PRISM – NSA surveillance program did not prevent a single terrorist attack
tutanota.com
tutanota.com
Reminds me of George Carlin's show about changing words to make them softer.[1]
An good example he used to show this is the condition the fighters get from shock in combat. In WW1, it was called Shell Shock, a terrifying name. The same condition in WW1 was called Battle Fatigue, a nicer name. In the Korean War, the name changed to Operational Exhaustion, removing any humanity from it. After the Vietnam War, the name because Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. When you compare the terms "Shell Shock" and "PTSD", it's obvious what the intent is.
As for the "Patriot Act", it's funny how ironic of a name it is.
And well authoritarians have no sense of irony - what they think is "ironic" is presenting their true self when it unacceptable and passing it off as a joke. Thus they destroy freedom to protect freedom the same as they destroy the village to save it.
(squints) I think you've actually uncovered a true case of irony here. How would you know that the dictator considers their propoganda ironic? The fact that people read it and still laugh it off is the true irony.
[1]https://www.therecoveryvillage.com/mental-health/ptsd/relate...
As an analogy, I doubt anybody thinks the social stigma around trisomy-21 is solely attributable to previous politically incorrect terminology but continued use of those former terms doesn't help alleviate that stigma.
Not everyone who gets fucked up got fucked up due to being shocked with shells. Your mom didn't get shocked with shells; she got shocked with your dad's fists (maybe even after he got Shell Shock).
Bad things happen to people, and sometimes they cause lasting trauma. The direct cause might be different but the effect is similar enough that the words used to name it should change.
I don’t think Carlin’s point was so much to comment on the accuracy of the description, but rather to say that these descriptions have become longer and longer as time has advanced and thereby lessons the guttural impact they “used” to command.
Do you think that’s fair?
... even if we've since established that said consequences exist along the same cognitive spectrum? From the perspective of a clinician (whose use of the term PTSD is scientifically driven), does it matter whether the conditions that caused the disorder were military or civilian?
1. is the low grade TBI(traumatic brain injury) that is fairly called "Shell shock" 2. is the psychological weight of traumatic experiences
The evidence is pretty strong that part of why soldiers PTSD is so hard to treat(not that PTSD is easy to treat in general) is that their neurons have been damaged so it's literally more difficult for them to learn new stress responses and make use of CBT(Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) to manage their inappropriate, for civilian life, stress responses.
Like when "School of the Americas" got renamed to, "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation" which are both names for sniping civilians and throwing people out of helicopters.
I could see _eating a copper banana_ as a euphemism for assassinating a south american labor leader.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_f...
> Reminds me of George Carlin's show about changing words to make them softer.[1]
“Patriot” isn’t exactly a soft word, though? I never understood why this brand of nationalism is so completely embraced and unquestioned in every fraction of the American political spectrum. It’s not like nationalism is unproblematic.
> This program was simply another extension of the US's march towards authoritarianism.
That was the original claim. You're the only one who's talking about the current administration.
Oooohk...
[1] It’s Time to Put an End to the NSA’s Bulk Collection of Americans’ Metadata https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/04/its-time-put-end-nsas...
Not a very good conspiracy theorist!
Obviously 'person' recognition tools, facial recognition included, are good enough that models work without facial data, hindering America's enemies but giving America the upper hand. This uses the assumption that miltech is anywhere from 10-100 years ahead of bleeding edge/experimental public/research tech.
I don't buy this theory but it's fun to consider.
Contradicted by what we know about current facial recognition technology but in a "make sure that the bullets are sterile, we don't want any wounded prisoners to die of an infection before we get any intelligence" sort of way.
>How China built facial recognition for people wearing masks: Hanwang says its technology has reached 95% accuracy in identifying mask wearers.
As usual, the truth is far less interesting. But, it has nothing to do with civilian unrest or authoritarianism at all. You are probably mistaking incompetence for malice.
Then again, most people still misunderstand what PRISM actually was.
If we actually want to convince people that this needs change, we need to hold both sides of the debate to the same standard. We searched for any concrete evidence of these measures adding safety, found none, and then concluded it didn't add safety. The next step is to look for concrete examples of how this erodes freedom for a normal American citizen. Otherwise you are arguing one theoretical with another and most people will tune out.
Otherwise I don't know what you want here, historically the masses mostly don't do anything until they start starving. Most large acts of rebellion were put together by a small band of agitators often high ranking members of the establishment who for whatever reason decide they've had enough then publicize and promote it and then often pay the common folk to fight. The US for instance was majority founded by a bunch of rich people who were tired of the type of taxes levied on them. The continental army for instance was paid to fight. My point being is any action is going to be taken by people who care about the abstract notions, the rank and file will be paid to care or provided some equal material value.
What does this mean in relation to the debate about NSA spying? How is the NSA antagonizing me? What is one example of a material impact on my life?
>Even if it doesn't effect you now all you need to do is look at historical examples from other nations going down the same path. There's a reason the poem "First they came ..." exists and it's a direct counter point to the argument you're making.
This is getting into slippery slopes and hypotheticals that don't seem to motivate anyone and they are the exact arguments that are used in defense of this spying. If we demand examples of the safety this spying supposedly provides, we need examples of the freedom this spying destroys.
>Otherwise I don't know what you want here, historically the masses mostly don't do anything until they start starving...
I am looking for anything that will motivate people to political action. It doesn't need to motivate people to overthrow the government. A simple here is why you real life is worse so vote for this candidate, volunteer with organization, donate to this cause, etc.
Edit: I'll also leave off with where if your beliefs don't include government spying being bad you and I likely are coming from very ideologically different starting points and I have no intention of trying to spend my time walking you from A to B I'll leave that for the evangelists I have other things to fill my time.
I believe we need to get better at explaining this issue. We need people who are "trying to spend [their] time walking you from A to B" because flatly saying "you should be against it simply because in principal it's a bad thing" is not going to motivate any political change.
That said I just disagree with you that the masses typically are motivated about anything not just government spying I think action and change will come from a small group of people with vested interest, at least initially.
Everyone has that personal issue but it turns out that everyone's "I want this to change" issue is typically pretty different from one another so finding that similar group and banding together there to fix the problem I expect to be better than finding some key to ignite the masses.
And FWIW if the argument from the government is "See these people don't care about it so it can't be bad" is in itself a super weak argument. People and the government haven't cared about plenty of things that, at least in my set of morals, turned out to be super bad even if only a small set of people initially protested so.
> a judge ruled beginning of September 2020 that not [one single terrorist attack had been stopped with the help of the NSA's phone surveillance program (sic)
If you trail the linked articles you end up with this 9th circuit opinion:
> The panel wrote that to the extent the public statements of government officials created a contrary impression, that impression is inconsistent with the contents of the classified record.
It's my reading that pertains specifically to the case before the court and not a conclusive determination about the entirety of the PRISM program.
I think it's worth noting that this is also fairly normal for signals intelligence of all types. If you want to use intelligence as evidence in a trial then you have to make that evidence available for scrutiny by the defense which is something intelligence agencies almost never want to do.
As I understand it (obviously Im not very informed here!) you'd normally use intelligence to identify suspects, then gather further evidence with which to secure a prosecution so you don't have to rely on the original intelligence in court. I believe GCHQ in the UK have in the past gone so far as to abandon a strong cases that hinged on intelligence data so as to not reveal the source of the intelligence.
[] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140620/10271327635/new-e...
The HN title certainly seems to be. My understanding is that 9th circuit opinion was talking about the bulk phone metadata collection program (which used to be enabled under section 215 and even done before ("stellar wind")), not about 702 collection. But that 702 collection is certainly part of PRISM as we understand it.
> It's my reading that pertains specifically to the case before the court and not a conclusive determination about the entirety of the PRISM program.
I understood it to be somewhat generally about bulk metadata collection under 215 (which is not all of PRISM).
PRISM is a phenomenal waste of trust and money.
Only if you believe its stated purpose is its real purpose.
I suspect it's actually a huge success if you measure it against its real purpose.
(With a bonus side effect of lots of government dollars funneled to certain Contractors.)
Is it really possible we only have <5 terror plots against our country in a given year, considering the population of our country, the amount of ideological extremism domestically and internationally, and the States' interventionism?
Maybe it is possible, in which case the U.S. has been very successful at convincing my generation it's a larger issue than it really is (I was a toddler when 9/11 happened, so it's all I know).
Now many of these people are facing federal crimes. You can get some serious years for swinging a sledge hammer at a US Marshal, as what happened at the Federal Courthouse in Portland. (Remember, three of those Feds are now blind in at least one eye from the green lasers?)
But the Anarchists/Antifa types that are burning down Portland are also being thrown together with the McCloskeys who were arrested for having guns out, while on their lawn, after people broke into their gated community. Or Jake Gardner, who the DA ruled as acting in self defense, with a full video clearly showing him acting in self defense after both he and his father were attached.
We're starting to see real terrorists conflated with what are clearly political prisoners from local officials.
Not so much, never point a gun at something unless you're willing to shoot -- a double barrel shotgun has a lot of power to make someone rethink their life choices when pointed at them without having to actually shoot.
In this formulation of the rule, pointing a gun with the intent to threaten isn't valid, since an intention to threaten is not an intention to shoot.
I've pointed weapons at people without the intention of shooting them while covering other solders and on occasions where they "just didn't look right" -- can't just randomly start shooting people but you also don't want to be caught off guard if they decide to start shooting at you. The last time this happened some car rolled up on our guard post and all of us were pointing our weapons at said vehicle while we sent someone out to figure out what they wanted (which turned out to be the main gate so they could find out what happened to one of their relatives who was arrested or something). Nobody intended on shooting them but if they didn't stop short or acted suspiciously we would've lit them up with the .50cal.
But I agree, she should have treated the gun like it was armed and ready. She flagged the back of her husband's head several times.
BUT, that isn't in and of itself criminal. In fact, nothing they did was criminal. They were in a gated neighborhood, people ripped the iron gate down, and I think it's clear they were reasonably defending their homes.
The law they're charged with says they were in violation of "brandishing a firearm in a threatening manner," but nowhere in the law do they define "threatening" .. it's ambiguous, it's a badly written law and it conflicts with federal laws and the 2nd amendment.
Viva Frei and Robert Barnes are two lawyers who have done some incredible breakdowns on this case:
Along with never pointing your gun at something you don't want to destroy, you always assume a gun is loaded. That's not just a gun you pickup, that's any gun anywhere. If someone else is holding it then it's loaded too.
> In fact, nothing they did was criminal. They were in a gated neighborhood, people ripped the iron gate down, and I think it's clear they were reasonably defending their homes.
Bullshit. Brandishing is a crime in pretty much every US state and Canadian province. There are affirmative defenses to Brandishing, like real physical threats to life or property, but that gate was community property and not theirs alone.
I could see them getting out of the charges and having enough reasonable doubt to do so. Right now it's being leveraged as a kulturekamf headline to make 2nd Amendment nuts get angry.
But make no mistake, if you point a real gun at people, with a finger on the trigger, you're implying you're going to kill someone. You'd better have a damned good reason for it, and be ready to stand to any consequences; "judged by a jury instead of by St. Peter", etc.
I never finished my video on Portland, but I do have one up on CHAZ, and I use to live and have friends in that area. I suggest you watch it:
https://battlepenguin.video/videos/watch/9f81cd38-3ee9-4f26-...
Anyway, best of luck. Thanks for being civil.
https://pamplinmedia.com/pt/9-news/475908-384635-portland-fe...
I'm curious why you appear to imply this definition of terrorism is unsuitable.
It is not, nor is it even compatible with the protoypical example from which the term terrorist derives, since the original Terror and the Terrorists who executed it operated entirely within and through the power of the State. Non-state terrorism is a more recent extension of the definition. Nor does it even capture the mechanism of intended effect which defines terrorism (the whole part that motivates the reference to "terror".)
Britannica and, somewhat surprisingly, WordNet have probably the best general definitions I can quickly locate, "calculated use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective" and "the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear".
Last time I checked, the USA didn't need terror plots 'against the country'; they have enough problems with "deranged individuals" shooting at schools, events, protests, etc.
Why would you label those who could be your child, parent or neighbor, and disagree violently with those who have a different opinion than yours, as terrorists against the country? /s
That depends on your definition. If you're talking about organized 9/11 style attacks, absolutely. It's hard to bring plans like that together no matter how strong your convictions. If you're talking "random mentally ill person unleashes devastation on a group of US citizens" then no, there's certainly far more. That said, situations like that are best handled by local authorities. The Stoneman Douglas High School shooting is a prime example of that because as the story unraveled it became clear that the shooter had a history that was well known to the local police (and FBI if I recall?).
The FBI made a huge deal about them stopping the plot to kidnap the Michigan governor and take over their capital building. Why would they hide other stuff?
That should count.
This!
We hear about the wins too.
The whole Bin Laden raid was a massive publicity coup for the Obama administration. It was shouted from the rooftops.
If a president can point to something in an election year and go "see, see there, I made you people safer," they will.
I remember a story from years ago that some lab was working on a lens for a satellite for the NSA with a resolution that would be able to discern different coins on the ground from space. They were complaining that, after all their work, the job was cancelled, and they weren't going to get paid. What it meant, of course, was that they had found a better alternative.
The fact that the NSA isn't even bothering to lie about this is telling. The linked article says they won't even be trying to get Congress to let them continue the process, and this is even more telling. But what it's telling me ISN'T that it does not work, and it's certainly not because they suddenly grew a conscience about the Constitution. It's just that they don't need this particular vector to get the sigint they're looking for now.
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/3448/was-hubble-re...
As for the PRISM replacement, it's fair to assume that the NSA simply buys whatever social contact graphs it wants from Facebook and commercial data brokers.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction-limited_system
Surveillance is about gaining power through information asymmetry. Spying on military, political or FINANCIAL targets is worth trillions.
It has nothing to do with terrorism, and everything to do with political hegemony.
Most of the Islamist terrorist plots federal authorities have 'broken up' over the past twenty years have involved undercover agents leading on people who are too dysfunctional to be dangerous to do things for which they can be convicted.
215: https://documents.pclob.gov/prod/Documents/OversightReport/e...
702: https://documents.pclob.gov/prod/Documents/OversightReport/8...
What if that wasn't a lie? If they truly couldn't tell you "anything" about them, they couldn't even acknowledge they existed. Whether or not a government should be allowed to keep such secrets is another matter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prism-week-in-life-straig...
If you want to argue against PRISM-like programs, it would behoove you to tackle their actual purpose. We shouldn't just argue that PRISM isn't good at catching terrorists, we should argue that the total value of intelligence gained from it is not worth sacrificing our privacy for.
* The stock is down 25% this year with our $100M/yr CEO, but think of how bad it would have been without them
* We need tough on crime policies because unreported crimes are on the rise
* Tough on crime policies deterred all the decline in crimerate
* The king is good because we didnt get invaded since he sat on the throne
The only real discussion that can take place is whether or not the potential safety afforded by the surveillance is worth the real erosion of freedoms. Those in favor of the surveillance are winning that discussion where it matters, whether its through emotional appeal, fearmongering, corruption or whatever. Its a totally opinionated case at this point, which even the ballot box wouldn't help as you'd just be shifting the onus of persuasion from the military leaders to the American people, who definitely don't know enough of what's happening overseas to make a reasonably informed decision.
Its the most complex issue voters would be straddled with, everything pales in comparison.
Which is unfortunate because the point of representation is to remove much of that onus from voters. If your representation just becomes a selfish risk factor, may as well do direct democracy.
It's too bad there isn't something like what lawyers, doctors, or fiduciaries must adhere to but for politicians.
But that doesn't make me believe these kinds of articles. Most of these types of articles for the past numerous years have the same formula. Case X proves it was useful, case X is determined to not be relevant to the data collection methods, typically by someone biased. And it's always a judge out of one of the most liberal places. (and I'm liberal / democrat)
It's weaksauce, and most of the people here are unwilling to see past it because they also agree with my first paragraph. We can have freedom and "live more dangerously". That's pretty much the entire point of how America came to be. We shouldn't spy on all of our people - and yes that comes with consequences. That's not the same as spying on specific people that we know will or may cause harm.
And, telling the general public that PRISM isn't effective has a decent shot at getting these practices outlawed. Telling the general public 'sure, a few terrorists will get through here and there, but that's the price of living in freedom' is pretty much guaranteed to get you the opposite result. You have to focus on effective persuasion, and regular people won't/can't think about hard tradeoffs
It’s certainly a fanciful story but does anyone really doubt that the post 9/11 US government would do this?
Yes, not only do I doubt that the post 9/11 government is spending billions (or even millions) to spy on corporations, but I’d flip your question and ask does anyone really believe that they are doing that.
Before someone brings up the Petrobras example, I’ll pre-emptively point out that this isn’t in any way suggestive of what’s alleged above, and it wasn’t related to PRISM.
https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781594206016
It's a look at the reporting of PRISM and other Snowden leaks by the guy who first broke the leaks. Pet jarring look at how the program can't to be, and how it evolved.
Anyway, it’s astonishing that so many people willfully continue to use products/services offered by the core companies that are members of PRISM surveillance. Members provide access to ALL user data/information to NSA et al. Here are some technology/telecom company members (and approx. date joined):
* Microsoft (2007)
* Yahoo! (2008)
* Facebook (2009)
* Google (2009) / YouTube (2010)
* Apple (2012)
* Dropbox (tbd)
* Verizon (and probably T-Mobile/Sprint, AT&T, etc.)
These member companies are effectively an extension of three letter agencies (intel) and are above the law.
A dozen+ countries participate in PRISM, too.[2]
Want to Break Out of the PRISM? It’s relatively easy. The nonprofit Prism-Break provides people a path to get started.[3]
Resources/Notes:
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24738743
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#C...
No, the moderators appear to have done no such thing. But with that opening sentence, and closing with the equivalent of "wake up, sheeple!", I can see why it got downvoted to a light gray.
This is generally not the best way to garner sympathy for your comment.
Perhaps some of these companies ‘joined’ prism willingly, but Google and Apple both deny having done so.
The dates you quote are from slides indicating when prism started to acquire data from these companies. They have nothing to do with membership or joining.
Data was obtained from these companies without their particpation, and they have taken measures to harden their systems since this was made public, for example in Google’s case prism obtained data by intercepting their underground fiber optic cables. Data was previously sent unencrypted between data centers along these, but after the intrusion was discovered, Google moved to encrypting this traffic.
If you can find evidence that either of these companies willingly became members of prism, then please present it.
Otherwise, you are repeating false claims.
And you of course trust them.
Nothing Snowden leaked actually corroborates DocPangloss’s claims.
Snowden showed that these orgs were compromised by prism, not that they willingly joined.
That’s the point.
Not true. Snowden showed that Apple and Google were "commercial partners" with PRISM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosure....
As has been discussed elsewhere there are legitimate and legal reasons for them to cooperate with the NSA in certain ways.
Those two words change nothing more than that there was a partnership of some kind.
No evidence has ever been produced of these companies knowingly participating in the kind of bulk data collection that PRISM is asserted to be.
I’m not claiming to be certain they didn’t participate.
I am claiming that the evidence clearly doesn’t not support that claim yet.
Specifically, this[1] email exchange:
NSA Director (Keith Alexander) to Google's CEO :-
"It was good seeing you recently after the meeting earlier this month"
"Google’s participation in refinement, engineering and deployment of the solutions will be essential."
Make of that what you will..
The problem is that evidence of collaboration doesn’t substantiate anything at all about participation in prism or any other illegal or underhanded scheme.
We know that Google does have portals to service lawful government information requests.
It’s also entirely possible that Google participated in some kind of analytics development based on their web indexing and nothing to do with private user data.
Either of these would be at least plausible explanations for these comments as “they joined prism and handed over all data to the NSA”.
Innuendo is not evidence.
But until we do, there is no evidence to support these claims.
You are confusing it with other programs. The one you are referring to was reported as a joint operation with GCHQ called MUSCULAR.
Google and Apple’s denials of PRISM participation are kind of semantic. One, they do not refer to it by any NSA codename, so they can truthfully say they don’t participate in something called PRISM, whatever PRISM supposedly is. Second, PRISM was incorrectly described as direct server access without approval. Both companies can truthfully claim that they do not participate in such a program, whether that program is PRISM or not. The truth is that they do “participate”, but that isn’t what PRISM actually enables.
That’s the best denial they can give due to the nature of the gag order.
From trumancenter.org:
If the NSA’s descriptions are accurate, the NSA’s PRISM program allows them to seek electronic data on non-U.S. Persons under FISA warrants applied to foreign electronic traffic travelling through U.S. servers with filters and controls to prohibit use of data of U.S. Persons that may get caught up in the dragnet. The expressly prohibits the use of FISA warrants toward U.S. Persons, but it is not as clear as to what happens to data on U.S. Persons that get picked up in large dragnets aimed at non-U.S. Persons. Much of the accuracy of claims depend on the certified disclosures to Congress by the Attorney General that such safeguards exist and are in place.
So, “participation” means you respond to FISA warrants, which isn’t optional.
We know they respond to fisa warrants. Nobody claims otherwise.
But - also know from Snowden we know that that PRISM is not just an aggregation of responses to fisa warrants.
PRISM also involved intercepting Google’s bulk traffic from their fiber without Google’s knowledge, and various other kind of interception.
If you equate PRISM with aggregating fisa warrants responses, then what you say is true.
However it is not actually accurate to make that equation.
And even if court ordered data was aggregated as part of PRISM, that doesn’t constitute ‘participating’ in PRISM in any by the most semantically stretched way, since they didn’t know about it.
If you are going to argue like this, you may as well say that the end users ‘participated’ in prism, by giving their data to these companies. In a way that’s true.
But it’s not true in the common understanding of what it means to participate.
The interception against US companies like Google was not done in the US, and there is a good reason for that. You are mixing up different programs.
Feel free to dig up the original reporting. They were distinct programs. PRISM requests are serviced by the provider and go through the FBI.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUSCULAR_(surveillance_progr...
This is what I meant by quasi-voluntary. They were not oblivious and hacked without their knowledge (under PRISM, that is - they were other ways), but they didn’t exactly have a choice.
It’s always “conspiracy theory”...until it becomes “conspiracy fact” years later.
Read Google’s (or Apple’s, or Yahoo’s) denial of participation in PRISM. The statements are examples of “Lying by Omission.” Verizon actually shared documents/orders it received from NSA, astonishingly. If one understand the basics of law, the omissions and doublespeak deniability are the most revealing and damning:[1] [2]
* “We have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government—direct access to our servers.”: The NSA is not “the U.S. government”; neither are the contract intel companies that have access to data as middleman for NSA.
* “...does not have direct access or a ‘back door’ to the information stored in our data centers.”: But Google does not deny “indirect” access or a ‘door’ – otherwise its crafty attorney would have stated “neither direct nor indirect” and certainly would not have narrowed the access point to only a “back door.” Doublespeak.
* Regarding giving data to the government upon request: “Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don’t follow the correct process.” ‘Frequently pushes back’ – that’s laughable.
* “Press reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended access to our users’ data are false, period.” Perhaps the press stated ‘open-ended’ but that’s not what Edward Snowden stated or leaked in documents. The prism program is not about “open-ended” access.[2]
The similarity of statements by the legal teams of Google, Apple, and Yahoo leads one to believe they are adhering to NDAs and FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) restrictions about what they may say about PRISM or whether they ever heard of the program. So Apple, Yahoo, and Google all used doublespeak deniability in the carefully crafted legal pressers.
[1] http://www.thepaepae.com/google-denies-prism-direct-access-o...
[2] https://techcrunch.com/2013/06/07/doublespeak-denials-and-br...
Other resources:
[3] NSF / DARPA (indirect NSA) funding that backed the inception of Google: https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-ci...
[4] The PRISM slides: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism...
[5] References to Snowden’s leaked docs (one needs to investigate the offlinds to original leaked docs; difficult to obtain): https://www.cloudwards.net/prism-snowden-and-government-surv...
[6] A money paper trail: NSA paid the companies for compliance! (but these companies and their legal teams denied – and continue to deny – either having known about the PRISM program or making data accessible to the NSA and related contractors via said program): https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism-cost...
___
When in doubt, check your assumptions...because your assumptions are likely invalid.
The NSA is a component of the US government, and if the NSA has something the US government also has it, so in the context of the sentence at issue, yes, if access was given to the NSA it was given to the US government.
If you operate in the United States, you must obey the US laws, among which are the espionage programs (claimed to be national security measures).
Not only do we not have evidence of willingness. We don’t have evidence they even knowingly participated, whether willing or not.
I don't think it's practical to expect either ordinary consumers or tech-savvy people to completely avoid all use of any Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, Google, YouTube, Apple, Dropbox, or Verizon/T-Mobile/Sprint/AT&T product or service, or to use Tor or I2P 24/7 as that website seems to suggest.
In how many cases were those companies essentially forced or heavily pressured to participate?
I'll remember this for next time though. I'll be sure to check my phone and laptop. I could always just buy a book and not have electronic devices .. or maybe take a cassette deck.
It just seems like its low cost. And maybe of some value that I don't understand since I don't really study terrorist methods.
Because a computer/smartphone is practically an organ, a brain extension. Letting other people read its content without limitations is like letting them read your actual memory and thoughts (including those you'd like to keep private between yourself and your partners of all the kinds - business, sex, whatever) and probably even plant a backdoor for spying on you in future (I don't know about the US TSA but Chinese border authorities are known to do so). I wouldn't feel comfortable about that.
> I don't really study terrorist methods.
What if I, occasionally, do? Out of pure curiosity. I believe I have googled and downloaded a lot of content which could be found suspicious although I hardly ever had time to read that so far, pure curiosity and information hoarding are my only motivation.
Shoes, when they are not inspected, are rational places for people to hide explosives.
While it may or may not be a 'valid' tool, it's not rational to say it's 'pointless' when it's literally a known - and used - vector of attack.
It's not 'pointless' - the question is, 'is it a good policy given the likelihood of attack, the effectiveness of 'shoes through the scanner as a means of thwarting, other tradeoffs' etc..
The TSA is completely hairbrained. They don't proactively think of anything, they only react to stuff that has already happened. Always one step behind. So useful.
Right below:
> What we do need is better trained and better equipped police officers so that they can identify potential threats faster.
If the violent offenders are already known to police then how is training cops to identify threats going to help? The threats were already known by police to be violent.
The article doesn’t really provide any new developments. The company also claims to be the next Google with private security in mind. To me it feels like marketing blog speak.
There are not any new developments about PRISM as related to Big Tech but having it in the title will make sure it reaches #1.
A great fictionalized movie about these situations is The Days Shall Come (2019).
Most poignantly there is literally an Ammonium Nitrate security program. [1]
As for the 'number of truck bombings being zero' ... it did happen and the average is 'more than zero' and when we consider the implications (an entire building and 100's of dead etc.) it's a concern.
Obviously, it's hard to determine the effectiveness of the various programs because they all play a part, but that there haven't been any such bombings since then is at likely a positive sign.
By your logic, gun control can’t prevent any shootings.
Because terrorist attacks that were prevented didn't happen, there is no way to know. We could only speculate by correlating terrorist attacks and surveillance, but there are so many external variables that it is effectively impossible to prove causation.
What the ruling said is that the NSA surveillance program resulted in only one conviction related to terrorism, and that it could have been made without it. i.e. it didn't help catch any terrorist, which is a different claim. The end result is the same: the NSA surveillance program is illegal and considered ineffective, but unlike the title claim, it is a fact.
This is nonsense, foiled attacks make the news. The FBI foiled a terrorist attack against the governor of Michigan a few days ago and that certainly made the news.
For example if you lock your bike and when you come back, you see bolt cutter marks on your lock and your bike it still there, you know that it stopped the thief.
But for one attempt like that, there are probably a hundred more potential thieves that just passed by, saw your lock and didn't do anything.
Seeing your lock untouched doesn't mean it is useless. It may or may not have prevented your bike from being stolen, but there is no way to be sure.
In the same way, a terrorist may have had plans, but because of surveillance, he knew he would never have succeeded, and gave up. Seriously I doubt it, but that's a possibility.
Even where the article does use PRISM, it uses it incorrectly. PRISM is not the program that involved storing telecommunications metadata. The article claims that was one part of PRISM. This contradicts all public reporting on the two programs.
Honestly I'm surprised this is even a controversial opinion at this point. This is exactly what Snowden exposed. That these programs were as if not more focused on internal spying than anything else.
And yet the OCA page still exists. The scripted narrative of politicos can't completely whitewash all historical facts. Yet.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnibus_Counterterrorism_Act...
Obama announcing his VP gave me pause back in '08. I voted for them anyway. After they retained/appointed W.Gates & T Geitner, I realized "Change" != change, apparently.
We now have two shit choices, IMO, and truly struggle to determine which is the least evil option through all the noise. Perhaps if we knew before casting our ballot who will be in each admins' cabinets making policy decisions we could make an more informed vote.
2001 didn't center around 2020 partisan politics. This is not a defense or condemnation of Biden.
There were a few attempts to blow up the WTC in the 1990's and many security officials were 'sounding the alarm' on Al-Qaeda well before 9/11.
The conspiratorial views here are unsubstantiated.
Wether or not PRISM/Patriot are effective, legal or worthwhile is a huge and legit question, but they were implemented effectively for the stated objectives.
Binney's thinthread program juxtaposed against what replaced it is a prime thing to start reading up to understand gp's point.
https://act.eff.org/action/stop-the-earn-it-bill-before-it-b...
If only just to save the cost to taxpayers and companies for a useless policy.
If you believe it was part of the new governance apparatus, I think you would consider it an unmitigated success.
What is the point of terrorizing a country that is already terrorizing its own citizens through unwarranted prying mass surveillance?
This is the tiger repelling rock theory of anti-terrorism. I have a rock that repels tigers. There haven't been any tiger attacks when I'm around, so it must work.
Behind the scenes, the man with the rock is using it to kill every single kitten he sees when he's alone. He can't prove how useful the rock is without admitting to all the senseless murder of innocent bystanders.
But maybe the rachet had been tightened too far and they, if they even exist, just don't see a way?
On the other hand, there is probably tremendous marketing value in publicizing any wins produced by the system.
Obama or Trump had no part in building the original system so why do they continue it? Is the political class as a whole 100% on board with authoritarian, privacy invading, controlling America?
It is a prison of their own creation.
Most people don't care enough to bug politicians about it, so politicians don't do anything about it.
Most people have zero clue what PRISM is, and they just don't care. They're trying to pay rent and make sure their kids are learning long division over Zoom.
The other would be that some of the danger is real and people in power are wary of giving up tools to fight it.
Most likely both have significant truth.
You might be shocked by how many regular citizens are fine with and support systems like these.
Assuming it didn't stop one act of terror (as this article assumed/the judge ruled), why?
We know that in the hands of corporations and political machines all of this data can be used with pinpoint accuracy. Is sussing out "who's likely going to commit an act of terror" categorically different than "who's likely to buy a massage from a local spa" or "who's likely to vote for party X"?
The Signal to Noise ratio makes it practically impossible for any nation state to properly go through each and every 'flagged for human analysis' entry. Metadata analysis (who was in contact with who and when) are more than sufficient for prosecution and hoovering up the loose ends (after the fact). Parallel construction neatly masks some of the more interesting stuff.
I am Pro Privacy but still keep in touch with those that deal with this sort of stuff and the latest fad is "ML/AI will solve it for us". Good luck with that because - What do you use as a training data set?
"Was" illegal?
- Mitch Hedberg
That means it's completely impossible for such things to be a lie doesn't it?
As long as you say something is for saving the world or doing good and accuse all others who might raise questions about it of being terrorists/communists/racists/nazis etc it simply has to be true doesn't it?
I mean as long as someone just says something is to save lives or for justice or to save the world you have to completely accept it without question don't you?
You don't question it at all right?
Or else that would make you pure black hearted evil wouldn't it?
To take something done in the name of good intentions and apply rational thought and reasoning to it in the interest of affirming whether or not it would actually do good for the world or others or to achieve its goals makes you the literally the equivalent of a rapist doesn't it?
I mean I just got done reading a recent hn article https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24714880 that is completely unrelated in any way whatsoever at all to anything mentioned above and I am completely shell shocked, dumbfounded!
I mean how could this happen?
Seriously, we were told it was to save lives?
And it was said by people in official positions with credentials; which means it is literally physically impossible to be wrong in any way at all, we all know this is true!
God this is all too much to take, I really need a holiday. I really hope we have a complete coronovirus lockdown for as long as it takes to kill off this virus for good so we can get back to normal and I can have one.
The emperor has been naked for a very long time but most people seem to care just enough to attack the messengers.
Edit: minor. Love the downvotes, keep them coming. You know your over target when your taking flak.