NSA asks Congress to let it get on with that warrantless data harvesting, again A US intelligence boss has asked Congress to reauthorize a controversial set of powers that give snoops warrantless authorization to surveil electronic communications in the name of fighting terrorism and so forth. NSA director General Paul Nakasone told the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board yesterday that the loss …
That's not how they operate. They bribe journalists to write for them, based on the "Intel" extracted from you, journalists like this one
NSA+CIA+FBI are already mostly partnering with US Big Tech (Google / Fakebook / Microsoft).
The juicy part is to get NSA's technology and to sell to China / Russia / Iran - revenge + big bucks. Takes some time but it is worth it. BTW, Meta's line of work based on NSA tech is supposed to make a big bad stocks dive.
Really depends on the plan. As they have reaped decades of barely restrained mass surveillance from these programs regardless of what the actual rules are, I really doubt the wording or the hearings really matter.
If in every case these programs have either been renewed, or ceremonially cancelled only for the program to move across the hall to a different inscrutable program with no name and at least one different digit, without ANY consequences to those that broke or bent the rules, the real rules are that the rules they talk to us about don't matter. They aren't promises with consequences, they are just a lampshade.
The real rules are the ones discussed behind closed doors, the ones that say the public rules apply the way the new guy says they do, and the new guy wants those reports coming. The new guy doesn't want the smell of a reform and oversight push sticking to their shoes when people realize how much these programs stink in the light of day. The new guy would rather not talk about it right now, maybe until after the midterms in their second term, if they aren't embroiled in some other scandal.
When they showed the FISA court as a rubber stamp and abdicated it's role in oversight these programs should have been automatically shut down the same day. When the TLA's were shown to be periodically forging, intentionally misreporting, and utterly gaming the application process they should have been held accountable. Instead, like the rest of government, in the absence of transpatency(by necessity) and accountability (by design and by convention) the government has sunk deep into the mire. The norm of looking the other way while ignoring security protocols, people's basic rights, and the letter of the law allowed fucking up at work to be the new normal in government.
So instead of letting their own experts build a system to manage this stuff that protected access and the tools to hold people accountable even for clearance level programs, built by their own in house experts, they canned it and handed a juicy contract to an outside vendor that in addition to costing much more, provided no such accountability features.
This system won't fix itself. These changes will have to come from the outside, either from the very top, or from us by ejecting elected officials until they start paying attention again.
Oh good. Violating the privacy of 300+ million individuals on a daily basis gave you less than a dozen useful cases.
That declaration in itself would be enough for me to tell them to take a hike. Then I'd go and create an even more restrictive law.
Plus : this is about spying on Americans, and the NSA is the one deciding what it can tell ?
Sorry buddy, you are talking to the elected representatives of your own country about your activity concerning your own citizens. You spill all the beans, or you go to jail.
Simples.
The reason we gather and process intelligence isn't necessarily to secure convictions. It's to drive critical policy and prevent or mitigate problems regardless of if they are a crime.
If we disrupt a terror plot without firing a shot or a court case, that's still accomplishing something. So especially when the waters are murky around the methods, they may not feel the symbolic victory of a court case that allows the defendant to expose and attack those methods. They are also fond of using the intel to quietly build a case around other charges that they can file under a fig leaf that shields the original investigation.
That said, yes, shut these programs down, through people in jail who clearly turned those laws inside out to perform surveillance that a plain reading of the law prohibits. Write new ones that actually have some accountability and penalties for ignoring them. And and politician that wants to play bobble head and renew this crap in the face of the security community clearly gaming the rules or flat ignoring them should get stripped of their committees, tossed out in the next election, and barred from public office.
Get their attention in a hurry. But while we can fill the streets with a pointless convoy of truckers to fight vaccines or conspiracy theory crap, the opposition party isn't making a whimper about these issues, and most of them have quietly continued pushing them off camera.
Quote (of quote): " "Section 702 cannot be used to target Americans anywhere in the world or any person inside the United States regardless of nationality. No exceptions," Nakasone said. "
So....colour me puzzled....an encrypted message is sent using a bogus identity (say by Edward Teach in Bermuda).....how would the NSA know that "Edward Teach" is actually a manufactured online identity of an American citizen?
Yup....the NSA would not know ANYTHING about the citizen status of this person.
Conclusion: The NSA slurps EVERYTHING......because they really don't give a sh*t about Section 702.
But how could you possibly find domestic terrorists now that everyone has perfect encryption and communication security ?
Great. El Reg hires a Californian, who tells all her friends, and now we get rabid cowards like this one parroting the same drivel we see on American comment sites. Fox News Fox News Mean Orange Guy kill them all BRAWK! Next thing you know we'll be censored for using words like "bugger." Mark my words, let American liberals have unfettered access, and this place will become a useless cess pool just like most American comment sites. Non-American liberals are OK, and it's possible do discuss differences with them with intelligence and respect granted to both sides of the discussion, but American liberals are hate spewing simpletons who will even turn on their own if another's hate is not the same as theirs.
It's a news site, not parler. They run a longer leash on the forums then during the Moderatrix days as well. I really don't think it's improved the quality of the site, but it's not injecting it into people's heads like MetaFace or Twitter either so I generally prefer to see things lean to free speech.
What I do resent is the fact that there is a new population of trolls targeting these forums to spew off topic talking points pushing various nation state's prop and bullshit. Crap that has nothing to do with IT, and generally little to do with the articles. It's killing the community here, as is the toxic blamethower aimed by those trying to saddle these problems on the US readership. Quite a large number of us long timers would hate to see the Reg lose it's UK roots, but trolling the US readers just attracts more trolls and drives out more of the UK old timers from reading the posts.
If we as the cranky, crap-talking IT community want this odd beast to survive, we are probably better off keeping the signal to noise ratio up.
Because we are already deep into the death spiral at this point, and barring editorial action, this site is going the way so other public forums have died before. The are trolls and shills are gathering because there are less and less high profile sites they can post on. They shit all over everything and harass the local till they leave. They will eventually get this place shut down if nothing changes, which in the case of the shills for Russia and China may be part of the point, and the actual news coverage here is often, unflattering. I for one WANT the vultures both in the UK and the US to keep their beaks sharp and latched onto the US government as much as the UKs, both richly deserve it. That's part of the news we comer here for, and the team has made enough of a name for them that leakers are contacting them with material.
If these forums endanger that mission though, this is a news site after all, and while I will miss you mad bastards, the news comes first.
You've never watched Tucker Carlson then?
Tucker Carlson: The Left are destroying childrens lives: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-children-destroyed-by-this
'Gutfeld!' on rise in violent crime in liberal-run cities https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/gutfeld-violent-crime-liberal-run-cities
Tucker Carlson lies about Childrens Hospitals, causing bomb scare
@M.V. Lipvig
Quote: "...using words like "bugger"..."
It's already happened.....how about the banning of the word "field"......
Link: https://news.sky.com/story/university-department-removes-the-word-field-over-racist-connotations-12784945
Yup.....soon there will be NO WORDS AVAILABLE AT ALL which do not offend someone!!!!!
....then how will we commumicate?
It's not just domestic, or domestic groups that are operating separately from international factions.
Been watching the news in Brazil? Wonder why they are all showing up in Florida?
It's because like the recent invasion of Venezuela from Florida, the clown car is doing test runs on Latin America. They are going to look at their mistakes and then try to do it here again.
So the government needs to be looking both inside and out, and the parts of Government need to be coordinating effectively to do that. What they don't need is endless dragnet surveillance programs that they then also fail to process into accurate or actionable intelligence. Also, while I believe that they need to keep looking, I know that the shadows they hide in aren't helping. Most of these programs should be transparent, at least if not to the general public(obviously) to an oversight body of normal people that can still pass a background check.
There isn't much classified material, or many programs, that should be shielded from a periodic surprise audit by the equivalent of a grand jury, with severe penalties for trying to bury misconduct by sealing it away till the statute of limitations or public interest had expired.
And take note, this crooked arm of the US government ALREADY has access to EVERYTHING any citizens does on the INTERNET by way of Senate Joint Resolution (SJR) 34 [2017], (Look it up!)...unless citizens use a legitimate VPN (virtual private network) to protect their CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO PRIVACY!!! Seriously. Look it up.
Helpful hints:
It should be noted that the auditors pointed out the password age issue as a non-compliance to the DOI's own password policy, not as a general principle. Instead, they recommended it update its 2016 policy based on current NIST guidelines, which no longer mandate periodic password changes (which result in changes from passw0rd1 to passw0rd2) but focus on strong passwords /passphrases and MFA.
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