Germany abandons hope of No-Spy treaty

[bilateralrope]

The NSA claims that information they have gathered has stopped terrorist plots./quote]
Which plots ?

To quote from the link I posted earlier:

We have no evidence that any of this surveillance makes us safer. NSA Director General Keith Alexander responded to these stories in June by claiming that he disrupted 54 terrorist plots. In October, he revised that number downward to 13, and then to "one or two." At this point, the only "plot" prevented was that of a San Diego man sending $8,500 to support a Somali militant group. We have been repeatedly told that these surveillance programs would have been able to stop 9/11, yet the NSA didn't detect the Boston bombings -- even though one of the two terrorists was on the watch list and the other had a sloppy social media trail. Bulk collection of data and metadata is an ineffective counterterrorism tool.

Links to back up this quote can be found within the blog post.

[K. A. Pital]

Why is phone tapping bad?

For the same reason stalking other people is bad even though it doesn't harm them: you are violating their privacy. It's disturbing. Also, knowledge learnt that way is usually used for blackmail and clearly that's not something good either. Saying that spying is a dirty business is admitting that there is a problem. Now, if you spy less on your allies or don't spy on them at all, maybe people would think "Hey, these guys really stick to their principles and they only spy on [designated] bad guys, only when it's absolutely necessary".

[Ace Pace]

Wouldn't doing their job include actually stopping terrorist plots ?

The NSA claims that information they have gathered has stopped terrorist plots.

I'm somewhat sick of this talking point, and it's 100% Western intelligence agencies failure to explain themselves, or a large gap between public understanding of their role, and their actual roles.

Intel agencies do not exist solely to stop attacks on their home countries, but to provide actionable intel. If the U.S. is conducting sensitive negotiations over nuclear missiles with Russia, you bet your ass that spying on every single channel of communication the Russians have is the NSA's job. Because that provides the State Department with information on what the Russians are actually willing to do. If you're now trying to figure out if Greece is going to collapse and the repercussions, then yes, spying on Greek political parties is part of the job.

[bilateralrope]

The NSA is trying to make a big deal about the terrorist plots it's stopped. If the NSA wasn't making any claims about them, I wouldn't be asking that question.

As for producing actionable intel, what actionable intel has the NSA produced with its mass surveillance ?

[Thanas]

I am willing to bet the NSA has uncovered a lot of intel, that is not the point.

[Siege]

Let's play a game: read the following and take a shot of liquor every time a claim is made you don't believe. You win this game when you make it through to the end without dying of acute alcohol poisoning. And by win I mean lose, because you're probably too trusting for this world.

President Barack Obama has ordered curbs on the use of bulk data collected by US intelligence agencies, saying civil liberties must be respected.

Mr Obama said such data had prevented terror attacks at home and abroad, but that in tackling threats the government risked over-reaching itself.

However civil liberties groups have said the changes do not go far enough.

The announcement follows widespread anger after leaks revealed the full extent of US surveillance operations.

The leaked documents revealed that the US collects massive amounts of electronic data from communications of private individuals around the world, and has spied on foreign leaders.

The latest revelations claim that US agencies have collected and stored almost 200 million text messages every day across the globe, according to the Guardian newspaper and Channel 4 News.

'Rights are protected'

In his much-anticipated speech at the Department of Justice, Mr Obama said he would not apologise for the effectiveness of US intelligence operations, and insisted nothing he had seen indicated they had sought to break the law.

It was necessary for the US to continue collecting large amounts of data, he said, but acknowledged "the potential of abuse".

"The reforms I'm proposing today should give the American people greater confidence that their rights are being protected, even as our intelligence and law enforcement agencies maintain the tools they need to keep us safe," he said.

Details of the times, numbers and durations of phone calls - known as metadata - are currently collected and held by the National Security Agency (NSA). But Mr Obama said he was ending that system "as it currently exists".

He has asked the attorney general and the intelligence community to draw up plans for metadata to be held by a third party, with the NSA requiring legal permission to access them.

A panel of independent privacy advocates would also sit on the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) which has responsibility for giving permission for mass surveillance programmes.

Mr Obama offered assurances to non-Americans, saying people around the world "should know that the United States is not spying on ordinary people who don't threaten our national security".

"This applies to foreign leaders as well," he said, promising that from now on the US "will not monitor the communications of heads of state and government of our close friends and allies".

It was revealed last year that the US had spied on friendly foreign leaders, including on the personal mobile of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

A spokesman for Mrs Merkel said on Friday many Germans were "rightfully concerned" by spying reports and that the rights of foreign citizens must be respected.

He said Berlin would continue to hold confidential talks with the US on "a new clear basis for co-operation amongst intelligence agencies".

Mr Obama was also critical of nations he said "feign surprise" over US snooping but "privately acknowledge that America has special responsibilities as the world's only superpower" and have used the information gathered for their own purposes.

'Music on Titanic'

Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor at the who leaked the information, is wanted in the US for espionage and is now living in exile in Russia.

Civil liberties groups see him as a hero for exposing what they see as official intrusions into private lives, but many Americans believe he has endangered American lives.

The president said he would not "dwell on Mr Snowden's actions or his motivations", but warned that the "sensational way" the NSA details had come to light had potentially jeopardised US operations "for years to come".

Mr Obama's reforms were welcomed as progress in some quarters, but others argued they did not go far enough in protecting individuals.

"President Obama's surveillance adjustments will be remembered as music on the Titanic unless his administration adopts deeper reforms," said Steven W. Hawkins, executive director of Amnesty International USA.

"Shifting the storage of information does not address the fundamental problem: the collection of mass personal data in the first place," he said in a statement.

So the United States is not spying on ordinary people who don't threaten 'national security'. I wonder, how do they know which of the ordinary people are threatening? This and many other pieces of odious buzzword bullshit brought to you by the President of the United States.

[bilateralrope]

I am willing to bet the NSA has uncovered a lot of intel, that is not the point.

Lets look at how Obama is defending the NSA's programs:

Mr Obama said such data had prevented terror attacks at home and abroad

"The reforms I'm proposing today should give the American people greater confidence that their rights are being protected, even as our intelligence and law enforcement agencies maintain the tools they need to keep us safe," he said.

Those defenses are based on two points:
- That a persons right to privacy is not absolute and can be overridden by other factors. For example, if someone is accused of fraud, his right to privacy does not prevent the police looking at his bank records.
- That these programs are effective enough that they are worth the loss of privacy required for them to run.

I can't see any way to argue with the first point. So that just leaves me arguing against the second and saying that these programs are not effective enough to justify the major loss of privacy they entail. Which means asking how effective these programs are. A question the NSA seems unwilling to answer.

Assuming these programs are effective at gathering useful intel, when the evidence disagrees, is just weakening your own position.

[Thanas]

This is not a debate. I am not going to argue things which I believe to be untrue.

Also, that statement was typical Obama. Announcing some sort of control in the future without detailing what it does, then talking some buzzwords. Just like he does every time, as with Guantanamo etc.

[CaptHawkeye]

You know I don't believe that flagrant violations of citizen's rights and the sovereignty of nations was something Obama planned to do before he took office. It's likely something he does because he believed at one point it would win this country's right-wing loony bin to his side.

If Obama had actually stood his ground on his values he might have been able to end his career having at least accomplished health care reform. Instead, his meager attempts to please everyone end with pleasing no one and his career will I think be looked back upon as a cautionary tale about the folly of assuming the middle ground is always the right ground.

It concerns me really because something I gleaned out of history is that a string of bad leaders can really do a number on a country's well being. The long term effects of which can reach out to the next century. It all started with Czar Bush and continues with Obama the Lesser, who will be next and what kind of fool will they be? To paraphrase the great Tyrion Lannister "We've had vicious Presidents and we've had idiot Presidents but I don't think we've ever had a viscous idiot President before".

[Grumman]

You know I don't believe that flagrant violations of citizen's rights and the sovereignty of nations was something Obama planned to do before he took office. It's likely something he does because he believed at one point it would win this country's right-wing loony bin to his side.

If Obama had actually stood his ground on his values...

That is bullshit. If you're willing to throw innocent people under the bus like Obama has done, that is who you are. Trying to blame his treachery on those mean Republicans just makes him a coward on top of that.

[CaptHawkeye]

That's what i'm saying though. I agree the circumstances of his power do not justify making bad decisions that hurt people. The problem isn't really the Republicans though, it's the nature of our inflexible "flexible" system that allows small dissenting groups to completely derail the political process without consequence to themselves. A small batch of extremists can essentially force the hand of the President and the House just by being obstinate. It does nothing but serve their interests after all so why wouldn't they? The small successes in that arena build up and the Republicans feel satisfied knowing that their (selfish) interests have won the day. Confirming their bias that they are on the righteous path and encouraging them to continue gaming the system.

I have a hunch that from Obama's point of the view the most important thing was the AFCA. Its success would (and still might) legitimize his Presidential career. If that's true then his fixation on its success has been his undoing because he has completely neglected to perform every other obligation in favor of his baby, the AFCA. Maybe when the guy publishes commissions a book in 10 years on his career we`ll see what was actually going through his head. Maybe the book will be 666 pages long and consist of only one sentence endlessly repeated. "All work and no play makes Barry a dull boy".

Glenn Beck will feel vindicated then i'm sure.

[Simon_Jester]

Those defenses are based on two points:
- That a persons right to privacy is not absolute and can be overridden by other factors. For example, if someone is accused of fraud, his right to privacy does not prevent the police looking at his bank records.
- That these programs are effective enough that they are worth the loss of privacy required for them to run.

I can't see any way to argue with the first point. So that just leaves me arguing against the second and saying that these programs are not effective enough to justify the major loss of privacy they entail. Which means asking how effective these programs are. A question the NSA seems unwilling to answer.

Assuming these programs are effective at gathering useful intel, when the evidence disagrees, is just weakening your own position.

There's a straightforward way to argue with the first point: that it is a matter of degree. If you are accused of fraud, the police look at your bank records. But the police cannot look at your bank records for being "kinda shifty-looking." They cannot search your house because "c'mon, we both know that guy's too uptight not to be using something illegal."

There needs to be enough evidence to support any given violation of privacy.

Now, when this happens in criminal proceedings, we can at least examine the evidence. Or we know that trustworthy judges can examine it. There's a paper trail.

But there's nothing like a paper trail here. How do we know what the Obama administration's idea of "threat to national security" is? For all we know, it means "guy whose name has a funny anagram." Or "guy with accent that makes it amusing to listen to his phone conversations."

[Sky Captain]

Given how modern electronic communication networks work there is inherent possibility for mass surveillance. For example with regular paper mail that kind of surveillance simply were not possible because then someone would have to physically tear open every message to read it. Now internet and all sorts of fancy software allows to easily gather tons of data that were physically impossible earlier.
How would you really enforce clandestine organizations like NSA to stop mass surveillance when technology makes it easy to gather and process wast amounts of data? You can't uninvent Internet.

[Thanas]

Cut funding? No money for spy programs = no spy programs. Easy to enforce as hell.

[Purple]

Cut funding? No money for spy programs = no spy programs. Easy to enforce as hell.

The issue is that you really don't need that much funding to do these things. The kind of programs required to steal messages are not exactly hard to write*. And whilst decryption is much harder it becomes a moot point as every encryption system out there has loopholes deliberately built in to allow access to governments. And analyzing the data can again be done by relatively simple software. So really, the only real monetary requirement is for the hard drives to store all that data and stuff. Given proper security access (which the NSA has) you could pull all this off on a budget equaling that of a modern video game.



*They are extremely hard to write, but it's still trivial compared to the mentioned paper mail example.

[Thanas]

Cut funding? No money for spy programs = no spy programs. Easy to enforce as hell.

The issue is that you really don't need that much funding to do these things.

Which is why the NSA budget is around 1.5 billion, right? They need a lot of money for their supercomputers and data storage.

[Purple]

Cut funding? No money for spy programs = no spy programs. Easy to enforce as hell.

The issue is that you really don't need that much funding to do these things.

Which is why the NSA budget is around 1.5 billion, right? They need a lot of money for their supercomputers and data storage.

But you really don't need that much as you don't need to actually store all that data or even go through it. The software side makes it very easy to have the capability, and capability is all you need to pose a threat to personal privacy.

[Flagg]

Cut funding? No money for spy programs = no spy programs. Easy to enforce as hell.

Congress has to cut the funding and they pretty much support what the NSA is doing IIRC. They are also the ones keeping Guantanamo open.

[Thanas]

But you really don't need that much as you don't need to actually store all that data or even go through it. The software side makes it very easy to have the capability, and capability is all you need to pose a threat to personal privacy.

Forgive me, but I will take the word of the guys actually building the supercomputers over yours.

Cut funding? No money for spy programs = no spy programs. Easy to enforce as hell.

Congress has to cut the funding and they pretty much support what the NSA is doing IIRC. They are also the ones keeping Guantanamo open.

So?

[Flagg]

But you really don't need that much as you don't need to actually store all that data or even go through it. The software side makes it very easy to have the capability, and capability is all you need to pose a threat to personal privacy.

Forgive me, but I will take the word of the guys actually building the supercomputers over yours.

Cut funding? No money for spy programs = no spy programs. Easy to enforce as hell.

Congress has to cut the funding and they pretty much support what the NSA is doing IIRC. They are also the ones keeping Guantanamo open.

So?

So you seem to be laying it all at the feet of Obama as if he can just stop funding. That's how I read it anyway, am I mistaken?

[Thanas]

So you seem to be laying it all at the feet of Obama as if he can just stop funding. That's how I read it anyway, am I mistaken?

Obama cannot force congress to give the NSA money.

He however as head of the executive can force the NSA to do something with the money - or not.

[Purple]

Forgive me, but I will take the word of the guys actually building the supercomputers over yours.

You misunderstand. It's not one or the other. You need those supercomputers to conduct any serious data analysis or get any serious results that will be worth it. But you don't need them to be a malicious pest. Which is more or less what they are right now as evidenced by the stupidity of things such as the WOW thing. So just cutting funding without improving oversight as well will only do so much.

[Sky Captain]

Cut funding? No money for spy programs = no spy programs. Easy to enforce as hell.

The issue is that you really don't need that much funding to do these things.

Which is why the NSA budget is around 1.5 billion, right? They need a lot of money for their supercomputers and data storage.

Large fraction of that money probably goes into maintaining spysats and other espionage stuff that's not directly responsible for data mining from Internet.
The point is everything becomes more and more networked, computers and software become more powerful so in the future as tech advances it only will become more easy and cheaper to carry out mass surveillance. Smart security cameras, online banking data, smart houses, smart cars, smart whatever will make it very easy for someone with proper security access to know pretty much everything about your daily life if they want to. Essentially data gathering that earlier would have required a field agent to physically track someone will be possible with just few mouse clicks in the office. I don't like that, but I have no idea how to effectively prevent it because it is just a side effect of tech advance.

Proper oversight may sound good on paper, but intelligence agencies by their very nature are secretive about what and how they do. Cutting funding - no serious country will willingly destroy their intelligence and counter intelligence capability.