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Discussion => Security => Topic started by: ruby123 on May 05, 2013, 02:52 am
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Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government?
A former FBI counterterrorism agent claims on CNN that this is the case
(clearnet) http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/04/telephone-calls-recorded-fbi-boston
The real capabilities and behavior of the US surveillance state are almost entirely unknown to the American public because, like most things of significance done by the US government, it operates behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy. But a seemingly spontaneous admission this week by a former FBI counterterrorism agent provides a rather startling acknowledgment of just how vast and invasive these surveillance activities are.
Over the past couple days, cable news tabloid shows such as CNN's Out Front with Erin Burnett have been excitingly focused on the possible involvement in the Boston Marathon attack of Katherine Russell, the 24-year-old American widow of the deceased suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. As part of their relentless stream of leaks uncritically disseminated by our Adversarial Press Corps, anonymous government officials are claiming that they are now focused on telephone calls between Russell and Tsarnaev that took place both before and after the attack to determine if she had prior knowledge of the plot or participated in any way.
On Wednesday night, Burnett interviewed Tim Clemente, a former FBI counterterrorism agent, about whether the FBI would be able to discover the contents of past telephone conversations between the two. He quite clearly insisted that they could:
BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It's not a voice mail. It's just a conversation. There's no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?
CLEMENTE: "No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It's not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.
BURNETT: "So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.
CLEMENTE: "No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not."
"All of that stuff" - meaning every telephone conversation Americans have with one another on US soil, with or without a search warrant - "is being captured as we speak".
On Thursday night, Clemente again appeared on CNN, this time with host Carol Costello, and she asked him about those remarks. He reiterated what he said the night before but added expressly that "all digital communications in the past" are recorded and stored:
Let's repeat that last part: "no digital communication is secure", by which he means not that any communication is susceptible to government interception as it happens (although that is true), but far beyond that: all digital communications - meaning telephone calls, emails, online chats and the like - are automatically recorded and stored and accessible to the government after the fact. To describe that is to define what a ubiquitous, limitless Surveillance State is.
There have been some previous indications that this is true. Former AT&T engineer Mark Klein revealed that AT&T and other telecoms had built a special network that allowed the National Security Agency full and unfettered access to data about the telephone calls and the content of email communications for all of their customers. Specifically, Klein explained "that the NSA set up a system that vacuumed up Internet and phone-call data from ordinary Americans with the cooperation of AT&T" and that "contrary to the government's depiction of its surveillance program as aimed at overseas terrorists . . . much of the data sent through AT&T to the NSA was purely domestic." But his amazing revelations were mostly ignored and, when Congress retroactively immunized the nation's telecom giants for their participation in the illegal Bush spying programs, Klein's claims (by design) were prevented from being adjudicated in court.
That every single telephone call is recorded and stored would also explain this extraordinary revelation by the Washington Post in 2010:
Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications.
It would also help explain the revelations of former NSA official William Binney, who resigned from the agency in protest over its systemic spying on the domestic communications of US citizens, that the US government has "assembled on the order of 20 trillion transactions about US citizens with other US citizens" (which counts only communications transactions and not financial and other transactions), and that "the data that's being assembled is about everybody. And from that data, then they can target anyone they want."
Despite the extreme secrecy behind which these surveillance programs operate, there have been periodic reports of serious abuse. Two Democratic Senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, have been warning for years that Americans would be "stunned" to learn what the US government is doing in terms of secret surveillance.
tia logo
Strangely, back in 2002 - when hysteria over the 9/11 attacks (and thus acquiescence to government power) was at its peak - the Pentagon's attempt to implement what it called the "Total Information Awareness" program (TIA) sparked so much public controversy that it had to be official scrapped. But it has been incrementally re-instituted - without the creepy (though honest) name and all-seeing-eye logo - with little controversy or even notice.
Back in 2010, worldwide controversy erupted when the governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates banned the use of Blackberries because some communications were inaccessible to government intelligence agencies, and that could not be tolerated. The Obama administration condemned this move on the ground that it threatened core freedoms, only to turn around six weeks later and demand that all forms of digital communications allow the US government backdoor access to intercept them. Put another way, the US government embraced exactly the same rationale invoked by the UAE and Saudi agencies: that no communications can be off limits. Indeed, the UAE, when responding to condemnations from the Obama administration, noted that it was simply doing exactly that which the US government does:
"'In fact, the UAE is exercising its sovereign right and is asking for exactly the same regulatory compliance - and with the same principles of judicial and regulatory oversight - that Blackberry grants the US and other governments and nothing more,' [UAE Ambassador to the US Yousef Al] Otaiba said. 'Importantly, the UAE requires the same compliance as the US for the very same reasons: to protect national security and to assist in law enforcement.'"
That no human communications can be allowed to take place without the scrutinizing eye of the US government is indeed the animating principle of the US Surveillance State. Still, this revelation, made in passing on CNN, that every single telephone call made by and among Americans is recorded and stored is something which most people undoubtedly do not know, even if the small group of people who focus on surveillance issues believed it to be true (clearly, both Burnett and Costello were shocked to hear this).
Some new polling suggests that Americans, even after the Boston attack, are growing increasingly concerned about erosions of civil liberties in the name of Terrorism. Even those people who claim it does not matter instinctively understand the value of personal privacy: they put locks on their bedroom doors and vigilantly safeguard their email passwords. That's why the US government so desperately maintains a wall of secrecy around their surveillance capabilities: because they fear that people will find their behavior unacceptably intrusive and threatening, as they did even back in 2002 when John Poindexter's TIA was unveiled.
Mass surveillance is the hallmark of a tyrannical political culture. But whatever one's views on that, the more that is known about what the US government and its surveillance agencies are doing, the better. This admission by this former FBI agent on CNN gives a very good sense for just how limitless these activities are.
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TL;DR
The NSA records all phone calls.
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The idea behind "Enemy of The State" has been here for longer than we're being told and has been active for as long..Location of said communication recovery is in the Mountain buried several miles deep...Surly someone can remember the name??? ;) The facial recognition came after 911.. Say "Cheese".. :)
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I thought you might enjoy this article about how the NSA is trying to store all digital communications forever.
The spring air in the small, sand-dusted town has a soft haze to it, and clumps of green-gray sagebrush rustle in the breeze. Bluffdale sits in a bowl-shaped valley in the shadow of Utah’s Wasatch Range to the east and the Oquirrh Mountains to the west. It’s the heart of Mormon country, where religious pioneers first arrived more than 160 years ago. They came to escape the rest of the world, to understand the mysterious words sent down from their god as revealed on buried golden plates, and to practice what has become known as “the principle,” marriage to multiple wives.
Magazine2004
Today Bluffdale is home to one of the nation’s largest sects of polygamists, the Apostolic United Brethren, with upwards of 9,000 members. The brethren’s complex includes a chapel, a school, a sports field, and an archive. Membership has doubled since 1978—and the number of plural marriages has tripled—so the sect has recently been looking for ways to purchase more land and expand throughout the town.
But new pioneers have quietly begun moving into the area, secretive outsiders who say little and keep to themselves. Like the pious polygamists, they are focused on deciphering cryptic messages that only they have the power to understand. Just off Beef Hollow Road, less than a mile from brethren headquarters, thousands of hard-hatted construction workers in sweat-soaked T-shirts are laying the groundwork for the newcomers’ own temple and archive, a massive complex so large that it necessitated expanding the town’s boundaries. Once built, it will be more than five times the size of the US Capitol.
Rather than Bibles, prophets, and worshippers, this temple will be filled with servers, computer intelligence experts, and armed guards. And instead of listening for words flowing down from heaven, these newcomers will be secretly capturing, storing, and analyzing vast quantities of words and images hurtling through the world’s telecommunications networks. In the little town of Bluffdale, Big Love and Big Brother have become uneasy neighbors.
Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.
But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”
For the NSA, overflowing with tens of billions of dollars in post-9/11 budget awards, the cryptanalysis breakthrough came at a time of explosive growth, in size as well as in power. Established as an arm of the Department of Defense following Pearl Harbor, with the primary purpose of preventing another surprise assault, the NSA suffered a series of humiliations in the post-Cold War years. Caught offguard by an escalating series of terrorist attacks—the first World Trade Center bombing, the blowing up of US embassies in East Africa, the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, and finally the devastation of 9/11—some began questioning the agency’s very reason for being. In response, the NSA has quietly been reborn. And while there is little indication that its actual effectiveness has improved—after all, despite numerous pieces of evidence and intelligence-gathering opportunities, it missed the near-disastrous attempted attacks by the underwear bomber on a flight to Detroit in 2009 and by the car bomber in Times Square in 2010—there is no doubt that it has transformed itself into the largest, most covert, and potentially most intrusive intelligence agency ever created.
In the process—and for the first time since Watergate and the other scandals of the Nixon administration—the NSA has turned its surveillance apparatus on the US and its citizens. It has established listening posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the country or overseas. It has created a supercomputer of almost unimaginable speed to look for patterns and unscramble codes. Finally, the agency has begun building a place to store all the trillions of words and thoughts and whispers captured in its electronic net. And, of course, it’s all being done in secret. To those on the inside, the old adage that NSA stands for Never Say Anything applies more than ever.
A swath of freezing fog blanketed Salt Lake City on the morning of January 6, 2011, mixing with a weeklong coating of heavy gray smog. Red air alerts, warning people to stay indoors unless absolutely necessary, had become almost daily occurrences, and the temperature was in the bone-chilling twenties. “What I smell and taste is like coal smoke,” complained one local blogger that day. At the city’s international airport, many inbound flights were delayed or diverted while outbound regional jets were grounded. But among those making it through the icy mist was a figure whose gray suit and tie made him almost disappear into the background. He was tall and thin, with the physique of an aging basketball player and dark caterpillar eyebrows beneath a shock of matching hair. Accompanied by a retinue of bodyguards, the man was NSA deputy director Chris Inglis, the agency’s highest-ranking civilian and the person who ran its worldwide day-to-day operations.
A short time later, Inglis arrived in Bluffdale at the site of the future data center, a flat, unpaved runway on a little-used part of Camp Williams, a National Guard training site. There, in a white tent set up for the occasion, Inglis joined Harvey Davis, the agency’s associate director for installations and logistics, and Utah senator Orrin Hatch, along with a few generals and politicians in a surreal ceremony. Standing in an odd wooden sandbox and holding gold-painted shovels, they made awkward jabs at the sand and thus officially broke ground on what the local media had simply dubbed “the spy center.” Hoping for some details on what was about to be built, reporters turned to one of the invited guests, Lane Beattie of the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce. Did he have any idea of the purpose behind the new facility in his backyard? “Absolutely not,” he said with a self-conscious half laugh. “Nor do I want them spying on me.”
For his part, Inglis simply engaged in a bit of double-talk, emphasizing the least threatening aspect of the center: “It’s a state-of-the-art facility designed to support the intelligence community in its mission to, in turn, enable and protect the nation’s cybersecurity.” While cybersecurity will certainly be among the areas focused on in Bluffdale, what is collected, how it’s collected, and what is done with the material are far more important issues. Battling hackers makes for a nice cover—it’s easy to explain, and who could be against it? Then the reporters turned to Hatch, who proudly described the center as “a great tribute to Utah,” then added, “I can’t tell you a lot about what they’re going to be doing, because it’s highly classified.”
And then there was this anomaly: Although this was supposedly the official ground-breaking for the nation’s largest and most expensive cybersecurity project, no one from the Department of Homeland Security, the agency responsible for protecting civilian networks from cyberattack, spoke from the lectern. In fact, the official who’d originally introduced the data center, at a press conference in Salt Lake City in October 2009, had nothing to do with cybersecurity. It was Glenn A. Gaffney, deputy director of national intelligence for collection, a man who had spent almost his entire career at the CIA. As head of collection for the intelligence community, he managed the country’s human and electronic spies.
Within days, the tent and sandbox and gold shovels would be gone and Inglis and the generals would be replaced by some 10,000 construction workers. “We’ve been asked not to talk about the project,” Rob Moore, president of Big-D Construction, one of the three major contractors working on the project, told a local reporter. The plans for the center show an extensive security system: an elaborate $10 million antiterrorism protection program, including a fence designed to stop a 15,000-pound vehicle traveling 50 miles per hour, closed-circuit cameras, a biometric identification system, a vehicle inspection facility, and a visitor-control center.
Inside, the facility will consist of four 25,000-square-foot halls filled with servers, complete with raised floor space for cables and storage. In addition, there will be more than 900,000 square feet for technical support and administration. The entire site will be self-sustaining, with fuel tanks large enough to power the backup generators for three days in an emergency, water storage with the capability of pumping 1.7 million gallons of liquid per day, as well as a sewage system and massive air-conditioning system to keep all those servers cool. Electricity will come from the center’s own substation built by Rocky Mountain Power to satisfy the 65-megawatt power demand. Such a mammoth amount of energy comes with a mammoth price tag—about $40 million a year, according to one estimate.
Given the facility’s scale and the fact that a terabyte of data can now be stored on a flash drive the size of a man’s pinky, the potential amount of information that could be housed in Bluffdale is truly staggering. But so is the exponential growth in the amount of intelligence data being produced every day by the eavesdropping sensors of the NSA and other intelligence agencies. As a result of this “expanding array of theater airborne and other sensor networks,” as a 2007 Department of Defense report puts it, the Pentagon is attempting to expand its worldwide communications network, known as the Global Information Grid, to handle yottabytes (1024 bytes) of data. (A yottabyte is a septillion bytes—so large that no one has yet coined a term for the next higher magnitude.)
It needs that capacity because, according to a recent report by Cisco, global Internet traffic will quadruple from 2010 to 2015, reaching 966 exabytes per year. (A million exabytes equal a yottabyte.) In terms of scale, Eric Schmidt, Google’s former CEO, once estimated that the total of all human knowledge created from the dawn of man to 2003 totaled 5 exabytes. And the data flow shows no sign of slowing. In 2011 more than 2 billion of the world’s 6.9 billion people were connected to the Internet. By 2015, market research firm IDC estimates, there will be 2.7 billion users. Thus, the NSA’s need for a 1-million-square-foot data storehouse. Should the agency ever fill the Utah center with a yottabyte of information, it would be equal to about 500 quintillion (500,000,000,000,000,000,000) pages of text.
The data stored in Bluffdale will naturally go far beyond the world’s billions of public web pages. The NSA is more interested in the so-called invisible web, also known as the deep web or deepnet—data beyond the reach of the public. This includes password-protected data, US and foreign government communications, and noncommercial file-sharing between trusted peers. “The deep web contains government reports, databases, and other sources of information of high value to DOD and the intelligence community,” according to a 2010 Defense Science Board report. “Alternative tools are needed to find and index data in the deep web … Stealing the classified secrets of a potential adversary is where the [intelligence] community is most comfortable.” With its new Utah Data Center, the NSA will at last have the technical capability to store, and rummage through, all those stolen secrets. The question, of course, is how the agency defines who is, and who is not, “a potential adversary.”
Before yottabytes of data from the deep web and elsewhere can begin piling up inside the servers of the NSA’s new center, they must be collected. To better accomplish that, the agency has undergone the largest building boom in its history, including installing secret electronic monitoring rooms in major US telecom facilities. Controlled by the NSA, these highly secured spaces are where the agency taps into the US communications networks, a practice that came to light during the Bush years but was never acknowledged by the agency. The broad outlines of the so-called warrantless-wiretapping program have long been exposed—how the NSA secretly and illegally bypassed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was supposed to oversee and authorize highly targeted domestic eavesdropping; how the program allowed wholesale monitoring of millions of American phone calls and email. In the wake of the program’s exposure, Congress passed the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which largely made the practices legal. Telecoms that had agreed to participate in the illegal activity were granted immunity from prosecution and lawsuits. What wasn’t revealed until now, however, was the enormity of this ongoing domestic spying program.
For the first time, a former NSA official has gone on the record to describe the program, codenamed Stellar Wind, in detail. William Binney was a senior NSA crypto-mathematician largely responsible for automating the agency’s worldwide eavesdropping network. A tall man with strands of black hair across the front of his scalp and dark, determined eyes behind thick-rimmed glasses, the 68-year-old spent nearly four decades breaking codes and finding new ways to channel billions of private phone calls and email messages from around the world into the NSA’s bulging databases. As chief and one of the two cofounders of the agency’s Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center, Binney and his team designed much of the infrastructure that’s still likely used to intercept international and foreign communications.
He explains that the agency could have installed its tapping gear at the nation’s cable landing stations—the more than two dozen sites on the periphery of the US where fiber-optic cables come ashore. If it had taken that route, the NSA would have been able to limit its eavesdropping to just international communications, which at the time was all that was allowed under US law. Instead it chose to put the wiretapping rooms at key junction points throughout the country—large, windowless buildings known as switches—thus gaining access to not just international communications but also to most of the domestic traffic flowing through the US. The network of intercept stations goes far beyond the single room in an AT&T building in San Francisco exposed by a whistle-blower in 2006. “I think there’s 10 to 20 of them,” Binney says. “That’s not just San Francisco; they have them in the middle of the country and also on the East Coast.”
The eavesdropping on Americans doesn’t stop at the telecom switches. To capture satellite communications in and out of the US, the agency also monitors AT&T’s powerful earth stations, satellite receivers in locations that include Roaring Creek and Salt Creek. Tucked away on a back road in rural Catawissa, Pennsylvania, Roaring Creek’s three 105-foot dishes handle much of the country’s communications to and from Europe and the Middle East. And on an isolated stretch of land in remote Arbuckle, California, three similar dishes at the company’s Salt Creek station service the Pacific Rim and Asia.
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Binney left the NSA in late 2001, shortly after the agency launched its warrantless-wiretapping program. “They violated the Constitution setting it up,” he says bluntly. “But they didn’t care. They were going to do it anyway, and they were going to crucify anyone who stood in the way. When they started violating the Constitution, I couldn’t stay.” Binney says Stellar Wind was far larger than has been publicly disclosed and included not just eavesdropping on domestic phone calls but the inspection of domestic email. At the outset the program recorded 320 million calls a day, he says, which represented about 73 to 80 percent of the total volume of the agency’s worldwide intercepts. The haul only grew from there. According to Binney—who has maintained close contact with agency employees until a few years ago—the taps in the secret rooms dotting the country are actually powered by highly sophisticated software programs that conduct “deep packet inspection,” examining Internet traffic as it passes through the 10-gigabit-per-second cables at the speed of light.
The software, created by a company called Narus that’s now part of Boeing, is controlled remotely from NSA headquarters at Fort Meade in Maryland and searches US sources for target addresses, locations, countries, and phone numbers, as well as watch-listed names, keywords, and phrases in email. Any communication that arouses suspicion, especially those to or from the million or so people on agency watch lists, are automatically copied or recorded and then transmitted to the NSA.
The scope of surveillance expands from there, Binney says. Once a name is entered into the Narus database, all phone calls and other communications to and from that person are automatically routed to the NSA’s recorders. “Anybody you want, route to a recorder,” Binney says. “If your number’s in there? Routed and gets recorded.” He adds, “The Narus device allows you to take it all.” And when Bluffdale is completed, whatever is collected will be routed there for storage and analysis.
According to Binney, one of the deepest secrets of the Stellar Wind program—again, never confirmed until now—was that the NSA gained warrantless access to AT&T’s vast trove of domestic and international billing records, detailed information about who called whom in the US and around the world. As of 2007, AT&T had more than 2.8 trillion records housed in a database at its Florham Park, New Jersey, complex.
Verizon was also part of the program, Binney says, and that greatly expanded the volume of calls subject to the agency’s domestic eavesdropping. “That multiplies the call rate by at least a factor of five,” he says. “So you’re over a billion and a half calls a day.” (Spokespeople for Verizon and AT&T said their companies would not comment on matters of national security.)
After he left the NSA, Binney suggested a system for monitoring people’s communications according to how closely they are connected to an initial target. The further away from the target—say you’re just an acquaintance of a friend of the target—the less the surveillance. But the agency rejected the idea, and, given the massive new storage facility in Utah, Binney suspects that it now simply collects everything. “The whole idea was, how do you manage 20 terabytes of intercept a minute?” he says. “The way we proposed was to distinguish between things you want and things you don’t want.” Instead, he adds, “they’re storing everything they gather.” And the agency is gathering as much as it can.
Once the communications are intercepted and stored, the data-mining begins. “You can watch everybody all the time with data- mining,” Binney says. Everything a person does becomes charted on a graph, “financial transactions or travel or anything,” he says. Thus, as data like bookstore receipts, bank statements, and commuter toll records flow in, the NSA is able to paint a more and more detailed picture of someone’s life.
The NSA also has the ability to eavesdrop on phone calls directly and in real time. According to Adrienne J. Kinne, who worked both before and after 9/11 as a voice interceptor at the NSA facility in Georgia, in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks “basically all rules were thrown out the window, and they would use any excuse to justify a waiver to spy on Americans.” Even journalists calling home from overseas were included. “A lot of time you could tell they were calling their families,” she says, “incredibly intimate, personal conversations.” Kinne found the act of eavesdropping on innocent fellow citizens personally distressing. “It’s almost like going through and finding somebody’s diary,” she says.
But there is, of course, reason for anyone to be distressed about the practice. Once the door is open for the government to spy on US citizens, there are often great temptations to abuse that power for political purposes, as when Richard Nixon eavesdropped on his political enemies during Watergate and ordered the NSA to spy on antiwar protesters. Those and other abuses prompted Congress to enact prohibitions in the mid-1970s against domestic spying.
Before he gave up and left the NSA, Binney tried to persuade officials to create a more targeted system that could be authorized by a court. At the time, the agency had 72 hours to obtain a legal warrant, and Binney devised a method to computerize the system. “I had proposed that we automate the process of requesting a warrant and automate approval so we could manage a couple of million intercepts a day, rather than subvert the whole process.” But such a system would have required close coordination with the courts, and NSA officials weren’t interested in that, Binney says. Instead they continued to haul in data on a grand scale. Asked how many communications—”transactions,” in NSA’s lingo—the agency has intercepted since 9/11, Binney estimates the number at “between 15 and 20 trillion, the aggregate over 11 years.”
When Barack Obama took office, Binney hoped the new administration might be open to reforming the program to address his constitutional concerns. He and another former senior NSA analyst, J. Kirk Wiebe, tried to bring the idea of an automated warrant-approval system to the attention of the Department of Justice’s inspector general. They were given the brush-off. “They said, oh, OK, we can’t comment,” Binney says.
Sitting in a restaurant not far from NSA headquarters, the place where he spent nearly 40 years of his life, Binney held his thumb and forefinger close together. “We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state,” he says.
There is still one technology preventing untrammeled government access to private digital data: strong encryption. Anyone—from terrorists and weapons dealers to corporations, financial institutions, and ordinary email senders—can use it to seal their messages, plans, photos, and documents in hardened data shells. For years, one of the hardest shells has been the Advanced Encryption Standard, one of several algorithms used by much of the world to encrypt data. Available in three different strengths—128 bits, 192 bits, and 256 bits—it’s incorporated in most commercial email programs and web browsers and is considered so strong that the NSA has even approved its use for top-secret US government communications. Most experts say that a so-called brute-force computer attack on the algorithm—trying one combination after another to unlock the encryption—would likely take longer than the age of the universe. For a 128-bit cipher, the number of trial-and-error attempts would be 340 undecillion (1036).
Breaking into those complex mathematical shells like the AES is one of the key reasons for the construction going on in Bluffdale. That kind of cryptanalysis requires two major ingredients: super-fast computers to conduct brute-force attacks on encrypted messages and a massive number of those messages for the computers to analyze. The more messages from a given target, the more likely it is for the computers to detect telltale patterns, and Bluffdale will be able to hold a great many messages. “We questioned it one time,” says another source, a senior intelligence manager who was also involved with the planning. “Why were we building this NSA facility? And, boy, they rolled out all the old guys—the crypto guys.” According to the official, these experts told then-director of national intelligence Dennis Blair, “You’ve got to build this thing because we just don’t have the capability of doing the code-breaking.” It was a candid admission. In the long war between the code breakers and the code makers—the tens of thousands of cryptographers in the worldwide computer security industry—the code breakers were admitting defeat.
So the agency had one major ingredient—a massive data storage facility—under way. Meanwhile, across the country in Tennessee, the government was working in utmost secrecy on the other vital element: the most powerful computer the world has ever known.
The plan was launched in 2004 as a modern-day Manhattan Project. Dubbed the High Productivity Computing Systems program, its goal was to advance computer speed a thousandfold, creating a machine that could execute a quadrillion (1015) operations a second, known as a petaflop—the computer equivalent of breaking the land speed record. And as with the Manhattan Project, the venue chosen for the supercomputing program was the town of Oak Ridge in eastern Tennessee, a rural area where sharp ridges give way to low, scattered hills, and the southwestward-flowing Clinch River bends sharply to the southeast. About 25 miles from Knoxville, it is the “secret city” where uranium- 235 was extracted for the first atomic bomb. A sign near the exit read: what you see here, what you do here, what you hear here, when you leave here, let it stay here. Today, not far from where that sign stood, Oak Ridge is home to the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and it’s engaged in a new secret war. But this time, instead of a bomb of almost unimaginable power, the weapon is a computer of almost unimaginable speed.
In 2004, as part of the supercomputing program, the Department of Energy established its Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility for multiple agencies to join forces on the project. But in reality there would be two tracks, one unclassified, in which all of the scientific work would be public, and another top-secret, in which the NSA could pursue its own computer covertly. “For our purposes, they had to create a separate facility,” says a former senior NSA computer expert who worked on the project and is still associated with the agency. (He is one of three sources who described the program.) It was an expensive undertaking, but one the NSA was desperate to launch.
Known as the Multiprogram Research Facility, or Building 5300, the $41 million, five-story, 214,000-square-foot structure was built on a plot of land on the lab’s East Campus and completed in 2006. Behind the brick walls and green-tinted windows, 318 scientists, computer engineers, and other staff work in secret on the cryptanalytic applications of high-speed computing and other classified projects. The supercomputer center was named in honor of George R. Cotter, the NSA’s now-retired chief scientist and head of its information technology program. Not that you’d know it. “There’s no sign on the door,” says the ex-NSA computer expert.
At the DOE’s unclassified center at Oak Ridge, work progressed at a furious pace, although it was a one-way street when it came to cooperation with the closemouthed people in Building 5300. Nevertheless, the unclassified team had its Cray XT4 supercomputer upgraded to a warehouse-sized XT5. Named Jaguar for its speed, it clocked in at 1.75 petaflops, officially becoming the world’s fastest computer in 2009.
Meanwhile, over in Building 5300, the NSA succeeded in building an even faster supercomputer. “They made a big breakthrough,” says another former senior intelligence official, who helped oversee the program. The NSA’s machine was likely similar to the unclassified Jaguar, but it was much faster out of the gate, modified specifically for cryptanalysis and targeted against one or more specific algorithms, like the AES. In other words, they were moving from the research and development phase to actually attacking extremely difficult encryption systems. The code-breaking effort was up and running.
The breakthrough was enormous, says the former official, and soon afterward the agency pulled the shade down tight on the project, even within the intelligence community and Congress. “Only the chairman and vice chairman and the two staff directors of each intelligence committee were told about it,” he says. The reason? “They were thinking that this computing breakthrough was going to give them the ability to crack current public encryption.”
In addition to giving the NSA access to a tremendous amount of Americans’ personal data, such an advance would also open a window on a trove of foreign secrets. While today most sensitive communications use the strongest encryption, much of the older data stored by the NSA, including a great deal of what will be transferred to Bluffdale once the center is complete, is encrypted with more vulnerable ciphers. “Remember,” says the former intelligence official, “a lot of foreign government stuff we’ve never been able to break is 128 or less. Break all that and you’ll find out a lot more of what you didn’t know—stuff we’ve already stored—so there’s an enormous amount of information still in there.”
That, he notes, is where the value of Bluffdale, and its mountains of long-stored data, will come in. What can’t be broken today may be broken tomorrow. “Then you can see what they were saying in the past,” he says. “By extrapolating the way they did business, it gives us an indication of how they may do things now.” The danger, the former official says, is that it’s not only foreign government information that is locked in weaker algorithms, it’s also a great deal of personal domestic communications, such as Americans’ email intercepted by the NSA in the past decade.
But first the supercomputer must break the encryption, and to do that, speed is everything. The faster the computer, the faster it can break codes. The Data Encryption Standard, the 56-bit predecessor to the AES, debuted in 1976 and lasted about 25 years. The AES made its first appearance in 2001 and is expected to remain strong and durable for at least a decade. But if the NSA has secretly built a computer that is considerably faster than machines in the unclassified arena, then the agency has a chance of breaking the AES in a much shorter time. And with Bluffdale in operation, the NSA will have the luxury of storing an ever-expanding archive of intercepts until that breakthrough comes along.
But despite its progress, the agency has not finished building at Oak Ridge, nor is it satisfied with breaking the petaflop barrier. Its next goal is to reach exaflop speed, one quintillion (1018) operations a second, and eventually zettaflop (1021) and yottaflop.
These goals have considerable support in Congress. Last November a bipartisan group of 24 senators sent a letter to President Obama urging him to approve continued funding through 2013 for the Department of Energy’s exascale computing initiative (the NSA’s budget requests are classified). They cited the necessity to keep up with and surpass China and Japan. “The race is on to develop exascale computing capabilities,” the senators noted. The reason was clear: By late 2011 the Jaguar (now with a peak speed of 2.33 petaflops) ranked third behind Japan’s “K Computer,” with an impressive 10.51 petaflops, and the Chinese Tianhe-1A system, with 2.57 petaflops.
But the real competition will take place in the classified realm. To secretly develop the new exaflop (or higher) machine by 2018, the NSA has proposed constructing two connecting buildings, totaling 260,000 square feet, near its current facility on the East Campus of Oak Ridge. Called the Multiprogram Computational Data Center, the buildings will be low and wide like giant warehouses, a design necessary for the dozens of computer cabinets that will compose an exaflop-scale machine, possibly arranged in a cluster to minimize the distance between circuits. According to a presentation delivered to DOE employees in 2009, it will be an “unassuming facility with limited view from roads,” in keeping with the NSA’s desire for secrecy. And it will have an extraordinary appetite for electricity, eventually using about 200 megawatts, enough to power 200,000 homes. The computer will also produce a gargantuan amount of heat, requiring 60,000 tons of cooling equipment, the same amount that was needed to serve both of the World Trade Center towers.
In the meantime Cray is working on the next step for the NSA, funded in part by a $250 million contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. It’s a massively parallel supercomputer called Cascade, a prototype of which is due at the end of 2012. Its development will run largely in parallel with the unclassified effort for the DOE and other partner agencies. That project, due in 2013, will upgrade the Jaguar XT5 into an XK6, codenamed Titan, upping its speed to 10 to 20 petaflops.
Yottabytes and exaflops, septillions and undecillions—the race for computing speed and data storage goes on. In his 1941 story “The Library of Babel,” Jorge Luis Borges imagined a collection of information where the entire world’s knowledge is stored but barely a single word is understood. In Bluffdale the NSA is constructing a library on a scale that even Borges might not have contemplated. And to hear the masters of the agency tell it, it’s only a matter of time until every word is illuminated.
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32 year veteran of the NSA speaks out.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KwYBejOhsM
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I remember reading that article in Wired a few months ago.Big Brother sees all...........
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32 year veteran of the NSA speaks out.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KwYBejOhsM
Too easy...lol
Wow Jack, brains and beauty huh!! ;)
" it’s only a matter of time until every word is illuminated." actually the key words are illuminated and these are the ones that getcha noticed..because illuminating all of them shows no difference of importance, and there is..
The show was much better for those of us with "word phobia".. Thanks for the food though..+1 to ya both
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Lots of very valuable information in this thread. 1984 isn't coming. It's already here. Luckily for us, there's encryption which really can't be broken by the government- unless, of course, your passphrase is too short and too uncomplicated, so it can be guessed by ASIC.
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Let me tell you about someone I met once- this person had his entire neighborhood's phones tapped to know if anyone was getting wise to his operation and call a snitch-your-neighbor -off 1-800 line.
During this time he observed that 95% off all telephone calls consisted of insubstantial chatter, rarely did anyone say anything of real interest. And weird thing about the English language, that alot of what said could be easily misinterpreted even from one person to the next, and 1st hand information gets twisted more and more the further handed it goes when spoken. And most 1st hand info isnt very accurate, 70% or so is a person's personal spin on it, bullshit like what they felt, or opinion s interjected throughout.
The point is there's a saying when it comes to data of any sort "Garbage in = Garbage out."
The enormous heap of worthless info this agency must accumulate would be sooo staggering, that getting any valuable information would take soo long , that the info might as well had been worthless to begin with, and is US unless it was taken with a warrant, in would be inadmissible in court.
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Let me tell you about someone I met once- this person had his entire neighborhood's phones tapped to know if anyone was getting wise to his operation and call a snitch-your-neighbor -off 1-800 line.
During this time he observed that 95% off all telephone calls consisted of insubstantial chatter, rarely did anyone say anything of real interest. And weird thing about the English language, that alot of what said could be easily misinterpreted even from one person to the next, and 1st hand information gets twisted more and more the further handed it goes when spoken. And most 1st hand info isnt very accurate, 70% or so is a person's personal spin on it, bullshit like what they felt, or opinion s interjected throughout.
The point is there's a saying when it comes to data of any sort "Garbage in = Garbage out."
The enormous heap of worthless info this agency must accumulate would be sooo staggering, that getting any valuable information would take soo long , that the info might as well had been worthless to begin with, and is US unless it was taken with a warrant, in would be inadmissible in court.
Riveting tale.
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all i can say is do you believe everything you hear? don't look into it so much its a bunch of scare tactics and if you were smart you wouldn't be talking illegal activities over the phone; don't trust the gov't FUCK the gov't bunch of overpaid pussies in my opinion
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There was a very good PBS documentary called "Top Secret America" with insight from top CIA, NSA officials that aired recently, I was able to get it from bittorrent.
As for the movie "Enemy of the State". When I first saw this movie I was shocked at the satellites they used to track Will Smith. If the GOVT allowed that technology to be shown in a movie, they have had it for years before they allow it in the open like that. If the powers that be had that type of technology BEFORE 1998, one can only guess at what types of TOP SECRET gadgets are being used today to track and record ALL AMERICANS every move.
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TL;DR
The NSA records all phone calls.
+1 for that informative chunk of information. When you actually apply some brain power trying to imagine how much data the NSA is storing it is staggering.
I wonder how the UK compares?
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I wonder how the UK compares?
Look up ECHELON.
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Yeah I remember reading about Echelon years ago. It sounded pretty crazy then and still does, but I do believe the powers that be definitely have access to all of our communications.
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What is PGP Club's first slogan? It is:
Support PGP Club!
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Support encryption in general, it's your ticket out of this dystopia the state seems to be want to build for us.
At this point I'm not even mad at the NSA or the governments of the world. Like Bruce Schneier, I think if the technology exists then it will be used. It sort of just lies in wait for the right mix of social and political situations to be availed of. Technologies give power to everyone, but some technologies disproportionately help some and not so much others. The problem is getting people to wake up and react to the situation that is unfolding itself. PGP and similar technologies are a form of immunization against state power.
I don't really have a problem with the NSA hoovering up data per se, because it's like the story of the scorpion who wanted to cross the river. It is in the nature of any intelligence gathering organization to do this. It's be to expected. Accepted, perhaps not, but expected yes. The problem starts with who has access to that data. If the NSA is concerned exclusively with surveiling violent existential threats to the state, then few people have a problem with that. Unfortunately almost nobody believes that. Now I don't know whether Utah is the modern version of the Bastille (it was stormed only to find just a handful of prisoners, despite what the French think it wasn't their proudest moment, they let their rhetoric cloud their judgement of reality), or it is more like Stazi HQ (real assholes who badly needed the guillotine treatment), but I do know that:
A: They're going to do it.
B: If you are successful in stopping them doing it then much less friendly nation states will do it. Pick your evil, or...
So ultimately only the Cipherpunk route can actually have a realistic chance of working. You can't politic or legislate your way out of this situation. You have to join PGP Club.
The biggest problem right now is that people (general population, not the darknet) are being extremely stupid about what is going on. They are aware there's a general sort of problem facing them, but they are not doing anything about it because it always seems like it affects some other guy. It's going to take deaths for people to wake up basically.
I believe that large numbers of people in Syria have learned that anonymity and encryption technologies are quite important to not being dead.
Maybe that sounds callous, but until people accept responsibility for their own communications instead of outsourcing their security natural selection is going to take care of them. The more people who are aware of this, the more the darknet will grow.
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What is PGP Club's second slogan? It is:
PGP Club or Die!
</ propaganda>
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OH FUCK HELICOPTERS EVERYWHERE
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OH FUCK BLACK HELICOPTERS EVERYWHERE
It's not like you to be politically correct masterblaster!
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Of course, well not all...they know exactly who theyre after and thats who they tap and record...it doesnt stop with calls.
Emails
Texts
Browser history
the books you've taken out at your library
and its not even about stopping terrorists (Russia told USA Tsarnaev was a terrorist!)
terror keeps them in business, keeps the blood, money and oil flowing
They (LEO/Govt) are after us the drugies and such the people making money and having fun while experiencing life to its fullest and that's what they cant stand. They're tapping us, and reading this thread right now especially with a subject name like this...
As for PGP its safe for now, but that too will be cracked one day. They have the best computers in the world and unlimited money to develop new ones. But then we'll come up with something else and on goes the game of cat and mouse until we die or there's a revolution.
-JOS
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There was a very good PBS documentary called "Top Secret America" with insight from top CIA, NSA officials that aired recently, I was able to get it from bittorrent.
As for the movie "Enemy of the State". When I first saw this movie I was shocked at the satellites they used to track Will Smith. If the GOVT allowed that technology to be shown in a movie, they have had it for years before they allow it in the open like that. If the powers that be had that type of technology BEFORE 1998, one can only guess at what types of TOP SECRET gadgets are being used today to track and record ALL AMERICANS every move.
You should read the book for which the documentary was based off of.: "Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State" Dana Priest , William M. Arkin
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pine, but in the end, both the fox and the scorpion drowned. I am wondering if that natural instinct precipitates an inevitable conflict.
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pine, but in the end, both the fox and the scorpion drowned. I am wondering if that natural instinct precipitates an inevitable conflict.
It probably leads to an arms race. The battle between the nation state cryptographers is well understood, but a battle between nation state cryptographers vs the general population is something new. So cryptography becomes politicized, hence the cipherpunks.
I think the ideas of the cipherpunks are still a decade ahead of most people, but that even their most extreme ideas are on the money, especially when it comes to the impact of cryptography on economics.
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pine, but in the end, both the fox and the scorpion drowned. I am wondering if that natural instinct precipitates an inevitable conflict.
fox?
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Let me tell you about someone I met once- this person had his entire neighborhood's phones tapped to know if anyone was getting wise to his operation and call a snitch-your-neighbor -off 1-800 line.
During this time he observed that 95% off all telephone calls consisted of insubstantial chatter, rarely did anyone say anything of real interest. And weird thing about the English language, that alot of what said could be easily misinterpreted even from one person to the next, and 1st hand information gets twisted more and more the further handed it goes when spoken. And most 1st hand info isnt very accurate, 70% or so is a person's personal spin on it, bullshit like what they felt, or opinion s interjected throughout.
The point is there's a saying when it comes to data of any sort "Garbage in = Garbage out."
The enormous heap of worthless info this agency must accumulate would be sooo staggering, that getting any valuable information would take soo long , that the info might as well had been worthless to begin with, and is US unless it was taken with a warrant, in would be inadmissible in court.
All data is copied with a splitter.
Satellites and cables (fiberglass and light) immediately after the cable reaches the main continent.
At&t found a cable at a main place where all data came /comes together and followed the cable to a apartment below, rented by the NSA, again with (through) a splitter.
A very simple hardware device.
So yes, all phone-calls are copied and stored.
That's why you could listen to the conversations the terrorists had with each other in Mumbay a few years ago.
All data is stored and screened by software.
Non of this data can be used in a court of law.
There is the data not meant for, it is just a information tool for the security agency's.
The use of sexual words and phrases can help to send your data strait to the garbage.
You still have to use your words in code.
Stick, suck and lick ain't helping if you use the phrase ""killing the president"" unencrypted.
Say ""put the compact-disk finally a t-shirt on"" instead or something as substitute, or any other code, as long it is clear what is meant only to those who are concerning the message
This is a quite new thing that all telephone calls are monitored and listened too.
The NSA used to screen only incoming data from abroad and the fbi was responsible for internal affairs.
After 9/11 it became clear that c.i.a the n.s.a and f.b.i were not working side by side and did not share information.
The info of the round cake or something with a tale a stick and an other stick was not shared with the fbi who could have monitored the Hijackers that were already in the states.
This was outside the jurisdiction of the NSA.
The patriot act made it possible to keep a eye on all American citizens , by listening to all their phone conversations.
And more, like using your phone as a microphone to monitor the room where the phone is stationed.
Now the patriot act is in use, and the screening personal have to listen to very sexual phone-calls of all citizens of the U.S.A.
Google some of the info I just gave and you will be amazed you will find
Nice to see is when the building of the NSA opens its doors at 9 and 5 o"clock and see all those thousands of people start to get, or leave work.
22.000 thousand people is like a small village in one building.
Powerful organization by the way.
All onion data of the tor routers is stored and analyzed just the same.
Not because all data is encrypted and useless.
Last tornodes are copied and replaced with look a like nodes so data can be intercepted without encryption.
Fake buttons have a shockwave flash connection exe under it's icon. making 99% of the data go through TOR but 1 or 2% will bypass the tor nodes and contact your pc.
The same goes for pdf files.
They will bypass TOR too, so your identity is revealed
Man in the middle attack methods are used by our (secret) agency's too.
To add a security layer it is still wise to use the gpg encryption for sensitive data.
NSA uses software and about 22000 people are involved to screen all data.
Yes , all phone-calls (voice over ip included) are all stored and screened by software, and listened to, by about 22.000 people, listening to the most uncommon dialects and almost dead languages.
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You shouldn't use a phone for anything sensitive, but if you absolutely must, there are encryption options available. Look into RedPhone and TextSecure, both developed by a well known cryptoanarchist / hacker*. Make sure you root your phone, and remember that metadata like the numbers you call/text and the time of each communication will still be available to the carrier and LE. As the saying goes, "metadata in aggregate is content."
You're better off using desktop communication tools, email + PGP, softphones with ZRTP, and running everything over anonymity networks.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisper_Systems
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pine, but in the end, both the fox and the scorpion drowned. I am wondering if that natural instinct precipitates an inevitable conflict.
fox?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog
It is an small story called a fable. Fables are miniature lessons in morality or commonsense that emphasize the necessity for clear thinking and looking at the big picture. The most famous collection is called Aesop's Fables. Variants of Aesop's fables have been told to Western and Asian children for thousands of years, especially in Europe and North Africa.
You have probably heard of the stories indirectly even if you haven't read them, things such as "The Golden Goose", "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" and "The Tortoise And The Hare". The interesting thing about these stories is how ancient they are, they are originally from the Bronze Age culture, when there were only 30 million people that walked the earth.
I think it is unfortunate that many children today are losing this beautiful heritage. Our ancestors were not morons, it is not a coincidence that at the same time society loses its thread it also neglects the old stories. When times get tough, people pay more heed to such simple and important truths. It is the conceit of all people in all times to think they live in a complicated world but really everything is very simple and human nature hasn't ever changed.
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I personally prefer the Native American parable:
A scorpion was walking along the bank of a river, wondering how to get to the other side. Suddenly, he saw a fox. He asked the fox to take him on his back across the river.
The fox said, "No. If I do that, you'll sting me, and I'll drown."
The scorpion assured him, "If I do that, we'll both drown."
The fox thought about it and finally agreed. So the scorpion climbed up on his back, and the fox began to swim. But halfway across the river, the scorpion stung him. As poison filled his veins, the fox turned to the scorpion and said, "Why did you do that? Now you'll drown, too."
"I couldn't help it," said the scorpion. "It's my nature."
Both fables/parables are comparable in their intended use. Wasn't anyone else read Grim's Fairly Tales as a kid?
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I wasn't scared. I don't text. I use a VPN, proxy IP and then tor. I have a burner phone. I use PGP.
But when my customer told me about the taps he installs for diverting all Internet traffic from his Verizon NOC, I finally got scared. This is real folks, ad PGP is broken. We need the encryption arms race to start NOW!
Here's what he wrote to me a few days ago:
let me tell you ...the scariest thing to our civil liberties going forward is the NSA ...in the name of national security and preventing terrorism .... it is frankly quire scary ... big brother is just around the corner ..... crazy thing is ...nobody seems to care !!! we could put a stop to this if people would wake up and demand it be stopped !!ok ...
So how does it work .... a lot of this is public knowledge ... except for the part about how it operates in a place like Verizon or ATT ....well.... as it stands ... both ATT and Verizon W have both granted almost unlimited access to their networks .... and that is big ..every other carrier is using these networks (ie, sprint, Tmobile etc don't really have networks ...or very tiny ones anyway ... they basically piggy back off VZW (Verizon)/ATT) ...ATT and Verizon land line (includes MCI and a lot of old Bellsouth etc) basically have the entire country's data and voice traversing their networks at one point or another.
Think about it ..even if you have a cable modem .... to get to yahoo or whatever website ...your data will most likely go though Vernon or ATT at some point ...Now, the NSA has chosen to set up shop in switching centers around the country ( i work in such a place) ....they essentially have taps into the big data stream ...essentially ... it mirrors 100% of what goes through and at this point and time ....as i understand it ... they are looking for key words, patterns etc in the name of security .....yes, they even look through your social media ...creating graphs and patterns ... if you do anything to get on that hot list ...everything you do and say will be recorded .....fast forward a bit now ....this is NOT good enough for our friends at the NSA .... they have decided ...and are currently creating a 1 million square foot data center in Utah .... to gather and store 100% of every piece of data that goes through ...from anyone to anyone ....in case you are not aware, this includes PHONE CALLS ...your phone calls are 90% VOIP (IP based) already ...making the storage and recording very easy.
So what about the little protection called encryption you say ...well they used to say it would take a million years to crack AES 128 bit encryption if you tried all the combinations ..... here is where it gets even more scary ..the NSA has acknowledged they can't just crack these encryptions !! so what are they planning on doing with all this encrypted data they are storing ..... WELL ..apparently ..they are on the brink of super computers ...with processing powers i can not explain b/c the numbers are so big it is incomprehensible ... they are designing them for one purpose ...to use brute force attacks to crack any encryption .... thus ..every word you ever say or anything you ever type will be stored on their data center and they can , at will, crack your encryption and listen to anything you ever say or write with no warrant and no oversight ...
This shit is scary ..and this is real .... and both political parties have signed on ..there is nobody objecting to it ..it is all legal ..and there is nothing we can do .... save the public gets outraged and congress changes the laws.
If you doubt any of this ...research it .... you will find most of it is available info .... but i can add to that when i say ....i can show you where they are actually tapping the network ... i helped install the device and run fibers to tap panels that mirror your data and phone calls. ***note ...i may be rambling ...but this scares the hell out of me ... living under shit like this freaks me out ...so when somebody wants to know why I want my assault rifles ...and why anybody would think government tyranny is possible ....it is, it is already here.
Get yourself some guns brother ... enough for you and your neighbors .... we may need it b4 these elites try to take our freedom from us ...both parties ... although Barry may be the worst to date , since he is bought and paid for in a way never seen before ..... ugh ... nobody (except maybe the NRA) is actually interested in protecting our freedoms and civil liberties ...and if we do not protect them ... our children, grandchildren will not know what freedom taste like.
What i have expressed is 100% accurate (in regards to NSA).
Now feel free to alert the masses ..but do NOT use my name, company or position please... people in high places ... particularly in my own company would not approve of this message ...as it may scare customers away ..which is what most of them care about!!! They don't give a dam about politics or personal freedom and civil liberties .....So, how do you feel about being monitored? Like i said, for now you and i are likely ok ..but they are storing this information ...so if they want it later ..they already have what you said years ago .....
NSA= Never Say Anything ...
Enough for now good sir, be well brother .... destroy this e-mail.
*****
Modzi
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I like you modziw.
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Now, the NSA has chosen to set up shop in switching centers around the country ( i work in such a place) ....they essentially have taps into the big data stream ...essentially ... it mirrors 100% of what goes through and at this point and time ....as i understand it ... they are looking for key words, patterns etc in the name of security
He's talking about internet exchange points. I've head for years that the NSA is tapping IXes, but I've also heard that they are 1) storing everything, or 2) sampling a small portion of it, like 2%. Since 80% of the data moving across the internet is video and bittorrent stuff, and a good chunk of that is porn, it doesn't make sense to me to store everything, but what do I know.
I've always suspected they are searching for key words, although it may be rather sophisticated, so telling your friend you're sending them "1.5 CDs" in the mail is a pattern that they could pick up.
So what about the little protection called encryption you say ...well they used to say it would take a million years to crack AES 128 bit encryption if you tried all the combinations ..... here is where it gets even more scary ..the NSA has acknowledged they can't just crack these encryptions !! so what are they planning on doing with all this encrypted data they are storing ..... WELL ..apparently ..they are on the brink of super computers ...with processing powers i can not explain b/c the numbers are so big it is incomprehensible ... they are designing them for one purpose ...to use brute force attacks to crack any encryption
He's talking about quantum computers, but there's already a lot of research into crypto algorithms that are resistant to quantum computation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography
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pine, but in the end, both the fox and the scorpion drowned. I am wondering if that natural instinct precipitates an inevitable conflict.
fox?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog
It is an small story called a fable. Fables are miniature lessons in morality or commonsense that emphasize the necessity for clear thinking and looking at the big picture. The most famous collection is called Aesop's Fables. Variants of Aesop's fables have been told to Western and Asian children for thousands of years, especially in Europe and North Africa.
You have probably heard of the stories indirectly even if you haven't read them, things such as "The Golden Goose", "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" and "The Tortoise And The Hare". The interesting thing about these stories is how ancient they are, they are originally from the Bronze Age culture, when there were only 30 million people that walked the earth.
I think it is unfortunate that many children today are losing this beautiful heritage. Our ancestors were not morons, it is not a coincidence that at the same time society loses its thread it also neglects the old stories. When times get tough, people pay more heed to such simple and important truths. It is the conceit of all people in all times to think they live in a complicated world but really everything is very simple and human nature hasn't ever changed.
Kudos to you pine.
Yes there are very valuable lessons to be learned with the old tales and if you dig deep enough you can see our fore father's certainly pulled no punches when it came to delivering the lessons. Today's society (at least where I live) seems to find it necessary to cushion the blown for the new generations. That's several generations back when this first began, not sure why it has evolved the way it has but it has. There are some radio personalities that have and do call this (close your eyes girls) 'the pussificatiion of America' now I can't say for sure I agree or disagree with this but, I am certainly keeping my eye on the nOtion.
Never heard the fox, but know the frog oh too well...(nature verse nurture) :)
Thank you ladies!!! lol :)
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You shouldn't use a phone for anything sensitive, but if you absolutely must, there are encryption options available. Look into RedPhone and TextSecure, both developed by a well known cryptoanarchist / hacker*. Make sure you root your phone, and remember that metadata like the numbers you call/text and the time of each communication will still be available to the carrier and LE. As the saying goes, "metadata in aggregate is content."
You're better off using desktop communication tools, email + PGP, softphones with ZRTP, and running everything over anonymity networks.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisper_Systems
^this
+100
Fantastic advice! Been using their apps for the past year and a half. I can't recommend their shit enough!
BTW, LE requires a warrant to search your phone in most jurisdictions- provided that you have a basic password lock to protect access to your phone. If they ever do get access to it via the warrant and easily crack your screen lock, you are not required to divulge your TextSecure (or any other) password under your 5th Amendment right to remain silent. This has only been ruled against once when a woman admitted to LE that she was hiding something illegal, so she was forced to give up her password or face a contempt charge.
In short: encrypt, encrypt, encrypt. Create a strong enough password, consisting of multiple, random words. And keep your mouth shut. This is true for perfectly law abiding citizens as well as... others ;)
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I think it is unfortunate that many children today are losing this beautiful heritage. Our ancestors were not morons, it is not a coincidence that at the same time society loses its thread it also neglects the old stories. When times get tough, people pay more heed to such simple and important truths. It is the conceit of all people in all times to think they live in a complicated world but really everything is very simple and human nature hasn't ever changed.
Perfectly said, Pine. The wisdom of the ages is propagated through stories and quotations. Simple as that.
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I like you modziw.
Thanks bro. You aight too. Goodnight ;)
Modzi
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I love this thread, so many well written posts.
This NSA information scares me, but no one seems to be interested when I tell them. They all seem to think because (they think) they are law abiding citizens then they will be ok and don't care if everything they do is recorded.
I try telling them the "First they came" poem by Martin Niemöller, they still aren't interested.
Thing is most if these people do break the law in some way, smoke a bit of hash, illegally download movies yet they do not consider the NSA tapping into everything they say or do online a problem....
So many people are ASLEEP at the wheel, it frightens me so much.
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I love this thread, so many well written posts.
This NSA information scares me, but no one seems to be interested when I tell them. They all seem to think because (they think) they are law abiding citizens then they will be ok and don't care if everything they do is recorded.
I try telling them the "First they came" poem by Martin Niemöller, they still aren't interested.
Thing is most if these people do break the law in some way, smoke a bit of hash, illegally download movies yet they do not consider the NSA tapping into everything they say or do online a problem....
So many people are ASLEEP at the wheel, it frightens me so much.
You have come to the right place... To learn, plan, and do drugs when it gets too scary.
Modzi
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TL;DR
The NSA records all phone calls.
True !!! At least for 3 years, but can be 5 years.
The NSA has the possibillity to tap in without delay, but can let it filter by software, so sex-phone-calls are filtered so the harddrive with conversations gets smaller. Voice-recognitionsoftware can type out what is being said, live! Without delay. Like the translations from CNN that you can read when a Arab speaks, or a Chinese..
AT&T had to make a record of which eimei and phonenumber called from where to who, phonenumber emei and location, and time of course.
And the triangulation is accurate!
Maybe a 20 meter miscalculation, at most, compare to the GPS positioning.
On the wikileaks spycables are nice gadgets from the army.
No need for the phone-provider to help, identity theft by stealing someones number and even emei, make calls in his name.
Point a phone out, where it is, and make contact to the phone it's microphone, So call the phone without let it ring or even change the display.
Possibility to tap in on blackberry too, even the newest encryption is cracked.
No need for servers in a country to tap in on the blackberry's, Totally autonomous.
No help of the telephone-provider is needed.
The NSA is stealing all data that goes aroun, but if you stuble over something and make a copy, you can and some have got a 20 year punishment.
20 years in jail, and who is going to jail for stealing all data from all data and phone-providers.
The CEO of the NSA or Obama himself?
Let's put them in Guantanamo and see over 10 years if there is a case to be made.
And water-board them a lot. Not that we need a confession, we have the evidence.
They would make good warez to change for Mannings, Snowden or Assange.
The Palestinians , they manage to change 1000 people for just 1 soldier.
When the terrorists killed people in Mumbay in the Oberon Hotel, there was a Israelish Family killed too.
The terrorist had a satelitephone and was in connection with his boss in Pakistan all the time.
Two days later in a replay of the event you could hear them talk to eachother.
So yes everything is recorded.
Just in case someone needs to know what has been said 4 years ago or 5 years ago.