NSA collected US email records in bulk for more than two years under Obama
guardian.co.uk
guardian.co.uk
Just let that sink in for a minute.
It's almost certain that this metadata was for protocols other than SMTP and HTTP as well. Probably all netflows.
The agency "analyzed networks with two degrees of separation (two hops) from the target", the report says. In other words, the NSA studied the online records of people who communicated with people who communicated with targeted individuals.
Contact chaining was considered off-limits inside the NSA before 9/11. In the 1990s, according to the draft IG report, the idea was nixed when the Justice Department "told NSA that the proposal fell within one of the Fisa definitions of electronic surveillance and, therefore, was not permissible when applied to metadata associated with presumed US persons".
No. THEY WON.
I get your point, but it's a purely rhetorical one that has little to do with actual history. Al Qaeda had real objectives of their own, rather than simply existing to make us fearful.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden#Beliefs_and_ide...
That said, if their goal was to bankrupt us & draw us out by a war of attrition - it's easy to say that they achieved their objective.
The claims of metadata being public and being exempted from Fourth Amendment does not resonate with me and even more so with emails. It seems by collecting IP addresses associated with emails, NSA has the ability to compare that with all the other data they may have collected and build a profile on you.
To me it seems to be a violation of the fourth amendment. I do not expect the government to be constantly searching everything about everyone without a probable cause.
I don't think anyone can reasonably say that it is.
The fact that we consider our online privacy as granted is the scary part.
Ignorant, actually.
'Privacy on the internet' is an oxymoron.
No one should expect privacy. There are sketchy ISPs, sketchy mail providers, hosting providers, etc.
But a few hackers collecting email from a few individuals is not the same as a massive database that links everything in entire world in one nice package. A few random hackers in Russia do not have the political machinery or military machinery of the US government. They generally don't care that you're pro-gay rights (or whatever). They aren't going to try to punish you for your political views. They probably just want money or to defraud you in someway.
The US government, however, wants to control you.
[Citation needed]
Are you on facebook? Were you ever on facebook?
Ask yourself - how easy would it be to do your job if somebody you didn't know or trust was sitting behind you evaluating every decision you made.
In my opinion, the financial and societal implications of a populous that behaves strictly to conform for fear of consequence, translates to slower innovation, less technological advancement, and will have a long term negative economic impact.
Now, as for the question. The problem is after 9/11, everything changed. People did task the government to prevent further 9/11 attacks and sadly, they can only do that by doing what they're doing now. IMO, 9/11 wasn't the point of what the terrorists were doing, but the aftermath of it.
I'm the man who believes that we don't deserve security if we use it to justify the loss of our rights. However, that belief is easily shaken when and if my family are harmed in an attack that could've been foiled, and my first reaction would be, why didn't the government stop it? So, you can see the problem right here.
Nothing is worth losing our rights over, we fought so many wars to protect it, suffered so many loss as the result of the wars, and yet, we're giving them up easily for terrorism.
I'm not from the US, and this sort of statement really baffles me every time I hear it. There's nothing remarkable about the events really, probably more people get killed by fridges falling on them than by a terrorist attack, yet nobody seems to modify their lifestyle to avoid standing in front of them.
Can you explain to me what actually changed about the American lifestyle? I genuinely have no idea.
Now, if you can't work out how the largest terrorist attack in history might have change the stance of the world's largest military superpower, with a knock-on effect on everyone else, then you're not trying. When I saw the events of 9-11 happening on TV I immediately knew it was going to result in years of war, just like the collapse of the Soviet Union obviously led to a de-escalation of military posture.
probably more people get killed by fridges falling on them than by a terrorist attack
Not at the same time, and crucially, not at someone else's pleasure. I'm not American either but the notion that people wouldn't or shouldn't react to something like this is just asinine. Frankly, I'm surprised it didn't lead to greater change in the US than it actually has.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_an...
As for the parent comment, I know it changed everything. But beyond the initial years, how has it changed your life over, say the past 2 years. Is everything back to normal? How long do you continue changing your behaviour and living in fear? (I realise you're not American, just asking)
Don't be obtuse. Of course it's remarkable, the only other reason you ever hear of 3000+ people being killed in the space of a few hours is when there's some large natural disaster like an earthquake.
There are many ways they can do it. I hate argument from lack of imagination. That's why SCOTUS allows DUI checkpoints: supposedly the police can't do their job without them and they need them for public safety.
So the Obama regime didn't curb anything until after the eight or ninth renewal of the program. Pitiful indeed.
Because if so, please, run, I'd like to see it happen.
By pitiful, I meant that this shutdown seems minuscule among the variety of other privacy violations—but that hardly justifies the Guardian using this specific reveal as an attack piece.
No, I'm not. But I do believe that we were all given the impression that ending unconstitutional wiretaps was going to be near the top of Obama's to-do list.
How can we trust the Government, ever in the future, to tell the truth?
I don't see how this can actually be solved, since most people aren't concerned about encrypting their communications. I can't use encryption to message other people unless they use encryption too.
This is the future. We will be constantly watched.
Please tell me I'm wrong.
They shouldn't need to be. Encryption is cheap, it should happen automatically behind users backs by default.
> I can't use encryption to message other people unless they use encryption too.
Build the next WhatsApp/Facebook/GMail and integrate encryption to it.
Your phones are tapped, your metadata is collected, your internet traffic is watched and stored, and your categorized, organized data online (emails, documents, history, behaviors, etc) is available at the drop of a dime.
What do you mean "will be constantly watched"?
we provide user data to governments only in accordance
with the law. Our legal team reviews each and every
request, and frequently pushes back when requests are
overly broad or don’t follow the correct process. Press
reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended
access to our users’ data are false, period.
-- Larry Page
Well... why didn't he?
The specific question I had is how they jump from email meta-data to IP Logs. If they were collecting all of my IP traffic, that would be a lot bigger deal than email headers. The title and most of the content seem to imply it's only email metadata, so I don't know how to interpret the alarming quotes about having a copy of my brain.
The current situation has been a foregone conclusion for the last decade. This is how the government has worked for years. I'm surprised so many people act shocked by both the government's actions and the leaks.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/enable-american-so...
Let me know what you think!
It's great to see this information going public, however hyperbolic statements like the above are completely unnecessary and really take away from the rest of the article.