The dangers of our new normal...

[Deranged Rhino]

The Computers are Listening:

How the NSA turns spoken words into searchable text

 

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/05/nsa-speech-recognition-snowden-searchable-text/

 

 

 

 

Spying on international telephone calls has always been a staple of NSA surveillance, but the requirement that an actual person do the listening meant it was effectively limited to a tiny percentage of the total traffic. By leveraging advances in automated speech recognition, the NSA has entered the era of bulk listening.

And this has happened with no apparent public oversight, hearings or legislative action. Congress hasn’t shown signs of even knowing that it’s going on.

(SNIP)

“I think people don’t understand that the economics of surveillance have totally changed,” Jennifer Granick, civil liberties director at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, told The Intercept.

“Once you have this capability, then the question is: How will it be deployed? Can you temporarily cache all American phone calls, transcribe all the phone calls, and do text searching of the content of the calls?” she said. “It may not be what they are doing right now, but they’ll be able to do it.”

And, she asked: “How would we ever know if they change the policy?”

Indeed, NSA officials have been secretive about their ability to convert speech to text, and how widely they use it, leaving open any number of possibilities.

That secrecy is the key, Granick said. “We don’t have any idea how many innocent people are being affected, or how many of those innocent people are also Americans.”

 

 

[Chef Jim]

Well this is good news.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/07/politics/nsa-telephone-metadata-illegal-court/index.html

[Deranged Rhino]

Well this is good news.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/07/politics/nsa-telephone-metadata-illegal-court/index.html

 

It is great news and a solid first step. But the courts are expecting a debate in Congress that shows no signs of happening any time soon:

 

"In light of the asserted national security interests at stake, we deem it prudent to pause to allow an opportunity for debate in Congress that may (or may not) profoundly alter the legal landscape," Lynch wrote.

[OCinBuffalo]

Has anyone noticed the start page for Mozilla Firefox lately?

 

 

"What kind of information do you think the United States government should collect about you? Sort it out here, and get smart on surveillance."

 

https://sendto.mozilla.org/page/content/surveillance-interstitial/?ref=20150414Advocacy_Surveil&utm_campaign=20150414Advocacy_Surveil&utm_source=firefox&utm_medium=snippet&sample_rate=0.1&snippet_name=5161

Mozilla is hardly a source of rational thought after they fired the guy who invented javascript because of his gay marriage opinion.

 

IT is IT. I've worked with convicted felons, and I've been around people who should be, for no other reason than they can do the job.

 

The hilarious part is: if you were able to obtain a criminal history of everyone at Mozilla, or, especially, their contractors, you'd be LYAO at them trying to speak seriously about national security.

 

It's just more Valley hypocrisy. These people will spend all weekend doing heroin, but then come back and give $/speeches about the need for urban opportunity. They literally create the underground economy, which has empirically destroyed urban areas, by buying the coke and heroin(that nobody else can afford btw), and then refuse to admit that they are the #1 source of demand, and thus, the #1 source of drug crime.

 

Now we're supposed to listen to them about this? As I said above: all they care about is forcing the government into their business model, rather than being at the government's beck and call. Neither situation is acceptable for the true privacy advocate.

[Azalin]

Mozilla is hardly a source of rational thought after they fired the guy who invented javascript because of his gay marriage opinion.

 

IT is IT. I've worked with convicted felons, and I've been around people who should be, for no other reason than they can do the job.

 

The hilarious part is: if you were able to obtain a criminal history of everyone at Mozilla, or, especially, their contractors, you'd be LYAO at them trying to speak seriously about national security.

 

It's just more Valley hypocrisy. These people will spend all weekend doing heroin, but then come back and give $/speeches about the need for urban opportunity. They literally create the underground economy, which has empirically destroyed urban areas, by buying the coke and heroin(that nobody else can afford btw), and then refuse to admit that they are the #1 source of demand, and thus, the #1 source of drug crime.

 

Now we're supposed to listen to them about this? As I said above: all they care about is forcing the government into their business model, rather than being at the government's beck and call. Neither situation is acceptable for the true privacy advocate.

 

My post was not meant as an endorsement of Mozilla or the way they run their company, but rather a statement of support for their putting that up where people unaware of the government surveillance issue would see it.

[Deranged Rhino]

Jim Clapper claims he "forgot" about NSA bulk collection programs while testifying to Congress (and denying such programs exist) in 2013.

 

http://thehill.com/policy/technology/241508-spy-head-had-absolutely-forgotten-about-nsa-program

 

 

“This was not an untruth or a falsehood. This was just a mistake on his part,” Robert Litt, the general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said during a panel discussion hosted by the Advisory Committee on Transparency on Friday.

“We all make mistakes.”

 

Seriously, go !@#$ yourself, Clapper.

[Azalin]

Jim Clapper claims he "forgot" about NSA bulk collection programs while testifying to Congress (and denying such programs exist) in 2013.

 

http://thehill.com/policy/technology/241508-spy-head-had-absolutely-forgotten-about-nsa-program

 

 

 

Seriously, go !@#$ yourself, Clapper.

 

Clapper is a very important and busy man. He can't be expected to remember every little thing when he's so preoccupied watching over us and keeping us safe. You're just being paranoid again.

[Deranged Rhino]

Speech Recognition: NSA's best-kept secret. The computers are listening:

 

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/11/speech-recognition-nsa-best-kept-secret/

 

 

 

 

The strategic advantage, invasive potential and policy implications of being able to turn spoken words into text are not trivial: Suddenly, voice conversations, historically considered ephemeral and unsearchable, can be scanned, catalogued and archived — not perfectly, but well enough to dramatically increase the effective scope of eavesdropping.

Former senior NSA executive turned whistleblower Thomas Drake, who’s seen NSA’s automated speech recognition at work, says the silence is telling.

“You’re seeing a black hole,” Drake told The Intercept. “That means there’s something there that’s really significant. You’re seeing some of the fuzzy contours of this whole other program.”

 

(Snip)

 

 

All the secrecy has an obvious advantage for the NSA. If the NSA can keep their speech-recognition capabilities secret, nobody can tell them what to do. And if nobody knows what they are doing, then nobody can tell them to stop.

Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., arguably the foremost congressional critic of NSA overreach, wouldn’t comment directly on the question of speech recognition. But, he said through a spokesperson: “After 14 years on the Intelligence Committee, I’ve learned that senators must be constantly on the lookout for secret interpretations of the law and advances in surveillance that Congress isn’t aware of.”

He added: “For centuries, individual privacy was protected in part by the limited resources of governments. It simply wasn’t possible for governments to secretly collect information on every single citizen without investing in massive networks of spies and informants. But in the 21st century mass surveillance is no longer difficult and expensive — it’s increasingly cheap and easy. The only privacy protections that will matter in the future are the ones that are written into law and defended by public demand for freedom and openness.”

 

 

[Deranged Rhino]

Like clockwork, the fearmongers are out in force using the Texas event as just cause for continuation of the mass surveleance of American Citizens. It's shameless.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/10/nsa-surveillance-domestic-texas-isis

 

 

 

 

Seizing on last week’s failed attack on a Texas contest to draw cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, the chairmen of three congressional security committees, two former CIA directors and the secretary for homeland security all urged greater scrutiny of domestic extremists they claim have been inspired by the Islamic State.

“Terrorism has gone viral,” said Michael McCaul, the Republican chair of the House homeland security committee, telling Fox News Sunday there were “thousands of people in the United States who will take up this call to arms when Isis sends out an internet missive, a tweet, to launch a terror act like we saw in Garland in Texas”.

“We are very definitely in a new phase in the global terrorism threat where the so-called lone wolf could strike at any moment,” said Jeh Johnson, Barack Obama’s secretary for homeland security, on ABC.

Former CIA director Michael Hayden told CNN: “I think the tide’s coming in and we’re going to see more of what we saw in Texas last week.”

Little evidence has yet emerged to support Isis claims of direct responsibility for the Garland attack, in which the two gunmen were the only people killed, although FBI director James Comey has argued that the distinction between inspiring and directing attacks is “irrelevant”, claiming social media propaganda meant “it’s almost as if there is a devil sitting on the shoulder saying, ‘kill, kill, kill,’ all day long”.

(Snip)

Controversial NSA powers to monitor suspicious communication by collecting all American phone records are due to expire at the end of the month, a circumstance that was dramatically complicated by a US appeal court judgment on Thursday ruling the practice first revealed by Edward Snowden to be unlawful.

A number of lawmakers warned on Sunday the Garland attack showed why it was essential Congress face down opposition to the so-called “bulk collection” programme and reauthorise the original Patriot Act provision, despite Thursday’s legal challenge.

“I hope that the reality of the situation, the reality of the threats we face, will actually play a great part in terms of exactly how Congress responds,” Senate homeland security chairman Ron Johnson told CNN.

“Our first line of defence is an effective intelligence-gathering capability,” the Wisconsin Republican added. “I think the demagoguery and the revelations ofEdward Snowden have done a great deal of harm to our ability to gather that information.”

 

 

 

[reddogblitz]

"A number of lawmakers warned on Sunday the Garland attack showed why it was essential Congress face down opposition to the so-called “bulk collection” programme and reauthorise the original Patriot Act provision, despite Thursday’s legal challenge."

 

Yeah we need this because the "bulk collection" program was able to find out about these guys and stop them.

 

Most of these things are stopped by some citizen or police doing something. The guy in NYC was stopped because a purse salesman notice and told the cops. The shoe bomber was stopped because the guy next to him notice him trying to set his foot on fire.

 

These guys were stopped when someone called the police. Does anyone think that if they weren't having that dumb Muhammed cartoon contest these guys would have don anything?

 

I would like for Obama or someone to tell us just what they've actually been able to stop with this nonsense Sure didn't help us with the Boston bombing.

[Deranged Rhino]

"A number of lawmakers warned on Sunday the Garland attack showed why it was essential Congress face down opposition to the so-called “bulk collection” programme and reauthorise the original Patriot Act provision, despite Thursday’s legal challenge."

 

Yeah we need this because the "bulk collection" program was able to find out about these guys and stop them.

 

Most of these things are stopped by some citizen or police doing something. The guy in NYC was stopped because a purse salesman notice and told the cops. The shoe bomber was stopped because the guy next to him notice him trying to set his foot on fire.

 

These guys were stopped when someone called the police. Does anyone think that if they weren't having that dumb Muhammed cartoon contest these guys would have don anything?

 

I would like for Obama or someone to tell us just what they've actually been able to stop with this nonsense Sure didn't help us with the Boston bombing.

 

The points you raise are excellent reminders of how this sort of spying on US Citizens doesn't do much to keep us safe, despite claims to the contrary. We've already allowed the irrational fear of terrorist attacks on US soil the power to take away our right to privacy and lead us into a war which cost us untold amount of treasure and blood.

 

Let's not double down on that stupidity by allowing the congresscritters once again to fearmonger us into another untenable situation.

[FireChan]

"A number of lawmakers warned on Sunday the Garland attack showed why it was essential Congress face down opposition to the so-called “bulk collection” programme and reauthorise the original Patriot Act provision, despite Thursday’s legal challenge."

 

Yeah we need this because the "bulk collection" program was able to find out about these guys and stop them.

 

Most of these things are stopped by some citizen or police doing something. The guy in NYC was stopped because a purse salesman notice and told the cops. The shoe bomber was stopped because the guy next to him notice him trying to set his foot on fire.

 

These guys were stopped when someone called the police. Does anyone think that if they weren't having that dumb Muhammed cartoon contest these guys would have don anything?

 

I would like for Obama or someone to tell us just what they've actually been able to stop with this nonsense Sure didn't help us with the Boston bombing.

Those are the ones that make headlines. I don't have any doubts that there are many more unreported incidents that are thwarted by these programs. Also, just because a single terrorist attack was successful doesn't mean the programs are useless. We lost VIetnam, should we disband the military?

[Deranged Rhino]

Those are the ones that make headlines. I don't have any doubts that there are many more unreported incidents that are thwarted by these programs. Also, just because a single terrorist attack was successful doesn't mean the programs are useless. We lost VIetnam, should we disband the military?

 

Since the deployment of bulk collection of meta-data, there has only been one confirmed report of it being used to nab a bad guy. And that bad guy was just donating money to a known terrorist organization.

 

I'm not a pie in the sky idealist, I realize there are real threats out there and a need for intelligence gathering (active and passive). It's the lack of oversight, accountability, and the complete demolition of the fourth amendment that has me (and others) up in arms about this.

[FireChan]

 

Since the deployment of bulk collection of meta-data, there has only been one confirmed report of it being used to nab a bad guy. And that bad guy was just donating money to a known terrorist organization.

 

I'm not a pie in the sky idealist, I realize there are real threats out there and a need for intelligence gathering (active and passive). It's the lack of oversight, accountability, and the complete demolition of the fourth amendment that has me (and others) up in arms about this.

I'm right there with you. I'm just advocating a bit.

[Deranged Rhino]

I'm right there with you. I'm just advocating a bit.

 

Me too. I'm clearly avoiding work today.

[Tiberius]

"A number of lawmakers warned on Sunday the Garland attack showed why it was essential Congress face down opposition to the so-called “bulk collection” programme and reauthorise the original Patriot Act provision, despite Thursday’s legal challenge."

 

Yeah we need this because the "bulk collection" program was able to find out about these guys and stop them.

 

Most of these things are stopped by some citizen or police doing something. The guy in NYC was stopped because a purse salesman notice and told the cops. The shoe bomber was stopped because the guy next to him notice him trying to set his foot on fire.

 

These guys were stopped when someone called the police. Does anyone think that if they weren't having that dumb Muhammed cartoon contest these guys would have don anything?

 

I would like for Obama or someone to tell us just what they've actually been able to stop with this nonsense Sure didn't help us with the Boston bombing.

So most are found by good police work, but why take away an important tool that helps law enforcement?

[Deranged Rhino]

So most are found by good police work, but why take away an important tool that helps law enforcement?

 

Because there's little to no anecdotal evidence that this tool helps law enforcement at all -- certainly local law enforcement are not privy to this sort of tech or information. The only thing there is proof of is government malfeasance when it comes to unlawfully invading our privacy as U.S. Citizens.

[reddogblitz]

So most are found by good police work, but why take away an important tool that helps law enforcement?

 

Can you provide any proof that this "important tool" has helped law enforcement thwart a terrorist attack?

[OCinBuffalo]

 

The points you raise are excellent reminders of how this sort of spying on US Citizens doesn't do much to keep us safe, despite claims to the contrary. We've already allowed the irrational fear of terrorist attacks on US soil the power to take away our right to privacy and lead us into a war which cost us untold amount of treasure and blood.

 

Let's not double down on that stupidity by allowing the congresscritters once again to fearmonger us into another untenable situation.

Explain how, when we just had a terrorist attack on US soil, it's irrational to fear them. Fear of heights is irrational. Anxiety is irrational.

 

Fear of a very real, and very irrational enemy who just tried and failed to attack us, and who has sometimes succeeded, cannot be defined as irrational. Or, do you really think that Ft. Hood was merely "workplace violence"?

 

No. There is no "irrational fear of terrorist attacks on US soil". That's a F'ing dog whistle. Get it the F out of here.

[Deranged Rhino]

Explain how, when we just had a terrorist attack on US soil, it's irrational to fear them. Fear of heights is irrational. Anxiety is irrational.

 

Fear of a very real, and very irrational enemy who just tried and failed to attack us, and who has sometimes succeeded, cannot be defined as irrational. Or, do you really think that Ft. Hood was merely "workplace violence"?

 

No. There is no "irrational fear of terrorist attacks on US soil". That's a F'ing dog whistle. Get it the F out of here.

 

Very real? Please. You're 58x more likely to be killed by a police officer as a US citizen than you are by a terrorist. Nearly 60 times! A million plus people die in car crashes on American roads every year, but we have yet to abolish driving privileges for our citizens. And yet because of that very irrational fear of evil no good terrorists killing Americans on American soil, we've completely given up our right to privacy, due process, and any semblance of a fourth amendment.