risking his life to tell you about NSA surveillance [ot]

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WBraun

climber

Jun 15, 2013 - 09:41pm PT

none of the Senators or House members read ANY of this sh#t.

I told you all they're stupid Americans.

And you all stupidity voted for these morons all while you were warned ......

healyje

Trad climber

Portland, Oregon

Jun 15, 2013 - 11:01pm PT

If they're currently using optical splitters, then that would imply they streaming whole content, not metadata, to NSA storage and analysis servers and generating their own metadata there (//as opposed to using the telco / ISP metadata//). If they were really persisting that content on NSA storage servers, it would seem odd they'd then have issue warrants for that same content from the likes of At&T, Microsoft, facebook, and google, even as a formality. The odds are better they generate their own medata data and discard the actual content stream after doing so.

TGT

Social climber

So Cal

Jun 15, 2013 - 11:11pm PT

Panetta's resume

Leon Edward Panetta (born June 28, 1938) is an American politician, lawyer and professor. He served in the Barack Obama administration as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2009 to 2011 and as Secretary of Defense from 2011 to 2013. An Italian-American Democrat, Panetta was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1977 to 1993, served as Director of the Office of Management and Budget from 1993 to 1994 and as President Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff from 1994 to 1997. He is the founder of the Panetta Institute for Public Policy, served as Distinguished Scholar to Chancellor Charles B. Reed of the California State University System and professor of public policy at Santa Clara University.

Haines

Haines, 43, instead had a stint as an urban entrepreneur, running Adrian’s Book Café — named for her late mother — for several years between graduating from University of Chicago and moving on to law school at Georgetown. During those years, she served as president of the Fells Point Business Association, according to Baltimore Sun stories at the time, and was active in the neighborhood preservation society.

And then there were the times that Adrian’s welcomed patrons for the occasional readings of high-toned erotica over chicken tostadas,

kunlun_shan

Mountain climber

SF, CA

Jun 15, 2013 - 11:35pm PT

healyje, the last Snowden PPT shows real-time cable taps and PRISM as independent, and that analysts rely on both.

from http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/06/snowden-powerpoint/#slideid-57990

healyje

Trad climber

Portland, Oregon

Jun 15, 2013 - 11:47pm PT

Those are two distinct things. The top "UPSTREAM" graphic depicts what we discussed earlier - optical taps on some of the world's main optical fiber trunks. The lower would be access to telcos/ISPs/Social Media Cos metadata .

Taps on the main optical fiber trunks would be attempting to do packet analysis and generate metadata off of it in more or less real time. The NSA didn't and undoubtedly doesn't have the storage capacity to store the content off such trunks beyond some selective and highly-targeted packet streams - it's too much data and really they probably aren't capable of generating real-time metadata against the full trunk capacity either.

kunlun_shan

Mountain climber

SF, CA

Jun 16, 2013 - 01:26am PT

..The NSA didn't and undoubtedly doesn't have the storage capacity to store the content off such trunks beyond some selective and highly-targeted packet streams - it's too much data and really they probably aren't capable of generating real-time metadata against the full trunk capacity either.

healyje, here's an excerpt from Bill Binney, former NSA technical director, on capabilities of the new Utah Data Center, in Bluffdale, opening this September.

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2013/6/10/inside_the_nsas_domestic_surveillance_apparatus_whistleblower_william_binney_speaks_out

AMY GOODMAN: Bill Binney, could you say a little more about Bluffdale, this site in Utah that’s being built right now? I don’t think most people are aware of it.

WILLIAM BINNEY: Well, what they’re putting together there in Bluffdale is a million-square-foot storage facility, of which only 100,000 is really going to have equipment to store data. But the rest of it, the peripherals, then are power generation, cooling and so on. So, but in there, there’s 100,000 square feet of storage capacity. And at current capabilities that are advertised on the web with Cleversafe.com, they can put 10 exabytes in about 200 feet—square feet of storage space in 21 racks. What that means is, when you divide that out, is you—that even at current capacity to store information, that’s five zettabytes that they can put in into Bluffdale. And if you—and my estimate of the data they would be collecting, which would include the targeted audio and perhaps all of the text in the world, that would be on the order of 20 terabytes a minute—or, yeah, 20 terabytes a minute. So if you figure out from that how much they could collect, it would be like 500 years of the world’s communications. But I only estimated a hundred, because really they want space for parallel processors to go at cryptanalysis and breaking codes. So—

more on Bluffdale. Note #6 Domestic Listening Posts.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/

healyje

Trad climber

Portland, Oregon

Jun 16, 2013 - 04:21am PT

kunlun_shan, sorry, I wasn't clear enough, they don't have the sufficient storage capacity local to the fiber optic trunk taps (or wherever an optical splitter would terminate) to capture the content; they probably don't have enough to even buffer sufficiently for packet analysis of the entire trunk in realtime.

And even if Bluffdale is using CleverSafe archive boxes (which they undoubtedly are given their board) with 1-TBS ingest boxes fronting them for say a 5-10 TBS combined facility ingest rate, you'd still have to get raw trunk data to it and that's pretty damn hard to do in the middle of Utah. Maybe if you built a Bluffdale at each of say a dozen submarine cable landing sites you could probably do it given those cables top out around 3.2 TBS last I saw. But you'd also have the issue of how fast you can do deep packet inspection / information extraction. And then there's doing high-level intelligence analysis that could even begin to keep up with a trunk's datastream - unlikely.

But, if the arrows on that chart and the size of the cooling systms on the Bluffdale schematic are to be believed, then Bluffdale looks rather more CPU than storage intensive and I'm guessing it's a high-level intelligence analytics [Hadoop] data center which all the other facilities are going to be forwarding pre-screened/processed data to.

Simultaneously, make massive changes to the Patriot Act to bring it more in line with the Constitution.

You'd need a Supreme Court without Roberts and Alito on it to do that and they were picked as supportive of expansive executive powers and young for a reason.

The people responsible for this spying should be brought to justice and/or impeached.

Well, they're not in office anymore and the ones who are have legal cover provided by the ones who aren't. Then again, John Yoo is at Berkeley and someone should 'get' him for his perverse interpretations of the constitution. But do you then disagree with this assertion of his which I posted a ways back and which likely underpins the 'logic' of the Patriot Act given he's one the principle authors?:

From a Frontline interview with John Yoo on 1/10/2007:

Frontline: And gathering intelligence then means gathering intelligence at home as well as abroad.

Yoo: I think that's right. Again, if you're going to gather intelligence and follow members of Al Qaeda outside the United States, you don't want to make the United States some kind of safe haven where once they cross the borders into our country it actually becomes harder to find them and track them down. That would be perverse; exactly the reverse kind of powers that you want our government to have when it's fighting especially this kind of enemy, which tries to infiltrate our borders and launch surprise attacks.

P.S. The commercial fiber corridor going by Bluffdale probably operates near capacity and that brings up an aspect of all this that doesn't get press as it's more technical in nature. But one can assume the NSA has leased a bunch dark fiber to connect their facilities and has probably embarked on a simultaneous network build out to go along with this as the leased fiber isn't going to cut it from security or capacity perspectives. The only real question is are they piggy-backing on the defense network build out or building their own - I would guess the latter given the defense network will be subject to relentless attacks and have inadequate security at best.

Bargainhunter

climber

Jun 16, 2013 - 05:34am PT

Great to see idiotic mainstream media get bitchslapped by Glenn Greenwald:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BJyp6_4P_6Y

TGT

Social climber

So Cal

Jun 16, 2013 - 09:19am PT

[Click to View YouTube Video]

TGT

Social climber

So Cal

Jun 17, 2013 - 12:07am PT

I don't have to listen to your phone calls to know what you're doing. If I know every single phone call you've made, I'm able to determine every single person you talked to - I can get a pattern about your life that is very, very intrusive. And the real question here is what do they do with this information that they collect that does not have anything to do with al Qaeda? And we're gonna trust the President and the Vice President of the United States to do the right thing? Don't count me in on that.

-- Joe Biden, May 2006

J man

Trad climber

morgan hill

Jun 17, 2013 - 01:33am PT

Just as we thought, the NSA spies are listening to our phone calls without
warrants. They admitted to it at the closed door congressional oversite meeting.

Can elected Reps or Senators be charged with Holders bogus espionage rap
for leaking this stuff?

NSA spying flap extends to contents of U.S. phone calls

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57589495-38/nsa-spying-flap-extends-to-contents-of-u.s-phone-calls/

Reilly

Mountain climber

The Other Monrovia- CA

Jun 17, 2013 - 01:55am PT

The dude ditched his pole artist girlfriend and went to China with a Rubik's
Cube and we're supposed to take him seriously? Seriously?

healyje

Trad climber

Portland, Oregon

Jun 17, 2013 - 05:48am PT

I would.

Also, I have no doubt an NSA analyst has the capability to tap any phone or go after any text, voicemail, or email - doing so on their own, or a supervisor's authority, without either a valid warrant or an order that is somehow a constitutionally-rooted, legal expression of executive power would be highly problematic.

kunlun_shan

Mountain climber

SF, CA

Jun 17, 2013 - 11:48am PT

The false allegation that Snowden is a narcissist is baseless. It's a transparent attempt to shift the focus away from the extremely serious and existential issue now facing this nation to killing the messenger. It's a grasping at straws.

Snowden will go down in history as a patriot, more so than some of the criminals who have held the highest offices in the US.

kunlun_shan

Mountain climber

SF, CA

Jun 17, 2013 - 12:52pm PT

There's an interesting live chat going on right now between Snowden and journalist Glen Greenwald. Readers can submit questions.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/edward-snowden-nsa-files-whistleblower#start-of-comments

"You can also follow along on Twitter using the hashtag #AskSnowden".

k-man

Gym climber

SCruz

Jun 17, 2013 - 12:54pm PT

What we are witnessing is a huge amount of people who are in denial. In denial that our government is composed of criminals who hold the constitution in contempt.

Meh, the Constitution. It is nothing but a piece of paper.

nah000

climber

canuckistan

Topic Author's Reply - Jun 17, 2013 - 01:02pm PT

the following are quotes from the twitter q + a, kunlun_shan linked up thread. snowden is a one man quotable quotes generator:

"It was seeing a continuing litany of lies from senior officials to Congress - and therefore the American people - and the realization that that Congress, specifically the Gang of Eight, wholly supported the lies that compelled me to act. Seeing someone in the position of James Clapper - the Director of National Intelligence - baldly lying to the public without repercussion is the evidence of a subverted democracy. The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed."

"Further, it's important to bear in mind I'm being called a traitor by men like former Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead. Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school."

"There can be no faith in government if our highest offices are excused from scrutiny - they should be setting the example of transparency."

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

"The US Person / foreigner distinction is not a reasonable substitute for individualized suspicion, and is only applied to improve support for the program. This is the precise reason that NSA provides Congress with a special immunity to its surveillance."

"First, the US Government, just as they did with other whistleblowers, immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason and that the disclosure of secret, criminal, and even unconstitutional acts is an unforgivable crime. That's not justice, and it would be foolish to volunteer yourself to it if you can do more good outside of prison than in it."

"Second, let's be clear: I did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets. I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous. These nakedly, aggressively criminal acts are wrong no matter the target. Not only that, when NSA makes a technical mistake during an exploitation operation, critical systems crash. Congress hasn't declared war on the countries - the majority of them are our allies - but without asking for public permission, NSA is running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people. And for what? So we can have secret access to a computer in a country we're not even fighting? So we can potentially reveal a potential terrorist with the potential to kill fewer Americans than our own Police? No, the public needs to know the kinds of things a government does in its name, or the "consent of the governed" is meaningless."

"More fundamentally, the "US Persons" protection in general is a distraction from the power and danger of this system. Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it's only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%. Our founders did not write that "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all US Persons are created equal.""

"Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now."