14 ms·

Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

1227 points by FlemishBeeCycle 13y ago

jwr 13y ago
The saddest thing here is that I read the top three headlines on HN in the morning (all of which were about this story), shrugged, yawned, mumbled to myself "well that's some news" and moved on.
ChuckMcM 13y ago
Interesting. as I recall the last President to reign in the intelligence services was Jimmy Carter.
- datalus 13y ago
  And he was politically assassinated... All my friends' parents and my own often talk about Jimmy Carter as a man who just didn't have what it takes to be a President. Bang up job they did on him.
  - javert 13y ago
    Well, he actually was a horrible president. He was politically assassinated by himself.
    - bobwaycott 13y ago
      That is the dominant narrative, yes.
aashaykumar92 13y ago
Before you down vote, maybe try it: I bet if the pros and cons were written down, people would actually find the aggregate magnitude of each to be similar.
- deleted 13y ago
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detcader 13y ago
Cross-posting from the other comment forum: Everyone should realize one thing that makes this news slightly less scary, but still scary nonetheless: the order only applies to "Verizon Business Network Services", which is not the entirety of Verizon Communications. While this still means that the metadata from millions of phone calls by random people, possibly from phones not even on Verizon who were simply calling VBNS phones, have been vacuumed up by the government, it also means that not "all" Verizon phones are meta-tapped as the article seems to insinuate (tagline, picture caption). Glenn has done incredible commentary and reporting for many, many years; I hope this story will be only the beginning of his contributions and shake-ups to the discourse and activism against the U.S. surveillance oligarchy. Anyone who hasn't been reading his pieces whenever they come out are missing a phenomenon in human history. And as another user noted: "Although this only means that the order for VBNS was released - for all we know every telco could be under a similar order that just hasn't been leaked." Edit: not sure what here is getting the downvotes exactly; I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade, I just see "leaked court order shows all Verizon call metadata is seized" all over WaPo, Forbes, EFF etc and it's really a factual error. If we're exposing government corruption and authoritarianism, do we want to be credible or sensationalist?
- nikcub 13y ago
  this particular leaked document only applies to Verizon Business Network Services. they will request the same data from other providers in other FISA court applications. there is nothing in the request that makes it specific to Verizon Business. The legal justification used applies to all providers.
  - detcader 13y ago
    The document that Greenwald presented, which is the only document of its kind so far, makes it clear that when it says "Verizon" it means "Verizon Business Network Services". Sure: by whatever insane reasoning the government came up with to issue this order, they could probably issue orders for any other subsidiary of any other telecom, and I would not be surprised at all if they've done so many many times for many different time frames, but we don't have the definitive proof yet. Obama could come out tomorrow and say "we were just doing this for VBNS" and there's nothing anyone could say to refute him until another separate document is leaked. If you want to go by some sort of Laws of Authoritarian Fluid Dynamics and say "if this order exists, there must be similar orders because if the government has the internal secret legal justification to do something for one company it would for all" then sure, there are orders for ever carrier.
davidandgoliath 13y ago
"Confirmed". Welcome to.. 2002? (Not to lessen the impact of the post, but, this is old news)
- ISL 13y ago
  It's my understanding that at least some legal cases on the subject are hobbled by a lack of official evidence that such surveillance is under way. ("You can't prove that we're doing it, because all the documents are secret. The court thinks so too. Come back when you have proof.") Assuming that this document is real, perhaps it may provide sufficient leverage to force into the light whatever hides in the shadows. At least some of those who might authorize such a program will be earnest in intent; we would be wise to carefully consider their justification.
beedogs 13y ago
America sucks more every day. This really is a pathetic joke -- warrantless, covert surveillance of EVERY call made in the country. I predict the level of outrage won't match the scale of this crime, though.
- adventured 13y ago
  Americans won't so much as lift their head away from Candycrush to bat an eyelash about it. If there were enough give-a-shit left in America, I don't think things would have gotten so bad to begin with. It's a broken, battered, unemployed, bankrupt, bitter nation being drown by a behemoth $6.3 trillion government system that nothing could possibly contain or restrain. The NSA has a budget the size of the economy of half the nations on earth. Far easier to go back to playing Candycrush than try to do anything about the MASSIVE mess that is America.
  - javert 13y ago
    What is your suggestion for "doing something?" I can't help that most Americans are wrongly educated about thinks like civil rights.
    - adventured 13y ago
      The absolute easiest thing? Outrage + phone calls / letters. It would take a mere 1% of the US population to give a shit, and it would light D.C. up like a Christmas tree. Bury their phones and inboxes in just a few hundred thousand calls and emails per day and every member of Congress would instantly stand to attention and respond positive. It's such a trivial % of the overall population as to be disgusting that it probably can't be mustered. Next step down the line, Americans need to start caring about their civil liberties again. They need to start caring about their privacy again. They need to stop buying into the fake war on terror and drugs. They need to elect a President that isn't a fraud, someone who will use executive order powers - if necessary - to aggressively break the police state and domestic espionage racket. The US Federal Government is extraordinarily violent and militarized. It has to be de-militarized, and you could only do that by abolishing the military industrial complex. It'd require a President to openly talk to the US public about what was happening and why, it'd have to be a public conversation. This, realistically, can never happen until there's a collapse (leaving a vacuum of respected authority). In a word, Americans need to take back responsibility for their own well being, and stop trusting that the government will fix or solve the destruction of the last decade (which the government caused). The key phrase is personal responsibility, it can't start anywhere else. As an aside... there's always a lot of back and forth discussion here about Socialism vs Capitalism, the concept of big government, etc. You know why America can't emulate the Nordic model? Culturally, to its core, we have an aggressive, violent government (busy waging war 24/7 in a dozen countries). You know what happens when you have a BIG government that is aggressive and violent? It was a fantasy to ever think that aggression would always just point overseas.
ChrisAntaki 13y ago
The NSA will have dirt on everyone.
noonespecial 13y ago
Take a look at your technology with an engineer's eye. If it can be done, they probably will. If it can be done easily they probably already are. You may as well just assume this is always the case. In the current political climate, why in the world wouldn't they?
- mtgx 13y ago
  Of course. You should also be fighting it with every fiber in your body. Generations behind you gave their lives for rights like these, and the current generation seems to be giving them away because they are too busy chatting with friends on Facebook to care about it. And if you don't fight it now peacefully, you'll be fighting it in the streets in a bloody revolution, in a decade or two.
  - javert 13y ago
    I don't see any way to fight it now. What are your suggestions? If we were to have a revolution here, even in a decade or two, we'd probably end up with something much worse than what we have now.
    - dsrguru 13y ago
      The only realistic way to fight untargeted spying is to protect yourself from being made a target.
    - waterlesscloud 13y ago
      Develop new technologies that make this kind of thing impossible.
      - adventured 13y ago
        If they can't control said technologies, and put backdoors in them, then they'll make them illegal. That's a non-starter. A solution can only ultimately occur in D.C.
mtgx 13y ago
I give this maybe 2-3 months before the whistleblower behind this is being prosecuted by the Obama administration for "harming national security and putting people's lives in danger, and/or espionage".
- richtr 13y ago
  To notch up the paranoia a bit, the original court order document looks like it may contain some digital fingerprinting around the edges (either made by a certain class of printer or placed there prior to dissemination) that could lead authorities to the person(s) they originally distributed this specific copy of the court order to. Of course, I hope that is not the case here but people should be aware these things exist.
  - andreyf 13y ago
    I'd be really surprised if journalists who published leaks weren't well aware of digital fingerprinting, since protecting sources is integral to their profession.
    - betterunix 13y ago
      Considering that journalists are not advising their sources to use Tor or anonymous remailers, not publishing PGP or S/MIME public keys as part of their contact information, and continuing to base their assumptions about technology on the reality of the 1960s, I am not sure why you would be surprised. Most journalists are as clueless about computing as the rest of the general population. The education system is doing an absolutely terrible job of educating people about technology, and journalism majors are not taught much about how computers work or how they can be attacked.
    - deleted 13y ago
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krisroadruck 13y ago
Who needs a 4th amendment right? What has to be done to get the Gov to stop doing whatever it likes whenever it wants? I'm really losing faith in this country.
- einhverfr 13y ago
  Technically it is well established that CDR's are not protected by the 4th Amendment. Cell site location data is another question and that is currently an area of evolving law with at least two circuits saying there may be 4th Amendment protections there.
tlrobinson 13y ago
I suggest every software developer take a course or two on cryptography and make privacy integral in the products you develop.
- silvestrov 13y ago
  Cryptography doesn't help at all when your government will require you by law to provide them with a decrypted dump. That's what they did with Verizon. Verizon could not provide you with privacy no matter how much they wanted.
  - Ihmahr 13y ago
    That is why you should put your servers in iceland or similar places. With asymetric encription there is no need; Only the user knows and not the service provider.
    - _k 13y ago
      Why in Iceland ?
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
      - Ihmahr 13y ago
        Mostly out of reach of nsa, fbi etc. More than average respect for privacy etc. Cheap green energy.
  - tlrobinson 13y ago
    End-to-end encryption and p2p networks help in that respect.
  - anemitz 13y ago
    There's no expectation of privacy at the service provider level in this case. If Verizon, or any service provider, has access to the unencrypted data or the decryption mechanism, the system is insecure. However, cryptography does help you as an individual user of a service. There's no reason we can't build systems which are provably secure and retain strict end-user data privacy.
downandout 13y ago
Yet another reason not to use Verizon. To be fair though, this is par for the course for the US government these days, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if other carriers are or will be targeted. Hopefully people are starting to see that our privacy laws are nothing more than cannon fodder for creative Justice Department attorneys. Freedom and privacy in the US have been nothing more than illusions for a very long time. These illusions are quickly being shattered, and that is a good thing because hopefully it will lead to (eventual) change.
yekko 13y ago
Freedom is dead in America.
_pmf_ 13y ago
Question from a non-American: if not spying, what are they supposed to do?
- prollyignored 13y ago
  There is no other way. I think the "right to privacy" is childish. "Big Brother" was about controlling behavior but grepping phone records is not. edit: I'd be more upset about DNA database.
- snom380 13y ago
  Who are you talking about? This order is about the FBI.
- declan 13y ago
  The NSA is generally viewed as not operating domestically. This order shows otherwise.
- einhverfr 13y ago
  They are supposed to be spying on non-Americans only. Keep in mind the US has a long-standing distrust of a porous boundary between military and law enforcement embodied in things like our 3rd Amendment, The Posse Comitatus Act, and more. These have been eroding fast unfortunately since Reagan era (and maybe even arguably since Carter signed FISA), but they are major aspects of American governance.
dirktheman 13y ago
I can't say I'm surprised. It's well known the NSA is monitoring internet traffic (read this article in Wired, published in 2006: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/ip-telephony/these-photos-illustrate-at-and-ts-phone-internet-tracking-activities-for-nsa/1103 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/ip-telephony/these-photos-illustra...) and they have a massive data center in Utah which they use for foreign data collection (read: phone calls). Under the FISA guidelines they can gather foreign data, but have to get a warrant for every US citizen they want to spy on. The NSA admitted they have an excess of domestic data because it's hard to filter out. So they have all this data available, and somehow we have to trust them when they say 'Oh, but we won't use it'... To put a little perspective into things: I live in The Netherlands. A somewhat decently managed country (opinions differ!), with the highest rate of phone taps on civilians in the world. So all's not well on this side of the ocean, too. The way I see things, there's a gliding scale between security on one end, and privacy on the other. I know the HN crowd generally gravitates towards the privacy end. But realize that a lot of people don't necessarily feel the same way. If you're a law-abiding, middle class citizen with a family, steady job and a mortgage, you're likely to give up a little privacy over security. I don't think there's anything massively wrong with that. What I do have problems with is the fact that they're being so secretive about it.
- squidi 13y ago
  It's not about whether citizens are law abiding, it's about whether the the government is using the data in a legitimate way. I have middle-class friends in Istanbul fighting a authoritarian government which is arresting people because of their statements on Twitter and Facebook - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/05/turkish-police-arrests-social-media-protest http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/05/turkish-police-a.... So the data can easily be abused in a very negative way.
  - vbo 13y ago
    Which is why the government should not have broad access to your records and why "I've got nothing to hide" is a wrong attitude even for "good citizens": the government's definition of good and bad may shift (or become arbitrary).
h4rrison 13y ago
I will never understand the inherent distrust America seems to have in their government. Every time a document like this is released, the logic is to assume that the document applies to all Verizon customers (which it does not), then to assume that all telecom companies have been given similar documents, then to assume that the government actually acts on this and randomly spies on people, then to assume that they are using that data for malicious purposes, and suddenly the government is evil. Perhaps the only thing they use the data for (if indeed it exists) it to programatically uncover underground pedophilia rings? Perhaps they use it to pre-empt mass shootings? Perhaps the country with the most powerful government in the world should have a little trust in it now and then?
- kingnothing 13y ago
  America was founded on the distrust of government. It's deeply rooted in its people.
  - adventured 13y ago
    Would you trust the same government that instigated massive wars in Vietnam and Iraq? The one that spies on the planet without permission. Kills thousands of civilians with drones. Actively prosecutes a zillion dollar fake war on drugs and terror as an excuse to run huge military and police bureaucracies and enrich the insiders involved in it. The one that has a military budget the size of the rest of the world combined. The one that has actively put more people in prison - political prisoners - than any other country in history (outside of maybe Stalin and Mao). The one that has shown absolutely no respect for its own governing documents, with Obama lately using the IRS to attack his political opponents, spying on the Associated Press, running from a big scandal on Benghazi and Fast & Furious, to actively expanding unconstitutional domestic spying programs. The government whose President can only be elected with a billion dollar campaign. The one whose Senators are all bought and paid for by a lobbying industry so large it's bigger than all the lobbying in the rest of the world combined. And on it goes. You'd trust that monster? We were warned by the founders about this, many times over. The warnings have become gradually unheeded. Washington in his farewell address warned against the kind of foreign entanglements that the US Govt. now specializes in instigating. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington%27s_Farewell_Address http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington%27s_Farewell_...
lispm 13y ago
Also confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Hundreds of Millions of Non-Americans
- einhverfr 13y ago
  That, at least, is their official mission, which is supposed to exclude Americans.
- Create 13y ago
  Directive 2006/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2006 on the retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks and amending Directive 2002/58/EC http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32006L0024:en:NOT http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:...
  - lispm 13y ago
    Wikipedia > The German Bundestag had implemented the directive in "Gesetz zur Neuregelung der Telekommunikationsüberwachung und anderer verdeckter Ermittlungsmaßnahmen sowie zur Umsetzung der Richtlinie 2006/24/EG".[17] The law became valid on 1 January 2008. Any communications data had to be retained for six months. On 2 March 2010, the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany ruled the law unconstitutional as a violation of the guarantee of the secrecy of correspondence.[18] As such, the directive is not currently implemented in Germany.
austenallred 13y ago
A lot of comments in this thread area calling for the head of Verizon and recommending boycotts, but for how much of this is Verizon really at fault? If the NSA comes knocking and tells you to turn over X, you can't exactly say "no", can you? More to the point, it's highly unlikely that this is an issue unique to Verizon; it's just the only one we've heard about so far.
- declan 13y ago
  Right. It's a boilerplate order. Some reliable reports say there are 50 companies that are NSA data suppliers. They request these orders as legal cover.
- newman314 13y ago
  So roll over and take it like a champ? If everyone thought this way, there would have been no revolution. At some point, enough is enough and I say that that point is way past.
  - ne0codex 13y ago
    Well, if enough people say "enough is enough"... what next. My mobile device is tied to my phone, I have some work discounts attached to my service, I have a contract (which will gain fees for early termination). These issues make it highly improbably to truly do any action (when it comes to businesses). However, there is a way politically to actually get something done, but that requires the masses to actually organize and take action.
    - vijayr 13y ago
      may be start by refusing to sign contracts for anything other than what is absolutely necessary (like apartment lease, for example)? don't sign contracts for gyms, phones, cable etc? that would make it a tiny bit easier to switch between services?
    - vijayr 13y ago
      may be start by refusing to sign contracts for anything other than what is absolutely necessary (like apartment lease, for example)? don't sign contracts for gyms, phones, cable etc? that would make it a tiny bit easier to switch between services?
robomartin 13y ago
I hate to use this tone but, so be it. Maybe now you morons who continue to vote in the pieces of shit into our government who are bent on taking more and more power for themselves will wake up and figure it out? How much more proof do you need? Does this make you angry yet or is Obama still your diety? Oh, and Republicans don't get a pass either. The point is that all of you morons voting like robots along party lines are destroying my country, from the inside, one fucking vote at a time. And it is sad. And it is painful. And it is almost unbearable to watch. You are destroying what this country is supposed to be about and turning it into something our children will have to suffer with. Terrorists won. You morons saw to it. Our way of life is, in many ways, unrecognizable from what it was before 9/11. When are you going to understand that a conservative Libertarian (as opposed to extreme and nearly anarchist) approach is the only path to recovery? Ultra limited government. They are OUR servants, we are not their property. They need to get the fuck out of our lives, homes, businesses, bedrooms, schools and more. Time to take it back. Peacefully. Vote with intelligence. Email. Write letters. Make calls. Let them know who they work for. Reboot the system.
- snoshy 13y ago
  Sadly, you forgot the most important factor in all of this: money. Vote with your wallet. Far more important and influential than voting once in 4 years.
  - acjohnson55 13y ago
    Only if you have a big wallet. And that's the problem.
- worldsayshi 13y ago
  As a non american, my theory about why your state is allow to abuse it's power to such a degree is that your democratic system disincentivize multiple parties and so a fair competition. I understand that the ruling party is the one with the largest share of votes rather than whatever group of parties who can agree to work with each other comprising the majority of the votes. You should need 50% of the votes to rule. That means making compromises with minority parties. Compromises is a good thing in the political sphere, not something to avoid. And it incentivizes voting on small parties. It may lead to some bad apples but at least you have slightly better environment for competition.
digitalengineer 13y ago
Dutch person here with a little insight what's to come for you guys. Some information about our tiny little country (in Wester Europe, very pro-US) with just 17 million people. Our government listens in on more calls every year than in the whole of the US combined. All our telecommunications providers are forced to have the capability to intercept all traffic (phone and internet). Encrypted data must be stored for an unlimited time to facilitate possible decryption in the future. Our 'Team Digital Expertise' developed software that profiles social networks on which a suspect operates to use it in order to gather crime-related information. Our police buys TomTom software-data to see when and where they can get the maximum amount of money if they photograph speeding drivers. (Safety is not their first concern, money is). Local and national police now use drones. The army is training how to spy on it's own civilians. Our 'Camera Surveillance Act' allows images to be retained for up to four weeks and also facilitates the use of cameras for law enforcement purposes, whereas before the main purpose of camera surveillance was keeping public order. They're working on a pay-per-mile car tax system but activating it stopped when it turned out they were collecting more (personal) data than was technically needed to run the system and using the data for purposes other than those for which was collected. Every important road is viewed by camera's with license-plate scanning software. You can travel by public transport but a special card with chip and login/logout is required. You can purchase one without your name and address but you can only add money to it using your bank-account. The system tracks all travelers' movements (departure and end points for each leg of every journey), in most cases combined with the traveler's identity. It retains the data for seven years. Our Dutch passport contains both fingerprints, facial recognition and RIFD. Every large city center is equipped with camera's with powerful microphones. Our Minister of the Interior announced plans to also store the biometric data in a central database. Dutch hotels are breaking data protection laws by photocopying guests' passports and identification cards because they are required by our government to do so. The 'Electronic child file' records a child's development and environmental indicators from birth. Teachers are forced to build a profile of every child in their class along with a description of his/her family's situation. It received local media coverage when it turned out doctors are even recording when a child starts getting pubic hair. The government is also actively building a electronic patient file, containing all medical details of every person. Because of the workload they have asked insurance companies to help building this. (That got a lot of people's attention). Privacy? There is no such thing. Source: https://www.privacyinternational.org/reports/netherlands https://www.privacyinternational.org/reports/netherlands
cdooh 13y ago
National Security - destroyer of civil and personal liberties everywhere
Yaggo 13y ago
OpenPGP and similar strong encryption methods are widely considered unbreakable (with the current technology) and available as easy-to-use software packages. Is there any similar software which enables easy encrypted VoIP-style calls? So if you want to keep a secret from the government, why bother to use non-safe communication methods (public telephone network etc) at all? Aren't people who actually pose a threat to the society smart enough to use such tools?
- k2enemy 13y ago
  The problem with OpenPGP is that it only encrypts the contents of the communication. The identities of the sender and receiver, as well as the time and other info are still vulnerable. This communication "metadata" is exactly what the article is referring to.
gohrt 13y ago
People are saying that no one can stop Congress or big companies, yadda yadda. Maybe the solution is to find people who are doing the actual "dirty work" (govt employees, or telco employees), and apply pressure there, making it an undesirable life choice to choose treason as a career. Many people in the USA go to work every day with an explicit task of harming Americans. Make them prefer to get a new job or file for unemplyment insurance.
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dutchbrit 13y ago
There's nothing you can do about this. You're the governments bitch. You are a slave of the system... Sad but true ;) Don't want to be traced? Ditch technology... Hide from satellites...
Fuxy 13y ago
Great... anybody think this planet is going to hell or is it just me? The creation of the space ship will be credited to some guy trying to live some place with proper privacy. The possible future described in the series Firefly seems to be more realistic every day. The only difference will the the reason for the war will be privacy.
jonemo 13y ago
Wasn't there a story recently about how they record (the content of) every phone call? This seems to be a subset of that, so how is this news?
dutchbrit 13y ago
This won't stop. It will only get worse. We are the slaves of the system.. Ditch technology will reduce being spied on drastically, but we always have satellites & CCTV..
alan_cx 13y ago
As a Brit, can I ask: Why don't I see Fox "News" presenters, and the like, crying daily on screen about the death of the USA over things like this? Unlike the birth certificate of Obama or attempts to being free health care to people, this really is destroying US citizen's basic rights. But no Fox tears and hysterics. Why is that? I mean, surely this is a fantastic way to attack the "hated" Obama, surely. Aren't they all about "freedom"? Isn't this a huge open goal for the right? From where I sit it looks like a very weird contradiction. Surely this is more of a threat than say gun controls? Clearly I'm missing something, but what?
- nkurz 13y ago
  I'm American, and don't know if I have any more insight than you do. I think the issue is that both major parties in the US (at least publicly) prioritize security over privacy. Fox doesn't cry out about this because Fox viewers are rarely in uproar about such trade offs. If anything, I'd guess this policy has greater support among mainstream Republicans than Democrats. Privacy issues are viewed in an entirely different light than gun control, and are frequently a darling of the left. For example, the EFF (source of this article) is considered as an extremely liberal left organization, and hated by many conservatives. Perhaps the feeling is that as long as you can maintain control of the government you and your side have nothing to worry about, and the guns are there in case you somehow lose control of that government.
  - alan_cx 13y ago
    Understood. Does seem to me though that there is little idealogical or political consistency in what the left and right campaign for. I'm now wondering if it is the same here in the UK. That, I'll have to give some thought to.
  - pnathan 13y ago
    > the EFF (source of this article) is considered as an extremely liberal left organization, and hated by many conservatives. Seriously? I've never seen it catch flak for being liberal. I've always tagged it as libertarian and off the spectrum.
dodyg 13y ago
As long as Americans want their government to do WHATEVER IT TAKES to protect them from terrorism threat (real or imagined), this kind of shit will continue to go on.
Create 13y ago
http://benjamin.sonntag.fr/Moglen-at-Re-Publica-Freedom-of-thought-requires-free-media http://benjamin.sonntag.fr/Moglen-at-Re-Publica-Freedom-of-t...
speeq 13y ago
This is happening in Europe since a while now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_data_retention http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_data_retenti... What makes me really angry is that since that law has passed in Austria, we have to pay a so called "service fee" on all providers - which is 20EUR/year for all internet and mobile contracts. We basically pay for our own surveillance.
- koide 13y ago
  You'd still pay for it one way or the other. It's the government, you/we pay for all of it.
downandout 13y ago
I'm not sure what's more disturbing: that this is happening, or that the Obama administration can't keep highly classified documents under wraps. That document was labeled Top Secret and was supposed to remain so until April 12, 2038. This whole episode shows evil on the one hand and dangerous ineptitude on the other.
- FrojoS 13y ago
  Why? The more scandalous the fact, the higher the chance someone from inside decides to blow the whistle.
  - downandout 13y ago
    It's not my job to know how they can keep these things under wraps; I don't work in intelligence. But I do know what "Top Secret" means. It means that it's not supposed to be on the front page of every major news website in the world, no matter how scandalous or controversial. That the people whose job it is to keep these things secret have failed miserably is of great concern - who knows what else is leaking.
    - noir_lord 13y ago
      I wouldn't worry, the Chinese already have anything that might leak in future.
- qwertzlcoatl 13y ago
  It's easier to keep things secret when you're in the right. People are more inclined to assist the cause. All bets are off when you're in the wrong, and it's good we have patriots willing to leak this information.
- deleted 13y ago
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rschmitty 13y ago
Has anyone come up with a solution? From my POV I see three things happen in what seems to be a never ending cycle: 10 OMG why did you not know about these terrorists, how could you have missed this?! 20 OMG now you are profiling _____! That is unfair just because they are ____ 30 OMG you are invading the privacy of everyone! GOTO 10 The goal being: only criminals/terrorists have their privacy invaded and everyone else is left alone. How does can happen? I have no solution myself, just complaining about the complainers since no matter what anyone does someone complains about it not being right.
- koide 13y ago
  You can't please everybody. You, as a government, have to choose one of those states. I personally prefer a government that will choose to stay on line 10, especially because profiling everyone will not prevent terrorism at all, unless it's in an orwellian dystopia. And I prefer buildings blowing up once in a while to the alternative, even if one of my family or myself get killed on the explosion.
Buzaga 13y ago
since this is a leak, I'd suggest you americans to PLEASE press your government to reveal what other services they are imposing this, I see no reason why couldn't they be doing this with Facebook or other tech companies that are used ~globally~, and then it's a global espionage scheme. I'd like to know if I'm being spied right now too.
sigzero 13y ago
I had already assumed this was the case.
benjamincburns 13y ago
I'm an American and a Verizon customer. Maybe I'm the proverbial frog in a pot of boiling water, but I'm not outraged. I'm not really even annoyed. I don't know why exactly, but I think it boils down (no pun intended) to two different things. First, I'm under no delusion that the US federal government has my personal best interest in mind with everything that it does. I think that usually the federal government as a whole has the best interest of the entirety of the American people firmly in mind, but it's a big behemoth that is often unaware of the individual. Second, I willingly use technology every day in which people are actively monitoring my actions. Verizon didn't magically start collecting these data at the bequest of the government. Or even if they did (really, they didn't), they'll happily use it in their daily business operations. You're monitored every day by many, many corporations. Many people here have started businesses on that principle alone. Strangely, I trust the federal government more with how they'll limit the scope of their monitoring than I do the private corporations with whom I constantly interact through the use of their technology. Maybe I'm naïve. But here's the thing. These are reasons why I'm not outraged by this particular event. The USA PATRIOT Act angers me. Our insane alarmist reaction to terrorist attacks (aka our endemic inability to apply simple statistics) angers me. The amount of money we waste in our military angers me. But this? Meh.
- Ziomislaw 13y ago
  it was not alarmist, it was just a convinient explanation to turn US into next China.
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  - benjamincburns 13y ago
    I realize there's some hyperbole here, but we're hardly "next China." Reeducation through labor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re-education_through_labor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re-education_through_labor Beijing Olympics Relocation: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/19/AR2008021901612.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02... Tibet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibet#From_1950_to_present http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibet#From_1950_to_present
jack_trades 13y ago
Iiiiiiiiiii wanna beeeee anarchy. Sorry folks. We should have been well beyond the point of detached thought experiments about this. Change the power structures or change the power structures. They've gone too far in so many ways. Change from within, change from outside, or stay home and get what you deserve?
theklub 13y ago
Anyone who has been paying attention to the right media/news has known this for years.
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Aloha 13y ago
I've never considered Call Detail Records to be particularly private.
suredo 13y ago
Too bad they didn't release the court order which allows them to record the conversations..
anuraj 13y ago
Capability to do so has been present for a long time. I remember working on CALEA implementation in 1998.
nicholasjarnold 13y ago
In addition to making your opinion heard to your senator and representative I would recommend using strong, vetted and open source encryption whenever possible. Whisper Systems is a good place to start for mobile security on Android. TextSecure and RedPhone will secure the content of your communications, but I'm not sure they will prevent the "metadata" from being captured (who called who, for how long, ect). The biggest hurdle to me effectively using these tools is convincing others to use them. Many people seem eerily not bothered by being spied on by their own government or private companies. It's a strange world...
o0-0o 13y ago
The 2nd ammendment is there to protect the 1st.
vijayr 13y ago
Ok, so is there any place/any country in the world that is balanced? not free for all/wild wild west where anyone can do anything (like parts of Africa) and not where the govt counts every breath it's citizens take? something in-between, a place more balanced?
- rdouble 13y ago
  Canada, according to Privacy International.
  - vijayr 13y ago
    do you have the source?
    - rdouble 13y ago
      https://www.privacyinternational.org/reports/surveillance-monitor-2007-international-country-rankings https://www.privacyinternational.org/reports/surveillance-mo...
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stelonix 13y ago
Does anyone else think the 2 posts about this issue here on HN have quite a bit of shills commenting? I hate to point fingers like this, but some posts I've read yesterday were so "weird" (read: "neo-con" propaganda) compared to usual HN culture that I was honestly creeped out. It's the kind of writing that tries to persuade people not to care, or to simply be ok with it, since (paraphrasing) "ATT has all the data already, so why care?". Maybe I'm just thinking too much about some comments and HN really has a demographics made of mostly neo conservatives. Been wanting to point this out since yesterday. Thoughts?
systematical 13y ago
I hope all these up voters have emailed their representative.
graycat 13y ago
Gee, let's see: All that NSA 'big data', every phone call, from, to, time, etc. Then we had the wacko Boston bombers. So, apparently the great, all powerful, all seeing, all knowing NSA didn't see those two wackos coming. But, but, but, how could the poor, little NSA be expected to see two, obscure, wacko nutjobs? Well, let's see: The Russians told us over and over that those guys were wackos and dangerous. Told us face to face, in plain English/Russian. No phone records, Internet data intercepts, super computers required. Really sounds like 'security theater', like Senator Feinstein is having fun straining her arm patting herself on the back for "protecting the US" and a lot of middle managers in the huge NSA funny farm are having fun doing what not very good middle managers are wont to do, build empires. Gee, they can build their own giant facility in Utah, with rows, columns, and layers of racks of computers, disk drives, etc. with rivers of cables overhead all with its finger tips on the pulse of every little thing, except ignoring the wackos in Boston the Russians told us about in simple sentences, face to face, didn't even need a phone tap. I used to live in Laurel, MD and, thus, have two pictures of the NSA: First, when I was in graduate school, in our class in measure theory and functional analysis, we had an NSA employee also in the class. Nope, not the sharpest tack in the box. Really, a bit out of it. We're talking slow witted. I was the grader for the class, and as I recall he never got anything correct. He said nothing in class and lasted a few weeks, and then we didn't see him again. Second, there's a great photograph taken, likely, at a Congressional hearing, of the head of the NSA and standing not far away Diffie Hellman or one of the RSA guys, etc. The Hellman guy, of course, had been explaining public key crypto-systems that heavily embarrassed the NSA and, really, essentially put it out of business for its stated mission, is smiling. As I recall, he had blond hair long, nearly to his waist. The head of the NSA, a real ram rod straight arrow, short hair, close shave, crease in his shirt, etc. is a sour looking puss. Torqued. Like he was just made a fool of, embarrassed, like he's just lost his self-respect, career, etc. The evidence is that the NSA is a bunch of fumble bumblers collectively about three cans short of a six pack. We should be even more concerned about the NSA if there was good evidence that they were competent. NSA has thousands and thousands of people. Even if some of the people are bright with good backgrounds, they will get lost in the mob of paper pushers, mediocre middle managers, and high end military brass. First fundamental problem: Too much big gumment. Sorry, Senator Feinstein: Why don't you do something useful like help some grade school children read Mother Goose? Second fundamental problem: Our democracy is short on well informed citizens. So, gumment just grows and grows. A problem? Sure: Mo big gumment, Ma! Hopefully the Internet can make some progress here. Or the technology that can let the NSA ruin the US can also let the US keep the NSA 'safe and effective' for the good of the US. Supposedly Bin Laden claimed that he wasn't trying to defeat the US but just to have it so over react it would bankrupt itself. Whether he said this or not, there's a point there. We're again back to the old "America always does the right thing after trying everything else.". Money wasting, incompetent big gumment is a very ugly thing. If they try actually to do something, then they get even uglier. When they take the next step and really want to take over, then they are taking us close to Hitler, Mao, etc. The US founding fathers were fully correct: "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.". The thing for Congress to do is just to cut the budgets. How much? Recently there was a report that supposedly the wealthiest area of the US is Silicon Valley. Next was the hedge fund area of CT. Next? And the nominees are, Houston with its oil, NYC with its finance, Chicago with its "broad shoulders", Redmond with its computing, and within 100 miles of the Washington Monument with its big gumment. May I have the envelope, please? Yes, here it is. And the winner is (drum roll) within 100 miles of the Washington Monument with its big gumment. Put it on a diet. Cut it back. Leave the money in the hands of the citizens. Then let that money be seed corn actually to get the economy going again. Kings of old commonly bled their countries white, over their delusions of self-importance and especially their absurd foreign adventures. Now DC is doing the same. For people leaving back packs with pressure cookers in public places, sorry 'bout that, but NSA, FBI, CIA, DHS, etc. clearly are no real solution. So, basically we just have to leave that issue to local police. NSA, etc. are short on both safety for our democracy and efficacy for stopping the bad guys. Yes, yes, we know that they are incompetent. But we have to understand: They are really, really expensive, a gigantic waste. Besides they trash the spirit and/or letter of the Constitution. Just vote for guys in Congress who will cut their budgets. Let's get Detroit, etc. looking like 100 miles from the Washington Monument and that area looking more like Detroit. The main purpose of the US is "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", not forever bigger and bigger big gumment. The main business of the US is business, not gumment. Gumment is there to serve the people, not force the people to serve big gumment. Senator Feinstein: Go help some children with Mother Goose.
waynecochran 13y ago
Why aren't we all using strong, private crypto for everything -- or at least for email? Nobody seems to using PGP? We "the people" have the technical ability to communicate privately but nobody seems to use it. What happened to Zimmerman and his followers? This is a solvable problem! -----BEGIN RSA PUBLIC KEY----- MFwwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQADSwAwSAJBAObAT8Pn+C1Ets8Ge/EyMgiOPzmy/Mzk N+ENpDYRJzqGoyS59QkI58GhYwIVkhmEEk2pjp6gqWPNjTzO0QI1KOUCAwEAAQ== -----END RSA PUBLIC KEY-----
quackerhacker 13y ago
Paranoia Justified. Aside from the fact that I was a dumb 19 year old when I got caught hacking, the patriot act is what was used to catch me.
mullingitover 13y ago
This is pretty unconstitional, but there's a problem with the constitution and the government. Thwarting the constitution is pretty simple if you have enough willing (or unwilling but coercible) participants in government. We have three co-equal branches of government. If two branches collude to thwart the constitution, they will always succeed because they can override the third branch. And of course if all three branches collude (as is arguably the case in the last 12 years), the constitution goes down without a fight.
- Zimahl 13y ago
  It's a lot like Andrew Jackson's "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!"[1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester_v._Georgia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester_v._Georgia
ahallock 13y ago
I just want to know who the developers are behind these systems. How much did they sell their souls for? Are they reading Hacker News? I hope it was worth it, assholes. The NSA, DHS, [INSERT 1984 department here] are just an effect of taxation (and borrowing from the Fed). These things will never go away if we keep funding them and giving sanction to them. It's also disgusting and sad that we've poured billions into the War on Terror while people suffer everyday from cancer. I don't know anyone personally affected by terrorism, but I know 3 close relatives battling cancer. Which is the real threat?
piyush_soni 13y ago
The only thing I don't understand is, why should I be worried if I'm not doing anything wrong?
Gepsens 13y ago
Just making this clear but, when the government got a 400 Cassandra node cluster you guys didn't tilt ?
bigB 13y ago
Don't want to sound like a smart ass, but I would have been more surprised if it were confirmed they WEREN'T spying on Americans. Its the American Government ???? Really, are Americans that naive to think that their own country doesn't spy on them.
gasull 13y ago
William Binney at the last HOPE conference talking about the NSA spying program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqN59beaFMI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqN59beaFMI

1227 points by FlemishBeeCycle 13y ago

jwr 13y ago

The saddest thing here is that I read the top three headlines on HN in the morning (all of which were about this story), shrugged, yawned, mumbled to myself "well that's some news" and moved on.

ChuckMcM 13y ago

Interesting. as I recall the last President to reign in the intelligence services was Jimmy Carter.

datalus 13y ago
And he was politically assassinated... All my friends' parents and my own often talk about Jimmy Carter as a man who just didn't have what it takes to be a President. Bang up job they did on him.
- javert 13y ago
  Well, he actually was a horrible president. He was politically assassinated by himself.
  - bobwaycott 13y ago
    That is the dominant narrative, yes.

aashaykumar92 13y ago

Before you down vote, maybe try it: I bet if the pros and cons were written down, people would actually find the aggregate magnitude of each to be similar.

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detcader 13y ago

Cross-posting from the other comment forum: Everyone should realize one thing that makes this news slightly less scary, but still scary nonetheless: the order only applies to "Verizon Business Network Services", which is not the entirety of Verizon Communications. While this still means that the metadata from millions of phone calls by random people, possibly from phones not even on Verizon who were simply calling VBNS phones, have been vacuumed up by the government, it also means that not "all" Verizon phones are meta-tapped as the article seems to insinuate (tagline, picture caption). Glenn has done incredible commentary and reporting for many, many years; I hope this story will be only the beginning of his contributions and shake-ups to the discourse and activism against the U.S. surveillance oligarchy. Anyone who hasn't been reading his pieces whenever they come out are missing a phenomenon in human history. And as another user noted: "Although this only means that the order for VBNS was released - for all we know every telco could be under a similar order that just hasn't been leaked." Edit: not sure what here is getting the downvotes exactly; I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade, I just see "leaked court order shows all Verizon call metadata is seized" all over WaPo, Forbes, EFF etc and it's really a factual error. If we're exposing government corruption and authoritarianism, do we want to be credible or sensationalist?

nikcub 13y ago
this particular leaked document only applies to Verizon Business Network Services. they will request the same data from other providers in other FISA court applications. there is nothing in the request that makes it specific to Verizon Business. The legal justification used applies to all providers.
- detcader 13y ago
  The document that Greenwald presented, which is the only document of its kind so far, makes it clear that when it says "Verizon" it means "Verizon Business Network Services". Sure: by whatever insane reasoning the government came up with to issue this order, they could probably issue orders for any other subsidiary of any other telecom, and I would not be surprised at all if they've done so many many times for many different time frames, but we don't have the definitive proof yet. Obama could come out tomorrow and say "we were just doing this for VBNS" and there's nothing anyone could say to refute him until another separate document is leaked. If you want to go by some sort of Laws of Authoritarian Fluid Dynamics and say "if this order exists, there must be similar orders because if the government has the internal secret legal justification to do something for one company it would for all" then sure, there are orders for ever carrier.

davidandgoliath 13y ago

"Confirmed". Welcome to.. 2002? (Not to lessen the impact of the post, but, this is old news)

ISL 13y ago
It's my understanding that at least some legal cases on the subject are hobbled by a lack of official evidence that such surveillance is under way. ("You can't prove that we're doing it, because all the documents are secret. The court thinks so too. Come back when you have proof.") Assuming that this document is real, perhaps it may provide sufficient leverage to force into the light whatever hides in the shadows. At least some of those who might authorize such a program will be earnest in intent; we would be wise to carefully consider their justification.

beedogs 13y ago

America sucks more every day. This really is a pathetic joke -- warrantless, covert surveillance of EVERY call made in the country. I predict the level of outrage won't match the scale of this crime, though.

adventured 13y ago
Americans won't so much as lift their head away from Candycrush to bat an eyelash about it. If there were enough give-a-shit left in America, I don't think things would have gotten so bad to begin with. It's a broken, battered, unemployed, bankrupt, bitter nation being drown by a behemoth $6.3 trillion government system that nothing could possibly contain or restrain. The NSA has a budget the size of the economy of half the nations on earth. Far easier to go back to playing Candycrush than try to do anything about the MASSIVE mess that is America.
- javert 13y ago
  What is your suggestion for "doing something?" I can't help that most Americans are wrongly educated about thinks like civil rights.
  - adventured 13y ago
    The absolute easiest thing? Outrage + phone calls / letters. It would take a mere 1% of the US population to give a shit, and it would light D.C. up like a Christmas tree. Bury their phones and inboxes in just a few hundred thousand calls and emails per day and every member of Congress would instantly stand to attention and respond positive. It's such a trivial % of the overall population as to be disgusting that it probably can't be mustered. Next step down the line, Americans need to start caring about their civil liberties again. They need to start caring about their privacy again. They need to stop buying into the fake war on terror and drugs. They need to elect a President that isn't a fraud, someone who will use executive order powers - if necessary - to aggressively break the police state and domestic espionage racket. The US Federal Government is extraordinarily violent and militarized. It has to be de-militarized, and you could only do that by abolishing the military industrial complex. It'd require a President to openly talk to the US public about what was happening and why, it'd have to be a public conversation. This, realistically, can never happen until there's a collapse (leaving a vacuum of respected authority). In a word, Americans need to take back responsibility for their own well being, and stop trusting that the government will fix or solve the destruction of the last decade (which the government caused). The key phrase is personal responsibility, it can't start anywhere else. As an aside... there's always a lot of back and forth discussion here about Socialism vs Capitalism, the concept of big government, etc. You know why America can't emulate the Nordic model? Culturally, to its core, we have an aggressive, violent government (busy waging war 24/7 in a dozen countries). You know what happens when you have a BIG government that is aggressive and violent? It was a fantasy to ever think that aggression would always just point overseas.

ChrisAntaki 13y ago

The NSA will have dirt on everyone.

noonespecial 13y ago

Take a look at your technology with an engineer's eye. If it can be done, they probably will. If it can be done easily they probably already are. You may as well just assume this is always the case. In the current political climate, why in the world wouldn't they?

mtgx 13y ago
Of course. You should also be fighting it with every fiber in your body. Generations behind you gave their lives for rights like these, and the current generation seems to be giving them away because they are too busy chatting with friends on Facebook to care about it. And if you don't fight it now peacefully, you'll be fighting it in the streets in a bloody revolution, in a decade or two.
- javert 13y ago
  I don't see any way to fight it now. What are your suggestions? If we were to have a revolution here, even in a decade or two, we'd probably end up with something much worse than what we have now.
  - dsrguru 13y ago
    The only realistic way to fight untargeted spying is to protect yourself from being made a target.
  - waterlesscloud 13y ago
    Develop new technologies that make this kind of thing impossible.
    - adventured 13y ago
      If they can't control said technologies, and put backdoors in them, then they'll make them illegal. That's a non-starter. A solution can only ultimately occur in D.C.

mtgx 13y ago

I give this maybe 2-3 months before the whistleblower behind this is being prosecuted by the Obama administration for "harming national security and putting people's lives in danger, and/or espionage".

richtr 13y ago
To notch up the paranoia a bit, the original court order document looks like it may contain some digital fingerprinting around the edges (either made by a certain class of printer or placed there prior to dissemination) that could lead authorities to the person(s) they originally distributed this specific copy of the court order to. Of course, I hope that is not the case here but people should be aware these things exist.
- andreyf 13y ago
  I'd be really surprised if journalists who published leaks weren't well aware of digital fingerprinting, since protecting sources is integral to their profession.
  - betterunix 13y ago
    Considering that journalists are not advising their sources to use Tor or anonymous remailers, not publishing PGP or S/MIME public keys as part of their contact information, and continuing to base their assumptions about technology on the reality of the 1960s, I am not sure why you would be surprised. Most journalists are as clueless about computing as the rest of the general population. The education system is doing an absolutely terrible job of educating people about technology, and journalism majors are not taught much about how computers work or how they can be attacked.
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krisroadruck 13y ago

Who needs a 4th amendment right? What has to be done to get the Gov to stop doing whatever it likes whenever it wants? I'm really losing faith in this country.

einhverfr 13y ago
Technically it is well established that CDR's are not protected by the 4th Amendment. Cell site location data is another question and that is currently an area of evolving law with at least two circuits saying there may be 4th Amendment protections there.

tlrobinson 13y ago

I suggest every software developer take a course or two on cryptography and make privacy integral in the products you develop.

silvestrov 13y ago
Cryptography doesn't help at all when your government will require you by law to provide them with a decrypted dump. That's what they did with Verizon. Verizon could not provide you with privacy no matter how much they wanted.
- Ihmahr 13y ago
  That is why you should put your servers in iceland or similar places. With asymetric encription there is no need; Only the user knows and not the service provider.
  - _k 13y ago
    Why in Iceland ?
    - deleted 13y ago
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    - Ihmahr 13y ago
      Mostly out of reach of nsa, fbi etc. More than average respect for privacy etc. Cheap green energy.
- tlrobinson 13y ago
  End-to-end encryption and p2p networks help in that respect.
- anemitz 13y ago
  There's no expectation of privacy at the service provider level in this case. If Verizon, or any service provider, has access to the unencrypted data or the decryption mechanism, the system is insecure. However, cryptography does help you as an individual user of a service. There's no reason we can't build systems which are provably secure and retain strict end-user data privacy.

downandout 13y ago

Yet another reason not to use Verizon. To be fair though, this is par for the course for the US government these days, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if other carriers are or will be targeted. Hopefully people are starting to see that our privacy laws are nothing more than cannon fodder for creative Justice Department attorneys. Freedom and privacy in the US have been nothing more than illusions for a very long time. These illusions are quickly being shattered, and that is a good thing because hopefully it will lead to (eventual) change.

yekko 13y ago

Freedom is dead in America.

_pmf_ 13y ago

Question from a non-American: if not spying, what are they supposed to do?

prollyignored 13y ago
There is no other way. I think the "right to privacy" is childish. "Big Brother" was about controlling behavior but grepping phone records is not. edit: I'd be more upset about DNA database.
snom380 13y ago
Who are you talking about? This order is about the FBI.
declan 13y ago
The NSA is generally viewed as not operating domestically. This order shows otherwise.
einhverfr 13y ago
They are supposed to be spying on non-Americans only. Keep in mind the US has a long-standing distrust of a porous boundary between military and law enforcement embodied in things like our 3rd Amendment, The Posse Comitatus Act, and more. These have been eroding fast unfortunately since Reagan era (and maybe even arguably since Carter signed FISA), but they are major aspects of American governance.

dirktheman 13y ago

I can't say I'm surprised. It's well known the NSA is monitoring internet traffic (read this article in Wired, published in 2006: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/ip-telephony/these-photos-illustrate-at-and-ts-phone-internet-tracking-activities-for-nsa/1103 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/ip-telephony/these-photos-illustra...) and they have a massive data center in Utah which they use for foreign data collection (read: phone calls). Under the FISA guidelines they can gather foreign data, but have to get a warrant for every US citizen they want to spy on. The NSA admitted they have an excess of domestic data because it's hard to filter out. So they have all this data available, and somehow we have to trust them when they say 'Oh, but we won't use it'... To put a little perspective into things: I live in The Netherlands. A somewhat decently managed country (opinions differ!), with the highest rate of phone taps on civilians in the world. So all's not well on this side of the ocean, too. The way I see things, there's a gliding scale between security on one end, and privacy on the other. I know the HN crowd generally gravitates towards the privacy end. But realize that a lot of people don't necessarily feel the same way. If you're a law-abiding, middle class citizen with a family, steady job and a mortgage, you're likely to give up a little privacy over security. I don't think there's anything massively wrong with that. What I do have problems with is the fact that they're being so secretive about it.

squidi 13y ago
It's not about whether citizens are law abiding, it's about whether the the government is using the data in a legitimate way. I have middle-class friends in Istanbul fighting a authoritarian government which is arresting people because of their statements on Twitter and Facebook - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/05/turkish-police-arrests-social-media-protest http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/05/turkish-police-a.... So the data can easily be abused in a very negative way.
- vbo 13y ago
  Which is why the government should not have broad access to your records and why "I've got nothing to hide" is a wrong attitude even for "good citizens": the government's definition of good and bad may shift (or become arbitrary).

h4rrison 13y ago

I will never understand the inherent distrust America seems to have in their government. Every time a document like this is released, the logic is to assume that the document applies to all Verizon customers (which it does not), then to assume that all telecom companies have been given similar documents, then to assume that the government actually acts on this and randomly spies on people, then to assume that they are using that data for malicious purposes, and suddenly the government is evil. Perhaps the only thing they use the data for (if indeed it exists) it to programatically uncover underground pedophilia rings? Perhaps they use it to pre-empt mass shootings? Perhaps the country with the most powerful government in the world should have a little trust in it now and then?

kingnothing 13y ago
America was founded on the distrust of government. It's deeply rooted in its people.
- adventured 13y ago
  Would you trust the same government that instigated massive wars in Vietnam and Iraq? The one that spies on the planet without permission. Kills thousands of civilians with drones. Actively prosecutes a zillion dollar fake war on drugs and terror as an excuse to run huge military and police bureaucracies and enrich the insiders involved in it. The one that has a military budget the size of the rest of the world combined. The one that has actively put more people in prison - political prisoners - than any other country in history (outside of maybe Stalin and Mao). The one that has shown absolutely no respect for its own governing documents, with Obama lately using the IRS to attack his political opponents, spying on the Associated Press, running from a big scandal on Benghazi and Fast & Furious, to actively expanding unconstitutional domestic spying programs. The government whose President can only be elected with a billion dollar campaign. The one whose Senators are all bought and paid for by a lobbying industry so large it's bigger than all the lobbying in the rest of the world combined. And on it goes. You'd trust that monster? We were warned by the founders about this, many times over. The warnings have become gradually unheeded. Washington in his farewell address warned against the kind of foreign entanglements that the US Govt. now specializes in instigating. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington%27s_Farewell_Address http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington%27s_Farewell_...

lispm 13y ago

Also confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Hundreds of Millions of Non-Americans

einhverfr 13y ago
That, at least, is their official mission, which is supposed to exclude Americans.
Create 13y ago
Directive 2006/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2006 on the retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks and amending Directive 2002/58/EC http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32006L0024:en:NOT http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:...
- lispm 13y ago
  Wikipedia > The German Bundestag had implemented the directive in "Gesetz zur Neuregelung der Telekommunikationsüberwachung und anderer verdeckter Ermittlungsmaßnahmen sowie zur Umsetzung der Richtlinie 2006/24/EG".[17] The law became valid on 1 January 2008. Any communications data had to be retained for six months. On 2 March 2010, the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany ruled the law unconstitutional as a violation of the guarantee of the secrecy of correspondence.[18] As such, the directive is not currently implemented in Germany.

austenallred 13y ago

A lot of comments in this thread area calling for the head of Verizon and recommending boycotts, but for how much of this is Verizon really at fault? If the NSA comes knocking and tells you to turn over X, you can't exactly say "no", can you? More to the point, it's highly unlikely that this is an issue unique to Verizon; it's just the only one we've heard about so far.

declan 13y ago
Right. It's a boilerplate order. Some reliable reports say there are 50 companies that are NSA data suppliers. They request these orders as legal cover.
newman314 13y ago
So roll over and take it like a champ? If everyone thought this way, there would have been no revolution. At some point, enough is enough and I say that that point is way past.
- ne0codex 13y ago
  Well, if enough people say "enough is enough"... what next. My mobile device is tied to my phone, I have some work discounts attached to my service, I have a contract (which will gain fees for early termination). These issues make it highly improbably to truly do any action (when it comes to businesses). However, there is a way politically to actually get something done, but that requires the masses to actually organize and take action.
  - vijayr 13y ago
    may be start by refusing to sign contracts for anything other than what is absolutely necessary (like apartment lease, for example)? don't sign contracts for gyms, phones, cable etc? that would make it a tiny bit easier to switch between services?
  - vijayr 13y ago
    may be start by refusing to sign contracts for anything other than what is absolutely necessary (like apartment lease, for example)? don't sign contracts for gyms, phones, cable etc? that would make it a tiny bit easier to switch between services?

robomartin 13y ago

I hate to use this tone but, so be it. Maybe now you morons who continue to vote in the pieces of shit into our government who are bent on taking more and more power for themselves will wake up and figure it out? How much more proof do you need? Does this make you angry yet or is Obama still your diety? Oh, and Republicans don't get a pass either. The point is that all of you morons voting like robots along party lines are destroying my country, from the inside, one fucking vote at a time. And it is sad. And it is painful. And it is almost unbearable to watch. You are destroying what this country is supposed to be about and turning it into something our children will have to suffer with. Terrorists won. You morons saw to it. Our way of life is, in many ways, unrecognizable from what it was before 9/11. When are you going to understand that a conservative Libertarian (as opposed to extreme and nearly anarchist) approach is the only path to recovery? Ultra limited government. They are OUR servants, we are not their property. They need to get the fuck out of our lives, homes, businesses, bedrooms, schools and more. Time to take it back. Peacefully. Vote with intelligence. Email. Write letters. Make calls. Let them know who they work for. Reboot the system.

snoshy 13y ago
Sadly, you forgot the most important factor in all of this: money. Vote with your wallet. Far more important and influential than voting once in 4 years.
- acjohnson55 13y ago
  Only if you have a big wallet. And that's the problem.
worldsayshi 13y ago
As a non american, my theory about why your state is allow to abuse it's power to such a degree is that your democratic system disincentivize multiple parties and so a fair competition. I understand that the ruling party is the one with the largest share of votes rather than whatever group of parties who can agree to work with each other comprising the majority of the votes. You should need 50% of the votes to rule. That means making compromises with minority parties. Compromises is a good thing in the political sphere, not something to avoid. And it incentivizes voting on small parties. It may lead to some bad apples but at least you have slightly better environment for competition.

digitalengineer 13y ago

Dutch person here with a little insight what's to come for you guys. Some information about our tiny little country (in Wester Europe, very pro-US) with just 17 million people. Our government listens in on more calls every year than in the whole of the US combined. All our telecommunications providers are forced to have the capability to intercept all traffic (phone and internet). Encrypted data must be stored for an unlimited time to facilitate possible decryption in the future. Our 'Team Digital Expertise' developed software that profiles social networks on which a suspect operates to use it in order to gather crime-related information. Our police buys TomTom software-data to see when and where they can get the maximum amount of money if they photograph speeding drivers. (Safety is not their first concern, money is). Local and national police now use drones. The army is training how to spy on it's own civilians. Our 'Camera Surveillance Act' allows images to be retained for up to four weeks and also facilitates the use of cameras for law enforcement purposes, whereas before the main purpose of camera surveillance was keeping public order. They're working on a pay-per-mile car tax system but activating it stopped when it turned out they were collecting more (personal) data than was technically needed to run the system and using the data for purposes other than those for which was collected. Every important road is viewed by camera's with license-plate scanning software. You can travel by public transport but a special card with chip and login/logout is required. You can purchase one without your name and address but you can only add money to it using your bank-account. The system tracks all travelers' movements (departure and end points for each leg of every journey), in most cases combined with the traveler's identity. It retains the data for seven years. Our Dutch passport contains both fingerprints, facial recognition and RIFD. Every large city center is equipped with camera's with powerful microphones. Our Minister of the Interior announced plans to also store the biometric data in a central database. Dutch hotels are breaking data protection laws by photocopying guests' passports and identification cards because they are required by our government to do so. The 'Electronic child file' records a child's development and environmental indicators from birth. Teachers are forced to build a profile of every child in their class along with a description of his/her family's situation. It received local media coverage when it turned out doctors are even recording when a child starts getting pubic hair. The government is also actively building a electronic patient file, containing all medical details of every person. Because of the workload they have asked insurance companies to help building this. (That got a lot of people's attention). Privacy? There is no such thing. Source: https://www.privacyinternational.org/reports/netherlands https://www.privacyinternational.org/reports/netherlands

cdooh 13y ago

National Security - destroyer of civil and personal liberties everywhere

Yaggo 13y ago

OpenPGP and similar strong encryption methods are widely considered unbreakable (with the current technology) and available as easy-to-use software packages. Is there any similar software which enables easy encrypted VoIP-style calls? So if you want to keep a secret from the government, why bother to use non-safe communication methods (public telephone network etc) at all? Aren't people who actually pose a threat to the society smart enough to use such tools?

k2enemy 13y ago
The problem with OpenPGP is that it only encrypts the contents of the communication. The identities of the sender and receiver, as well as the time and other info are still vulnerable. This communication "metadata" is exactly what the article is referring to.

gohrt 13y ago

People are saying that no one can stop Congress or big companies, yadda yadda. Maybe the solution is to find people who are doing the actual "dirty work" (govt employees, or telco employees), and apply pressure there, making it an undesirable life choice to choose treason as a career. Many people in the USA go to work every day with an explicit task of harming Americans. Make them prefer to get a new job or file for unemplyment insurance.

deleted 13y ago

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dutchbrit 13y ago

There's nothing you can do about this. You're the governments bitch. You are a slave of the system... Sad but true ;) Don't want to be traced? Ditch technology... Hide from satellites...

Fuxy 13y ago

Great... anybody think this planet is going to hell or is it just me? The creation of the space ship will be credited to some guy trying to live some place with proper privacy. The possible future described in the series Firefly seems to be more realistic every day. The only difference will the the reason for the war will be privacy.

jonemo 13y ago

Wasn't there a story recently about how they record (the content of) every phone call? This seems to be a subset of that, so how is this news?

dutchbrit 13y ago

This won't stop. It will only get worse. We are the slaves of the system.. Ditch technology will reduce being spied on drastically, but we always have satellites & CCTV..

alan_cx 13y ago

As a Brit, can I ask: Why don't I see Fox "News" presenters, and the like, crying daily on screen about the death of the USA over things like this? Unlike the birth certificate of Obama or attempts to being free health care to people, this really is destroying US citizen's basic rights. But no Fox tears and hysterics. Why is that? I mean, surely this is a fantastic way to attack the "hated" Obama, surely. Aren't they all about "freedom"? Isn't this a huge open goal for the right? From where I sit it looks like a very weird contradiction. Surely this is more of a threat than say gun controls? Clearly I'm missing something, but what?

nkurz 13y ago
I'm American, and don't know if I have any more insight than you do. I think the issue is that both major parties in the US (at least publicly) prioritize security over privacy. Fox doesn't cry out about this because Fox viewers are rarely in uproar about such trade offs. If anything, I'd guess this policy has greater support among mainstream Republicans than Democrats. Privacy issues are viewed in an entirely different light than gun control, and are frequently a darling of the left. For example, the EFF (source of this article) is considered as an extremely liberal left organization, and hated by many conservatives. Perhaps the feeling is that as long as you can maintain control of the government you and your side have nothing to worry about, and the guns are there in case you somehow lose control of that government.
- alan_cx 13y ago
  Understood. Does seem to me though that there is little idealogical or political consistency in what the left and right campaign for. I'm now wondering if it is the same here in the UK. That, I'll have to give some thought to.
- pnathan 13y ago
  > the EFF (source of this article) is considered as an extremely liberal left organization, and hated by many conservatives. Seriously? I've never seen it catch flak for being liberal. I've always tagged it as libertarian and off the spectrum.

dodyg 13y ago

As long as Americans want their government to do WHATEVER IT TAKES to protect them from terrorism threat (real or imagined), this kind of shit will continue to go on.

Create 13y ago

http://benjamin.sonntag.fr/Moglen-at-Re-Publica-Freedom-of-thought-requires-free-media http://benjamin.sonntag.fr/Moglen-at-Re-Publica-Freedom-of-t...

speeq 13y ago

This is happening in Europe since a while now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_data_retention http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_data_retenti... What makes me really angry is that since that law has passed in Austria, we have to pay a so called "service fee" on all providers - which is 20EUR/year for all internet and mobile contracts. We basically pay for our own surveillance.

koide 13y ago
You'd still pay for it one way or the other. It's the government, you/we pay for all of it.

downandout 13y ago

I'm not sure what's more disturbing: that this is happening, or that the Obama administration can't keep highly classified documents under wraps. That document was labeled Top Secret and was supposed to remain so until April 12, 2038. This whole episode shows evil on the one hand and dangerous ineptitude on the other.

FrojoS 13y ago
Why? The more scandalous the fact, the higher the chance someone from inside decides to blow the whistle.
- downandout 13y ago
  It's not my job to know how they can keep these things under wraps; I don't work in intelligence. But I do know what "Top Secret" means. It means that it's not supposed to be on the front page of every major news website in the world, no matter how scandalous or controversial. That the people whose job it is to keep these things secret have failed miserably is of great concern - who knows what else is leaking.
  - noir_lord 13y ago
    I wouldn't worry, the Chinese already have anything that might leak in future.
qwertzlcoatl 13y ago
It's easier to keep things secret when you're in the right. People are more inclined to assist the cause. All bets are off when you're in the wrong, and it's good we have patriots willing to leak this information.
deleted 13y ago
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rschmitty 13y ago

Has anyone come up with a solution? From my POV I see three things happen in what seems to be a never ending cycle: 10 OMG why did you not know about these terrorists, how could you have missed this?! 20 OMG now you are profiling _____! That is unfair just because they are ____ 30 OMG you are invading the privacy of everyone! GOTO 10 The goal being: only criminals/terrorists have their privacy invaded and everyone else is left alone. How does can happen? I have no solution myself, just complaining about the complainers since no matter what anyone does someone complains about it not being right.

koide 13y ago
You can't please everybody. You, as a government, have to choose one of those states. I personally prefer a government that will choose to stay on line 10, especially because profiling everyone will not prevent terrorism at all, unless it's in an orwellian dystopia. And I prefer buildings blowing up once in a while to the alternative, even if one of my family or myself get killed on the explosion.

Buzaga 13y ago

since this is a leak, I'd suggest you americans to PLEASE press your government to reveal what other services they are imposing this, I see no reason why couldn't they be doing this with Facebook or other tech companies that are used ~globally~, and then it's a global espionage scheme. I'd like to know if I'm being spied right now too.

sigzero 13y ago

I had already assumed this was the case.

benjamincburns 13y ago

I'm an American and a Verizon customer. Maybe I'm the proverbial frog in a pot of boiling water, but I'm not outraged. I'm not really even annoyed. I don't know why exactly, but I think it boils down (no pun intended) to two different things. First, I'm under no delusion that the US federal government has my personal best interest in mind with everything that it does. I think that usually the federal government as a whole has the best interest of the entirety of the American people firmly in mind, but it's a big behemoth that is often unaware of the individual. Second, I willingly use technology every day in which people are actively monitoring my actions. Verizon didn't magically start collecting these data at the bequest of the government. Or even if they did (really, they didn't), they'll happily use it in their daily business operations. You're monitored every day by many, many corporations. Many people here have started businesses on that principle alone. Strangely, I trust the federal government more with how they'll limit the scope of their monitoring than I do the private corporations with whom I constantly interact through the use of their technology. Maybe I'm naïve. But here's the thing. These are reasons why I'm not outraged by this particular event. The USA PATRIOT Act angers me. Our insane alarmist reaction to terrorist attacks (aka our endemic inability to apply simple statistics) angers me. The amount of money we waste in our military angers me. But this? Meh.

Ziomislaw 13y ago
it was not alarmist, it was just a convinient explanation to turn US into next China.
- deleted 13y ago
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- deleted 13y ago
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- benjamincburns 13y ago
  I realize there's some hyperbole here, but we're hardly "next China." Reeducation through labor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re-education_through_labor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re-education_through_labor Beijing Olympics Relocation: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/19/AR2008021901612.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02... Tibet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibet#From_1950_to_present http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibet#From_1950_to_present

jack_trades 13y ago

Iiiiiiiiiii wanna beeeee anarchy. Sorry folks. We should have been well beyond the point of detached thought experiments about this. Change the power structures or change the power structures. They've gone too far in so many ways. Change from within, change from outside, or stay home and get what you deserve?

theklub 13y ago

Anyone who has been paying attention to the right media/news has known this for years.

deleted 13y ago

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Aloha 13y ago

I've never considered Call Detail Records to be particularly private.

suredo 13y ago

Too bad they didn't release the court order which allows them to record the conversations..

anuraj 13y ago

Capability to do so has been present for a long time. I remember working on CALEA implementation in 1998.

nicholasjarnold 13y ago

In addition to making your opinion heard to your senator and representative I would recommend using strong, vetted and open source encryption whenever possible. Whisper Systems is a good place to start for mobile security on Android. TextSecure and RedPhone will secure the content of your communications, but I'm not sure they will prevent the "metadata" from being captured (who called who, for how long, ect). The biggest hurdle to me effectively using these tools is convincing others to use them. Many people seem eerily not bothered by being spied on by their own government or private companies. It's a strange world...

o0-0o 13y ago

The 2nd ammendment is there to protect the 1st.

vijayr 13y ago

Ok, so is there any place/any country in the world that is balanced? not free for all/wild wild west where anyone can do anything (like parts of Africa) and not where the govt counts every breath it's citizens take? something in-between, a place more balanced?

rdouble 13y ago
Canada, according to Privacy International.
- vijayr 13y ago
  do you have the source?
  - rdouble 13y ago
    https://www.privacyinternational.org/reports/surveillance-monitor-2007-international-country-rankings https://www.privacyinternational.org/reports/surveillance-mo...
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]

stelonix 13y ago

Does anyone else think the 2 posts about this issue here on HN have quite a bit of shills commenting? I hate to point fingers like this, but some posts I've read yesterday were so "weird" (read: "neo-con" propaganda) compared to usual HN culture that I was honestly creeped out. It's the kind of writing that tries to persuade people not to care, or to simply be ok with it, since (paraphrasing) "ATT has all the data already, so why care?". Maybe I'm just thinking too much about some comments and HN really has a demographics made of mostly neo conservatives. Been wanting to point this out since yesterday. Thoughts?

systematical 13y ago

I hope all these up voters have emailed their representative.

graycat 13y ago

Gee, let's see: All that NSA 'big data', every phone call, from, to, time, etc. Then we had the wacko Boston bombers. So, apparently the great, all powerful, all seeing, all knowing NSA didn't see those two wackos coming. But, but, but, how could the poor, little NSA be expected to see two, obscure, wacko nutjobs? Well, let's see: The Russians told us over and over that those guys were wackos and dangerous. Told us face to face, in plain English/Russian. No phone records, Internet data intercepts, super computers required. Really sounds like 'security theater', like Senator Feinstein is having fun straining her arm patting herself on the back for "protecting the US" and a lot of middle managers in the huge NSA funny farm are having fun doing what not very good middle managers are wont to do, build empires. Gee, they can build their own giant facility in Utah, with rows, columns, and layers of racks of computers, disk drives, etc. with rivers of cables overhead all with its finger tips on the pulse of every little thing, except ignoring the wackos in Boston the Russians told us about in simple sentences, face to face, didn't even need a phone tap. I used to live in Laurel, MD and, thus, have two pictures of the NSA: First, when I was in graduate school, in our class in measure theory and functional analysis, we had an NSA employee also in the class. Nope, not the sharpest tack in the box. Really, a bit out of it. We're talking slow witted. I was the grader for the class, and as I recall he never got anything correct. He said nothing in class and lasted a few weeks, and then we didn't see him again. Second, there's a great photograph taken, likely, at a Congressional hearing, of the head of the NSA and standing not far away Diffie Hellman or one of the RSA guys, etc. The Hellman guy, of course, had been explaining public key crypto-systems that heavily embarrassed the NSA and, really, essentially put it out of business for its stated mission, is smiling. As I recall, he had blond hair long, nearly to his waist. The head of the NSA, a real ram rod straight arrow, short hair, close shave, crease in his shirt, etc. is a sour looking puss. Torqued. Like he was just made a fool of, embarrassed, like he's just lost his self-respect, career, etc. The evidence is that the NSA is a bunch of fumble bumblers collectively about three cans short of a six pack. We should be even more concerned about the NSA if there was good evidence that they were competent. NSA has thousands and thousands of people. Even if some of the people are bright with good backgrounds, they will get lost in the mob of paper pushers, mediocre middle managers, and high end military brass. First fundamental problem: Too much big gumment. Sorry, Senator Feinstein: Why don't you do something useful like help some grade school children read Mother Goose? Second fundamental problem: Our democracy is short on well informed citizens. So, gumment just grows and grows. A problem? Sure: Mo big gumment, Ma! Hopefully the Internet can make some progress here. Or the technology that can let the NSA ruin the US can also let the US keep the NSA 'safe and effective' for the good of the US. Supposedly Bin Laden claimed that he wasn't trying to defeat the US but just to have it so over react it would bankrupt itself. Whether he said this or not, there's a point there. We're again back to the old "America always does the right thing after trying everything else.". Money wasting, incompetent big gumment is a very ugly thing. If they try actually to do something, then they get even uglier. When they take the next step and really want to take over, then they are taking us close to Hitler, Mao, etc. The US founding fathers were fully correct: "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.". The thing for Congress to do is just to cut the budgets. How much? Recently there was a report that supposedly the wealthiest area of the US is Silicon Valley. Next was the hedge fund area of CT. Next? And the nominees are, Houston with its oil, NYC with its finance, Chicago with its "broad shoulders", Redmond with its computing, and within 100 miles of the Washington Monument with its big gumment. May I have the envelope, please? Yes, here it is. And the winner is (drum roll) within 100 miles of the Washington Monument with its big gumment. Put it on a diet. Cut it back. Leave the money in the hands of the citizens. Then let that money be seed corn actually to get the economy going again. Kings of old commonly bled their countries white, over their delusions of self-importance and especially their absurd foreign adventures. Now DC is doing the same. For people leaving back packs with pressure cookers in public places, sorry 'bout that, but NSA, FBI, CIA, DHS, etc. clearly are no real solution. So, basically we just have to leave that issue to local police. NSA, etc. are short on both safety for our democracy and efficacy for stopping the bad guys. Yes, yes, we know that they are incompetent. But we have to understand: They are really, really expensive, a gigantic waste. Besides they trash the spirit and/or letter of the Constitution. Just vote for guys in Congress who will cut their budgets. Let's get Detroit, etc. looking like 100 miles from the Washington Monument and that area looking more like Detroit. The main purpose of the US is "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", not forever bigger and bigger big gumment. The main business of the US is business, not gumment. Gumment is there to serve the people, not force the people to serve big gumment. Senator Feinstein: Go help some children with Mother Goose.

waynecochran 13y ago

Why aren't we all using strong, private crypto for everything -- or at least for email? Nobody seems to using PGP? We "the people" have the technical ability to communicate privately but nobody seems to use it. What happened to Zimmerman and his followers? This is a solvable problem! -----BEGIN RSA PUBLIC KEY----- MFwwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQADSwAwSAJBAObAT8Pn+C1Ets8Ge/EyMgiOPzmy/Mzk N+ENpDYRJzqGoyS59QkI58GhYwIVkhmEEk2pjp6gqWPNjTzO0QI1KOUCAwEAAQ== -----END RSA PUBLIC KEY-----

quackerhacker 13y ago

Paranoia Justified. Aside from the fact that I was a dumb 19 year old when I got caught hacking, the patriot act is what was used to catch me.

mullingitover 13y ago

This is pretty unconstitional, but there's a problem with the constitution and the government. Thwarting the constitution is pretty simple if you have enough willing (or unwilling but coercible) participants in government. We have three co-equal branches of government. If two branches collude to thwart the constitution, they will always succeed because they can override the third branch. And of course if all three branches collude (as is arguably the case in the last 12 years), the constitution goes down without a fight.

Zimahl 13y ago
It's a lot like Andrew Jackson's "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!"[1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester_v._Georgia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester_v._Georgia

ahallock 13y ago

I just want to know who the developers are behind these systems. How much did they sell their souls for? Are they reading Hacker News? I hope it was worth it, assholes. The NSA, DHS, [INSERT 1984 department here] are just an effect of taxation (and borrowing from the Fed). These things will never go away if we keep funding them and giving sanction to them. It's also disgusting and sad that we've poured billions into the War on Terror while people suffer everyday from cancer. I don't know anyone personally affected by terrorism, but I know 3 close relatives battling cancer. Which is the real threat?

piyush_soni 13y ago

The only thing I don't understand is, why should I be worried if I'm not doing anything wrong?

Gepsens 13y ago

Just making this clear but, when the government got a 400 Cassandra node cluster you guys didn't tilt ?

bigB 13y ago

Don't want to sound like a smart ass, but I would have been more surprised if it were confirmed they WEREN'T spying on Americans. Its the American Government ???? Really, are Americans that naive to think that their own country doesn't spy on them.

gasull 13y ago

William Binney at the last HOPE conference talking about the NSA spying program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqN59beaFMI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqN59beaFMI