It's not their mission.

Post #384,359 by Another Scott 12/18/13 10:25:05 AM Reply	It's not their mission. The NSA is run and staffed by people. People who are evaluated every year to determine what they worked on, how well they satisfied their job requirements, etc. People don't get promoted if they don't do their jobs. They don't get raises if they don't do their jobs. People get demoted, fired, prosecuted, and imprisoned if they break the rules and the laws. If they get told by their bosses to do something illegal, they can and should report it through the proper authorities. "But what about Snowden! But what about contractors! But what about those guys at the IRS office that were snooping on celebrities and ex girlfriends!" Yes, sometimes people break the rules and the laws. No matter what laws and rules are in place, some people will break them. No human system is perfect. "But you're essentially saying that no human system can be trusted with such power! The NSA is too big! They have to stop "snooping" on the Internet!" No. Our protections, as Snowden himself said in one of his interviews when he revealed himself, are the the rules and processes in the system. Not the technology. Any technology can be misused. Any system without a particular technology can be misused if protections are not built into it. Have you registered with UPS to get package delivery e-mail alerts? That was quite eye-opening for me. When I did so, they asked me a series of questions to verify that I was who I claimed. They had home addresses for me going back something like 30 years. Addresses that I hadn't thought about in decades. It's a little creepy. Does it mean that UPS is "snooping" on me? No. It's not in the NSA's charter to snoop on Americans. It is illegal for them to do so without a court order. Are more protections needed to prevent them from having access to data from Americans, even in an incidental way? Maybe. Maybe not. Make the case, but don't go over the top about the NSA "snooping" on every American or that the Deep State is tramping on our rights. My $0.02. Cheers, Scott.
Post #384,364 by a6l6e6x 12/18/13 11:11:03 AM 12/18/13 11:40:36 AM Reply	Well said! Sometimes reality just sucks. :) Incidentally, I did that UPS thing in the last two weeks. Shocking questions. All based on ex post facto digitized public records no doubt. [edit]Give the ancient Italians credit with italics. Alex Edited by a6l6e6x Dec. 18, 2013, 11:40:36 AM EST Expand All History
Post #384,365 by drook 12/18/13 11:45:06 AM 12/18/13 1:30:05 PM Reply	Here's my problem U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3: "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed" The problem with keeping all this information "even though they can't read it all" is that someone can decide tomorrow that something I did 10 years ago is now suspect, and they've got the evidence for it. No, I'm not saying that they will actually pass an ex post facto law, but they sure could develop a data mining algorithm to identify the "right" people to look at for activities that just became suspect. This is where you say, "Of course they could, that's their mission." :-/ [edit] tyop -- Drew Edited by drook Dec. 18, 2013, 01:30:05 PM EST Expand All History
Post #384,366 by Another Scott 12/18/13 12:16:50 PM Reply	Ok. And there's probably a good recent example of that... http://bangordailyne...one-call-records/ Posted Sept. 26, 2013, at 7:41 a.m. WASHINGTON Â The head of the National Security Agency delivered a vigorous defense Wednesday of his agencyÂs collection of AmericansÂ phone records for counterterrorism purposes, saying the program was helpful in investigations of the Boston Marathon bombing and the suspected plots against U.S. diplomatic outposts this summer. ÂIt provides us the speed and agility in crises, like the Boston Marathon tragedy in April and the threats this summer,Â Gen. Keith Alexander said at the Billington Cybersecurity Summit, a gathering of business and government officials. AlexanderÂs address follows calls by some leading lawmakers to end the program because of concerns that it invades AmericansÂ privacy without having proven its value as a counterterrorism tool. In a brief interview after his talk, Alexander said the program did not help identify the Boston suspects, brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. But he said that by using the database of domestic phone call records, the NSA was able to determine that fears about a follow-up attack in New York City were unfounded. That's probably a clear example of "ex post facto", er, evidence. It's not an ex post facto law though. Should the NSA or other 3 letter agency be able to have such data on hand to allow quick searches in an emergency? Maybe, maybe not. I think it's reasonable to assume that such data exists, and will continue to exist with or without the NSA. And it's reasonable to assume that court orders requiring whoever has that data to give it up to law enforcement will also continue to exist. Perhaps at a moment's notice - computers do continue to get faster and more capable after all. Are we really safer or freer if the NSA can get the data instantly from Verizon (after a court order) as opposed to getting it instantly from their own server farm in Utah (after satisfying various national security requirements)? The only difference, it seems to me, is that people with different badges might be tempted to break (likely) similar privacy and access rules to access it. I haven't been convinced. Some have proposed that there be some sort of wall between the data that's collected and access to it. It seems to me that there is already a wall (the rules, laws and procedures), but maybe it needs to be thicker or higher. Having more people in the way between the data and the investigators might make things safer, but they might also increase the risk of unauthorized disclosure (witness Snowden). Oh, and IIRC, the NSA can only keep the metadata for 5 years, so rest easy. ;-) FWIW. Cheers, Scott.
Post #384,369 by pwhysall 12/18/13 12:36:59 PM Reply	Aw, come on. This is weaselling. They're reading your damn email. If someone invented a machine that could steam open paper mail, scan the contents, and re-seal it without trace, you know damn well the NSA would have the USPS install one in every sorting office in America. It's illegal. It's unconstitutional. They know it, and they know you know it, and they know you know there's not a damn thing you can do about it. Because no judge, no politician and no President is gonna stand up and fight when the opposition will go "bu-bu-bu THE TERRORISTS! WHY DO YOU HATE AMERICA SO MUCH!?" Your acquiescence is a bit depressing.
Post #384,372 by Another Scott 12/18/13 12:54:48 PM Reply	<sigh> Their biggest problem is separating the wheat from the chaff. Why would they want to intentionally add yottabytes of extraneous stuff to their servers when it is outside their mission? They have to get their funding from Congress - the NSA doesn't create money out of thin air. If they are intentionally storing stuff that is not part of their mission, then they are using money and resources that should be used for other things (thereby not doing that work and risking all sorts of bad things) and not doing the things that they should be doing (thereby risking all sorts of bad things). They aren't hoovering up the Internet because they feel like it, playing around like kids at Wonka's factory. The USPS logs all mail in its system - http://www.nytimes.c...il-mail.html?_r=0 Mr. Pickering was targeted by a longtime surveillance system called mail covers, a forerunner of a vastly more expansive effort, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States Â about 160 billion pieces last year. It is not known how long the government saves the images. Together, the two programs show that postal mail is subject to the same kind of scrutiny that the National Security Agency has given to telephone calls and e-mail. The mail covers program, used to monitor Mr. Pickering, is more than a century old but is still considered a powerful tool. At the request of law enforcement officials, postal workers record information from the outside of letters and parcels before they are delivered. (Opening the mail would require a warrant.) The information is sent to the law enforcement agency that asked for it. Tens of thousands of pieces of mail each year undergo this scrutiny. Are they "snooping" on all of us? No. Is it unconstitutional? No. Is it overbroad and are there insufficient safeguards? Maybe, maybe not. The NSA doesn't read everyone's e-mails. They don't have enough money, enough people, enough time to do that. It's outside their mission. It's a distraction. I assume you're just as outraged at GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 and have let your MP know about it? https://www.mi5.gov....q/mi5-or-mi6.aspx <sigh> What I find outrageous is that we have people in Congress who have helped destroy the world economy, and that continue to fight sensible policies to lessen the suffering of people, and that refuse to work on the important problems that are facing our nation and the planet. This NSA-outrage stuff is small beans. FWIW. Cheers, Scott.
Post #384,374 by pwhysall 12/18/13 1:08:24 PM Reply	Scott, here's how they get around all that THEY LIE. They lie like a cheap rug, all the time, about everything. Clapper lied to Congress, and nothing happened. I don't know how you can possibly trust anything they say. If the director of the NSA said that the sun will rise tomorrow morning, I'd get a second opinion.
Post #384,380 by drook 12/18/13 1:35:05 PM Reply	That argument I'm sympathetic to What I find outrageous is that we have people in Congress who have helped destroy the world economy, and that continue to fight sensible policies to lessen the suffering of people, and that refuse to work on the important problems that are facing our nation and the planet. This NSA-outrage stuff is small beans. The sudden outrage by the same people who passed all this stuff, now that it's being used by a secret Muslim atheist Marxist socialist Nazi is almost enough to get me to totally discount it. Almost. -- Drew
Post #384,381 by Another Scott 12/18/13 1:36:38 PM Reply	:-)
Post #384,376 by a6l6e6x 12/18/13 1:14:58 PM Reply	Meanwhile, in 1941, the Brits in Bermuda... Miss Gardner was part of a small team of examiners who secretly went through mail that came in diplomatic pouches. The team were experts at what they termed ÂchamferingÂ. They could steam open letters, usually with a little kettle, and reseal them. They could also unwrap packages encased in a web of twine, examine the contents, and then put everything back as though the contents were never disturbed. http://www.royalgaze...SLAND01/710049995 As mentioned in the reference, USA after entering the war, took over examining all transatlantic mail. Hey, it's not on US soil! I got to see some pictures of this operation on a cruise to Bermuda. Alex

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