
NSA tracking cellphone locations worldwide, Snowden documents show (2013) - randomname2
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-tracking-cellphone-locations-worldwide-snowden-documents-show/2013/12/04/5492873a-5cf2-11e3-bc56-c6ca94801fac_story.html
======
datamoshr
The thing that bothers me most about this as a European is; I have zero say in
this, in the US you can strike out against surveillance, you can write to
senators, protest against terrible legislation. Actually have a voice, however
faint it is. Whereas I don't get a say but the exact same treatment from your
country. The Five Eyes have made me paranoid and the only escape seems to be
downgrading your phone to a brick and carrying it in a Faraday cage. We may as
well just go back to plain old telephones.

~~~
coroutines
I was happy to see the disgust people had for the CIA black sites operated in
other countries when that came to light during the Bush presidency. Not
because of the torture, but because people here expected alleged terrorists to
have the same rights as detained American citizens. I feel this is important
to note, because we have a large population of young voters who I feel have
concern for everyone - not just the US. This is very different from how my
grandparents vote and I do think it's split along generational lines. In
regards to overreaching surveillance: It's not ideal, but we over here do
think of you when we vote.. I do.

~~~
blockross
unfortunately you're part of a minority. The mere fact that the election will
happen between Clinton and Trump makes me think that mass surveillance and
lack of respect for other countries are going to continue and probably worsen.

Clinton: [http://time.com/4150694/hillary-clinton-calls-for-more-
surve...](http://time.com/4150694/hillary-clinton-calls-for-more-surveillance-
to-fight-terror/)

Trump (not that it's really necessary): [http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-
box/presidential-races/26167...](http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-
box/presidential-races/261673-trump-sides-with-rubio-over-cruz-in-nsa-
surveillance)

~~~
Mtinie
I'm hesitant to consider the next presidential election's results as a
harbinger of the state of politics during the 2020 or 2024 races.

The Baby Boomer generation's influence is waning and I'm optimistic that the
next generations who did not grow up in a period of extreme mutual distrust
like we saw post-WW2 and during the Cold War will be better suited to lead.

It's going to take us, as a global group of people on the planet, a long time
to unwind a lot of the hawkish and nationalist policies that have evolved over
the past 150 years. Certainly there will be periods where charismatic leaders
with latent agendas drag us backwards and temper the progress, but ultimately
if each successive generation is even just a bit more inclusive and globally
considerate than the last, we'll find a way to make this work.

~~~
talmand
That sounds nice. It won't happen, but it sounds nice.

Every generation has felt they could do things better than the previous (old
people shouldn't be allowed to vote has been stated lately), until they learn
what it was the previous generation had to deal with. The mutual distrust
among certain parties do go away after time, look at all the countries that
were at war in WW2 that are now allies. But there is always somebody that
jumps in to take advantage of the newfound peace and harmony to further their
agenda. Sometimes it leads to a return of mistrust, sometimes it leads to war.

What you are describing is every agency of authority agreeing with each other
across numerous nation-states, economies, cultures, and more. Some of which
are directly opposed to each other, possibly violently.

The human race is simply not ready for that level of cooperation and will not
for a very long time. Losing sight of that will only lead to hardship and
suffering. Likely the only way for such a thing to happen is for it to be
forced among people with violence. Then that status maintained for multiple
generations until the old ways have been forgotten.

But your way is a nice thought and should be attempted at least.

~~~
dmix
> old people shouldn't be allowed to vote has been stated lately

Really? I'd be interested to see a source on that. Not questioning the
validity, I so many of these college aged kids calling for restrictions on
speech and political organization of people they disagree with. I'm not
surprised that this would come up.

Looks like we can expect a mommy-state as much as we can expect a
liberalization of out-dated baby boomer policies.

~~~
talmand
I've seen it in connection with the Britain leaving the EU vote.

I wasn't implying I've seen it here, so I hope it didn't come across that way.

------
cdevs
Man I will forever be grateful for the eye opening insights Snowden has
provided to us. I now check for https and use tor and always block cookies.
How is there not a monument in every city dedicated to this hero?

~~~
toomanythings2
So you think using any of that protects you from the Chinese, KGB, etc.? Did
you forget to block localStorage, too?

~~~
peterkelly
The KGB ceased to exist in 1991 with the break-up of the Soviet Union, a full
three years before HTTPS was invented.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KGB](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KGB)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTPS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTPS)

~~~
toomanythings2
Has nothing to do with my point. Quit pretending the Russians don't have a spy
agency.

~~~
zymhan
Maybe if you're trying to make a point about spy agencies, you should learn
what they're called first.

------
jacquesm
How would America respond if it found out that say the UK is tracking
cellphones worldwide, except for British subjects of course, but including all
Americans on American soil?

~~~
themartorana
They probably are, so the NSA can request such data from them if they need it.

[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/01/nsa-paid-
gch...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/01/nsa-paid-gchq-spying-
edward-snowden)

[https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-cables-
secre...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-cables-secret-world-
communications-nsa)

And so on.

------
schoen
Apart from the political conversation I've always tried to encourage a
technical conversation about how our mobile phone infrastructure is _really
terrible for privacy_ on many levels.

CCC events have had many presentations about this in the last few years, about
IMSI catchers and mobile crypto attacks and abusing roaming mechanisms and
databases. And it seems there's more where that came from; the system is wide
open in many respects to exploitation by a sophisticated attacker,
governmental or not. (I read somewhere that people in China are buying and
deploying IMSI catchers in order to send SMS spam to passersby.)

Some of the privacy problems are a result of economic factors including
backwards compatibility and international compatibility goals. Some of the bad
decisions for privacy were made by or at the behest of intelligence agencies,
and some of those decisions _are continuing to be made_ in standards bodies
that deal with mobile communications security. Ross Anderson described some
spy agency influence in early GSM crypto conversations (which is one reason
A5/1 is so weak), and it's still happening at ETSI now.

I support political criticism of surveillance activities, but at moments when
people feel overwhelmed and powerless, there is another front, which is trying
to clean up the security posture of mobile communications infrastructure, or
provide better alternatives to it.

We can find lots of reasons why this is hard ("Bellhead" communities are much
less ideologically committed to privacy and opposed to surveillance;
communications infrastructure is highly regulated in many places, and it's
hard to get access to radiofrequency spectrum; people want worldwide
compatibility; there's a huge installed base on both the client and server
sides; many of the infrastructure providers around the world are directly
beneficially owned by governments; spy agencies do actively try to influence
standards-setting in this area, plus sabotaging implementations and stealing
private key material) and it's probably going to stay hard. But maybe some of
the people reading this are going to some day be tech billionaires or working
in or running companies that have significant influence in the
telecommunications space, and be in a position to personally make future
generations of communication technology take privacy and security seriously.

------
bnastic
> The NSA cannot know in advance which tiny fraction of 1 percent of the
> records it may need, so it collects and keeps as many as it can — 27
> terabytes [...] The location programs have brought in such volumes of
> information, according to a May 2012 internal NSA briefing, that they are
> “outpacing our ability to ingest, process and store” data

27TB doesn't sound much, even by 2012 standards. The article doesn't specify
if this is the total size, just the delta over some period of time, or
something entirely different? Certainly not something NSA would "struggle to
ingest"?

~~~
advisedwang
Well if each (lat,lon,cell#,imei) record takes, say, 500 bytes and they take a
measurement every minute, 27TB is enough to record every American for 4
months. That's pretty hefty surveillance even if the raw size doesn't impress.

~~~
bnastic
I don't dispute that, but instead the tone of the article that makes it sound
as if it's such a huge quantity of data that NSA is struggling (or was
struggling) to capture it all.

~~~
brokenmachine
I agree that 27Tb doesn't sound too big for the NSA, but perhaps they are
doing very deep and involved "processing" on the data, making the output size
orders of magnitude larger than the input size.

Better give them more budget, then they will be able to handle all the data!

------
exabrial
Okay I hate to be the one to break the news to everybody here, but if you have
a GSM phone this is quite trivial to do.

The NSA hasn't done anything groundbreaking here, except maybe a Google
search.

~~~
throwanem
A measured reaction? Good God! We can't have _that_.

~~~
exabrial
Sorry to disapoint. Please resume panic

------
ffggvv
This shows clearly that Putin is a dictator, that China is communist and that
the USA spys the entire world to protect its citizens freedom. /s

~~~
meric
The "communist country" has a capitalist economy.

The "free country" has total electronic surveillance.

The "federation" is run like an empire in a dictator-like fashion.

And north korea, the "democratic republic", is the most oppressive regime in
the world.

What a world we live in.

~~~
tonyjstark
Seems like labels are not always telling the truth. It's a bit like in the
supermarket, if something is called 'Premium' it's often nothing like that.

------
bicubic
I'm on mobile and don't have any links handy, but it's fairly well known that
you can ostensibly track every. single. handset. in the world if you can gain
access to any one carrier's infrastructure. You can bet every spy agency from
every country is doing this.

~~~
Zigurd
To get a feeling for the size of the problem, the carrier logs all handset
accesses on all transceivers. To do location tracking you have to get the
carrier to give you access to those logs and you have to have the storage and
processing to get finer-grained location based on overlapping transceiver
accesses and precise times. It's a bit more than the carrier themselves would
do for network quality monitoring, but not even 10X more. With this data your
daily routine and divergence from that routine can be learned and detected.
With this plus payment information, you've got enough to tell who is doing
something interesting in real time.

------
furyg3
If Americans (of which I am one) and the US government believe that it is
self-evident that all men are created equal, then surely they should apply the
principles that they have enshrined in their constitution to all equals when
dealing with them, regardless of whether or not they are a US Citizen or where
on earth they are.

~~~
Practicality
I think a good number of us do and a good number do not. There is a world
divide right now and you may have laid your finger on what the difference is.
Ironically, those who believe all men are created equal are loathe to divide
from the rest, so it's an awkward divide.

------
jefe_
Not long ago you could buy SIM cards from kioskos, corner stores, etc. This is
becoming increasingly rare, even in places with otherwise poor infrastructure.
The shift was rapid but noticeable.

~~~
tonylemesmer
As soon as you start using them, that's when you become an interesting
subject.

------
progx
And why we still have terrorists?

~~~
Zigurd
Because terrorists establish normal-seeming patterns of movement that do not
diverge from that pattern until it is too late.

Whereas if you take some time off from work to attend a protest, the FBI knows
to come knocking on your door to ask pointed questions about your friends.

That's what's pernicious about these programs. They're not good enough to
focus on terrorists, but there is plenty of fodder for harassment of
protesters.

~~~
nacs
Also I'm thinking they don't use smartphones that leak all kinds of other data
and instead cycle thorugh simple, cheap/pre-paid, disposable phones which
would make establishing long-term patterns more difficult.

------
cryoshon
they are tracking our every single movement, and aspire to track our every
single thought

we have a duty to resist this totalitarianism by any means possible or
necessary; fascism is here, and free men can't delude themselves with hoping
for gradual change to the contrary any further.

~~~
toomanythings2
How many government employees does it take to track and analyze my every
movement?

~~~
JChase2
A couple of engineers, depending on the situation.

------
mouzogu
So now they can detect the location of the "target" and send a drone to kill
them from the convenience of their office, before going on lunch break.

This really sickens me. They are inferring so much and therefore many innocent
people are and will suffer.

To me this system is pure evil however much the nsa try to sugar coat or spin
it. Who gave them the right to do this, to track people around the world and
in many cases perform extra judicial assassinations.

~~~
benevol
> Who gave them the right to do this

Before Snowden, themselves.

After Snowden, the silent citizens/voters that we are did (and continue to
do).

------
tmaly
I am really amazed that more people are not outraged at this. When things like
the Pentagon Papers came out or when Watergate hit the news, people reacted
and change happened.

Today everything gets buried in a sea of noise and entertainment. Long term
this cannot be good for the general health and welfare of society to not
ponder on and discuss.

------
mSparks
I wonder if they manage to track my cell phone more accurately than my cell
phone manages to track itself.

My phone rarely seems to be sure what country it is in, let alone which town.

Simply lost count of the number of times I've been like, "yeah, I'm sure the
weather is lovely where I was a week ago, but I'm more interested in where I
am now".

Must be quite depressing for the NSA analysts stuck in their cubical watching
people run around the world having fun while they stuff another donut down
their fat american face.

~~~
throwanem
Actually, most of the smartest people I've ever known have worked for NSA, in
both analytical and other capacities. Some of the fittest, too, for "does
century rides on the weekends for fun" values of "fit".

------
anonbanker
..And people ask me why I don't have a cellphone in 2016.

------
kseistrup
Please edit the title to reflect the fact that the article is dated December
2013.

------
duncan_bayne
Well, in fairness, that's actually more aligned with their actual mission, not
to mention legal under American law.

This isn't great news as a non-American but from their perspective, surely
this is just the NSA doing their job?

~~~
NietTim
Right, so fuck the US even more.

