
NSA collected US email records in bulk for more than two years under Obama - k-mcgrady
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/27/nsa-data-mining-authorised-obama
======
lawnchair_larry
So at minimum, the NSA literally knows every single person or entity that I
have exchanged emails with, when we exchanged emails, the size of the message,
every single website I have ever had an account on, for much of my adult life.
And that data is sitting in their archives, indefinitely.

Just let that sink in for a minute.

~~~
sc68cal
What I found interesting, was that this so called "contact chaining" (where
they graph out who you talk to, and two degrees onward) was only approved
after 9/11\. Amazing how far we've fallen.

 _The agency "analyzed networks with two degrees of separation (two hops) from
the target", the report says. In other words, the NSA studied the online
records of people who communicated with people who communicated with targeted
individuals.

Contact chaining was considered off-limits inside the NSA before 9/11\. In the
1990s, according to the draft IG report, the idea was nixed when the Justice
Department "told NSA that the proposal fell within one of the Fisa definitions
of electronic surveillance and, therefore, was not permissible when applied to
metadata associated with presumed US persons"._

~~~
rapind
Kevin Bacon had better get on a plane to Ecuador before he's arrested for
treason.

------
vermontdevil
And according to the article they were emails of Americans with no connection
to foreigners.

The claims of metadata being public and being exempted from Fourth Amendment
does not resonate with me and even more so with emails. It seems by collecting
IP addresses associated with emails, NSA has the ability to compare that with
all the other data they may have collected and build a profile on you.

To me it seems to be a violation of the fourth amendment. I do not expect the
government to be constantly searching everything about everyone without a
probable cause.

------
samd
Every American has to ask themselves, "Is this worth it?" Are the plots
stopped and the lives saved worth the loss of privacy, the loss of trust and
good will internationally, and most frightening of all, the unprecedented
power this gives the government?

I don't think anyone can reasonably say that it is.

~~~
mikhailt
It's not every American, it's every human being. This isn't just happening in
US but most likely in every democratic country as well. We're not special or
unique in this area, yes we should be leading the world in terms of how to
protect our privacy but we haven't led in that area for decades. So I'm not
surprised about this.

Now, as for the question. The problem is after 9/11, everything changed.
People did task the government to prevent further 9/11 attacks and sadly, they
can only do that by doing what they're doing now. IMO, 9/11 wasn't the point
of what the terrorists were doing, but the aftermath of it.

I'm the man who believes that we don't deserve security if we use it to
justify the loss of our rights. However, that belief is easily shaken when and
if my family are harmed in an attack that could've been foiled, and my first
reaction would be, why didn't the government stop it? So, you can see the
problem right here.

 _Nothing_ is worth losing our rights over, we fought so many wars to protect
it, suffered so many loss as the result of the wars, and yet, we're giving
them up easily for terrorism.

~~~
nwh
> Now, as for the question. The problem is after 9/11, everything changed.

I'm not from the US, and this sort of statement really baffles me every time I
hear it. There's nothing remarkable about the events really, probably more
people get killed by fridges falling on them than by a terrorist attack, yet
nobody seems to modify their lifestyle to avoid standing in front of them.

Can you explain to me what actually changed about the American lifestyle? I
genuinely have no idea.

~~~
anigbrowl
Don't be obtuse. Of course it's remarkable, the only other reason you ever
hear of 3000+ people being killed in the space of a few hours is when there's
some large natural disaster like an earthquake.

Now, if you can't work out how the largest terrorist attack in history might
have change the stance of the world's largest military superpower, with a
knock-on effect on everyone else, then you're not trying. When I saw the
events of 9-11 happening on TV I immediately knew it was going to result in
years of war, just like the collapse of the Soviet Union obviously led to a
de-escalation of military posture.

 _probably more people get killed by fridges falling on them than by a
terrorist attack_

Not at the same time, and crucially, not at someone else's pleasure. I'm not
American either but the notion that people wouldn't or shouldn't react to
something like this is just asinine. Frankly, I'm surprised it didn't lead to
greater change in the US than it actually has.

~~~
kamjam
Not wanting to sound like an ahole but...

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_an...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki)

As for the parent comment, I know it _changed_ everything. But beyond the
initial years, how has it changed your life over, say the past 2 years. Is
everything _back to normal_? How long do you continue changing your behaviour
and living in fear? (I realise you're not American, just asking)

~~~
tptacek
Your argument is that Hiroshima didn't change anything?

~~~
kamjam
No, your first point. The US has been just as responsible mass death. And of
course it changes a lot.

 _Don 't be obtuse. Of course it's remarkable, the only other reason you ever
hear of 3000+ people being killed in the space of a few hours is when there's
some large natural disaster like an earthquake._

------
thetabyte
I find it amusing the the Guardian seems to position this article in such a
way that it is meant to disparage the Obama administration. While the
administration is far from above criticism, and a variety of other Guardian
reveals do justifiably criticize the President, my personal takeaway from this
is a sign that the administration did at least attempt to curb some Bush era
privacy invasions—though perhaps to a pitiful extent. Funny how the article
doesn't seem to put it that way.

~~~
shill
The NSA collected US email records in bulk for more than two years and the
FISA court renewed collection orders every 90 days.

So the Obama regime didn't curb anything until after the eight or ninth
renewal of the program. Pitiful indeed.

~~~
thetabyte
Are you under the impression that you can review the entire federal
government, decide which programs to get rid of, and shut down every one of
those programs, during your first year on office?

Because if so, please, run, I'd like to see it happen.

By pitiful, I meant that this shutdown seems minuscule among the variety of
other privacy violations—but that hardly justifies the Guardian using this
specific reveal as an attack piece.

~~~
shill
> Are you under the impression that you can review the entire federal
> government, decide which programs to get rid of, and shut down every one of
> those programs, during your first year on office?

No, I'm not. But I do believe that we were all given the impression that
ending unconstitutional wiretaps was going to be near the top of Obama's to-do
list.

~~~
thetabyte
I agree. That's a problem for which he deserves more than a little criticism.
But that's not what I was discussing, at all.

------
mrt0mat0
So Edward Snowden wasn't bluffing when he said there was more... I'm thinking
the government is going to try to step up the efforts to bring him (and this
will need to include Greenwald) in to stop it all. This is better than tv!

~~~
chaz
Snowden isn't mentioned once in this article.

~~~
gasull
Good. The focus should be on the revelations.

------
gasull
How do we know that there isn't another super secretive program, right now,
that is still collecting everything?

How can we trust the Government, ever in the future, to tell the truth?

I don't see how this can actually be solved, since most people aren't
concerned about encrypting their communications. I can't use encryption to
message other people unless they use encryption too.

This is the future. We will be constantly watched.

Please tell me I'm wrong.

~~~
zokier
> I don't see how this can actually be solved, since most people aren't
> concerned about encrypting their communications.

They shouldn't need to be. Encryption is cheap, it should happen automatically
behind users backs by default.

> I can't use encryption to message other people unless they use encryption
> too.

Build the next WhatsApp/Facebook/GMail and integrate encryption to it.

------
anologwintermut

        we provide user data to governments only in accordance    
        with the law. Our legal team reviews each and every     
        request, and frequently pushes back when requests are
        overly broad or don’t follow the correct process. Press   
        reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended
        access to our users’ data are false, period.
        -- Larry Page
    

So, clearly we have a request that is within the law as far the courts are
concerned. Did Google push back on this too? Did they succeed? Did the order
just not apply to them somehow?

~~~
lawnchair_larry
Although Google's statements are of minimal value to me, my belief is that
Google would not have to be complicit in this particular program. This was
likely pulling from fiber taps at ISP backbones.

~~~
3JPLW
But: such a tap would reveal no information about gmail-to-gmail
communication, no? Most gmail usage is via their SSL web app or an email
client, and their directions for most (all?) clients specify to use SSL. And
in my experience, most people using gmail send most of their emails to other
gmail accounts.

------
marze
This program has apparently ended. That probably means a more powerful system
is operating currently.

------
skwirl
Why is the subject of this article Obama? It was a Bush era program that he
shut down. But since he didn't do it the day he took office, I guess he is
literally Bush Jr. Jr. Great reporting by The Guardian.

~~~
marknutter
> But since he didn't do it the day he took office

Well... why didn't he?

~~~
heartbreak
Perhaps because he isn't omniscient and wasn't aware that it existed?

------
loumf
I really wish the Guardian would get someone very technical to talk to these
sources and then write a technical report of exactly what's happening. These
dumbed down articles make it hard for me to understand what is happening.

The specific question I had is how they jump from email meta-data to IP Logs.
If they were collecting all of my IP traffic, that would be a lot bigger deal
than email headers. The title and most of the content seem to imply it's only
email metadata, so I don't know how to interpret the alarming quotes about
having a copy of my brain.

------
jared314
And how, with money polluting politics so badly, do you fight this type of
situation? A public scandal. And how do you get a scandal? Wait for the
inevitable government overreach and someone to leak it, the bigger the better.
There are to many people for it not to leak out, no matter how much you try to
squash them.

The current situation has been a foregone conclusion for the last decade. This
is how the government has worked for years. I'm surprised so many people act
shocked by both the government's actions and the leaks.

------
breck
I created a petition with a concept that I think would be a pretty helpful
proactive step to start addressing these problems:

[https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/enable-american-
so...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/enable-american-software-
engineers-monitor-nsa-regularly-publishing-general-statistics-its/x6jDvjxk)

Let me know what you think!

------
Maascamp
_" Seeing your IP logs – and especially feeding them through sophisticated
analytic tools – is a way of getting inside your head that's in many ways on
par with reading your diary," Sanchez added._

It's great to see this information going public, however hyperbolic statements
like the above are completely unnecessary and really take away from the rest
of the article.

~~~
DuskStar
In my opinion, though, that statement is not hyperbolic and is very, very true
- no matter how scary that may seem.

