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What Your "Startlingly Intimate, Voyeristic" NSA File Looks Like
A few days ago, we asked a simple rhetorical question: "Are you targeted by the NSA?"
The answer, sadly for those reading this, is very likely yes, as it was revealed that as part of the NSA's XKeyscore program "a computer network exploitation system, as described in an NSA presentation, devoted to gathering nearly everything a user does on the internet" all it takes for a user to be flagged by America's superspooks is to go to a website the NSA finds less than "patriotic" and that user becomes a fixture for the NSA's tracking algos.
So assuming one is being tracked by the NSA - or as it is also known for politically correct reasons "intercepted" - as a "person of interest" or worse, just what kind of data does the NSA collect? The latest report by the WaPo titled "In NSA-intercepted data, those not targeted far outnumber the foreigners who are" sheds much needed light on just how extensive the NSA's data collection effort is.
According to WaPo, the files on intercepted Americans "have a startlingly intimate, even voyeuristic quality. They tell stories of love and heartbreak, illicit sexual liaisons, mental-health crises, political and religious conversions, financial anxieties and disappointed hopes. The daily lives of more than 10,000 account holders who were not targeted are catalogued and recorded nevertheless."
The Post reviewed roughly 160,000 intercepted e-mail and instant-message conversations, some of them hundreds of pages long, and 7,900 documents taken from more than 11,000 online accounts.
Remember when the NSA said they only target foreigners, and only those who are of particular actionable interest? They lied.
Nine of 10 account holders found in a large cache of intercepted conversations, which former NSA contractor Edward Snowden provided in full to The Post, were not the intended surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody else.
Many of them were Americans. Nearly half of the surveillance files, a strikingly high proportion, contained names, e-mail addresses or other details that the NSA marked as belonging to U.S. citizens or residents. NSA analysts masked, or “minimized,” more than 65,000 such references to protect Americans’ privacy, but The Post found nearly 900 additional e-mail addresses, unmasked in the files, that could be strongly linked to U.S. citizens or U.S.residents.
Going back to "your" file:
Taken together, the files offer an unprecedented vantage point on the changes wrought by Section 702 of the FISA amendments, which enabled the NSA to make freer use of methods that for 30 years had required probable cause and a warrant from a judge. One program, code-named PRISM, extracts content stored in user accounts at Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Google and five other leading Internet companies. Another, known inside the NSA as Upstream, intercepts data on the move as it crosses the U.S. junctions of global voice and data networks.
It gets worse, because that bed-wetting habit you kicked in the 2nd grade? The NSA knows all about it.
Among the latter are medical records sent from one family member to another, résumés from job hunters and academic transcripts of schoolchildren. In one photo, a young girl in religious dress beams at a camera outside a mosque.
Scores of pictures show infants and toddlers in bathtubs, on swings, sprawled on their backs and kissed by their mothers. In some photos, men show off their physiques. In others, women model lingerie, leaning suggestively into a webcam or striking risque poses in shorts and bikini tops.
How many Americans may be tracked by the NSA at any one time? Turns out ther answer is lots:
The Obama administration declines to discuss the scale of incidental collection. The NSA, backed by Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., has asserted that it is unable to make any estimate, even in classified form, of the number of Americans swept in. It is not obvious why the NSA could not offer at least a partial count, given that its analysts routinely pick out “U.S. persons” and mask their identities, in most cases, before distributing intelligence reports.
If Snowden’s sample is representative, the population under scrutiny in the PRISM and Upstream programs is far larger than the government has suggested. In a June 26 “transparency report,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence disclosed that 89,138 people were targets of last year’s collection under FISA Section 702. At the 9-to-1 ratio of incidental collection in Snowden’s sample, the office’s figure would correspond to nearly 900,000 accounts, targeted or not, under surveillance.
And tangentially, for those who are urging the NSA to release Lois Lerner's emails, all it would take are a few keystrokes:
“If I had wanted to pull a copy of a judge’s or a senator’s e-mail, all I had to do was enter that selector into XKEYSCORE,” one of the NSA’s main query systems, [Edward Snowden] said.
What the file would likely reveal is all the dirt the US intelligence apparatus had on said (Supreme Court) judge or senator, or IRS employee. After all, what better way to keep the system of "checks and balances" in check than to have dirt on all the key places of leverage.
The WaPo has released a sterilized example of what a "target package" looks like for any given individual.
All of the above would be stunning... if it wasn't for a culture in which FaceBook has made the exhibitionist stripping of one's privacy and disclosure of every last piece of "intimate" personal information a daily chore. It is in this world, sadly, where the most recent confirmation of just how expansive Big Brother is, will merely be granted with a yawn by the vast majority of the population.
Finally, here's a thought for the cash-strapped US government: when the Fed is no longer able to monetize the US deficit, the NSA can just hire Goldman to IPO the NSA "social network." It should raise at least a few hundred billion in cash.
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!!!
No matter where one stands on the 9/11 issue, it is a Fact the US cut back on HUMINT. Lacking actual agents to investigate, analyze, and run networks, you become over-dependent on technology, which is a poor substitute in most cases. Satellites? Great for spotting enemy stuff. Intercepting phone calls? Great! But who are you listening to? It turns out two guys are talking about a football game, not perfidy.
Now, no doubt due to some govt bean-counter, we do not have the right tools, and the ones we are using sweep up everyone.
(Bean counter: "Hey, this computer can replace 10 agents, at pennies a day!")
Excellent. I'm making my own version as we speak...!!
Excellent. I'm making my own version as we speak...!!
....two versions ?
Don't think NSA just gathers data. They have lots of people working at building these profiles. That is even more scary because there is so much stuff available - with or without warrants.
CIA interrupts info about secret overseas nuclear project
http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2014/07/cia-interrupts-info-about-sec...
Go ahead NSA - you fucks...
Collect away on me...you already have a shit load of useless shit on me anyway....fuckers...
In the end....wasted money and time....but that's you; a bunch of fuckers destined to do nothing....
what a fucking career for you dickless douches
OK, I will play devil's advocate.
The example here is a foreign operative, not a USA person. This operative is engaged in dissemination of IED technology to Indonesia and likely other locations.
Show us an actual USA innocent person profile.
If you are going to display TS data, please do not use an actual suspect.
End of devil's advocate.
Not only that the information is blacked out. It takes time to generate these reports and that in and of itself is going to be prioritized in the first place since they don't have unlimited resources and also information that is of actionable intelligence purposes tends to have time limit on usefulness in the first place.
This WAPO piece is not what it claims to be.
AND......one final thing....
IT'S ...THE FUCKING.....GOVERNMENT.....EFFICIENT? I DON'T THINK SO......
LIKE....FUCKING....EVER
UNLESS THESE GUBBERMINT EMPLOYEES (MILITARY OR OTHERWISE) ARE FOCUSED IN/SPENDING A SHIT LOAD OF DOUGH...they totally SUCK ....
There is no privacy. Get over it. Act accordingly.
Back in the day, we lived in packs and had little or no privacy. The only thing wrong with this is that the transparency is a one way window. It is way too much power in one place.
it'll be used for political blackmail
Nine of 10 account holders found in a large cache of intercepted conversations, which former NSA contractor Edward Snowden provided in full to The Post, were not the intended surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody else.
...
Bullshit this is just plain misdirection by the NSA and Obama here. He wouldn't have had access to that level of operational detail in the first place as a contractor.
Guess they need to keep trying perpetrate the smoke and mirrors misdirection to scare the populace about how powerful they are aka Greenwald getting caught lying about having a list of people they are spying on then claiming the NSA shut him down then this to make it seem like WAPO is some rogue organization to continue the lie and try to salvage the counter pys-op gone bad. We know how relentless this adminstration is with leaks and how complicit the news media is in all this so the credibility here is suspect at best. This whole piece is amateur hour trying to salvage that turd of an op called The Intercept. My 4 year old niece is a better bullshit blower than these people when especially when she wants something.
Besides think of it this was, they need documents (powerpoint, word, etc) to be generated on these people listing all this shit. That is being done by desk jockeys collecting a salary so for arguments sake it takes on average at least 1 hour to generate one of these files there is only 8760 hours in a year and 343+ million people in the US and over 7 billion people in the world. Do the math....
Think of all the time, effort and money wasted on this effort..... think of what could be accomplished if all this wwent into something PRODUCTIVE Keep in mind that this is all PARASITIC - tax money from you and I are being used to finance the spying on us.
Same thing for the whole war on 'Terror'. If we weren't screwing the rest of the world over, stealing their resources and generally trying to impose our will on others - eg pissing off the rest of the world - we wouldn't HAVE any 'terrorists' to worry about.
You hit it on the head, they are all parasites, stealing another man's labor. That is the essense of the system, organized theft enforced with monopolized violence.
Pretty sure my file starts with....Views way too much Porn, Unhealthy appetite for the truth, oh yeah, the porn thing as well.
Is there really such a thing as "too much porn"?
Yes, there is. When it leads a man get to married.
Someday someone is going to release that data on the public web and that will be an interesting moment in history. These guys aren't much better than the average public company in managing their internal security.
Barrry the Osama Slayer is collecting blackmail material on all of us!
And WHO thought it was a great idea to plaster your whole life on a Faceb00k (fuckbook) page?
not me man.
Like John Roberts, or Mitt Romney(who intentionally lost the debates).
If you're ever called for jury duty, and the case involves the murder of an NSA employee, or any politician, judge or other bureaucrat who enabled the NSA, vote "NOT GUILTY."
As I said in a post last week, the surviving Boston bomber was wounded, most likely trailing blood, and was found by a civilian a few hundred yards from where he abandoned his getaway car. The entire city of Boston was locked down with door to door searches for an entire day yet helicopters with high-tech detection equipment and tracking dogs, failed to find the terrorist a few hundred yards from his last known position. Form your own thoughts on what .gov was doing that day.
NSA files. = USELESS. BALL OF. STRING costing billions
a monument to stupidity, arrogance and violation of the CONSTITUTION
NSA intercepts benghazi related phone calls PRIOR........ does nothing with it
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Look at our borders Or, The lack of one!
Look at the massive purposeful increases of illegals under this President being invited in to the detriment of citizens.
Look at our NSA that swears they don't look at citizen files or share them with other Agencies, when we know we are the most spied upon citizens on Earth by our own government!
Look at our few jobs for our citizen youth going to non-citizens what few are left because of government laws and restrictions on business and manufacturing.
Look at the pay differential between a federal employee in wage and pension that more than doubles that of a private sector citizen.
Look at how restricted our States are compared to federal power in opposition with our Constitutional Law.
Look at our citizen poor made wards of the State because of no jobs in historic numbers.
Look at this arrogant president "I will do all I can without Congress" (He reminds one of Chavez! Listen to the two, it's uncanny)!
Look at our Senate changing 96 years of past practice to get Judges into the DC Court of Appeals to keep timely cases on Presidential action from getting to the Supreme Court!
Look at our real economic situation: 1. Our Middleclass as a percentage of population is smaller now than at any time in our history. 2. Our manufacturing jobs as a percentage of working population is lower than anytime since 1870. 3. There are more disability recipients as a percentage than ever before. 4. Our wealth comparisons for the non-government working class to other major nations has fallen sharply in the last 6 years. 5. WE have not improved since the crash in any productive way! 6. Look at the quality of jobs available compared to the past for our kids!
In my own paranoid opinion, I think some hot shots at the NSA are selling data to comercial interests. Data mining plus and it would probably be cheaper than paying for surveys. I'd sure like to look at the NSA employees financial records and life style...whoops their shit is off limits....I wonder why daddy.
Yesterday following 4TH OF JULY, I had EXPLOSIVE GAS in which my bowels were a PRESSURE COOKER of UNSTABLE ELEMENTS. That was a prelude to EXPLOSIVE PROJECTILE diarrhea which was very difficult to WIPE OUT. Thankfully, I was ALONE and not AROUND A CROWD OF ONLOOKERS in which no INNOCENT VICTIMS were involved.
Hi guys. Hope you enjoyed your 4th.
You may hate the next one.
An easy way to counter this is to share an enourmous amount of false and confusing information about yourself making the file a pile of garbage.
should have took the blue pill