
NSA tracking cellphone locations worldwide, Snowden documents show - 001sky
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-tracking-cellphone-locations-worldwide-snowden-documents-show/2013/12/04/5492873a-5cf2-11e3-bc56-c6ca94801fac_print.html
======
angersock
From the article:

 _NSA Director Keith Alexander disclosed in Senate testimony in October that
the NSA had run a pilot project in 2010 and 2011 to collect “samples” of U.S.
cellphone location data. The data collected were never available for
intelligence analysis purposes, and the project was discontinued because it
had no “operational value,” he said.

Alexander allowed that a broader collection of such data “may be something
that is a future requirement for the country, but it is not right now.” _

And for all this, I'm not going to lie--that'd be a fun dataset to hack on.

And that, folks, is why we as engineers and hackers have a moral duty to be
very selective in the types of work we take on and for whom.

~~~
marvin
> And that, folks, is why we as engineers and hackers have a moral duty to be
> very selective in the types of work we take on and for whom.

Computer yechnology work is still a wild west. Other fields which have similar
ethical considerations - medicine, chemistry, engineering - have ethics
courses which make it clear to the graduates that their professional decisions
have consequences.

There is no such standard for computer people. It still baffles me that people
would voluntarily work at implementing something like PRISM - I would
literally quit my job over something like this; similar considerations have
popped up in the research I do for my Masters thesis - but ethics is
definitely something we would talk more about.

~~~
runn1ng
It's way more ambiguous.

PRISM people _thought_ they were doing right. All NSA - based on all the
official and unofficial responses - think they are doing right. That they help
building a safer America. That they have to sacrifice privacy for safety. Etc,
etc.

I don't think NSA people are evil. They believe that the things they do are
for good.

~~~
Amadou
_I don 't think NSA people are evil. They believe that the things they do are
for good._

Evil like in the movies doesn't exist. In the real-world evil is simply a lack
of perspective (some would call it empathy instead).

No one ever wakes up and decides they want to be a villain. They always have
some sort of logic that rationalizes their actions as being reasonable if not
outright good. The more they act on that lack of perspective the greater the
evil they perpetrate.

~~~
CWuestefeld
Reminds me of the movie _The Cube_ [1].

Some select quotes (minor spoiler alert):

"There is no conspiracy. Nobody is in charge. It's a headless blunder
operating under the illusion of a master plan."

"It's all the same machine, right? The Pentagon, multinational corporations,
the police. If you do one little job, you build a widget in Saskatoon, and the
next thing you know, it's two miles under the desert, the essential component
of a death machine."

Quentin: But why put people in it?

Worth: Because it's here. You have to use it, or you admit that it's
pointless.

Quentin: But it _is_ pointless.

Worth: Quentin... that's my point.

[1] [https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the-
cube/](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the-cube/)

~~~
dbdr
These quotes are from the 1997 film Cube [1], not the 1969 The Cube [2] of
your rotten tomatoes link.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube_(film)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube_\(film\))

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cube_(film)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cube_\(film\))

------
swalkergibson
I am now numb to these revelations, as I suspect are most of the technology
community. The only thing that will make the rest of the general populace wake
up is if someone on TV says they are vehemently opposed to it. Someone who has
trotted out the, "I have nothing to hide, so I am not worried." I believe the
only way this will happen is if Edward Snowden specifically targeted one of
those people and created a file of some seriously embarrassing (or, better
yet, incriminating) private business that will be released. I seriously hope
that he has verifiable proof that Glenn Beck is having cocaine-fueled sex
parties with Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Joe Liebermann, Diane Feinstein and
the corpse of Strom Thurmond.

That, or something to keep football from being televised on Sunday.

Please, Edward. Tell me there is something up your sleeve that will get people
to realize that this is actually a really fucking big thing and that it needs
to stop right away.

~~~
slg
Are you saying that you actually support this level of spying when the person
being spied on has a different political opinion than you?

~~~
swalkergibson
I do not support this level of spying, period. However, the ignition of any
real movement would certainly be helped by the personal embarrassment of
anybody with a large enough mouthpiece. s/Glenn Beck/Rachel Maddow if you
want, the point still stands. Somebody has to get really, really worked up
over this.

EDIT: As it so happens, Glenn Beck is actually not in favor of this type of
surveillance. I would have never guessed. I thought I was pretty safe in that
assumption.

~~~
adventured
Isn't Glenn Beck a strong Constitutionalist? I was always under the impression
that was his entire platform.

~~~
dclowd9901
He's an American Exceptionalist, given his historical support of torture and
"if you're not with us you're against us" attitude.

------
sjtgraham
> The NSA does not target Americans’ location data by design, but the agency
> acquires a substantial amount of information on the whereabouts of domestic
> cellphones “incidentally,” a legal term that connotes a foreseeable but not
> deliberate result.

The implication that Americans being "incidentally" caught in the dragnet is
the only aspect that makes this egregious is absolutely fucking disgusting.
This is a habit endemic in the American media that persistently differentiates
between Americans and mere humans, as if the former is sacred and the latter
mere fodder. I try to avoid swearing in comments, but damn it that's how angry
this attitude makes me (and pretty much every non-American, I'm sure).

~~~
pavpanchekha
I understand your contempt but this distinction is important in _this
specific_ discussion, because the NSA charter specifically restricts its
actions against Americans. Thus, if the NSA is spying on Americans often
enough for it not to be a "mistake", then the NSA is flagrantly violating the
scope it has been given. If this is not occurring, the NSA is operating within
its (ridiculously loose) legal bounds.

~~~
Zigurd
Don't the instances of "parallel construction" already uncovered mean that the
whole "restricts actions against Americans" thing has been blown wide open?

I suspect the answer to whether this was been written into law lies in secret
interpretations of secret passages of the PATRIOT Acts, and that our rights
have been, in secret, broadly abridged if not suspended.

~~~
ewoodrich
Simply put, no. Parallel construction is a process by which otherwise
inadmissible evidence can be used in court by obtaining it through an
alternative lawful method. i.e. DEA trailing a specific car until it leads to
a drug dealer based on a tip from the NSA.

The NSA charter restricts directly targeting Americans unless related to an
international threat. i.e. FISA warrants ("Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act").

Instances of parallel construction emerge when evidence potentially useful for
a domestic investigation is incidentally uncovered. Were it to be directly
targeted when the individual has had no foreign communication, it would exceed
the (very broad) scope of the NSA.

So it hasn't been "blown wide open". It is just that many people don't seem to
particularly care about the nuances of either the NSA's charter or "Parallel
construction" and throw terms around.

~~~
eliasmacpherson
Your argument that everyone who is against it doesn't care about nuances
doesn't hold any water.

Your language is curious for someone who claims a nuanced understanding:
"otherwise inadmissible evidence can be used in court"[1], "alternative lawful
method"[2].

[1] is wrong because the evidence the NSA use for the tip, however legally or
illegally it was acquired, is not used in court. Exhonerating evidence they
acquired is not seen by the court.

[2] if the initial acquisition is inadmissible because it's illegally acquired
then the alternative evidence acquisition is fruit of the poisoned tree, and
any cover up probably illegal.

[1] and [2] imply the evidence acquired by the NSA and the DEA are the same
evidence, and this is not the case.

The DOJ are investigating "Parallel Construction". If it was obviously
legitimate, they would not be.

------
DanielBMarkham
So the deal modern man was presented with was this: we'll give you instant
global communication for pennies, but in return governments and corporations
will closely monitor everyone on the planet: where they are, who they call,
how long the call is, their texts, messages, and other communications --
basically their thoughts. We'll record this forever to use as we choose. Trust
us.

As a global population, we seem to have made this deal, but I'm not aware of
ever being consciously offered the choice. Can I change my mind now?

~~~
lukev
Sure you can! Join the 60% of the world's population that _don't use the
internet at all_.

Or the 20% of the population of the _US_ that don't use the internet.

You can even still use a cell phone, if you want - just buy a prepaid mobile
with cash.

And aside from awkwardness with your friends, you might even find such a life
quite livable. You'll experience no material hardship.

~~~
sukuriant
Citation needed on the 20% of the population of the US that doesn't use the
internet. Is there even 20% of the US population outside of 100 miles from the
shore?

Also, you can't use a cellphone without them knowing who you are with high
certainty. It only takes 3 points of location data to identify a person the
vast majority of the time[1]. Using a cell phone that you paid for with cash
is insufficient.

[1] [http://www.livescience.com/28353-anonymous-phone-data-not-
an...](http://www.livescience.com/28353-anonymous-phone-data-not-
anonymous.html)

~~~
sanskritabelt
Rough estimate from
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population)
suggests that about 2/3 of americans live in a state bordering the ocean, so
about 100 million americans further away from the shore.

What that has to do with anything, god only knows, unless you meant something
like '100 miles away from the border', and even then I'm at a loss.

Go visit a flyover state sometime. Most of the country's very different than
SV/the northeast corridor/other modern urbanized area, and I wouldn't live
there if you paid me.

~~~
sukuriant
I was going on the assumption that most people in population centers use or
have used the internet; and that the number of people that were not in
population centers was less than 20%; and I mental-gymnastics'd myself to
thinking that those population centers tend to be on the shore, so I said it
that way.

Not necessarily right, but that's how I go there.

~~~
sanskritabelt
"most people in population centers use or have used the internet" 80% is
"most" by lots of definitions.

~~~
sukuriant
You're right; but I figured 95-99% in population centers and much more than
50% everywhere else, which ends up being more like at least 86% of the people
in the United States used the internet in the last year.

------
cryoshon
Isn't this one of the big reveals that we've been waiting for-- that they are
attempting to track our physical movement? With this geographical information
history, their ability to smash dissent without physical force is
unparalleled, given that nearly everyone has visited a sketchy location at one
time or another.

Doesn't this revelation prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the USA is even
worse than the imagined world of 1984?

~~~
CWuestefeld
But they're quite clear that they were not ATTEMPTING to track us. It's just a
side effect of something else, a benefit they may be profoundly happy about,
but can claim that is was not the goal of the program.

~~~
anonymouz
> But they're quite clear that they were not ATTEMPTING to track us.

Speak for yourself. As a European I'm apparently a "foreign target".

------
mixmastamyk
Posts with NSA in the title are heavily penalized here. Keep that in mind when
submitting an important story.

    
    
        2.  Have I been pwned? Check if your email has been...
            213 points by mountaineer 4 hours ago
            
        3.  NSA tracking cellphone locations worldwide, ...
            266 points by 001sky 2 hours ago

~~~
Brakenshire
It's one of the problems of these algorithmic measures of editorial
importance, that these sorts of rules can be operating in the background.

------
crystaln
NSA responses generally imply that any sort of surveillance is ok, as long as
it's of non-Americans.

While it may largely be legally true, I think the presumption that that is a
valid defense needs to be challenged more often.

Phrases like "intended strictly to develop intelligence about foreign targets"
seems to be regularly used by reporters in such a way as to imply that, if
true, the surveillance would be a-ok.

The difference between the rights of Americans vs non-Americans, with regard
to US intelligence services, is an interesting one. Certainly non-Americans
are deserving of at least some protections. I would hope that we could provide
most of the world with the same level of respect as we do each other.

~~~
wcummings
The distinction between ordinary spycraft and mass surveillance of a foreign
civilian populace at an unprecedented scale needs to be drawn

------
swalsh
Meta topic, but it seems kind of rude to link to the print page. The
washington post is already a very readable site, If i don't want ads, i'll use
adblock.

~~~
drcube
If you don't want people to view something on the public web, don't post it
there.

This page design is infinitely better than the other one, also linked on the
HN front page. Seems like you get a choice. Hooray for freedom!

~~~
stdbrouw
He's saying it's rude (not despicable or forbidden) to link to this page when
putting it in front of a big crowd (not e.g. when viewing it on your own).
Your comment is therefore entirely beside the point.

~~~
drcube
It's rude to link to an ugly site when you could link to a better, more
readable one. It's rude to lie and manipulate people for money, when you could
easily avoid doing so. Advertising should not be encouraged, ever.

When you have the opportunity to show someone an ad-free, single page,
uncluttered version of a piece of literature, do it. Please. Always.

~~~
ChristianBundy
>Advertising should not be encouraged, ever.

I've never come across this view – can you tell me why you hold that opinion?

~~~
drcube
Advertising is basically all manipulation and lies. If it isn't, we just call
it "information".

Look at what they call "underwriting" on nonprofit independent or public radio
stations. "This production is brought to you by Bill's Shoes, 123 Main Street,
Saginaw. Selling Men's and Women's shoes, boots and sandals since 1982."

Advertising goes beyond that, using false superlatives, misleading copy, calls
to action, and peer pressure, at best. At worst it's just lies. There is
_nothing_ free about "buy one get one free", for instance. It's a lie. Sales,
"deals", "limited time only" \-- these are psychological games. Manipulation.
Often, the "everyday" price the sale prices is marked down from, is a lie.
Misleading propaganda at best. Straight up fraud at worst. This is the
everyday "harmless" content we allow our children and politicians to watch.

And that's just traditional television, radio and print advertising. What
passes for advertising on the internet is uniformly awful. I'd call most of it
malware.

~~~
Wingman4l7
Advertising: malware for your wetware.

------
NatW
Discovery of non-explicit co-traveler networks is _interesting_. I'd read an
article about co-traveler networks here:

Inferring High Quality Co-Travel Networks, 20 May, 2013:
[http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.4429](http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.4429) pdf here:
[http://arxiv.org/pdf/1305.4429.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1305.4429.pdf)

------
sebkomianos
I shouldn’t be writing this.

Every time I read something NSA/FBI/CIA/KGB/Interpol/MI5/Stasi related I get
this instinctive feeling of angriness and sadness at the same time.

We were given the “internet”, pretty much for free, and we believed it would
be a fair deal? That there would be nothing in for them? When was the last
time you were give something for free, can you even remember? They are
breaking encryption? Really?! Didn’t we learn that it’s not feasible to break
encryption? Ah, but they are using quantum computers, right. Should we even
believe Snowden and Assange and Schneier, or anyone really? My father even
thinks they are watching him through the cable set. Am I supposed to argue
with him about the opposite?

Worldwide, governments and agencies and individuals control whatever they
want, however they want, whenever they want. And we are just siting and
watching them. Individuals are profiting from illegal activities? Who cares?
NSA is breaking an amendment? Who cares? Governments are saying A and doing B?
Who cares?All these are breaking the law? They are the law. We let them become
the law. Because we don’t care.

Damon Albarn (songwriter of the virtual music group Gorillaz) was once asked
about X-Factor (a music reality show) and his answer applies not only to it
but to a lot of things in our lives too: Every time you do even a little thing
that harms your privacy or your freedom or even your dignity, it might not do
a lot of harm because it is little but what’s actually happening is that you
are moving the privacy/freedom/dignity barrier away from where it should be.
And all these times, all these “littles”, they sum up and next time you do
something very bad it looks little again but it’s very very big.

Because you don’t realise how much the barrier has moved. We didn’t care when
we had to pay unreasonable taxes last year. We don’t care when politicians lie
to us in front of our sad faces, time after time, election after election. We
don’t care about other any other person’s rights. We don’t care about
unfairness all over around us. We don’t care about any kind of oppression,
anywhere in the world. So we won’t care when we find out that someone is
scrapping this page and is adding data to our profiles on a database. Of
course we won’t. We don’t care that in 2014 we can send rockets to the space
but haven’t evolved our culture to to the point where it would be our
collective duty as the human race to make sure that everybody on this planet
can have all the water and the food they need and access to an amazing
education and an incredible health system for their whole life.

We have lost the war, and we don’t even care. We should expect the worst,
really.

Now, please, save the “if you really cared you would actually do something”
comments. Because the truth is, I can’t do anything. Not alone. I can’t make
anyone care. Most of us can’t. We don’t have access to them, we don’t have the
mediums to stimulate them, we don’t have nothing. I didn’t want to become a
politician or a media baron or a general or anything that involves that sort
of authority over other people anyway. I wanted to become a sports writer,
then a columnist, then an academic and then a software developer. And I am not
even a talented software developer that can hack for good or build software
that will help liberate the world. And I believe that protests and occupying
and rioting and any sort of such action is just expansion and nothing else, so
I don’t do it. But this fact, that I haven’t found a way to “fight”, doesn’t
mean I can not be heartedly disappointed by our collective indifference. Maybe
that’s what I can offer, these typed words.

I shouldn’t be writing this.

I should be working on my personal project that will help me get a job and
make money instead. I shouldn’t even care as much to talk about it.

But all that is left is our ideas and voices, really, and I just can’t give up
without even saying a few things — even to an online community where I know
nobody. Not to change anything, probably, but at least to say I tried.

I shouldn’t be writing this. But I care. And I hope you start caring too.

(I have also published this comment on medium:
[https://medium.com/p/ebcea7330613](https://medium.com/p/ebcea7330613))

~~~
tjbiddle
Reminds me of the "First they came" poem - well written post, thank you:

First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a
Communist.

Then they came for the Socialists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a
Socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I
wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.

~~~
diminoten
Who have they actually come for?

What group is no longer here because the CIA/NSA have decided they shouldn't
exist?

~~~
downer91
In a generation or two, those positions will be staffed by completely
different people, as the "THEY" of today retire.

When the "THEY" of tomorrow are handed the keys to this vast panopticon that
they didn't have to build themselves, how will "THEY" behave. No one can be
sure.

Consider the men that inherited the ash heap of Europe after WWI. What did
those men do?

They started WWII.

~~~
diminoten
If you think the world today is anything like post-WWI Europe, you're either
immensely blind, or you don't know what post-WWI Europe looked like.

~~~
GVIrish
I don't think parent was equating current times with post-WWI era Europe in
the least. He was simply saying that people who inherited a
challenging/dangerous geo-political landscape went on to create an
unimaginably worse geo-political landscape.

The current challenge is global terrorism, but the swing towards
authoritarianism by Western governments may end up being FAR worse than the
threat of terrorism.

~~~
diminoten
Then what he was saying is immensely broad and basically useless as guidance
for today. "Bad thing happened at some point in history" is worthless, as a
sentence.

And we're _not_ swinging towards authoritarianism. That's absolutely a lie.
Want to know the irony in you saying that? That you _can_ say that, and not
fear your door being knocked down and you being questioned. You don't know
authoritarianism if you think the US is headed that way. Authoritarianism is
not being able to criticize the government. Authoritarianism is the inability
to change the government. Authoritarianism is a very loaded word, and your
misuse of it only clouds the real problems the US government has, of which
there are undeniably many.

People like you who go chicken-little constantly by bandying about words like
"authoritarianism" create huge political blockage, which _causes_ government
standstills like what we're seeing in congress today. Lawmakers are afraid to
_do_ anything, because every time they try, it ends with some lawmaker or
another being portrayed as eating children under a bridge somewhere, and
his/her constituents buy it enough to oust him/her, despite just trying to
make this country a better place.

~~~
GVIrish
Well, just because I can say what I want today, doesn't mean the same will be
true tomorrow. We're already past the point that people are beginning to self-
censor out of fear of the surveillance state. We already have indefinite
detentions, torture, secret laws with secret interpretations, and state-
sanctioned kidnappings.

Looking across the pond at England, they went from filtering the internet to
block child porn, to filtering the internet to block extremists in less than
one year. You have UK law enforcement harassing and intimidating legitimate
journalism about the out of control surveillance state.

Maybe none of that is alarming to you, and maybe you don't think any of those
things are along the road that leads to an authoritarian state, but I and many
others feel differently. Either way, just because my perception of events is
different that yours doesn't make my perception a _lie_.

~~~
diminoten
> We already have indefinite detentions, torture, secret laws with secret
> interpretations, and state-sanctioned kidnappings.

And have had them for many many years. Nothing new. We committed a genocide
against a people in the 1900s, and enslaved another people in the 1800s, both
of which I think are _much_ worse things to do to people than where we are
now. If you chart the kinds of freedoms people living in the US have
throughout the US's existence, would you really try to say the average person
is _less_ free today? Obviously we're not done working on being better at
that, and absolutely we slip, but I'm so sick and tired of this attitude that
we're moving into a totalitarian state, when we only in the last 100ish years
LEFT what amounted to one.

And a small point of order but obviously no, my perception isn't any _more_
valid than yours, but there _is_ an objective perception, and if your
perception is not aligned with that objective flagpost, then yes, your
perception is a lie.

~~~
ferrouswheel
If you know anything about neurology or psychology, you'll know that there is
no "objective perception". There is science, but that's about repeatability,
and the complexity of geopolitics makes situations difficult to reproduce in
exactitude. We make assessment based on different sets of experiences and
knowledge, and our perception is influenced by our past and present.

No two people have the same life experience.

The very rawest form of perceptual subjectivity can be demonstrated by the
interference of vision and sound caused by the McGurk effect. Search youtube
for an example.

------
Zigurd
WP ddoes not appear to have released the source documents. That makes it hard
to trust that these reports are complete w.r.t. what the documents reveal.

~~~
pkinsky
If we're very lucky the NSA will call the Post's bluff, and we'll get to see
the source docs.

------
salient
Metadata surveillance is the backbone of drone assassinations. Without it,
they wouldn't be possible. They first find out when the person to be
assassinated is _located_ , and _then_ send the drone.

------
rl3
_" The National Security Agency is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on
the whereabouts of cellphones around the world, ..."

"The records feed a vast database that stores information about the locations
of at least hundreds of millions of devices, ..."_

Why are there only 5 billion geolocation records ingested daily? Using a
conservative estimate of 200 million devices, that yields an average daily
ingestion rate of 25 records for each device. This seems really low.

It sounds like NSA may be culling the data aggressively, or the definition of
a record may constitute more than just a single polling event. Perhaps both.

Keep in mind that the Bluffdale, Utah facility was not operational at the time
the documents referenced in the article were created. It's possible ingestion
of gelocation data has since ramped up.

------
wickedlogic
Dear rest of the world, we (our US gov) are tracking as much of everything
that we (our US gov) find relevant. When we don't, we encourage fund companies
who do.

Dear US citizens, can we also stop being surprised that we are doing such
things? We have a long history of doing this.

------
VladRussian2
it is called doctrine of Total/Global (like in the Globe of the planet Earth)
Awareness. Started somewhen 20+ years ago in Pentagon and now has been adapted
from military into anti-terrorism [which incidentally covers _everything_]

------
lasermike026
I have no desire to carry a mobile phone if these are the terms. No thanks. I
pass.

------
nitrogen
_...it collects locations in bulk because its most powerful analytic tools —
known collectively as CO-TRAVELER — allow it to look for unknown associates of
known intelligence targets by tracking people whose movements intersect._

Better change your bus route if you notice the same terrorist rides the same
bus as you every day.

------
lignuist
I know a guy who does not have a mobile phone. Sometimes I am a bit envious of
him.

~~~
mjolk
Why? Why are you envious of him? You can choose to only sometimes carry a
phone or turn it on.

~~~
middleclick
Most modern phones take a long time to start up. Reminds of the time I had one
of those Nokia phones. 2-3 seconds bootup time.

I think putting in Airplane Mode should be a good idea.

~~~
lignuist
> I think putting in Airplane Mode should be a good idea.

And then you still would have to trust this Airplane Mode.

Honestly, I have absolutely no idea what is happening in my phone. Is it maybe
still collecting data while it is in Airplane Mode and sending it somewhere
once it is set back to regular mode? Or is it even sending data all the time,
because the NSA knows that never a single plane has crashed because of active
cellphones? Probably some smart people out there are checking their phone's
internals and activities more than I do...

------
l0stb0y
Anytime something bad happens I'm going to ask why the NSA didn't stop it.
Paul Walkers death... why didn't the NSA stop it? PS4 DOA orders...why didn't
the NSA stop it? Psychboo finding Prezi's source code... why didn't the NSA
stop it?

~~~
swalkergibson
You say this in jest, but they may have opened a can of worms here. Some
defendant in a criminal case in Florida subpoenaed his NSA file in his
defense. It would sure be interesting to see if this location data can be used
as exculpatory evidence to acquit somebody, or if it would even be available.
It would be very hard to stomach if that type of information is only available
to convict, not exonerate.

~~~
l0stb0y
The authorities regularly withhold information that could assist defendants so
it would be business as usual I'm sure. But yeah, that's one giant can of
worms!

~~~
swalkergibson
Theoretically, they are not allowed to do that. If it is evidence that would
affect the outcome of the case, they are obligated to disclose it. While it
seems like due process and the rule of law is being eroded daily, I really
hope that the below case still applies...

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brady_v._Maryland](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brady_v._Maryland)

------
dariopy
Once again RMS is proven right, in all his paranoid delirium. Pretty sad is
you ask me.

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forgotAgain
I wonder what the codename is for the program that enforces martial law?

------
foobarqux
Anyone know the details of accuracy and penetration of network-side
positioning? Client-side could in principle be detected but network-side would
be undetectable.

------
ajju
Was this not obvious from the various news stories of drone strikes targeted
at cell phone locations of suspected terrorists?

------
contingencies
_the NSA’s FASCIA repository_

Fascists gonna fash.

~~~
na85
Please keep this sort of comment on reddit where it belongs.

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Zoomla
Can one record include many rows? I would assume so.

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P3KLb82AhB
if north korea would do that to usa, it would be considered an act of war...

------
giardini
AFAIK no one ever asked Clapper (or any other NSA representative) to give a
precise operational definition of the term "metadata". I don't want to hear
what someone else thinks "metadata" is, I want to know how NSA operationally
defines "metadata" internally and precisely when and where the usage(s) are
made.

Voice:

I am on the telephone with you. My actual voice is the data. Is the
digitization of my voice not metadata? After all, natural voice =/= digitized
voice. So it seems that digitized voice could be, to the NSA, metadata and
therefore subject to capture.

I know the NSA has software/hardware to translate digitized voice to text.
Suppose all phone conversations are converted to text. Then is that text
therefore not data but metadata? Once again, it seems that the text of all
phone conversations could be, to the NSA, metadata and therefore subject to
capture.

Fax:

I send a fax to you. What's on the sheet of paper is data. But is the
digitized and compressed sequence of bits sent to you not metadata? It
certainly is not the same as the original data. So it seems that the digitized
fax could be, to the NSA, metadata and therefore subject to capture.

Still, were that not so, the NSA has OCR that can read handwritten or typed
text from a fax and convert it to text. Is the converted text not metadata? It
is certainly different from the original data. So it seems that the converted
text from the fax could be, to the NSA, metadata and therefore subject to
capture.

E-mail:

I e-mail you. The text I see before me is data. Once I press the send key, it
is compressed through various software/hardware for rapid transmission as it
passes over the TCP/IP/phone network. Is not that compressed text also
metadata? Therefore it seems that e-mail content could be, to the NSA,
metadata and therefore subject to capture.

IOW once data is processed through any transformation whatsoever then it could
be defined as "metadata". Again I don't know NSA's exact definition (used
internally) of what metadata is. There may be many different definitions. But
since NSA's representatives raised the use of the term w/o defining it (and
then used the metaphor of a library to draw questioners off track) I believe
that they should be questioned again about precisely what "metadata" means
when and where. Furthermore the question of what precisely the NSA captures
should be driven to ground thoroughly.

Personal belief:

NSA considers the product of any transformation of data to be metadata. The
NSA captures all voice, fax, e-mail, chat, sms, etc. and maintains it in
digitized form. Regardless of origin, all communications end up in text format
(with pointers back to the original digitized form) which is then subjected to
semantic/content analysis (scanning for naughty words), and optionally (under
control of an analyst) to social network analysis and AI software that
analyzes events, objects, actors, their intentions, and possible variations in
interpretation of the text.

~~~
downer91
Your request to have them explicitly define what they are designating as
metadata is wise. They may have a completely distorted concept of metadata
that represents a drastic departure from any sane definition.

But the definitions you've put forth are completely off target, with respect
to the layman's ordinary, rational concept of metadata. Conceptually, metadata
forms a map of relationships between actual examples of data, in the sense
that the wires between the lightbulbs are the metadata, while the lightbulbs
are the data. Your hypothesis is that someone might propose that only the
light emitted from the bulb is the data, and that all other phenomena beyond
that are the metadata, so, if you take a picture of the lightbulb while it's
switched on, and mark the time, the timestamped photo is the metadata, only
because it recorded measurements of the intensity of the photons emanating
from the bulb, and did not capture and retain the actual photons themselves
(all else, aside from the photons being fair game). No one in their right mind
would ever build such an absurd mental model.

The reality is that anyone proposing concepts like the ones you mention, is
simply lying through their teeth. Thus, why would you want anyone like that to
speak a single word?

If that's their version of the truth, and they seriously believe that's a
representation of honesty, it's not worth listening to them.

If they know it's a lie and try to sell the lie anyway, it's not worth
listening to them.

If they know what the reality is, but lie and provide the rational definition
of metadata, regardless of how inaccurately it aligns with the truth, it's not
worth listening to them.

The only thing you'd gain from hearing them speak to their belief of how
metadata is defined, would be if you compare what they say to the actually
evidence that proves the reality, and assess how warped they are, and how much
they lied.

~~~
giardini
I don't believe the layman has an "ordinary, rational concept of metadata".

The NSA's library metaphor was well-chosen: loose enough to possibly explain
but complex enough to mislead. It derailed the conversation.

But I see no utility in the light bulb metaphor you present, except possibly
to mislead as most metaphors can do. I would never use it in this context.

The point is to eliminate the metaphors. "Just the facts, ma'am." as Dragnet's
Sgt. Friday (didn't exactly) always says.

"why would you want anyone like that to speak a single word?"

To find the truth. If not, to reveal those who lie under oath. To eliminate
the metaphors and replace them with facts.

------
timbro
> The NSA does not target Americans’ location data

and

> ...location data are obtained by methods “tuned to be looking outside the
> United States,”

Whew, I was getting worried, but now I'm sure we're safe and it's just for
foreigners.

------
wilsonbooster
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