSA subpoenas that also have gag orders attached to them so they are not even allowed to talk about it.

Gag orders have become a government tactic to perform searches and seizures without the person or company being searched being permitted to talk about the search, or even reveal that a search has been done. These gag orders were originally used to prevent someone from tipping off a supposed "terrorist" that the government was using an investigation, but more and more often they are being used to prevent a person or company from being able to mount a defense in court, to examine probable cause for a search, or even to see the search warrant. (The Fourth Amendment prohibits this, and the Supreme Court has ruled on several occasions that such gag orders violate the First Amendment as well, but that doesn't seem to matter.)

On top of that, the NSA spying is beginning to hurt the US economy. According to a report issued by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation called "How Much Will PRISM Cost the US Cloud Computing Industry?", US-based cloud storage companies and ISPs will lose about $20 billion to $35 billion in revenue over the next 2-3 years as US companies stop using them in favor of cloud hosting companies outside the US.

Cloud storage companies in the US are subject to warrantless NSA spying and to gag orders preventing the companies from informing their customers that their information has been released to the NSA. US companies, concerned about the number of NSA government contractors with easy access to the information, are worried about losing trade secrets and other proprietary information, and so are no longer using US-based ISPs and providers.

But naah, it's all to catch terrorists, and it won't really affect anyone but terrorists, right?

Meanwhile, the Washington Post recently ran an interesting article that points out statistically, you are more likely to be killed by a toddler than a terrorist.

Yep, you read that right. Even factoring in 9/11 and the Boston bombings, you are:

- 1,048 times more likely to be killed in a car accident than by a terrorist.

- 404 times more likely to be killed by slipping and falling than by a terrorist.

- 12 times more likely to accidentally suffocate under your covers in your bed than be killed by a terrorist.

- 8 times more likely to be accidentally killed by a police officer than by a terrorist.

- 3 times more likely to be accidentally killed by a toddler than by a terrorist.

Can someone explain to me why we are so scared of terrorists that we are willing to turn the rule of law and the US constitution into toilet paper, spy on our own citizens, cost American businesses billions of dollars in revenue, and ignore the US Supreme Court just to "fight terrorism"?

AFAIK, Silent Circle hasn't received any NSA subpoenas or gag orders yet, but decided to discontinue their Silent Mail service anyway, so their clientele can transition before Silent Circle is treated to the full Monty. Beyond that, I fully agree with your assessment of the situation. It's plain crazy, but unfortunately nothing new in the US: I'm sure it's been said before that the current anti-terrorism hysteria has had predecessors in the Red Scares, but it bears repeating. The one 'positive' thing in all this is perhaps the fact that the current attack on privacy and freedom is not discriminatory, but hits everybody equally. I guess that's progress, of sorts...

According to The New York Times —
"Bits Blog: 2 E-Mail Services Close and Destroy Data Rather Than Reveal Files"

Today's dilbert puts not to fine a point on where the NSA likes to stick its head.
(Today is also the 68th anniversary of VJ Day.)

fwiw, here's a link to the actual date of the strip grel found, instead of a link to today's strip.

It's not just the NSA that's involved. Big Brother is alive and well. The Border Is a Back Door for U.S. Device Searches

Your link takes me to a blank page, Jon.

It works for me (I just tested it out). Try a different browser. Your problems with Safari may be deeper than you think.

Works now; I guess I hit a momentary glitch.

I have to admit, it's clever. "We want to search so-and-so's computer, but there is no legal justification for it, no probable cause, and we could never in a million years get a judge to sign off on it. So we'll just flag him in the border crossing computer and hope he leaves the country. When he comes back, we can search him without a warrant!"

I have looked into what it would take to move to Canada. The partner I live with would have no problem; she has a master's degree in engineering, which qualifies her for fast-track status. She could have a Canadian residency visa in three days. I, alas, lack any of the qualifications.

On the other hand, moving to Canada might have unanticipated consequences. If you ± partner still had significant ties to the US and were wont to border hop, the significant downside of your first paragraph would quickly become apparent.

Even if you chose to never again to travel to the States, merely stopping there in transit would place you in jeopardy (via DHS's TECS system and Advance Passenger Information System), assuming you ± partner were "person(s) of interest".

NSA Gathers Data on Social Connections of US Citizens

You still think you're safe?!

This makes TV's "Person of Interest" a reality show.

Whether you're plotting a terrorist attack, having a dalliance of one sort or another or just chatting harmlessly online or otherwise, the NSA's analysts (and others) are getting off on your peccadilloes. And the next time you enter the good ol' US of A, you can be treated to the pleasure of a cavity + electronic device search. Ain't it grand?!

Land of the free and home of the brave. Not so much.

Say hi to George Orwell the next time you see him.

New Snowden revelation: NSA collects millions of email and chat address books

The article you linked to came on the same day Glenn Greenwald (who published materials leaked by Snowden in The Guardian) announced that he was leaving The Guardian for a 'once-in-a-career dream journalistic opportunity' creating a new and large scale news organization. The day before Greenwald had stated that the worst [of the Snowden leaks] was yet to come. One wonders about possible links between the two...

In this context it's interesting to note that earlier today the French daily Le Monde published Snowden-sourced data indicating that the NSA had collected metadata from about 70 million French phone calls during a single month about a year ago. This article also shed light on the nature of 1.8 million Dutch phone calls intercepted by the NSA last year, a number derived from a graph published by the German Spiegel weekly this summer. The official French reaction was markedly muted, perhaps because the French (like the British) operate similar data collection programs. The Dutch were less amused, presumably because they are/were not. Be that as it may, these latest revelations don't yet qualify as 'the worst', suggesting it could be worthwhile to keep (y)our eyes/ears peeled for more.

Today, British daily The Guardian published NSA Files: Decoded, an impressive interactive summary of much that has become known about the NSA data collection activity. Recommended reading for anyone interested in the topic.

In the past year the public got proof positive of the fact that the US government (and several other national governments) had effectively usurped internet privacy, and with that, privacy in general. Rights and freedoms that once were considered inviolate turned out to be anything but. The justifications for these actions don't matter much; suffice it so say that Macchiavelli would have approved, to the chagrin of founding fathers all over.

In the wake of this news, many started or resumed work on measures to curb this increasingly virulent Big Brotherism. Today, some of those hard workers made the status of their efforts public, and provided more detail and background information. I consider it an appropriate and timely Christmas present, and for all of you who think likewise: have a look yourselves!

(Looking over shoulder...) Merry Christmas!

NSA worked on iPhone spyware to remotely monitor users, leaked documents show

EDIT: Another development is shown in Apple Says It Is ‘Unaware’ of N.S.A. iPhone Hack Program.

Earlier today my son noticed that the clocks on his Macs were running seriously slow, having rolled over to 1984. Coincidence?

NY Times editorial: Edward Snowden, Whistle-Blower.

Will 2014 stop the slide? Who knows, but awareness precedes action. Academics Against Mass Surveillance.

Still like your iPhone (or other smartphone)?

Spy Agencies Tap Data Streaming From Phone Apps

Wow. The hits keep on rollin'.

For those few folks who are still gullible enough to believe the NSA is doing all this to "PROTECT!!!!!" us from the "TERRORISTS!!!", it turns out the NSA is involved in corporate espionage, too...spying on American law firms, no less.

Power corrupts.

For those of you who want to keep abreast of developments around Snowden's revelations and don't yet know about Glenn Greenwald's new publishing venue, The Intercept is a worthwhile site to visit regularly.

Revelations of N.S.A. Spying Cost U.S. Tech Companies. Since we have the best government that money can buy, something now will be done because NSA spying is bad for the bottom line, not to mention campaign contributions.

Beyond the occasional media summary it's hard to keep track of what Snowden has released so far, and for those of you who are interested delving into one or the other document, here's some help. The ACLU started The NSA Archive, a web site containing all documents obtained by Edward Snowden and released since June 5, 2013. The database can be searched in a variety of ways, and the results sorted by type and area of surveillance. The archive will be updated as new materials become available.

Last night PBS aired the first part of United States of Secrets, a two-part FRONTLINE documentary about the NSA surveillance program that reversed decades of US government policy on privacy. For those who missed it, the documentary can be viewed online on this page, which also provides background information. This first part details the history of the surveillance program, and how knowledge of its existence and extent reached those outside of it.

The second part will be shown next week, and focus on how the NSA obtained (and continues to obtain) its surveillance data.

No Place to Hide: Monumentally important book shines a spotlight on the surveillance state:

No Place to Hide : Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State (Glenn Greenwald, 2014)

Signaling Post-Snowden Era, New iPhone Locks Out N.S.A.

FBI director: New privacy protection in Android and iOS "allow[s] people to to place themselves beyond the law," complains "The notion that someone would market a closet that could never be opened -- even if it involves a case involving a child kidnapper and a court order -- to me does not make any sense."

J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon (plus a lot of others) would have put the same spin on this. The Founding Fathers understood that mentality all too well, which is why we have the Fourth Amendment.

It appears the name of the thread can have Son of Samsung added. According to this broadcaster's report Samsung can listen to conversations you have in your home, using the microphone intended to change channels by voice command.

It seems Samsung does state in their privacy policy that viewers should be aware that "personal or other sensitive" conversations "will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party" through the voice-recognition technology.

Hmmmm. I wonder how many consumers think they need to read a "privacy policy" when they purchase a television.

In Soviet Russia, (are we there yet?) TV watches YOU

It seems to me that the media aren't asking enough questions about this.

Taking a simple-minded approach, (and those more technically literate can correct any errors) the television needs a voiced instruction to change the channels. I assume that it compares the voice command to incoming data in order to make the right channel-changing decision.

I'm okay with all of that.

However, I wonder why circuits would be designed and installed that route the microphone's output anywhere other than to the device that makes the voice/data comparison.

Although my approach was a bit tongue in cheek, I did think this belongs in the discussion about spying.

If the moderators think this should be a new thread, okay by me. A good title might be "Television to Worry About"

Doing natural language processing is still a very difficult task, especially in situations where you don't first "train" the computer to recognize your voice, and/or where there's a noisy background.

We can't yet do untrained language recognition in a TV or cell phone. So when you use Siri or Cortana or a voice-operated TV, your voice is recorded and uploaded to a huge server farm for analysis and processing, and the results are sent back down to the device. That's why Siri won't work if you don't have an Internet connection, and it's why this TV uploads everything you say to company servers.

Well, that sure let's the air out of the conspiracy balloon.

Thanks for the explanation. I hadn't thought about or made that connection relative to Siri (although I've yet had occasion to use Siri anyway) but it is good to know.

If it's all as benign as tacit has implied, why doesn't Samsung flat-out say so?

The implications of "third party" fly in the face of benignity!

You don't generally roll your own high quality offsite voice processing and recognition. You farm it out to someone else. Apple is a bit of an exception, since they more-or-less pioneered offsite VR.

(it wouldn't surprise me if Sony farmed it out TO Apple)

They did, in pretty much the same way Apple addressed similar accusations about iPhone localization tracking etc. in the past (scroll down to 'voice recognition'). I’m sure they’ll do more to explain things, just as I’m sure that there will be many people who’ll continue to believe what they like to believe, regardless of ‘the facts’. Still the issue is an increasingly important one, but one that goes beyond the mere sending of potentially sensitive data to ‘third parties’.

In fact Apple bought out another company to get their VR technology so it could be used in Siri and Dictate.

Nuance's Dragon Naturally Speaking is just about the only surviving VR that actually runs on a Mac or PC and that requires a lot of "training" to get acceptably accurate translation and can cost anywhere from $150 to $999 depending on the extent of the vocabulary. (That cost includes the headset microphone needed to get the best voice quality for VR.)

but that "other company" wasn't doing offsite VR were they?

Thanks for putting that quote back into its context and clearing up at least the immediate issue.

Edit: Is instructing a TV so complicated that a very basic, multi-user piece of built-in software with a minimal number of preset (only) commands couldn't do the job? (The last TV I owned was a 12" B&W over 30 years ago; I'm not quite up to date. )

The issue emerged with the advent of Samsung’s audio-capable smart remotes, which allow the user to speak commands in a way Siri users are familiar with. This functionality requires processing beyond the TV’s (or iPhones’) capabilities, a problem solved by remotely processing the requests. This solution gave rise to the privacy problem, perceived or not.

The trick, whether it is instructing a television set, or dictating the "Great American Novel" is not so much in recognizing a limited command set as it is in being able to correctly interpret the various regional, racial, ethnic, native language accents, pronunciation, intonations, voice patterns, [i]etc//i]. Even gender can make a difference. AFIK Dragon Naturally Speaking is about the only consumer grade VR software that runs on a Mac or PC and it costs anywhere from $150 to $999 depending on the complexity of the vocabulary.

I understand the problem with Siri, which you're liable to ask virtually anything, but I was thinking that the command set for a TV is limited enough that minimal, built-in, multi-user software with ([i]) "n" commands, and "this" is how each user speaks each one, would make remote access, even interpretation, unnecessary.

Samsung has clarified its terms and conditions to say that it has a contract with a voice recognition company called Nuance Communications, Inc to handle its voice recognition. This si the "third party" that gets access to the spoken commands for the TV.

The problem with doing the VR on the device is that even if you have only a limited set of spoken commands, you still have to process all the speech you hear in order to figure out whether it contains any of those commands. That, as it turns out, is surprisingly tricky to do. The processing power scales not with the number of commands but rather with how flexible you want to be in recognizing them--it's one thing to recognize a dozen words from a single person in a quiet room with no background noise after training, and quite another to recognize a dozen words spoken by anyone in any pitch or accent in a place with variable background noise. A lot of the processing happens before you even get to the point of recognizing the words--removing noise, normalizing frequency, that sort of thing.

Thanks for the explanation.

I was thinking "little", in the sense that each user would say "user n", followed by "up", "down", or "sideways"...speaking clearly, and, hopefully, in a room that's not very noisy, i.e. virtually zero flexibility required.

Hardly high-tech, but it still seems possible.

Even if there were some dollar cost involved aside from the "overhead", I'll guess that many would pay to avoid the alternative.

FYI Nuance Communications is the developer of Dragon Naturally Speaking that I mentioned.

Several years ago there were dozens of developers, including IBM with its very deep pockets and massive computing power, working on natural language voice recognition and spending many millions on developing the technology. The field has since narrowed down to a very few and rather than becoming more common and less expensive such systems remain uncommon and very expensive. A testament to the difficulty of the task. Dragon Naturally Speaking requires hours to train the software to recognize the speakers voice patterns and the speaker must learn to speak in a way the software understands and at that 90% accuracy is considered average comprehension.

Can we really trust the NSA? Will they surreptitiously do bulk collections of metadata without authorization? How will we know? National Security Agency's bulk phone metadata collection program to sunset on June 1

If by "trust" you mean "an accurate belief in the actions of another," I think we can trust the NSA. We can trust them to collect data wherever and however they can, with or without authorization. I think we can count on them to operate with casual disregard for the law. I think we can trust them to continue doing exactly what they've been doing even if the legal pretext they had for doing it is no longer available. So in that sense, do I trust them? Absolutely. I have high confidence I can reliably predict what they're going to do.

I have to agree with tacit. But on the chance of sounding political, things also depend on your point of view. Where it wasn’t expertly ambiguous, the NSA has proven to be reliably unreliable in its public comments on its activities, so the answer for the public has to be: absolutely not. From the point of view of government agencies tasked with ‘maintaining’ national security, the answer may very well be: absolutely! I strongly suspect that the ‘philosophy’ underlying surreptitious activities without authorization won’t change, and if it isn’t one argument that supposedly justifies it, it’ll be another. Again, and for good or for bad, the only thing you can be sure of is that no official answer to any such question will ever be fully trustworthy, reliable or complete. Unfortunately, you don’t need to be a conspiracy buff to feel that way.

Btw, that also applies to sunset provisions in national security related legislation. They are somewhat of a boondoggle, since they have rarely if ever worked as the public is led to believe. History shows that such laws don’t ’expire’ but tend to get back on the books by majority votes, with the tacit understanding that if ever something happens that just might have been prevented by the laws in question, the blame would squarely fall on those who vote(d) against it. So rather than reassure, such provisions should give one pause.

Pun intended?

Yes? (Sufficiently ambiguous?)

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden collaborates on ultra-secure iPhone case