SO, how many secret domestic spy programs are there anyway, and are they legal?

[Coyotl]

Deja DU: L. Coyote Jul-31-07

SO, how many secret domestic spy programs are there anyway, and are they legal?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1481897

To make a point, "More than there are stars in the heavens" (at least from a metropolitan perspective).
And, yes, they are legal. The NSA is forbidden by law from spying on Americans. Other agencies are not.

THIS THREAD: Focus - all domestic espionage programs. Purpose - provide actual context of current events.

Recent news events surrounding the Gonzales testimony re: Meuller, Comey, and Ashcroft's hospital visit, seems to convey a blissful ignorance about just what is happening on the domestic spying front, including the legal spying.

Much of the current investigation begaqn with the hacker-gate interception of all the Senate Committee on the Judiciary electronic communications, and Dem Senators began asking questions way back then, albeit without the power of the majority.

The "oversight era" could not begin until the People transformed the Congress. Now the sheer mass of corruption and abuses of power are difficult to deal with while, at the same time, attempting to stop an illegal war and run the country. Nonetheless, this issue has not yet evaporated, perhaps in no small part due to how it started with Republicans spying on the Senate Judiciary Democrats, and Dems wondering what they are up to this time. Watergate started with Republicans spying on Dems too, some might recall.

================
Feb. 2004. Hacker-Gate, "Republicans stole thousands of Democratic documents.."
This alone is way worse than Watergate. In this case the criminals actually pulled off a
their "listening" program, instead of getting caught trying to bug the Dems. And, in retrospect
from several years later, the Department of Justice or the GOP Congressional leadership did NADA!!
So, do we have the proverbial crime of the cover-up to consider too?

=======================================
Dems: Stolen memo case should go to DOJ
by kos - Tue Feb 10, 2004 at 02:02:22 PM PDT
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/2/10/17222/9423

.... Senate Dems are now demanding a criminal investigation from the Department of Justice
after Republicans stole thousands of Democratic documents from a shared Justice committee server.

...........

MUCH, MUCH MORE here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1481897

[longship]

1. They're like cockroaches; they proliferate in the dark!

Last edited Fri Jun 21, 2013, 11:40 PM - Edit history (1)

And like cockroaches, you cannot prove that they aren't there.

That's the conundrum. We have many people here saying we have cockroaches everywhere. But the info from Mr. Snowden is a Power Point presentation which only says that there's cockroaches somewhere.

As any PP presentation, it's a bit soft on hard evidence, but its implications (I admit) are somewhat disturbing. (Note that I am not shocked by them, but I do want to know more.)

This PP presentation is not a document that was designed to brief those with high level clearance in detail. It is, like any Power Point, an overview -- a big picture look see. There are no, if any, details; just block diagrams with labels which may be subject to inevitable misinterpretation.

Although I am very concerned about this business, I am not ready to set my hair on fire and jump off a cliff. There just isn't enough concrete evidence here that says anything like what some here are claiming (e.g., that phone calls are being listened to).

I don't like this NSA shit at all. And a guy I put a lot of credence in, Bruce Schneier, agrees with me.

But none of this is new with Obama. And Congress has supported it all, time and time again by huge bipartisan majorities.

That's the reality within which we live. If it is so important that it needs to be changed, than we have a lot of work to do.

So, stop calling people here names, or calling them racists, or whatever. Let's get the fuck together and let's get 'er done.

Let's handle this like adults.

Thanks, coyotl!

[Coyotl]

2. I'm not calling people names or racists.

Don't know where you are getting that misdirection from???

[longship]

3. Sorry, not meant personally.

My response was a general post to DUers who have acted poorly these past couple of weeks.

My knickers are a bit in a bunch about this. Forgive me. It was not intended to be directed at you, but against the general milieux here these days.



Modified my response.
Thanks for yours. Appreciated.

[delrem]

7. Well, if you haven't seen enough "evidence", good luck to you.

[longship]

10. I just do not jump to confusions.

And a power point slide does not rise to the level of the detail I would consider requisite to discern what is or is not happening.

It is low grade intelligence.

I have administered Internet servers and have expertease in Internet protocols. I cannot tell from what Snowden and Greenwald leaked what exactly it means in context with what I know. I worked on telephone switching systems for years and I only understand the ease of getting the Meta data and the extreme difficulty of getting the content of calls.

But some people here seem to think it's all magic and the NSA is an omnipotent god who can circumvent the limits of all the technologies.

That is not true. Although the NSA may have awesome infrastructure, they still have to work within the structure of the technology and are equally limited by that same technology.

In other words: One doesn't get to make shit up here.

* Can they read emails? Likely.
* Can they access servers? Likely, but only from outside. (Really not much of a difference.)
* Do they have phone call Meta data? Yup! That's what even they say they have. But it's a fuck of a lot of information, so trolling it for shit isn't likely to be productive. But if they can detect patterns, that's a different story. They go to FISA court and get permission (usually granted) and they go at it.
* Are they downloading all phone conversations? No fucking way. It's not like Meta data, it's audio, not digital accounting stuff. There's too much and even if it weren't, there's far, far too much chaff in the wheat to make it worthwhile. It is just not a credible claim that calls are being recorded. Anyway, there's been a legal process forever to get a subpoena for a phone tap when its needed. There's just no need to vacuum everything up. What would they do with it all?

People need to stop making stuff up. This issue is too important to be doing that.

[delrem]

11. You are using bafflegab to pretend "objectivity".

Even Obama is worried about what this this leak says.
Cheney endorses the whole project.

Get real.

[longship]

13. I am very real.

Do not think that I agree with this NSA spying. And if I were Obama I would be worried about it, too.

But too many people are reading too much rubbish into what these leaked Power Points say, and what they do not say.

I think Snowden may be an honest guy. I wasn't too sure at the beginning and I am still very concerned that he may be over his head. I do not have much love for Greenwald because he seems to be willing to sacrifice Snowden for his own good. But I think that this is gone well beyond Greenwald now. One can only hope.

I am open to any reasonable interpretation to events which are consistent with the data we know, including speculations.

But I am not comfortable with crazy talk like the NSA is listening to all phone calls, because nobody who doesn't believe in magic thinks that is even possible, let alone useful. (Sorry for the double negative.)

Thank you for your response.

[RobertEarl]

12. All phone calls?

They will soon be able to, if not already.

Internet traffic, emails and server taps, lead them to which phones to tap now.

The meta data is already logged by the telcos so all they have to do is download it. Then they use that to cross reference the stored voice data.

What else is there to do with the billions of dollars and who knows how many analysts, but gather every bit of info they can?

[longship]

14. Hi Robert!

But for what use would anybody want to vacuum up all phone conversations?

That claim doesn't come close to being credible. If there is suspicion that a crime is being committed a warrant for a tap can be issued. Then you have an expectation that your listening is going to provide some value. That's the way it's always been.

But if you're vacuuming up everything what the flaming fuck are you going to do with it? What value is it going to serve?

With the Meta data one can see a value. It can be mined for patterns. It's all digital anyway so a program can make inquiries on a specific metric, like which numbers called this known bad guy within the last year. Easy peasy. And there's the FISA court oversight. (Yup! I know they only turned down 11 requests, but that's a conversation one could have with Congress or Obama.)

But I would hate to be the guy who proposed the project to vacuum up all the phone conversations. On top of the fact that any reasonable Fermi calculation puts such a thing out of reasonable capability, what the fuck do you do with it when you have it all?

What the fuck use is a huge bunch of audio about mundane shit? How in the fuck are you going to mine that? A million cloned human transcribers made from a secret University lab?

And even if the call content can be correlated with Meta data already provided, wouldn't it be enough to just go to court with the evidence from the Meta data and get a specific wire tap warrant rather than sift through gazillions of recorded phone calls between teenagers to retrieve some audio (presuming all those calls could even be indexed accurately -- software isn't fucking magic.)

No! It makes no fucking sense to record calls unless there is prior cause. Then, the procedures are already in place and have been for a very long time. The NSA doesn't need to record all the calls. The FBI and other LE can do it whenever there's a good reason. They don't need the NSA. All they need is reasonable justification, which the FISA court can provide under the current legal framework.

I don't like this shit, but it's what we have. But please don't be making stuff up about recording phone calls. It just is not credible.

Thank you for your response.

[RobertEarl]

22. Longship

I guess by now you have read the threads in LBN about how the Brits have been scooping up phone calls?

Y'know, we try and learn you folks things and yall just get your hair on fire. Your hair on fire is not conducive to edumactional activities. I mean, will you ever fucking learn?

[longship]

23. Life teaches one that there's always something to learn.

Science teaches that, too. That's why I studied it.

I am always willing to be proven wrong because therein lies learning something new. That can be an exciting thing if one is willing to admit one was wrong. The deal is that ability.

I am very conflicted about this issue but I have significant experience in computer and Internet technology. Scooping up phone calls isn't very credible. Furthermore, there is no evidence that such a thing is even possible, let alone plausible.

I will change my mind when somebody provides evidence sufficient that such a thing would be either possible or -- and this is a biggie -- worthwhile.

Willing to hear where I am wrong, but I would like to see something that holds up.

As always, best regards.

[KentuckyWoman]

15. Oh they proliferate in the light of day too.

Even in my little blink and you miss it east Kentucky town there are cameras every place and the local police have talked the businesses into letting the police department have real time access.

Well, that was just dandy until some stupid deputy blabbed about where someone's wife was (where she didn't want anyone to know where she was) and we all got wise. The creamed corn hit the fan, businesses were shunned and the access was yanked (supposedly). Eventually we all just decided we'll pretend it doesn't exist and things went right back to the way they were....... cops watching everyone everywhere.

[longship]

16. That's a different issue, the cameras.

As if the NSA stuff wasn't enough. What do we do about cameras everywhere?

Europe has this problem in spades, and has had it for some time.

We have a rather much larger country so the logistics are much more difficult. I thank goodness that I live in the national forest where the only cameras will be from some biologist researching black bears, or some hunter looking for his next turkey dinner, neither of which are likely to be anywhere near my place.

But in NYC, there are cameras everywhere.

What do we do about that under our 4th Amendment? I think that this will take a SCOTUS case to resolve this. One can only hope we have the proper SCOTUS.

That's why I am a lifelong Democrat. I care about this shit, as apparently you do, too. And we're both apparently passionate enough about it to make our opinions known on a public forum.

The thing is, complaining about it is one thing. What do we do to change it?

[KentuckyWoman]

17. I'm not entirely sure it's a fight we can win - but I keep trying

tilting at windmills maybe.

This big wide net NSA thingy has been in the news before. I distinctly remember this discussion in the newspapers back when cellphones got cheap enough for most to have them. A LOT of people, mostly older, refused to get a cell phone because they didn't want the NSA or some other government entity to secretly turn the sound on to listen to us wherever we were. My mother still takes the battery out of her Tracfone and only installs it if she wants to use the phone....... because 15-20 years ago someone at her church said that's the only way the government wouldn't be able to eavesdrop.

5 or 10 years ago the news was full of the fact government hires hackers of it's own supposedly to test the security of the internet, but when they find a back door in a browser or operating system they exploit it and never tell Microsoft or whomever......

And then we all just decided to pretend the problem was solved and moved on.........

Now the discussion is back with a whole new group of angry Americans....... which I welcome. Maybe this time we can actually have the conversation we should have had already. ........ not to mention a private contractor being able to download all this mess to a thumb drive (WHAT??!!)

When we were all on analog it was a lot easier for them to target an exact person or number. Now with everything digital and the little bytes of my info mixed all up with everyone elses the infrastructure needs to be rebuilt to allow them to target a specific individual again.

[longship]

18. I am not at all worried about my phone calls.

There's no way even the NSA can vacuum up all of it. There's just not enough storage on the planet to do so. Then, even if you could, what the fuck would you do with all of it?

There are procedures to tap a phone line which have been in place for decades. The NSA doesn't need to do that and it wouldn't do any good even if they could. Again, what would you do with millions of daily phone conversations even if you could interpret them?

So I am not worried about that. Those who disagree do not have very credible arguments other than they think it's happening. Not good enough evidence for me. First of all it has to be plausible.

[MNBrewer]

4. none of our business, and if we ask, the terrorists win.

[Coyotl]

5. I know, those damn Sandinista terrorist are fast approaching Texas as we speak

I have absolute faith and confidence in everything Saint Ronnie said, especially how he warned us about those damn pinko commies terrorists and their sinister intentions to invade Texas

Without all our secret spy programs, they could have been here by now

[noise]

9. Exactly

Besides President Obama subjected himself to the withering questions of Charlie Rose. What else does the public want?

We have now had two (yes two) accountability moments! The '12 election and the Charlie Rose interview. That is pretty damn impressive if you ask me.

[rhett o rick]

6. If you loved America you wouldnt ask. nm

[snot]

8. Could we please get over this meme that

unConstitutionally invading our privacy without probable cause could ever be "legal"?!!

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

[Coyotl]

19. You might want to look up the definition of "legal"

as in encoded in law. Laws can be unconstitutional. And a President may have to abide by them or face impeachment until they law is adjudicated!

[snot]

20. You may be right. But those calling it "legal" are mostly trying to suggest

that it's ok; and it's not.

[Cleita]

21. It is in violation of the Constitution IMHO no matter how many other laws are

passed to make it "legal". Legal doesn't equal ethical either. Totalitarian regimes usually do their crimes legally because they passed laws enabling them to do so.