The crux of the NSA story in one phrase: 'collect it all'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/15/crux-nsa-collect-it-all

by uptown • 13 years ago

169 61 13 years ago

guardian.co.uk

oceanstone2• 13 years ago

Collect it all now. Search* it later.

* Motivations for searching are subject to change.

fnordfnordfnord2• 13 years ago

Exactly. That way NSA can cross their fingers and say "No, no, of course they don't have 'dossiers' on everyone, that would be crazy!" while they fail to mention that they can run a query to build one at any time.

b63• 13 years ago

There's a lot of scary stuff they can do. I'm sure I'm not devious enough to think of most of it.

If they have years worth of emails you wrote in your normal style to friends and colleagues, it may be hard to write anything of length anonymously without being recognized. They may have hundreds of hours of our voices recorded, and that may be fingerprintable too.

tracker1• 13 years ago

Perfect... so when you write stuff anonymously, make sure you are both high, and drunk so that it won't match your typical communications*

* assuming you aren't typically high and/or drunk

sixothree• 13 years ago

Every email you've sent, every chat, every site you visit, every bill you've paid, every product you've bought in store, every note you store, every post you create, every file you transfer, every place you physically go, every city you visit, every route you take, and maybe even every file stored on your computer or phone.

stefanix• 13 years ago

Correct, it's called stylometry and means, given enough data, your normal writing is identifiable on the basis of content.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stylometry

e3pi• 13 years ago

Collect it all now. Search* it later.

Entire data record of you over years, with `~non-finite' indefinitely long-term memory, with evolving code to sift and immediately provide answers to queries, knows you better than you. Hitting the `Enter' key, you are pwned by some `See Clearly, Act Quickly' strange strangers in Maryland. Those animal experiment abominations, with wires in heads, involuntarily switching muscles, entrapped organisms reduced to spastic robot tools, we.

fnordfnordfnord2• 13 years ago

What's being built is a mechanical god. It sees and remembers everything. Until recently it has mostly ignored the affairs of the average person, or at least operated in ways that have made observation of its activities difficult. But, with closer integration to the other parts of government, it has and will become more like a god who micromanages the affairs of its subjects by punishing their indiscretions. There is nothing to stop it from imposing its morality upon everyone.

ferdo2• 13 years ago

And idols aren't of much use unless people are being sacrificed to it in some form or another.

contingencies• 13 years ago

Preferably visibly, with lots of blood, to keep the others in line.

7952• 13 years ago

Or a massive Sims like computer game based on real world data. Sooner or later someone is going to add controls that let the players subtlety modify peoples lives. Because winning the game is more important than the lives of the tiny little people.

pyrocat• 13 years ago

Getting flashbacks to FFX-2, although I'm sure there are better references to be made.

bdg• 13 years ago

Ah, what a brilliant future we have to explore as we introduce Bayes' Rule to the Analytics of crimes. Who needs a gelatinous liquid pool of psychics floating around when we can train a polygonal mesh of data points and extrapolate new data points after applying a laplacian smoothing function to it.

It will be just as wonderful as the voice-recognition software (like Siri) that runs on a similar principle, but this time it's for governing. And who wouldn't like Siri as mechanical a god?

diminoten4• 13 years ago

What do you mean, "until recently"?

JonSkeptic• 13 years ago

Did this remind anyone else of the Pokemon theme song?

Gotta collect 'em aallllll!!!! (Your emails!)

jgrahamc• 13 years ago

My reading of history is that this has always been NSA's (and GCHQ's) desire.

See, for example, Project Shamrock (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Shamrock). From a SIGINT perspective you want to gather all the signals you can because you don't necessarily know which ones will be 'interesting'.

I'm very disappointed in Greenwald's handling of this story. He seems to be treading over the same ground over and over again without revealing anything particularly new.

b63• 13 years ago

He seems to be treading over the same ground over and over again without revealing anything particularly new.

He has to, to have any chance of what he's saying actually sticking. Do you follow his Twitter feed? People routinely accuse him of holding opinions exactly opposite to his actual ones, even though he's been writing about them and publishing in newspapers and books for years. There are a huge number of confused, ignorant noisemakers twisting everything.

Maybe it seems slow to you, but there's been more groundbreaking stuff in the last month or so than in all previous years of my whole life, so I'm willing to give him and his collaborators time to triple-check everything before publishing so that the stories are absolutely unassailable.

I think Greenwald is exactly the right guy to be doing this. I hope my life and chance affords me the opportunity to help him someday, maybe one millionth as much as he's helping us.

diminoten4• 13 years ago

What do you mean by "sticking"?

And what do you mean "more groundbreaking stuff in the last month or so than in all previous years of my whole life"? What year span are we talking about, here?

ecocentrik• 13 years ago

We're already seeing the effects of this surveillance program on internet behavior. Some people are switching to privacy conscious alternatives to services, but these changes in service allegiance are mostly unimportant and illusory. If blanket surveillance is allowed to continue it will effect the types of information we feel free to share and even who we choose to interact with; how we use the internet and how we perceive our personal freedoms. The internet will become a very boring and much less useful place unless something is done to address the total scope of the issue.

As I see it the scope of this thing is huge. It's an information arms race. The French say they have similar capabilities (this is probably a bluff but won't be for long). The Chinese probably already have the capabilities and their society is aligned with a social morality to support it. Governments have complained that the information being gathered includes trade secrets of use to commercial interests. Finally, from the perspective of individuals, it looks like something dreamt up by a paranoid totalitarian government to enforce population control. This is a proper shit-storm.

I'm not sure where this is going but I'm hoping for some kind of global blanket surveillance ban treaty. Something that applies to both governments and corporations and regulates how long data can be stored and used. I'm hoping for something totally unrealistic that completely averts the nightmare scenario.

ferdo2• 13 years ago

I'm hoping for some kind of global blanket surveillance ban treaty.

That would depend on trusting the people that are spying on us in the first place to adhere to the treaty. I'm hoping that talented coders will continue to produce possible defenses to the obvious infringements of our basic right to be left alone.

saintx• 13 years ago

"No Secrets, Anywhere"

jka• 13 years ago

More like: "All secrets, available in our records, for current/future use"

D9u• 13 years ago

Nothing Sacred Anymore.

mathattack3• 13 years ago

This is a very large mega-trend to buck against. Look how much people (most of us included) willingly give up to Facebook, LinkedIn, our banks and credit card companies, etc....

charonn04• 13 years ago

The difference being that Facebook, et al ask for the information. NSA is taking it by force and under the color of lawful authority.

mathattack3• 13 years ago

Maybe lawful should be in quotes. :-)

mtgx• 13 years ago

"That is the definition of a ubiquitous surveillance state - and it's been built in the dark, without the knowledge of the American people or people around the world, even though it's aimed at them. How anyone could think this should have all remained concealed - that it would have been better had it just been left to fester and grow in the dark - is truly mystifying."

Maybe they didn't expect it to remain in secret forever - but just enough for them to spent trillions of dollars on it, and make hundreds of facilities all over the world, until it would be close to impossible to roll it all back, even if everything does become public.

You only need to look at the ever growing military industrial complex to know what I'm talking about. It used to be that wars kept the MIC expanding, but now it's become the other way around - MIC is lobbying for more wars, more militarization of the police internally and all over the world, just to keep themselves well fed.

They've almost finished the Utah data center, if it's not finished already. So what are they going to do now? Destroy it?

yk• 13 years ago

Probably they did not even think that PRISM/surveillance is a problem. If you look how the security establishment reacts, I think it is entirely possible that no one in their circles ever thought that total surveillance may be unjustified, when "we" do it to "keep America save."

coldcode• 13 years ago

Evisceration. A good word for what is being done to all of us.

s_q_b6• 13 years ago

I understand this is an unpopular opinion on HN, but I'm not willing to give up the advantages surveillance gives us. There are people out there that very much want to cause regular citizens harm. Make all the comparisons you want between bathtub falls and terrorism, but the fact is that terror attacks cause market panic, meaning the damage they do is on the order of billions of dollars.

On a personal note, I knew people at the Boston marathon finish line, as I'm sure many of you did as well. My parents had friends in the World Trade Center. If we could stop that in the future, that is worth a small sacrifice in personal liberty. Again, this a personal opinion, one that many do not share.

To me, the key is creating adequate oversight to control this leviathan. We need a real court, with proper appointment procedures and adversarial process. We need restoration of legislative oversight. Most importantly, we need strong encryption on the systems that can only be unlocked with a court order.

In fact, this was the original design of Total Information Awareness. The privacy tech got gutted somewhere in development, but there's no reason we can't bring it back.

mrbgty• 13 years ago

How do you feel about the concept that these types of programs in part may be what drives terrorists to do what they do?

s_q_b6• 13 years ago

Not very good. It's a thorny problem, but honestly I doubt many mujahideen are motivated by blanket surveillance.

That's not to say that the government didn't just mint a few hundred new highly skilled blackhat "hactivists" by deploying this technology.

charonn04• 13 years ago

Maybe you have a point. Maybe it is possible to install enough internal and external controls for these surveillance programs to bring them back from the outer edges of ethical and moral propriety. Maybe.

There's still, however, the problem of the Fourth Amendment. To my High-School-Civics understanding of the US Government, these programs are patently unconstitutional.

If these programs are indeed essential to our security, if they are to become a permanent fixture of our civil society, then let the Constitution be amended to allow them. Otherwise, no amount of oversight by any (or all) of the branches of the government will be sufficient to legitimize any such programs.

s_q_b6• 13 years ago

There's two issues at play here that are legally distinct:

1. Surveillance of United States Person (USPER) communication. 2. Surveillance of non-USPER communications.

With regard to (2), the Fourth Amendment does not apply to foreign nationals. That's not very reassuring for those outside the United States, but it is a well established principle of Constitutional law.

With regard to (1), the FISA court has carved out an exception to the Fourth Amendment, relying upon Skillman and its progeny. Now, that's a very shaky justification, and probably wouldn't hold up before SCOTUS.

So, at present they are within the bounds of the Fourth Amendment, under the FISA court's interpretation of the law. However, that foundation is not very solid. I agree that we need a data-mining amendment to the Constitution if we're going to continue with these behaviors.

EdiX• 13 years ago

There are people out there that very much want to cause regular citizens harm

And what happens if the government becomes the one that wants to cause regular citizens harm? How do you protest a government that knows everything, monitors everything?

s_q_b6• 13 years ago

Well that's the rub. Remember, we already live in the surveillance state. As it stands now, you're reliant upon the goodwill of the current government. If we put robust safeguards in place, we could ensure our rights more concretely.

igravious2• 13 years ago

To me, the key is dismantling the Leviathan and not allowing it to happen again.

My desires oppose your desires. Which of us gets to live in the world we desire to bring into being?

I hope the answer is that it is my world because I don't want to live in yours, thanks all the same.

sliverstorm• 13 years ago

Well, he doesn't want to live in your world either. So what do you do? :)

dreamfactory2• 13 years ago

A dragnet of the civilian population kept in perpetuity and allowing a dossier of everyone to be conjured up with a query is obviously not primarily for stopping terrorism. Who would fall for that really? (The target seems more aligned to tax enquiries for a start...)

9/11 was enabled by box cutters - the message was that this was super low tech and you often can't stop the most awful terrorism if people are really determined and feel they have nothing to lose. The good news for you is that news events are by definition rare and there's actually so little terrorism (in the west at least) - that's because there's not nearly as much motivation to commit these acts as many seem to believe, not because of robocops peering into your drawers.

greyman3• 13 years ago

What I am missing from Greenwald (or other journalists) is some serious analysis regarding what would happen, if NSA will really not be allowed to do "collect it all". I mean, whether it really isn't justifiable.

As an amateur, I am just thing aloud now: some "bad quys" are quite capable nowadays, and without collecting the whole haystack, you would be allowed to monitor someone only from some point in the future (after getting the court permission), and you couldn't "hear" the past conversations, if you didn't collect them. Moreover, if someone is very careful, it will be even difficult to discover that that person is suspicious and should be monitored in the first place.

Mind you, I am not defending the NSA strategy, I don't know if it is justifiable, I am just saying that Greenwald doesn't make any effort to let some opposing views to be presented. He just repeats the same arguments over and over again, but doesn't discuss what would happen in other scenarios (if NSA would be much less capable).

j_baker• 13 years ago

Who says he has to? I don't agree with the notion that reporters are supposed to blandly report both sides of the issue and ignore their own views, nor do I think that leads to a more accurate representation of reality. I mean, when you see an article about a serial murder, does it include something like "Serial murder supporters claim that murder prevents overpopulation"?

greyman3• 13 years ago

Ok, I didn't explain myself good enough. Of course he doesn't have to, he can write what he wants, and I also don't say he is wrong. I just wanted to say that I miss other points of view in this story.

IsThisObvious2• 13 years ago

Mind you, I am not defending the NSA strategy, I don't know if it is justifiable, I am just saying that Greenwald doesn't make any effort to let some opposing views to be presented.

Here's some fun statistics:

There are about 30,000 gun related deaths a year in the United States (19000 suicide, 11000 murders).

There are about another 30,000 vehicle related deaths a year in the United States.

There are about 3,000 people who died in the 9/11 attacks - the deadliest act of terrorism perpetrated against the United States.

Are you saying that we should use the massive spying apparatus - including invading cellphone calls and emails - to stop even one third of murders? How about stop one sixth of suicides before they happen?

Because that would save more Americans than stopping a 9/11 scale attack every year would do - which is more than the NSA is claimed to have done.

In reality, it would take 10 9/11 scale attacks on the US each and every year to rival the number of deaths caused by guns.

Do you support using the government spy apparatus to stop these gun deaths? If not, why support something that isn't appropriate for a /larger/ problem to solve a small one?

I think most Americans panicked when they felt attacked, and became total cowards - as did their leadership at the time.

The correct response to terrorism is simply to shrug it off and ignore it (or at least limit yourself to prudent measures) - the deaths, strictly speaking, are a statistical blip on the radar - but the damage you can do to your civil liberties and society at large can last decades and impact generations of an entire nation.

tl;dr: America got sucker punched, and just like a bitch, got all fearful and cowardly about how it acted. The NSA spying is a sign of that fear and cowardice (possibly being used to nefarious ends by people exploiting it).

greyman3• 13 years ago

Hm, but shouldn't we also count thwarted attacks into your statistics? (I don't believe no deaths were prevented by such a massive apparatus). But as I said, I don't support anything, I am not even American, but with such a huge issue (I mean that "collect it all" thing) - which doesn't seems to be easy to get rid of - I would just expect a more broad discussion.

twoodfin• 13 years ago

Number of people identified as having been killed by NSA surveillance: 0.

So no big deal: We should just shrug it off, right?

Obviously we worry about more things in this society than body counts, like civil liberties and the liberty to live our lives out of the shadow of bombers.

The crux of the NSA story in one phrase: 'collect it all'

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