Some very damaging additional stuff about the NSA domestic spying will come up this week. A preview was given today on Face The Nation and on Meet The Press. The emphasis is now not on "collect it all" but the much more interesting question of how to "access it all". How does the NSA get the information out of the raw data.
Senator Udall says that all "phone records" are collected. But that is only half the beef. The NSA is collecting much more. "Phone records" are the metadata of a call: Date/time of call, call length, originating number, location of originating number, destination number, destination location. If the implicated phones are mobiles additional information about the phone type and serial as well as location changes during the call may be included.
This metadata is useful to find connections between people, to reconstruct where they have been when and to find out about certain habits of the people involved.
But the content of the calls may be much more interesting.
As reckless and untruthful as the people at the head of the NSA have been proven to be there is absolutely no reason to believe that they do not also record the content of every call (and email and web access etc) of everything they could possibly get.
Today 99% of call and internet traffic is transported through optical fiber cables. The NSA has access to every major fiber cable hub in the United States and in parts of Europe. It additionally taps into various undersea and land cables by clandestine means. It uses optical splitters that leave the original line working as before but copy the raw datastream onto an NSA line and feed it to some NSA datacenter where all will be recorded. As General Alexander planned five years ago the NSA it is by now really recording nearly all communication data. But how can one use this data? How can one even access it? This is where the metadata comes in. Any name can be easily connected to a phone number and vice versa. Any IP address can be easily connected to a name. An IP address, a phone number, an email address, a name can then be used to automatically search through the recorded raw data streams to find and display the content data hidden in it. As Glenn Greenwald explained today on Meet The Press:
“The NSA has trillions of telephone calls and email in their databases. What these programs are are very simple screens, like the ones that supermarket clerks or shipping and receiving clerks use, where all an analyst has to do is enter an email address or an IP address, and it does two things: it searches that database and lets them listen to the calls or read the emails of everything that the NSA has stored, or look at the browsing histories or Google search terms that you’ve entered; and it also alerts them to any further activity that people connected to that email address or connected to that IP address do in the future. And it’s all done with no need to go to a court, with no need to even get supervisor approval on the part of the analyst.”
Access to these search programs is not restricted to NSA personal. The NSA spends 70% of its budget on contractors. They do have, like Edward Snowden had, access to the search capability and thereby access to the meta- and content data. Thinking further there is no reason to believe that these capabilities is restricted to certain facilities or just small circle of people. It is already known that U.S. and NATO soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan had and have access to these systems and abused them. Does the State Department have access? Has the White House? Do political operatives have access? The very likely answers are "yes", "yes" and "yes".
The NSA claims that it can not search its own emails. I actually believe that to be somewhat true. The NSA task is to spy on others not on itself. Its internal email search capabilities may well be underdeveloped compared with its capabilities to search through the emails of others.
Likewise I doubt that its internal security is as developed as its external security. Trusted people with security clearance will have relative free access to its system (just ask Snowden) while any access from the outside will be heavily guarded.
So how much internal logging and controlling does the NSA have? Will every fishing through the accumulated data by trusted personal be recorded, logged and reviewed? I very much doubt this. Abuse then is likely to be widespread. Look up your nasty neighbor? Look up your former girlfriend? A political enemy? The urge to so will be great and the chance of getting rebuked over it will be small. Herein lies the mother of all scandals still to be unearthed.
Greenwald Claims Private Contractors Can Spy On Calls, Emails: ?I Defy NSA Officials To Deny? These Capabilities | Mediaite
@FaceTheNation "The #NSA is literally collecting every phone record of every American every day...that is a violation of Americans' privacy" @MarkUdall
Senator Udall says that all "phone records" are collected. But that is only half the beef. The NSA is collecting much more. "Phone records" are the metadata of a call: Date/time of call, call length, originating number, location of originating number, destination number, destination location. If the implicated phones are mobiles additional information about the phone type and serial as well as location changes during the call may be included.
This metadata is useful to find connections between people, to reconstruct where they have been when and to find out about certain habits of the people involved.
But the content of the calls may be much more interesting.
As reckless and untruthful as the people at the head of the NSA have been proven to be there is absolutely no reason to believe that they do not also record the content of every call (and email and web access etc) of everything they could possibly get.
One internal document quotes the head of the NSA, Lieutenant General Keith Alexander, on a visit to Menwith Hill in June 2008, asking: "Why can't we collect all the signals all the time? Sounds like a good summer project for Menwith."
Today 99% of call and internet traffic is transported through optical fiber cables. The NSA has access to every major fiber cable hub in the United States and in parts of Europe. It additionally taps into various undersea and land cables by clandestine means. It uses optical splitters that leave the original line working as before but copy the raw datastream onto an NSA line and feed it to some NSA datacenter where all will be recorded. As General Alexander planned five years ago the NSA it is by now really recording nearly all communication data. But how can one use this data? How can one even access it? This is where the metadata comes in. Any name can be easily connected to a phone number and vice versa. Any IP address can be easily connected to a name. An IP address, a phone number, an email address, a name can then be used to automatically search through the recorded raw data streams to find and display the content data hidden in it. As Glenn Greenwald explained today on Meet The Press:
“The NSA has trillions of telephone calls and email in their databases. What these programs are are very simple screens, like the ones that supermarket clerks or shipping and receiving clerks use, where all an analyst has to do is enter an email address or an IP address, and it does two things: it searches that database and lets them listen to the calls or read the emails of everything that the NSA has stored, or look at the browsing histories or Google search terms that you’ve entered; and it also alerts them to any further activity that people connected to that email address or connected to that IP address do in the future. And it’s all done with no need to go to a court, with no need to even get supervisor approval on the part of the analyst.”
Access to these search programs is not restricted to NSA personal. The NSA spends 70% of its budget on contractors. They do have, like Edward Snowden had, access to the search capability and thereby access to the meta- and content data. Thinking further there is no reason to believe that these capabilities is restricted to certain facilities or just small circle of people. It is already known that U.S. and NATO soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan had and have access to these systems and abused them. Does the State Department have access? Has the White House? Do political operatives have access? The very likely answers are "yes", "yes" and "yes".
The NSA claims that it can not search its own emails. I actually believe that to be somewhat true. The NSA task is to spy on others not on itself. Its internal email search capabilities may well be underdeveloped compared with its capabilities to search through the emails of others.
Likewise I doubt that its internal security is as developed as its external security. Trusted people with security clearance will have relative free access to its system (just ask Snowden) while any access from the outside will be heavily guarded.
So how much internal logging and controlling does the NSA have? Will every fishing through the accumulated data by trusted personal be recorded, logged and reviewed? I very much doubt this. Abuse then is likely to be widespread. Look up your nasty neighbor? Look up your former girlfriend? A political enemy? The urge to so will be great and the chance of getting rebuked over it will be small. Herein lies the mother of all scandals still to be unearthed.
Greenwald Claims Private Contractors Can Spy On Calls, Emails: ?I Defy NSA Officials To Deny? These Capabilities | Mediaite
