More details on just how the NSA collects data: with screenshots!

[c1ue]

Looks like Clapper et al are going to get caught lying again...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...am-online-data

US officials vehemently denied this specific claim. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said of Snowden's assertion: "He's lying. It's impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do."


But training materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed.

...


Analysts can also search by name, telephone number, IP address, keywords, the language in which the internet activity was conducted or the type of browser used.

...

A slide entitled "plug-ins" in a December 2012 document describes the various fields of information that can be searched. It includes "every email address seen in a session by both username and domain", "every phone number seen in a session (eg address book entries or signature block)" and user activity – "the webmail and chat activity to include username, buddylist, machine specific cookies etc".

...


Beyond emails, the XKeyscore system allows analysts to monitor a virtually unlimited array of other internet activities, including those within social media.

An NSA tool called DNI Presenter, used to read the content of stored emails, also enables an analyst using XKeyscore to read the content of Facebook chats or private messages.

An analyst can monitor such Facebook chats by entering the Facebook user name and a date range into a simple search screen.

...

The XKeyscore program also allows an analyst to learn the IP addresses of every person who visits any website the analyst specifies.

...

William Binney, a former NSA mathematician, said last year that the agency had "assembled on the order of 20tn transactions about US citizens with other US citizens", an estimate, he said, that "only was involving phone calls and emails". A 2010 Washington Post article reported that "every day, collection systems at the [NSA] intercept and store 1.7bn emails, phone calls and other type of communications."

Much more at link above

[vt]

Re: More details on just how the NSA collects data: with screenshots!

Google or the NSA monitoring your computer tells the authorities if you look up pressure cookers and backpacks. A team of up to six cops then visit your home and conduct a search. How much futher will the police state go?

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/natio...Xy7zQ.facebook

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: More details on just how the NSA collects data: with screenshots!

Google or the NSA monitoring your computer tells the authorities if you look up pressure cookers and backpacks. A team of up to six cops then visit your home and conduct a search. How much futher will the police state go?

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/natio...Xy7zQ.facebook

That event is just an awful, bumbling, ham-fisted mess.

Here is the first-hand account by the lady of the house, a writer with more than a million twitter followers
http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...oogle-searches

It's a perfect example of why the 4th amendment says this:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized"

I cannot see any way this event was not a full violation of those people's 4th amendment rights.
I doubt there was anything special about these folk out on Long Island, and I assume the same authorities are looking at both me and you right now.

[shiny!]

Re: More details on just how the NSA collects data: with screenshots!

That event is just an awful, bumbling, ham-fisted mess.

Here is the first-hand account by the lady of the house, a writer with more than a million twitter followers
http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...oogle-searches

It's a perfect example of why the 4th amendment says this:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized"

I cannot see any way this event was not a full violation of those people's 4th amendment rights.
I doubt there was anything special about these folk out on Long Island, and I assume the same authorities are looking at both me and you right now.

My first reaction to stories like this is usually fear. How can I avoid having them coming down on me for no reason? I better be more careful in what I say, in what I read on the internet. Contract myself in fear. I'm probably not alone in this reaction. It's the one that the government wants us to have.

My second reaction is anger. And my third reaction is a desire to end this police state and restore our liberty. How?

Every American every day should spend several minutes googling for backpacks, pressure cookers, guns, ammo, instructions on how to build incendiary devices, you name it. Speak these keywords in every phone call, on every twitter. Whatever words set off alarm bells at the NSA, we should flood their data collection with so much noise that they can't deal with it. They can pick us off one by one, but they can't send six guys to interview every person and search every home in the country.

We need an official "Flood the NSA Day" for everyone to jump in at once, then keep it up until they give up. To be effective, don't just click on a site and then click away. Drill down, click on several pages, spend some time there. Make it look real. They want data on us? Let's give it to them in spades.

[Adeptus]

Re: More details on just how the NSA collects data: with screenshots!

Today I've watched the 2.5 hour video of the...
United States Senate "Hearing on Strengthening Privacy Rights and National Security: Oversight of FISA, Surveillance Programs"
VIDEO: http://www.senate.gov/isvp/?comm=jud...udiciary073113

At around 1hr:32 mins into the video, a question is asked where a mere 300 American citizens being queried in one year, due to the "3 hop" reach-ability allowance (basically, friend of a friend of a friend), may actually lead to a theoretical maximum of 600 million phone records being investigated - which might explain NSA's requesting access to ALL of Verizon's phone records (and AT&T's and possibly other's) phone records... for the past 6 years! So with 600 million x 6 years, what are the odds that most American citizens haven't already been investigated to one degree or another? Or as Mr.Durbin put it...

"It seems to me that what's being described as a very narrow program [a mere 300 phone records], is in fact a very broad program [3.6 BILLION phone records]".

Another major testimony of interest is at 2:12:55 where Jamel Jaffer from the American Civil Liberties Union outstandingly identifies most of the critical issues in a mere 3 minutes. Very much worth listening to. I'd write the entire thing here, but am hoping a video or transcript will appear on the net soon.

Questions I didn't hear asked:
1) If it is true that you have limited the number of people that can perform queries against the various secret databases containing all the "meta" data to a mere 22 people (in the NSA?), then why is there a need to hire a 3rd party corporation like the one Swoden was working for and also give them access to these surveillance tools?
2) Why are we framing questions about access to "only" meta data when in fact, when one combines all the various NSA tools, including external 3rd party's data (i.e. Telcos, Google, Facebook, Skype, etc) it is clearly evident that payload information (actual content of a user's telephone call, internet search words, chats, SMS etc) can be and have been acquired and used?
3) Can the NSA and/or all the various surveillance parties used to perform terrorism investigations confirm that payload information of American citizens is not in fact stored (regardless of who stores it or where) so as to be able to be retrieved at a later time? And if this is not true in the present, is this not part of the surveillance roadmap to acquire such capabilities in the near future (i.e. NSA Utah 2Billion $$ data center)?


I hope there's more of these government public committee discussions, as a mere 2.5 hours ins't enough to ask all the tough questions necessary. Aside from 2 or 3 speakers, the first of which also did make a few good points (although he was against Snowden's whistleblower acts which exposed the NSA and triggered this debate in the first place) , it seems several others appear to merely attempt to justify and continue to recommend the existing programs with at most, only the slightest of alterations so as to seemingly pretend that 'something' is being done to address the concerns of the citizenry.

Ironically, in this age of the Internet we're watching you too. The Internet does not forget.
"Obama 2007 vs Obama 2013 - NSA, FISA, and Patriot Act"

It should be noted that these NSA programs are also only functional so long as people do not encrypt and proxy their internet activities (excluding Facebook, Google, Youtube, Gmail, etc - whose user data seems to be freely granted to government 3 letter agencies, regardless of the fact you may have been reaching those sites with secure SSL connections). Having said that, I have no doubts the NSA and other such agencies already have at least partial access to decrypt encrypted internet access, and eventually with quantum computers, existing encryption will be useless... until all citizenry is themselves using quantum computers and related future privacy tools... at which point, the NSA will be a completely useless entity... but that reality may still be 15-30 years out, until then use caution, because whilst what you are doing today online may be legal and so "if you are doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about"; if collected and stored permanently into the future, if a law down the road changes under a more totalitarian government, you may in fact be proven guilty and charged.

[c1ue]

Re: More details on just how the NSA collects data: with screenshots!

The worst part from my view:

One hundred times a week, groups of six armed men drive to houses in three black SUVs, conducting consented-if-casual searches of the property perhaps in part because of things people looked up online.

One hundred times a week? Really?

[shiny!]

Re: More details on just how the NSA collects data: with screenshots!

Encryption, proxies, none of that will do any good. Smarter mice only beget smarter mousetraps. Thus my idea of simply flooding the NSA with so much noise that it all becomes meaningless.

[Adeptus]

Re: More details on just how the NSA collects data: with screenshots!

Encryption, proxies, none of that will do any good. Smarter mice only beget smarter mousetraps. Thus my idea of simply flooding the NSA with so much noise that it all becomes meaningless.

AI software will make sense of it. Not unlike how google can make sense of the entire Internet and provide you with relevant results based on the most simplistic of queries. Or how companies like cloudflare.com or prolexic.com can make sense and successfully filter out massive DDOS data flood attacks by millions of botnets targeting a single destination with random data or even data that attempts to look real.

[vt]

Re: More details on just how the NSA collects data: with screenshots!

"One hundred times a week"

Remember this is six armed police in one area of the country. How many other locales is this being repeated in? 50, 100, 500?

Maybe this is why response time of local police departments is longer; they're tied up looking for backpacks!

How many bomb making factories were found? Would time or effort be better spent on using other intelligence and not invading the privacy of innocent Americans.

[c1ue]

Re: More details on just how the NSA collects data: with screenshots!

The worst part from my view:

One hundred times a week, groups of six armed men drive to houses in three black SUVs, conducting consented-if-casual searches of the property perhaps in part because of things people looked up online.

One hundred times a week? Really?

An update to the original article notes that it wasn't the FBI, it was a 'local' Long Island law enforcement/anti-terror operation doing this.

If a 'local' anti-terror operation is performing this operation 100 times a week, this seems even worse.

[reggie]

Re: More details on just how the NSA collects data: with screenshots!

Of course these systems are architected to insert its users in a fish bowl. But what a ridiculously inefficient way to create and analyze intelligence. It's pretty damn irresponsible to be posting this stuff without any real understanding of how the systems actually are employed in real life, as the following quoted post illustrates.

My first reaction to stories like this is usually fear. How can I avoid having them coming down on me for no reason? I better be more careful in what I say, in what I read on the internet. Contract myself in fear. I'm probably not alone in this reaction. It's the one that the government wants us to have.

My second reaction is anger. And my third reaction is a desire to end this police state and restore our liberty. How?

Every American every day should spend several minutes googling for backpacks, pressure cookers, guns, ammo, instructions on how to build incendiary devices, you name it. Speak these keywords in every phone call, on every twitter. Whatever words set off alarm bells at the NSA, we should flood their data collection with so much noise that they can't deal with it. They can pick us off one by one, but they can't send six guys to interview every person and search every home in the country.

We need an official "Flood the NSA Day" for everyone to jump in at once, then keep it up until they give up. To be effective, don't just click on a site and then click away. Drill down, click on several pages, spend some time there. Make it look real. They want data on us? Let's give it to them in spades.

Of course this material is meant to engender FEAR as it's first reaction. FEAR is an essential element in all propaganda, for fear laced communications cause the brain to by-pass its cognitive processing centers and direct the incoming communication directly to the Amygdala, where communications are stored unalyzed. Ssimilar communications in the future will create and build-upon this fear based emotional response, with the target individual unable to control their own emotional response. This works no matter how IRRATIONAL the inputs, or no matter how "intelligent" the indivdiual, because cognition is bypassed during the inbound signal.

And posters like the O.P. add to this fear by presenting this material without the appropriate level of analysis, understanding, and framing. It's disgusting..... for it distributes the goal of the intended material to a wider audience, rather than diffuse it.

[leegs]

Re: More details on just how the NSA collects data: with screenshots!

Reggie do I understand correctly that it is your assertion that these systems (NSA) are in fact not really that effective, and perhaps not even intended to be, but rather that the objective of them is primarily to promote fear, and subsequently subservience? And that having the existence of these systems 'leaked' is part of the plan?

[reggie]

Re: More details on just how the NSA collects data: with screenshots!

Reggie do I understand correctly that it is your assertion that these systems (NSA) are in fact not really that effective, and perhaps not even intended to be, but rather that the objective of them is primarily to promote fear, and subsequently subservience? And that having the existence of these systems 'leaked' is part of the plan?

The goal is to create the perfect intelligence system in order to manage the social in totality. The best way to achieve this is to create a system where intelligence is known in advance, and even directed, across the masses. Hence the perfect system does not simply involve the gathering of intelligence across millions of human objects who are all observing, thinking, deciding and acting individually and independently, as is so frequently depicted and discussed in this forum. Rather, it involves the establishment of a system that will "fuse" these invidividuals into predetermined frames of orientation, and therefore action, and then to guide that "action" across these "fused" groupings of people into desireable outcomes for the architects. This is what feedback-control systems are designed to do, and this is precisely what we have across social today.

Hence, this Snowdon material is propaganda designed to:

1) engender fear, as that's necessary to implant the irrational communications into the minds of millions;
2) maintain and expand the belief that we are all individuallly spyed upon;
3) internalize this belief into individuals so that they will self-manage behavior, especially online, in accordance with system goals;
4) ruthlessly marginalize anyone who does not buy into one of the authorized belief-frames perpetrated by either mainstream media, alternative media, or conspiracy media.

Ultimately, the system is designed to create and manage belief systems in it's targets, and to create targets who are myopically self-centered, self-absorbed, and lack human kiindness, as this environment creates the most effective means of control. The Internet and Mass Media are merely the delivery systems for the messages as well as the feedback mechanisms to measure the effectiveness of campaigns, so that the messages maybe adjusted accordingly.

I'll post a video in the video forum regarding Google's Internet of Things to illustrate where some of this is headed.

Edit: Here's the video post
http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthr...means?p=264282

I hope this helps. Let me know if you want me to peel more layers off the onion.

[Woodsman]

Re: More details on just how the NSA collects data: with screenshots!

The domestication of humans seems forever the dream of kings, comissars and oligarchs. They want an insect society with a hive mind. Still for all their resources and ruthlessness, they don't seem to understand humans and humanity very well.

I'm sure the Internet, the anomie it engenders, and the second order cybernetics schemes you write about (of which I hold a mere snowflake's worth of understanding) constitutes their best play to date. Only us pesky humans just won't be ants or bees, nevermind how much the psychopaths in authority demand us to be.

Or maybe not.

[c1ue]

Re: More details on just how the NSA collects data: with screenshots!

Hence, this Snowdon material is propaganda designed to:

Sorry, but I for one give your theory zero credence.

It is far harder to control information once out than it is to try to keep it contained. The conception that Snowden is some mole designed to pre-emptively out the NSA is ludicrous, especially in light of the obvious ways by which the MSM is attempting to marginalize him.

Furthermore your ongoing assumptions are that the powers that be are somehow superhuman - able to accurately assess, predict, and control behavior, when the real world periodically illustrates this is false. The Occupy movement was marginalized, but true control would have prevented its rise to start with.

The sad fact is that the level of control or even understanding that you assume is an illusion on par with George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq.