NSA works with Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc. to collect all your data

[AidenCarby]

Well, we are back to back world war champs.

Reigning and defending baby.

[thetruepandagod]

Is it weird that I consider the bigger story here not that the US Govt is collecting call metadata and internet info from Americans, but that they are actively spying on the internet use and call data of virtually the entire world?

Is it? Is it really archi?

[Xajii]

Is it weird that I consider the bigger story here not that the US Govt is collecting call metadata and internet info from Americans, but that they are actively spying on the internet use and call data of virtually the entire world?

What the fuck did you think the NSA does? Lol

[ronin sparthos]

Is it weird that I consider the bigger story here not that the US Govt is collecting call metadata and internet info from Americans, but that they are actively spying on the internet use and call data of virtually the entire world?

Because 'Murica has totally given a fuck about what the rest of the world thinks?

[Cantih]

Well, if data going through the US means the government is looking at it, that's going to cause foreign entities to not want to use US services.
The extreme case would be the world disconnecting/disallowing connections from US networks, but the more realistic means a rise in non-domestic competitors to US internet businesses services, and probably a bit of a pullback.

So ultimately, by doing this, it leads to the US having less influence on the global network, and likely a drop in revenue (for the government too, well, if businesses paid taxes, so maybe not).
Oh, what was that line from Good Omens, "Evil sows the seeds of it's own demise.", something like that.

[archibaldcrane]

Can you secure communications against this NSA spying? I'd think foreign governments would be shitting themselves over this...

[Blubbartron]

Can you secure communications against this NSA spying? I'd think foreign governments would be shitting themselves over this...

The only possible protection would be encryption, if they're storing the contents of the signal as the hub processes it and sends it off to its destination. That, or don't allow your data to be routed through the US (difficult, to say the least, but probably not impossible).

[Niiro]

One would think a foreign government would know better than to send sensitive information unencrypted through unsecured channels.

If they're sending the launch codes through their Gmail account, it's not gonna take the NSA to find them.

[Blubbartron]

Encrypted doesn't necessarily mean safe. It just means more safe. The NSA is full of code breakers and creators, and I seem to recall hearing something about it being a felony to use an encryption method in the US which they are unable to break, but my google-fu can't find any evidence, so I may have just imagined that.

[Kuya]

Perhaps you can't find it because the NSA deleted it. They control all our internets now.

[hey]

where they quickly discover they're wasting their time watching you and move on to one of tens of thousands/hundreds of thousands of others on these lists. because this list would be that long or longer if thats all it took to get on it.

i get it, i really do, the "the government is always trying to gain more control, whittle away at your freedoms until theres almost nothing left" mentality. in some cases its a good thing. Here you have to realize that the world has changed, the rules of war have changed, people are willing to break these rules for the causes they believe in, and that leaves us in a position where we either let them shit all over us, or we change in the necessary way to stop them from doing so. there are far worse solutions, and few better. i'm all ears if anyone wants to throw some alternate ideas around. but if you argue for more privacy and less security, you can't bitch when bombs go off and innocents are killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. you can't criticize national security agencies for coming up short. you have decided that these people dieing is an acceptable price for keeping your unremarkable information private.

Sounds good. I mean, fuck, even 9/11 was only what? 3k people killed? What was the worst terrorist attack since then (11 years ago!)? How about in the decade before it?

Surely you must be joking. You don't really think terrorism is a serious threat, do you? They don't go on rampages killing massive amounts of people. Their goal is to scare people, not kill them. ya know, that's why they call it terrorism. If you stop getting so scared about minor shit (oh no 3 people died!), they'd be harmless. The deaths they cause are entirely insignificant.

Encrypted doesn't necessarily mean safe. It just means more safe. The NSA is full of code breakers and creators, and I seem to recall hearing something about it being a felony to use an encryption method in the US which they are unable to break, but my google-fu can't find any evidence, so I may have just imagined that.

lol?

[Kohan]

The NSA is full of code breakers and creators, and I seem to recall hearing something about it being a felony to use an encryption method in the US which they are unable to break, but my google-fu can't find any evidence, so I may have just imagined that.

Yes, you imagined it. Either that, or you confused encryption with the export of encryption software (which has restrictions, but is not wholly illegal either). The NSA cannot crack AES, for example, but endorses it as an ideal specification, and considers it suitable for top secret level data protection.

[Xno Kappa]

Imagine the shit storm on BG if this had been under Romney lol?

[Niiro]

Yea, people are only okay about it because it happened under......Bush.

[archibaldcrane]

I wore myself out on the Patriot act 12 years ago. Now it's just reaping what we've sown.

[Kuya]

We need guns to protect ourselves from government but we're apparently okay with it spying on us.

[notorious bum]

Obamabots are a little upset, but when you're stuck in the "good guyz(D) versus bad guyz (R)" mindset, they can convince themselves and others that this has nothing to do with Obama and everything to do with Bush/Repubs.

[quannum]

[Cantih]

And to anyone playing the "it's just metadata" card.
You can do a lot of amazing (and disturbing) stuff just by combining metadata with public data. An example, http://www.phiprivacy.net/?p=12898

[Tagus]

This whole thing is upsetting to me on a crazy level. I'm actually surprised that more people aren't really pissed off about this that I talk to irl. It's not so much that the govt was monitoring our activities... you figure that's going to happen on some level. It's not so much either that they're using silicon valley's dominance in the creation of internet infrastructure to monitor foreign communications... being someone with very little to hide myself, it's not particularly troublesome. I go to work, take pictures of my kid and put them on facebook, yadda yadda. Nothing incriminating or particularly damning about my lifestyle on a public forum there. What bothers me, is that if these companies were hit with a gag order which forces them to deny all involvement in it, then they're still lying to us about it in their responses to this. And as the government goes into damage control and tries to do what they do best, which is spin this to the most positive light possible and then sweep it all under the rug, the powers that be will still be in control of our lives to such an insane degree.

I think it's the implications that scare me the most, and interestingly enough, the implications seem to be what people really don't think are that important. Say Microsoft gave the govt. permission to view emails. What was to stop the guy who leaked all this shit from just spying on a bunch of corporate CEO's and doing some heavy insider trading? All you need to make millions on the stock market is money to invest and information on what to invest it in. Look at Sony stock for example. A year ago it was at $12 a share, which was an all time low... Now fast forward a year. PS4 is announced and now their stock is at $20 a share. If you knew they were developing that, which I imagine would be a relatively easy discovery if you had access to all of their company's electronic communications, you could have doubled your money in a year. Multiply that by essentially every publicly traded company that uses Microsoft Outlook, and you've got a whole lot of power in your hands. Is this tinfoil hat shit, or am i on to something here? Idk... the shit is worrisome though when you really think about it.