Prism and Verizon surveillance discussion thread

[Junkenstein]

I'm betting he's waiting for more hits to that website of his, must not be doing as well as he hoped for, for some reason.

http://cryptome.org/

Not come across these before, crazy territory or "Welcome to another watch-list" territory?

[Telarus]

cryptome.org has an interesting history.
http://gawker.com/a-discussion-with-cryptome-514154708

[LMNO]

I dunno why, but I'm sensing a fizzle.

Kids/people these days want a flash, not a slow burn.

[Junkenstein]

Day continues to be shitty:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-28237108

Emergency legislation will be brought in next week to force phone and internet companies to log records of customer calls, texts and internet use.

Ministers say it is necessary so police and security services can access the data they need after a legal ruling which declared existing powers invalid.

The proposed law has the backing of Labour and the coalition parties.

A special cabinet is being held to agree the planned laws, which will only last until 2016.

Horseshit. It'll be quietly renewed, expanded and toughed up when it's forgotten about in 2016.

Prime Minister David Cameron and his Lib Dem Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg will tell a special cabinet meeting on Thursday that emergency legislation is necessary to keep the country safe.

Horseshit. Nothhing to hide, nothing to fear bullshit all over. Just waiting for Clegg to say why this is such a super idea.

Labour is backing emergency legislation after all-party talks agreed that this law would enshrine existing rights and not be used to extend them by re-introducing the so-called "snoopers charter".

Horseshit. If it's enshrining existing rights, why not change the RELEVANT laws and not add in a new one? Oh, because this is lies and nonsense. I forgot.

It will also bring in so-called safeguards including:

The creation of a new Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to examine the impact of the law on privacy and civil liberties (Awesome. UK regulators do such a fine job that every single one of them is a joke.
A review of the controversial RIPA - Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (In this context, a review means "Spend several months to find no problem at all)
Annual government transparency reports on how these powers are used (Which will only be accessible by extensive FOI requests and even then probably denied due to National security. Any report published is guaranteed to be worthless)
The law will include a so-called sunset clause - ensuring that these powers will die in 2016 - so there will be a longer and wider debate about what replaces them.(So any gaps can be plugged and rights violated in full for everyone [ha. everyone] next time)

Shoving a law through in a week should give you alarm bells. Cross party support should ring more bells.

[Junkenstein]

Greenwalds reveals are starting to get a little silly and sad now:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-28238932

US spy agencies snooped on the emails of five high-profile Muslim Americans in an effort to identify security threats, documents leaked by fugitive ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden show.

The targets include a lawyer, professor and a political operative, according to a report published in the Intercept.

Wow. Spied on 5 high profile muslims. No shit. Really. That's the extent of the problem here.

• Faisal Gill, a Republican Party operative and former Department of Homeland Security employee

• Asim Ghafoor, a lawyer who represented clients in terrorism-related cases

• Hooshang Amirahmadi, an Iranian-American professor at Rutgers University

• Agha Saeed, a former political science professor at California State University

• Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations

Tell me 50. Tell me 500. Tell me 5,000. Because if the above names honestly hadn't thought or expected to be invovled in this shit, they're astonishingly stupid, and these don't sound like stupid men. I mean, a fucking lawyer who represented clients in terrorism cases. Tell me he's surprised.

You can do better than this Glen.

[Junkenstein]

You know the chant:

"Nothing to hide, nothing to fear. Nothing to hide, nothing to fear"

Mr Cameron said: "We face real and credible threats to our security from serious and organised crime, from the activity of paedophiles, from the collapse of Syria, the growth of Isis in Iraq and al Shabab in East Africa.

"I am simply not prepared to be a prime minister who has to address the people after a terrorist incident and explain that I could have done more to prevent it."

CRIME! PAEDOPHILES! SYRIA AND TERRORISTS!

Totally legit. The only thing missing was Boko Haram. I, for one, will rest easier knowing that as a result of this law I'm now never going to experience any crime or paedophilia, nor will I have to deal with Syrians and terrorists. And All it took was giving up any semblance of pretence of privacy.

Democracy? Sorry, can't hear you, laughing.

[Junkenstein]

Oh yeah:

The Lib Dem leader said successive governments had "neglected civil liberties as they claim to pursue greater security", but added: "I wouldn't be standing here today if I didn't believe there is an urgent challenge facing us.

"No government embarks on emergency legislation lightly but I have been persuaded of the need to act and act fast."

Let's try that again with a touch of truth:

The Lib Dem leader said successive governments had "fucked over civil liberties as they claim to pursue greater security", but added: "I wouldn't be standing here today if I hadn't been told to.

"No government embarks on emergency legislation lightly but I have my script and it would be lovely if you stuck to yours too."

Apparently this man has kids. I'd bet he can't look them in the eye. Or at himself in a mirror.

[LMNO]

Man, this subforum is full of light and wonder today.

[Junkenstein]

I'm in a GREAT mood.

[Junkenstein]

Your daily reminder that this shit is bad and getting worse:
http://rt.com/news/172284-nsa-stores-calls-audio/

At least 80 percent of all audio calls are gathered and stored by the NSA, whistleblower William Binney has revealed.

"At least 80 percent of fiber-optic cables globally go via the US," Binney said. "This is no accident and allows the US to view all communication coming in. At least 80 percent of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the US. The NSA lies about what it stores."

Binney has no evidence to substantiate his claims as he did not take any documents with him when he left the NSA. However, he insists the organization is untruthful about its intelligence gathering practices and their ultimate aim. He says that recent Supreme Court decisions have led him to believe the NSA won't stop until it has complete control over the population.

"The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control," Binney said, "but I'm a little optimistic with some recent Supreme Court decisions, such as law enforcement mostly now needing a warrant before searching a smartphone."

I'm not certain his logic of total population control follows, though I can certainly see why that's his conclusion. I think the intended result is for something closer to Nixon's wet dream. Total population surveillance to enable control of particular actors as and when desired. 

[Junkenstein]

Still a thing, in case you'd forgotten:

The massive surveillance effort was bad enough, but Snowden was even more disturbed to discover a new, Strangelovian cyberwarfare program in the works, codenamed MonsterMind. The program, disclosed here for the first time, would automate the process of hunting for the beginnings of a foreign cyberattack. Software would constantly be on the lookout for traffic patterns indicating known or suspected attacks. When it detected an attack, MonsterMind would automatically block it from entering the country—a "kill" in cyber terminology.

Programs like this had existed for decades, but MonsterMind software would add a unique new capability: Instead of simply detecting and killing the malware at the point of entry, MonsterMind would automatically fire back, with no human involvement. That's a problem, Snowden says, because the initial attacks are often routed through computers in innocent third countries. "These attacks can be spoofed," he says. "You could have someone sitting in China, for example, making it appear that one of these attacks is originating in Russia. And then we end up shooting back at a Russian hospital. What happens next?"

http://www.wired.com/2014/08/edward-snowden/

The other interesting thing in this article is the heavy indications of a second NSA leaker, seemingly operating around the time of many Snowden leaks.

[Junkenstein]

HA HA?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/18/turkey-summons-german-ambassador-bnd-spying

German media reported at the weekend that the BND had not only "accidentally" listened in on phone calls made by the US secretary of state, John Kerry, and his predecessor Hillary Clinton in 2012 and 2013, but that it also – less accidentally – monitored the activities of Turkish politicians. According to news magazine Der Spiegel, the Nato member has been listed as a target for BND surveillance since 2009.

The revelations come less than a year since Germany summoned the US ambassador following spying allegations and Angela Merkel admonished Barack Obama that "spying on friends is not acceptable". Now, it appears, the tables have turned. Kerry is understood to have already raised the issue with his German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

For members of the German parliament's inquiry committee into surveillance by the NSA, the latest revelations have confirmed suspicions about the BND's role. "We have for some time assumed that there is some kind of circular information exchange in place," Green MP Konstantin von Notz told the Guardian.

No prizes for guessing who told Turkey about this.

"Make no mistake: this is a disaster for the government. Either they knew what the BND was up to and acted in the most hypocritical way possible, or they didn't know, which is just as problematic." By refusing to answer questions about the intelligence agencies, he added, German politicians were acting much in the same way as their US colleagues.

I will concede that this would be funnier if it wasn't so inevitable. We're rapidly getting to the point where it's going to be offensive to politicians to not have 6(minimum) different agencies tapping your phone. How else will you know you're important?

[Cain]

Matt Taibbi has left FirstLook Media.  Different versions abound as to why he left, some have suggested it was due to unwarranted abuse of a female staffer.  The Intercept writers, to their credit, downplay those accusations and instead suggest it was conflicts with the First Look media leadership...which, going by what we know about how The Intercept is run, is probably code for "didn't like Pierre Omidyar looking over his shoulder and micro-managing his writing output".

All we need now is for Jeremy Scahill and Marcy Wheeler to jump ship, and I wont have any reasons to read anything The Intercept writes ever again.

Oh, and by the by http://ohtarzie.wordpress.com/2014/11/03/i-read-the-new-york-magazine-omidyar-article-so-you-dont-have-to/

Highlight:

Omidyar immersed himself in the Second Life community, adopting a secret identity: a tattooed black man named Kitto Mandala. Even after Omidyar became a Linden Lab investor, [Linden Lab founder, Philip] Rosedale primarily interacted with his animated avatar. Mandala rode a Segway and wore a T-shirt that said KISS ME I'M LAWFUL EVIL.

Just gonna leave that one there.

[Junkenstein]

The lengthy post was written by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Jeremy Scahill and John Cook (a former editor of Gawker), who added that Taibbi was not alone in butting heads with First Look management. Editorial staffers and remotely-based management frequently argued, for instance, over "a confounding array of rules, structures, and systems imposed by Omidyar and other First Look managers," including the "mandated use of a 'responsibility assignment matrix" called a 'RASCI,' popular in business-school circles for managing projects."

I'm generally terrible with names but Omidyar doesn't stand out as an notable for anything in particular, journalism wise. Feel free to correct me there.

I suggest the above indicates why some of the problems arose. From what I understand these "business schools" are excellent at churning out idiots that think a spreadsheet can explain everything. I've generally found that any "mandatory matrix" will only piss people off for so long before they just generally lose their shit with everything. Trying to set up a successful journalism enterprise while dealing with this kind of bullshit could easily cause anyone to snap.

Taibbi's output in general is pretty solid so I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt here until more/further details emerge.

[Cain]

Well, Taibbi and Ames have both had problems with female staff in the past....but Omidyar is a Silicon Valley rich kid (eBay and Paypal was where he made his fortunes), whereas Taibbi has definite journalistic credentials and experience, no matter his personal history or views.  Notably, there was no mention of these kind of problems with Rolling Stone Magazine, which does have female staff but is also a far more professional journalistic outfit, with much more experienced writers and management.

So my guess would be that the problem here is not Taibbi's interpersonal conduct, but of a more professional nature.