
Massive New Surveillance Program Uncovered by Wall Street Journal - mtgx
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/12/13/national_counterterrorism_center_s_massive_new_surveillance_program_uncovered.html
======
nnq
> allow databases about U.S. civilians to be handed over to foreign
> governments for analysis, presumably so that they too can _attempt to
> determine future criminal actions_

...where on the line did these guys lost the _"innocent until proven guilty"_
part?! (the possibility of your government handing personal data of _innocent_
civilians to foreign governments sounds "out of your freakyn minds" even for a
foreigner like me! Imagine someone coming to the US in attempt to flee from an
oppressive government and data about his whereabouts getting to a contract
killer via an "en masse" exchange of data about "suspicious" civilians between
governments...)

...keep it like this and the USA will be the last place on Earth someone would
want to emigrate to, either to work or to open a business!!!

~~~
buro9
It's been happening in the other direction for a number of years now.

My brother was turned back when he flew to Miami with his family to take his
children to Disney World.

It turned out that because he had been arrested aged 19 and failed to declare
it that the border people felt that he had answered fraudulantly when
challenged on "Have you ever been arrested?".

My brother answered no because whilst he was arrested he was never charged or
convicted. He had attended a demonstration in the North of England and when a
few people caused trouble the police had just arrested everyone only to
release the vast majority some hours later.

He'd forgotten about this because nothing had ever actually come of it and it
was over 20 years ago, yet there he was being confronted by it at a US border.

Clearly the UK authorities already share data with the USA on its citizens,
even those never charged or convicted.

That it may happen more does not surprise me the least. The only part that
surprises me is that the data flow might go the other way too.

~~~
nikcub
It sucks that this is how it works, but that is what the survey is for. They
already know all the answers, they just want to see how _you_ respond.

For eg. they already know the date, your flight number, your passport number,
your history - it is all about getting you in a situation where you answer
questions and can be analyzed.

The Isrealis are really good at it. They realized that security through
innspecting every person and every square centimeter of luggage is too
expensive and isn't as effective.

A lot of their security at airports depends on picking out people and just
asking them a random question or two ('why are you here') and seeing the
response. If you have ever been asked the time, or the directions to the mens
room, or about a flight from a tourist looking person at an Israel airport,
chances are that they may have been an agent. There is a front-line of plain
clothed who look around on the ground and pass on potential targets to
uniformed officers.

There was a paper I remember reading sub-titled "Can you really catch
terrorist by asking them if they are terrorists" and the conclusion was that
yes, you can - and you do - and not because you know they will answer 'no',
but by how they answer and their body language, among other factors (much of
which modern governments keep secret).

There was sometime in how your brother answered that steered them towards not
allowing him in. There are a lot of people who also make similar mistakes on
immigration forms and are still let in.

~~~
barrkel
_They already know all the answers_

That's nonsense. Ever commit "moral turpitude"? You'd need to be a historian
of the law to know what they're on about, and the peons behind the desks
certainly don't know all the answers.

They also didn't know how to interpret my H-1B after my division was purchased
by another company, even at the supervisor level, though I had a thick binder
from the company lawyers to explain it all - I didn't use it in the end, I did
the visa waiver instead.

I'd maintain that almost all people would be turned back by CBP if their lives
were inspected closely enough and the laws and questions interpreted literally
enough. It's a game; you need to know which questions they think they have the
answer to, and answer as expected for them; and admit no wrongdoing elsewhere.
And you may still end up with a jobsworth behind the counter - though my
experience of most CBP personnel is that they are reasonably cheerful and
pleasant.

~~~
nikcub
I'm talking about customs and immigration clearance, not visa applications.
All flights into the USA are now pre-screened with airlines forwarding all
passenger info prior to departure. They literally know all the answers and
have no real need for the cards you fill out.

edit: I don't have the link with me atm, but there was a Wired (I believe)
story about the center that is responsible for collecting all the data in pre-
screening and the technical challenge. As inputs they have airline data and
data exchange agreements with governments that are part of the visa waiver
program, amongst others

~~~
barrkel
I've entered the US 15 times in the past 5 years; I've been through the
transition from filling out forms in the arrivals hall, to getting landing
cards with your boarding pass, to ESTA pre-authorization. I've gone through
with visas and without, I've gone through the US embassy process etc.; I've
even sometimes gone through CBP before I left Europe, in Shannon.

They still ask stupid questions, whether it's on a website or on paper.

------
d0ne
My company will sponsor $5,000 for the best idea submission for mitigation
techniques against these types of systems. Any suggestion on the best service
to use host this / receive submissions?

We will:

1) Open source all submitted ideas.

2) Let the community choose the top 5 and we will hold an internal review
process for the top spot.

3) Fly the winner(s) to our office in Atlanta, GA to discuss the winning
submission in details with some of the top information security experts in the
world.

4) Work to get press around the winning idea.

5) If we get north of 50 submissions we will help seed (with an additional
$5,000) an IndieGoGo campaign to see the idea developed.

Email me (adam | socialfortress.com) or respond here to discuss.

~~~
jacquesm
> Fly the winner(s) to our office in Atlanta, GA to discuss the winning
> submission in details with some of the top information security experts in
> the world.

That may be a bit prohibitive, given that they will still have to use air
travel, possibly to and at least within the USA. I figure the people that come
up with a mitigation against a system like this would be very smart to stay
the hell away from claiming credit for it.

And the top information security experts in the world are working for what
we'll loosely designate 'the other side' here, I don't think they'll be on
your discussion panel.

~~~
mindcrime
_And the top information security experts in the world are working for what
we'll loosely designate 'the other side' here_

I think that would be accurate if it read:

 _And some of the top information security experts in the world are working
for what we'll loosely designate 'the other side' here_

There are some pretty goddamned smart people in the cypherpunk / hacker
community, who would (and do) find this kind of surveillance crap abhorrent
and who will work to resist it. I certainly would not say that all of the best
people are on "the other side". Maybe time will prove me wrong, but I doubt
it.

~~~
jacquesm
I'm with you on the 'some', I should have been more careful with the wording
there.

Yes, there are indeed lots of smart people who find this crap abhorrent and
who will work to resist it. But I don't think they're the majority. Not even
close. Individuals such as Phil Zimmerman are making a real difference.

But money is a powerful motivator. Lots of people will do very stupid things
when offered enough money. Governments _print_ money. Nationalism is another
such powerful motivator. Press the combined buttons of nationalism and piles
of cash and a lot of people will start seeing things your way.

The NSA is currently the largest employer of mathematicians in the United
States, and that probably makes them the largest employer of mathematicians
planet wide.

There are lots of counterparts of the NSA in other countries. And those
mathematicians are not too upset about not being able to publish their
results, so I'm thinking there is something to counterbalance that, such as
abundant financial compensation.

For now this is an unbalanced situation.

~~~
mindcrime
_For now this is an unbalanced situation._

Agreed. I was just trying to point out that there are at least a few talented
folks on "our side".

------
dreamdu5t
Why I'm worried about a surveillance state? Because the people in charge will
have their records protected while everyone else gets the surveillance.

Our president committed crimes his justice department jails people for
(illegal drugs). Drug testing is a perfect example of the surveillance state.
The people who don't get tested? The testers. The legislators. The people in
charge. I know there are technical problems with that analogy - but you get
the point.

~~~
belorn
As Eben Moglen said in his speech in Berlin. If we don't do something soon, we
are going to be living in the age past forgetting. Nothing will ever be
forgotten again. Everything one do, everything one say, everything one reads,
listen to, or think about is recoded and saved for all eternity.

This 5 years the article talk about. Do anyone really believe than in 5 years,
they won't extend it further? It will continue to the point in which either
everything is stored forever, or push back actually takes away this pandora
box from the government.

No goverment ever want to be with less information about the population. If
they could predict who is a criminal before a crime is committed, social
benefits could be rerouted away. If they could predict who is going to become
political candidates, they could adjust information flows away or towards that
person. If they can predict who is voting for who, they can direct
support/anti-support to "encourage" the right result.

This is why I am worried about a surveillance state. With a large enough
database of population information, and prediction models, democracy will be
eroded to the point of destruction.

~~~
tripzilch
> If they could predict who is a criminal before a crime is committed, social
> benefits could be rerouted away.

Surveillance is no replacement for legwork. They're not catching _that_ many
criminals (or "terrorists") with it right now, and in order to have an effect
like you describe they need to catch most if not all of them. Surveillance
isn't a panacea like that (even if you ignore the freedom aspect), even with
perfect total information awareness, there's a ceiling of efficiency.

The thing you describe, to run smoothly is just about the same amount of
trouble and effort for a government, as it would be to rule with actual
justice, civil liberties, privacy, etc.

The truth is, all this surveillance shit is NOT really about protecting the
public and reducing crime. It may be useful but not _that_ useful, definitely
not billons-of-dollars useful, the amounts that are being invested in this
tech. It's about the state protecting its place, keeping the status quo and
people covering their asses. In a healthy country, those two goals are
aligned. In many countries, including the USA, they aren't. Also, money and
power. Actually it's just power, money is secondary.

------
oelmekki
> using “predictive pattern-matching,” to analyze it for suspicious patterns
> of behavior

Here we are again : authoritarianism being rationalized.

~~~
chmike
This has nothing to do with authoritarism. It is method to detect behaviour
not mathching "normal" pattern. This is used as a heuristic to detect
suspicious behavior.

~~~
dalke
An issue is that they are only an _approximate_ heuristic. What is the
likelihood that an unusual behavior is suspicious? The level of false
negatives is, as this article points out, very high. That's because it's
essentially impossible to define "normal" behavior.

"Normal" behavior doesn't include jumping off a bridge. But I and friends
have, as a lark. Is that then suspicious? Or from the article, normal people
don't buy explosive chemicals and a timer in the same week ... except if the
person's teen wants the chemicals for a science experiment and the timer
replaces the broken one for the lawn irrigation system.

There are a huge number of these low-probability events, and it overwhelms the
signal of any truly suspicions behavior. Should the authorities investigate
all of these? Some of these? What sets the limit? The lack of funding or the
law?

"Authoritarianism" comes into play because the authorities do come in and
investigate. That's their mandate. And innocent citizens are compelled to
submit to the investigation, or at the least get the clear signal that the
government thinks they are suspicious. Some will stop doing legal things (like
traveling by air) in order to not be subject to increased scrutiny by the
authorities. This might be low-level authoritarianism, but it still is a
higher level of submission to authority than I would like.

There's always going to be some false positives, where innocent citizens are
investigated, accused, and even put into prison, so it's not like I'm saying
that we can have a non-authoritarian government. But do say that this has
nothing to do with authoritarianism is only focusing on the collection of the
data, and not the likelihood that someone in authority will do something with
it.

------
mcantelon
WSJ didn't uncover it. It has been talked about since October in the context
of the "disposition matrix", which is to be used to search out possible
candidates for the extrajudicial "kill list".

>The central role played by the NCTC in determining who should be killed ...
the NCTC operates a gigantic data-mining operation, in which all sorts of
information about innocent Americans is systematically monitored, stored, and
analyzed

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/24/obama-
te...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/24/obama-terrorism-
kill-list)

------
paganel
> The aim of the TIA initiative was essentially to create a kind of ubiquitous
> pre-crime surveillance regime monitoring public and private databases.

I Ctrl+F-ed for Philip K. Dick's name, didn't find anything, I'll be the first
one to copy-paste this:

> Paradoxes and alternate realities are created by the precognition of crimes
> when the chief of police intercepts a precognition that he is about to
> murder a man he has never met.
> (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Minority_Report>)

~~~
mtgx
People have warned that this will happen eventually, but I don't think that
many believed it. We're witnessing the first real steps towards making pre-
crime recognition a reality in the country. Good bye "innocent until proven
guilty".

Cory Doctorow has said in his "war against general computation" talk [1] that
it's becoming cheaper and easier for authorities to just monitor everyone and
store information about everyone, and then use algorithms to catch them, than
focusing on who they they need to catch and following just that one. Now it's
up to the people to stop this from becoming legal or from being done even
illegally, not just in US, but in all countries, as I'm sure many others will
try doing it, too. The ironic part is that the developed "democratic"
countries may be the first to do it, because they are more advanced
technologically.

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbYXBJOFgeI>

------
varelse
Since the predictive algorithms in use mostly come down to glorified dot
products, I question their general validity.

Sure, it works sometimes, but just look at some of the wacky stuff Amazon,
Google, and Netflix derive from such things. Now replace search results and
product recommendations with waterboarding and extraordinary rendition based
on the results of those dot products and hilarity ensues...

~~~
yid
And those dot products come down to glorified FMUL and FADD machine
instructions! Specious reductionism goes all the way down.

~~~
varelse
And those FMUL and FADD instructions could either be fused multiply/add or
separate multiplies and adds with twice the truncation issues, Holy FPRE!

But I'm curious as to why you place such faith in the sooper top sekrit(tm)
basis vectors for these dot products? It seems to me that it's politically
expedient for such a system to generate false positives rather than risk
letting the terrorists win(tm) and that's where I think things go wrong.
Because it would appear from the outside that the powers-that-be have decreed
that it's better to torture the occasional innocent than risk letting the
guilty slip through their fingers.

~~~
yid
I think you might be a bit too wrapped up in conspiracy theories, friend.

------
dendory
"Pre-crime"

You thought it was a movie, now it's reality. Soon, it'll be something you get
arrested for. Mark my words.

~~~
barking
If you have a record then isn't it understandable that you might attract more
attention than someone with a blameless past? It seems logical to me anyway.
Obviously not to the extent that you'd be held but keeping an eye on you is
fair enough imo.

~~~
thwarted
Eventually, having a blameless past will be cause for suspicion, if it's not
already. Because at some point, not having a record is is sufficiently
different from everyone to not be "normal".

~~~
barking
Good point. That reminds me of hearing how traffic cops decide to pull someone
over to check for drink driving. One of their criteria was any car that
appeared to be sticking too rigidly to the speed limit

------
hermannj314
I have an aquaintance that was falsely accused of vehicular homicide because
he had a car whose description was close enough for the police and he had to
spend a decade in the legal system fighting for his freedom. And all of this
is made possible because the police have access to records of which cars are
owned and by whom and they can look at it. Should we not let the police use
this information since this one individual was the victim of a false positive
match and it cost him 10 years proving it? I mean, he never committed a crime
in his life, and yet the police had access to his vehicle driving history /
cars registered to him / etc. The had collected that information in advance.
But no one called it a "massive surveillance program"

So where does it stop? Phone records. Addresses. Aliases. Friends.
Fingerprints. Is it wrong that they want to put in all in place? Would we be
happier if they had to run around to 25 different government agencies / 25
private corporations to get the information? What if the information is lost
before the need to use it to aid an investigation. Wouldn't it be easier if
they just aggregated it ahead of time and looked at it when they needed it?

I guess personally I'm just not seeing the problem. As long as they are simply
gathering all information that is legally knowable, what do I care? Why should
I care? I'd like to know I have the freedom to do the same thing and I assume
large corporations are doing it already. Should it be illegal to gather
information on people simply because they didn't authorize it? Should
individuals have the power to control what others do with the information that
is publically knowable about them? I, personally, say no.

~~~
capnrefsmmat
> Should it be illegal to gather information on people simply because they
> didn't authorize it? Should individuals have the power to control what
> others do with the information that is publically knowable about them? I,
> personally, say no.

I think this is the third time I'll make this post on HN, but it's been
relevant every time.

Privacy is not about having something to hide, or about keeping things secret.
Giving the government the power to store all this data about you isn't bad
because they might learn embarrassing things; after all, it will most likely
only be read by a computer.

But it gives the government enormous power to make decisions about you --
decisions about whether you may take a commercial airline flight, get a
security clearance, or even get a job -- without your knowledge or consent,
and without you knowing how they make the decisions. It's not Orwellian, it's
Kafkaesque.

In short, a lack of privacy gives the government the power to be even less
transparent in its decision-making, and gives it yet more power over its
citizens. It's not a question of discovering your fetishes or being
embarrassed, and we shouldn't respond to the "but I have nothing to hide"
argument as though their conception of privacy is right and having nothing to
hide really is an excuse.

There's a rather good paper I can recommend on the subject:

<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565>

------
aswanson
They're probably using Palantir. I wonder how Thiel resolves his
libertarian/freedom philosophy with supplying the government with such a
powerful oppressive tool.

~~~
wyck
Well there is also this company <https://www.recordedfuture.com/> which has
the CIA and Google as investors, like anything political the grey area covers
a lot.

~~~
magicalist
"We constantly collect news, blogs, and public social media. We identify the
events: past, present, and future. We help you find predictive signals in the
noise of the web."

sounds like...anyone doing information extraction or sentiment analysis from
the web? If investment is the only thing to raise a red flag, you have to
worry about a lot more companies than that:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel#Investments>

------
wtfus
<strike>Innocent until proven guilty.</strike>

<strike>Innocent until "terrorist".</strike>

<strike>Innocent until suspected "terrorist".</strike>

<strike>Innocent until surveillance indicates you use encryption, therefore
"terrorist".</strike>

<strike>Innocent until our surveillance predicts you might commit some sort of
crime, therefore "terrorist".</strike>

Innocent until we say so.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

------
adventured
Give a government trillions to spend in an era of massive government programs
and vast new storage & surveillance technology, and it should be obvious what
you're going to get.

The only possible way to stop it is to starve the beast of funds to spend. Cut
the government in half, and let's see if they can still afford all the shiny
new big brother toys.

~~~
stygianguest
By this logic Europeans should be a total police state. To find a solution we
need to discover what makes Americans so afraid that no gun is big enough, no
military powerful enough, and due process can be suspended.

~~~
Vivtek
First, it hasn't been so long since Europeans _had_ police states, and people
in Europe actually remember it.

Second, "Europeans" are a myth. The French, Germans, Italians, Danes, Brits,
Spaniards, Hungarians, Greeks, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Romanians, Dutch,
Belgians, Irish, and so on trust each other about as far as they can
collectively throw one another. No one country can possibly get much
centralized control. Not that they don't try.

Third, Americans have that exceptionalism thing: no matter how dangerous a
course of action is, an American will succeed because, gosh darn it, God loves
us and we're great! So something like TIA, well, sure, if Castro tried it or
even some trustworthy but lesser nation like English did, it'd be terrible
tyranny - but _we_ can be trusted because we're Americans.

------
chmike
I don't understand the critics. Do you think that terrorists or criminals are
detected by oracles ? You ridiculed the security agencies after 911 for not
beeing able to detect such a plot and now you are in shock because they do
their job ? There is no way to detect a plot while staying eyes shut.

There is a problem, more precisely a risk, but it is not in collecting the
data and processing it to detect a plot. It is in the usage and control of
usage of the data. This is the heart of the problem and the secrecy around
this information gathering and processing is not a good sign. Who controlls
and how is this information controlled are the core problem which is
absolutely not properly addressed.

The need to collect the information to ensure security is on the other hand
obvious, at least to me. Not doing this is stupid.

~~~
peterhost
Ok, you're my target cause this comment is so obviously being uttered by
someone who hasn't studied history in his/her whole life... Jeez ! (whom i
don't believe in btw)

Hacker new indeed....

Has anyone's been following dunno, wikileaks or Appelbaum or... Hacker news
that are not on hackernews (which usurpates its name because what it really is
is startup news) ? Eagle, the Athen Affair
([http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/the-athens-
affair/...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/the-athens-affair/0)),
or more generally this : <http://wikileaks.org/the-spyfiles.html> ?

It's our liberty that's slipping out of the (gaping a..)hole of democracies,
which is not democracies fault because they are by definition are
"representative governements", based on election. Tocqueville knew that back
in the XIXth, so did all theoreticians of "governance", and not a single one
called a "representative government" a "democracy".

Anyway. What it boils down to is : if you're not strictly speaking living in a
democracy (which i'm sorry, the US, UK, France,... Aren't by historical,
philosophical, and semantic definition), the only thing that matters is
keeping power at bay. Try and elect representatives who truly understand that
too much power in to few hands always leads to disaster. Only. There are none.
There haven't been for decades. The latest in france was General de Gaulle
(though his ego was high, he was the sort able to step down from power after a
people's vote) , and I guess, on the US side, Kennedy.

I wouldn't trust my shoes to the state. And to facebook ? (non existing) Jeez
again ! This is so scary to realize nobody - at large - realizes...

WWII is far away, the days of the cold war too, and people become lazy. Even
(so called) hackers.

~~~
chmike
I fear people are confusing things. Take the analogy of police patrols in
streets. They may see all what you do and even control your identity and ask
you questions. You may consider this as a frontal aggression to your privacy
and right to move around without beeing spied. You may claim it's the same as
the gestapo, or your preferred historical reference. It wouldn't be fully
wrong.

But see that it has also been understood by your ancestors that it is a price
to pay to ensure security of the people. Because while they look at what you
do they also look at what bad people do and will detect them most of the time.

The same change is taking place at a country and hopefuly at a world scale by
using the new tools available.

Now back to the police patrols. While this has a proven positive effect on
ssecurity, this is also a risk because these armed forces walking among us may
also be subverted and they may abuse people. This is a real danger and by
society evolution and learning mechanisms and rules have been put in place to
avoid this.

All I say is that police patrols are unavoidable and needed to ensure
security. Our concern should be to focus on the mechanisms and rules put in
place to ensure it doesn't go wrong, gets misused or abused.

So I think we agree that there is indeed a danger with this. We may disagree
on what the danger is and what we should focus on. This is in par with
democracy.

~~~
betterunix
Police patrols are not one thing. It is not just "officer friendly" with a
nightstick. In New York City, there are paramilitary teams wandering around in
subway stations -- one can only recognize them as police because of the word
POLICE written on their body armor.

Things have gotten excessive:

[http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/06/cops-military-
gear/a...](http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/06/cops-military-gear/all/)

------
propercoil
Assume everything is recorded. don't expect anything less

~~~
rdl
It's the responsibility of people in technology to design systems to defeat
passive surveillance as a baseline. Defeating simple active-attack assisted
monitoring (mitm with a different cert, etc.) is a nice additional step, and
being able to resist targeted attack is basically beyond what we can do now,
most of the time, but we should try.

~~~
meaty
Universal point to point encryption with pre-shared keys would solve this
instantly.

~~~
rdl
There are some issues with doing ipsec opportunistic encryption still (which
is probably the easiest way to realize that). I still think Free S/WAN was the
closest we've come to a system designed for OE for passive monitoring
resistance.

(and Start TLS for mail, does a pretty good job of that for the mail space)

------
shmerl
Not surprising. Consider the government to be dreaming about 1984 and prepare
to deal with it now.

~~~
conradfr
1984 in the back and A Brave New World in the front :)

------
rglover
Are we so spooked as a nation that we're really considering precognition-style
crime fighting? Liberties aside, this really makes me wonder what the
atmosphere is like inside the government. With all of this paranoia, only two
paths come to mind: 1.) They're aware of a future threat so large that it
threatens the stability of the country, or 2.) They're planning something
internally to "take over" the country one way or another.

In another view, you have to ask what this would do to society? A public so
paranoid of being harassed by the government that they barely do anything, or,
actually do go out and commit crimes. Despite our "intelligence" we're still
animals and will behave so put under the right amount of strain. This is a
time bomb.

~~~
orangecat
_With all of this paranoia, only two paths come to mind_

I think it's just that they place zero or negative value on privacy, so any
perceived incremental increase in identifying threats justifies any amount of
increased surveillance.

------
kmfrk
So this is how the world ends, not with a bang, but muffled behind a paywall.

------
Zenst
One way I'm reading this is that in effect it is illegal to hack a computer
without permision; YET a computer can hack you without permision. When you
think of it like that it does appear one-sided. This data centre could
indicate you thru false positives of a crime and even present enough data to
potentualy incriminate you even if you are innocent. Whilst we have managed to
lock up innocent people in the past indicating the system is not perfect, the
prospect of stepping closer towards automating that does not bode well.

That all said I understand what they are doing and why and it does make sence
and if anything will make people realise that online is the same as in person,
just better documented.

------
Vivtek
"Reminiscent" of Total Information Awareness? It _is_ TIA - and did anybody
ever actually think they'd not implement TIA just because it was found out?

------
lunchladydoris
I'm assuming the OP posted a link to Slate instead of the Wall Street Journal
because the article is gated at the latter. In which case, let me show you a
little trick (in case you haven't come across it).

Just Google the full title of the WSJ article and the WSJ link in the search
results will let you read the whole thing.

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eyeareque
Home of the free, right?

------
AutoKorrect
ladies and gentlemen we have here a clear case where the people in charge have
failed to uphold the Constitution of the United States. These people must be
forced out of government, and prosecuted for their crimes.

Please vote, and please run for office if you have the fortitude to help us
deal with this problem.

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zactral
Your tax dollars at work, powered by machine learning(tm)

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blueprint
Our society would be extremely foolish to believe that we've not already been
under deep surveillance by the government for quite a long time.

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pluc
Philip K. Dick called...

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SideburnsOfDoom
Not _another_ one!

------
lucian303
If it was just revealed, it's been going on in some way or another for the
last two decades plus.

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pcvarmint
Nothing new, move on :(

~~~
pcvarmint
Not sure why this was downvoted, but those of us who have been reading Naomi
Wolf, Glenn Greenwald, et al. have known about this. This is merely the
logical extension of the Patriot Act, Military Commissions Act, Telecom
Immunity, NDAA, etc. I hope this federal Leviathan collapses, and we return to
liberty someday, but I fear there will be a lot of casualties before that
happens.

