PRISM

[ZenGum]

In case you haven't heard...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/invest...7_story_1.html

... the US government is (allegedly) doing massive (allegedly) illegal data mining through some of the biggest internet companies (allegedly) including google, facebook and apple.

Well, when I signed up for Gmail, I just assumed that Uncle Sam would be snooping through the data one way or another, and always treated it accordingly.

[glatt]

It's one of those things I always assumed they were doing, but to see it confirmed is pretty shocking.

[Undertoad]

Always plan your terror excursions using Cellar private messaging. They haven't asked me for access yet.

[Spexxvet]

I can't say whether the government is doing all that .... but if it is, PRISM has saved all our lives from multiple terrorist attacks. It's the most important anti-terror tool we have, I mean if it exists, it would be the
most important anti-terror tool we have.


And how could something initiated by the Bush administration be bad?

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Always plan your terror excursions using Cellar private messaging. They haven't asked me for access yet.

Unless they have another secret program that does.

[glatt]

I plan all my terror activities by snail mail and in person.

[Undertoad]

They couldn't read the Cellar PMs without me knowing. That's why they should just intercept data at key exchange points. I don't know why they would even have to talk to Yahoo to get information on their servers, when they could just read your Yahoo Mail at the router.

[Lamplighter]

The Washington Post had an exclusive article yesterday (6/6/13)
of a PowerPoint presentation of theNSA's PRISM program... here

There is a related Post article here

[Griff]

Originally Posted by ZenGum

In case you haven't heard...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/invest...7_story_1.html

... the US government is (allegedly) doing massive (allegedly) illegal data mining through some of the biggest internet companies (allegedly) including google, facebook and apple.

Well, when I signed up for Gmail, I just assumed that Uncle Sam would be snooping through the data one way or another, and always treated it accordingly.

I think you can drop the (allegedly).

[Griff]

"Horror at Their Capabilities" Drove Leak of NSA Spying Program

He's going to get the Bradley Manning treatment.

[Lamplighter]

What do Google and Allied Waste have in common ?
We give them our raw materials for free, they claim absolute ownership, sort it, and sell it for profit.

Bloomberg
Christopher Flavelle
Jun 8, 2013

Does Google Have an Ethical Obligation Not to Spy?

Many Americans are outraged at the government for mining
user data from Apple, Google, Facebook and other Silicon Valley giants.
What about the actions of the companies themselves
-- have they met their ethical obligations to their customers and society as a whole?
Do they even have any?

The Washington Post reported that the National Security Agency collects data
"directly from the servers" of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple.
While some companies issued carefully worded denials of involvement,
it's hard to imagine they were unaware of the arrangement, however they choose to describe it.<snip>

The surveillance debate raises the question of whether our expectations
of these companies and their leaders should also extend to the defense of our civil rights.
Imagine, for an instant, that Steve Jobs, Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg had
held a press conference in 2007, when the government first
began seeking this access, and said to the public,
"The government has asked for your information,
and we don't think that's right." <snip>

This week's revelations demonstrate the centrality of
Silicon Valley to American life, in ways we never imagined.

In the face of that expanded role, maybe it's time to revisit what it means
for a company to be a good corporate citizen, and whether that includes
acting as a check on the government when no one else can.

[Griff]

Now that national elections are meaningless maybe the right approach is stockholder pressure. At least its a front that can be fought.

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by Griff

I think you can drop the (allegedly).

It actually seems that PRISM is not illegal and has been approved by pretty much all three branches of government. This data mining is a definitely a true slippery slope and it can be strongly argued to violate the 4th amendment, but this seems to be a bi-partisan move that is well known among all elected officials.

In fact, it's a near certainty that the legal theory behind orders of this sort has been carefully examined by all three branches of the government and by both political parties. As the Guardian story makes clear, Sen. Ron Wyden has been agitating for years about what he calls an interpretation of national security law that seems to go beyond anything the American people understand or would support. He could easily have been talking about orders like this. So it's highly likely that the law behind this order was carefully vetted by both intelligence committees, Democrat-led in the Senate and Republican-led in the House. (Indeed, today the leaders of both committees gave interviews defending the order.) And in the executive branch, any legal interpretations adopted by George W. Bush's administration would have been carefully scrubbed by President Barack Obama's Justice Department.

Ah, you say, but the scandal here isn't what has been done illegally -- it's what has been done legally. Even if it's lawful, how can the government justify spying on every American's phone calls?

It can't. No one has repealed the laws that prohibit the National Security Agency (NSA) from targeting Americans unless it has probable cause to believe that they are spies or terrorists. So under the law, the NSA remains prohibited from collecting information on Americans.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...calls?page=0,0


Note: That article is an obvious defense of PRISM and there will likely be a lot of political spin on this in the next few weeks but I think it is important to try to look at PRISM for what it really is (in a factual sense).

[xoxoxoBruce]

You put your whole fucking life online and are worried about someone finding out what you've been up to?

[Lamplighter]

The hypothetical example in PH45's link is far too tenuous to carry much weight at all.
It basically tries to argue that the phone companies can not manage the author's imaginary problem,
therefore only the government is capable, and therefore must do it.

"must" ? Why "must" ?

Even the author's final paragraph pre-supposes the "must"

But for those who don't like the alternative model, the real question is "compared to what"?
Those who want to push the government back into the standard law enforcement approach
of identifying terrorists only by name and not by conduct will have to explain
how it will allow us to catch terrorists who use halfway decent tradecraft
-- or why sticking with that model is so fundamentally important that
we should do so even if it means more acts of terrorism at home.

My hypothetical would be to change only the timing in his example.
Instead of urgency, the terrorists use the postal services of each country.
So now, would that justify a government database of the addresses
and return addresses on every piece of mail handled by the post office ?
Who knows, maybe such already exists.

Although some aspects of physics posits an infinite number of parallel universes,
we don't build our lives around that possibility.
The Boston Marathon bombing shows that a program that has been
in operation for at least 7 years failed to do what it is supposed to do.

Sometimes, absolute safety is not possible for all the possible hypothetical or imaginary situations.