The Internet is a surveillance state

CNN ^ | March 16, 2013 | Bruce Schneier

[eagleye85]

CNN) -- I'm going to start with three data points. One: Some of the Chinese military hackers who were implicated in a broad set of attacks against the U.S. government and corporations were identified because they accessed Facebook from the same network infrastructure they used to carry out their attacks. Two: Hector Monsegur, one of the leaders of the LulzSac hacker movement, was identified and arrested last year by the FBI. Although he practiced good computer security and used an anonymous relay service to protect his identity, he slipped up.

And three: Paula Broadwell,who had an affair with CIA director David Petraeus, similarly took extensive precautions to hide her identity. She never logged in to her anonymous e-mail service from her home network. Instead, she used hotel and other public networks when she e-mailed him. The FBI correlated hotel registration data from several different hotels -- and hers was the common name. The Internet is a surveillance state. Whether we admit it to ourselves or not, and whether we like it or not, we're being tracked all the time. Google tracks us, both on its pages and on other pages it has access to.

[Hoodat]

The Internet is a surveillance state. Whether we admit it to ourselves or not, and whether we like it or not, we're being tracked all the time.

Except that our government is not tracking people who utter words like 'jihad, or 'bomb', or 'attack'. They are tracking people who use words like 'TEA Party', or 'pro-life', or 'support Israel'.

[ldish]

‘TEA Party’, or ‘pro-life’, or ‘support Israel’

[ldish]

For the second time...’TEA Party’, or ‘pro-life’, or ‘support Israel’

[ldish]

And again...’TEA Party’, or ‘pro-life’, or ‘support Israel’

[Diogenesis]

They left the borders open, and WEAPONIZED the terrorists
with FAST&FURIOUS and MANPADs and more for sure.

They freed the COLE murderers, played with Hasan,
protected the Boston terrorists, and released 20,000
felons.

Anyone who trust THIS government is a fool or with al Qaeda.

[TheCause]

Well stated.

[umgud]

With all this metadata, you can bet Obama will use it to help out the 2014 election. He certainly used it in 2012.

[AlexW]

“Anyone who trust THIS government is a fool or with al Qaeda.”
________________________________________
I prefer to say that anyone who likes this government is, whether they know it or not, a Marxist/Leninist Communist.
Karl and Vlad are smiling from the grave.

[jeffc]

Every now and then Google Dashboard tells me someone in China tried to access my account. I have to laugh as all I do on this PC is surf and play RACE 07. There’s no banking or anything like that done (we do that on a much more secure PC).

[B212]

Well, after few glasses of wine.....the tentacles of NSA, reach into the economical bastions of American, and globally, hence the price of wheat bid on a contract becomes know, and then this info can be passed on to interested parties, who may have a competitive price to offer....in essence the free capital system is corrupted, and destroyed globally....all this spying and collection info, hastens the economical disaster....end of story.....

[EarlyBird]

Just remember, it's not NSA that's requesting this surveillance, it's the DOJ under Eric Holder.

Look at the leaked Verizon FISA warrant. NSA is doing the collecting only because it's been ordered to.

Why are so many media reports getting this wrong? This is just another baseless DOJ warrant signed off by Eric Holder!

Obviously, the media is still in Eric-Holder-protection mode.

[AlexW]

“Every now and then Google Dashboard tells me someone in China tried to access my account.”
________________________________________________

I would be more worried about having Google Dashboard on my computer. Does it not know everything you are doing online?

[DoughtyOne]

I want to record your phone conversations...
I want to capture your emails...
I want to know what you search for on the internet...
I want to know what sites you've been visiting on the internet...
I want to harrass you if you're a Christian...
I want to harrass you if you're a patriotic U. S. Citizen...
I want to indoctrinate your kids...
I want to eliminate Christianity in public...
I want to protect the followers of Islam...
I want to pretend that it isn't the followers of Islam that cause almost all terrorism around the world...
I want to prevent U. S. Citizens from talking openly about who is carrying out terrorism...
I want to pretend that it's U. S. Citizen's gun rights that are causing all the problems...
I want to enforce hundreds of laws that essentially make it impossible for citizens to realize their Second Amendment rights...
I want to turn this into a Soviet Style State, and lower the A.C.O.R.N. Curtain
And then I'll blame all this on you, the loyal Citizens of the United States

[palmer]

The three cases he mentions are investigations of suspects. There is some legal criteria for being a suspect (it may be somewhat weak but it has to be there). Next it is quite likely that the data was gathered with a warrant.

This should not be confused with the snooping on non-suspect Americans. The NSA will simply waste billions of dollars on data that it will choke on. Does anyone think for one minute that the alleged crimes in these cases could have been detected in the mass of phone and internet records that they are collecting? Sure they would, along with 10 million false positives, rendering any true positives completely useless. More like they would not. The evidence is simply too spread out.

But just because the data is useless for preventing terrorism doesn't mean it can't be abused. I'm sure the data will only be used to go after some child marrying cult leader or some other derided figure, right?

[jeffc]

Not everything, but still quite a bit. I go into the setup and change things, I use Ccleaner and MBAM (among others) to root out things I do not want on my PC.

Still, it keeps track of quite a bit, but like I said, I have no worries on this PC.

[Black Agnes]

Supposedly this sort of stuff started en masse back in the 50’s. Which, unsurprisingly, is approximately the same time that the big megacorporations began to amalgamate.

I’m sure it’s got nothing to do with unfair advantage over your competition being had by ‘those in the know’.

Is it any wonder all of our secrets have been siphoned off to other countries?

[combat_boots]

The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement:

“Why You Should Care

TPP raises significant concerns about citizens’ freedom of expression, due process, innovation, the future of the Internet’s global infrastructure, and the right of sovereign nations to develop policies and laws that best meet their domestic priorities. In sum, the TPP puts at risk some of the most fundamental rights that enable access to knowledge for the world’s citizens.”

https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp

“Son of ACTA...”
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110105/02301112524/son-acta-worse-meet-tpp-trans-pacific-partnership-agreement.shtml

“The agreement, under negotiation since 2008, would set new rules for everything from food safety and financial markets to medicine prices and Internet freedom. It would include at least 12 of the countries bordering the Pacific and be open for more to join. President Obama has said he wants to sign it by October.

Although Congress has exclusive constitutional authority to set the terms of trade, so far the executive branch has managed to resist repeated requests by members of Congress to see the text of the draft agreement and has denied requests from members to attend negotiations as observers — reversing past practice.

While the agreement could rewrite broad sections of nontrade policies affecting Americans’ daily lives, the administration also has rejected demands by outside groups that the nearly complete text be publicly released.”
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/obamas-secret-treaty-which-would-push-the-deindustrialization-of-america-into-overdrive

Read that last link if nothing else. Curls your toenails.

[Paladin2]

They use the megadata .

[combat_boots]

First sentences from that last link:

“Did you know that Barack Obama has been secretly negotiating the most important trade agreement since the formation of the World Trade Organization? Did you know that this agreement will impose very strict Internet copyright rules, ban all “Buy American” laws, give Wall Street banks much more freedom to trade risky derivatives and force even more domestic manufacturing offshore? If you have not heard about this treaty, don’t feel bad. Obama has refused to even give Congress a copy of the draft agreement and he has banned members of Congress from attending the negotiations. The plan is to keep this treaty secret until the very last minute and then to railroad it through Congress and have it signed into law by October. The treaty is known as “the Trans-Pacific Partnership”

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/obamas-secret-treaty-which-would-push-the-deindustrialization-of-america-into-overdrive

0bama expects to not be POTUS at some point during the next 3.5 years because he does not expect the US to exist at all.