FBI quietly changes its privacy rules for accessing NSA data on Americans
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Also, I did not realize just how intricately NSA data is shared with the FBI (and who knows how many other agencies). From the article, it sounds like any FBI analyst can run an arbitrary query on the "to" and "from" fields of email addresses, at any time, as many times as desired. So effectively the FBI has one giant inbox with Americans' communications in it?
That inbox will get hacked. It's only a matter of time. If thousands of federal bureaucrats have access to it, I would be very surprised if foreign intelligence agencies do not already have access to it in some capacity.
Scary stuff. People should continue to assume all systems are compromised and email is public information.
Nobody in government service gets punished for following rules; many are in place to serve as a CYA measure. Oh, you did something that is horrible or unconstitutional in hindsight but that was how you were instructed to do it and you were following the rules? Well, here's a hand-slap for you, shame.
Contrast and compare with how our government treats whistle-blowers, for the full depressing experience.
So, Nuremberg defense? I think we pretty much agreed in 1961 that criminal behavior following orders is still criminal behavior...
Most foreign agencies would probably take a far more direct route, one they've been using for centuries, and use one of the multiple moles they surely have placed inside of these organizations.
The chances of it being secure are zero.
The career incentives of the intelligence classes do not align with actual national security.
Sadly it seems the inverse is true.
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Empirically: who gets fired when the data is hacked ? Guy at the top or some IT peon.
Just who today is buck stop responsible for US National Data Security.
(hint: APPLE)
It probably has been hacked already. NSA respects FBI OpSec so little that this interface is already used to funnel disinformation to counterintelligence adversaries. That the lives of random citizens are randomly fucked up is a mere side benefit.
I have never heard this before. Do you happen to have a citation for this? I would like to read more about it.
If there ever was an example of the pot calling the kettle black, this is it.
Recall that NSA allowed a Dell employee to have free reign of countless of their internal systems, and to make copies of literally hundreds of thousands of internal documents. Not just NSA documents, but also Australian Intelligence and British Intelligence documents. And probably a lot more.
That is honestly my problem with NSA/FBI/etc.
They have the biggest pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and the attack vectors are limitless. Political [The Hitler scenario], technical [foreign intelligence, terrorists, basement hackers, etc.], handling of garbage [someone didn't dispose of it correctly], internal [someone wants to go a target on their own, sell it to the Chinese, etc], etc. etc.
The fact Snowden was able to do what he did is proof they aren't competent enough to be trusted with that pot of gold.
This is the most compelling reason of all.
It makes me wonder why the media doesn't focus on the human attack vectors. Buffer overflows and zero-day sploits are hard to understand... but anyone can understand bribes.
Whats more, if you really get down to the technicalities, they have taps at all the major fiber nodes domestically, collect that information, but supposedly it's not collection in NSA terminology unless they look at it after they collect, which is just the most back-asswards way of arbitrarily defining terms as I can think.
So in reality, all your packets, even the encrypted ones, belong to them. Become a high target node on the graph for any reason, and expect your data to have a "7 year storage" tag, so they can focus your data and walk the cat back later.
Yes, the surveillance state is real, and it sets up what William Binney calls the "turn-key totalitarian state". FOSS and encryption will save the computer literate, but the masses are in for rude surprises.
Surveillance state may be real, and we all know what has actually been going on (to include massive interception and storage of so-called metadata of domestic U.S. communication on a vast scale), but that doesn't change the fact that U.S. surveillance of foreigners located in the U.S., or of communications of U.S. persons that take international paths, is flat-out illegal without judicial approval.
What is really needed (barring a codified policy change by the legislature and executive), is some meaningful restraint from the Supreme Court on government intrusion into so-called metadata collection. We've come a long way since the pen register.
That was my original point... how long until domestic spying is no longer illegal
But they can't use it yet because they lack a credible cover story to use for "parallel construction" (look it up).
They tried to use Apple to get their little parallel construction cover story -- and now they're just changing the rules so they don't even have to use parallel construction any more.
Interesting times.
But I know no more about the iPhone case than you do. Possibly less.
So we already know it's going on within the US Government. Is the FBI using it? Whatever the line is between plausible and damn certain, that's perhaps where this falls.