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

[Xajii]

I'm well aware there is an investigative process and this NSA thing is just creating a subset of the population for investigation. Did I really need to explicitly state that it's possible for investigators to fuck up and cause this? Is it really necessary to draw up a convincing hypothetical like, you're a college student that befriended the Boston bombing brothers, and you made some questionable sarcastic jokes on Facebook. Is it really that difficult to imagine that someone could have their life ruined merely by association? It doesn't even have to be locked in gitmo forever. It could just be a record that you were investigated for suspected terrorism (goodbye any chance of government/security clearance required job).

First of all, your example is ridiculous, but we'll go with that. Any person employed by the NSA is damn well going to be able to tell the difference between some idiot making sarcastic jabs on Facebook versus someone who was actually involved in a terror plot of any kind. Because they aren't fucking stupid. Is there a room for error? Absolutely, the same way that there is room for error in any investigation of any kind from any lead or piece of data ever, legally or less legally obtained or not.

You're just bringing up absolutely nothing new at all, using bad analogies to try and argue it, and flailing around crying. I get it, you're pissed off, but don't be ridiculous. The NSA has some of the most qualified people in the world working for them and they have technology that exceeds what we believe to be currently possible. They're not out to get anyone other than the people who are looking to harm the USA. I'm not happy with the way they do some of their business, but I am happy that they've done a fairly good job protecting us from an innumerable amount of threats that we don't even know about.

I would argue internet privacy is far more nuanced than you give it credit for.

I would argue that you're being naive.

[Cantih]

I know BG loves to troll, but the tone of it this time has me worried, are this many of you truly not bothered by this?

Also, I have to wonder if the media is really pushing this story for once because of all the recent prosecutorial targeting of journalists.
It is hilarious though that the right wing side of the media is going for it to because they finally have a scandal they can make stick to Obama after so many attempts, but it's going to have to cost them their "'tection from turrurists" drum to pursue it.

[Xajii]

I know BG loves to troll, but the tone of it this time has me worried, are this many of you truly not bothered by this?

It's less "I don't care / I think this is great" and more "No shit." Most of us posting on "this side of the argument" realized this shit happened and got pissed off about it for a while then moved on when we were teenagers.

It is hilarious though that the right wing side of the media is going for it to because they finally have a scandal they can make stick to Obama after so many attempts, but it's going to have to cost them their "'tection from turrurists" drum to pursue it.

Even funnier because legislation enacted in the Bush administration makes almost all of this possible, and Reagan enacted some foundational laws himself.

[kuronosan]

It bothers me, but it really depends on the circumstance. I don't think it bothers me because of what it is, I think it's because of its potential for abuse by corporations, businesses, and blowhards.

[Blubbartron]

How is that different from any other investigation? Aside from being stupid, your hypothetical requires no government intrusion anyway.

Unless you think you have a reasonable expectation of privacy on......facebook. In which case idk what to tell you.

I suppose it is a bad hypothetical. After a terrorist plot, any people that associated with them are probably going to be investigated (at least lightly). This is the part where someone with more law enforcement/government agency experience would probably be useful. I imagine (not really sure) there is some cutoff point where a person is deemed an acquaintance as opposed to an associate/friend. Acquaintances would be pretty unlikely to get a rigorous investigation, I imagine. In this case, if the NSA identified the acquaintance as part of the subset of potential terrorists (due to sarcastic remarks), they are essentially going to use "evidence" that they should not have (because they weren't going to investigate) as evidence to support the assertion the person is a terrorist/accomplice. It's hard to express it in words, but it feels like they could end up in sort of a circular evidence pattern (two or more totally unrelated things look/are innocent, but someone could put them together and claim they're related, using each as evidence to strengthen the argument that the other is evidence). I guess you could call it "fabricated" corroborating evidence. People trying to find a pattern often will find a pattern, even if no such pattern exists.

More simply, the NSA system will dramatically increase the scale of investigations. Given the fact that false positives happen, and the consequences of being wrongfully identified as a terrorist, I can't support any system that will increase the number of people affected.

[Xajii]

I suppose it is a bad hypothetical. After a terrorist plot, any people that associated with them are probably going to be investigated (at least lightly). This is the part where someone with more law enforcement/government agency experience would probably be useful. I imagine (not really sure) there is some cutoff point where a person is deemed an acquaintance as opposed to an associate/friend. Acquaintances would be pretty unlikely to get a rigorous investigation, I imagine. In this case, if the NSA identified the acquaintance as part of the subset of potential terrorists (due to sarcastic remarks), they are essentially going to use "evidence" that they should not have (because they weren't going to investigate) as evidence to support the assertion the person is a terrorist/accomplice. It's hard to express it in words, but it feels like they could end up in sort of a circular evidence pattern (two or more totally unrelated things look/are innocent, but someone could put them together and claim they're related, using each as evidence to strengthen the argument that the other is evidence). I guess you could call it "fabricated" corroborating evidence. People trying to find a pattern often will find a pattern, even if no such pattern exists.

More simply, the NSA system will dramatically increase the scale of investigations. Given the fact that false positives happen, and the consequences of being wrongfully identified as a terrorist, I can't support any system that will increase the number of people affected.

Security sometimes gets things wrong so its better to just have less security. Got it.

[Blubbartron]

First of all, your example is ridiculous, but we'll go with that. Any person employed by the NSA is damn well going to be able to tell the difference between some idiot making sarcastic jabs on Facebook versus someone who was actually involved in a terror plot of any kind. Because they aren't fucking stupid. Is there a room for error? Absolutely, the same way that there is room for error in any investigation of any kind from any lead or piece of data ever, legally or less legally obtained or not.

You're just bringing up absolutely nothing new at all, using bad analogies to try and argue it, and flailing around crying. I get it, you're pissed off, but don't be ridiculous. The NSA has some of the most qualified people in the world working for them and they have technology that exceeds what we believe to be currently possible. They're not out to get anyone other than the people who are looking to harm the USA. I'm not happy with the way they do some of their business, but I am happy that they've done a fairly good job protecting us from an innumerable amount of threats that we don't even know about.


I would argue that you're being naive.

See other post, I admit it wasn't a good analogy, in hindsight.

As far as the NSA being awesome - it's anecdotal, but no, they're just as prone to cronyism/nepotism as any other government agency. I went to college with a guy who now works for the NSA. He was a home schooled, socially inept, project plagiarizing dumbass. He has a job because his step father (or actual father, I forget) works for the government. Are there some very bright people? Sure. However, I would argue that they're not the brightest. The brightest among us have a tendency to scoff at authority and think for themselves. They can see through the fear mongering of the media and know that while there are people who hate America and would like to destroy us, they are an extreme minority and are largely incapable of inflicting any level of significant damage.

Also, I apologize for the fascist comment earlier. You aren't quite there yet - you're just a nationalist, as evidenced by how much you're praising a government agency when you freely admit you have no idea if they've done anything at all. You just need to add the militarization and innate superiority beliefs to be a fascist.

[Niiro]

What your describing is the NSA essentially going out of their way to investigate someone not involved and make them into a patsy for no apparent reason. The information they have access to and the legality of that access aside, what your describing has nothing to do with privacy or intrusion and everything to do with incompetence. I wouldn't trust your hypothetical NSA agents with a Nancy Drew mystery.

[Rhyis.]

Pretty much.

[octopus]

It does bother me that our government is basically no different than some others. Land of the free, my ass.

[shaggnix]

on npr it was explained like this:

they collect this info yes, but can't use it fully at will

they can look to see when/who you sent emails/texts/calls to at will, but not the content of said communications

they can look at the contents of these communications if you're found to be linked to an ongoing investigation that involves national security


assuming they play by their own rules (they're the ref AND the other team after all...), i have no problems with this. it seems they've set it up so they invade your privacy as little as possible and only when they really need to. a lot of people seem to object to the collection of this information, not its use. this sounds awfully similar to the NRA saying that making a list of gun owners will absolutely inevitably lead to the gov't using said list to take your guns ...... somehow. i admit its a little different, but you can't believe that they couldn't get this information in other ways if they decided they wanted it. and there's so much data involved here they won't look at any particular piece unless they think its pertinent to something important or a program flags it, and 99% of the flagged info is worthless anyway.

[ronin sparthos]

Everyone keeps going on about security as if these threats have a finite period in which they will happen and thus our defensive precautions to thwart them. However, this isn't the War Powers Act or Lincoln's suspension of Habeus Corpus but a policy that will continue in perpetuity so long as "threats" exist to the USA. This is merely the beginning of a series of pervasive measures that will continue so long as we fail to address the reasons such things occur.

Why have I jumped off the slippery slope you ask?

What are we doing to address the underlying issues for these threats? Income disparity continues to grow across the globe that pushes people towards extremists and attacks on the perceived source of the disparity.

Socially, we're justifying the murder of civilians in order to eliminate terrorists which continues a vicious circle of hate on both ends. We also indefinitely imprison whoever we feel like while speaking out the other sides of our mouths about cherishing law and the legal processes.

Geographically, we've supported some of the most brutal and oppressive regimes in order to consolidate and maintain spheres of influence.

Militarily, we spend more than any other country on the face of planet Earth and seem interested in war at the drop of a hat be that handing out weapons to questionable individuals or initiating preemptive invasions.

I'm not even worried about Obama per se. I'm worried about the precedent being setup for future Presidents and their respective administrations to viciously stomp out anything that is seen as a threat to the status quo and how easily the word terrorism can be attached to it as justification. Obama is just towing the line that Dubya started.

[Xajii]

See other post, I admit it wasn't a good analogy, in hindsight.

As far as the NSA being awesome - it's anecdotal, but no, they're just as prone to cronyism/nepotism as any other government agency. I went to college with a guy who now works for the NSA. He was a home schooled, socially inept, project plagiarizing dumbass. He has a job because his step father (or actual father, I forget) works for the government. Are there some very bright people? Sure. However, I would argue that they're not the brightest. The brightest among us have a tendency to scoff at authority and think for themselves. They can see through the fear mongering of the media and know that while there are people who hate America and would like to destroy us, they are an extreme minority and are largely incapable of inflicting any level of significant damage.

Also, I apologize for the fascist comment earlier. You aren't quite there yet - you're just a nationalist, as evidenced by how much you're praising a government agency when you freely admit you have no idea if they've done anything at all. You just need to add the militarization and innate superiority beliefs to be a fascist.

Oh, fuck off. Your anecdotal evidence is idiotic and I take offense to your terrible generalization of people that work at the NSA. No shit there's a few bad apples, but given their rigorous and frequent process for background investigations, vetting and training, screening, and so on, along with the extremely demanding job activities and low tolerance for ineptitude, yes - I do generally regard people that work there as competent. I have plenty of anecdotal evidence myself, but as it is neither prudent nor relevant to share that, I will gladly leave that out.

I have said numerous times that I do see some things wrong with this, but every single point you're trying to make isn't one of them. The worst part of this is that is shows precedent for the private sector to be rewarded for bending to the government's will, and for violating their own TOS.

Keep on labeling, maybe you'll hit a target. I will play that game too: you are a blind, uninformed manchild that probably loves reddit.com/r/politics

To summarize: This is not news. The only news is that there was a leak, and it's as much of a "leak" as if an anonymous source told E! Hollywood Tonight that Clay Aiken is gay. The NSA is generally one of the most competent groups of workers and tech systems the nation has, and they do not as an agency have bad intentions. The methods used to secure the nation are and always have been questionable, but that's the name of the game. If methods like this hadn't been used, a lot of bad shit would have happened on top of what we already have dealt with. I don't think that justifies it, but I'm really ambivalent. It's the devil that you don't see.

Yet despite all of this, US citiziens' privacy is still substantially better than that in most other nations worldwide in similarly developed circumstances. Also, would be surprised if NSA was the only nation's government agency involved in data purchasing.

[Blubbartron]

Security sometimes gets things wrong so its better to just have less security. Got it.

It's not security unless it actually lessens the incidence of terrorism (examine the philosophical question of the functional security camera vs. the fake security camera - the effect is what makes it a security device, not the device itself). I'd be shocked if there were even one instance of a terrorist plot being stopped as a direct result of this system (or any other anti-terrorism system, to be perfectly honest). The overwhelming majority of terrorist plots are simply fucked up by the idiots trying to execute them. The rest are generally stopped by tips from people that observed suspicious behavior or accomplices with a conscience.

I'm not advocating for less security, I'm advocating for less "massive increases in 'security' that we think will only do good, and won't even acknowledge the possibility of a fuck up."

[Xajii]

Everyone keeps going on about security as if these threats have a finite period in which they will happen and thus our defensive precautions to thwart them. However, this isn't the War Powers Act or Lincoln's suspension of Habeus Corpus but a policy that will continue in perpetuity so long as "threats" exist to the USA. This is merely the beginning of a series of pervasive measures that will continue so long as we fail to address the reasons such things occur.

Why have I jumped off the slippery slope you ask?

What are we doing to address the underlying issues for these threats? Income disparity continues to grow across the globe that pushes people towards extremists and attacks on the perceived source of the disparity.

Socially, we're justifying the murder of civilians in order to eliminate terrorists which continues a vicious circle of hate on both ends. We also indefinitely imprison whoever we feel like while speaking out the other sides of our mouths about cherishing law and the legal processes.

Geographically, we've supported some of the most brutal and oppressive regimes in order to consolidate and maintain spheres of influence.

Militarily, we spend more than any other country on the face of planet Earth and seem interested in war at the drop of a hat be that handing out weapons to questionable individuals or initiating preemptive invasions.

I'm not even worried about Obama per se. I'm worried about the precedent being setup for future Presidents and their respective administrations to viciously stomp out anything that is seen as a threat to the status quo and how easily the word terrorism can be attached to it as justification. Obama is just towing the line that Dubya started.

Really this is a better avenue for discussion than anything Blubbar is trying to argue, and it also provides a pretty good response to this:

It does bother me that our government is basically no different than some others. Land of the free, my ass.

Don't expect to be both safe AND free when your country acts the way the US does.

[Xajii]

It's not security unless it actually lessens the incidence of terrorism (examine the philosophical question of the functional security camera vs. the fake security camera - the effect is what makes it a security device, not the device itself). I'd be shocked if there were even one instance of a terrorist plot being stopped as a direct result of this system (or any other anti-terrorism system, to be perfectly honest). The overwhelming majority of terrorist plots are simply fucked up by the idiots trying to execute them. The rest are generally stopped by tips from people that observed suspicious behavior or accomplices with a conscience.

ARE YOU SERIOUS? LOL

Done with you. Keep on keepin' on, dude. This is the most unbelievably naive comment I have seen in this subforum

[octopus]

assuming they play by their own rules (they're the ref AND the other team after all...)

To me this is the key. I have no problems with the idea that the government can go ask for data if there is probable cause for national security reasons, etc. But right now from what I've read, that since it's a backdoor to all these databases that there's really nothing that prevents someone to abuse the system. Also, what prevents foreign hackers from hacking these backdoors to get whatever they want?

It's too much power to the government without proper checks and balances. Like someone already said, if it requires a warrant to do this, I'd be more okay about this.

[Blubbartron]

What your describing is the NSA essentially going out of their way to investigate someone not involved and make them into a patsy for no apparent reason. The information they have access to and the legality of that access aside, what your describing has nothing to do with privacy or intrusion and everything to do with incompetence. I wouldn't trust your hypothetical NSA agents with a Nancy Drew mystery.

Not quite. First, the NSA isn't going to do the investigation - they're just creating a subset of the population for investigation. Second, their methods for identifying people can't be super complex, due to the problem of Big Data. Complex analysis of every txt, every post, every phone call for every person in America would require more computing power than every computing device on the planet combined. Just scanning every new word on the internet/airwaves and checking if it exists in the dictionary of "flag words" would take multiple supercomputers/massive cloud computing in order to keep up.

I can't remember where I was reading it, but there have been major advances in natural language processing. A computer was developed that could discern humor, sarcasm, etc. There is effectively a 0% chance the NSA has implemented their algorithms for doing that (see above). Even then, they can't compensate for the concept of "inside jokes." I used to mock a former roommate and friend by calling him a pedo, even though he wasn't. I believe many people on this forum used to joke with Firas and call him a terrorist (and some not-so-jokingly).

They're not incompetent, they just have delusions of grandeur. They think their idea is great, so can't admit the obvious potential problems with it, and implementing the idea in a way that would absolutely minimize those problems is literally impossible unless the NSA is a hundred years more technologically advanced than the rest of the country.

[Kyreth]

First of all, your example is ridiculous, but we'll go with that. Any person employed by the NSA is damn well going to be able to tell the difference between some idiot making sarcastic jabs on Facebook versus someone who was actually involved in a terror plot of any kind. Because they aren't fucking stupid. Is there a room for error? Absolutely, the same way that there is room for error in any investigation of any kind from any lead or piece of data ever, legally or less legally obtained or not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_J...Secret_Service

Game company writes cyberpunk RPG sourcebook, Secret Service raids "hackers", ends up paying $300k in damages and attorney's fees. No, the government is NOT always that competent.

[Renzokuken]