
The NSA is turning the Internet into a total surveillance system - northwest
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/11/nsa-internet-surveillance-email
======
DanBC
They have huge amounts of data. This is good, because now people can analyse
it and see how effective the measures are. Spending all that money must have
some tangible, measurable, benefit, right? So, show us. Show us how many
people have been caught as a result of all this monitoring.

I don't think the results are going to be impressive. See, for another
example, the fingerprint collection at US airports.

> _Collect it all_

I wonder how many Americans know about the scheme to collect at airports the
fingerprints of visitors to the US?

Here's an article from 2008 ([http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/03/25/us-
security-finger...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/03/25/us-security-
fingerprints-idUSN2538685320080325)), submitted to HN here
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6196375](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6196375))

> The U.S. government has been collecting digital fingerprints and photographs
> of nearly all non-citizens aged 14 and up entering the country since 2004,
> officials said, in a Homeland Security program called US-VISIT, at a cost of
> $1.7 billion.

> [...] On an average day, almost 14,400 international visitors undergo the
> fingerprinting process at Kennedy, officials said.

> More than 2,000 criminal and visa fraud cases have been detected by the
> screening process, introduced in response to security concerns following the
> attacks of September 11, 2001, U.S. officials said.

Roughly they've scanned fingerprints for 36,792,000 visitors (who may be
repeat visitors), and caught more than 2,000 people. (Between 2001/9/11 and
2008/9/11.)

~~~
gadders
TBH I wished the UK fingerprinted all visitors to the UK as well. Might help
with illegal immigration.

~~~
mikecsh
Upvoted because I don't see why you should be downvoted for expressing an
opinion, people should engage you via the comments instead. I see your point,
but I disagree with the wholesale collection of fingerprints.

~~~
DanBC
I'm guessing he was downvoted for the weirdness: Fingerprinting people flying
into New York airports on holiday does nothing to prevent people illegally
crossing the Mexican / American border.

~~~
Ntrails
Most illegal immigrants enter the UK conventionally and then do not leave when
visas expire. There are certainly some hiding in the back of lorries etc - but
it's not the majority.

So fingerprinting them means for sure that we know they came in. I'm not sure
what that achieves though?

~~~
rjsw
It would remove the current Catch-22 situation where they can be shown to be
here illegally but can't be deported due to lack of a passport indicating
their country of origin.

I don't know whether the problem is big enough to warrant this step though.

------
dubs99
I wish the headlines of these articles would read "The American Government is
turning the Internet into a total surveillance system".

Although it seems the government has no control over the NSA or even know what
they're up too, it would be good to see the focus of this problem turned to
the policy makers.

~~~
ErsatzVerkehr
Also, Google and Facebook are turning the Internet into a total surveillance
system.

~~~
w_t_payne
We, through our own behaviour, are turning the _World_ into a total
surveillance system.

~~~
alan_cx
Are you a terrorist?

~~~
w_t_payne
What do you think?

For your information, I believe that violence and destruction are counter-
productive.

As with most people, I rely on a global system of trade and cooperation for my
livelihood. I do not wish to disrupt that. Fundamentally, most people wish to
simply get on with their lives; to spend their time, attention and energies on
their own job, on feeding themselves and their family, on keeping a roof over
their heads, on maintaining their relationships with their friends, and on
pursuing whatever it is that makes each of them individually happy.

This political pissing-match is not something that they know or care about.
Indeed, the pool is now so polluted, who would want to swim here? We did not
ask for terrorists to come here and try to kill us ... just as we did not ask
for the authorities to poke their noses into our private lives and threaten us
with what they find.

However, as much as I would like both of these groups to go away and sc __w
themselves, I have to acknowledge that we have no real choice in the matter.
If some random psycho decides he does not like my religion or the colour of my
skin, and decides to murder me and my family for it ... well, in all
likelihood there is not much I can do about it. Ditto for the machinations of
the uncaring zombie bureaucracies that we call the "Nation State".

In truth, we are utterly powerless, and these things are done to us with
neither pity nor mercy nor any real thought for us as individuals whatsoever.
I do not seek change, for in a massively connected world of billions, it
cannot be but like this.

My bitterness and rage are futile; less than nothingness; feeble against the
unstoppable forces of inevitability.

The thought that I might get up and _do something_ is laughable -- at best it
might tar me with the same disease that infects those responsible for all of
this -- _optimism_ , and a horribly, destructively misplaced belief that we
have any power whatsoever to alter things.

------
ohwp
Don't get me wrong, but why is everybody so upset about the NSA when they post
everything on Facebook and use Google/Apple/Microsoft?

Are they upset because they lack the choice of who is tracking them? Because I
don't think people should be upset about their privacy when they know a
company like Facebook already knows everything about you.

~~~
dpatru
> Because I don't think people should be upset about their privacy when they
> know a company like Facebook already knows everything about you.

The fact that a private company like Facebook knows a lot about you is not a
problem as long as the company has a privacy policy and can be held
accountable. The problem specifically is _government_ access to the data.
Unlike governments, companies like Facebook have never morphed into tyrannies.
Facebook does not tax people, it does not prosecute, it does not put people in
prison or fine them, it does not drone people, it does not go to war. Unlike
Edward Snowden, an ex-Facebook employee who reveals Facebook's secret illegal
activities does not have to fear for his life and take refuge in Russia.

~~~
Amadou
Facebook knowing a lot about you _is_ a problem.

It is just an entirely separate problem that is only superficially similar to
the problem of the government knowing a lot about you.

~~~
knowaveragejoe
I think it's a bit more than superficially related - in a lot of cases, the
only reason the government knows what it does about you is because you turned
your personal information into bits and sent it to Facebook.

~~~
narcissus
Except for when they do it without you even knowing your sending information
to them. If you haven't heard of shadow profiles, then now is the time to
learn about them.

And don't get me wrong, I understand that I can do stuff to stop these things,
but I don't see why I should have to, quite frankly.

The point is that even if I have never visited Facebook, they more than likely
know a lot about me already, unless explicitly going out of my way to stop it.

~~~
knowaveragejoe
> shadow profiles

Which exist _only_ due to the exact reason I described.

> The point is that even if I have never visited Facebook, they more than
> likely know a lot about me already, unless explicitly going out of my way to
> stop it.

Well, that's not what I was addressing. "Going out of your way to stop it" is
simply becoming educated about what exactly it is we're doing when we use the
Internet and societal institutions. Being prudent about what we enter into a
form(either real or virtual) is key.

~~~
narcissus
> Which exist only due to the exact reason I described. I guess I presumed
> that when you said "you turned your personal information into bits and sent
> it to Facebook" you meant explicitly.

> Being prudent about what we enter into a form(either real or virtual) is key
> I agree. But then again, when I need to go out of my way to make sure that
> all of those little 'Like' icons aren't telling Facebook the sites that I
> visited, just because my browser loaded them, I think that's a line. Because
> where you are being explicit about the form being real or virtual, you also
> should be explicit about who or what is 'entering' data into that form...
> and even what that form looks like (because a lot of the time, it's just a
> lot of parameters attached to an image request).

------
mncolinlee
Well, there's only one response to those that would tag defenders of civil
liberties as traitors.

There was once a ragtag band of traitors who felt the same way. Their names
included: Jefferson, Adams, Hancock, Franklin, and 52 other signers of the
Declaration of Independence from England.

One only needs to look at the influence of the British "Star Chamber" on the
writing of our U.S. Constitution to understand exactly how our Founders would
feel about a secret court with secret evidence chosen by only one man to
decide which people get to violate their Fifth Amendment right against self-
incrimination every single day... Or worse yet, to have a non-judicial secret
court chosen by the executive that decides which American citizens to kill by
drone strike.

Regardless of what party or president runs our country, many things must
change.

------
ForFreedom
The Person Of Interest
([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1839578/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1839578/))
is coming true.

~~~
mtgx
Except there are orders of magnitude fewer checks on that power than in the
show.

~~~
walshemj
What checks does the machine have on it (let alone the Chinese machine that is
presumed to exist) its already broken free of 100% human control.

------
logn
This isn't really news at all. It's the guardian regurgitating prior news to
make money and HN posting it to re-explain what we all already know and agree
upon. I hope the next story on the NSA involves someone inventing something to
fix our problems. The best news I read all day was:
[https://gnunet.org](https://gnunet.org)

~~~
drunkenmasta
Yea it's a shame that Snowden risked so much just so that a newspaper could
rewrite the same story 50 times. We could use more leaks and less
grandstanding and posturing.

~~~
acqq
It's completely not the same story. NYT's "unnamed government official" claims
much more than any other story explicitly claimed before. Have you tried to
comprehend and compare? Guardian was able to show that UK services collect
everything it goes through their nodes, nobody up to 8.8.2013 was able to say
so about US, especially not that all the data are automatically searched
through, including those of US citizens, theoretically protected by the
Constitution.

------
john_b
Reading between the lines of various NSA statements, it seems like they
interpret the relevant sections of the Patriot Act and FISA Amendments Act to
only apply to "collected" data, and "collected" data they consider only that
which a _person_ looks at and stores. Apparently, they think that the
restrictions imposed on them don't apply to automated machine reading of data,
or any data that might possibly (51% or more) have a foreign source or
destination.

Since they define the criteria for what is "interesting", it gives them the
ability to inspect essentially all of the data they collect, and there is at
present no real check on the loosening of what constitutes "interesting" over
time.

------
gulfie
Turning? I think the tense might be slightly wrong. Has turned.

------
miguelindurain
I wish there were more emphasis on human rights for worldwide citizens rather
than on the 4th amendment. But maybe the goal is to target US public opinion
so that they do something about this.

------
_yields
Americans control you're government, it is out of control.

Regards, the rest of the world.

~~~
L4mppu
Your.

~~~
w_t_payne
Actually, lots of state security services are doing the exact same thing. Many
are much much worse.

America is the only country (so far) to have somebody brave and public
spirited enough to stand up and blow the whistle, and the only country (so
far) to have politicians with enough gumption and common sense to make the
requisite fuss, and to start to stand up against the encroaching tide.

It might be ugly, but it sure beats the silent acquiescence we see elsewhere.

In other words, America is the _only_ country where the political system is
_actually_ working to protect the general population against an overreaching
security state.

As far as I can see, that puts America far far ahead of the rest of the world,
thank you very much.

~~~
MisterWebz
There are german politicians that propose to take extreme measures such as
banning US companies if they don't comply with stricter regulation. And you'll
see there's a lot of other stuff going on in Europe. Of course you won't hear
about that in your US-centric media.

~~~
w_t_payne
OK, Fair enough -- to an extent. (Although I am not actually American).

------
squozzer
Expect more revelations, as the "cross-border" criterion for information
capture disappears from the debate.

All communication will be captured all of the time.

The upshot -- we have the best excuse in years to begin purging our ruling
class. Does the NSA have dirt on them? Did Snowden manage to get some of that
dirt and hand it over to Putin?

Probably not, but as the mafiosi in Casino said, why take the chance?

------
djvu9
Along with wearable and/or implanted devices and a little bit AI this could
become the prototype of the Matrix...

------
jjguy
Looks like the Guardian got hacked. I clicked, saw the article header, but was
then redirected to a NSFW ad for Teen Party Sluts.

~~~
jacquesm
You may want to check your computer for viruses/trojans, disable toolbars.

------
walshemj
says the site with 17 sets of tracking code on the home page :-)

------
madaxe
What good is a panopticon if you can't make sense of what you're looking at?

~~~
w_t_payne
You don't have to make sense of it. All you have to do is scare people
sh*tless.

------
icantthinkofone
I question why HNs sole source of information seems to only be The Guardian.

~~~
northwest
It's the NSA-related articles that often come from The Guardian. That's simply
because this paper is the window for Snowden (not sure if they have an
exclusive agreement, maybe). They have the balls to stand behind him, unlike a
lot of other outlets.

Also, know that the rest of the main stream media don't seem to like the idea
of discussing this mess and any possible solutions - probably b/c they're
ultimately controlled by influential politicians or other moneyed interests.

~~~
ianhawes
Actually, MSM has been covering Snowden and his leaks fairly consistently
since they occurred. Perhaps you should watch Fox News or CNN before you go
off making unsubstantiated claims.

