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Comment by ddelt | Hacker News Reader

Personally, the skeptic in me believes if the NSA is losing interest in a major data collection program like this, then they are deflecting the narrative from focusing on an even more impressive and accurate data collection program that they have developed and are ready to deploy out into the world. I’m putting on my tinfoil hat at this point, but every day I read HN I’m surprised at what is capable, given the right technology, money, and time.

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I think it's more likely that most everyone the NSA would be interested in snooping on is aware they're snooping and has changed how they communicate and moved to encryption.

The signal to noise ratio has to be completely ridiculous, to the point that it's no longer a justifiable effort.

Miranda warnings have been pop culture for decades, yet criminals keep confessing in interview rooms.

Threats to public safety tend not to be firing on all cylinders, thankfully.

For some reason, it’s often the people who should shut up the most who just can’t shut up. The ability to stop yourself from talking is an underrated skill.

Looks nervously in the general direction of the current President.

I think you misunderstand. Him not shutting up is probably how he got the job in the first place - the media gave him so much more attention than anybody else.

> I think you misunderstand.

I think I don’t. wink

I don't think it's that simple.

Intimidation and coercion are powerful motivators. The Innocence Project found 25% of people proven innocent, by DNA evidence, actually provided confessions or self-incriminating statements.

I worry about what other behind-the-door tactics are used. Some might even be official abuses of power, such as gag orders, which are already being used for what the WSJ called "political persecutions in Wisconsin,"(1) it wouldn't surprise me.

>Threats to public safety

This is what I'm worried about here.

0-https://www.innocencecanada.com/causes-of-wrongful-convictio...

1-https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/04/wisonsins-shame-i-tho...

Get an average person into a room, interrogate for hour or days,if necessary, and ultimately, the vast majority would confess to anything just for the sake of ending it. There are many tricks in a hat to do so+ decades of experience within police and other institutions.

I think you're talking about a different class of problems, though. The NSA is going to be focused on larger, sophisticated groups; Chinese government intrusions, multi-state-sponsored terrorism, coordinated Russian attempts to influence U.S. elections. Not the type of thing that's going to get caught in a police interview.

Of course there are some sophisticated adversaries who were probably too smart to use phones even before Snowden, but I’ll venture a guess that the typical terrorism conspiracy is closer in sophistication to a street gang than to the KGB. At least, if there were a clear link between a terrorist plot and and institution full of taxpayer-funded career spooks, it would not be terrorism, just war.

Encryption is nice but don't forget that every American university or company has been infiltrated by the NSA.

And the Chinese, and the Russians, probably some Iranians in there too.

You left out the Israelis who have had an extensive espionage operation in the US for decades.

According to Wikipedia, PRISM (the collection of internet communication) is "the number one source of raw intelligence used for NSA analytic reports".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)

Based on documents from 2011-13, a lot could have changed since then

I rather doubt that internet communication has become less important since 2013.

On the contrary, its grown even more important, but encryption has also grown immensely in popularity.

What is most interesting to me is that we are talking about this in open now, we have accepted that this is the new normal.

I decided to watch the x files this evening after not watching it since it was on regular television. And my god, the entire show is adorable. Scullys entire character is "the goverment would never do that. It would be illegal."

The American dream we all had at one point is staggering. And sad how much we have lost. Rose colored glasses aside, if the same show aired today, it would not last a season, since it would be considered to naive to take seriously.

Yeah pretty much or they are getting so much data from FAANG that they don't know what to do with this is totally useless and superfluous.

I think you mean GAF (reversed spelling). What is Netflix going to give the NSA? Looks like Osama bin Laden loves House of Cards. What about Amazon? The terrorists use AWS and ordered a bunch of pressure cookers?

AWS runs half the net..

Some useful data that might be subpoenad from a Netflix account:

* subscriber IP address (for an idea of target whereabouts)

* subscriber playback equipment (for confirming target)

* times of account usage (for determining daily routine or pattern analysis, or just confirming that they're home or sth)

* identity info on account or subaccounts (for identifying target or possible friends/family members)

* favorite shows (for chumming up to target to get them to talk/start conversation with)

I’m assuming by subpoena you mean a warrant. Not sure the feds would try and compel some terrorist to be a witness or give some evidence of something.

A cellphone would give you so much more information.

Fair enough, I'm not a legal expert. Yes, a cellphone also gives that info but an investigator may not always have a cellphone as a lead

IME you are served a subpoena to testify to specific information that they think you have, and if you can provide it prior to the date of testimony, you don't have to show up.

Suspect a warrant would be if they wanted to take something in your control, but I've never been subject of that kind of thing.

A cellphone would give information about the cellphone. Might be single use/shared burners - might be turned off. In certain cases the Netflix account might give better information (For example, imagine Snowden login in to Netflix in his hotel room. Or more likely, one of the journalists logging in to theirs...).

You might have a point regarding Netflix but Amazon’s cloud computing business is bigger than its online shop and used extensively the world over and has a lot of SaaS products based on communications alone (never mind all the other stuff in their portfolio)

“Amazon” — the company with massive contracts with the CIA and DoD, full time Alexa microphone in millions of homes, owner of Ring video doorbell, runs something like half the internet through their servers. Yeah I think they might have something the control freak “intelligence community” would be interest in.

oh so you don't understand humor and vote me down because of a funny comment - wow...

> What is Netflix going to give the NSA? Looks like Osama bin Laden loves House of Cards.

Looks like Osama bin Laden loved "Tom & Gerry".

https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/index_video....

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