So, nobody worried about this crap?
Conspiracy nutcase theorists were right, again. Maybe they have a better perception of reality than the rest of us sheep.
Official NSA slides, leaked:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BMHtXI3CUAAD1hk.png:large
i really don’t get the point of this :clue:
supposing that the conspiracy theory is correct,
why do they do this ???
i mean why this HUGE love of power exist ? they are going to die in the end…
[stupid-mad-world]
yeah I saw this
You are kinda cute 
One that is in power wants to hold complete power, no matter the cost. Like Caesar. One may long for complete information control. (In this case its only observation)
first of all: what we knew already: all of these companies will give the government all personal data if there is a reason/ if there are subpoenas. example: data of twitter followers of wikileaks were eventually given to the US
so we knew that already.
and I think personally that PRISM doesnt refer to any technology whatsoever but to this concept at large.
google and the others would have to invest a huge amount of money and time developing APIs or whatever simply for this reason.
It simply doesnt exist
so tl;dr: IMO, PRISM does not refer to any hidden software making us all transparent via direct access from the agencies; PRISM is just a concept name for how the can get data from these companies via law - which we already knew
I’ve known they could do this, technically. The conspiracy nutcases have claimed they’re doing it. But I was surprised that they’re actually doing it… and in such a wide manner that is reminiscent of a dystopian sci-fi novel.
But the most crazy thing is how the media and the government reacted to this, like they claimed it was like a no big deal, they’ve been doing this for a long time, and it helps keep us all safe. No big deal, carry on is the mantra.
Then there’s the scope of this whole citizen espionage project. It’s not exclusive to the U.S., as the slide shows and NSA claims “Much of the world’s communication flows through the U.S.”… so any natural inclination of a power hungry fascist is to of course to wiretap it all… its like gravity.
When much of the world’s communication, almost the entire internet communication of the western world flows through few net providers and services, the temptation to take a peek is clearly too strong for any government.
The solution is to distribute services in such a manner that no one government can force a net service to provide it with data, the net service would be redundant in such a manner it wouldn’t matter if they were no longer hosted in that country.
The thing that I’m wondering is:
If this was leaked, how safe is our data?
:persecutioncomplex:
I find this whole thing very scary on a personal level. Will they maintain data on me… forever? Maybe they can look me up in their database and see my entire internet history, search, page visiting, my emails and etc. etc. Everybody knows how Google logs everything and associates it to user profiles via their adsense service.
This could jeopardize the whole internet.
You think other world governments are just OK with the U.S. essentially wire-tapping their own citizens, just because the routing carries the IP packets through some U.S. carriers or they’re using services of Google and Facebook which are U.S. companies?
One could imagine world governments attempting to block these U.S. based services, or packets being routed to the U.S. to ensure the privacy of their citizens.
What will the European Union do?
If I were a leader of a country I’d seriously consider trying to block these espionage services, but not for the reasons some other countries do, like Iran, China, etc.
The internet is a HUGE part of the modern democratic process. If we can’t have privacy on the internet, then the whole democratic process is at risk.
Unfortunately the EU is very corrupt system. It will either mirror the US in time, or crumble.
So forget about it.
You saw how many countries actually signed ACTA before someone said “hey hold on a minute”
freedom of speech and privacy on the internet is very much in peril.
but yeah I already realized this before I guess: Act as if every information about you COULD be looked up.
Of course technologically you would have store immense amounts of data, then traverse it using crazy soft and hardware and finally a lot of secret manpower.
So yeah nothing is completely private, but if you aren’t a “target” its not an immediate concern. Also choosing smaller platforms has its benefits.
Encryption is another part. Of course people will counter by using proxies and encryption - and in general it may become a real battle for people who actually want to keep their privacy.
The fact is of course that most people willingly give up their privacy, by not only using facebook but by also publicly posting where they have been, where they are, what they do and think and plan, and so on.
It kind-of reminds me of DRM.
The people who it’s supposed to stop just slip through and are unaffected, while it annoys (and sometimes abuses) completely honest people.
When all this buzz started around Prism, I just wondered if everybody was blind the hole time. I mean there were so many similar strong clues about the US saving all telecommunications happening. The latest being a FBI agent talking about how they uncovered a month old telephone conversation in a TV interview(after the Boston bombing).
About the EU, the government’s here are probably quite happy about this spying. They can’t do it themself or are not allowed to, but can always Big Brother to help them out with some information. Take a look for examples at the treaties between the EU and US were the EU is giving the US all info about banking transaction(SWIFT) and all flight info(~60 data points for each passenger of every flight happening to the US). When Russia wanted to get the same info a week ago with the same arguments as the US had, EU politicians were suddenly concerned that another country other then the US would want this info.
As a last though, I think the thing we have to worry about is something similar like in “minority report”. They are already trying really hard to use big data to find abnormal behavior(i.e. EU project Indect). We all know how bad it is already when you somehow are on some special list from the government(no-fly list). With such new tech all this will be much more oppressive and inscrutable.
Update:
just read an article which perfectly matches this topic.
OK now I’m really convinced that the US is worse then eastern germany 30years ago.
tl;tr after finishing high school a german girl wants to go for a year to the US to take an english course and work as an Au-Pair. She dosen’t has a work visa. The border control kicks here right out of the country after they showed her private facebook messages which she exchanged with her guest parents.
There is simple no moral and ethics in the economy and politics. You do whatever makes sense from your point of view, to make money or wield power.
Would you spy on people in a situation (without moral bindings): yes it may benefit you.
Would you use 1 dollar a day asian workers: yes its a benefit.
Would you censor the media and only allow your news to broadcast: yes controlling information flow is very useful.
To assume power is being abused is perfectly reasonable, sad but its reality of course.
The sole core reason why the global economy is as bad as it is, is the reason that nobody really cares about other people. Especially people high up, dont care, statistically, how something may effect other people.
To quote Sherlock Holmes “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”
It is impossible, in this case for the guest-parents of the girl to have willingly submitted the facebook messages to the government (we dont know all the details here, but it would seem impossible for them to responsible).
Therefore the government must have had direct access to the private facebook contents. Which seems improbable - but there is no other option.
STASI as in that organization under the DDR? Umm…maybe a little history review is required, unless I’m missing the important part of this story.
:o
http://penguinpetes.com/b2evo/?c=1&more=1&pb=1&tb=1&title=why_i_don_t_give_a_rip_about_cispa_and_w
sums it up.
The government doesn’t have enough analysts to read through your lunch emails.
Oh how cute and naive :point:
If the processing power is lacking by factor 1,000, it’ll take 15 years before they have the capacity.
If the processing power is lacking by factor 1,000,000, it’ll take 30 years before they have the capacity.
Once they have the capacity, they will use it, and abuse it. People with data about you (and the people around you) can manipulate you and change your behavior to suite their cause. Just because something is 5,10 or 30 years away, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to slow it down or do anything to fight for our right of privacy.
Unfortunately, some people just don’t see the danger. They shrug and move on. One day their children may ask, ‘why did you let it happen’, and you’ll say, we were bloody naive.
Watch this interview: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22836378
It’s enough for the government to log everything there is about you… and maybe in 10-20 years when it suits them they can dig up some association with some people you had or discussion you had in order to paint you in a certain context.
Once the government can hold such a thing over ANYBODY, they have absolute control.
And regarding “analysts”, they don’t need them. All they need is a good AI which can detect “abnormalities” and alert the authorities. Soon you’ll have pre-crimes.
I mean you can’t make this dystopian shit up.
Really: What’s the worst they can do?
As soon as they begin to abuse it, people will quickly develop ways to get around it, or at least make it not worth the time it takes to process.
They will only ever be able to control the people who let themselves be controlled.
If you fight back, you can free yourself. Unfortunately, you can’t free those to stupid to bother, and they won’t care.
@Riven: 15-30 years is a long time. A lot can change in that time.
I in no way support this, but I do not need to concern myself with it. If a situation arises where I can take action, yeah, I’ll go for it, but I’m not going to worry about things that may never become a problem.
Let’s be to the point: What have we got to hide from them anyway?
oh HeroesGraveDev…how cute and naive. Read: http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1fv4r6/i_believe_the_government_should_be_allowed_to/caeb3pl?context=3
So young and naive. Read up some history to learn in what kind of world you live. Always when there is lot of power someone will use it wrongly.
Also I have lot of hide from them like my personal life, phone calls and emails.
I did some quick reading on that reddit page, googled a few things mentioned etc. but I still kept thinking of this:
What’s the worst they could do, and how likely is that to happen? And how much damage will it do before the community finds a way around it.
Say they have enough people working to trawl through EVERYTHING. Say that the person slaving away is dedicated enough to actually read you personal email or whatever properly. Say it’s notable enough for them to remember.
Then what??
Whenever freedom is ‘taken away’, it simply adapts and continues as usual, away from mainstream places.
I’m against this. I’ll leave it at just stating it for now. When the time for action comes, then I will do something.
This is just my opinion, and I am open to change it. If you want to disagree, I’ll be interested to read you thoughts.
I think you’re suffering from short sighted hyperbole. You realize that the U.S. is not the only country who monitors communications, and the sky has not fallen yet. Personally I am more worried about the attempts to give Internet policing / regulation power to the U.N.
I also think the world governments give less than half a rat squeeze about the routing and privacy of their citizens data beyond lip service. I would imagine they’re much more worried about the security of their own internal communications.
That’s such a rosy scenario, but in the cases where governments have done that, it’s been more for the purposes of cutting off communications between their own citizens and the rest of the world in order to protect themselves, not their fellow countrymen. See Egypt and China for some good examples. I would be far more afraid of a government that did that in the name of protecting me than I would be of a foreign government gathering information which would have no legal impact on me in my home nation.
I would hardly classify the service providers as “espionage services”. They release data when legally ordered to by the courts. Realistically any law abiding business anywhere operates by the same standards. If your government compelled a local ISP to divulge details of foreign communications that passed through their servers, would you suddenly accuse the ISP of espionage? No matter your good intentions, blocking access to information is a form of censorship. It’s not government’s job to decide where you as a citizen may and may not visit on the net any more than it is to mandate what type of firewall/virus scanner you run (or don’t run) on your PC. What you describe is on the same level as Iran and China despite your assertion to the contrary.
Can you name a time where there was any real privacy on an open, public network, such as the Internet? The Internet was never intended to be a form of Democracy with the majority deciding what’s acceptable and unacceptable. The Internet, in it’s purest form, is more akin to Anarchy with ideas of all types expressed by whoever wanted to express them being put forth. Why do you think attempts to regulate the Internet get met with such furious backlash from citizens.
So, a German girl comes here with the intent of violating her visa and gets kicked out. How does this qualify as being “worse than eastern Germany 30 years ago” exactly? Try going to any country on a visa intending to break their laws and see if getting kicked out isn’t about the best outcome you can hope for. Trying to tie this to PRISM is tenuous at best. Visa applications are often scrutinized, and in fact the data may have come from talking to the host family. I can easily imagine one of them being asked what the general plans were once the girl arrived and someone offhandedly saying they were going to try to help her find that job that she was looking for without considering the implications. It’s hard to say though since the article seemed pretty light on any sort of hard facts unless they were completely lost in the translation.
This works wonderfully in monopolies and dictatorships. Not so much with a government with distributed powers or an economy with alternate supply’s of a commodity. Government is a system of laws, not morals. A moral government is a dangerous government, especially if you disagree with their morals. A lawful government is a restrained government. Iran is a moral government (just ask their moral leaders), but it’s hardly the government I would like to live under.
No, there were a multitude of reasons for the bad global economy, and many of them were caused because governments had let spending get out of hand for things such as long entrenched social programs, public support of private industry, and many other things governments have no real reason to be involved with. In the U.S., for example, the government mandating that banks write sub-prime mortgages to people who could ill afford them in the name of “being fair and equal” sent a surge of unbacked debt into the economy which was then legally manipulated and resold to foreign banks and other takers. Doing things in the name of “taking care of the other guy” while failing to worry about taking care of ourselves first is the cause of more bad than good.
Arthur Conan Doyle is spinning in his grave right now. You bring up a single possibility, declare it impossible because it “seems that way” to you, then immediately conclude that the government has direct access to FaceBook data. That’s not elementary, my dear Watson. That’s not even preschool. As I stated above, the article is pretty light on any sort of definite facts and sorely lacking in depth.
That’s being a bit naive as well. :point: You’re estimates seem to assume that the type and volume of data remains static over time. It doesn’t take into account advancement it commercial grade cryptography (as mentioned earlier in the thread) and the dawning of the age of quantum computing.
Speaking as an American, I am aware of no such thing as a “right to privacy” in our Constitution, only the protection of warrentless searches. So far I haven’t seen a compelling case being made that the actual data collection has been warrentless. The initial slides don’t even indicate what’s being proposed, namely that the government has a direct pipe into service providers servers. The first slide mentions “Special Requests” which make no sense if you have direct access. When one is in control, there is no need to request anything, you just do it. The second slide speaks of communications flowing into and through the U.S. which just screams more of a foreign surveillance program than a domestic one. U.S. Constitutional rights are protections for American citizens, there is no basis to believe they apply to foreign communications.
That’s quaint that you think that “we let it happen”. Perhaps you’re not aware that “it happened” quite a long time ago, and and this is just an update to existing practices. For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON. Personally I think it reflects less the naivety of anyone’s parents, and more the natural need of any society to gather intelligence. Spycraft is hardly a recent art. It’s not that people don’t see the danger, it’s that they don’t feel a broad practical impact.