NZ Police Got PRISM Data Before Raid On Dotcom 208
Bismillah writes "Police affidavits show that the New Zealand Police requested and received assistance from the country's signals intelligence agency, the GCSB, which appears to have used PRISM to intercept Kim and Mona Dotcom and the Megaupload associates' communications."
Re:Not only for "Terrorism" (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not only for "Terrorism" (Score:2, Interesting)
What was once in books and magazines via people like http://cryptome.org/2013-info/06/whistleblowing/whistleblowing.htm [cryptome.org] is now much more public.
The openness of telco networks, US/NZ/UK politics, US trade groups, favours and sharing is not something new.
What is interesting is how open the NZ side is. The public/press know knows enough to look way beyond what could have been passed off as basic NZ telco/police efforts.
The next question is how will departments (and trusted contractors) within the US/UK/NZ/Aus/Canadian spy networks respond to their coveted generational access been revisited in yet another very public way.
Eastern Europe/South America does provide some history on the prospects for the press.
Re:Not just for the terrorists. (Score:5, Interesting)
The real reason for the establishment of a pervasive security state was not 9/11 but "battle of seattle" which happened 1999 and completely caught the government off guard. 9/11 was the excuse they needed to create a massive surveillance network accross the whole country to make sure it never happened again. Why do shit holes like Detroit or some podunk oil town in North Dakota need anti-terrorism control centers or whatever? They don't need them for al-Qaeda but for anarchists, union organizers, environmentalists and assorted other proft-threatening lefty types. Seattle put the fear in the government and they spent the last 10 years making sure if something like OWS pops up it gets put down fast.
Re:Was that really necessary? (Score:5, Interesting)
Wait, are you saying that PRISM was used for enforcement of some media company's copyrights?
Or was it used to try to prop up the arrest after the fact?
Because once there is proof that these systems are secret to the population of the USA, but used freely to enforce some copyrights for campaign donners, shit could hit the fan in high places.
Devil's Advocate (Score:4, Interesting)
Firstly, there's no difference between "law enforcement" and "national security" except in the eyes of egomaniacs who think that there brand of crime investigation (e.g. "terror" - seriously, could you get any more emotive?) is Totally More Important and should receive all sorts of Special Dispensations.
Secondly, intercepting data of suspected criminals - and there is a lot of good evidence that this guy was engaging in criminal activity - seems sensible. It shouldn't be all cloak and dagger, and "signals intelligence" should just be regarded as another way of collecting evidence.
Thirdly, people like this, who are essentially making huge bank by distributing other people's work, don't really deserve their income. They are the flip side of the copyright cartel.
The copyright cartel are also leeches and ought to be just as thoroughly investigated for their dirty bribery and lawyering practices.
A pox on all their houses.
Re:Not just for the terrorists. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not old enough to have been there but, a friend of mine that was part of the protests in the 1960s. One of the things he mentioned that caught my attention was that in the late 60s there wasn't 'the Women's rights protesters' and 'the black protesters', etc. The groups supported and worked with one another to achieve their goals. Then, new people started joining their groups. He stated that they stood out as they always had their dues ready on time and always in exact change. And once they came in, they started infighting between the groups that eventually led to the groups separating. At the time he believed these were government agents and in the last couple decades evidence has come out the the FBI was involved in counter-intelligence operations against protesters during that era.
If this is all true than this is just the next stage against freedom of expression in this country. :-(
Re:Was that really necessary? (Score:1, Interesting)
Your assertion that people don't give a shit is demonstrably false, rendering the rest of your post somewhat of a defeatist rant.
Re:Was that really necessary? (Score:5, Interesting)
[Citation needed]. Specifically a situation where people in general give a shit, rather than unique powerless individuals.
Re:Anton Vickerman Prosecution (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny how the US always criticizes other countries for human right violations and references their constitution as a safeguard against government abuse. Meanwhile, state agencies are collecting information on the entire internet population and handing it out to foreign governments to aid oppressing their population. The irony!
Re:Anton Vickerman Prosecution (Score:4, Interesting)
I wish that was funny.
I no longer take the human rights thing seriously when coming from my country. Until they start following the constitution, this country is completely dysfunctional. In the past, when something was declared/ruled as unconstitutional, it mean "you're done. cease doing it." For some reason, it doesn't mean that any longer. Now it's just "yeah? so?"
Re:Was that really necessary? (Score:5, Interesting)
I like how we are told by every government mouth piece how much harm these revelations by snowden, manning and fisa declassifications are doing to there anti terror intelligence work, but were willing to risk exposing it for copyright infirgment. Kinda cuts right through their bullshit about this being for the public good.
Re:Not just for the terrorists. (Score:5, Interesting)
And yet, I find myself completely unsurprised. How long before all this surveillance infrastructure gets used against farmers standing up against Monstano, or generic drug makers
Some years ago I returned from a trip abroad with some generic drugs in my luggage. The US customs guy searching my luggage noticed them. He told me that I should stop buying foreign generics because they were used to fund terrorists. I asked him if he seriously believed that or if it was just something he was supposed to say. He replied that he seriously believed it. So I think the generic drugs = terrorism line has already been crossed by our government.
Re:Was that really necessary? (Score:5, Interesting)
Some people seem to care, but it seems we're in the minority.
Another poster brought up the Occupy movement. Everything I've heard about how that movement was "dealt with" frankly made my skin crawl. Another example is the Tea party. It started out as a grassroots libertarian protest against "too big to fail" back in 2008, but by 2010 it had been completely co-opted into an astroturf wing of the Republican party.
The thing is that the powers that be have a very good understanding of psychology and sociology to the point of being expert manipulators. However, the only way it works is if enough people have their bread and circuses. When enough people are "getting by" (but only through "hard"/stressful work, so they can feel as though they've earned what they have and deserve no more and no less because after all if they wanted more they could just work "harder" and the magic Invisible Hand or else the magic Sky Wizard will provide more) they tend not to care about what's going on in the larger picture.
The thing that's been really creeping me out honestly in the past two to three-ish years is just how damned well the powers that be understand this dynamic.
It seems that the real trick is that people don't care right up until one of their family is targeted. Then they start caring. Until then, however, they'll reason that if they're doing ok that the propoganda in the mainstream media must be true. They want to pat themselves on the back for their hard work and good decisions like not getting "into drugs" (i.e. they've successfully resisted the devil in marijuana all these years so they must be good people and anyone who even gives into the devil/marijuana/"drugs" once must be a bad person). So, if the mainstream media says that the Occupy movement is just a bunch of aimless drug seekers who are defecating in public spaces, it must be true.
Of course, the trouble is programs like the oft mentioned here on /. COINTELPRO. All a powerful entity needs to do is plant enough people in enough highly visible places in a movement, and they can effectively control perception of that movement. Want to paint Occupy as a bunch of dirty hippies without jobs looking for handouts? Send in enough people to loudly ask every passer-by if they have any weed, and tell them to harass local businesses and generally be obnoxious.
A more prosiac example would be federalized Romneycare/Obamacare. The ACA seems to be utterly set up to fail. Insurance companies are already raising their premiums and blaming the ACA while really none of the provisions of the ACA that matter have kicked in yet (health insurance exchanges, vouchers/subsidies as I understand it, and the personal mandate). The thing that really worries me is how many people buy into the narrative that health insurance companies just have to raise premiums because of Barry and his Kenyan socialism so blindly instead of being more sceptical of the insurance companies themselves and demanding better justification for premium hikes than just "because ACA." The lack of critical thinking in the masses is truly terrifying.
Sure, it all sounded like a lot of tinfoil hattery even a few years ago. However, the more information that comes out, the more we can begin to suspect that perhaps our tinfoil hats really weren't on too tight after all. Now we have verification of things like "parallel construction," wide-scale domestic spying, incestuous data sharing among agencies, secret courts, national security letters, and a complete breakdown of due process.
However, the public isn't too worried. After all, they haven't come for me or anyone I know personally, and all the people I know are hard-working Americans, so therefore, there must be an element of truth that if I don't have anything to hide, it must really be the case that I don't have anything to worry about. History be damned.
So of course these "leakers" are just malcontents the reasoning goes. They're access information t
Re:Anton Vickerman Prosecution (Score:2, Interesting)
This NSA scandal is also a good comeback for the Chinese whenever Obama thinks it's a good idea to blast them for their human rights.
Where would you rather live? a country which detains you in secret and uses secret evidence against you, and maybe throw you in gitmo... Or a country which everyone knows spies on you, and isn't ashamed for the world plus its own citizens to know about it?
Serious food for thought really.
Re:Was that really necessary? (Score:5, Interesting)
Denninger quoted here, voted for Obama BTW:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/20/karl-denninger-tea-party_n_770108.html [huffingtonpost.com]