Leaked NSA Doc Says It Can Collect And Keep Your Encrypted Data As Long As It Takes To Crack It
lol. they do like to cover all their bases. As for those of you who believe what the authorities are saying about surveillance - including what they're saying under oath- Your gullibility is touching.
If you use privacy tools, according to the apparent logic of the National Security Agency, it doesnt much matter if youre a foreigner or an American: Your communications are subject to an extra dose of surveillance.
Since 29-year-old systems administrator Edward Snowden began leaking secret documentation of the NSAs broad surveillance programs, the agency has reassured Americans that it doesnt indiscriminately collect their data without a warrant, and that what it does collect is deleted after five years. But according to a document signed by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and published Thursday by the Guardian, it seems the NSA is allowed to make ambiguous exceptions for a laundry list of data it gathers from Internet and phone companies. One of those exceptions applies specifically to encrypted information, allowing it to gather the data regardless of its U.S. or foreign origin and to hold it for as long as it takes to crack the datas privacy protections.
The agency can collect and indefinitely keep any information gathered for cryptanalytic, traffic analysis, or signal exploitation purposes, according to the leaked minimization procedures meant to restrict NSA surveillance of Americans. Such communications can be retained for a period sufficient to allow thorough exploitation and to permit access to data that are, or are reasonably believed likely to become, relevant to a future foreign intelligence requirement, the procedures read.
nd one measure of that datas relevance to foreign intelligence? The simple fact that the data is encrypted and that the NSA wants to crack it may be enough to let the agency keep it indefinitely. In the context of cryptanalytic effort, maintenance of technical data bases requires retention of all communications that are enciphered or reasonably believed to contain secret meaning, the criteria for the exception reads. Sufficient duration [for retaining the data] may consist of any period of time during which encrypted material is subject to, or of use in, cryptanalysis.
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http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/06/20/leaked-nsa-doc-says-it-can-collect-and-keep-your-encrypted-data-as-long-as-it-takes-to-crack-it/?partner=yahootix