US Spies Have "Security Agreements" With Foreign Telecoms 181
McGruber writes "The Washington Post is reporting the existence of 'Team Telecom', lawyers from the FBI and the departments of Defense, Justice and Homeland Security, who ensure that Global Crossing and other foreign-owned telecoms, quickly and confidentially fulfill the USA's surveillance requests. Team Telecom leverages the authority of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to approve cable licenses. The security agreement for Global Crossing, whose fiber-optic network connected 27 nations and four continents, required the company to have a 'Network Operations Center' on U.S. soil that could be visited by government officials with 30 minutes of warning. Surveillance requests, meanwhile, had to be handled by U.S. citizens screened by the government and sworn to secrecy — in many cases prohibiting information from being shared even with the company's executives and directors. A spokesman for Level 3 Communications declined to comment for the Washington Post's article."
Yep (Score:5, Funny)
Definetly sounding more and more like 1984 every day... with people opening up their mouths for a taste of frosty piss from the government for first posts.
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Come on mods - this is one of those rare first posts that is on topic, voicing a valid opinion. It ought to get a +1 funny anyway.
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The rapid downmods come from secret agent astroturfers.
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Re:Yep (Score:5, Insightful)
With all this surveillance, it's a wonder there are any large crime rings at all. Yet the rings still seem to thrive.
Re:Yep (Score:5, Informative)
With all this surveillance, it's a wonder there are any large crime rings at all. Yet the rings still seem to thrive.
Large criminal organizations use the same tactics as large legal organizations, i.e. they bribe the relevant people and insert collaborators for leniency and favorable treatment.
If they remove the crime rings (Score:2)
then they cut their own throat buy losig funding. Image if weed bacame legal, the DEA would lose 10'0's of millions in funding and someone's bonuses would disapear.
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then they cut their own throat buy losig funding. Image if weed bacame legal, the DEA would lose 10'0's of millions in funding and someone's bonuses would disapear.
I doubt that would happen, fighting cocain, meth and heroin would easily suck up an extra quarter billion.
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With all this surveillance, it's a wonder there are any large crime rings at all. Yet the rings still seem to thrive.
Actually, that's one of the most compelling reasons why not only is what's going on an offense to the spirit of the US Constitution, it's a major waste of taxpayer resources.
As Isaac Asimov once noted (Foundation Trilogy), the use of statistical methods to predict individual behavior is a flawed concept. And, in fact, one of the most effective ways of deterring terrorism has proven to be the involvement of ordinary civilians on the scene, as witness such events as the Shoe and Underwear bomber incidents.
Par
Re:Yep (Score:5, Insightful)
The NSA surveillance is directed at terrorism and national security issues, not at ordinary criminal activity.
Even if that were true -- and there have been way too many dubious cases now to believe that without qualification -- it would only apply today. A lot of the danger in these systems is not how they are used right now, it is how they might be used by someone we haven't even identified yet who's running the show in 5 or 10 or 50 years.
If you think that it could never happen, may I remind you that just months ago, shortly after the Boston bombing, several prominent US politicians including a man who ran for President stated publicly and unambiguously that the surviving suspect should be treated as an enemy combatant and thus excluded from the normal rules of due process. Given that he was suspected of murder, a crime that can still carry the death penalty in the US but normally does not in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, that's a particularly disturbing footnote to an already tragic event.
Re:Yep (Score:5, Informative)
Let me show you how broken your thinking is. Here is what you quoted as this thing that requires the Governments to spy everyone. which resulted in 71,803 people killed, wounded, or kidnapped in 2007.
According to this [who.int], let us compare to alcohol which is perfectly legal to people of age, and does not require intrusive spying on everyone by Governments. These stats are 2004 so it would be safe to assume that increased population increases these numbers, while "terrorism" is fluctuates massively. For example, in your link the amount of people impacted has gone down annually (which is often due to how they fudge numbers to make things look really really bad). I"m not even touching illegal narcotics which would beat the pants off of these numbers.
Cirrhosis: 372,995 deaths.
Traffic accidents: 268,246
You can read the report yourself, but the point is that the net alcohol related deaths were 2,249,852. So over 30 times the deaths occurred, and it does not mean that we should be spying on everyone.
Real numbers, you have a .00003 percent chance of being killed by a drunk, compared to a .000001 percent chance of being impacted by a terrorist (death, kidnapping, wounding). Pay attention to that, it's dead vs. impacted.
Do you see how broken your logic is, to deem it's okay to spy on people based on some raw numbers? Save the straw man or red herring about how safe the spying keeps us, it's bullshit. Boston is proof that the massive spying on you and I does not make a difference. Save your next fallacy about inept or incompetent people managing the data, it does not change because that is not the point of their spying.
Reality check! More people in the US have been killed annually by appliances falling on them than by terrorists! Here [allgov.com] is a fun link for you.
Pay attention and read some history. In every case where people have allowed Governments to abuse their rights and privacy in order to protect them, it has turned out very very badly for that society. Every time, not most of the time. This is why Jefferson stated "Those willing to trade liberty for temporary security deserve neither liberty or security." You should know better, but you are brain washed into believing that it can't happen to you.
Either that, or you are paid to spread propaganda like you just did.
Re:Yep (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, cool. So instead of building a huge expensive Orwellian surveillance apparatus to catch criminals that actually exist and have an impact on the lives of ordinary citizens, the whole thing is aimed at the imaginary boogeyman that kills fewer people per year than lightning.
That makes it so much better. It's not a benevolent dictatorship trying to make a utopia, it's a fascist police state trying to keep itself in power. Thanks for clearing that up for us.
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Isn't that just as disturbing?
It means they have the tools already to crush us completely and we will never rid ourselves of the totalitarian state. We may not even know when it happens. Fictitious reports of crime can make us feel like we are unsafe and ensure we all stay quiet when really *bad* shit happens. And the rest can be kept quiet through the totalitarian state and system (systems which have shown to be in place already).
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Re:Yep (Score:4)
Yes, and that should be a hint. The NSA surveillance is directed at terrorism and national security issues, not at ordinary criminal activity. The local police and FBI go after ordinary criminal activity, and play by the criminal law rules.
Every time you fly on a commercial plane, you get a search directed at terrorism and national security. But if they find you carrying a pound of grass in the course of that search, they'll prosecute you for that ordinary criminal activity anyway.
The "criminal law rules" that the local police play by include getting cocaine-addicted prostitutes to testify falsely to get false convictions in murder cases, so I don't share your confidence.
The FBI and Republican federal prosecutors used financial transfer information that they got under the Bank Secrecy Act to bring a prosecution against an effective Democratic governor in New York, leading to his being replaced by an ineffective governor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliot_Spitzer_prostitution_scandal [wikipedia.org] It's not clear that he actually broke any laws, but these Republican prosecutors charged this Democratic governor under the Mann Act and agreed to drop the prosecution if he resigned.
Re:Yep (Score:4, Informative)
The role of a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_center [wikipedia.org] has changed that dynamic bringing the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. military and others together under one roof.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/06/opinion/the-cia-and-the-nypd.html?_r=0 [nytimes.com]
Dont worry embedded CIA with local police was only "irregular personnel practices" more a “perception” issue.
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Hmmm, I don't see NSA listed as being part of the fusion centers in your Wiki link.
I wouldn't be surprised that CIA had some sort of liaison to the NYPD. New York City has been the target of multiple terrorist attacks or planned attacks by Islamist militants (including al Qaida). (Suicide bombing attempt, 9/11 attack (al Qaida), WTC bombing (supported by KSM of 9/11 attack fame), Times Square bombing (Taliban), subway attack plot (al Qaida), others.). The city is more populous than many states. The poli
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Think of it as a partnership of more than 16 agencies under one government organisation.
So you will not see a huge list of every agency on a simple Wiki link covering the term as not all will have same funding/local support at this time.
As more cash flows, more fusion centers will get their full support vs the larger regional centers that got the full list of agencies and early on.
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I understand what it is, I just doubt the association. The Wikipedia authors go to the trouble of listing multiple other agencies, I'm not sure why they wouldn't list NSA if it was indicated. I've done a couple of google searches and don't see NSA coming up as part of fusion centers. I'm not sure that it makes sense for NSA to be part of a fusion center given its mission, although some of the higher level fusion centers may be able to reach back to NSA if necessary. By the same token I wouldn't expect t
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Yep and the Boston bombings never occurred due to these excellent programs.
There is no such thing as a national security issue. Only 'we don't want to tell anyone about this and look stupid' issues.
To summarize (Score:5, Insightful)
We are shocked. SHOCKED! That the US Government is SPYING on citizens and foreign governments with the assistance of telecoms and leading Internet companies.
US Congressmen are shocked. SHOCKED!
European officials are shocked. SHOCKED!
Slashdot, reddit and cool kids sites are shocked. SHOCKED!
Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and not so cool not-kids are shocked. SHOCKED!
Newspapers and universities are shocked. SHOCKED!
My God what's next... that US businesses might be selling their customer's buying and usage histories to other businesses?
Re: You're a fagot (Score:2, Insightful)
As one who totally agrees with you on the evils of "trivializing" the recent revelations of government abuses, I also recognize how much of a fuckhead you are for calling anyone who would challenge your tiny mind a "faggot". Maybe he wasn't "trivializing" these reports at all, but instead pointing out how much this should not be a shocking revelation at all. It should not be, because we were warned by whistleblowers over the past decade how our government has been using our communications systems in violat
Actually Protest This Shit (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a huge danger in the "we already knew they did this" thinking you see posted everywhere.
We already had suspicions, and very well founded ones considering AT&T's NSA room, but the information we are getting is different. It has confirmed beyond any doubt those suspicions are true and those who believed them not foil hatters. Why is this important? Because if we do nothing in the face of absolute confirmation, it means that the DC pukes will know they have mandate to do all this and more.
So quit being complacent "I told you so" time wasters, and get down to working for change. This is quite seriously, a "now or never" moment.
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Yup, in the few minutes it took to type that, AC already got in one of those bullshit comments.
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3945181&cid=44210277 [slashdot.org]
Pathetic. Be complacent now and we'll all look like goatse in a few years time, begging for more. And idiots like this AC are gently guiding our hands to our ankles.
No more complacency!
Re:Actually Protest This Shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of the "they already knew this" folks would have called you paranoid if you asserted half of what's been revealed. It's a thin attempt to justify their complacent attitudes, in the face of evidence that radical attitudes were called for all along.
And hopefully, I'm not going to be called paranoid now when I assert that the government has a social media strategy, and that they know how to play on people's vanities in order to manufacture consent.
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Within the last year or so I told my Postmaster that all mail was scanned and the data saved. He tried to tell me that they just threw it away after it's used for routing, and wasn't interested in why that was a stupid idea. If I ever see him peek over the counter again, I will get to roll my eyes at him.
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I'm not going to be called paranoid now when I assert that the government has a social media strategy, and that they know how to play on people's vanities in order to manufacture consent.
Of course they do. Just this year we got not one, but two Hie Hard remake MURICA FUCK YEAH in PRESIDENT WE TRUST movie blockbusters.
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I'm not going to be called paranoid now when I assert that the government has a social media strategy, and that they know how to play on people's vanities in order to manufacture consent.
They do, but you will, for the same reasons you mentioned earlier. At the end of the day though, all the wailing and anxiety caused by Snowden's revelations will not lead to much immediate change. Maybe congress will decide its a bad idea to give the executive office this much power. Maybe some European trade agreements will fall through.
The more important changes will be long term. The next time there's a European ICANN reform proposal, the US will not have a leg to stand on. The next time you submit a clo
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Ahh, my favorite story from Plato's Republic coming to life.. again.. yes it happens all the time. People really should heed my advice and study the book, it's very remarkable how much we can learn from history and politics nearly 2,600 years ago.
Most people living in the cave will refuse to speak with the escaped prisoner, who tells them they are being held in cave against their will and that there is a whole world they are being kept from. They will fear losing their TV (shadow puppet show playing again
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Spying on military programs? Okay, I can see why Governments do this. Spying on science and technology? Okay, I can see this one as well. Spying on citizens emails? Nope, not at all. The Government should not know about your mom and aunt having a conversation about what kind of underwear is best in the summer, it's not of their fucking business!
They should not care who your friends are or where you visit most often, unless you are a suspected criminal and they have a warrant. When Governments have t
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Yeah -- I wonder this too. I've been thinking about redoing my home desktop with encrypted everything, thinking about going back to a very vanilla OS, wondering if it should be Linux or BSD --- and yet I still question if it even matters from a technical point of view. I have no idea what's really on my mobo.
As for phones, I would bet that is much more likely considering how there is so much less hardware diversity than there is with PCs, plus they're the perfect bugs with video and audio capability: no n
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That's exactly why I've been thinking about BSD. But then, didn't the NSA also fund Theo, and isn't his supposed to be the securest flavor?
Re:Who built SeLinux? (Score:4, Interesting)
It wasn't NSA, it was DARPA. And that doesn't prove anything bad was happening. Look into the history of DES encryption sometime. There was a controversy because NSA changed the S-boxes used in the encryption before the design was finalized and accepted for government use. Nobody knew why at the time, and I've never heard that the government explained why the change. Many people were suspicious, thinking that the change would create some sort of exploitable weakness. DES has been analyzed to death and when used at the designed spec in terms of number of rounds of encryption, etc., there isn't much in terms of weaknesses other than key length. The one thing that has emerged was that DES was unusually resistant to differential cryptanalysis which was discovered in the academic world many years after DES was released. (~20) It turns out that IBM was aware of it at the time they were designing DES, and NSA asked them to say nothing. So it appears that NSA knew about differential cryptanalysis 20+ years before the academic world, and specifically strengthened DES against it by altering the S-box design values.
There is some history in this paper.
Extended Analysis of DES S-boxes [kuleuven.be]
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"In the development of the DES, NSA convinced IBM that a reduced key size was sufficient"
"However, the very uncertainty and ambiguity surrounding cryptology has prompted some NSA officials to express concern to NSF about certain grants with cryptological ramifications and to suggest that NSA be involved in reviewing these proposals."
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"In the development of the DES, NSA convinced IBM that a reduced key size was sufficient"
Yes, I think that's more or less covered.
As to your second quote, lets just put in the whole paragraph for clarity. Apparently it only means that NSA could be involved in the proposal review process, not that they control it, nor do they control the funding, and they aren't involved in the actual work. The NSF (National Science Foundation) is still quite independent.
UNCLASSIFIED SUMMARY: INVOLVEMENT OF NSA IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DATA ENCRYPTION STANDARD [senate.gov]
The NSA has not put pressure on the NSF to prevent funding of grants for cryptological research. However, the very uncertainty and ambiguity surrounding cryptology has prompted some NSA officials to express concern to NSF about certain grants with cryptological ramifications and to suggest that NSA be involved in reviewing these proposals. The NSF has agreed to the latter request, since it views NSA as the only location of competent cryptological expertise in the Government, but has not lessened its interest in, or willingness to fund, good research proposals in this field.
I think these two paragraphs from the same paper
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According to either the Guardian or Washington Post, the NSA did have meetings at Intel.
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Maybe you should read up on the subsidies China has been giving solar panel makers to ensure global monopolization. Then read up on the papers presented to Congress which lead them to pass a recent ruling that we should not be using devices made in China for Government/Defense work.
The risk is real, whether you wish to recognize it or not. I think the easy, and therefor more likely, dubious changes would not open hardware back doors but shut down devices. But that does not mean that back doors are imposs
Re:Actually Protest This Shit (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Actually Protest This Shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, the Seattle restorethe4th rally was scheduled for July 6 at noon at Westlake Center/Park. It was about 80 degrees yesterday, and not a cloud in the sky.
I showed up after driving for an hour and half, walked around in circles looking for the protest. I saw three cop cars, three ambulances, a dozen cops, and a Jesus Freak with a sign asking "what does Jesus mean to you".
I didn't break out my sign -- I figured it would be bad PR to have a protest only as big as Jesus Freaks could muster, because that makes the issue easily dismissed, ignored, and made fun of.
Posting web pages and not doing anything ... is not fucking doing anything. It is unbelievable to me that Anonymous can organize large protests against the CoS, a group that harms a tiny fraction of the world's population, but Seattle can't get 10 people to show up to protest an issue that threatens almost every person on the planet. That's fucking appalling.
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http://bostonherald.com/business/business_markets/2013/07/nsa_s_surveillance_program_blasted_by_hub_demonstrators [bostonherald.com]
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Most people still hold out the hope that normal democratic process' can be used to fix the problem
And yet they still vote for the same idiots again and again.
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The problem is that most people continue to believe the government when they say "if we dont listen to most of the worlds communications, America is at risk of being hit with a terror attack that makes 9/11 look tiny by comparison" (even though the RIGHT way to catch the terrorists is to stop collecting all this data and spend money on more PEOPLE. People who can analyze the data they do have to find the one needle in the haystack that points to the next bad guys. People who can interpret satellite/drone/sp
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the outcome of which is anybody's guess.
No guess needed. Just look to the overcrowded US prison system for your answer. Lots of people living in subhuman conditions many held under false pretenses or rigged court systems.
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Re:Actually Protest This Shit (Score:4, Insightful)
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Agreed. Yet, I live in a democracy, and this is the way to go. If it works out as you depict, I will have a last option: go into politics myself *shudder*
The problem with this is that both the government and the media are controlled by the same moneyed interests. Any "normal person" that tried to get into a position of power in order to fix things in favor of the public would be publicly destroyed. The only people that can more or less avoid that fate are the ones that aspired to high office since childhood, and never put a foot wrong (IOW, exactly the people that you DON'T want in power), or the ones already in bed with the aforementioned moneyed interests.
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In real, practical terms, what can we actually, really do about this?
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Re:Actually Protest This Shit (Score:4, Insightful)
As just one thing, vow that you will not vote for any candidate who does not support a full and complete pardon for Snowden. Even if you think your candidate is a "lesser evil" -- all that has gotten us is whole bunch of evil. Make the politicians fear for their jobs.
Send donations to charities that do good work in nations that will harbor Snowden. Yesterday I emailed public contact addresses at the embassies for Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Boliva requesting suggestions. I hope I get some, but if that doesn't work, there's always google.
It is important to talk about the issues and protest them, but it is even more important to take concrete steps in support of those issues.
Re:Actually Protest This Shit (Score:5, Interesting)
My wife and I have a rule that we began applying last election cycle. If there is any doubt about a particular race that we are voting on (after doing research on each candidate, of course), we apply a simple formula--vote the incumbent out.
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If by "incumbent" you just mean the guy in the chair, then you're not doing anyone any favors. The "incumbent" is and has been the Democrat/Republican machine.
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"...which is completely pointless if the incumbent and the challenging candidate are equally bad, which they usually are in the U.S."
Yes. If that is the only purpose, to vote for one party or another. The purpose of my wife and I always voting the incumbent out is to do what we can to break the chain of politicians that simply carry the same torch their predecessor carried. If I cannot trust them, I would prefer that torch was dropped entirely. Let someone else have a chance to pick it up. It's better then
Re:Actually Protest This Shit (Score:5, Insightful)
As just one thing, vow that you will not vote for any candidate who does not support a full and complete pardon for Snowden. Even if you think your candidate is a "lesser evil" -- all that has gotten us is whole bunch of evil. Make the politicians fear for their jobs.
And you shouldn't be afraid of voting a third-party candidate. Candidates in the Republican/Democrat parties do respond to those third-parties, if the race between the is close, as they want to get as many votes as they can.
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That is exactly what they want me to think. If I succumb, they definitely win.
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My contribution to ideas:
1) Talk to family and friends about exactly why you think this is horrendous. Perhaps some humour like this [theonion.com] or this [youtube.com] might help make your message more palatable, and make them know that you're far from the only person with these concerns. Let them know that the tech world is FURIOUS about this because our community is very aware of what's at stake.
2) Protecting yourself online is not easy, and may be too complicated for non-IT people at the moment, but there are some simple solutio
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Might also want to point this article out when they says they have nothing to hide and don't care:
http://www.salon.com/writer/radley_balko/ [salon.com] then click on the link to his article: âoeWhy did you shoot me? I was reading a bookâ: The new warrior cop is out of control
(for some reason, salon put a " in the URL which makes linking to the article directly really hard).
Sending in the SWAT team to break up home poker games for example.
More ominous, using the SWAT team to conduct warrantless searches of bu
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If you think this is only an issue in teh US, think again. In Germany we just recently had a high-profile case that backfired on the coppers/DA in ways beyond comedy.
After a anti-Nazi rally a preacher who organized a youth club got charged for inciting violence. The cops testified that he called for them, to be pelted with rocks. Furthermore they testified that he had sheltered a violent protester in his mini-bus.
In court they presented
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The Republicans like this on principle, and the Democrats like it as long as their man is in charge. So there will be no change.
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If your mom or wife is killed in a terrorist attack, you'd be screaming about how the government isn't doing enough to protect its citizens.
IIRC, more than a few of the relatives of 9/11 victims formed a group call "Not in our name" to protest against the war. Having said that, I think it's amazing how quickly the US forgot about Nixon's plumbers, government snooping on its people has been going on non-stop since Roman times.
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Your AC status lends tons of credibility to your statement.
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Does Zuckerberg really know? (Score:5, Insightful)
This casts a new light on Facebook, Google and Microsoft executives' denials of the NSA having "direct access" to their servers. Maybe the executives are not cleared to know what their tech staffs are doing, and the tech staffs are gagged from telling them. This won't kill the Cloud for users (many value convenience over privacy) but for anyone with confidential information, or entrusted with the private information of others - they don't know who they can really trust and what their liability will be.
People don't enjoy feeling duped. It's psychologically easier to believe that you knew this all along and you are not surprised.
The US doesn't deserve this position (Score:3)
If they treat us citizens of the EU as potential enemies who can be legally spied upon, I consider it a crime if the EU official co-operates with the US. A crime against me, as one of their voter, who are the only party that gives them any kind of power.
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That's not how it works. Your EU country spies on it's EU citizens at the request of whoever wants the information. It would be a gross waste of effort for every country to have to spy on every other country. Allies share information.
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Snowden hasn't only embarrassed the US but the whole "Free World".
Someone define corrupition? (Score:2)
This kinda sounds like it to me.
Proper compliance (Score:5, Interesting)
There's at least one US cellular provider which annoys the FBI by obeying the law. They have a contact point for interception requests. That phone is answered by their lawyers, who check the validity of the request before anything happens. If it's an "emergency" request prior to a court order, they insist that the requesting law enforcement agent sign a form.
The form requires full identification of the law enforcement officer, their contact information, and their supervisor's contact information. The officer must certify that a proper court order will be requested and provided to the telco within a specified number of days. The law enforcement officer has to agree that their agency will indemnify the telco in the event of any later legal dispute, and that should the agency fail to do so, the officer will be personally responsible for any penalties or legal expenses incurred by the telco.
That's what CALEA says a telco is supposed to do. The FBI hates being accountable like that.
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which carrier?
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What carrier are you talking about?
This appears close to the description (Score:5, Informative)
We long suspected this ... (Score:4, Interesting)
More added to the snowball that Edward Snowden started rolling. I accept that a certain amount of targetted monitoring is needed, but what we are being shown is on a different scale. What really annoys me is how the politicians have lied and told us that we should not worry our silly little heads. Now is the time to hold the politicians to account -- not accept the ''I will not discuss operations'' answers that they fob us off with. Time for honesty and heads to roll.
It will be interesting to see how much attention the mainstream media pay to this or if they will try to bury it.
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"Trust us" when this involves trusting they follow the rules voluntarily is a crock of poop.
Snowden claimed, and tested, that he could listen in on phone calls of important people without warrant and without setting off alarms.
It would be trivial for either party, or other large factions with connections, to insert an operative among hundreds or thousands of agents who listens in on political opponents. Prevention of that is the most important part of unreasonable search, not them listening to you wishin
Straight out of the Dictator's Handbook (Score:5, Interesting)
Dude, why so surprised? You read it here first:
http://dictatorshandbook.net/book/node237.html [dictatorshandbook.net]
From the dictator's handbook, chapter nine:
You own the hardware. Internet access passes through the infrastructure of your state-owned telecommunications systems, or at least the infrastructure of private telecoms that depend on your goodwill for their existence and continued operations. As such, you have a high degree of control over what information enters and exits your national territory. The Chinese have proven you can safely filter out âoeharmfulâ information from the outside without stifling economic activity.[180]
You control the purse-strings. The Internet is run by corporations, and corporations are most influenced by economic, not political considerations. Google was forced out of China by economics, not human rights concerns; both Twitter and Facebook have refused to join the Global Network Initiative (an organization focused on the right to expression and privacy). Research in Motion (RIM) offered access to its otherwise encrypted and protected messaging servers as soon as Bahrain asked for them, prompting other nations to do the same.9.1
No better resource than the Internet has ever existed with which an individualâ(TM)s life and movements can be tracked via their cyber footprints by any curious autocrat. Imperial Russiaâ(TM)s Okhrana, the East German Stasi, and the Soviet KGB: each was feared for its ability to track and monitor its prey. But they would be astonished with how much easier technology has made their work.
A look in my magic ball.. (Score:2)
US spies on non-US citizens
Western countries spy on US citizens
Western countries spy on Western citizens
Western countries spy on non-Western citizens
Non-Western countries spy on US citizens
Non-Western countries spy on Western citizens
Non-Western countries spy on non-Western citizens
US spies share information with Western spies
US spies share information with non-Western spies
Western spies share information with non-Western spies
US spies on US social networking
US
How about a sixth eye? Sweden (Score:2)
Foreign telecoms? ? ? ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Should be rather obvious by this time. . .
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Don't forget the Trilateral Commission, Lizard People, Masons AND the Illuminati all have roles in this too.
So the answer is (Score:2)
Any telecom who wants to claim to provide security cannot have any US office, branch, subsidiary head office or holding company in the US or any part of its empire.
Happily, this will still leave them 95% of the planet to do business on. A small sacrifice to ensure acceptable practice.
The flip side of this is that any provider that is vulnerable to illegal actions from US spooks cannot reliably claim to have any security. And all this is before they start to consider their own legal system.
the silver lining (Score:2)
Re:As if (Score:5, Funny)
It's one thing to assume it's going on, it's another thing to actually find proof it's going on.
Just like you assume your parents had nasty, disgusting sex to conceive you, and that's fine. But it's totally another thing to see the old home porno vhs tapes of them humping and grunting and confirming all your suspicions.
Re:As if (Score:5, Insightful)
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That has to be the most disturbingly accurate and *apropos* analogy I have heard yet...
There, FTFY. Given that what we've learned is that the powers that be will consider it our parents fault if they happened to have their laptop/gameconsole/mobilephone's cameras (err. 'sensors') aimed at the bed that night. Because they collect it by default because that might help national security. And they keep it forever. In a world of big brother, the only way to go forward is with little brother tactics...
http://cloudsession.com/dawg/downloads/misc/kag-draft-2k121024.pdf [cloudsession.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Damn - we forgot to make any porno films for the kids to find! Another missed opportunity to damage their poor little innocent psyches!
Re:As if (Score:5, Funny)
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Don't worry their is still time for them to find your profile on Ashley Maddison.
Re:Confirmed information is useless (Score:5, Insightful)
What are you going to do about it?
Cry. In my beer. We are fucked. Might as well find a way to relax and enjoy those deep, rhythmic thrusts. Its military industrial complex on steroids. As long as there is big money involved, and all 3 branches of govt are complicit, and the govt is run by big money, there is no hope. The chance of a sea change in the US electorate that gives a shit and might effect some meaningful change, is slim to none.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What are you going to do about it?
Vote for libertarians
Trolling cowards are useless (Score:2)
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They outsourced the "data-gathering" side, and are probably in discussions with Google, Microsoft and IBM on how best to data-mine it for terrorists and people exceeding the speed limit.
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Thank you for propagating the status quo and enabling mass surveillance on a scale never before imaginable. Your complacency in accepting violations of constitutional rights (for Americans) and human rights (for everyone else) is commendable.
Sincerely,
James Clapper
Re: (Score:3)
"No government is going to stop spying..."
Are you suggesting that we replace the government we have in order to get a government that has never had the chance to start spying? Considering your statement, that sounds like the only reasonable course for citizens that do not want to be spied upon by their own government.
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Ah, but the spying that has been going within the US has been contrary to its written law...its supreme written law. No one is arguing about spies (well, some people are, some people aren't; would be nice to get away from the institution, but then, we seem to be perpetually engaged in trying to outspy the other side), but that the spying that has been going on has violated, once again, the US Constitution. As such, this results in a supreme violation...which obviously bothers a lot of people; that the US go
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If you entered state politics with a small family fortune and worked your way up to the national level - contracting and business opportunities for your 'family~congressional staff' would be available.
What federal law used to call insider trading is now very legal for congressional staff.
The problem is other gov workers, celebrities, private press, trade organisations, disruptive technology firms, smaller arms dealers, diplomatic staff, dissidents, protesters, trade unions and other commu