Documents show how the NSA infers relationships based on mobile location data | Hacker News Reader

Documents show how the NSA infers relationships based on mobile location data

washingtonpost.com

96 pointsbcn18 comments

I actually posted about this a while back here on HN, having figured this out when attending a course on SS7 signalling several years back. At the time i thought it was a 'theoretical possibility'

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6682320

What I'm enjoying about these documents is that they reveal the 'correct' amount of paranoia.

If you're pretty technical, it's easy to simulate what the NSA does with your imagination. Just imagine what databases they have, and imaging what you could do in a limited way if you made it your side project. Badabing.

and if it happens that NSA doesn't do it or haven't even yet collected an imagined database, it should be treated as a performance issue and negligence on behalf of the NSA.

Exactly like how all of this should have been imagined pre-Snowden. But of course it was much easier to brush off room 641A as performing simple tcpdump sessions on TV villains.

I call it realistic conspiratorial thinking. Conspiracy thinking does indeed have a lot of positives, namely that of not trusting trusted parties. The problem is it can go whack where people start trusting no one and start erecting totally insane belief structures (truthers/moon deniers).

The question I ask is: Is it technically possible? Is it reasonable for one to do it if it were possible (economically)? Then I just assume that it's done somewhere in the world.

It's technically possible to track everyone, it's reasonable that governments would want this ability, ergo a government will have done it.

Many people already give up enough information (by carrying a smartphone) to allow for a simulated world, where their avatar's actions match their real world actions in realtime: phone calls, transactions, inventory, location, physical condition inferred from always-on sensors, connected databases, and natural language processing.

Then a controller could issue useful queries for parallel construction, like "select all avatars who have X in their inventory and who are currently driving in location Y", or how about a bar sting: "select all avatars who purchased more than X drinks at location Y and are driving, but are more than Z distance from their likely destination". Are we to presume that this is not being done? How will society react to the idea of such deep reaching surveillance?

So, basically, Google's location history is NSA's HAPPYFOOT data aggregator.

https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/

That seems suboptimal. By pulling directly from the telcos, they could get data on all users rather than a subset.

And that is nice. It is easy to fake Google locations data. When you know how they are tracking you it is easy putting them on a wrong way.

Given the glossary at the end, I'm surprised it didn't include Skyhook.

How many commercial wardriving services are there? Skyhook was an early one, but lost Apple.

Also: If 2.4 and 5.8 GHz satellite-based SIGINT were technically possible, at extreme difficulty and cost, it maybe within the realm of possibility of classified budgets.

What's disturbing is that even though they know which data is from US citizens, they still won't discard it, and can even use it. I mean, maybe I can understand if they "incidentally" collect the data of some people - although doing that for tens of thousand of people a year is really pushing it since all sorts of people could be in that "incidental" collection, and US persons could actually be targeted this way, and then masked as being "incidental collection".

But even after they know they are Americans, they still keep it? That's just unacceptable. This other story puts things in an even scarier perspective, because of what they can do with that data if it gets trickled down to other agencies (parallel construction, etc:

https://www.aclu.org/meet-jack-or-what-government-could-do-a...

The fact that we are somehow considering Americans' privacy more important that non-Americans' privacy is what I find disturbing. Also, the illusion that they were ever discarding American citizens' data never took hold of me. The NSA collects ALL THE DATA.

What is this thing you call privacy?

I guess down voters don't get the reference.

Sorry.. but Americans privacy is more important than non-Americans when we are talking about the US government. They aren't collecting the data for entertainment. They can very easily round up anyone they please on US soil.

At least you have your own government to protect you (assuming you aren't important enough to start a war over).

You are never leaving the american sector[1].

[1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_B_145_Bi...

> The fact that we are somehow considering Americans' privacy more important that non-Americans' privacy is what I find disturbing.

I see this argument a lot. While I do think it is totally valid, I think people forget that the NSA doesn't have any direct authority over foreign citizens in theory (but in practice probably all the intel orgs share info and exert influence across borders).

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