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[damnedifIknow]

This message was self-deleted by its author (damnedifIknow) on Tue Mar 26, 2013, 06:25 PM. When the original post in a discussion thread is self-deleted, the entire discussion thread is automatically locked so new replies cannot be posted.

[bluedigger]

1. I'll have to up my game if I'm playing to a wider audience.

[Baitball Blogger]

54. On the contrary. Ask every one of your facebook friends to tag you in a foreign country.

You can tag landscapes and food.

What you're doing is rendering your facebook pages useless as a profiling device.

[nessa]

114. Privacy on FaceBook has always been a fantasy as is privacy on DU or anywhere online. (nt)

.

[blm]

55. You? How many times do you think I posted on BCCI, IranContra, CIA drug running? ;)

I won't be an informed citizen who bothered to read sworn testimony and government documents and encouraging others to do the same, I'll be labeled a subversive.

Probably labeled that a decade ago for posting here. LOL

[Octafish]

79. As if they care!

They've got our home phone numbers, GOOGLE search profiles and what we think on record, ready for the big round-up.



Poppy Bush was in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963 and he loathes what "conspiracy theorists" have to say about it.

[librechik]

116. no roundup necessary. We already live in our present and future prisons

cool beans, we got Brave New World dystopia (mostly) and the 1984 dystopia is yet to arrive. Let's party like it's 2013!

[Octafish]

119. Here in Detroit, we know that is reality.

For most of the residents, the City is an open-air prison without walls. There's almost no chance of escape, as for 47 years, the City has been allowed to decay - from loss of jobs to lousy schools (public and now charter, as well) to crumbling infrastructure to constant crime - most who remain have little hope for a different personal future. It took a while, but the rest of America is catching up to life without a middle class.

Here's where the Ownership Class is hoping for a piratized Change:



Disaster Capitalists luv Detroit. The friends of Gov. Snyder will turn a buck off it. And when they're through, they'll have privatized the City's nicest assets, the water works and Belle Isle, which they want to transform into an quasi-independent Commonwealth located between the USA and Canada to the south -- a tax shelter identical in spirit with Georgetown in Grand Cayman I kid you not.

Detroit's Game Changer

In 1950, Detroit was a vibrant city; the wealthiest in the nation. Now, despite all the efforts of many good people, the city has lost most of its population and is now the poorest, most dangerous, most run down city in America.

Detroit needs a game changer. The 982 acre island of Belle Isle can be that game changer for Detroit. The book Belle Isle is about that vision.

The setting is Belle Isle, 30 years in the future. Twenty nine years prior (2014), Belle Isle was sold by the city of Detroit for $1 billion dollars to a group of investors who believed in individual freedom, liberty and free markets.

They formed their own city-state, with innovative systems of government, taxation, labor and money. People soon came from all over the world to be part of this culture of unlimited opportunity. Belle Isle became the “Midwest Tiger,” rivaling Singapore as an economic miracle. Although numbering only 35,000 citizens, it generated billions of dollars in desperately needed economic growth and became a social laboratory for the western world.

Detroit shared in the genuine Renaissance. The large sum paid for Belle Isle was used to train Detroiters to fill the huge need for construction workers on Belle Isle. Beyond this, the construction of this remarkable new nation by private money provided years of economic boost for Detroit and Southeast Michigan, and the sparks generated by the fires of “can do” optimism and a new social pact jumped the river, causing factories and farms to be built in Detroit, restoring it to its former glory.

Big changes take big ideas, power arising from noble intent, and leaders of great vision and courage. It happened before with the birth of America. It can happen again.

All this is possible on Belle Isle.

SOURCE: http://www.commonwealthofbelleisle.com/

Please pass the Freedom Fries. Partay!

[librechik]

121. it's appalling, and another sign of things to come

camel nose under the tent--pretty soon Detroit is everywhere

[Richardo]

104. HA!

[flamingdem]

2. poopy doopy do0do0 hussain!

there, now that's recorded forever and they can spend some $ figuring out the code

[Lady Freedom Returns]

10. Copy that! Jane has a pink poodle.

Over and out.

[Octafish]

4. Frank Church warned us. His committee was about the LAST time Congress held CIA, NSA accountablee

“That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.

"I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3510598

[Comrade Grumpy]

16. I think it's time for another Church Committee. We've let the CIA run rampant since 9/11.

Spook armies in Afghanistan.

God knows what in Iraq.

Torture.

Secret drone programs.

And what were they doing in Benghazi?

And what are they up to in Syria? And Yemen? And Somalia? And Pakistan?

And why on earth do they get to surveil/store all my electronic communications without a warrant?

[FuzzyRabbit]

30. Why?

"And why on earth do they get to surveil/store all my electronic communications without a warrant?" you ask.

Simple. The CIA thinks all citizens are enemies.

[Octafish]

80. Excellent suggestion, Comrade Grumpy!

"That is, 'Comrade Grumpy?' of DemocraticUnderground, spelled capital c-o-m-r-..."

These guys and gals know what's best for us. And to ensure the survival of democracy, are doing their best to covertly help it succeed, especially in the Homeland.

Take Porter Goss. And remember that helpful ex-CIA election official in Florida in 2000?

Personally, Agent Mike, I wonder who helped flip Tennessee that year? No one talks about him or her.

[HiPointDem]

24. +1

[Octafish]

83. Pike Committee scared the Reinhard Gehlen out of them in public.

In private, they laughed their asses off.



Know your BFEE: Spying on America Isn t Just Business, It s Tradition.

[snooper2]

5. LOL

macedoniablahblah has the scoop on that right

Like the FBI needs Amazon

I'm pretty sure they have their own VMWare running, lots of it

[spin]

6. I can't image a better way of spying on people then Facebook. ....

It's simple and ingenious.

It will end up being used for both good and evil.

[green for victory]

19. The US needs a data law like the EU

"Every person in the EU has the right to access all the data that a company is holding about him/her"

Austrian Max Schrems accessed the data that Farcebook collected from him after only 1 year of membership (actually he had to sue FB):



look at the data they colect and record:

-----------------
01. About Me
02. Account End Date
03. Account Status History
04. Address
05. Alternate Name
06. Applications
07. Chat
08. Checkins
09. Connections
10. Credit Cards
11. Currency
12. Current City

13. Date of Birth
14. Education
15. E-Mails
16. Events
17. Family
18. Favourite Quotes
19. Friend Requests
20. Friends
21. Gender
22. Groups
23. Hometown
24. Last Location
25. Linked Accounts
26. Locale
27. Logins

28. Machines
29. Messages
30. Minifeed
31. Name
32. Name Changes
33. Networks
34. Notes
35. Notification Settings
36. Notifications
37. Password
38. Phone Numbers
39. Photos
40. Physical Tokens
41. Pokes
42. Political Views

43. Privacy Settings
44. Profile Blurb
45. Realtime Activities
46. Recent Activities
47. Registration Date
48. Relationship
49. Religious Views
50. Removed Friends
51. Screen Names
52. Shares
53. Status Updates
54. Vanity
55. Wallposts
56. Website
57. Work

http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/Data_Pool/data_pool.html

[spin]

88. The video was great! (n/t)

[Paul E Ester]

124. Great vid!..nt

[leveymg]

29. Facebook was designed to collect data about you and your friends, and sell it.

As for the gov't, the NSA has been trolling the web, all ISPs, and Telcos for more than a decade, even before the Patriot Act made it legal inside the US.

It's what they do with all that data -- break it down, the algorithms they use to rebuild it to categorize you into predictive profiles (because they are so often dead wrong) -- that should worry you.

[spin]

89. Nah. You can always trust the government. ...

It has your best interest at heart.

[leveymg]

93. Doesn't everyone?

[aquart]

7. I'm impressed.

Gathering data is the easy part. Analyzing it is hard. Is this the CIA that fired the gay Arabic translators and thus had piles of info related to 9/11 they never saw? Or was that a different spy agency?

Everyone panics over the piles of data. Piles, darlings, are what you trip over.

[idwiyo]

15. ^^^ this

[HiPointDem]

25. easy to analyze piles of data with computers, and very quickly, on an as-needed basis.

and to monitor it continuously, too.

[kickysnana]

58. Obiously you haven't had to retrieve email from the IRS from 2005 LOL n/t

[siligut]

65. Exactly, if sorting data is the goal, computers are the tool

[aquart]

94. If they're properly serviced. If you budget for maintenance and upgrades...

Programming for hyperbole is undoubtedly simple. Then you put the printout on your superior's desk....and the tall stack falls when he spills coffee on it.

But I appreciate your total faith in technology. I'll bet you think rape kits are analyzed.

[GoCubsGo]

117. Yep.

It's kind of like the last scene in the "Raiders of the Lost Ark", where the fork lift containing the Ark of the Covenant heads into the never-ending warehouse, where it's to be buried.

[Lady Freedom Returns]

8. So? The FBI still keeps tabs on me.

It was a little tat I had with one of Roy Blunts security guys. He was tick that I told him to stop blocking my cameras while we were trying to film an interview. He got a ball rolling that was added to by my anti-war protest stuff I was involved in. Boy I do miss my college days!

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. Good luck drinking from that 5 foot hose.

[Orrex]

11. I already assumed that they know everything I've done online since 1983 or so

[MineralMan]

64. Me too. I also assume that they're interested in none of it.

I'm not interesting at all to the government, and haven't been since 1969. I wasn't very interesting before then, either, but I did have a high level security clearance up until that time, so they were somewhat interested then. Since then, I've just been a run-of-the-mill activist who hasn't been involved with anything nefarious or threatening to anyone.

Could they find out what I've been up to. No doubt, but it would bore them to tears. They have real people who are real threats to try to find. I'm not interesting. Neither is anyone on DU, almost certainly.

[Orrex]

85. Yeah, same here

I feel bad for the poor fool who gets stuck snooping on my online activity. Snooze!

[snot]

126. Tell that to the Occupiers targeted for preemptive arrest.

[Jamastiene]

12. Par for the course.

I figured as much. I am not surprised.

[idwiyo]

13. Million $$$ question to CIA: can you process it all, morons? No, you can't. You should know it but

majority of you is too computer illiterate to realise that just because you have lots of data it doesn't mean you can convert it to useful information.

Too bad taxpayers have to finance another "Star Wars" project, because this exactly the same type of project. You wouldn't listen to scientists when they told you to stop wasting money on Star Wars, you definitely will not listen when they tell you this is even worse misuse of public funds, your sculls are too thick to comprehend why.

[HiPointDem]

26. yeah, they're collecting it but they're too dumb to process it. that's the ticket.

[idwiyo]

31. What is the largest database size did yo ever work with?

[HiPointDem]

32. the entire database is not the database at the level of analysis.

computerization allows selection of specific indicators or targets at the touch of a key.

[idwiyo]

33. Entire set of data has to be processed first (sorted). THAT requires a hell of a lot of processing

power. I am sure you are aware of it?

[HiPointDem]

35. 'processing power' = cpu, not personnel.

[idwiyo]

37. The problem is the size of initial data set, how long does it take to process and index, how fast

is it growing daily, is there enough time to process is every day, if not how fast the back log is growing, what happens when there is a glitch and something was not processed in time, is it possible to catch up.

I seriously doubt that answer to those questions is "yes, we can". Doubt as in "no fucking way in hell"

[HiPointDem]

41. and yet, people are being convicted on the evidence of computer data.

[idwiyo]

43. Still the same questions remain. We are not talking here about targeting one specific individual

that CIA already believes is "guilty". We are talking a vast amount of data that is growing every day about everyone. It has to be processed to give meaningful results because they don't know who else is guilty. Entire idea of this project is to identify the potential threat, not to confirm an existing belief.

Also, remember few years ago there were a lot of child porn convictions in UK based on incomplete and incorrectly processed computer data. They we overturned later because data was false. A lot will depend of course on the level of experts one can attain, I don't dispute it. I dispute the initial premiss that CIA knows everything about any given individual because the managed to store some data somewhere.

BTW, I am not even going to discuss the actual data storage and backup. It's topic better left alone.
Don't take my word for it, do some research. You will soon realise that it's all not what we think it is.

Another topic I am not even going into is updating your version of database from v1.0 to v.something else. Just lets not go into discussion of what can and will happen to your data. Never mind if you decide to change databases from one company to another.

[HiPointDem]

44. and yet, those innocent persons were, in fact, convicted and punished.

[idwiyo]

51. Yep, false positives. And criminals walked/walk free because of false negatives. Never mind we

don't even know how many. Computers can not tell is because to them that person is innocent.

[HiPointDem]

90. but computers can access information that would not have been accessible in earlier times.

[idwiyo]

91. Only after the raw data is processed and stored correctly. Oh, forgot to mention, backups.

You know, between several databases. Initial one and the backup ones. That takes time too. Depends on how fast you can shift the data between 2 or more locations that are physically separated. It has to be synchronised. Another problem is data retrieval. As in what exactly are you storing everyday. Changes to the files? Entire files? How long does it take to retrieve the data? How long will it take to compile it?

The list is going on, and on, and on...

[aquart]

95. They cut supercomputer grants under Bush.

Just sayin'.

[TheMadMonk]

39. Keep telling yourself that. Ignore the fact that Amazon's computers know...

...when you're going on holiday and where. Knows whether you're taking mistress or wife.

[HiPointDem]

40. i'm not the one saying they can't process the data. your remarks should be addressed to the

person who is saying that.

[idwiyo]

42. Amazon computers store data. The initial data set has to be processed by said computers to something

meaningful first. That requires someone to write a query to do that. Next comes a list of questions like how big is initial set, how long does it take to process it, how fast is it growing daily, is it possible to process additional data every day, if not how fast the backlog is growing, is it possible to catch up (is it possible to add additional computing power, how much will it cost, is it even available), what happens when there is a glitch and data is not processed in time, etc, etc.

Throw in who rites the queries, who checks that they are producing meaningful data, how often is it checked, etc etc.

[HiPointDem]

45. and yet, if i made a death threat to some public official on social media, i'll bet federal agents

would be at my door fairly quickly.

whereas if i made such a threat down at the local tav -- not so quickly.

in both cases i'm the same person with the same capacity to carry out, or not, my threat.

[idwiyo]

49. Not unless someone else notifies them. Otherwise your chances to have a visit from FBI are very low.

Like almost non-existent. You are assuming again that they CAN process the data fast enough. I dispute that assertion because data storage, retrieval and processing is not as easy as majority of people tend to think it is. More like fucking one of the hardest things to do.

BTW, when we talk about innocent people being harassed or convicted on false data, we are talking about false positives.

Think about false negatives instead. That's the devil we don't even know about that actually exists and there is not much you can do about it because ... computers can not tell us, for them that person is innocent.

[MineralMan]

60. That is true, but because people would report your threat.

That happens a lot, and they can run down who made the threat very quickly. It's a long reach, though for them to sort those threats out on their own. People report threats they see. That's why there's a reasonably fast response, and that's the only reason.

Social media implies people looking at what you post. People are very good at filtering out things like threats. Computers not so much. They can't read and understand like people can.

[idwiyo]

92. Exactly. It's a Nobel prize right there if someone figures how to teach computer to sort the data

the same way humans do. This is the reason computers suck at face recognition and object recognition.
No one yet came up with a way how to make computer see like we do.

[aquart]

96. Only after it trends on Twitter.

[RobinA]

99. And Yet

threats were made by evil doers to target US jets YEARS before it actually happened, AND it was common knowledge, not lost in a cloud somewhere, and we see how that turned out.

Ewwwww, the CIA has pictures of my trip to the beach buried somewhere, I'm really scared.

[treestar]

59. Of course not, it's a huger dump that Wikileaks

It's too much data to invade anyone's privacy with.

People already report to the FBI if someone tweets something that sounds like a threat.

In the case of twitter it is public anyway, no worse than the CIA saving every issue of the New York Times.

[JDPriestly]

14. Here's the problem.

I don't know what macedoniaonline is about.

If true, this phrase is troubling: "the CIA will collect information on individuals thought to be America's enemies."

http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/22962/56/

How would the CIA define "America"?

Would that mean anybody the CIA doesn't happen to like?

Then what does "America's enemies" mean?

Does that include anyone who says anything the CIA doesn't like?

And then who is the CIA? Who in the CIA decides how the CIA defines "America"? Who in the CIA decides what "America's enemies" mean?

I have the same problem with the Patriot Act. It invites arbitrary enforcement and abuse because it uses language that is very, very overbroad and vague.

Normally in the law, you can define the elements that must be present for an act to constitute a crime or a civil wrong. That is not true with these kinds of laws.

[idwiyo]

17. Don't even bother to worry about it. They have to convert piles of data into useful info and unless

CIA have human observers manually sifting through it they are majorly fucked. No one has the capacity to do what they think they can do unless they employ lots and lots and lots of people to do the sorting. Computers are great but they do have limitations and CIA would be able to hire enough people because people have even more limitations, hence you'll need a hell of a lot of them.

[HiPointDem]

27. don't worry, don't worry....

[Lady Freedom Returns]

36. The CIA has a special team to do stupid stuff for them as do many places, they are called....

Interns!

[idwiyo]

38. Yes, and they do really stupid stuff, that's the main problem. I am not even going to start on the

topic of who writes the initial query and who checks that its actually produces a meaningful set of data.

[RobinA]

100. I Can See It Now

Three Days of the Condor, Part II. Hundreds sit in ex warehouses reading Facebook postings looking for possible terra references. Many good Federal jobs created.

[idwiyo]

107. Don't give them ideas, please. :) Sadly I wouldn't be surprised at all if this is how

they handle it. Use computers to do initial processing, use people to try and make sense out of the compiled data. Never mind the false positives and negatives, never mind corrupted data, never mind quality checks, forget simple shit like possibility of attribution to a wrong source due to database glitch, etc. The list of what can and will go wrong just gets larger and larger. And their database keeps growing and growing every single day.

This is why I originally compared this moronic waste of time and money with Star Wars project.
On the surface both look good but devil is in the detail. Star Wars projects literally needs to change laws of physics to be workable. This one is not much better, if not worse.

[dixiegrrrrl]

108. Hundreds dressed in camo, sitting in big cushy chairs,

eventually to be recipients of some new medal, no doubt.

[JDPriestly]

102. It occurred to me today that in the early 2000s, and in spite of the fact that banks

are now doing a lot of their business relatively openly and on the internet, the government seemed surprised by the horrible, possibly criminal, actions of the banks and mortgage companies.

[idwiyo]

122. Well... I can tell you a little story about a database.

Imagine a really big company. HUGE actually.
The amount of data it produces everyday is counted in hundreds of TB.
Everyday at night company does backup and synchronises its several data centres.
Or so they think.
Unknown to everyone but couple of low level IT techs the backup never finishes it job because there is not enough time to finish it. It programmed to stop at a particular time. It stops and dumps whatever it managed to transfer because its not finished.
The IT Techs never told anyone because they didn't understand the error message and they are not paid enough to even bother to understand. It's low wage dead end job and they really don't give a flying fuck.

There is only one master database. The backup databases are not synced and contain the original startup file and few newer back ups that managed to finish in allocated time. That's all.

The data centre where main database is located suffers from multiple hard drive failure due to power surge because someone bypassed UPS system. Fuck knows why, no one knows whom.

Poof, all the data for the last couple or more years is gone.

Shit like that happens more often the anyone would ever admit.

I don't have to tell you what will happen if someone tries to audit this company.

[Lint Head]

18. Hell I'm going on FaceBook and saying, "In the name of free speech FU."

Hope they store this comment.

[Apophis]

20. For what purpose?

Do they really think terrorists will facebook message or tweet each other? Why the hell do they need to spy on me or anyone? Do they really want terabytes of cat pictures, meme photos, and pics of what I had for dinner last night?

:dumb:

[HiPointDem]

28. networks of associations, and not only of 'terrorists'. and the other side of the coin is that

the system can be used to frame people as well.

[treestar]

69. The world is a little bigger than your imagination Horatio

Of course terrorists won't tweet their plans, but they might be able to gain some knowledge of their whereabouts, who they might be and who they are working with. I wouldn't know but ask them rather than make assumptions.

There are political groups on Facebook and a lot of news - it would be like having access to the archives of the New York Times - it's just information that might be useful in research on issues that they need to know about for their operations.

[aquart]

97. If Bozo the Terrorist tweets his cousin that he'll be out of touch for a while

So please pick up his mail, that could actually be a worthwhile clue...but how you pick that needle from the haystack? Good luck.

[treestar]

110. It would be more in the matter of making connections

Might show where Bozo is one day or who he talks to or what groups he belongs to, and if he puts that much out in public, fair enough. If he stops tweeting one day and they already think Bozo might have gone to Yemen to a meeting.

They knew that two of the hijackers had been to a particular meeting in a particular place - that was used against the government to say they should have known not to let those two into the country. And that was before all this.

It may take a lot of work to determine just who Bozo is and that he is involved in something. The sentiment expressed in your post and that of the poster I responded to fails to reflect that. It is a sentiment that assumes all terrorists are known and easily picked out.

It is too easy to oversimplify someone else's job.

[Coyotl]

21. If they keep looking, they will discover intelligence eventually

but it may cost the taxpayers more than they would like.

[idwiyo]

125. You win this thread!!!

[progressoid]

22. Is there another source other than Macedonia online?

[BVictor1]

23. So we can amass this data but can't do background checks?

Where the fuck are this countries priorities?

[longship]

34. Meh! They'll get what they deserve.

Millions of people Tweeting their meal pics; teens tweeting just about anything. As for Facebook, with the inanity there, I am sure one could construct any sort of conspiracy around the patternless patter there. I have no doubt that the CIA will have lots of fun with this... Or waste a lot of time.

So, have at it, Hoss. Waste your time all you want.

[DFW]

46. Now Langley just needs one more thing

Last edited Sat Mar 23, 2013, 10:05 AM - Edit history (1)

An additional staff of about half a million people and an annex the size of Bermuda so they can evaluate all that stored data.

[bluedigger]

56. Well, not quite the size of Bermuda...

Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.

But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”

For the NSA, overflowing with tens of billions of dollars in post-9/11 budget awards, the cryptanalysis breakthrough came at a time of explosive growth, in size as well as in power. Established as an arm of the Department of Defense following Pearl Harbor, with the primary purpose of preventing another surprise assault, the NSA suffered a series of humiliations in the post-Cold War years. Caught offguard by an escalating series of terrorist attacks—the first World Trade Center bombing, the blowing up of US embassies in East Africa, the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, and finally the devastation of 9/11—some began questioning the agency’s very reason for being. In response, the NSA has quietly been reborn. And while there is little indication that its actual effectiveness has improved—after all, despite numerous pieces of evidence and intelligence-gathering opportunities, it missed the near-disastrous attempted attacks by the underwear bomber on a flight to Detroit in 2009 and by the car bomber in Times Square in 2010—there is no doubt that it has transformed itself into the largest, most covert, and potentially most intrusive intelligence agency ever created.

In the process—and for the first time since Watergate and the other scandals of the Nixon administration—the NSA has turned its surveillance apparatus on the US and its citizens. It has established listening posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the country or overseas. It has created a supercomputer of almost unimaginable speed to look for patterns and unscramble codes. Finally, the agency has begun building a place to store all the trillions of words and thoughts and whispers captured in its electronic net. And, of course, it’s all being done in secret. To those on the inside, the old adage that NSA stands for Never Say Anything applies more than ever.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/

[DFW]

63. $2 billion?

Not much smaller, either!

[bluedigger]

68. Considering it's ginormous size, it's a bargain.

Bermuda has a lot better beaches than Utah, of course, so they probably got a good deal on the real estate.

[aquart]

98. Honestly that doesn't sound nearly enough for the project they discussed.

Where they seem to assume all will run smoothly.

Utah, huh? Mormons. Fraud capital of America. One widdle leaky poo in the pursuit of spare cash...

They're breaking all the codes that protect data but they think they can protect their data? I'm entertained.

[DFW]

106. They might have inadvertently (not) left off a zero.

Like we'll ever know, right?

[hobbit709]

47. I will start every posting on FB with "FUCK THE CIA"

[NYC Liberal]

48. CIA records public information. I'm shocked.

Anyone who puts something online and Expects it to be private is sorely mistaken.

[NYC Liberal]

53. Anything you post online should be considered public,

even if for no other reason than any one of your friends can simply copy and paste what you wrote. Or take a screenshot. Etc.

I would never consider anything I posted on Facebook to be truly private. Any time I post something I think about how much I'd care if it were made public. I never post anything I want to keep private.

[MineralMan]

61. Precisely. Right now, things like threats are investigated mainly

because someone reports them. Look at DU. Someone posts something that someone told them was posted on Twitter. If it's a threat, for example, half a dozen DUers report it to the FBI or the Secret Service, if it's a threat against the President.

Those all get looked at. It is the public nature of social media that gets things noticed and reported, not the accumulation of enormous piles of data that get sorted through by database algorithms.

DU, Free Republic, and other discussion forums are also public, and are monitored more by their users than by the government. A threat posted on any of those public discussion forums is more likely to be noticed because someone who reads those forums reported it than through data mining. Much more likely.

The goal of the NSA and CIA is not to screw around with the bulk of what goes on the Internet. They're interested in national security threats and issues. They're especially interested in what is NOT put on public forums and social media. That's what they're looking at, not people's general dissatisfaction with government. Nobody really cares about that.

If you put it on the Internet, even in what you think is private email, it's available to those agencies. If you do it under an assumed name or screen name, it will take about 30 seconds for any agency to find out who you are in RL. That is a certainty. Even if you're using some Internet anonymizer, consider whether you know who actually runs that service. Encrypting? Maybe. It might work, unless there's a back door in your encryption software. My assumption is that if the encryption software is from a company, it's likely that there's a back door into it. Things work like that.

The only preventive measure, if you're actually doing something the government might be interested in, which is unlikely, is to keep all communications off the internet, out of the mail, and off the telephone system. But, the government is very unlikely to be interested in you, anyhow. They have bigger fish to catch.

[nadinbrzezinski]

72. Look n the bright side

They are trying to drink from a five foot hose at full pressure.

(Hi boys)

I know they will use computers that clue in to things like certain words, al Qaida, and the Turner Diaries (for the FBI), are like obvious. Radical Islam and the 99% are as well.

But literally, these folks are trying to take a swig from a five foot hose.

Regardless, this is the sad part...privacy has been extinct...truly, for twenty years or more. I use my FB page to promote my newspaper articles and keep an eye on my beat...so does the police. In fact, when FB made it all but impossible but to follow without signing to FB.

Now, here is the truth...not all FB pages are in the US...the excuse to be used. But doing this kind of blunt Signals Intel is all kinds of non effective.

But hey...just the thought...(yes, it is to a point a tool of social control, if they are able to effectively track 5% of potential targets, given the traffic...I will be impressed. But the fear you are a target might make you think twice, this is how the Stassi worked.

[nadinbrzezinski]

87. Another era

Another time.

[OldDem2012]

50. The CIA is late getting into that game....the NSA is the outfit I'd worry about more....

....than the CIA.

National Security Agency

"The National Security Agency (NSA) is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S. government communications and information systems,[1] which involves information security and cryptanalysis/cryptography.

The NSA is directed by at least a lieutenant general or vice admiral. NSA is a key component of the U.S. Intelligence Community, which is headed by the Director of National Intelligence. The Central Security Service is a co-located agency created to coordinate intelligence activities and co-operation between NSA and other U.S. military cryptanalysis agencies. The Director of the National Security Agency serves as the Commander of the United States Cyber Command and Chief of the Central Security Service.[2]

By law, NSA's intelligence gathering is limited to foreign communications, although domestic incidents such as the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy have occurred."

The last sentence is the one which should cause the most concern. The NSA is doing keyword scans of ALL electronic communications coming into and out of the US, and they've been doing it for decades.

The CIA is attempting to build their own domestic electronic eavesdropping empire even though their charter prohibits them from spying on US targets. The FBI is the group officially charged with domestic surveillance programs.

[treestar]

57. It's public though

When you put something on FB, it is like writing a letter to the editor.

That's so much data that it's practically irrelevant. Whether the CIA, the Bank of America has it hardly matters any more than that Facebook has it.

[treestar]

66. Are you responding to my post or the OP

Your link says

THE CIA'S "GRAND CHALLENGES" WITH BIG DATA
Sensors, agents and an Internet of Things are all producing data, all of the time. It would be a vast understatement to say that the CIA has experience in acquiring, handling and analyzing big quantities of data. In this talk, the CTO of the CIA will talk about the scale of the problems his team deals with now, the coming inflection point in the increase in data, the grand challenges we face and why an emphasis on analytics is critical for the future. This is a talk not to be missed.

Speakers:
Ira "Gus" Hunt - CTO, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)

[Jersey Devil]

67. That is not "spying" on people

Anything you say on Facebook or Twitter is public, the same as if you dragged a soapbox to the park and gave a speech while standing on it with a megaphone. I don't understand why anyone would have the slightest expectation of privacy concerning something they post on FB or Twitter.

[nadinbrzezinski]

73. A more accurate analogy

Drag your soapbox to the park, and have it surrounded by the cops.

What people should be afraid is the chilling effect on speech.

Yes, the Wobblies kept at it after the San Diego PD surrounded them a hundred years ago, but in the end that broke popular support...same shit, different century, with Occupy San Diego. People simply were afraid to go to the Plaza, overwhelming police response made people afraid of actual arrest.

I covered it, and was a witness to overwhelming use of force.

That is what you should be afraid of it.

[MineralMan]

71. #sillysally OMG! Did you see Jason @ school?

DudeZ carrying dangerous weapon in pants.

Someone notify the FBI!

[Zax2me]

74. At least little bush and romney are not in charge.

Though the difference it seems is becoming more and more pressing to define.

[Paul E Ester]

75. Don't know about Facebook

but the library of congress is hooked to the twitter feed. Strange stuff

[stevenleser]

76. If you have ever owned a domain name for a political website and had access to the visit logs...

when you run those logs through one of those tools that show the origins of the IP addresses, you get a lot of hits from FBI.gov and CIA.gov and other governmental agencies. That was true when I ran "The Dumbya Chronicles" back in the early 2000s.

It could be just people at those places who like the content. I'm sure that happens too.

[Evoman]

77. Why do we allow them to spy?

They need some serious funding cuts. Stupid government trying to spy on their own people. Why don't we just let each other live in fucking peace....why do we always put fucknuts in power that need to spy on others and intimidate other and frame others? Nobody who wants power should ever be in power.

[Lex]

78. The ones that teenagers send should be extra fun for them to keep. nt

[NightWatcher]

81. Good luck searching through a zillion "OMG, look at this picture of my food" posts

They are going to be overwhelmed by stupid shit without a filter.

[markpkessinger]

109. You don't think a human being sits down and tries to sift through all this, do you?

And no, it isn't filtering technology they use either. An algorithm is created that can iterate through the data and flag messages deemed to be "of interest" based on the appearance of certain keywords. And no, they won't be overwhelmed: a supercomputer has an amazing tolerance for tedium such as scanning food posts, and it can scan hundreds of thousands of bytes of data per second. And it is likely that there are several levels of algorithms that are run in order to winnow the selection down to something a human being can reasonably analyze before human eyes ever see it.

[idwiyo]

127. "Appearance of certain keywords". Can you please explain what you mean?

[LiberalFighter]

82. Use it against them.

Regularly mention Poppy Bush as involved with killing the Kennedys.

"" "" that they killed all of the American soldiers in Iraq and Afghan.

[villager]

101. We always knew this was the case. The trick is be worthy of their surveillance. Earn your file.

They're keeping one on you anyway.

[elleng]

103. Let them have it, if they think they want it so much.

They'll never be able to make use of it.

[bluedigger]

105. In case anyone needs a refresher on what words to use, er, avoid...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2150281/REVEALED-Hundreds-words-avoid-using-online-dont-want-government-spying-you.html

[MelungeonWoman]

111. This is a common recurring theme on the RW site I frequent.

Scary, scary, scary; fear, fear, fear. Don't mingle with others without the guidance of serious people or the bad guys will get you.

[markiv]

113. if someone had a record of every single internet action the average person ever made

and had effective analytical tools to process it, they would have nearly total control over that person, perhaps without that person even suspecting it

[Zorra]

115. The CIA Facebook Project:

Truth in this satire.

I don't do Facebook, Twitter, whatever. Never have, never will.

[Are_grits_groceries]

118. Well, they better have some decent algorithms not to mention

computers that can process a lot faster than they do now. The amount of info is increasing exponentially, but the systems they use can't keep up.
They will have to rethink their systems not to mention their storage pans.

[ChisolmTrailDem]

120. So, is this CIA thing codified in the FB Terms of Service?

Also, are we saying the CIA has access to my FB account despite my login username/password?

Where is this shown to be official? Where has FB said or the CIA said they are monitoring my FB account to the point of even being able to get past my login to collect my comments?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

123. Oh, that's OK, the CIA thugs are spying on us to protect our "freedom".

The same way that bank robbers go to banks to protect our money.