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link to the guardian article: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data


The video gives you the gist of it but the article goes quite in depth, very worthwhile read.

Meh... I just can't get too worked up about this...

Did anyone think the NSA was not keeping tabs on who visited certain sites thought to be propagators of terrorism?

It's one thing to have this capability... but the real question is this: What is being done to ensure that American's rights aren't being trampled on?

Similarly, here's an account of a family investigated and even questioned because one member of a household was googling "pressure cookers" while her son was googling "backpacks".

https://medium.com/something-like-falling/2e7d13e54724

So apparently they're getting just a little bit more than metadata. I wonder if there's a search engine out there that isn't a front for the NSA.

It is a good day for freedom.

Edit: link

This again.

The internet wasn't going to be "the Wild West" forever. To think that anything you do or say online is somehow privileged is naïve beyond description.

 whembly wrote:

Did anyone think the NSA was not keeping tabs on who visited certain sites thought to be propagators of terrorism?

I've always thought they were. Then again, there's a lot of people out there who would have called me a foil hatter for claiming such things. Now we see that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

It's one thing to have this capability... but the real question is this: What is being done to ensure that American's rights aren't being trampled on?

Sadly, it seems like nothing other than blustering. What can be done? The NSA is showing that they're above the law here.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Monster Rain wrote:
This again.

The internet wasn't going to be "the Wild West" forever. To think that anything you do or say online is somehow privileged is naïve beyond description.

Investigating you on your search results is tantamount to investigating you for thoughtcrime.

I'd love to stop making nineteen eighty-four references, but it really needs to stop being relevant first.

 daedalus wrote:

Investigating you on your search results is tantamount to investigating you for thoughtcrime.

Ah, but nearly everyone is okay with someone being prosecuted, or at least censured, for what they consider to be a thoughtcrime.

It just depends on your own personal ideology.

To further address your point, however, you're not being investigated for your thoughts but your actions and potential future actions. Minority Report style!

Edit for quote tag chicanery.

 Monster Rain wrote:
To further address your point, however, you're not being investigated for your thoughts but your actions and potential future actions. Minority Report style!

In that case, since 100% of human beings have a >0% chance to become terrorists in the future, we must constantly investigate everyone forever and interrogate them when search results for pressure cookers and backpacks are performed within the same nebulous interval of time?

I feel safer with the terrorists.

 daedalus wrote:

 Monster Rain wrote:
To further address your point, however, you're not being investigated for your thoughts but your actions and potential future actions. Minority Report style!

In that case, since 100% of human beings have a >0% chance to become terrorists in the future, we must constantly investigate everyone forever and interrogate them when search results for pressure cookers and backpacks are performed within the same nebulous interval of time?

I feel safer with the terrorists.

I don't see how that follows what I said at all.

If there are certain criteria for being investigated, and you meet those criteria, you will be investigated. If the pressure cooker/backpack online shoppers were summarily imprisoned for simply searching for those items maybe the tinfoil would be warranted.

Now, one could ask why bother, since in one trip to the mall you could purchase both of those items with cash and not leave an online "paper trail", and I think that would be a more compelling case.

 Monster Rain wrote:


I don't see how that follows what I said at all.

If there are certain criteria for being investigated, and you meet those criteria, you will be investigated. If the pressure cooker/backpack online shoppers were summarily imprisoned for simply searching for those items maybe the tinfoil would be warranted.

There is reason to be concerned...

Just look at what happened to Nakoula:

I'm not sure I understand the comparison you're making.

 Monster Rain wrote:

 daedalus wrote:

 Monster Rain wrote:
To further address your point, however, you're not being investigated for your thoughts but your actions and potential future actions. Minority Report style!

In that case, since 100% of human beings have a >0% chance to become terrorists in the future, we must constantly investigate everyone forever and interrogate them when search results for pressure cookers and backpacks are performed within the same nebulous interval of time?

I feel safer with the terrorists.

I don't see how that follows what I said at all.

If there are certain criteria for being investigated, and you meet those criteria, you will be investigated. If the pressure cooker/backpack online shoppers were summarily imprisoned for simply searching for those items maybe the tinfoil would be warranted.

Well, the problem is that you're already being investigated. Does not monitoring everyone you look at, email, order, and watch to see if you need to be personally investigated still count as an investigation?

 Monster Rain wrote:
This again.

The internet wasn't going to be "the Wild West" forever. To think that anything you do or say online is somehow privileged is naïve beyond description.

Can I have your e-mail and password?

 daedalus wrote:
Well, the problem that you're already being investigated. Does not monitoring everyone you look at, email, order, and watch to see if you need to be personally investigated still count as an investigation?

If it doesn't lead to me being bothered by it I don't see much material difference between that and the advertising firms that do the same thing.

 Crablezworth wrote:

 Monster Rain wrote:
This again.

The internet wasn't going to be "the Wild West" forever. To think that anything you do or say online is somehow privileged is naïve beyond description.

Can I have your e-mail and password?

Because that's even remotely the same thing.

Let's not get silly. The fact that something can be accessed if someone tries hard enough doesn't mean there's no reason not to broadcast your information to all and sundry.

 Monster Rain wrote:
I'm not sure I understand the comparison you're making.

Nakoula was initially blamed on the original Egyptian protest and what happened in Benghazi on 9/11/12 due to an anti-Islamic youtube video he produced. He's in jail now because he violated his terms of probation... would would likely never have been discovered if he wasn't "investigated" initially for the events that occurred on 9/11/12.

See a connection yet?

Sounds like you've got something to hide.

 Crablezworth wrote:
Sounds like you've got something to hide.

Don't we all?

Agreed


Same reason I close the bathroom door, I'm not comfortable with other people, especially strangers seeing my gak.

 Crablezworth wrote:
Sounds like you've got something to hide.

I see what you're trying to do here, but it doesn't work.

 whembly wrote:

 Monster Rain wrote:
I'm not sure I understand the comparison you're making.

Nakoula was initially blamed on the original Egyptian protest and what happened in Benghazi on 9/11/12 due to an anti-Islamic youtube video he produced. He's in jail now because he violated his terms of probation... would would likely never have been discovered if he wasn't "investigated" initially for the events that occurred on 9/11/12.

See a connection yet?

That may have been the worst possible example for you to use.

 Crablezworth wrote:
Agreed


Same reason I close the bathroom door, I'm not comfortable with other people, especially strangers seeing my gak.

So don't post pics of it online and you won't have a problem.

 Monster Rain wrote:

 daedalus wrote:
Well, the problem that you're already being investigated. Does not monitoring everyone you look at, email, order, and watch to see if you need to be personally investigated still count as an investigation?

If it doesn't lead to me being bothered by it I don't see much material difference between that and the advertising firms that do the same thing.

Those bother me too. I try to rationalize them as the "price" I pay for using the services provided to me that require interacting with those advertising firms. I also use technological means to circumvent some of the more obnoxious ones those as much as possible, like ad-block and noscript.

But we've now hit an impasse. You aren't bothered by everything you do online getting monitored and analyzed to determine if you're a threat. I am. Do I have anything to hide? Not that I can think about, at least, from a legal standpoint. Do I have anything I would rather not be made known, to anyone even? Absolutely.

Do you have curtains on your windows? Do you ever close them?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Next questions: How many terrorists have been caught with this system? How much does it cost?

I'm guessing not enough of the first one and too much of the second, which makes me continue to ask, "why are they REALLY doing this?"

 daedalus wrote:
snip

I think we've hit more than one impasse.

I don't consider the "curtain" analogy to be particularly apt, given that there is (at least to me) a world of difference between what you do in a public forum, which I consider the internet to be, and what you're doing in your house at night. If we aren't going to separate the "real" world from our online activity I don't think we'll be able to understand each other.

 Monster Rain wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 Monster Rain wrote:
I'm not sure I understand the comparison you're making.

Nakoula was initially blamed on the original Egyptian protest and what happened in Benghazi on 9/11/12 due to an anti-Islamic youtube video he produced. He's in jail now because he violated his terms of probation... would would likely never have been discovered if he wasn't "investigated" initially for the events that occurred on 9/11/12.

See a connection yet?

That may have been the worst possible example for you to use.

Okay... you haven't made the jump. Lemme help...

Nakoula isn't in jail because of the Youtube video... he's in jail because he had the spotlight on him and he broke his probation (he's a dumb arse, but bear with me...). I'd even argue that he's been made a Patsy by the Obama administration in their attempt to deflect attention from the Benghazi situation during the election season, which worked.

You asked ' If the pressure cooker/backpack online shoppers were summarily imprisoned for simply searching for those items maybe the tinfoil would be warranted. ' You almost have that in the Nakoula situation.

As to the investigation "Backpack" and "Pressure Pot" internet activity... that in itself doesn't bother me that much, but it should be such that it's the ONLY thing the official should be investigating... and not look for OTHER things w/o probably cause. That's what I'd be worry about... are there any safeguards to prevent that sort of activites?

There was a town in thr uk circled by automatic numberplate cameras... the police were told to take them down because it was too great an invasion of privicy as it could track where and when residenta went.

So if that is illegal, why is it fine to track and store your activity online, on the phone, etc?

 SilverMK2 wrote:
There was a town in thr uk circled by automatic numberplate cameras... the police were told to take them down because it was too great an invasion of privicy as it could track where and when residenta went.

So if that is illegal, why is it fine to track and store your activity online, on the phone, etc?

That's in the UK... dunno why.

Here in the states, many jurisdictions use those red-light cameras as well.

Here's an attempt at a better analogy then: Telephone conversations. When you have a telephone conversation, you expect that the only other person listening in is the person on the other side. (okay, well I guess you don't NOW, as they admitted they're collecting "metadata", but back in the 90s and mid 00s, it was reasonable to expect a certain amount of privacy)

That's how I feel about the internet. Obviously, I've got a technical bend, so I'm not really looking at it from your normal person's perspective, but when I tell google to search for widgets, I'm supposed to be sending TCP packets to THEM. No one else. It's a point to point system. It's not like the requests that someone makes are just ambiently floating around in a cloud like radio transmissions, ready for anyone to listen in, and the NSA just happens to be tuning in. They're invasively parked inside datacenters with their own locked closets making copies of everything that hits the servers.

Also, asking again: how many terrorists have been caught with this system? How much does it cost?

 daedalus wrote:
Also, asking again: how many terrorists have been caught with this system? How much does it cost?

Like totally 5... Maybe 4... Maybe...

THINK OF THE CHILDREN

 Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:

 daedalus wrote:
Also, asking again: how many terrorists have been caught with this system? How much does it cost?

Like totally 5... Maybe 4... Maybe...

You think even? I'd think, in light of the public attention on this, if there was ANY successful cases, they'd be trumpeting them all over the place.

Also, didn't do much good for the Boston Marathon. Just saying.

Yeah, I sort of touched on that earlier when I pointed out that you could just buy whatever you need in cash and bypass the whole screening process.

Of course, they do catch plenty of stupid wanna-be terrorists with stings and whatnot all the time.

 Monster Rain wrote:
Yeah, I sort of touched on that earlier when I pointed out that you could just buy whatever you need in cash and bypass the whole screening process.

Of course, they do catch plenty of stupid wanna-be terrorists with stings and whatnot all the time.

Dony they do that by telling them what to do and how to do it and giving them all the materials? Wish these guyswere in cahrge of your education department

 Monster Rain wrote:
Yeah, I sort of touched on that earlier when I pointed out that you could just buy whatever you need in cash and bypass the whole screening process.

Unless, you're required to sign something so that they can track you...

They do that for Sudaphed...

 whembly wrote:

 Monster Rain wrote:
Yeah, I sort of touched on that earlier when I pointed out that you could just buy whatever you need in cash and bypass the whole screening process.

Unless, you're required to sign something so that they can track you...

Barcode Tattoos!