
Newly disclosed papers give rules for NSA surveillance without a warrant - eplanit
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/newly-disclosed-papers-give-rules-for-nsa-surveillance-without-a-warrant/2013/06/21/6346a462-da7c-11e2-a9f2-42ee3912ae0e_story.html
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guelo
They lied, they listen to our phone calls and read our emails.

In the Guardian story[0] it explained it like this: "Retain and make use of
"inadvertently acquired" domestic communications if they contain usable
intelligence, information on criminal activity, threat of harm to people or
property, are encrypted, or are believed to contain any information relevant
to cybersecurity;"

How can they know if it contains usable intelligence, criminal activity, etc.
if they aren't examining the contents of the communication?

I think the most outrageous in that list is "make use of ... information on
criminal activity". Do NSA spooks get to singlehandedly determine that you're
committing a crime? Do they have AI algorithms that sift through millions of
records flagging potential criminal activity? If someone is heard saying, for
example, that they smoked weed are they added to a federal database of weed
smokers? Why is a military program supposedly concerned with terrorism
interested in domestic criminal activity?

[0] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/20/fisa-court-
nsa-w...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/20/fisa-court-nsa-without-
warrant)

~~~
dhimes
And encrypting information makes it suspicious. I am nauseated.

~~~
codex
It's not that encrypted information is itself suspicious. If a communication
is encrypted, the NSA simply can't tell if it's a legitimate foreign target
intercept or some inadvertently picked up communication until the NSA is
finally able to decrypt it. Were it not so, foreign targets could evade the
NSA by encrypting their traffic and making it appear that it might be domestic
material (for example, routing it though domestic email accounts), forcing the
NSA to discard it.

Just as security researchers look for every possible loophole when creating
attack scenarios, so the authors of NSA regulations seek to close any possible
loophole a target could use to evade intercept. The NSA has to assume that its
internal rules will eventually be leaked (as has just occurred) and used
against it by a foreign enemy.

~~~
MereInterest
"I'm sorry. I couldn't read your mail to figure out whether I am allowed to
read your mail. Therefore, I am keeping your mail until I figure out whether
or not I am allowed to keep it."

Yes, they try to make the rules to close all possible loopholes. No, they
shouldn't be the ones making their own rules, since they have a very vested
interest in one-sided rules.

------
btipling
It seems like Snowden is purposefully leaking documents a little at a time in
order to keep the story in the press. He may be trying to combat the short
term memory of popular stories. It may be a viable strategy for getting enough
attention to achieve real progress. I wonder if news will simply stop covering
it as front page material as audiences get bored with it. Maybe leaking the
least interesting stuff earlier, and ratcheting up interest by saving the best
for last may aid such an effort.

~~~
leoc
Doesn't Greenwald have Snowden's entire document cache? I assume that it's
(primarily, at least) Greenwald who's choosing what to report and when.

~~~
e3pi
Does not this D-notice gag order also apply to Guardian/Greenwald? What's up
with that?

~~~
stordoff
A DA-notice is only advice, so Greenwald can choose to ignore it if he wishes.
IIRC, it falls somewhere between "We'd rather you didn't publish this, as we
feel it may harm national interests" and "this story may be illegal under the
Official Secrets Act (or similar)", rather than being a straight block on
publication.

------
BadCookie
Am I crazy, or have (many) American news sources stopped reporting on this
altogether? Nobody is talking about it on my Facebook either. There's a whole
lot of silence about this, and that's the scariest thing of all.

------
dyselon
The most interesting part to me was that they said the NSA did internal audits
of analyst queries. I hope someone leaks the results of those.

The rest of it seemed in line with the initial PRISM release, and also (kinda)
what they've been saying all along: they nab everything, but only read it if
they "reasonably" think you're foreign, and if they're wrong, they keep any
"interesting" bits anyway.

~~~
giardini
The fact that someone can do an internal audit indicates that someone can
bypass auditing. Who's watching the watchers who watch those who watch us.

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ngcazz
I don't get it. If they're doing it all from a "para-legal" angle, why would
they even bother to document that they're doing it that way? Isn't it more of
a organizational culture thing?

~~~
ajross
I suspect it's out of an honest attempt at doing the right thing. NSA spooks
aren't evil trolls out to crush the free world under their boots. They're
regular people, with typical moral compasses. And they have a difficult job.
Unfettered access to information pretty clearly makes their job easier, so
it's something they push for.

But they likewise understand that this kind of thing is controversial, and so
(either out of an attempt to limit the impact or deflect blame) they want to
make sure that everyone internally knows what they're doing and that it's not
quite kosher.

Lots of folks here are programmers: occasionally you need to commit some
horrible design affront in the name of expedience, right? Do you hide it or do
you call it out in comments and commit messages with a big "HACK HERE"
message? I know I do. It's the same impulse.

~~~
VladRussian2
>I suspect it's out of an honest attempt at doing the right thing.

no. It is to cover their asses. Like in the case of torture - if they just go
and torture it would be one thing, instead they have been doing it according
to the rules reviewed and approved by government lawyers, who declared the
torture is legal. Thus people have been tortured, yet nobody can be punished
for performing it. Nor people who only wrote the [illegal] rules, nor people
who only followed the [illegal] rules. Using such responsibility deflection
schema government can do anything as long as it follows "the rules" [which it
wrote itself] and even the people with moral compass can look in the mirror
easy because they only doing their job and follow the rules.

(another example - recent public outcry about drone killing of Americans was
easily put down by switching attention to the alleged fact of existence of the
"strict designation and targeting rules" the government follows without even
publishing the rules, just a mere statement of their existence)

~~~
jamieb
Seriously. Let's be honest. We used to torture people in extreme cases, but
the person doing it knew that (a) it was illegal, and (b) if they were exposed
they would be disavowed. (Of course, they might get away with it if they had
some really good dirt on their boss, but that requires "using" a "card").

So the person doing the torturing had to be really fucking sure that this
person was "guilty" and further that torturing would actually work (which is
"not often"). The kind of operative doing this work was strongly personally
committed to our country and extremely aware of their own personal investment.

Instead, we now have state-sponsored, legalized torture, and so any and all
sociopaths can happily try their hand at torture just for the jolies, at no
personal risk.

Spying must be _illegal_. A nation still needs to do it, but the brave few who
do it, are braver still for doing it at personal risk.

------
D9u
_"...the public needs to know the kinds of things a government does in its
name, or the "consent of the governed" is meaningless."_ Snowden, 2013.

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cdooh
Ever leak invalidates the information the NSA tells the public. Now I have to
ask do they even know what documents Snowden left with? Each new revelation
seems to be catching them flat footed

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
I think you answered your own question.

