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NSA pwns the internet

Written By: - Date published: 11:03 am, June 7th, 2013 - 74 comments
Categories: internet, Spying, telecommunications, us politics - Tags: ,

The NSA has direct access to servers at Google, Apple, Facebook, and other Internet giants, and they collect pretty much whatever data they like. We shouldn’t be surprised. The Guardian has the story:

NSA taps in to internet giants’ systems to mine user data, secret files reveal

• Top secret PRISM program claims direct access to servers of firms including Google, Facebook and Apple
• Companies deny any knowledge of program in operation since 2007

The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.

The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called PRISM, which allows them to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.

The Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation – classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies – which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program. The document claims “collection directly from the servers” of major US service providers.

Although the presentation claims the program is run with the assistance of the companies, all those who responded to a Guardian request for comment on Thursday denied knowledge of any such program.  …

The NSA access was enabled by changes to US surveillance law introduced under President Bush and renewed under Obama in December 2012.

The program facilitates extensive, in-depth surveillance on live communications and stored information. The law allows for the targeting of any customers of participating firms who live outside the US, or those Americans whose communications include people outside the US.

It also opens the possibility of communications made entirely within the US being collected without warrants.  …

Prism

 

PRISM slide crop

74 comments on “NSA pwns the internet ”

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  1. RedLogix 1
    7 June 2013 at 11:12 am

    No such thing as conspiracy theories eh?

    • Colonial Viper 1.1
      7 June 2013 at 11:22 am

      Long rumoured, but now this is a conspiracy fact.

      Your GMail, Facebook, Xtra (through Yahoo!), instant messaging, whatever, is an open book. Forget the GCSB scandal, they are just a small cog in this wheel allowing spying on any one deemed to be an enemy of the state…or of any incumbent government. Or if you are a friend, associate or family member of anyone under suspicion, sorry you are fair game too. We also know thanks to Julian Assange and Wikileaks that diplomatic negotiations, business deals, corporate activities etc. are all regularly spied upon by the US, these are just tools for them to do more of the same.

      I have also posted a link here previously from (popular mechanics?) on the new Utah data gathering site which attempts to capture and store in perpetuity every single electronic communication within, entering, and leaving the US (including messages from international sources going to non US destinations but simply routed through a US server).

      You may not be designated a protestor, activist or dissident now, but if any time down the track you are, or your children are, the archives of your previous communications are an open book for study.

      I believe a quote from that article is that the US is now a single turnkey away from being a totalitarian state.

    • weka 1.2
      7 June 2013 at 1:04 pm

      “No such thing as conspiracy theories eh?”

      In light of the conversation a few days ago, +1 RL.

      • Colonial Viper 1.2.1
        7 June 2013 at 5:35 pm

        there was a “conspiracy theory” going around a few years ago that one of FaceBook’s original investors was acting on behalf of the CIA; essentially that the CIA helped start FaceBook.

        Now it appears wherever there is “conspiracy smoke”, there is very likely to be “conspiracy fire”.

        I’m afraid in a world where real life is stranger than fiction, rationalists like Murray Olsen are going to be left far behind.

        • Murray Olsen 1.2.1.1
          7 June 2013 at 6:29 pm

          Funnily enough, I’ve stated for years that we should act as if the government can and is reading all our electronic communications. I don’t see that as a conspiracy theory at all, it’s a realistic view of what intelligence agencies do. It also has nothing to do with chemtrails or the Illuminati.

          I also know in principle how to encode all my communications so they can’t be decrypted using presently available technology. I’ll stick to being rational, thank you very much.

          • weka 1.2.1.1.1
            7 June 2013 at 6:34 pm

            “I also know in principle how to encode all my communications so they can’t be decrypted using presently available technology. I’ll stick to being rational, thank you very much.”

            You’re all right then Jack, good for you.

            You ok with your phone calls being recorded too? How about having a camera in your house?

            • Murray Olsen 1.2.1.1.1.1
              7 June 2013 at 6:47 pm

              No.
              No.
              Any other ridiculous questions? I don’t eat human children either, in case that was next on your list.
              In fact, if you’d read anything I’ve written, you would have already known the answer to those questions, but I suppose it’s more entertaining to just make stuff up as you go.

              • weka …
                7 June 2013 at 7:37 pm

                I suppose that’s what happens when you comment smugly in a thread where other people might be concerned about their own safety.

                How come you are ok with your emails being recorded but not your phone calls?

                • Murray Olsen …
                  7 June 2013 at 8:05 pm

                  I am not OK with my emails being recorded. I am not OK with anyone’s emails being recorded. The fact that I am not OK with it will not stop governments doing it. I also realise there are many paedophiles at large in society. Does that mean I’m OK with what they do? Following your specious logic, I’d have to conclude it does.

                  As for commenting, my name was brought up by CV in what seems a fairly smug manner. In fact, it was a direct attack. I don’t see how the hell I was being smug.

                  Anything else you’d like to find me guilty of while you’re at it? Or is selfishness (I’m alright, Jack), support of spy agencies, and being OK with having my emails recorded enough for one day?

                  By the way, plenty of people know how to encrypt their emails. Most don’t bother because it just attracts more attention. I don’t because I don’t put anything in my emails or on the internet that could compromise me in any way. The way things are these days, anyone using unbreakable encryption could well find themselves renditioned to warmer climes. Just to be clear, I’m not OK about that either.

                  • Colonial Viper …
                    7 June 2013 at 8:14 pm

                    At least I didn’t call you an irrational paranoid conspiracy theorist. Or maybe I did? When I used your name I simply said that your rationalist approach was simply not going to keep up with a reality that was less than rational. I suppose as a scientist you may have seen that as an attack on the tenets of your world view belief system, but it wasn’t really an attack on you personally.

                    Anyways it seems to me like all the fears and suspicions you think are reasonable, even if they are vast in scope, are rational and well grounded, yet step outside those bounds, and they rapidly become “conspiracy theories”. Which I suppose is a fine way to view the order of things.

                    My observation: there’s a long grey scale of likely to unlikely, and there are a lot of surprises on that scale most of us are not yet aware of.

                  • RedLogix …
                    7 June 2013 at 8:15 pm

                    As I said awhile back, us ordinary people know nutin’. As a result I try to take a middle road on this. Instead of taking black and white positions on these ‘conspiracy theories’, I mentally assign a probability to them.

                    Very few things are absolutely true or false, most things can be seen in some light between one extreme or another. NASA faking the moon landings is 99.999% untrue; the NSA comprehensively spying on us all; yesterday 95% true, is now 99.9999% true.

                    http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/u05/ule-s.gif

                    What does annoy me is when people get all positional and confrontational about their personal perception of this probability. Fact is… to some extent or another we are all guessing.

                    http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2939#comic

                    • Murray Olsen …
                      7 June 2013 at 8:33 pm

                      Fair enough, RL, that’s pretty much how most people decide stuff. I get more confrontational than I should for a number of reasons. The main one is that I get sick of being told I’m either brainwashed and believe everything on the news, or a paid disinformation agent, because I don’t agree that chemtrails exist or that 9/11 was a controlled demolition, for example. I also get upset at the number of times I’ve seen people hijack movements, meetings, or discussions by insisting that whatever they think is the most important issue be the sole topic.

                      I will say that we’re not always just guessing. When someone tells me that the CIA uses optical fibres to transmit microwaves for mind control purposes and I say that’s a load of crap, I’m not guessing. I generally try to make it clear when I’m expressing an opinion/guess.

                    • weka …
                      7 June 2013 at 8:41 pm

                      +1.

                      My problem with most conspiracy theorists isn’t the theory so much as the lack of critical thinking skills by some of the major proponents (the theory is after all just a theory). And when the rationalists can’t see past their own belief systems. Most of us live in the middle ground looking both ways, but it seems prudent to stay open to the possibility of things we don’t yet know or understand (which doesn’t mean giving up critical analysis).

                    • Colonial Viper …
                      7 June 2013 at 8:46 pm

                      USA now employing systems and laws East Germany’s Stasi could only dream of

                      http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-06-06/government-also-monitoring-content-our-phone-calls

          • Colonial Viper 1.2.1.1.2
            7 June 2013 at 7:56 pm

            I’ve stated for years that we should act as if the government can and is reading all our electronic communications. I don’t see that as a conspiracy theory at all, it’s a realistic view of what intelligence agencies do

            Lol conspiracy theory paranoid much?

            You left out the logical next step of what they do with that mass of data, and how the political powers in charge (who after all ordered and funded these activities in the first place) then use your information.

            Don’t say, maybe *that’s* when it finally becomes a “conspiracy theory” in your books?

            • Murray Olsen 1.2.1.1.2.1
              7 June 2013 at 8:22 pm

              Just make up for yourself what I think. I’ve explained it before, but you’re more interested in scoring imaginary points. I can see how this is quite different from 9/11 stuff, chemtrails, HAARP, Illuminati, Hollow Earth etc. If you can’t, that’s not my problem.

        • Bill 1.2.1.2
          7 June 2013 at 6:30 pm

          You do understand the difference between a suspicion (well grounded or otherwise) and a conspiracy theory CV, yes?

          • weka 1.2.1.2.1
            7 June 2013 at 7:38 pm

            But who gets to judge which is which?

            • Bill 1.2.1.2.1.1
              7 June 2013 at 11:22 pm

              You get to judge. And it’s fairly straight forward. It’s the difference between me suspecting you’re an alien on the one hane and announcing it as a matter of fact on the other.

          • Colonial Viper 1.2.1.2.2
            7 June 2013 at 7:47 pm

            I think it takes secret agreement between multiple government agencies, senior political figures and business leaders to secretly fund and organise the mass capture and recording of every single electronic transmission made in a day within billion dollar data centres, for later use for any purpose they decide, completely outside of the realm of public, judicial or democratic oversight.

            You can tell me whether that is a conspiracy theory (now conspiracy fact) or whether that was a ‘plausible suspicion’.

            • Bill 1.2.1.2.2.1
              7 June 2013 at 11:48 pm

              Do spy agencies employ undemocratic means to further information gathering agendas? I’d be surprised if that wasn’t the case. And what this NSA leek does is confirm the quite common sense suspicion that spy agencies do not operate in a transparent fashion and further (more importantly), give an insight to their capabilities and ways of operating.

              But I’d prefer a more subtle example such as – ‘Is it believable that the US government would allow the death of thousands of relatively innocant people?’ (Answer =Yes) Against – ‘Did the US government knowingly and directly conspire in the demolition of the twin towers by, for example, planting explosives in the towers?’ (Answer =No)

              And those that hold the answer to the latter question to be ‘yes’ throw occams razor wa-a-ay out the window in their tireless efforts to construct a conspiracy from spurious so-called *facts* surrounding the collapse of those towers (that can be shown to be false by the application of engineering principles) or by employing *facts* that are so tenuous and outlandish as to be utterly laughable.

              But since it is reasonable and able to be demonstrated from the historical record that governments (the US included) have scant regard for human life – to what degree is it reasonable to suspect that the US government knew that some form of terrorist act was being considered and allowed things to unfold for political reasons but had no idea of the specific details or targets? I don’t think that’s an unreasonable thought/suspicion, but also think it’s not worth wasting any time on. The political aftermath…the launching of the ‘war on terror’ and all of its consequences is what matters

              • Colonial Viper …
                8 June 2013 at 6:53 pm

                throw occams razor wa-a-ay out the window in their tireless efforts to construct a conspiracy from spurious so-called *facts* surrounding the collapse of those towers (that can be shown to be false by the application of engineering principles)

                3 skyscrapers suffered widely varying and assymetrical damage that day. Two out of the three were hit by planes from different directions and at different levels; the third skyscraper was not hit by any plane.

                However all three of them collapsed vertically upon their own foot print.

                I’d love to know what “engineering princples” allowed that circumstance to happen.

    • Murray Olsen 1.3
      7 June 2013 at 6:43 pm

      Of course there are. The question is not whether the theories exist, but whether they are plausible. An even more important question is whether they are used to make people feel helpless rather than organising against the mess we’re in.

      • weka 1.3.1
        7 June 2013 at 8:44 pm

        Well I’ll agree with you on that one. I’m not sure what the point is of scaring people if you don’t give them tools to deal with the problem.

      • rosy 1.3.2
        7 June 2013 at 8:47 pm

        +1 Murray Olsen
        I don’t recall anyone of the left stating conspiracies don’t exist, and there’s been plenty of agreement that it’s the plausibility/probability/evidence-gathering that is important.

        Talking across each other because some people can agree on the plausibility of some conspiracies but entirely disagree about the plausibility of other seems to me a complete waste of energy.

        I note that on this thread is seems all agree there has been a conspiracy to secretly collect electronic communications data. Isn’t who, why, where, when, what and how is much more important than point scoring?

        I for one, am pretty interested to know if our flash new GCSB laws were written with aiding the U.S. in collecting data on U.S. citizens in mind, and if so, is there a reciprocal agreement?

        • Murray Olsen 1.3.2.1
          7 June 2013 at 10:48 pm

          If we’re lucky, Nicky Hagar might write another book soon. If we’re really unlucky, Ian Wishart might.

          I’d suspect the US had a huge input into our new laws, but seeing how the GCSB could collect stuff on non-residents/citizens legally already, I’m not sure how what you suggest would fit. As for reciprocal agreements, my understanding is that we send them a lot of raw data, they analyse it, and then tell us what they decide we need to know. The reciprocal agreement our craven intelligence community and politicians would have with the seppos is probably heavily weighted in favour of the US and A, and then breached by them at will anyway. A bit reminiscent of the TPPA would be my guess. I just hope we get a government that realises we’re a sovereign nation before that obscenity gets signed, but I won’t be holding my breath.

          • ghostrider888 1.3.2.1.1
            7 June 2013 at 11:02 pm

            so Murray, with your expertise, what do you think of ‘The Coming Technological Singularity’ – Vernor Vinge (Professor of Mathematics, Computer Scientist; SDSU) , in 30 years, from his statement in 1993.

            • Murray Olsen 1.3.2.1.1.1
              8 June 2013 at 12:59 am

              None of my professional expertise is really relevant to his article, which seems to be a metaview of AI (also IA), ethics, and philosophy. What I do see is something quite scary – we create something that makes us redundant and, if what he says about further evolution is right, we will never even understand why we’re regarded as redundant. At the moment we seem to be intent on destroying ourselves via global warming, so from a purely selfish (and pessimistic) perspective, that may not change much.

              Moore’s Law seems to have held so far where processing is concerned, but must break down one day with improvements of present architecture to depend on. Quantum computing offers a way past this, but I have two problems with that concept. One is that I am dubious that it will ever work as promised and the second is that the day it does, the NSA will grab it for themselves and it’ll effectively disappear. The technological singularity could end up being like commercial fusion – always 20 years away.

              It was an interesting read at least. Thanks. I wonder if it came out of a wine and cheese session at an AI conference?

              • ghostrider888 …
                8 June 2013 at 6:40 pm

                😀

              • RedLogix …
                8 June 2013 at 6:51 pm

                Vernor Vinge is a Professor Emeritus of Computer Science (San Diego SU) and a well known hard-SF author.

                From the very beginning of his career he has addressed many aspects of the apparently inexorable impact of Moore’s Law and the many implications of this brings. He’s definitely one of the groundbreaking thinkers in this area.

                Plus I’m a big fan … having a complete collection and all.

                • ghostrider888 …
                  8 June 2013 at 8:51 pm

                  gee, you guys (and gals) and your Science Fiction; I hardly find time to read the non-fiction I’m interested in, and then there’s that new-fangled magic-realism, and all those classics, modern literature and old; God, let the Internet crash soon, please.

    • Poission 1.4
      8 June 2013 at 6:12 pm

      No such thing as conspiracy theories eh?

      Oh it gets better.The US DOJ is appealing (in secret) the secret findings of a us secret court’ that found the secret surveillance was unconstitutional ie PRISM.

      http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/07/justice-department-prism_n_3405101.html

      • ghostrider888 1.4.1
        8 June 2013 at 6:41 pm

        a raft of articles in the Herald ‘World’ section today, eeevin.

      • Murray Olsen 1.4.2
        8 June 2013 at 8:41 pm

        Ironic that the fuss over there is about US agencies spying on US citizens when they were only supposed to spy on foreigners. Same script, different country.

        • ghostrider888 1.4.2.1
          8 June 2013 at 8:53 pm

          Thanks for the reply; I appreciate the amplified architecture of your comments, and one can never be certain 😉 of the probabilities of having ones own Horrorscope read.

  2. ghostrider888 2
    7 June 2013 at 11:46 am

    Rev. 13:7 It was given power to wage war against God’s holy people and to conquer them. And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation. 8 All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast- all whose names have not been written ( in another) book of life…

  3. RJL 3
    7 June 2013 at 11:48 am

    It could be interesting to know whether MegaUpload was “invited” to join PRISM. And whether or not it refused.

    • weka 3.1
      7 June 2013 at 1:02 pm

      I’m a little confused. Are you saying the FB, google, apple etc have given permission?

      Does this open them up to lawsuits?

      edit – it’s been a long time since I actually read a privacy policy when signing up to something online.

      • RJL 3.1.1
        7 June 2013 at 2:51 pm

        Read the Guardian article.

        • weka 3.1.1.1
          8 June 2013 at 9:43 pm

          I have read the article. Is there a reason you won’t answer a straight forward request for clarification?

          • Colonial Viper 3.1.1.1.1
            8 June 2013 at 9:56 pm

            Although lprent could answer more fully, I’d say yes all those large companies will have given permission to the NSA etc. But more than that, the corporates will have actually co-operated with the intelligence agencies to develop the applications and interfaces needed by the intelligence agencies to access every part of their databases and other systems.

            Google will no doubt have helped refine the intelligence agencies search strategies. (Google has previously been contracted to build proprietary search apps for military and government use).

            The corporates will have co-operated for many reasons, not the least of which that they didn’t want the intelligence agencies using ad-hoc “hacks” to get the information that they wanted, bad programming which might have inadvertently slowed down or even crashed the corporation’s commercial systems.

            btw when you look at news stories describing how the Chinese Government has previously blocked GMAIL in their country…I guess they figured this stuff out some time back.

            • weka 3.1.1.1.1.1
              8 June 2013 at 10:24 pm

              Thanks CV. I had taken the bit quoted in the post above about the companies denying knowledge at face value. I guess they’re lying then.

              • Colonial Viper …
                8 June 2013 at 11:05 pm

                it’s absolutely likely that only a couple of dozen people inside each of these companies has any exposure whatsoever to the work which has been done. And even then, they may have no idea that the work was done for an intelligence agency. Just another job from management refining a new set of database administrative tools.

                As an aside, Russia Today reports that senior executives from Google, Amazon, etc are a key part of the Bilderberg meetings. And that both the UK Tories and UK Labour have representatives there.

            • ghostrider888 3.1.1.1.1.2
              8 June 2013 at 10:26 pm

              you guys (and gals) could be watching The Mechanic (for free on 2) in the ads. 😉

              there was a former Drone Pilot, Brandon Bryant on the News; 1626 documented ‘kills’ with a diploma to verify them.
              http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2249252/Brandon-Bryant-Drone-operator-followed-orders-shoot-child–decided-quit.html

          • joe90 3.1.1.1.2
            8 June 2013 at 10:10 pm

            Denials galore.

            http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57588337-38/no-evidence-of-nsas-direct-access-to-tech-companies/

            The National Security Agency has not obtained direct access to the systems of Apple, Google, Facebook, and other major Internet companies, CNET has learned.

            Recent reports in the Washington Post and the Guardian claimed a classified program called PRISM grants “intelligence services direct access to the companies’ servers” and that “from inside a company’s data stream the NSA is capable of pulling out anything it likes.”

            Those reports are incorrect and appear to be based on a misreading of a leaked Powerpoint document, according to a former government official who is intimately familiar with this process of data acquisition and spoke today on condition of anonymity.

            “It’s not as described in the histrionics in the Washington Post or the Guardian,” the person said. “None of it’s true. It’s a very formalized legal process that companies are obliged to do.”

            http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/07/in-response-to-prism-anonymous-leaks-classified-dod-documents/

            http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/06/google-facebook-apple-deny-participation-in-nsa-prism-program/

            http://googleblog.blogspot.co.nz/2013/06/what.html

    • Murray Olsen 3.2
      7 June 2013 at 6:32 pm

      I assume that anything sourced via MegaUpload would have gone through other servers anyway, so I doubt if this is why Kim attracted so much attention.

  4. weka 4
    7 June 2013 at 12:54 pm

    If you’ve got nothing to hide you have nothing to fear.

    /sarc

  5. Jacobin 5
    7 June 2013 at 12:56 pm

    Wow. Just wow. The worst that privacy advocates have been alleging for years, particularly Glenn Greenwald who has often stood out like a lone pariah, turns out to be true and more.

    All the more reason we need to get our own GCSB house in order/investigations need to be cleaner than they have been

    • Murray Olsen 5.1
      8 June 2013 at 9:52 pm

      We need to abolish the GCSB. They are an American/British intelligence agency, staffed by and paid for by Kiwis. This is one case where I support economic austerity. The SIS can go as well.

  6. joe90 6
    7 June 2013 at 1:02 pm

    So who’s going to stop voluntarily handing over their personal information because their service provider might be legally obliged to hand it over to those who request it?.

    • weka 6.1
      7 June 2013 at 1:07 pm

      The way I read it, it’s not about a company legally handing over information. It’s about the NSA having free access to those companies’ databases.

        • weka 6.1.1.1
          7 June 2013 at 1:27 pm

          That doesn’t address my point.

          This was interesting though –

          5. The information the NSA is collecting is metadata, not content (like a wiretap), and not account names. Uncovering personally identifiable information would require separate warrants to do so. This was a pattern analysis, not really mass surveillance as we traditionally understand it. Anyone who calls this a “wiretap” is probably stupid or didn’t read the order.

          That is different from the Guardian is saying.

          • karol 6.1.1.1.1
            7 June 2013 at 1:38 pm

            This is looking like the “Thin Thread” that I posted about a couple of weeks back. It is a metadata gathering programme that the GCSB supposedly trialed for the NSA:

            William Binney, a whistle blower from the US NSA (National Security Agency) claims that a surveillance device, Thin Thread was sent to spy agencies in places like NZ, Canada,, Australia, Germany and the UK in 2000-2001 for testing. According to author Tim Shorrock, ThinThread monitors the meta data of phone, internet and email communications, at first masking the identities of the participants in the communications. It only reveals these identities when the spies decide they are concerned enough to apply for a warrant.

            • freedom 6.1.1.1.1.1
              7 June 2013 at 3:11 pm

              The NSA simply use whatever they want. The metadata collected with PRISM is most likely used in conjunction with other [fascist] tools such as ThinThread to create whatever they require, to do whatever they want. This admission though, is a smokescreen at best.

              Folk may wish to pause and reflect on this ‘forced’ declaration. What does it really mean in the wider context of the ugly hate machine the US has become. The NSA would by no means be the most extreme of US agencies involved. It has been widely discussed that since 9-11 over 1000 new Agencies have been added to the US Administration’s lexicon of acronyms. Since 2002, mostly throughout Virginia, there has been a massive ongoing construction programme, where some very large compounds have been planted deep into some very out of the way places. Some are said to challenge Langley for sheer scale of construction. Though unlike Langley many of these compounds are completely anonymous. These enormous glass and concrete bunkers, styled with a ‘YOU THERE! look away from here!’ attention to detail, are said to collectively house the biggest threat on the planet, to our privacy our security and our democracy.

              It is suspected the majority are officially assigned to assisting with Defense, The War on Terror and National Security. As far as the US is concerned, that ‘National Security’ bit involves controlling enslaving or simply destroying any bits of Earth that have the temerity to disagree with what it is doing. These largely unknown agencies all act under an umbrella yielded by DHS jurisdiction, thus are exempt from full public disclosure as to purpose budget and accountability. It sure is a wonderful world we are leaving the children.

        • joe90 6.1.1.2
          7 June 2013 at 1:33 pm

          To me it appears that they have free access because congress legislated that they can.

          edit: The full court ruling.

          http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/06/verizon-telephone-data-court-order

          • Colonial Viper 6.1.1.2.1
            7 June 2013 at 1:42 pm

            Even totalitarian states need a legal framework to operate in.

            And which Bill was that authorising this?

            And isn’t it interesting that a company with the might and size of Google etc didn’t block it at every turn.

            Bye bye US constitution.

            • Poission 6.1.1.2.1.1
              7 June 2013 at 2:16 pm

              tradeoff in exchange for your global information we will overlook your tax avoidance.

              • Colonial Viper …
                7 June 2013 at 2:41 pm

                Which we happen to know all about in the first place because we have the emails and phone recordings between you and your accountant. And you and your next prospective employer you are negotiating with. And you and your spouse. And you and your lover. And you and your ex.

                Good fun days.

                • Poission …
                  7 June 2013 at 3:12 pm

                  Sergei Brin was given “temporary high security” clearance with regard to operation aurora.

                  There are suggestions also that a substantial part of the google gathering information (under the guise of google maps) was imparted to other parties (sic) prior to being destroyed.

          • joe90 6.1.1.2.2
            7 June 2013 at 1:54 pm

            Bye bye US constitution.

            I think this is the end run around the fourth.

            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_v._Maryland

            • Colonial Viper 6.1.1.2.2.1
              7 June 2013 at 2:43 pm

              Ahhhh thanks. So the same principle would apply to email addresses, instant messaging user names, login IDs and passwords, any pin verification, addresses on letters you write etc.

  7. the central scutinizer 7
    7 June 2013 at 3:26 pm

    https://www.eff.org/

  8. ghostrider888 8
    7 June 2013 at 5:13 pm

    …now, who were those sociologist prophets who predicted The Technological Society would witness the end of democracy.hmmm.

  9. Bill 9
    7 June 2013 at 6:45 pm

    Maybe ‘faceleft’ or similar networking sites are the answer for those of a political persuasion? Of course, since they don’t sell your data or carry advertising, they do look to charge a small monthly subscription. And I’m only putting this here because maybe you are one of the people who ‘should’ take a closer look and consider it as a much safer alternative to the likes of facebook etc. Here’s a link to the FAQ page for those who might be interested http://www.zsocial.org/help

    My personal take is that, given its currently limited size, that it could be a valuable resource for any pre-existing groups that use internet based organising or communication tools.

    Anyways….

  10. xtasy 10
    7 June 2013 at 11:52 pm

    To all those that may be “surprised”, I am not, and I have warned before of what is actually going on already with Facebook, Twitter, Google and others very actively harvesting your own info, including user profiles, your emails, your names and more. This is not a joke, it is real, and it is done so for “advertising purposes”, and if you look more closely at what you click and sign when registering for various services, you condone to be tracked and traced day in and out.

    So the NSA does spy on the services you use, big deal.

    You should have known this from the start, before using Facebook and allowing their cookies and else to connect to your browser and follow you, yes follow you, onto other websites, and onto whatever you click. The same applies to the Standard, and this site is being tracked by the ones I just mentioned constantly, same as most websites and forums.

    Try to get some Google blocking software and others, and then you will see your browser slowing down, as it has already been compromised, to only function if you allow all the track and spyware to follow you. If you block it, they try to slow your usage.

    That is capitalism and control on the web now. So dream of the freedom of the web, it is all commercialised, like the rest of this society and system. Dream on, dream on about “freedom”!

    The NSA have it so easy, and they are everywhere, so mind your language and comments, as they will take note and maybe get back at you, that is while we have a government so friendly with Washington and Hollywood, right?!

    • kiwicommie 10.1
      8 June 2013 at 2:59 am

      *shrug* They will learn less reading my mail than talking to me, also most users (like myself) these days create personas which are totally different to what they believe in real life. Then there are people just out to troll. Create useless information, then they have more to sift through. 😉

      • xtasy 10.1.1
        9 June 2013 at 1:37 am

        kiwicommie

        Every computer has its own identifiable number. So people may use different “personas” or profiles in social media and other communications, but that does not mean they cannot be identified. Most people have their own laptop, desktop or other computers, and they all are identifiable.

        And every website and function on a website that is clicked, does get recorded and can be tracked.

        Naturally most tracked and gathered information is only used for collecting browsing behaviour and sold encoded to advertisers, but if an agency like the NSA or GCSB takes an interest that goes deeper into “suspicious” or “undesirable” browsing behaviour, then they will have means to find out more about persons.

        There will always be limits to what they can do, and some software can limit what can be tracked and traced, but the way things are going certainly give sufficient reasons to be highly concerned.

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