
Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen - gasull
http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/hope-9-whistleblower-binney-says-nsa-has-dossiers-nearly-every-us-citizen
======
kitsune_
Switzerland had a huge surveillance scandal during the 80's. It was named
"Fichenskandal" or in English, "Secret files scandal".

More than 700'000 people or organizations were targeted, usually people on the
left: unions, feminists, environmentalists etc.

A friend of my father runs an independent book store and he requested his
files after the scandal was made public. He received a stack of paper over 10
inches high. The government pretty much had every part of his life on file.
From mundane stuff to him participating in demonstrations (protesting for
women's suffrage * , environmental issues). This is a guy who was never
arrested in his life. Yet they had a record of pretty much everything.

This was in a time with limited technological capabilities.

In the 70's, the police probably took photographs of public gatherings and
sent them to a special group which in turn had to identify the participants
with the help of a magnifying glass and reference files.

Nowadays with have facial recognition techniques, cameras everywhere. Yes,
this is some Public Enemy No. 1 shit, but it's a good time to be paranoid.

You can be sure that every form of electronic communication is in some form or
another under surveillance by governments around the globe.

* Switzerland finally allowed women to vote in... drum roll... 1971.

~~~
mtgx
Is there a good reason for any country to have spies at all, especially for
internal matters?

I feel that spying on other countries (let alone on own citizens) shouldn't
exist at all, but it has become accepted by societies as something that the
Governments just have to do, to "make their job easier", just like even FBI
said recently that they'd prefer if they didn't need to get warrants, because
it would make their job easier. Having a democracy and rights for people must
be really tough on authorities, or at least that's how they sound.

~~~
kennon
I'm curious why you think international spying is unnecessary. Until countries
cease to compete for limited resources, it seems to me like an inevitability.

~~~
DanI-S
Why should it be considered morally acceptable by those who vote? When have we
had the opportunity to vote on it?

~~~
kennon
I understood mtgx's question to be based on practical grounds, not moral ones.
But in answer to your question, I think of espionage as something akin to the
military. Perhaps in an ideal world neither would be necessary, but
unfortunately the world is not a utopia.

Thus, from a realistic standpoint, spying is sort of like doing market
research for a startup. It allows you to make predictive decisions instead of
reactive ones.

~~~
KaoruAoiShiho
I agree with international spying. If the other countries don't allow you that
information, you must spy to get that information. A scenario of nations
having bad or inaccurate information about other countries, their status and
their intentions can make the world a more dangerous place.

However domestic spying seems kind of silly. You should just be able to
collect the information you need voluntarily through census and and surveys,
without resorting to spying. If they refuse to provide the information, get a
warrant.

------
bobsy
If this is true doesn't it mean that Bin Laden won the war on terror?

Every time I go to the airport I think this. Those full body scanners? Thanks
to Bin Laden, now you practically get strip searched for every flight. You
have to take off your shoes. You cannot take drinks on a plane.

You then have everyone on edge no matter where you go. You and a friend play
CounterStrike. You get on the bus and start talking about good locations to
plant the bomb. You will probably be wrestled to the floor by some over-
zealous commuter.

It doesn't surprise me if this is true. The US attitude to privacy and civil
rights have been becoming more like China's every year since 2001.

~~~
kamaal
Muslim here.

I never understood both sides and their actions. I mean I find both Islamic
fundamentalism and American actions all round globe both equally dumb.

I don't think OBL ever had it as an explicit aim to pull down US militarily or
culturally transform US into a Islamic state. That is impossible, and I assume
somebody like him already understood that. I guess his aim was to drag US into
a war and then reduce them to a state USSR, now russia was in 1990 post
Afghanistan war. Long wars benefit nobody. They are a huge drain on man power,
economy and morale of a nation. Its actually surprising that US fell for it. I
was expecting more of a Intelligence based response where the CIA would hunt
him down and kill him, instead of wasting trillions dollars.

On the other hand. Afghans seem to be very stubborn people. They don't give up
easily no matter how shitty state they are in. Its just in their blood and
culture to not accept foreign occupation over them. Even the British that had
the entire Indian subcontinent under them couldn't conquer them. In the recent
history alone, every body knows what has happened of USSR after going there.
So no matter how bad the Taliban is, they still consider them as their own
country men compared to Americans who actually released them from their
bondage.

As a moderate muslim, I feel bad every time I'm pulled up for an ideology
which I have nothing to do with. I've been a subject of religious
discrimination many times since 911. I've been asked to come for extra rounds
for job interviews, pulled up separately and checked at building security
points, had troubles to open bank accounts, asked to delay visa filing for
visiting abroad etc innumerable number of times. I feel having an arabicized
name a huge liability to carry, a kind of burden for which you have to pay no
matter even if you have nothing to do with their ideology.

On the other hand I see so much turmoil in the west, due to the war ordinary
people like me having to pay for no mistake of theirs. Wars, economics crisis
etc.

When I look at all this, I can't help but wonder that perpetrators of these
crimes actually won.

~~~
euroclydon
_Its actually surprising that US fell for it._

Yep. Bush would have been a hero if he hadn't fallen for it. Compassionate
conservatism, expressed in Medicare Part C. Tax cuts combined with modest
military expansion would have held the deficit in check.

But remember the pundits saying, "this one calles for boots on the ground"?
Even Jon Stewart showed a clip of Bush or someone making a compassionate
statement, and commented "you're killing my blood lust." And he meant it!

I don't guess Clinton wouldn't have fallen for it -- he didn't during all of
OBL's significant attacks in the 90's.

~~~
Tloewald
I think the invasion of Afghanistan was inevitable, but not Iraq. Afghanistan
was a big mistake (even Rthe USSR, with a land border, couldnt handle it) but
Iraq was worse and bizarre.

~~~
accountswu
>I think the invasion of Afghanistan was inevitable

Inevitable as in "in response to 9/11"? I don't think so, it was planned
months, if not years before September 2001. [edit, corrected typo to 2001]

<http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/nov2001/afgh-n20.shtml>

US planned war in Afghanistan long before September 11 By Patrick Martin 20
November 2001

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1550366.stm>

Tuesday, 18 September, 2001, 11:27 GMT 12:27 UK US 'planned attack on Taleban'

A former Pakistani diplomat has told the BBC that the US was planning military
action against Osama Bin Laden and the Taleban even before last week's
attacks.

Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American
officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead
by the middle of October.

<http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26410.htm> U.S. government
documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and recently
posted on the website of the George Washington University National Security
Archive shed some additional light on talks with the Taliban prior to the
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, including with regard to the repeated
Taliban offers to hand over Osama bin Laden, and the role of Pakistan before
and after the attacks.[1] ... It is already known that the U.S. had demanded
in secret discussions with the Taliban that bin Laden be handed over for more
than three years prior to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The
talks continued “until just days before” the attacks, according to a
Washington Post report the month following the attacks. But a compromise
solution such as the above that would offer the Taliban a face-saving way out
of the impasse was never seriously considered. Instead, “State Department
officials refused to soften their demand that bin Laden face trial in the U.S.
justice system.”

[http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=80482&page=...](http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=80482&page=1)

U.S. Rejects New Taliban Offer Oct. 1 [2001]

The United States today rejected yet another offer by Afghanistan's ruling
Taliban to turn over Osama bin Laden for trial in a third country if the U.S.
presents evidence against bin Laden and stops air attacks. ... "There's no
need to discuss it," Bush said. "We know he's guilty. Just turn him over. …
There's nothing to negotiate about. They're harboring a terrorist and they
need to turn him over."

Couldn't Osama claim that he knew there were criminals in those buildings that
he attacked and that there is nothing to negotiate about?

~~~
snowwrestler
This is largely hindsight bias--because we did go to war with Afghanistan in
response to 9/11, you look back at planning prior to 9/11 and perceive it as
proof that war with Afghanistan was inevitable.

Prior planning is not proof of future action. For instance the U.S. spent
decades planning in great detail how to go to war with the USSR, but we never
did it.

Put another way--every war-like situation the U.S. has ever entered was pre-
planned to some extent. But we also planned for a great many wars that never
happened.

------
hooande
About ten years ago, the NSA got direct access to every phone call, text and
email sent via AT&T from the west coast to asia. Every. Single. Message. Set
up shop next to the servers and just copied all of the data coming across.

I think that by "dossiers" this guy meant "social network information from
communication logs". They can start with your number (any number) and see who
communicates with it. And then see who communicates with those people, and so
on until they find a link to a terrorist or whatever.

If you're doing something that the government doesn't want you to do, use a
burner phone. And drive 30 minutes from your home, and use a proxy server to
connect to the internet. Any federal agent can get a record of every call you
make with a boilerplate warrant. The NSA can dig up the full text of all of
your conversations with a tech support ticket. Welcome to 2012.

If it makes you feel any better, facebook has a similar level of information
about you and they haven't done much harm with it.

~~~
nl
_And drive 30 minutes from your home, and use a proxy server to connect to the
internet_

I'd _love_ to hear some details of what you are proposing here. Because right
now it doesn't sound like you know what you are talking about.

 _If it makes you feel any better, facebook has a similar level of information
about you and they haven't done much harm with it._

Um. No they don't.

~~~
tristanj
On your second point, here's incomplete list of data that facebook stores
about its users. Note that they keep all wall posts, messages, tags, and
photos _even after the user deletes it from his profile_

<http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/Data_Pool/data_pool.html>

Of course, they won't have any of your data if you don't have an account,
which might be what you're trying to get at.

~~~
T-hawk
_> Of course, they won't have any of your data if you don't have an account_

Facebook can indeed. Your name even without an account can be tagged into
photos and status updates by other users. Those photos contain location data.
And of course the accounts of other users in the same photo as you contain a
wealth of data about their locations and interests and one-degree-further
friends, statistically speaking much of which will also apply to you.

Whether Facebook has the ability to automatically aggregate such sparse data
into something useful is an open question, but the data does exist. Unless you
somehow never let yourself get photographed or mentioned by anybody else who
does use Facebook.

------
chao-
Speaking as a youngin' who grew up with the internet (US citizen and just now
24), I've never expected any privacy for as long as I can remember. Of any
sort. Only an odd sense of my insignificance providing a minor smokescreen. I
accept that if I ever obtained any real notoriety, all would be laid bare in
due course.

When I read articles like this, I don't wonder if anyone is surprised by these
things anymore. I would hope it's understood. My mind instead turns to these
questions:

 _"Who out there expects some eventual return of privacy?"_ and _"What degree
of effort do they expect it to require, relative to what they gain?"_ Surely
at some point it is not worth the time/effort to reform "the system", and
personal mitigation strategies are more feasible.

I rarely find myself in the role of doomsayer, but I've never lived in a world
where the word "privacy" didn't already have an implicit asterisk following
it. So my stance doesn't feel apocalyptic, it just feels like the way the
world has always been.

~~~
javert
I'm probably about a year and a half older than you, a US citizen, and I don't
feel that way at all. The government used to not be spying on me. Then, in the
last decade, the chance that it would started to rise. In the last 5 years, it
became likely. Now, with this story, if it's true, we know that it's almost
certainly spying _on me_. (And to clarify, I'm not a criminal or anything
remotely criminal in any way, shape or form.)

Right now, spying on me.

Now, it may just be recording the info and looking for triggers. Wonder if
this post will be a trigger. It's definitely possible.

So there has been a massive ramp-up in unethical electronic spying, and unlike
you, I have (for some reason) been alert to it.

~~~
chao-
_The government used to not be spying on me... In the last 5 years, it became
likely._

I'm going to pick on the 5 years & 10 years estimate, if you don't mind.

If no one was spying on you then, it was because you were a child or teenager,
and presumably not very interesting. If you were someone of major consequence
five years ago (2007, to keep things in perspective), or even a decade ago
(2002), you'd surely have at least a minor notation, blurb or profile
somewhere. If our government wasted time and money tracking John Lennon in the
60's, it's hard to imagine that by 2007 there wasn't at least cursory analysis
available about anyone with a job and credit card. Never mind anyone who
attended college/university, purchased car insurance or signed up for a
grocery store rewards card.

Let me be clear: I'm _not_ saying the government is specifically tracking on
your grocery bill. Instead, you're letting someone else do so, and the data is
simply available upon request from most reasonable actors.

Further temporal perspective: Google had long gone public by 2007, and people
were long crying foul on privacy with respect to it. So the government may not
have even been the first to open some unbeknownst profile on you. It may have
just been some data aggregator who put your SSN, DoB and address up for sale
after your general practitioner's secretary got some malware (I'm being
hypothetical of course, but hopefully you understand the premise).

A counterpoint to my argument is that this is the government, not corporation
X or shady data reseller Y. I concede that there is a different feeling
associated with the government spying on you (with the assumption of
legality), and some third-party actor who maybe, some day, could be brought to
trial (we hope?).

Yet the practical result is the same: there are people building profiles of us
which we will never see, and judging how best to relate to us based on them.
They have been doing it for a lot longer than five years, and I don't see the
trend reversing any time soon. It doesn't really freak me out, either. In a
way, it just makes sense.

~~~
javert
_A counterpoint to my argument is that this is the government_

I think this is a much bigger deal than you do. Any government is always a
threat to you, because governments weild force, and the actors within
government can change rapidly.

A company that has your data is not a physical threat to you. (Unless the
government isn't doing its job - in which case disfunctional government is the
more fundamental problem.)

So, in summary, it is utterly unjustifiable for the NSA to spy on every
average American, whlie it is utterly justifiable for companies to collect
what data on you they manage to get their hands on.

By the way, it's not that nobody was spying on me 5 years ago because I was a
teenager. Nobody was spying on me then because _the government was not as
evil._ If I was a teenager now, or even a child, the government would be
spying on me today.

------
VikingCoder
Math is fun!

You can buy a 2 TB HD for $99.99 right now.

The population of the United States is 311,591,917.

That's 7057 bytes per citizen, for a penny under a Franklin.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare can be downloaded from Project
Gutenberg in EPUB format, in 2.3 MB.

Therefore, if you wanted to have William Shakespeare write as much text about
every single citizen in the United States, as he wrote in all of his Complete
Works, you would need 341.74 of those HDs.

Therefore, the raw storage would cost you $34,196.58.

The NSA's annual budget is around $3.6 billion.

Every year, the NSA could buy enough hard drive space to store 105,273 times
as much text as the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, on every single
U.S. citizen.

~~~
thereallurch
While you make a good point, your end number is wildly inaccurate.

1) I highly doubt the NSA is buying $100 dollar low grade hard drives. I bet
this data is backed up at least twice per site, at multiple sites.

2) The data is not unstructured, it will be structured in some sort of
database. Storing your facebook photos alone will be potentially hundreds of
megabytes.

3) I doubt NSA is spending it's entire budget every year on hard drives.

~~~
VikingCoder
Yes, that's why I quite carefully said, "Every year, the NSA COULD..."

Emphasis on the COULD. It's to emphasize how cheap storage is, and how
relatively few U.S. Citizens there are. In our day-to-day lives, we think 311
Million is an enormous number. But in the scale of computing, it's actually
quite small.

My real point is: storing the data is no longer a challenge. If you want
someone (businesses, governments, etc.) to not store data about every citizen
of the U.S., you need laws, regulations, and checks and balances.

------
locusm
I live in the Southern Hemisphere and like most 40 something year olds I
follow whats happening in the States from a distance. I've been reading and
watching a fair bit of Jacob Appelbaum and reading Glenn Greenwald's posts
which seem to be fair and well written. Democracy Now also does some
interesting interviews with Jacob and William Binney.

Some stuff I recommend to have a look at... in no particular order.

Challenging the Surveillance State - Pt. 1 to Pt.4
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VCTvs7UXa4>
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueDTOfEqey8&feature=relmf...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueDTOfEqey8&feature=relmfu)
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwm6VeYFdKM&feature=relmf...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwm6VeYFdKM&feature=relmfu)
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fao4Z8JooxY&feature=relmf...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fao4Z8JooxY&feature=relmfu)

[http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/exclusive_national_sec...](http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/exclusive_national_security_agency_whistleblower_william)

Jacob Appelbaum (Part 1 & 2) Digital Anti-Repression Workshop - April 26 2012
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHoJ9pQ0cn8&feature=relmf...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHoJ9pQ0cn8&feature=relmfu)
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9fByRmAHgU&feature=relmf...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9fByRmAHgU&feature=relmfu)

Glenn's Salon Posts <http://www.salon.com/writer/glenn_greenwald/>

------
jayfuerstenberg
Might I suggest having some fun with one's dossier?

Like randomly doing the exact opposite of what you would ordinarily do on a
daily basis. Here are some ideas...

1\. Take the bus instead of driving your car.

2\. Buy a pack of cigarettes if you're not a smoker.

3\. Buy magazines you would never normally buy.

4\. Attend a political meeting of the party you typically oppose.

5\. Buy vegetarian food for a week if you're a meat eater.

etc...

If the dossier is dry and not a useful tool for profiling you then you don't
have anything to worry about. If on the other hand the dossier is more
sinister in nature you can dilute its usefulness by being a different person
every now and then to throw it off track.

~~~
law
Apple has a patent on this.[1]

[1] [http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=8205265.PN.&OS=PN/8205265&RS=PN/8205265)

~~~
jayfuerstenberg
I wonder if the wiping techniques used to securely erase data from government
HDDs would count as prior art here.

------
waiwai933
Ethics, morality and legality aside, I'd be really curious to see what
information is actually stored in these "dossiers", besides (presumably) one's
name, address, and other details that other branches of the government
legitimately have.

~~~
tikhonj
Is that the sort of thing you can ask for with a FOIA request?

If you have some spare time it might be worth trying--it certainly couldn't
hurt. I'm not familiar enough with the actual procedure to say if it would be
particularly difficult or not.

~~~
waiwai933
Not really, unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, if one is speaking
practically and not philosophically, since I'd rather terrorists not know what
intelligence agencies have on them).

FOIA has an extensive list of exemptions, and pretty much anything relating to
do with national security is exempt from FOIA requests. And well, it's called
the National Security Agency for a reason; even though the information
probably isn't legitimately related to national security, can you prove that
it isn't, keeping in mind that you can't see it until you've proven that it's
not?

------
keithpeter
"Domestically, they're pulling together all the data about virtually every
U.S. citizen in the country and assembling that information, building
communities that you have relationships with, and knowledge about you; what
your activities are; what you're doing."

A plot for a novel: NSA operative comes across an identity with no links to
any other identity, no social network history. Just an isolated node...
curious, she starts investigating and finds all avenues blocked, and her boss
asks her to stop. Intrigued, Agent Hernandez continues on her own time...

~~~
lubujackson
Surprise ending, it is a "Forever Alone" guy.

------
fierarul
The NSA probably has "dossiers" on the whole world.

For example, in order to get an US Visa from the embassy they take your
fingerprints. Your visa form also has a lot of data. At least that has to be
centralized somewhere.

Add your online accounts to the mix and it's safe to say they have enough info
about everybody.

------
minikomi
Where's little bobby tables when you need him?

------
waterlesscloud
I'm sure these would never be used for political gain.

------
toomuchcoffee
_TL;DR_ \- The Committee is outraged that the NSA is developing expensive
software in house, rather than from Google or Oracle. But no one raises an
eyebrow at what that software is being used for domestically.

~~~
Create
they had to demonstrate, that they "gave up" in-house dev

<http://accumulo.apache.org/>

------
smokeyj
I wonder if MLK would exist if this were around 50 years ago.

~~~
mjwalshe
the FBI collected a lot of dirt on MLK - Hoover was obsesed

------
alan_cx
Remember people, its _you_ who are the real enemy of the state. Its you they
fear more than anything else.

------
treelovinhippie
I think soon people will realize that the only defense against this kind of
data collection (and it's subsequent uses - which grow more powerful everyday)
is to record your own life and know the same (if not more than) what
governments and corporations know about you.

~~~
boronine
How will that work as a defense?

~~~
treelovinhippie
Record your entire life (everything). Encrypt and store the data. Workout some
way for data scientists to anonymously and securely experiment on the data
such that privacy is maintained and the data remains in your control and
ownership.

The idea is that there are big companies out there now (including the
government) that have huge databases of information on you, and they've been
working hard for many years now in the background to find useful patterns in
the data in order to sell-to/manipulate/control you.

If you can do the same research with your own data, you can know in advance
(or catch-up to) what those companies already know about you. With that
knowledge, you could perhaps develop something like an anti-malware
application for "you".

So if sometime in the future, you begin seeing very targeted ads that begin
manipulating your purchasing behaviour or even manipulating your opinions and
thoughts... then the system could notice these attacks and warn you (because
it knows your data, your interests and your weaknesses).

The end-game of what these companies are doing is to have so much data on
individuals (and the distribution channels), that they are able to subtly
manipulate and program their minds without the individual even noticing.

If you know the algorithms they've discovered within your data, you can
protect your mind.

Anyway, that's just one advantage. I'm working on a startup now that does
this.

------
saraid216
Out of curiosity, how many other people had the gut reaction of, "Awesome! I
have a dossier!"

~~~
javert
I would like to ask them my hair color, because it's a weird color and I
honestly don't know what it is.

------
tomjen3
This is going to be embarasing the next time there is a major terror attack
(hopefully it won't happen, but statistically it is likely eventually) when it
turns out that they had the data on everybody but somehow didn't act on it.

~~~
ams6110
It's far easier, _after you know what happened_ , to go back to the data and
"connect the dots" to claim it should have been foreseen and acted upon. But
beforehand, the dots could have been connected in any number of permutations
and paths, so it becomes impossible to act on every possibility that can be
forecast in advance.

~~~
tomjen3
Which will properly be their excuse too. Won't stop them from being flayed in
the media.

------
Freestyler_3
Just lifting the curtain will hopefully be enough, if you really need to say
anything after doing that...

We are sitting in the theater and the curtains are closed, we are reading the
program. The program says "It's okay, nothing is happening behind the
curtain." After everyone read their program 99% of the crowd leaves because
they think they know enough. Then that 1% is eagerly waiting to see the show.
And there are a few people trying to sabotage the place and open the curtains
so that the people can see the show. Those curtains are not going to open
themselves.

------
jakeonthemove
Why is this a surprise to anyone? Governments will always want to have as much
info as possible on anyone, especially their own citizens, and the US has been
number 1 for a long time.

With Facebook, Twitter and face recognition, privacy is truly dead. Heck, even
from public records you can get a lot of information about anyone, and if you
have their SSN, you can increase that to a metric sheet ton. Any database and
method of communication can be easily tapped for surveillance, too, so if they
really want you, they're gonna get you.

------
ck2
If this is true, the NSA knows which of every cop is dirty in the country
because they have full access to financial, voice and email records.

And doesn't do anything about it.

------
beedogs
I really fucking hate the right wing and its authoritarian ideology. It's like
there are two separate and distinct species of people on this planet: those
with empathy and compassion for their fellow man, and these kinds of assholes
who just want nothing but control.

It's one of the reasons I got out of the US. My worry is I won't be allowed to
return one day.

~~~
3pt14159
This isn't about the left wing or the right wing, it's the authoritarian wing.
Jeff Flake, Ron Paul, Justin Amish, Gary Johnson, Rand Paul are all right wing
and don't want to see you under the eye or chain.

On the authoritarian left, we have Obama:

\- Ordered the killing of US citizens with no due process.

\- Signed the National Defence Authorization Act, so now any American, at home
or abroad, can be locked up with no trial at Guantanamo.

Many other examples. Not all the right is authoritarian and not all
authoritarians are right.

~~~
beedogs
I consider Obama right-wing. He's only left-wing compared to other American
politicians, and he's really not all _that_ left-wing even then.

------
bhaile
From the article: "In the short video interview, Binney explained a bit more
about the NSA spying on Americans: "Domestically, they're pulling together all
the data about virtually every U.S. citizen in the country and assembling that
information, building communities that you have relationships with, and
knowledge about you; what your activities are; what you're doing. So the
government is accumulating that kind of information about every individual
person and it's a very dangerous process.""

I imagine this is where Palantir is being used. About building the connections
through large data sets on the science of ontology.

------
aidenn0
Bishop: Ah. You're the guys I hear breathing on the other end of my phone.
Dick Gordon: No, that's the FBI. We're not chartered for domestic
surveillance. Bishop: Oh, I see. You just overthrow governments. Set up
friendly dictators. Dick Gordon: No, that's the CIA. We protect our
government's communications, we try to break the other fella's codes. We're
the good guys, Marty. Bishop: Gee, I can't tell you what a relief that
is...Dick.

------
dean
When I was in school, there was a girl in one of my classes who highlighted
every line of every page in the textbook. I told her that highlighting every
page was the same as highlighting no pages. You end up with undifferentiated
information. You're no further ahead than when you started.

In the same way, the NSA having a dossier on everyone is the same as them
having a dossier on no one.

------
rglover
I've always assumed when talking online, over the phone, wherever, that even
if they (this is ambiguously referencing the government as a whole) weren't at
that moment: someone _could_ listen in if they wanted to. It's surprising to
think that people still believe in the existence of total privacy (albeit any
form of privacy).

------
gregcmartin
Yeah it's called Facebook

~~~
david927
CIA's Facebook Program Dramatically Cuts Agency's Costs [The Onion]:

[http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-
dramatic...](http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-
cut-agencys-cos,19753)

------
elorant
If they have records for every US citizen, they'd probably have records also
for anyone visiting the country.

------
bfung
If this were true, we wouldn't really need to conduct the census
(<http://www.census.gov/>), right?

Perhaps the NSA has tools like pipl or spokeo to build dossiers, but not that
it has every person on file, right now.

------
lwhi
I suppose a Facebook profile could correspond to 'dossier' in most senses of
the word.

------
antidoh
I'm beginning to believe that all governments and their security/intelligence
forces tend toward a Stazi mean.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stazi>

------
BlackNapoleon
In-Q-Tel was one of the first investors in Google anyways

------
locusm
My Binney delivered a keynote at Hope9 too recently

<http://privacysos.org/node/759>

------
guscost
For the record, I'd be surprised if mine is less than five years old.

------
twoodfin
Everyone in this thread seems to miss the fact that if the NSA were
deliberately keeping files on communications _between Americans in America_
that would be a really big deal. But AFAIK, no one in a position to know
anything has even alleged this.

------
mariuolo
Anyone surprised?

------
rorrr
Well of course they do. I would be really surprised if they didn't.

That's why we should ENCRYPT EVERYTHING possible. Use HTTPS as much as you
can.

~~~
WestCoastJustin
I have a question about this -- maybe I'm ignorant. But using https without
self-signed keys actually allows the government to peer into your
communications, doesn't it? We are worried about third parties stealing your
data between you and your bank for example. A bank might be a bad example as
they probably already have access to their databases for compliance reasons.
Can't the US government ask for the keys of these US based certificate
authorities?

My point being is that https is probably equivalent to plain text when it
comes to government surveillance.

~~~
tlrobinson
They don't even need to ask for the keys.

Pretty much every OS/browser comes with root CAs belonging to the U.S.
government (on OS X I see "DoD Root CA 2" and "DoD CLASS 3 Root CA", see also
<http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4415>). As I understand it, if they wanted to,
they could MITM any HTTPS connection by forging a certificate using their root
CAs.

This is why people were upset when a root CA for some Chinese government
agency was added to certain browsers. We don't trust the Chinese government,
but we do trust the US government, I guess.

Of course, if they regularly forged certificates someone would notice. Right?

Which begs the question, _how_ would we notice? If you diligently check
certificates for sites you visit you might happen to notice facebook.com's CA
suddenly changes from Verisign to the U.S. DoD.

Is there a better way? How can we automatically check that the certificates we
get are legitimate?

At a minimum it would be nice if there was a warning when a cert doesn't match
a previously seen one (similar to SSH)

I feel like a "web of trust" needs to be layered on top of the certificate
authorities to really solve this problem. If 10 of my friends have seen the
same certificate for a given website I'm inclined to believe it's legitimate.
I'm also likely to trust certain organizations (EFF, etc)

Of course it's also a user interface issue. The average user wouldn't
understand a single sentence I wrote above.

~~~
gasull
Try Perspectives addon:

<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/perspectives/>

~~~
chokma
And Certificate Patrol:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
us/firefox/addon/certificate-p...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
us/firefox/addon/certificate-patrol/)

~~~
tlrobinson
Thanks. Is anyone aware of something like this for Chrome?

------
mjwalshe
Depends what you mean by dossier I am sure the NSA has a definative list of
all Us residents names and SSN's but thats not a dossier in the same way That
the FBI under hover had about anyone even sligtly progressive.

Id be more worried by the fact the in the USA its common practice to register
with the govenment what political party you support.

~~~
saryant
Registering your political party is a state thing, not federal. Nor does every
state require it. My state, Texas, does not.

You can see all the information asked for when registering to vote here:

<https://webservices.sos.state.tx.us/vrapp/index.asp>

~~~
mjwalshe
So I am registering with "local" govenment FFS that is even worse at least at
the national level there is some oversight and Journalists holding teh
executive to account.

~~~
saryant
I have a pretty dim outlook on the state of civil rights in this country but I
think you're going too far. States which ask for this information do so in
order to give you your party's ballot during primary elections.

I think you're reading too much into this one. The fact that not every state
asks should also point to a lack of any grand conspiriacy here.

~~~
politician
Statistically speaking, you give up your right to vote anonymously by
registering your political party with the state in return for the convenience
of getting one of two ballots instead of both.

"There are two ballots here which one am I interested in again? Better ask the
State which one I registered for.." Seems like a stretch.

------
snambi
Sure, they have all data about someone. But, what is the use? It is like
searching a needle in a haystack.

~~~
dredmorbius
""If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I
would find something in them to have him hanged."

\- Cardinal Richelieu

~~~
dman
What if every sentence began with - "Hypothetically speaking"

~~~
dredmorbius
Hypothetically speaking, I think the good Cardinal would say "Frankly, my
dear, I don't give a damn."

