Latest big NSA story in the WaPo.

[BlueCheese]

Article here.

Ordinary Internet users, American and non-American alike, far outnumber legally targeted foreigners in the communications intercepted by the National Security Agency from U.S. digital networks, according to a four-month investigation by The Washington Post.

Nine of 10 account holders found in a large cache of intercepted conversations, which former NSA contractor Edward Snowden provided in full to The Post, were not the intended surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody else.

Many of them were Americans. Nearly half of the surveillance files, a strikingly high proportion, contained names, e-mail addresses or other details that the NSA marked as belonging to U.S. citizens or residents. NSA analysts masked, or “minimized,” more than 65,000 such references to protect Americans’ privacy, but The Post found nearly 900 additional e-mail addresses, unmasked in the files, that could be strongly linked to U.S. citizens or U.S.residents.

[gcomeau]

1. Ummm... and?

Where's the breaking news part? We already knew they were conductind mass data collection. Is the big revelation supposed to be that they're *not* actively targetting most of the people in that mass?

Ummm, no shit?

[Luminous Animal]

2. It means that they are retaining data of people who are not targets. They are retaining data of

innocents far more than they are retaining data of targets. Why retain the data of people who are not suspected of any crime?

[BlueCheese]

3. Exactly.

First, even if you do suspect someone of a crime, you're supposed to get a warrant.

But according to the article, they may be tracking up to nearly a million people who they don't really suspect of anything.

The article points out that among the things collected are medical records, job applications, pictures of babies, more risque pictures, etc. What gives the government the right to snoop through our most private conversations without cause?

Also, it shows that NSA officials likely lied, or were misinformed, when they claimed that Snowden wouldn't have had access to this kind of data.

[Luminous Animal]

4. I choose, the NSA lied.

Also, quite telling that these posts about clearly unconstitutional activity are sinking and barely a peep from the "SnowGlenn" is a poopie-head contingent.

[randome]

5. Well, you can have your 'woe is me' thread if you want.

But I'll step in to give you something to think about. Something that's been mentioned numerous times before.

It is impossible to only collect one end of an electronic communication, same as it is impossible to only hear one end of a telephone tap.

If a suspect is on chat rooms and uses the Internet for other purposes -which the article clearly states accounts for most of these communications- of course the NSA will collect the communications of others who are not the suspect.

Out of billions of daily emails, we're going to cry and stomp our feet over several thousand that -so far as we know, anyways- were collected inadvertently?

I don't think so.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled 'woe-is-me' thread.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]"The whole world is a circus if you know how to look at it."
Tony Randall, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964)[/center][/font][hr]

[winter is coming]

14. Oh, I wouldn't be surprised if that number's higher than a million.

Bit by bit, we're unraveling the NSA puzzle. And each step of the way, we get variations on "that's not really happening" or "but it's only a little bit". And then the next step comes along and we find out the problem's even larger than previously admitted.

[lovuian]

6. Yep What is their reason

It's a waste of time money and space

but are you looking for stock tips, corporate secrets, where a company is drilling for oil
A Senator's email


innocent Americans trying to do business in a Capitalistic (competitive) atmosphere

when you have the edge on information
What are they doing with the info?
information is knowledge

[randome]

7. Cost is not the sole determining factor. Nor should it be.

It says right in the article what the inadvertent collection led to.

...fresh revelations about a secret overseas nuclear project, double-dealing by an ostensible ally, a military calamity that befell an unfriendly power, and the identities of aggressive intruders into U.S. computer networks.

Months of tracking communications across more than 50 alias accounts, the files show, led directly to the 2011 capture in Abbottabad of Muhammad Tahir Shahzad, a Pakistan-based bomb builder, and Umar Patek, a suspect in a 2002 terrorist bombing on the Indonesian island of Bali.

Now is any of that worth the 'cost' of reading electronic transmissions involving legitimate suspects? Um, I kind of doubt that costs much more than a dime or two so I'd say that cost isn't an issue.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Where do uncaptured mouse clicks go?[/center][/font][hr]

[Aerows]

10. Gosh

You are always so informed when you come into these threads. It's rather amazing that you are so clued in on all of this, but you always say "I have no dog in this show."

[randome]

11. Yes, I'm armed and dangerous because I can read and apply context.

Guilty as charged.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Aspire to inspire.[/center][/font][hr]

[Aerows]

13. Nope, no dog in the show

[DirkGently]

8. This is why "dragnet" searches are disfavored.

It's a long-held tenet in Constitutional law. Collecting everything, on the theory that you'll only "look" at what you're allowed to, is a specious claim. What happens is everyone's privacy is violated first.

The promise of using the information only for permissible purposes does not hold up to the reality of human conduct.

[Octafish]

9. Gee. That's a lots more than metadata they're collecting.

Kid pics, too. Why would the NSA do that?

[BlueCheese]

12. Because they can.

They're completely out of control.

I don't doubt that the great majority of analysts working there really do think their main job is catching "terrorists". But the infrastructure they've put in place is appalling and has the potential for massive abuse. It's really amazing how people like Obama, Pelosi, and Feinstein would go along with that.

We could probably reduce crime a lot by having surveillance cameras in every room in every house, but we would never accept something like that. Why on earth do we tolerate that when it comes to the NSA?

[Octafish]

15. NSA was never supposed to be turned on Americans.

What Sen. Frank Church (Real D Idaho) in 1975, the last time Congress actually tried to show CIA and the rest of the "intelligence community" who was boss:

“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.”

[BlueCheese]

16. Indeed.

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.

That's where the title of Greenwald's book originates.

[bobduca]

17. Kick