
FOIA release: Completely Redacted Document About Text Snooping - raverbashing
http://reason.com/blog/2013/05/13/most-transparent-administration-in-histo
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dm2
Everyone should assume that text messages are analyzed by a computer and
flagged as necessary.

Only select people under investigation would have their entire text message
conversations read by a human.

Does the NSA store all text messages? Yes, more than likely. Do their
employees snoop on US citizens? Nope. Can other agencies have access to this
data? Yes, Patriot Act.

There is a very easy way to test their capabilities. Send a text message with
keywords involving bombs and political figures and see what happens. I'm not
going to do it, but it would be an interesting experiment.

Information is critical in the world we live in. It's troubling that any
secretive organizations would be able to have this much power over citizens,
but the alternative is much scarier. The US has to maintain information
dominance on the internet. Allowing other countries to dominate the internet
could tip the scales of power. The US carries the big stick right now, if
China gets the upper hand (and they are trying unimaginably hard) then what?
What will the sleeping dragon do? I have nothing against China at all, but the
unknown is scary and I simply would rather the US maintain indisputable
dominance.

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jlarocco
> Do their employees snoop of US citizens? Nope.

I'm glad you're so certain.

> Information is critical in the world we live in. It's troubling that any
> secretive organizations would be able to have this much power over citizens,
> BUT the alternative is much scarier.

That's just scare mongering. As a country we got by for over 200 years without
government surveillance, and nothing has changed to make it necessary now.

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rayiner
> That's just scare mongering. As a country we got by for over 200 years
> without government surveillance, and nothing has changed to make it
> necessary now.

I'd argue a lot has changed.

The U.S. has always militarily dominated everything that could hurt it. Soon
after our independence, we were intervening in Latin America because in the
1800's, set off from the Old World by two huge oceans, Latin America is what
could have hurt us. As the world became smaller, we built a bigger Navy, and
by World War I we had the largest in the world. Ever since World War I we have
maintained military supremacy in any domain that mattered (naval, air,
nuclear, space, etc).

Arguably this is just a continuation of the trend onto the internet, now that
the digital sphere matters.

~~~
jlarocco
I disagree. By that logic the government should have been reading our mail and
recording telegraphs, phone calls, and faxes.

I'm also curious what "threat" this is supposed to protect us from.

There are enough communication mediums to choose from that it's pointless to
monitor any of them. It's trivial to find or create one that isn't being
monitored. It's not stopping criminals, it's just taking freedom from normal
citizens.

~~~
rayiner
China can't attack us via telegraph and phone the way it can via the internet.

I don't think the government needs to be reading our text messages. I do think
it's silly to pretend nothing has changed in 200 years. Electronic warfare is
going to be a thing, and I want to live in a world where the U.S. has the
upper hand in it, not China.

We're going to have to figure out a way that accommodates U.S. dominance over
electronic networks while reasonably protecting everyone's' privacy. We're not
going to do that by burying our heads in the sand and pretending nothing has
changed in 200 years.

~~~
jlarocco
Electronic warfare is not on the same level as real warfare. Nobody will die
if the internet is down for a few weeks.

Watching funny cats on YouTube isn't so important that I should give up my
privacy. Some mega-corp's website going down for a day or two is less
worrisome to me than knowing the government is watching me.

~~~
tptacek
I think you're wrong for a variety of reasons about how many people will die
if the entire Internet becomes unavailable to North America for weeks at a
time.

~~~
jlarocco
Maybe, but I'm willing to bet it's a very small number compared to how many
could die if the electrical power grid went down or land line telephones or
the water system. We didn't give up privacy and freedoms to protect those
systems, why would we give them up for the internet?

~~~
jholman
Actually, that's precisely the issue. If the entire internet goes down, it
will start to impact things like the power grid and the water systems. Every
year, utility companies put more and more of their infrastructure behind
increasingly clever management infrastructure, and control it over the open
internet. Hopefully none of it will fail-unsafe (though I bet something will),
but if the management systems are offline for weeks?

And it will immediately, although not fatally, impact land line telephones,
which I believe do significant backhaul over IP.

~~~
Rylinks
I'd imagine that taking a laptop to the control server and plugging in an
ethernet cable would suffice to access the control panels if the internet is
down.

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jstalin
What would that even mean? The title is "Guidance for the Minimization of Text
Messages over Dual-Function Cellular Telephones." Any idea what _minimization_
it is referring to?

EDIT -- Found the answer to my question:
[http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/02/minimiza...](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/02/minimization-
a-term-you-need-to-know/35403/)

~~~
3JPLW
Very informative link, thank you. I was likewise unaware. TLDR: minimization
is the act of removing non-relevant personal data from foreign intelligence
information.

From the article: _"Minimiaztion [sic], in essence, is the legal term for the
constraints placed upon the government's ability to retain non-relevant
private information collected legally. Here is the technical definition of
"minimization," as supplied by 50 U.S.C. 1806 (A):_

    
    
        Information acquired from an electronic surveillance conducted pursuant 
        to this subchapter concerning any United States person may be used 
        and disclosed by Federal officers and employees without the consent of 
        the United States person only in accordance with the minimization 
        procedures required by this subchapter. No otherwise privileged 
        communication obtained in accordance with, or in violation of, the 
        provisions of this subchapter shall lose its privileged character. No 
        information acquired from an electronic surveillance pursuant to this 
        subchapter may be used or disclosed by Federal officers or employees 
        except for lawful purposes.
    

_"So -- the saving grace for civil liberties is the requirement that the
government get rid of the information it accidentally or incidentally collects
on people that isn't considered foreign intelligence information."_

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stfu
So we are reaching a stage where government is not just dancing around hot
issues but by now they apparently don't even pretend to give a crap anymore.

Unfortunately there are still enough people around whos' reaction to this is
"let's start and online petition and beg the administration to declassify all
the "and"s in the text".

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D9u
The best way to beat the censors is for multiple parties to request the same
data at different times.

Oftentimes the resulting FOIA documents will be redacted in differing ways,
allowing the various parties to "compare notes" and hopefully piece together
the complete picture.

~~~
pixelcort
However, in this case, literally the entire text was redacted (sans the
title).

~~~
D9u
From a single source... Perhaps other parties will receive a less censored
document? Perhaps the same party will receive such on a subsequent request?

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meritt
We quickly need to reach a point where we encrypt everything we do on the
client-side, during transmission and only readable by intended recipients.

~~~
moxie
We're working on this for text messages with TextSecure
(<http://www.whispersystems.org>). If you've got the time and interest to help
contribute, please check it out.

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fnordfnordfnord
Ho ho ho, the gov't discovers blackfaxing! What a merry bunch of pranksters
they are. So funny! Seriously though, I'm sure there's nothing to see.
Whatever the gov't does they do for our safety, and I feel foolish for
suspecting otherwise.

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defilade
I'm not sure that the handling of a single document, especially one that
happens to be about intelligence gathering procedures, should be THE standard
by which we judge transparency.

~~~
yew
The entire point of FOIA requests is to allow access to previously undisclosed
documents that aren't _legally_ considered secret.

The notably weird thing here is that they released a completely redacted
document rather than just declining the request. Is there some minimum amount
of text required to be considered a response?

Politics aside, this is certainly one of the _strangest_ things I've seen in a
while.

~~~
defilade
Just saying that a single example doesn't prove a pattern.

Yeah it's a little weird, but out of the context of other FOIA requests it
doesn't make much of a point.

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dangrossman
It's a pattern. This is the same kind of response the EFF got to its FOIA
requests about NSLs (national security letters). They were sent back a pack of
blank pages as all the text had been redacted. When the ACLU issued a request
to the FBI on GPS tracking activity, they were sent back 111 blank pages.

~~~
defilade
You have three instances...that meets your hurdle for statistical
significance?

~~~
yew
I should hope so! The government is rather more regular than a particularly
noisy lab experiment.

Now, as to what it meets the hurdle for statistical significance _for_ . . .
well, I personally prefer to avoid conspiracy theories when possible. So I'll
just be keeping an eye open for more information.

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neeee
Is there a direct link to the PDF available?

~~~
Scryptonite
Here you go: [http://www.scribd.com/doc/141222327/Totally-Redacted-FOIA-
re...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/141222327/Totally-Redacted-FOIA-response)

