Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/confirmed-nsa-spying-millions-americans

1227 440 13 years ago

ChuckMcM• 13 years ago

Interesting. as I recall the last President to reign in the intelligence services was Jimmy Carter.

datalus• 13 years ago

And he was politically assassinated... All my friends' parents and my own often talk about Jimmy Carter as a man who just didn't have what it takes to be a President. Bang up job they did on him.

javert3• 13 years ago

Well, he actually was a horrible president. He was politically assassinated by himself.

aashaykumar92• 13 years ago

Before you down vote, maybe try it: I bet if the pros and cons were written down, people would actually find the aggregate magnitude of each to be similar.

_bfhp2• 13 years ago

Cross-posting from the other comment forum:

Everyone should realize one thing that makes this news slightly less scary, but still scary nonetheless: the order only applies to "Verizon Business Network Services", which is not the entirety of Verizon Communications.

While this still means that the metadata from millions of phone calls by random people, possibly from phones not even on Verizon who were simply calling VBNS phones, have been vacuumed up by the government, it also means that not "all" Verizon phones are meta-tapped as the article seems to insinuate (tagline, picture caption).

Glenn has done incredible commentary and reporting for many, many years; I hope this story will be only the beginning of his contributions and shake-ups to the discourse and activism against the U.S. surveillance oligarchy. Anyone who hasn't been reading his pieces whenever they come out are missing a phenomenon in human history.

And as another user noted: "Although this only means that the order for VBNS was released - for all we know every telco could be under a similar order that just hasn't been leaked."

Edit: not sure what here is getting the downvotes exactly; I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade, I just see "leaked court order shows all Verizon call metadata is seized" all over WaPo, Forbes, EFF etc and it's really a factual error. If we're exposing government corruption and authoritarianism, do we want to be credible or sensationalist?

nikcub• 13 years ago

this particular leaked document only applies to Verizon Business Network Services.

they will request the same data from other providers in other FISA court applications. there is nothing in the request that makes it specific to Verizon Business. The legal justification used applies to all providers.

_bfhp2• 13 years ago

The document that Greenwald presented, which is the only document of its kind so far, makes it clear that when it says "Verizon" it means "Verizon Business Network Services".

Sure: by whatever insane reasoning the government came up with to issue this order, they could probably issue orders for any other subsidiary of any other telecom, and I would not be surprised at all if they've done so many many times for many different time frames, but we don't have the definitive proof yet. Obama could come out tomorrow and say "we were just doing this for VBNS" and there's nothing anyone could say to refute him until another separate document is leaked.

If you want to go by some sort of Laws of Authoritarian Fluid Dynamics and say "if this order exists, there must be similar orders because if the government has the internal secret legal justification to do something for one company it would for all" then sure, there are orders for ever carrier.

davidandgoliath• 13 years ago

"Confirmed". Welcome to.. 2002? (Not to lessen the impact of the post, but, this is old news)

ISL• 13 years ago

It's my understanding that at least some legal cases on the subject are hobbled by a lack of official evidence that such surveillance is under way. ("You can't prove that we're doing it, because all the documents are secret. The court thinks so too. Come back when you have proof.")

Assuming that this document is real, perhaps it may provide sufficient leverage to force into the light whatever hides in the shadows. At least some of those who might authorize such a program will be earnest in intent; we would be wise to carefully consider their justification.

beedogs• 13 years ago

America sucks more every day. This really is a pathetic joke -- warrantless, covert surveillance of EVERY call made in the country. I predict the level of outrage won't match the scale of this crime, though.

adventured13• 13 years ago

Americans won't so much as lift their head away from Candycrush to bat an eyelash about it.

If there were enough give-a-shit left in America, I don't think things would have gotten so bad to begin with. It's a broken, battered, unemployed, bankrupt, bitter nation being drown by a behemoth $6.3 trillion government system that nothing could possibly contain or restrain. The NSA has a budget the size of the economy of half the nations on earth.

Far easier to go back to playing Candycrush than try to do anything about the MASSIVE mess that is America.

javert3• 13 years ago

What is your suggestion for "doing something?" I can't help that most Americans are wrongly educated about thinks like civil rights.

waterlesscloud3• 13 years ago

Which nation is resisting these intrusions?

adrr• 13 years ago

Thats the real issue. People are really apathetic to the situation. Frequent response when brought up is that they have nothing to hide and it only makes them safer. But its not just the government's fault, we have news media driven by ad dollars. Fear drives viewership up and is good for business. If these programs weren't popular, our politicians wouldn't get elected. In our times, if your "soft" on terror, its like automatic disqualification in terms of getting elected.

johnpowell• 13 years ago

Well, when shit goes down the other party will call the "weak" so it is best to cover your ass.

oceanstone2• 13 years ago

The NSA will have dirt on everyone.

noonespecial• 13 years ago

Take a look at your technology with an engineer's eye. If it can be done, they probably will. If it can be done easily they probably already are. You may as well just assume this is always the case.

In the current political climate, why in the world wouldn't they?

mtgx3• 13 years ago

Of course. You should also be fighting it with every fiber in your body. Generations behind you gave their lives for rights like these, and the current generation seems to be giving them away because they are too busy chatting with friends on Facebook to care about it.

And if you don't fight it now peacefully, you'll be fighting it in the streets in a bloody revolution, in a decade or two.

javert3• 13 years ago

I don't see any way to fight it now. What are your suggestions?

If we were to have a revolution here, even in a decade or two, we'd probably end up with something much worse than what we have now.

chenster• 13 years ago

Can you still buy a pre-paid phone and remain anonymous on the phone bill in the states? Or they require ID now when purchasing such device?

mtgx3• 13 years ago

I give this maybe 2-3 months before the whistleblower behind this is being prosecuted by the Obama administration for "harming national security and putting people's lives in danger, and/or espionage".

richtr2• 13 years ago

To notch up the paranoia a bit, the original court order document looks like it may contain some digital fingerprinting around the edges (either made by a certain class of printer or placed there prior to dissemination) that could lead authorities to the person(s) they originally distributed this specific copy of the court order to.

Of course, I hope that is not the case here but people should be aware these things exist.

andreyf2• 13 years ago

I'd be really surprised if journalists who published leaks weren't well aware of digital fingerprinting, since protecting sources is integral to their profession.

venomsnake• 13 years ago

And killing puppies with chainsaw. Think of the puppies.

The US is behaving more and more like authoritarian regime - see no evil, hear no evil - no evil exists. And if someone sheds light on our misdealing - it is their fault and must be punished.

Nixon was born in the wrong time. Poor guy.

qwertzlcoatl2• 13 years ago

Turkey is burning right this moment for (arguably) less evil by their government leaders.

timthorn• 13 years ago

There might be a reason that the original report is from a UK newspaper.

crusso10• 13 years ago

Jeez, isn't that poor Benghazi scapegoat who made that anti-Muslim video still rotting in jail for some bogus parole violation that normally no one would have done anything about?

And these are just the high profile type cases that make some news.

Think of all the sad saps with a watery ditch on their property whom the EPA jackbooted into oblivion. Or gods help folks who did something so societally horrible as to sell raw milk and then had the FDA come in with their own SWAT folks.

krisroadruck• 13 years ago

Who needs a 4th amendment right? What has to be done to get the Gov to stop doing whatever it likes whenever it wants? I'm really losing faith in this country.

einhverfr8• 13 years ago

Technically it is well established that CDR's are not protected by the 4th Amendment. Cell site location data is another question and that is currently an area of evolving law with at least two circuits saying there may be 4th Amendment protections there.

tlrobinson4• 13 years ago

I suggest every software developer take a course or two on cryptography and make privacy integral in the products you develop.

silvestrov2• 13 years ago

Cryptography doesn't help at all when your government will require you by law to provide them with a decrypted dump.

That's what they did with Verizon. Verizon could not provide you with privacy no matter how much they wanted.

tlrobinson4• 13 years ago

End-to-end encryption and p2p networks help in that respect.

anemitz3• 13 years ago

There's no expectation of privacy at the service provider level in this case. If Verizon, or any service provider, has access to the unencrypted data or the decryption mechanism, the system is insecure.

However, cryptography does help you as an individual user of a service. There's no reason we can't build systems which are provably secure and retain strict end-user data privacy.

Ihmahr• 13 years ago

That is why you should put your servers in iceland or similar places. With asymetric encription there is no need; Only the user knows and not the service provider.

epsylon• 13 years ago

And, above all, end-to-end cryptography doesn't protect you against traffic analysis, which is what the NSA is doing with this metadata (which allows them to choose targets subject to a full blown surveillance).

e3pi5• 13 years ago

Google: Deniable Cryptography and Rubberhose(update: Waterboarding) Cryptanalysis

anemitz3• 13 years ago

This is precisely the type of attitude we should all have as hackers.

It's easy to sit back and say "oh government this or corporation that sucks", we need to step up our game as builders of the software sitting on millions of devices.

This is a privacy arms race -- and right now we're losing.

sharkweek• 13 years ago

Who are the developers who go work on these projects for the government? I feel like this is some cutting edge technology they create, so they have to be some of the best, right? Is the money that good or is there an allure to having a security clearance.

richtr2• 13 years ago

While this is sound advice there is the problem that if you get very big/popular the government can knock at your door with sealed court orders to enable things like wiretapping.

Case in point: "Microsoft’s tweaks to Skype could facilitate wiretapping" http://www.extremetech.com/computing/132935-microsoft-tweaki...

If that has happened or not under the current system we will never know - which is the exact issue the OP was citing.

tlrobinson4• 13 years ago

Build open-source, encrypted, p2p networks.

Fortunately the 1st Amendment is still mostly respected, at least relative to some of the others.

[Edit] Now, monetizing such software is an interesting problem.

Ripple/OpenCoin may have found one model: include a cryptocurrency that's used as credits in the system, and claim a large portion for yourself, which you can later sell. The problem is if they open source the software too early someone could easily create a new network with the currency allocated to themselves.

[Edit] Perhaps that could be solved with a new open source license that forbids forking the network.

downandout3• 13 years ago

Yet another reason not to use Verizon. To be fair though, this is par for the course for the US government these days, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if other carriers are or will be targeted. Hopefully people are starting to see that our privacy laws are nothing more than cannon fodder for creative Justice Department attorneys. Freedom and privacy in the US have been nothing more than illusions for a very long time. These illusions are quickly being shattered, and that is a good thing because hopefully it will lead to (eventual) change.

yekko• 13 years ago

Freedom is dead in America.

_pmf_• 13 years ago

Question from a non-American: if not spying, what are they supposed to do?

prollyignored• 13 years ago

There is no other way. I think the "right to privacy" is childish.

"Big Brother" was about controlling behavior but grepping phone records is not.

edit: I'd be more upset about DNA database.

snom3802• 13 years ago

Who are you talking about? This order is about the FBI.

declan2• 13 years ago

The NSA is generally viewed as not operating domestically. This order shows otherwise.

einhverfr8• 13 years ago

They are supposed to be spying on non-Americans only. Keep in mind the US has a long-standing distrust of a porous boundary between military and law enforcement embodied in things like our 3rd Amendment, The Posse Comitatus Act, and more. These have been eroding fast unfortunately since Reagan era (and maybe even arguably since Carter signed FISA), but they are major aspects of American governance.

dirktheman6• 13 years ago

I can't say I'm surprised. It's well known the NSA is monitoring internet traffic (read this article in Wired, published in 2006: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/ip-telephony/these-photos-illustra...) and they have a massive data center in Utah which they use for foreign data collection (read: phone calls).

Under the FISA guidelines they can gather foreign data, but have to get a warrant for every US citizen they want to spy on. The NSA admitted they have an excess of domestic data because it's hard to filter out. So they have all this data available, and somehow we have to trust them when they say 'Oh, but we won't use it'...

To put a little perspective into things: I live in The Netherlands. A somewhat decently managed country (opinions differ!), with the highest rate of phone taps on civilians in the world. So all's not well on this side of the ocean, too.

The way I see things, there's a gliding scale between security on one end, and privacy on the other. I know the HN crowd generally gravitates towards the privacy end. But realize that a lot of people don't necessarily feel the same way. If you're a law-abiding, middle class citizen with a family, steady job and a mortgage, you're likely to give up a little privacy over security. I don't think there's anything massively wrong with that. What I do have problems with is the fact that they're being so secretive about it.

squidi• 13 years ago

It's not about whether citizens are law abiding, it's about whether the the government is using the data in a legitimate way.

I have middle-class friends in Istanbul fighting a authoritarian government which is arresting people because of their statements on Twitter and Facebook - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/05/turkish-police-a.... So the data can easily be abused in a very negative way.

vbo• 13 years ago

Which is why the government should not have broad access to your records and why "I've got nothing to hide" is a wrong attitude even for "good citizens": the government's definition of good and bad may shift (or become arbitrary).

h4rrison• 13 years ago

I will never understand the inherent distrust America seems to have in their government. Every time a document like this is released, the logic is to assume that the document applies to all Verizon customers (which it does not), then to assume that all telecom companies have been given similar documents, then to assume that the government actually acts on this and randomly spies on people, then to assume that they are using that data for malicious purposes, and suddenly the government is evil.

Perhaps the only thing they use the data for (if indeed it exists) it to programatically uncover underground pedophilia rings? Perhaps they use it to pre-empt mass shootings? Perhaps the country with the most powerful government in the world should have a little trust in it now and then?

kingnothing• 13 years ago

America was founded on the distrust of government. It's deeply rooted in its people.

adventured13• 13 years ago

Would you trust the same government that instigated massive wars in Vietnam and Iraq? The one that spies on the planet without permission. Kills thousands of civilians with drones. Actively prosecutes a zillion dollar fake war on drugs and terror as an excuse to run huge military and police bureaucracies and enrich the insiders involved in it. The one that has a military budget the size of the rest of the world combined. The one that has actively put more people in prison - political prisoners - than any other country in history (outside of maybe Stalin and Mao). The one that has shown absolutely no respect for its own governing documents, with Obama lately using the IRS to attack his political opponents, spying on the Associated Press, running from a big scandal on Benghazi and Fast & Furious, to actively expanding unconstitutional domestic spying programs. The government whose President can only be elected with a billion dollar campaign. The one whose Senators are all bought and paid for by a lobbying industry so large it's bigger than all the lobbying in the rest of the world combined. And on it goes.

You'd trust that monster?

We were warned by the founders about this, many times over. The warnings have become gradually unheeded. Washington in his farewell address warned against the kind of foreign entanglements that the US Govt. now specializes in instigating.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington%27s_Farewell_...

snom3802• 13 years ago

Have you even read the order? It calls for all CDRs to be handed over.

If you had read up on the abuses of the patriot act, including giving telephone companies retroactive immunity so they could not be prosecuted, you would understand some of the distrust.

This is about the government covering up and hiding its actions and how they interpret the law.

khyryk• 13 years ago

Favoring privacy at the expense of hypothetical benefit is a conscious decision and is a matter of principle. For instance, the freedom to kick down doors in the middle of the night without warrants and drag people out of the building would undoubtedly result in some benefit, but I think there's a reason something like that hasn't yet become standard procedure. Moreover, I believe that trust is something that's earned.

waterlesscloud3• 13 years ago

America was founded with an inherent distrust in government.

timdev2• 13 years ago

> Every time a document like this is released, the logic is to assume that the document applies to all Verizon customers (which it does not), then to assume that all telecom companies have been given similar documents, then to assume that the government actually acts on this and randomly spies on people, then to assume that they are using that data for malicious purposes, and suddenly the government is evil.

The thing about that is that the government did those sorts of things in the past. When those became public, measures were put into place to check those powers. Some people feel that since 9/11/2001, many of those checks have been continually eroded.

More specifically:

> the logic is to assume that the document applies to all Verizon customers

Given the breadth of this order, it appears that there's no particular thing being investigated. It's just "fishing", ostensibly for national security purposes.

> then to assume that all telecom companies have been given similar documents

Once the government is asking "everything" from a particular company, using national security (as opposed to particularized criminal investigation) as the reason, what reason is there to assume they haven't ordered everyone else to do the same. Don't forget this is a secret order, the subject of which (a Verizon subsidiary) is legally barred from discussing with anyone. The document making the news here was leaked, and the leaker has committed a felony by doing so.

> ... then to assume that they are using that data for malicious purposes

I'm not sure anyone is arguing that they're doing anything malicious ... yet. But history as shown that this particular slippery slope isn't always a fallacy.

> Perhaps the country with the most powerful government in the world should have a little trust in it now and then?

One can, conversely, argue that the citizens of that country have a moral obligation to the rest of the world to keep their government's power in check precisely because it's so powerful.

lispm2• 13 years ago

Also confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Hundreds of Millions of Non-Americans

einhverfr8• 13 years ago

That, at least, is their official mission, which is supposed to exclude Americans.

Create2• 13 years ago

Directive 2006/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2006 on the retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks and amending Directive 2002/58/EC

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:...

lispm2• 13 years ago

Wikipedia

The German Bundestag had implemented the directive in "Gesetz zur Neuregelung der Telekommunikationsüberwachung und anderer verdeckter Ermittlungsmaßnahmen sowie zur Umsetzung der Richtlinie 2006/24/EG".[17] The law became valid on 1 January 2008. Any communications data had to be retained for six months. On 2 March 2010, the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany ruled the law unconstitutional as a violation of the guarantee of the secrecy of correspondence.[18] As such, the directive is not currently implemented in Germany.

austenallred2• 13 years ago

A lot of comments in this thread area calling for the head of Verizon and recommending boycotts, but for how much of this is Verizon really at fault? If the NSA comes knocking and tells you to turn over X, you can't exactly say "no", can you?

More to the point, it's highly unlikely that this is an issue unique to Verizon; it's just the only one we've heard about so far.

declan2• 13 years ago

Right. It's a boilerplate order. Some reliable reports say there are 50 companies that are NSA data suppliers. They request these orders as legal cover.

newman314• 13 years ago

So roll over and take it like a champ?

If everyone thought this way, there would have been no revolution. At some point, enough is enough and I say that that point is way past.

austenallred2• 13 years ago

I don't know what the solution is, but I doubt it's "switch my service provider to AT&T."

rytis• 13 years ago

You reckon people are going to revolt? I have serious doubts about that.

ne0codex2• 13 years ago

Well, if enough people say "enough is enough"... what next.

My mobile device is tied to my phone, I have some work discounts attached to my service, I have a contract (which will gain fees for early termination). These issues make it highly improbably to truly do any action (when it comes to businesses).

However, there is a way politically to actually get something done, but that requires the masses to actually organize and take action.

return0• 13 years ago

It's kind of frightening that a boycott can be considered a better course to defend civil rights than democracy.

Trufa3• 13 years ago

On the other hand, if you boycott Verizon to the point when (for an example's sake) they are broke, the next business the NSA comes knocking at the door will definitely be more reluctant.

If you can get into the businessman's head that the NSA is bad for business, they'll have a bad time pulling this kind of thing off.

ne0codex2• 13 years ago

The trouble is, that's easier said than done. However, if there were any action feasible enough to do that would make it possible to: "get into the businessman's head that the NSA is bad for business." Then that will definitely be the way to go.

stedaniels• 13 years ago

Because we all know the NSA are a nice friendly bunch who will only be applying pressure at a corporate level and won't apply any pressure at all on a personal level to any of the key individuals in control of the company.

baddox• 13 years ago

So let us boycott the government! Oh wait, unlike Verizon, the government will lock you up for doing that.

ojii• 13 years ago

You can easily boycott the government without getting locked up: move to another country!

jwr• 13 years ago

The saddest thing here is that I read the top three headlines on HN in the morning (all of which were about this story), shrugged, yawned, mumbled to myself "well that's some news" and moved on.

robomartin17• 13 years ago

I hate to use this tone but, so be it. Maybe now you morons who continue to vote in the pieces of shit into our government who are bent on taking more and more power for themselves will wake up and figure it out? How much more proof do you need? Does this make you angry yet or is Obama still your diety? Oh, and Republicans don't get a pass either.

The point is that all of you morons voting like robots along party lines are destroying my country, from the inside, one fucking vote at a time. And it is sad. And it is painful. And it is almost unbearable to watch. You are destroying what this country is supposed to be about and turning it into something our children will have to suffer with.

Terrorists won. You morons saw to it. Our way of life is, in many ways, unrecognizable from what it was before 9/11.

When are you going to understand that a conservative Libertarian (as opposed to extreme and nearly anarchist) approach is the only path to recovery? Ultra limited government. They are OUR servants, we are not their property. They need to get the fuck out of our lives, homes, businesses, bedrooms, schools and more.

Time to take it back. Peacefully. Vote with intelligence. Email. Write letters. Make calls. Let them know who they work for. Reboot the system.

snoshy• 13 years ago

Sadly, you forgot the most important factor in all of this: money. Vote with your wallet. Far more important and influential than voting once in 4 years.

acjohnson552• 13 years ago

Only if you have a big wallet. And that's the problem.

worldsayshi• 13 years ago

As a non american, my theory about why your state is allow to abuse it's power to such a degree is that your democratic system disincentivize multiple parties and so a fair competition. I understand that the ruling party is the one with the largest share of votes rather than whatever group of parties who can agree to work with each other comprising the majority of the votes. You should need 50% of the votes to rule. That means making compromises with minority parties. Compromises is a good thing in the political sphere, not something to avoid. And it incentivizes voting on small parties. It may lead to some bad apples but at least you have slightly better environment for competition.

adventured13• 13 years ago

There are three particularly big problems in the US system today.

1) Lobbyists 2) Tort 3) The Federal Reserve / federal banker insider system

The lobbyists are powerful because of what they can buy, because of the nearly total power over the economy that the Federal Govt. possesses. If the politicians can't dictate economic policy, then buying them is worthless.

The desperate need for tort reform is obvious.

The Federal Reserve has failed, basically across the board over the course of its entire history. It has created an economy dependent on one bubble after another. It has devalued the dollar by 97% over its history, and particularly dramatically since the 1960s. The dollar used to be regarded as being "as good as gold," that's a bad joke now. It is currently, intentionally, inflating massive asset bubbles with trillions worth of debt monetization ("QE") because it stupidly thinks that's how you create prosperity (or they're really clever and intentionally trying to crash the economy). It has to be abolished, and the US monetary system has to be returned to a sound basis, rather than relying on dollar devaluation to fund the government (ie we need strict balanced budget laws).

Trufa3• 13 years ago

I am not American, so I am not an as immersed in your politics as many of you so take it with a grain of salt but this is my opinion.

Obama is about the most dangerous thing that could have happened to your government. Why?

In most of the world outside from the US, after Bush's second term, you simply couldn't defend him. My family tends to be very pro USA (blindly), but with Bush, it got to the point that it was not "politically correct" any more to defend him, just about anybody criticized him.

But then comes Obama, likable and with a promise to make things better, everybody likes him, and in between promises and small steps forwards, he/his goverment/others/whoever slip in huge blows to human rights, privacy and freedom.

In my eyes, Obama is Bush with better PR.

And why is this dangerous, because with bush at least most people knew they wanted better, and now for most, this is good enough or even good, and it's not.

sounds• 13 years ago

Bush : wolf :: Obama : wolf in sheep's clothing ?

bmelton3• 13 years ago

The problem isn't really with Obama, it's that the American people haven't done much against the government's attempts at power grabs. There are a variety of reasons for why not, ignorance being high on the list, but perhaps the most prominent reason is that we expect our government to keep us safe, for better or worse.

If Americans are just now getting upset about this, it's ultimately our own fault, as this was the fairly logically expected result of the Patriot Act, and we haven't really done enough to get rid of it. The 'right' response would have been to vote out every single Senator and House Representative that voted for such an egregious overstep on our liberties, but in reality, that ignores a whole slew of other interests those politicians may have supported.

If, for example, I am gun-toting civil rights advocate, a Senator that votes against an assault weapons ban comes out slightly ahead, even if that same Senator also voted for the Patriot Act.

If I'm a gay man, looking for federal recognition of marriage, I'm in the same boat. Someone who votes for gay marriage, but also against privacy, comes out ahead.

The net, basically, is that privacy is nobody's 'hot-button' issue because even while somebody can espouse the inherent ignorance of the "If you have nothing to hide..." argument, we, for the most part, don't have anything to hide. So while we don't acquiesce to these intrusions of privacy, we let them fall by the wayside in the wake of more important issues.

The real bitch of the matter, of course, is that Republicans are almost certainly going to scream 'outrage' to this new knowledge, even though it was Bush's policies that implemented their capability. Meanwhile, democrats will likely 'defend Obama' because it would otherwise reflect negatively on the party to not do so. In sort, it's political ammunition. The outrage we see won't even be universal. You'll probably see exceptions on either side (Lindsay Graham, Republican from South Carolina has already said this information "doesn't bother" him), and ultimately, if the 'blame' can be assigned in such a way that it advances someone's political agenda, that's what'll happen.

dclowd9901• 13 years ago

I'm not sure it's quite that simple. Democrats have traditionally been about large government and nanny-state policies. Something weird happened in the Bush leadership where we got the traditional conservative laissez-faire policy toward military and the private sector, but also large government/nanny-state policies indicative of Democrats.

The result was actually something coming very close to an outright fascism. I know that's one of those words people throw around a lot, but we were coming close to that definition with the level of power the federal government was wielding domestically, and how much power they also gave back to private sectors, doing things like prosecuting citizens criminally for tort offenses.

So, no, Bush !== Obama. Obama is actually playing right out of the traditional democrat handbook, but the world has changed, and the New Democrat (TM) is an individual that wants the social freedoms traditional progressives offered without the nanny-state. Obama's losing the NDs in droves.

Libertarians keep trying to Co-opt this group, but it's not going to happen. We have a two-party state, and it's statistically infeasible to have anything but. I'd rather morph the group that didn't seat Bush into what I want than try to bootstrap a whole new party. Party politics is far too entrenched in this country for anything else to happen.

rhizome• 13 years ago

You could have deleted everything but the last line.

nkohari2• 13 years ago

Name a conservative Libertarian candidate and I'll point out the socially regressive policies that make me not vote for them.

nazgulnarsil• 13 years ago

by all means continue giving away your economic freedoms in order to signal your loyalty to social freedoms the president doesn't have control over anyway.

durzagott• 13 years ago

What is a socially regressive policy and why are Libertarian candidates prone to them?

eatitraw• 13 years ago

Gary Johnson?

toolz• 13 years ago

is it ironic that I can name the last libertarian presidential candidate, Gary Johnson, and you can't name a socially repressive policy?

Buzaga2• 13 years ago

I wonder what the hell is voting for... this system is corrupted/failed already, politicians put millions and billions in marketing to get elected, sometimes with corruption money even(ruling party in Brazil admitted to it with a "everybody does it, it's normal" argument, also fucking lobbyists up there) and after they're there they don't have to answer to anyone anymore, it doesn't matter that the actions took by the government doesn't match the persona they marketed themselves to get there(As an outsider who rooted for Obama for his apparent reasoning and humanity, I'm severely disappointed with what I see), not to mention that probably in most countries the 'game' is already a two-party only play, with "you wouldn't want that other guy so pick me" as one of the prevalent voting reasonings, with parties getting more and more alike by the day, making the whole voting process look more like lucha-libre than a competition to me

I don't disagree with what you said but I'm seriously in doubt if I really trust "voting", I'm in Brazil and over here seems like it's a lost case(uneducated population, obligatory voting <= marketing + corrupts power circle)

robomartin17• 13 years ago

I lived in Argentina for a while. It's probably worst there. In many strange ways I see aspects of what I saw happening in Argentina happening here in the US.

loup-vaillant4• 13 years ago

Don't reboot the system, rewrite it. Instead of a representative government most western countries suffer, switch to democracy.

I mean, democracy. Where the people decide for their rules directly. Where real democratic processes such as random trials are used, instead elections which by nature are heavily influenced by a tiny elite. Where the constitution itself is not written by those who will later rule the country (that's such an obvious conflict of interest).

Good luck, though.

mtgx3• 13 years ago

Keep the representative system, but add a ton of direct democracy influences to it. You can even take real world examples from countries like Germany or Finland, I believe, where the citizens can create their own bills, and then pass them through a referendum.

It doesn't need to be 100% democracy, and it doesn't need to be 80-90% representative like US, either. It definitely needs to be a lot more towards direct democracy than it is in US now.

Also another huge problem that needs to be fixed in US, is making sure the incredibly skewed "money vote" is drastically reduced, by only allowing people to donate $100 per voter at an election, and no anonymous donations anymore.

Votes are supposed to be equal, but this alternative money vote system, created by lobbying in US, has really compromised to the point that you can almost discard the real vote system. When 70% of the voters want decision A vs decision B, but 90% of the donors want decision B, in the vast majority of cases the politicians go with decision B - because they were basically paid to do it.

But what's worse is that 90% of the funds usually comes from only a handful of people - therefore the incredibly skewed system. At least with $100 cap you can equalize it a lot.

crusso10• 13 years ago

The Democracy vs the representative Republicanism are irrelevant.

What matters is that we have a massive unelected bureaucracy that is its own ulta-powerful branch of the government that sucks money and makes its own laws.

talmand4• 13 years ago

True democracy is a far worse sort of government than a representative republic because it is essentially mob rule.

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch." -said by somebody

kunai3• 13 years ago

"Democracy is little more than mob rule." -- Thomas Jefferson

When more than half the country has an IQ of less than 100, democracy is deeply, deeply flawed. The only way to properly reimplement government is to replace corrupt representatives with trustworthy ones, and offer a voice and most importantly, CHOICE.

rlx0x• 13 years ago

Thats great, lets minimize government, lets privatize schools, police, prison, the fire department and everything else! "Ultra limited government" for the future! Lets deregulate everything, because you know you can trust Corporations!

The part you need to realize is, there already are on their way to your utopia. The point is, that you need a strong military, police and surveillance state in order to make the transition fully. There some people that don't like to be corporate slaves so you need power to force people into their brave new world! :)

crusso10• 13 years ago

Name the corporation that has the self-given legal right to take ALL our data and store in insecurely.

Name the corporation that has the right to spy on us, and even when caught doing it contrary to the law, no one goes to jail over it.

Name the corporation that when it runs out of money on its stupid ideas just prints more or can raise its prices indefinitely and FORCE you to buy however much of its products that it wants you to.

Name the corporation that has the authority to break into your house in the middle of the night, shoot your dog, put a boot on your throat, then say, "Sorry we had the wrong house" ... with little or no negative consequences for their mistake.

Name the corporation that can sick its money collectors on you for disagreeing with them and then they'll audit your income over and over to make your existence miserable.

Name the corporate agents who have the legal right to manipulate the markets with the creation of new laws and bureaucracies and then can use that knowledge to do as much insider trading as they want to enrich themselves... and it's all legal.

Name the corporation that has the means and the authority take away your house, your children, your very life, and I'll be right there with you.

Until then, I'm going to go ahead and keep pushing against the government that has ALL of the powers mentioned above and that abuses those powers on a daily basis.

mindcrime• 13 years ago

Thats great, lets minimize government, lets privatize schools, police, prison, the fire department and everything else!

Since when did "private" become a bad word? F%!# that, "private" business is me, you, your neighborhood plumber, the dive bar on the corner, IBM, Microsoft, Google and a whole range of "in between" companies. Nothing about a firm being "private" makes it "bad". In fact, I'd argue that it's just the opposite... anything that can be provided by a private firm, participating in a free market, should be provided by such, or not at all. Note, however, that "private firm" does not necessarily equate to "corporation" OR to "for profit business". The range of "private" organizations also includes various non-profit cooperatives, communes and collectives.

Lets deregulate everything, because you know you can trust Corporations!

If we were really serious about minimizing government, there wouldn't be any Corporations, as Corporations are a legal fiction which depend on the State for their very existence.

talmand4• 13 years ago

Sorry, but limited government doesn't mean no government at all. Most of what you describe should be the responsibility of the local government in your area which is far more capable of dealing with such matters as opposed to a massive central government that can care less about your community's well-being.

Most people who speak of limited government are speaking of the federal level, not local or state.

king_jester2• 13 years ago

> I hate to use this tone but, so be it. Maybe now you morons who continue to vote in the pieces of shit into our government who are bent on taking more and more power for themselves will wake up and figure it out? How much more proof do you need? Does this make you angry yet or is Obama still your diety? Oh, and Republicans don't get a pass either.

> The point is that all of you morons voting like robots along party lines are destroying my country, from the inside, one fucking vote at a time. And it is sad. And it is painful. And it is almost unbearable to watch. You are destroying what this country is supposed to be about and turning it into something our children will have to suffer with.

I'm sorry but this is a load of crap. The US gov't at all levels has always suffered from this problem due to the way it is structured. Blaming individual people for not participating in that system the way you think they should is completely unhelpful and puts the blame in the wrong place.

> Terrorists won. You morons saw to it. Our way of life is, in many ways, unrecognizable from what it was before 9/11.

This is not true. Although some policies and attitudes have changed since 9/11, US society has not fundamentally changed and the major problems pre-9/11 are the same post-9/11.

> When are you going to understand that a conservative Libertarian (as opposed to extreme and nearly anarchist) approach is the only path to recovery? Ultra limited government. They are OUR servants, we are not their property. They need to get the fuck out of our lives, homes, businesses, bedrooms, schools and more.

I find it funny that you slight anarchism here while claiming that a different type of political candidate is all that is needed to change society. Limited government isn't just about reduced budgets and programs, but removing the bureaucratic and hierarchical elements of government. Further, if you feel that existing political parties all are contributing to the problem, picking a different party isn't going to change anything.

> Time to take it back. Peacefully. Vote with intelligence. Email. Write letters. Make calls. Let them know who they work for. Reboot the system.

This isn't rebooting the system, this is how most people interact with and solicit the government already.

darkarmani2• 13 years ago

> This is not true. Although some policies and attitudes have changed since 9/11, US society has not fundamentally changed and the major problems pre-9/11 are the same post-9/11.

We have way more problems after 9-11. We've invented more problems, starting with the TSA that nudiescans and molests people -- the Patriot act, spying on Americans, other fear mongering.

jneal• 13 years ago

Vote Republican: Patriot act created Vote Democratic: Patriot act abused

I'm not sure where this leaves us, which is worse?

crusso10• 13 years ago

Get out of the Republican vs Democrat team mindset?

Choose individual candidates who believe in and you trust to legislate based upon some core principles. Examine voting records when possible since speeches can be useless.

Too many people get caught up in the complexity of noise issues that aren't that important. These noise issues are like the trade-in value of your used car when you go to buy a new one... or the infamous "under coating". They're just mixed in with the important issue (price of the car) in order to confuse you and maximize the power that the dealer has in the negotiation.

Government abuse comes from too much government power. Too much government power comes from too much legislation and too much money through taxation and money printing.

Vote for politicians who understand the beauty of the limitations created by our Constitution and who can push for following a more strict interpretation of it.

In the end, it's all about power. Power corrupts. We want the people in government to have only as much power as they absolutely need to do things that we cannot do (national defense, TRUE interstate commerce regulation, etc.) The rest of the power we grant them is just ripe for abuse.

TheFuture• 13 years ago

Patriot act was overwhelming supported by Republicans AND Democrats when passed. Let's not rewrite history here.

The more we learn about the Obama admin, the worse it gets. This isn't a R vs D thing.

damoncali• 13 years ago

“The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.” ― George Orwell

bilbo0s• 13 years ago

"...When are you going to understand that a conservative Libertarian (as opposed to extreme and nearly anarchist) approach is the only path to recovery?..."

I think this is the issue in a nutshell. Partisanship. Even people who do not like the Demopublicans... are 'partisan'. I know it was probably not intended, but your post provides illustration of the issue by way of example. I'd wager you, like the average Democrat and Republican, would vote for whoever towed your party line. And this vote comes regardless of whether or not the party line is good for the US. If a given policy is good for the US, then great! But this is not a necessity to gain your support... it is incidental.

The important thing for Partisans is not continuous improvement, but continuous compliance. It's far more important to a Partisan that we do things 'their way', than it is for us to improve ourselves.

We need to move away from Partisanship toward an environment where each issue is judged on its merits. Without regard to preconceived grand ideas that underlie some Party's philosophy on the 'right way to do things'. This is the only way we will get the continuous improvement we are looking for. By abandoning the, sort of, 'sacred cow', ideas that have gripped the nation's political discourse on every front.

robomartin17• 13 years ago

Wrong. I voted for Obama the first time. Then, when I learned he had no clue, lied about everything, did not do as promised, plunged us into more debt, is a total union whore, etc, I voted for Romney.

I am a true independent in the full sense of the word.

To be fair, our system is based on political parties. If these were abolished and politicians had to run without party affiliation then one could vote outside clans.

I want an intellectually honest limited government that is fiscally conservative and socially, well, gets the fuck out of our lives. As an atheist it pains me to sometimes have to vote for uber-religious Republicans. Sometimes I have to choose between social and fiscal policies. Obama promised he would deal with all of it, and here we are we have wasted four years and are about to waste four more.

None of the extreme's are good. Extreme left, right and yes, extreme Libertarians are deranged and delusional lunatics who ought to be nowhere near our government. As an example, I love Ron Paul but some of his foreign policy ideas were nutty. I still think we need to quickly shift into something that is closer to a moderate Libertarian concept.

Beyond that, we need major structural changes in order to have a shot at recovering in FIFTY YEARS. Yes folks, do the math, recovery will take twenty five to fifty years. We've done a lot of damage to our country --all from the inside. Unions, entitlement programs, patents, tax code, Obamacare, IRS, Patriot act, NSA, EDUCATION, spending, political whore politicians, ignorant voters, budgets, OSHA, etc.

chez17• 13 years ago

There is nothing more intellectually childish than saying "x isn't working in this case, therefore x never works and should be totally abandoned." I agree 100% that 99% of people don't care about politics enough and vote blindly. Look at the turn out rate for primaries and years where people aren't voting for president. Libertarians like you are all talk. There plenty of places in this world with no government but you would never go there because they are 3rd world shit holes. Ask yourself, "why aren't there any first world countries that are prosperous that have libertarian governments?" You love government. You love roads, infrastructure, safe food, safe cars, you take things like electricity, water, and internet for granted, you bathe in government funded projects that have made your life better in every way. The answer isn't no government, it's better government. In some areas that means drastically reducing it's power and I think even the left most progressive could agree with the right most libertarian on many things. However it's just childish to say "no government". It's been tried before in the past, and it's being tried now, it never works. We do better when we work together.

talmand4• 13 years ago

He didn't say nor have I ever heard a libertarian claim they wanted no government. I believe that's a different ideology.

Dirlewanger• 13 years ago

Nice job busting out a rant that no one provoked.

robomartin17• 13 years ago

No government? Who said that? Where?

We need a simple and limited government that remains out of our lives in nearly every imaginable way. Every human being on this planet is born free. We created these monstrous governmental systems that, effectively, enslave us in one way or another.

I can't go for a swim in my local lake. My government will not allow it. I can easily swim 1500 meters or more. Swim every day. Yet, if I so much as stick my FOOT in the lake they'll warn me that this is not allowed.

Los Angeles County has a "no water contact" policy. I've had a lifeguard in a power boat rush over to me while walking with my children along the shore in six inches of water to tell us we could not get our feet wet. If I did try to go for a swim I could be arrested and fined. Really? Yes, really. And this is just one example.

gregd2• 13 years ago

It's funny how you call everyone BUT yourself, a moron. Oh wait, no it's not.

So the only way to the promised land, is via the path you laid out? I see what you did there.

vpeters25• 13 years ago

I'm afraid in this case voting for somebody else is just not going to be enough. History shows us the only way to really change the status quo is by massive mobilization akin to the Civil Rights movement.

tbatchelli• 13 years ago

You say that a conservative libertarian approach is the only path. I find it hard to believe it is the only option, tbh, and you provide no evidence --nor I have evidence to support that it is not. But, could it be that the problem is that the US citizens have no (effectively possible) way to effect power on the government? Could it be that with a two party system there is little incentive to cater to the constituents? Could it be that there is little incentive for Democrats to be anything other than a little to the left of the Republicans, and that there is little incentive for Republicans to be other than not Democrats? ... There are examples of countries out there with more government (lefties!!!) and a better life for their constituents.

In any case, any form of goverment, big or small, if unchecked, will use it's power for self-serving interest. Governments are formed by human beings after all...

powertower• 13 years ago

> Maybe now you morons who continue to vote in the pieces of shit into our government who are bent on taking more and more power for themselves will wake up and figure it out?

In my opinion, from everything I've seen, the only thing they are bent on is protecting people like you from the increased threats of crimes, radicalization, and terrorism.

I know how that sounds, you can't figure out if I'm joking or if I'm a brain-washed moron.

But think of it this way, Obama did a 180 when he got into office because a) power-lust made him do it, or b) he gained access to a much more detailed and clearer picture than you have?

jbooth2• 13 years ago

Most of the conservatives I know just want to spend more money investigating Benghazi.

digitalengineer9• 13 years ago

Dutch person here with a little insight what's to come for you guys. Some information about our tiny little country (in Wester Europe, very pro-US) with just 17 million people.

Our government listens in on more calls every year than in the whole of the US combined. All our telecommunications providers are forced to have the capability to intercept all traffic (phone and internet). Encrypted data must be stored for an unlimited time to facilitate possible decryption in the future. Our 'Team Digital Expertise' developed software that profiles social networks on which a suspect operates to use it in order to gather crime-related information.

Our police buys TomTom software-data to see when and where they can get the maximum amount of money if they photograph speeding drivers. (Safety is not their first concern, money is). Local and national police now use drones. The army is training how to spy on it's own civilians.

Our 'Camera Surveillance Act' allows images to be retained for up to four weeks and also facilitates the use of cameras for law enforcement purposes, whereas before the main purpose of camera surveillance was keeping public order. They're working on a pay-per-mile car tax system but activating it stopped when it turned out they were collecting more (personal) data than was technically needed to run the system and using the data for purposes other than those for which was collected. Every important road is viewed by camera's with license-plate scanning software. You can travel by public transport but a special card with chip and login/logout is required. You can purchase one without your name and address but you can only add money to it using your bank-account. The system tracks all travelers' movements (departure and end points for each leg of every journey), in most cases combined with the traveler's identity. It retains the data for seven years.

Our Dutch passport contains both fingerprints, facial recognition and RIFD. Every large city center is equipped with camera's with powerful microphones. Our Minister of the Interior announced plans to also store the biometric data in a central database. Dutch hotels are breaking data protection laws by photocopying guests' passports and identification cards because they are required by our government to do so.

The 'Electronic child file' records a child's development and environmental indicators from birth. Teachers are forced to build a profile of every child in their class along with a description of his/her family's situation. It received local media coverage when it turned out doctors are even recording when a child starts getting pubic hair. The government is also actively building a electronic patient file, containing all medical details of every person. Because of the workload they have asked insurance companies to help building this. (That got a lot of people's attention).

Privacy? There is no such thing.

Source: https://www.privacyinternational.org/reports/netherlands

dirktheman6• 13 years ago

Fellow Dutchman here, and I couldn't agree more. I actually helped building the electronic patient file in two major hospitals, and I can't tell you enough about the massive clusterfuck that is. The government requires you to finish it before a certain date, only they provide you with the exact requirements after that date. Basic security measures like encrypting data? No way!

To me, America is still the land of the slightly more free and little more brave!

digitalengineer9• 13 years ago

Agreed. Imagine voting for you own major, sheriff, congressman and president! (This is no joke people, we can't. They're appointed from within their own ranks. We can vote for a specific party-leader and hope they win. But the always end up creating a coalition with 2 or 33 other party's and needing to compromise).

dutchbrit3• 13 years ago

Another "Dutchie" here! :)

killerpopiller4• 13 years ago

no, it is, fanfare.., Germany.

I read this above report and can't believe it. When that this happen?

Our data privacy laws are thorough and sometimes an obstacle, but many projects got stopped because of privacy issues:

e.g. the digital stored medical records on ones health insurance card

The stop of the data retention directive by our beloved Bundesverfassungsgericht (they are awesome) is another milestone.

Core of our privacy law is that every person is entitled to reign over it's own data as the person pleases, thus every personal data processing is forbidden as long as there isn't a law allowing it.

But fear not my fellow neighbors, the EU comission (not so beloved) might overhaul the data privacy laws and you might gain citizen rights back: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/newsroom/data-protection/news/12...

Proleps• 13 years ago

Weird thing is, nobody seems to care. I care, it's one of the reasons I will keep voting for the pirate party.

rvschuilenburg• 13 years ago

Same here, and it confuses the hell out of me. Everytime i tell someone about yet-another-privacy-issue, and each time they answer "well, i have nothing to hide".

k-mcgrady• 13 years ago

I think people did care but we see these stories so regularly now, even though I know it's a bad thing, I find it hard to care.

e3pi5• 13 years ago

Vote: Pi Rate Party International(PRPI) ...Krypto-Anarchic-Socialists?

dekz2• 13 years ago

> You can purchase one without your name and address but you can only add money to it using your bank-account. The system tracks all travelers' movements (departure and end points for each leg of every journey), in most cases combined with the traveler's identity. It retains the data for seven years

Not to discredit your whole post but is this really the case. You can buy those 1 hour/24 hour/48 hour passes for cash. With a 1 hour one you aren't exactly required to check out if you don't use it again (on tram at least).

dirktheman6• 13 years ago

You're right, you can buy the one-time cards and they won't be able to track you. But for regular travellers like myself those one-time cards are much more expensive than the ones linked to your bank account. Not to mention the hassle of having to buy a new card every day...

Heliosmaster• 13 years ago

even without considering that you charge an anonymous card with your bank account, if you keep only one, it's quite easy to follow patterns still. Especially if they have already targeted a person and they have additional information, there are not so many people that check in X and check out Y on days W,Z.. and so on. The more additional info you have, the narrower the search space.

gerwitz• 13 years ago

Funny that this thread has become about the Netherlands.

I moved to Amsterdam from Seattle last November, and have to say that I feel far less vulnerable here, information-wise. Perhaps if I compared the policies and behaviors of only the national governments, I would remember the US as the land of the free, but I prefer to take all levels of government and corporate power into account.

joelhaasnoot• 13 years ago

This isn't even true. At the railway ticket machines you can buy an anonymous card with just coins. Yes, it does cost 7.50 euro, and it does let you charge in 1 euro increments. Yes, the data is collected, but no, they are not allowed to use it on a case by case basis, only aggregated and only individual trips. Data has been thrown away with lawyers and auditors present to watch.

fmavituna• 13 years ago

"You can purchase one without your name and address but you can only add money to it using your bank-account"

I used to live in Amsterdam and I clearly remember that it was possible to top up with cash, has this changed? (only some machines in some stations got this cash option though, maybe all gone now)

tigerente• 13 years ago

That's still possible, maybe not everywhere. At least this past Tuesday it still worked :-)

odiroot• 13 years ago

Well, about the OVkart. I assume you were writing about this one. I visited Amsterdam and bought one with cash. Then I loaded it at Zuid also paying with cash. No paper trail. And I only did that because it was nearly impossible to pay with my Visa Electron. But that's another issue.

digitalengineer9• 13 years ago

There are some. Most machines only accept a bank-card, not cash. There has even been a debate about it in parliament because psychiatric patients and refugees don't have a bank account. See: http://www.omroepwest.nl/nieuws/17-03-2013/ov-chipkaart-opla...

oceanstone2• 13 years ago

> Our government listens in on more calls every year than in the whole of the US combined.

Are you saying your country talks on the phone more than the USA? Every one of our phone calls gets recorded. Check out "Mark Klein", he's a whistleblower, formerly of AT&T.

dirktheman6• 13 years ago

To clarify: the number of subpoenas for phone taps is higher, not neccesarily the number of taps actually in place.

digitalengineer9• 13 years ago

Yeah if everything is recorded automatically you are of course number one. Officially (what our government tells us) Dutch detectives actively 'tap' into and listen to more phone conversations a month than their American colleagues do in a year. Source #1: Tweakers (Dutch) http://tweakers.net/nieuws/53705/dagelijks-bijna-1700-telefo... Source #2 National Dutch newspaper: http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2686/Binnenland/article/detai...

yread• 13 years ago

Well at least it's still possible to buy a prepaid SIM card with cash which includes data for ridiculously cheap. And travel in towns on bikes with huge sunglasses and a hat. And buy tickets for traveling between cities with cash.

I don't really care that they gather the OVkaart data (they can see that I go to work and back when the weather sucks, so what). What makes me steaming with anger is that they don't seem to be using it to IMPROVE the network. People are actually getting off the metro to get on a bus. Have the bus wait for those people, dammit! What's the use of data collection if it's not used?

dirktheman6• 13 years ago

My gripe too. When I forget to 'check out' in Amsterdam when transferring from metro to train I get fined, even though I did in fact 'check in' for the train. It's so mindnumbingly stupid to have the two check-in/out poles standing next to each other.

flexie• 13 years ago

Dane here. Todays headline in Danish news is that the government just learned that a database containing ID numbers of all people with a driver's license was hacked last year and an unknown amount of information may be leaked. The Danish ID numbers can be used to get just about any information on Danes, whether it's tax related, education, health, criminal records, addresses, bank accounts etc.

digitalengineer9• 13 years ago

Holy cr*p. That's my nightmare as well. The Public transport system has been hacked many times. What is the Electronic Patient, Electronic Passport or Tax system gets hacked? Anyone could take all your information and you're screwed. I think anyone owning any system whatsoever should be FORCED to go public if there system gets hacked. (Especially banks!)

wahsd• 13 years ago

Just wait until it turns out that forcing all software to have back-doors wasn't all that great of an idea.

hereonbusiness• 13 years ago

I don't really get why governments would want to do most of this, it's mostly just a waste of money if they don't plan to establish a totalitarian regime.

I mean, they collect all those phone records, internet records, they know your movement patterns, and now what? What good can you do with it for your citizen ?

goshakkk• 13 years ago

Don't you get it? The government tries to prevent terrorism!

Public fear of terrorism is what's being used to take away rights and liberties, especially in post-9/11 America.

belorn• 13 years ago

Mostly political power. Terrorism/military/police arguments is the short term answer, but the reason so much effort is put in is because politically, surveillance is a very valuable. The two primary uses of raw surveillance data (to my knowledge) is to trade it with other nations, and to give political leaders information about their citizens in order to stay in power.

For trading, he who has most data can get most in exchange for it. Sometimes, it's details about on-going deals between companies, where trading information might mean receiving information so one's national companies get a edge over foreign ones. Diplomats, airplane manufacturers, car manufacturers, oil companies are historical beneficiaries of information acquired by the NSA.

But leaders of nations also want information about their citizens. They need to identify other politically important people, influential groups, or where campaign money should (or not) be invested so that they get elected next election. With surveillance data, you can direct police forces to crack down on people or groups who would otherwise have an effect on election day.

znowi• 13 years ago

Oddly enough, reading this made me want to move my NL servers elsewhere :)

_k3• 13 years ago

Where to ?

gpvos• 13 years ago

Regarding the public transport chipcard: you _can_ recharge them with cash. Using the machines of the railways, you can only use coins, unfortunately. But at least the machines of Amsterdam local transport accept bank notes.

tripzilch3• 13 years ago

Also Dutch. Didn't know about the drones, got a link for that? I believe you (esp. given all the other crap they pull), I'm curious how and where they use the drones.

digitalengineer9• 13 years ago

There have been 81 official drone flights the last 5 months using the 'Raven' drone. Police are now learning to control the 'Scaneagle'. Amsterdam cops have already broken 2 of their drones... See: http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2013/05/09/bevestiging-na-kamervrag...

dhughes• 13 years ago

Not to condone such an intrusive government but I've read that a lot of personal info is public record but with the result of, for example, being able to track diseases with great precision in families over decades.

I forget whereI read it but there is more to it than that but the gist of it is the existence of such a massive amount of data results in amazing discoveries.

cdooh• 13 years ago

National Security - destroyer of civil and personal liberties everywhere

Yaggo• 13 years ago

OpenPGP and similar strong encryption methods are widely considered unbreakable (with the current technology) and available as easy-to-use software packages. Is there any similar software which enables easy encrypted VoIP-style calls?

So if you want to keep a secret from the government, why bother to use non-safe communication methods (public telephone network etc) at all? Aren't people who actually pose a threat to the society smart enough to use such tools?

k2enemy• 13 years ago

The problem with OpenPGP is that it only encrypts the contents of the communication. The identities of the sender and receiver, as well as the time and other info are still vulnerable. This communication "metadata" is exactly what the article is referring to.

gohrt• 13 years ago

People are saying that no one can stop Congress or big companies, yadda yadda.

Maybe the solution is to find people who are doing the actual "dirty work" (govt employees, or telco employees), and apply pressure there, making it an undesirable life choice to choose treason as a career. Many people in the USA go to work every day with an explicit task of harming Americans. Make them prefer to get a new job or file for unemplyment insurance.

dutchbrit3• 13 years ago

There's nothing you can do about this. You're the governments bitch. You are a slave of the system... Sad but true ;)

Don't want to be traced? Ditch technology... Hide from satellites...

Fuxy• 13 years ago

Great... anybody think this planet is going to hell or is it just me? The creation of the space ship will be credited to some guy trying to live some place with proper privacy. The possible future described in the series Firefly seems to be more realistic every day. The only difference will the the reason for the war will be privacy.

jonemo• 13 years ago

Wasn't there a story recently about how they record (the content of) every phone call? This seems to be a subset of that, so how is this news?

dutchbrit3• 13 years ago

This won't stop. It will only get worse. We are the slaves of the system.. Ditch technology will reduce being spied on drastically, but we always have satellites & CCTV..

alan_cx3• 13 years ago

As a Brit, can I ask:

Why don't I see Fox "News" presenters, and the like, crying daily on screen about the death of the USA over things like this? Unlike the birth certificate of Obama or attempts to being free health care to people, this really is destroying US citizen's basic rights. But no Fox tears and hysterics.

Why is that? I mean, surely this is a fantastic way to attack the "hated" Obama, surely. Aren't they all about "freedom"? Isn't this a huge open goal for the right?

From where I sit it looks like a very weird contradiction. Surely this is more of a threat than say gun controls? Clearly I'm missing something, but what?

nkurz2• 13 years ago

I'm American, and don't know if I have any more insight than you do. I think the issue is that both major parties in the US (at least publicly) prioritize security over privacy. Fox doesn't cry out about this because Fox viewers are rarely in uproar about such trade offs. If anything, I'd guess this policy has greater support among mainstream Republicans than Democrats.

Privacy issues are viewed in an entirely different light than gun control, and are frequently a darling of the left. For example, the EFF (source of this article) is considered as an extremely liberal left organization, and hated by many conservatives. Perhaps the feeling is that as long as you can maintain control of the government you and your side have nothing to worry about, and the guns are there in case you somehow lose control of that government.

alan_cx3• 13 years ago

Understood.

Does seem to me though that there is little idealogical or political consistency in what the left and right campaign for.

I'm now wondering if it is the same here in the UK. That, I'll have to give some thought to.

pnathan• 13 years ago

> the EFF (source of this article) is considered as an extremely liberal left organization, and hated by many conservatives.

Seriously? I've never seen it catch flak for being liberal. I've always tagged it as libertarian and off the spectrum.

adventured13• 13 years ago

Well you're slightly wrong.

See: Judge Andrew Napolitano (former New Jersey Superior Court Judge). He's a host on Fox News and does in fact regularly make an issue of these types of abuses. Take a look at his books:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Napolitano#Writing_caree...

Fox News is a 2/3 conservative bastion (and they're for big government, big spending, big military, big debt), but it also has a small mixture of libertarian "extreme right wing" Republican views as well (and those people are against the police state, against big government, pro civil liberties, etc).

alan_cx3• 13 years ago

Hang on, conservatives for big government? Im sure I remember "big government" being the evil that was being fought off when Obama care was a big deal. Wasn't that conservatives?

Hands up. Im confused!!

dodyg• 13 years ago

As long as Americans want their government to do WHATEVER IT TAKES to protect them from terrorism threat (real or imagined), this kind of shit will continue to go on.

Create2• 13 years ago

http://benjamin.sonntag.fr/Moglen-at-Re-Publica-Freedom-of-t...

speeq• 13 years ago

This is happening in Europe since a while now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_data_retenti...

What makes me really angry is that since that law has passed in Austria, we have to pay a so called "service fee" on all providers - which is 20EUR/year for all internet and mobile contracts. We basically pay for our own surveillance.

koide2• 13 years ago

You'd still pay for it one way or the other. It's the government, you/we pay for all of it.

downandout3• 13 years ago

I'm not sure what's more disturbing: that this is happening, or that the Obama administration can't keep highly classified documents under wraps. That document was labeled Top Secret and was supposed to remain so until April 12, 2038. This whole episode shows evil on the one hand and dangerous ineptitude on the other.

FrojoS• 13 years ago

Why? The more scandalous the fact, the higher the chance someone from inside decides to blow the whistle.

downandout3• 13 years ago

It's not my job to know how they can keep these things under wraps; I don't work in intelligence. But I do know what "Top Secret" means. It means that it's not supposed to be on the front page of every major news website in the world, no matter how scandalous or controversial. That the people whose job it is to keep these things secret have failed miserably is of great concern - who knows what else is leaking.

qwertzlcoatl2• 13 years ago

It's easier to keep things secret when you're in the right. People are more inclined to assist the cause. All bets are off when you're in the wrong, and it's good we have patriots willing to leak this information.

rschmitty• 13 years ago

Has anyone come up with a solution? From my POV I see three things happen in what seems to be a never ending cycle:

  10 OMG why did you not know about these terrorists, how could you have missed this?!
  20 OMG now you are profiling _____!  That is unfair just because they are ____
  30 OMG you are invading the privacy of everyone!
  GOTO 10

The goal being: only criminals/terrorists have their privacy invaded and everyone else is left alone. How does can happen?

I have no solution myself, just complaining about the complainers since no matter what anyone does someone complains about it not being right.

koide2• 13 years ago

You can't please everybody.

You, as a government, have to choose one of those states. I personally prefer a government that will choose to stay on line 10, especially because profiling everyone will not prevent terrorism at all, unless it's in an orwellian dystopia.

And I prefer buildings blowing up once in a while to the alternative, even if one of my family or myself get killed on the explosion.

Buzaga2• 13 years ago

since this is a leak, I'd suggest you americans to PLEASE press your government to reveal what other services they are imposing this, I see no reason why couldn't they be doing this with Facebook or other tech companies that are used ~globally~, and then it's a global espionage scheme. I'd like to know if I'm being spied right now too.

sigzero• 13 years ago

I had already assumed this was the case.

benjamincburns3• 13 years ago

I'm an American and a Verizon customer.

Maybe I'm the proverbial frog in a pot of boiling water, but I'm not outraged. I'm not really even annoyed. I don't know why exactly, but I think it boils down (no pun intended) to two different things.

First, I'm under no delusion that the US federal government has my personal best interest in mind with everything that it does. I think that usually the federal government as a whole has the best interest of the entirety of the American people firmly in mind, but it's a big behemoth that is often unaware of the individual.

Second, I willingly use technology every day in which people are actively monitoring my actions. Verizon didn't magically start collecting these data at the bequest of the government. Or even if they did (really, they didn't), they'll happily use it in their daily business operations. You're monitored every day by many, many corporations. Many people here have started businesses on that principle alone. Strangely, I trust the federal government more with how they'll limit the scope of their monitoring than I do the private corporations with whom I constantly interact through the use of their technology. Maybe I'm naïve.

But here's the thing. These are reasons why I'm not outraged by this particular event. The USA PATRIOT Act angers me. Our insane alarmist reaction to terrorist attacks (aka our endemic inability to apply simple statistics) angers me. The amount of money we waste in our military angers me.

But this? Meh.

Ziomislaw• 13 years ago

it was not alarmist, it was just a convinient explanation to turn US into next China.

benjamincburns3• 13 years ago

I realize there's some hyperbole here, but we're hardly "next China."

Reeducation through labor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re-education_through_labor

Beijing Olympics Relocation: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02...

Tibet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibet#From_1950_to_present

benjamincburns3• 13 years ago

Am I being downvoted by someone who disagrees with my opinions, or did I do something wrong here?

Downvoting something that's contrary to your opinion just seems childish. If you disagree with me, tell me why I'm wrong...

jack_trades• 13 years ago

Iiiiiiiiiii wanna beeeee anarchy.

Sorry folks. We should have been well beyond the point of detached thought experiments about this. Change the power structures or change the power structures. They've gone too far in so many ways. Change from within, change from outside, or stay home and get what you deserve?

theklub• 13 years ago

Anyone who has been paying attention to the right media/news has known this for years.

Aloha• 13 years ago

I've never considered Call Detail Records to be particularly private.

suredo• 13 years ago

Too bad they didn't release the court order which allows them to record the conversations..

anuraj• 13 years ago

Capability to do so has been present for a long time. I remember working on CALEA implementation in 1998.

nicholasjarnold• 13 years ago

In addition to making your opinion heard to your senator and representative I would recommend using strong, vetted and open source encryption whenever possible. Whisper Systems is a good place to start for mobile security on Android.

TextSecure and RedPhone will secure the content of your communications, but I'm not sure they will prevent the "metadata" from being captured (who called who, for how long, ect).

The biggest hurdle to me effectively using these tools is convincing others to use them. Many people seem eerily not bothered by being spied on by their own government or private companies. It's a strange world...

o0-0o• 13 years ago

The 2nd ammendment is there to protect the 1st.

vijayr3• 13 years ago

Ok, so is there any place/any country in the world that is balanced? not free for all/wild wild west where anyone can do anything (like parts of Africa) and not where the govt counts every breath it's citizens take? something in-between, a place more balanced?

rdouble4• 13 years ago

Canada, according to Privacy International.

vijayr3• 13 years ago

do you have the source?

stelonix• 13 years ago

Does anyone else think the 2 posts about this issue here on HN have quite a bit of shills commenting? I hate to point fingers like this, but some posts I've read yesterday were so "weird" (read: "neo-con" propaganda) compared to usual HN culture that I was honestly creeped out. It's the kind of writing that tries to persuade people not to care, or to simply be ok with it, since (paraphrasing) "ATT has all the data already, so why care?".

Maybe I'm just thinking too much about some comments and HN really has a demographics made of mostly neo conservatives.

Been wanting to point this out since yesterday. Thoughts?

systematical• 13 years ago

I hope all these up voters have emailed their representative.

graycat9• 13 years ago

Gee, let's see: All that NSA 'big data', every phone call, from, to, time, etc.

Then we had the wacko Boston bombers. So, apparently the great, all powerful, all seeing, all knowing NSA didn't see those two wackos coming.

But, but, but, how could the poor, little NSA be expected to see two, obscure, wacko nutjobs?

Well, let's see: The Russians told us over and over that those guys were wackos and dangerous. Told us face to face, in plain English/Russian. No phone records, Internet data intercepts, super computers required.

Really sounds like 'security theater', like Senator Feinstein is having fun straining her arm patting herself on the back for "protecting the US" and a lot of middle managers in the huge NSA funny farm are having fun doing what not very good middle managers are wont to do, build empires. Gee, they can build their own giant facility in Utah, with rows, columns, and layers of racks of computers, disk drives, etc. with rivers of cables overhead all with its finger tips on the pulse of every little thing, except ignoring the wackos in Boston the Russians told us about in simple sentences, face to face, didn't even need a phone tap.

I used to live in Laurel, MD and, thus, have two pictures of the NSA:

First, when I was in graduate school, in our class in measure theory and functional analysis, we had an NSA employee also in the class. Nope, not the sharpest tack in the box. Really, a bit out of it. We're talking slow witted. I was the grader for the class, and as I recall he never got anything correct. He said nothing in class and lasted a few weeks, and then we didn't see him again.

Second, there's a great photograph taken, likely, at a Congressional hearing, of the head of the NSA and standing not far away Diffie Hellman or one of the RSA guys, etc. The Hellman guy, of course, had been explaining public key crypto-systems that heavily embarrassed the NSA and, really, essentially put it out of business for its stated mission, is smiling. As I recall, he had blond hair long, nearly to his waist. The head of the NSA, a real ram rod straight arrow, short hair, close shave, crease in his shirt, etc. is a sour looking puss. Torqued. Like he was just made a fool of, embarrassed, like he's just lost his self-respect, career, etc.

The evidence is that the NSA is a bunch of fumble bumblers collectively about three cans short of a six pack. We should be even more concerned about the NSA if there was good evidence that they were competent.

NSA has thousands and thousands of people. Even if some of the people are bright with good backgrounds, they will get lost in the mob of paper pushers, mediocre middle managers, and high end military brass.

First fundamental problem: Too much big gumment. Sorry, Senator Feinstein: Why don't you do something useful like help some grade school children read Mother Goose?

Second fundamental problem: Our democracy is short on well informed citizens. So, gumment just grows and grows. A problem? Sure: Mo big gumment, Ma! Hopefully the Internet can make some progress here. Or the technology that can let the NSA ruin the US can also let the US keep the NSA 'safe and effective' for the good of the US.

Supposedly Bin Laden claimed that he wasn't trying to defeat the US but just to have it so over react it would bankrupt itself. Whether he said this or not, there's a point there.

We're again back to the old "America always does the right thing after trying everything else.".

Money wasting, incompetent big gumment is a very ugly thing. If they try actually to do something, then they get even uglier. When they take the next step and really want to take over, then they are taking us close to Hitler, Mao, etc.

The US founding fathers were fully correct: "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.".

The thing for Congress to do is just to cut the budgets. How much? Recently there was a report that supposedly the wealthiest area of the US is Silicon Valley. Next was the hedge fund area of CT. Next? And the nominees are, Houston with its oil, NYC with its finance, Chicago with its "broad shoulders", Redmond with its computing, and within 100 miles of the Washington Monument with its big gumment. May I have the envelope, please? Yes, here it is. And the winner is (drum roll) within 100 miles of the Washington Monument with its big gumment.

Put it on a diet. Cut it back. Leave the money in the hands of the citizens. Then let that money be seed corn actually to get the economy going again.

Kings of old commonly bled their countries white, over their delusions of self-importance and especially their absurd foreign adventures. Now DC is doing the same.

For people leaving back packs with pressure cookers in public places, sorry 'bout that, but NSA, FBI, CIA, DHS, etc. clearly are no real solution. So, basically we just have to leave that issue to local police.

NSA, etc. are short on both safety for our democracy and efficacy for stopping the bad guys.

Yes, yes, we know that they are incompetent. But we have to understand: They are really, really expensive, a gigantic waste. Besides they trash the spirit and/or letter of the Constitution.

Just vote for guys in Congress who will cut their budgets. Let's get Detroit, etc. looking like 100 miles from the Washington Monument and that area looking more like Detroit.

The main purpose of the US is "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", not forever bigger and bigger big gumment. The main business of the US is business, not gumment. Gumment is there to serve the people, not force the people to serve big gumment. Senator Feinstein: Go help some children with Mother Goose.

zecho2• 13 years ago

I realize I'm unfairly ignoring 90% of your rant, but I just want to say I disagree with "too much government" as the issue here. When my computer breaks, I don't throw away my computer. I fix the problem. Size doesn't matter. Focus does. Large organizations can have plenty of thoughtful focus, too.

When two terrorists explode bombs at a public event, I definitely don't want less "gumment." I want effective government.

In this case, every Senator knew about the wiretapping. Why did they allow it to continue? We elected our government. The government isn't the problem. We are. So in that respect, I agree with you. We're short on well-informed citizens.

flagnog2• 13 years ago

yeah, but when your computer breaks it doesn't pull out a firearm and order you to add drives, a better graphics card, more monitors and a faster internet connection. And then raid your bank account if you don't do it fast enough. Size does matter.

graycat9• 13 years ago

I tried to make clear: Big gumment brings two problems. First, it wastes money. That's the smaller problem but still quite significant (we need to get our economy going, and wasting money hurts). Second, big gumment is a real threat to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" and nearly everything we want.

But you want to emphasize "effective" gumment. Okay. So did I: I said that we should get the NSA being "safe and effective" for our country. "Safe" mostly means that the NSA doesn't trash our Constitution and ruin the US, and "effective" means what you want, catch the bad guys.

Now we come to the hard part: Catching the bad guys. In the case of Boston, as I pointed out, Russia told us. Russia was correct. So, really, it's getting clear: The NSA's ideas of all that 'big data' is not very effective. I know; I know; some of the Senators will say that in the secret hearings the NSA, FBI, DHS, CIA, etc. guys explain all the bad guys they stopped, bad guys that never made the news. Given Boston, I don't believe it! What I believe is that they go after some guy in the second grade in the lunch room who takes the bread from his sandwich, cuts it out to like like a gun, shows it around his lunch table, and the big gumment guys shut down the school. Or they go after Aaron Swartz. They are just not competent. So, they are not effective.

"Big" is always a threat: Ike warned about the military-industrial complex, and the bigness is much of the positive feedback loop that has it grow.

Sure, we'd both like more competence. Remember 9/11? Or, remember one of the core reasons? Right: Some semi-, pseudo-, quasi-bright guy had one of his better ideas: If a terrorist tries to take over an airplane in mid-flight, then don't resist and, instead, let him have it. Presto: Open, engraved invitation to 9/11. Bet you can't do that now. Even if managed to get on an airplane with various weapons, bet couldn't take over the plane and fly it into a big building. So, need the TSA, DHS, and NSA for that? Nope: Just change the silly rule that says give an airplane to any terrorist who asks.

Competence is more difficult. I'm all for more in competence. But big and competent don't go well together.

Look, it's not worth trashing our Constitution, setting up an organization that could take us to Hitler, and wasting the big bucks to set up an NSA that could catch another Boston bomber, even if such an organization could catch another bomber, which likely they can't. Heck, again, the Russians told us about those two loser, wacko nutjobs, which is much better info than we could have hoped for from the NSA, and still we did nothing.

Big gumment in England? Go after a guy because of something about pictures of nude children on his computer that turned out to be his grandchildren playing with water in the yard.

Big gumment in the US? Have some Department of Natural Resources (DNR) go after a couple with several cats, several dogs, and a five year old deer they had raised from a fawn whose mother had just been killed in an auto accident, really, a minute or so before the fawn was born. So the DNR has in their imagination that deer, with their hoofs, can hurt people. Of course, in this case, the deer has been just fine, in the house, with several dogs and cats, for five years, not even hurting the furniture. Big gumment.

And we have the Aaron Swartz case, gumment going wacko over some PDF files readily available to everyone at MIT for free and in paper form in nearly every research library in the world for the cost of photocopying. Big gumment.

We saw in the IRS case big gumment abusing its powers. Well, the NSA data would be an engraved invitation to more such abuses -- shakedowns, blackmail, payoffs, kickbacks, etc.

In reality, the more effective gumment you want will have to be smaller gumment.

There's a recent example with the F-35. Supposedly part of the problem with that program is that someone wants to change the specifications on some screw, so they have a meeting all day with everyone affected, 600 people, that is a representative from each of all the possibly affected subcontractors or some such. The solution? The Lockheed Skunk Works deliberately kept small enough to keep up communications and keep down the huge meetings.

For the NSA phone data, that sounds like the old project Total Information Awareness or some such. There has been a little company on a few floors of a not very attractive office building on the space of a shopping mall in a suburb of Boston. Once I went for an interview. I used to do 'artificial intelligence', i.e., 'expert systems', and they were big on that, likely from what some people at DARPA are still dreaming about. So, they wanted to get data on phone calls, maybe e-mail messages, postcards, whatever, with data on from, to, and date, and then build a big directed graph with an arc for each communication and a node for each person sending or receiving. Then they wanted to do some analysis of the graph, look for 'cliques' or some such. While they explained, I tried to stay awake, but being really interested was asking too much. BS. Total BS. But it looks like the graph people have taken over the NSA. All the brighter people in Russia are likely doing a ROFL. I'm not laughing: It's expensive, dumb, and dangerous. Just cut it back.

squidsoup• 13 years ago

In the United States I'm not so certain that you can place the blame on uninformed citizens given that you effectively have a 2 party political system and both parties have been complicit in domestic surveillance.

joering2• 13 years ago

> Really sounds like 'security theater', like Senator Feinstein is having fun straining her arm patting herself on the back for "protecting the US"

When this disgusting heretic blob said on the news today that we have, quote, "this culture of leaks", I thought I will throw-up inside. How on earth would you want to call this "free country", "home of the brave", democracy, whatever, if people in the company called "government" that you hired and that you pay their salary from your own pocket, keeps everything secret from you, and take full advantage of that, while breaking the law and raping you in the wide open in the name of "terrorist" ? And then when someone in that company reports (to media) that bunch of people are breaking the law, they become a criminal and, as Feinstein said: "need to be persecuted". How can you believe, in your sound mind, that there will be ANY freedom left in this country within next 5-7 years?? HOW??

Guess what Feinstein? You are much bigger terrorist with your pen and big stupid mouth, than all the terrorist combine out there together!

tmandarano• 13 years ago

It's simple. This movement in security and spying on your own citizens is driven by the military industrial complex.

Here's a VICE documentary on it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL_3Qg-SADY

walshemj8• 13 years ago

well woudl you take what the FSB says on face value? I sure the FSB told MI5 that Litvinenko was a "wacko nutjob"

Helpful_Bunny• 13 years ago

Ahem

Litvinenko was assassinated by Putin for working for MI6, and the assassination was very carefully planned to end up in London to send a very pointed message. He was tasked with "getting nuclear materials out of Russia". Well, he managed that all right...

The more you know.

Seriously: this is well known, look for Telegraph coverage, radiation on the plane ("in his tea" cover - yeah, nice one), Litvinenko's business network connections and so on. Is Putin a nice guy? Nope, but poisoning is his personal signature, and MI6 aren't exactly angels either.

I'm sure I'll pick up more "down votes" from the HN crowd, but hey: I thought you were all wise to info-bubbles?

p.s.

MI5 is the internal Security division for the UK; MI6 is the external Security division for the UK

Helps if you know the difference, and for that matter - it helps if know that the FSB is also the domestic Security division, so wouldn't be contacting MI6 anyhow.

Top marks all around for generally bullshitting there.

graycat9• 13 years ago

Certainly not at face value. Instead, have to take what they say as a starting point, a lead, but one from possibly a quite well informed source. Of course, we can't really trust the source, even if they are well informed.

But, heck, all we will get from the NSA and their Utah computers are leads that are just starting points.

As I recall, one of the US three letter acronyms, well before the Boston Marathon, actually did look into the two Boston loser, wacko nutjobs and then mostly dropped the effort. Looks like we needed just better police work.

Maybe this time the Russians actually tried to help. Good. Then Tchaikovsky's music isn't the only good thing from Russia! Maybe next time the Russians will try to fool us; they will accumulate a track record, and in time we will see.

joonix2• 13 years ago

It's all a giant scam. All this technology requires huge IT contracts for some of the biggest corporations in the country.

It's all kind of a hilariously sad cycle:

1. Energy/resources corps "encourage" the US into war or political involvement/coups to protect their assets (i.e. oil rights in Iran, Iraq, etc. War involves much spending which goes to big contractors)

2. Meddling in the region provokes resentment from locals against US, breeding terrorism (more intelligence spending)

3. Terrorists strike back at US

4. US freaks out about terrorism, ups defense/security/intelligence spending which is outsourced to big contractors.

graycat9• 13 years ago

Your 1. is not the only spark of the process you describe, with considerable accuracy. E.g., the US bent itself all out of shape in Viet Nam and did a lot in Korea, and oil or assets of big US companies were not saved or much at risk or involved. But, yes, some big US companies -- Ike's military- industrial complex -- got big bucks.

And in Viet Nam, a lot of oil was burned, and I have long guessed we burned enough oil to enable the power of OPEC. Keeping B-52 bombers in the air 24 x 7 in the 1950s also burned a lot of oil.

Part of the US overreactions is that from the President on down, it's easier to play cover thy ass by spending US blood and treasure than to speak the often sad, ambiguous, no good option truth to the American people. E.g., in Viet Nam, nearly no one in public office wanted to open themselves to accusations of "Who lost Viet Nam" as happened with "Who lost China" when Mao took over and drove Chang Kai Shek to Taiwan. We finally gave up in Viet Nam when nearly every young person in the country saw someone die in Viet Nam that they had known in high school and the demonstrations were too big to ignore. Even then, President Ford, at the last moment, tried for another big chunk of cash and supplies to Saigon. Congress didn't go along, but Ford had then tried to put the 'blame' on Congress. In some of the earlier days, say, after the Tonkin Gulf thing, there were only a few voices in Congress warning that we were heading for vast disasters with half-vast reasons.

But, we should be able just to say no to absurd foreign adventures and hysterical, ineffective overreactions at home; lot's of other countries do: E.g., in Afghanistan, the EU countries mostly stay out of harm's way. In Gulf War I, there was a fairly significant international effort to push Saddam out of Kuwait, but Gulf War II was essentially just a US effort. Why? For Gulf War II nearly all other countries looked at Saddam and saw a thug in Iraq and concluded that he was just Iraq's problem.

The old remark, maybe from Churchill, that "America always does the right thing after trying everything else" has some truth to it. We are too eager to squander our blood and treasure on absurd foreign adventures. And not just foreign: Now the NSA, FBI, DHS, and more are all going hysterical running around in circles, stirring up dust, and accomplishing next to nothing good and possibly doing a lot of harm.

But as soon as someone rolls back the DHS, the other party will be out for blood at the next pressure cooker in a shopping mall.

It's an old story: In medicine it was long, "The person is sick. We don't know why they are sick. We don't know what to do. But we must do something." which was often harmful. So, a few terrorists do this and that, take advantage of our old silly policy to give any airplane to any terrorist that asks, and we go all hysterical and start bankrupting ourselves and throwing away our Constitution.

Solution: Have the voters wise up. Get that by better information from the Internet. A current case is Syria: We could sit here and debate for hours which is worse, Assad or some of, maybe the most powerful of, the rebels. What do we want there, Assad, in with Iran, wants to attack Israel, a thug in his home country, or some rebels that might lead to an Al Qaeda takeover, turn Syria into a base for radical Islam, attack Israel, etc.? It's ugly there; people are suffering and dying; the US should do something? My guess is, the US should do little or nothing. The enemy of my enemy is my friend? Well, not always!

cheese1756• 13 years ago

Hopefully an official response can add some accountability to the process. I put up a White House petition here, which can hopefully get an official response: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/cease-overbroad-su...

primodemus• 13 years ago

"The Hellman guy, of course, had been explaining public key crypto-systems that heavily embarrassed the NSA and, really, essentially put it out of business for its stated mission, is smiling. As I recall, he had blond hair long, nearly to his waist. "

The Hellman guy was probably Whitfield Diffie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitfield_Diffie

graycat9• 13 years ago

Thanks! I think you got it!

waynecochran• 13 years ago

Why aren't we all using strong, private crypto for everything -- or at least for email? Nobody seems to using PGP? We "the people" have the technical ability to communicate privately but nobody seems to use it. What happened to Zimmerman and his followers? This is a solvable problem!

-----BEGIN RSA PUBLIC KEY----- MFwwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQADSwAwSAJBAObAT8Pn+C1Ets8Ge/EyMgiOPzmy/Mzk N+ENpDYRJzqGoyS59QkI58GhYwIVkhmEEk2pjp6gqWPNjTzO0QI1KOUCAwEAAQ== -----END RSA PUBLIC KEY-----

quackerhacker• 13 years ago

Paranoia Justified.

Aside from the fact that I was a dumb 19 year old when I got caught hacking, the patriot act is what was used to catch me.

mullingitover• 13 years ago

This is pretty unconstitional, but there's a problem with the constitution and the government.

Thwarting the constitution is pretty simple if you have enough willing (or unwilling but coercible) participants in government. We have three co-equal branches of government. If two branches collude to thwart the constitution, they will always succeed because they can override the third branch. And of course if all three branches collude (as is arguably the case in the last 12 years), the constitution goes down without a fight.

Zimahl• 13 years ago

It's a lot like Andrew Jackson's "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!"[1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester_v._Georgia

ahallock• 13 years ago

I just want to know who the developers are behind these systems. How much did they sell their souls for? Are they reading Hacker News? I hope it was worth it, assholes.

The NSA, DHS, [INSERT 1984 department here] are just an effect of taxation (and borrowing from the Fed). These things will never go away if we keep funding them and giving sanction to them.

It's also disgusting and sad that we've poured billions into the War on Terror while people suffer everyday from cancer. I don't know anyone personally affected by terrorism, but I know 3 close relatives battling cancer. Which is the real threat?

piyush_soni• 13 years ago

The only thing I don't understand is, why should I be worried if I'm not doing anything wrong?

Gepsens• 13 years ago

Just making this clear but, when the government got a 400 Cassandra node cluster you guys didn't tilt ?

bigB• 13 years ago

Don't want to sound like a smart ass, but I would have been more surprised if it were confirmed they WEREN'T spying on Americans. Its the American Government ???? Really, are Americans that naive to think that their own country doesn't spy on them.

gasull• 13 years ago

William Binney at the last HOPE conference talking about the NSA spying program:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqN59beaFMI

Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

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