Prism and Verizon surveillance discussion thread

[Pergamos]

Now, I'm not trying to introduce another tangent in this, but I had an interesting idea while I was jerking off today:

Remember when the MPAA rolled out some torrent seeds of one of their major blockbuster films, and they used it to track and later prosecute the people who downloaded and shared these items? Let's take this PRISM program, consider the metaphor of an actual prism, and pretend for a moment that the parties behind this are 10x as evil as we feared...

What is a prism? Well, light comes in one side, and it is split into its colors on the other. So, what we picture them as doing is taking information from all different areas (colors) and constructing a database out of it (pulling it into one bank). But a prism goes in the opposite direction. What if they're taking all of this info, and categorizing us into different banks; realms of concern. Remember looking up how to make hash that time when you were wondering what the heck your college roommate was smoking? Well, you're in the narcotics category. Remember downloading that weird porn from Taiwan? Well, you're in "fucked up dude" category. Remember downloading the Anarchist Cookbook? That's right, you're now a potential terrorist.

All the while, they keep passing confusing laws that turn pretty much any abnormal Internet act into a crime. A while ago, they passed the Federal Analog Act, which criminalizes substances that could theoretically be used to manufacture certain scheduled compounds, or non-scheduled material that could potentially have similar effects as those compounds, if they are used outside of their intended method.  In other words, if you purchase Morning Glory seeds for your grandmother, and earlier that day you were on Bluedot or something, they could say "Yep, it's apparent he wanted to get LSA out of 'em. We know that a few days earlier he bought Zippo fluid."

Let's also look at something else...

http://www.sfgate.com/local/article/FBI-shared-child-porn-to-nab-pedophiles-4552044.php

The Bureau ran the service for two weeks while attempting to identify more than 5,000 customers, according to a Seattle FBI agent's statements to the court. Court records indicate the site continued to distribute child pornography online while under FBI control; the Seattle-based special agent, a specialist in online crimes against children, detailed the investigation earlier this month in a statement to the court.

Yeah. So let's consider how many of those porn sites out there disseminate obscene amounts of, well, obscene material for free. Why are some of these sites giving away so much free porn? There's no reason to actually get a subscription. Do you think they're making it all back in ads?

What if a number of those items feature underage girls who look over 18. Like the iTunes agreement, are you going to the trouble of checking the age documentation of each video you stream? Well, guess what....? You're now on a list. You start getting ideas about organizing a political party, or protesting Monsanto, or whatever, and several men in dark sunglasses show up at your door.

Man 1: "Hello, IKK. You are going to be an informant for us, now."
Me: "I don't wanna."
Man 2: "See these video links? You downloaded underage pornography, and you know this will result in the loss of your job, marriage, children, and you'll be outcast from society to the point where suicide is the only option. Unless, of course, you give us a reason to look the other way...."

Maybe even not to that level. How 'bout...

Man 1: "Rmemeber when Cain posted that RAR of all those books? Well, the publishing company has the lawsuit ready in the holster, and they will hit you up for tens of thousands of dollars you don't have. Or, you know, you could play ball..."

Even with the Stasi, it was admitted they made no effort to quietly persecute. Why? Half of their operational intent was to make you fear being monitored, whether you were, or not. What was one of the reasons why so very few Stasi members were prosecuted after the fall of the GDR? Well, they were in powerful positions of the judiciary and government, and in many situations, bringing charges against them are abandoned because it would require the introduction of the collected intelligence as evidence. Perhaps the intelligence was an extramarital affair with someone embarrassing...

What should scare the shit out of people is the fact that with data as extensive as this, whether you are a criminal, or you truly aren't and have made every effort to follow the straight and narrow, it is assured that something in your digital past could be used for nefarious purposes by an unethical power. Think about how many people have been out on death row by an overzealous police detective, and even with DNA exonerating them, how many are still in prison? Plus, are you keeping thorough logs of your activity and data? So, when they take you to court, they could manufacture evidence, and what do you have to counter their claims? Character witnesses? Bah!

But this is why people like me fully intend to eventually bury our heads in the sand and hope it either goes away, or someone else fixes it for us. I have kids and a mortgage to worry about, and I don't want to be thrown in prison before the next season of House of Cards, thankyouverymuch.

Speaking of copyright violation, aren't the government violating copyright every time they make an archive of copywritten data?  I know that isn't going to trump SECURITIES, but still, I haven't heard it brought up yet. 

[I_Kicked_Kennedy]

I am fairly sure that is where all this is headed...only more along the lines of the law constricting the "legitimate" scope of inquiry to account for why all this information doesn't simply sit in one giant, vast database.

If you look at the future strategic forecasting by the UK and USA, you'll notice it tends to preoccupy itself with a few key topics:

- resource scarcity
- urbanization
- destabilizing influence of social networks formed online
- the possibility of radical alliances between the newly urbanized working and university educated but underemployed middle classes to challenge the existing status quo

And furthermore, these issues will act in tandem, on a regional basis.

How do you deal with international problems?  You come up with an international regime.  How do you deal with an uprising?  You subvert, intimidate and brutalise the opposition via the security services.  How do you deal with an international uprising?  Well...

Yeah, but there's two major factors that leave my opinions in limbo:

1) China
2) The secondary sociological effects of a security apparatus

In reference to the first factor, let's pretend China wants to take over the US's status as World Heavyweight Champion, and they've been dipping their fingers into our IT systems. Wouldn't it be in their benefit to spill the entire deal in one messy heap of "Oh fuck" to totally destabilize the security apparatus's hold on the world consciousness? And wouldn't there be a preemptive "Hey the Chinese are doing these shitty things..." disclosure to world media outlets to offset this? We know each group has the goods on the other. What's stopping them from sending the respective populous of the other into full blown revolution? Or do you think secretly they're pals? But if that we're the case, Snowden would be in the basement of some dungeon in East China, right now.

Regarding the second one, using Stalin and the Stasi as a precedent, the NSA and CIA have to know that any bare wire in the self-espionage only emboldens and legitimizes anti-establishmentism in the eyes of the populous. Wouldn't they aim for something lower-key, instead of something as massive as this... Ie. plausible deniability? I find it hard to believe that when thy designed this, no one raised their hand and said "shit, at this scale, even with the most thorough safeguards, this will eventually become known. Logistically, it would be impossible for it not to. Maybe, at the least, we should use blood oath FreeMasons and Elite pedigree instead of well-paid third party contractors, or something...?"

[Left]

http://www.sfgate.com/local/article/FBI-shared-child-porn-to-nab-pedophiles-4552044.php

The Bureau ran the service for two weeks while attempting to identify more than 5,000 customers, according to a Seattle FBI agent's statements to the court. Court records indicate the site continued to distribute child pornography online while under FBI control; the Seattle-based special agent, a specialist in online crimes against children, detailed the investigation earlier this month in a statement to the court.

Yeah. So let's consider how many of those porn sites out there disseminate obscene amounts of, well, obscene material for free. Why are some of these sites giving away so much free porn? There's no reason to actually get a subscription. Do you think they're making it all back in ads?

What if a number of those items feature underage girls who look over 18. Like the iTunes agreement, are you going to the trouble of checking the age documentation of each video you stream? Well, guess what....? You're now on a list. You start getting ideas about organizing a political party, or protesting Monsanto, or whatever, and several men in dark sunglasses show up at your door.

Man 1: "Hello, IKK. You are going to be an informant for us, now."
Me: "I don't wanna."
Man 2: "See these video links? You downloaded underage pornography, and you know this will result in the loss of your job, marriage, children, and you'll be outcast from society to the point where suicide is the only option. Unless, of course, you give us a reason to look the other way...."

Wow, you make me glad I like to watch people my own freaking age having sex.

[Cain]

China's expertise and access to US government computers is massively overstated, in part to justify building up "defensive" cyberwarfare systems which will be used internally for surveillance and disinformation, and externally to support US programs abroad.*

In fact, part of the NSA revelations that have come out is that the USA has been "aggressively hacking" China for the past 15 years in a highly systematic fashion.  Cyberwarfare is something the Chinese government has devoted a lot of time to, as it is the only possible area in which they can challenge the USA in the near term, but the USA has been aware of this since the Clinton administration, and has been taking steps to stem this challenge accordingly.

I also think China is keen to avoid surveillance-state overreach backlashes, since, you know...

As for the backlash itself...well, there are a number of ways they are attempting to deal with this.  Firstly, while it's legal for reporters to report on secrets given to them by whistleblowers, there is no exemption for the whistleblowers themselves.  That's a massive disincentive for them to come forward with what they know - which typically won't be the whole story, as intelligence agencies routinely practice compartmentalization.

Secondly, you'll note the vast majority of the US media has not been entirely sympathetic to whistleblowers.  We've had so-called journalists from papers like the Washington Post calling for Greenwald to be tried for treason.  Media perception shapes public perception, and media perception of leakers is viscerally negative, as most journalists in the US have internalised state politics into their worldview.

Thirdly, the leaks come in drips and drabs, being compartmentalised as they are, and so the full story can take years to become apparent.  Most people have not got the attention span for considering those kinds of time spans.  Initial outrage gives in to apathy as the original transgressions are forgotten, only for new transgressions to be brought up and cause the cycle to repeat.

Fourthly, because most of the intelligence gathering is passive, it is much harder for people to get enraged, it seems.  It's not guys in vans listening to you fucking your wife (or someone else's wife), it's a bunch of abstract gobbledegook (technical term) about metadata (whatever that is) and social networking patterns. 

Im sure I had some other points, but it's pretty late at night and I've got an early start tomorrow, so I'll leave it there.


*there's also a lot of money in inflating the threat.  Who does most of the threat analysis?  Booz Hamilton, Rand, Palantir etc.  Who gets most of the cyberwarfare contracts?  Booz Hamilton, Rand, Palantir etc.  Pleases vocal anti-PRC constituencies in the US as well, so it's a dual use complaint.

[I_Kicked_Kennedy]

So, Cain, knowing what you just reminded me, and the news that the NSA was tapping the shit out of the EU, what's to say this whole spiderweb isn't just some massive data mining tool for the financial juggernaut to stack the deck and count cards?

What if its not about security (both domestic and internstional) but rather, a manner to extract a massive amount of economic insight and heavily influence the flow of capital? If you were to imagine a method implemented by a super secret hedge fund of plutocrats, what would it be?

[The Johnny]

Just from a purely research point of view I am jealous.

So much of this information could be used for benefitial research in the social sciences, because what a lot of we do is take the discourse, group it around analytical categories, and see the recurrences... even better, they not only have the data for the discourse, they also have the data for the practices.

Sitting on a treasure trove they are, of psychological, sociological and anthropological data, too bad it will never see the light of day.

[LMNO]

So, Cain, knowing what you just reminded me, and the news that the NSA was tapping the shit out of the EU, what's to say this whole spiderweb isn't just some massive data mining tool for the financial juggernaut to stack the deck and count cards?

What if its not about security (both domestic and internstional) but rather, a manner to extract a massive amount of economic insight and heavily influence the flow of capital? If you were to imagine a method implemented by a super secret hedge fund of plutocrats, what would it be?

Whoa. I never thought about this.

[Golden Applesauce]

Just from a purely research point of view I am jealous.

So much of this information could be used for benefitial research in the social sciences, because what a lot of we do is take the discourse, group it around analytical categories, and see the recurrences... even better, they not only have the data for the discourse, they also have the data for the practices.

Sitting on a treasure trove they are, of psychological, sociological and anthropological data, too bad it will never see the light of day.

Something like this?
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/06/startup-skybox/

But over the long term, the company's real payoff won't be in the images Skybox sells. Instead, it will derive from the massive trove of unsold images that flow through its system every day—images that, when analyzed by computer vision or by low-paid humans, can be transmogrified into extremely useful, desirable, and valuable data. What kinds of data? One sunny afternoon on the company's roof, I drank beers with the Skybox employees as they kicked around the following hypotheticals:

— THE NUMBER OF CARS IN THE PARKING LOT OF EVERY WALMART IN AMERICA.
— THE NUMBER OF FUEL TANKERS ON THE ROADS OF THE THREE FASTEST-GROWING ECONOMIC ZONES IN CHINA.
— THE SIZE OF THE SLAG HEAPS OUTSIDE THE LARGEST GOLD MINES IN SOUTHERN AFRICA.
— THE RATE AT WHICH THE WATTAGE ALONG KEY STRETCHES OF THE GANGES RIVER IS GROWING BRIGHTER.

[Golden Applesauce]

Now, I'm not trying to introduce another tangent in this, but I had an interesting idea while I was jerking off today:

Remember when the MPAA rolled out some torrent seeds of one of their major blockbuster films, and they used it to track and later prosecute the people who downloaded and shared these items? Let's take this PRISM program, consider the metaphor of an actual prism, and pretend for a moment that the parties behind this are 10x as evil as we feared...

What is a prism? Well, light comes in one side, and it is split into its colors on the other. So, what we picture them as doing is taking information from all different areas (colors) and constructing a database out of it (pulling it into one bank). But a prism goes in the opposite direction. What if they're taking all of this info, and categorizing us into different banks; realms of concern. Remember looking up how to make hash that time when you were wondering what the heck your college roommate was smoking? Well, you're in the narcotics category. Remember downloading that weird porn from Taiwan? Well, you're in "fucked up dude" category. Remember downloading the Anarchist Cookbook? That's right, you're now a potential terrorist.

All the while, they keep passing confusing laws that turn pretty much any abnormal Internet act into a crime. A while ago, they passed the Federal Analog Act, which criminalizes substances that could theoretically be used to manufacture certain scheduled compounds, or non-scheduled material that could potentially have similar effects as those compounds, if they are used outside of their intended method.  In other words, if you purchase Morning Glory seeds for your grandmother, and earlier that day you were on Bluedot or something, they could say "Yep, it's apparent he wanted to get LSA out of 'em. We know that a few days earlier he bought Zippo fluid."

Let's also look at something else...

http://www.sfgate.com/local/article/FBI-shared-child-porn-to-nab-pedophiles-4552044.php

The Bureau ran the service for two weeks while attempting to identify more than 5,000 customers, according to a Seattle FBI agent's statements to the court. Court records indicate the site continued to distribute child pornography online while under FBI control; the Seattle-based special agent, a specialist in online crimes against children, detailed the investigation earlier this month in a statement to the court.

Yeah. So let's consider how many of those porn sites out there disseminate obscene amounts of, well, obscene material for free. Why are some of these sites giving away so much free porn? There's no reason to actually get a subscription. Do you think they're making it all back in ads?

What if a number of those items feature underage girls who look over 18. Like the iTunes agreement, are you going to the trouble of checking the age documentation of each video you stream? Well, guess what....? You're now on a list. You start getting ideas about organizing a political party, or protesting Monsanto, or whatever, and several men in dark sunglasses show up at your door.

Man 1: "Hello, IKK. You are going to be an informant for us, now."
Me: "I don't wanna."
Man 2: "See these video links? You downloaded underage pornography, and you know this will result in the loss of your job, marriage, children, and you'll be outcast from society to the point where suicide is the only option. Unless, of course, you give us a reason to look the other way...."

Maybe even not to that level. How 'bout...

Man 1: "Rmemeber when Cain posted that RAR of all those books? Well, the publishing company has the lawsuit ready in the holster, and they will hit you up for tens of thousands of dollars you don't have. Or, you know, you could play ball..."

Even with the Stasi, it was admitted they made no effort to quietly persecute. Why? Half of their operational intent was to make you fear being monitored, whether you were, or not. What was one of the reasons why so very few Stasi members were prosecuted after the fall of the GDR? Well, they were in powerful positions of the judiciary and government, and in many situations, bringing charges against them are abandoned because it would require the introduction of the collected intelligence as evidence. Perhaps the intelligence was an extramarital affair with someone embarrassing...

What should scare the shit out of people is the fact that with data as extensive as this, whether you are a criminal, or you truly aren't and have made every effort to follow the straight and narrow, it is assured that something in your digital past could be used for nefarious purposes by an unethical power. Think about how many people have been out on death row by an overzealous police detective, and even with DNA exonerating them, how many are still in prison? Plus, are you keeping thorough logs of your activity and data? So, when they take you to court, they could manufacture evidence, and what do you have to counter their claims? Character witnesses? Bah!

But this is why people like me fully intend to eventually bury our heads in the sand and hope it either goes away, or someone else fixes it for us. I have kids and a mortgage to worry about, and I don't want to be thrown in prison before the next season of House of Cards, thankyouverymuch.

The NYPD cultivated informants in Muslim neighborhoods by actively pulling over anyone they could for any reason at all, among other things. If they found drugs or literature or anything else, jackpot, and on to groom them to report on what imams where saying in mosques and what people were chatting about in coffee shops.

http://www.ap.org/media-center/nypd/investigation

[Junkenstein]

FBI and FSB have apparently been ordered to "Find a solution".

These people tend to solve things in pretty final ways.

[Cain]

I'm almost certain that the NSA and its corporate partners are using such surveillance systems for private profit as well.

France made a number of allegations concerning US industrial espionage carried out with the aid of the CIA in the early 90s, and of course, the world of banking and oil and the world of intelligence frequently overlap. 

Metadata concerning the habits of CEOs and negotiators could give US government-linked companies a decisive edge in market positioning, buyouts and similar. 

And indeed, foreign companies have assumed this is the case, which is why they are now pulling out of any cloud computing systems with partners in the PRISM system.

[P3nT4gR4m]

So, Cain, knowing what you just reminded me, and the news that the NSA was tapping the shit out of the EU, what's to say this whole spiderweb isn't just some massive data mining tool for the financial juggernaut to stack the deck and count cards?

What if its not about security (both domestic and internstional) but rather, a manner to extract a massive amount of economic insight and heavily influence the flow of capital? If you were to imagine a method implemented by a super secret hedge fund of plutocrats, what would it be?

Whoa. I never thought about this.

Really? "How would I make a fuckton of cash from this?" is the first question I ask myself of pretty much anything. Ever. This is how I've managed to avoid believing any of the bullshit humanitarian/freedom/peacekeeping/security/political reasons these money grabbing fucks give for anything they do. It's ALWAYS about the money. Powermongers are physically incapable of any other form of reasoning.

tl/dr - "political agenda" = "business plan"

[Doktor Howl]

RELEVANT:

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/01/19229897-germany-to-us-bugging-friends-is-unacceptable?lite

BERLIN - The German government said on Monday if media reports of large-scale U.S. spying on the European Union were confirmed, it would be unacceptable Cold War-style behavior between partners who require mutual trust.

"If it is confirmed that diplomatic representations of the European Union and individual European countries have been spied upon, we will clearly say that bugging friends is unacceptable," said Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert. "We are no longer in the Cold War."

Germany wanted an EU-U.S. free trade deal which would foster economic growth and job creation, said Seibert. But he added: "Mutual trust is necessary in order to come to an agreement."

German magazine Der Spiegel reported over the weekend that the NSA had tapped communications at EU offices in Washington, Brussels and at the United Nations.  According to the report, the NSA taps half a billion phone calls, emails and text messages in Germany in a typical month, much more than any other European peer.

Meanwhile, the leader of Germany's opposition Greens suggested that Europe provide a safe haven for former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who revealed the extent of U.S. surveillance programs.

Juergen Trittin, parliamentary leader and candidate for chancellor of the Greens, Germany's third biggest party, told German television it was an outrage that the 30-year-old leaker should be seeking asylum in "despotic" countries.

"Someone like that should be protected," he said. "He should get safe haven here in Europe because he has done us a service by revealing a massive attack on European citizens and companies. Germany, as part of Europe, could do that."

Trittin did not specify which "despots" he was referring to.

Snowden flew from the United States to Hong Kong and is now in an international airport in Russia seeking asylum in Ecuador - the country that has been sheltering WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in its London embassy since last year.

[Junkenstein]

If Germany do that, all kinds of shit is going to end in tears, fast.

That said, it sounds more like flexing than an actual statement of intent. More Germany reminding the US that as far as it should be concerned the EU=Germany.

[Salty]

Pretty intense either way.

It is sort of amazing just how eagerly other people are thumbing their nose at the US. I can only imagine the exasperated expressions of officials who first read this shit and have to pass it on.

"Uh...Phil, Germany just told us go fuck ourselves."

It's almost like our foreign policy is not helping us build a positive world.image or something..