NSA Attacked. What Is The World Coming To?

I don't know why, but when I first read this I thought it was 2 men attacked NASA.

A bajillion years ago (early 80's) my Darling Bride worked there. We stayed in a motel just off base, for a few days, when we first arrived. The road through the base was a state road, no guards, no checkpoints.

One morning in the lobby I overheard some guy ask the desk clerk: "Can you tell me how to get to (voice drops to a whisper) the NSA?"

The desk clerk pointed at a half dozen cars in the parking lot. "Yeah, follow any of those people."

Vince524 said:

I don't know why, but when I first read this I thought it was 2 men attacked NASA.

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No, that's a Bond movie, and one of them was a really big guy with metal teeth.

And they were dressed as women? Maybe they were the Daesh dudes who fled Tikrit

https://gma.yahoo.com/2-injured-out...ort-meade-150520232--abc-news-topstories.html

I'm happy to hear that somebody tries to tell you to go back before they shoot I turned up a wrong road once near the coast and ended up by signs and cameras warning me that I could be shot if I went farther (obviously military of some sort). That's my paraphrasing; it might have said something about martial law? Anyway, I still had to have space to turn around, so I white-knuckled it driving up a bit more to get space!

robjvargas said:

::scribbles note::
Next time, use the sarcasm smilie.

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::scribbles note::
Next time, use the smilie smilie.

::scribbles note::

stay within the lines, don't write over your hand.

Williebee said:

A bajillion years ago (early 80's) my Darling Bride worked there. We stayed in a motel just off base, for a few days, when we first arrived. The road through the base was a state road, no guards, no checkpoints.

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It's changed so much since then. Still a state road... but multiple check points, armed guards...

Had a friend who lived/worked on Fort Meade for the military (not even linked to the NSA) and I still had to go through the full search of my car each visit.

Yeah, I love living this close to DC...

Rob,

I posted a snarky response earlier, then deleted it because I realized I was probably taking your post too seriously. However, I would like to point out a few things:

1. Making light of what could have been an armed attack on a US government agency, and the civilian employees therein, might not be so hi-larious, especially to those who remember the 1993 shootings in front of the CIA headquarters.

Actual people drive through those checkpoints every day on their way to work. And no, they are not listening to your phone calls.

2. The days in which people whispered about "No Such Agency" are long gone. There are employee entrance signs on the local freeways, sheesh.



3. Being purely domestic surveillance agents, the dust bunnies do not work for the NSA. They work for the FBI.

Ceiling Cat is ours.



4. No, I would not have to kill you if I told you har har har. If I were going to kill anyone, it would be people who keep repeating that joke har har har.

robjvargas said:

The NSA is not prohibited from internal surveillance. The CIA is.

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Wrong. The NSA's mission is Signals Intelligence and Information Assurance, and it is prohibited from conducting any form of domestic surveillance except under very limited circumstances (i.e., FISA warrants).

robjvargas said:

Nothing in your link prohibits internal intelligence.

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The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act does.

In fact, your link includes:

(Emphasis mine)

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Yes, if terrorists and other agents of foreign powers are found to be operating within the US, that is one of the situations in which a FISA warrant might be granted to permit the NSA to monitor communications that it would normally be prohibited from monitoring.

That the cell data mining was conducted against US citizens without clear and specific warrants, that is not in question.

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Yes it is. In fact, it's false.

They *are* monitoring internal. And I'm not convinced that they are meeting (nor intend to) the last portion of the sentence I highlighted.

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There are people who are not convinced we actually landed on the moon. I don't know what I can do about that other than to point people at the facts. There isn't really a meaningful rebuttal to "Everybody is lying and so are you."

Amadan said:

Wrong. The NSA's mission is Signals Intelligence and Information Assurance, and it is prohibited from conducting any form of domestic surveillance except under very limited circumstances (i.e., FISA warrants).

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So that means they're probably spying on everyone else, though, right?

I'm kidding, though I must admit I sort of assumed the NSA was listening to everyone, along with GCHQ. It's actually nice to know there are limitations.

thepicpic said:

So that means they're probably spying on everyone else, though, right?

I'm kidding, though I must admit I sort of assumed the NSA was listening to everyone, along with GCHQ. It's actually nice to know there are limitations.

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Executive Order 12333 sets forth the authority under which national intelligence agencies can conduct foreign surveillance.

It's very dry reading, as is the FISA and USSID 18, "Legal Compliance and U.S. Persons Minimization Procedures."

(While much of this applies specifically to conducting surveillance on US citizens, yes, there are a lot of limitations on foreign surveillance as well.)

I doubt many reporters at the Washington Post, or any of the people yipping about Edward Snowden being a "whistleblower," have so much as skimmed any of these documents.

The people actually involved in conducting intelligence work have, because they are required to.

(I don't know all the equivalent laws and policies applying to GCHQ, but I know generally they have at least as many restrictions as US intelligence agencies do.)

Amadan said:

Executive Order 12333 sets forth the authority under which national intelligence agencies can conduct foreign surveillance.

It's very dry reading, as is the FISA and USSID 18, "Legal Compliance and U.S. Persons Minimization Procedures."

(While much of this applies specifically to conducting surveillance on US citizens, yes, there are a lot of limitations on foreign surveillance as well.)

I doubt many reporters at the Washington Post, or any of the people yipping about Edward Snowden being a "whistleblower," have so much as skimmed any of these documents.

The people actually involved in conducting intelligence work have, because they are required to.

(I don't know all the equivalent laws and policies applying to GCHQ, but I know generally they have at least as many restrictions as US intelligence agencies do.)

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On the grounds I can count the number of hours I slept last night on one hand with digits to spare, I'll save the reading for another day. but that's good to know. Thanks.

robjvargas said:

The blanket, "send us every call record you have, in perpetuity,"

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What blanket perpetual order was this?

Also, do you understand what a "call record" is?

is data mining that sweeps up the records of US citizens and puts the lie to the assertion tht they don't monitor internal communications.

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There are aspects of the NSA's data mining program that are troubling even to its defenders, but mostly because of the ill-defined nature of it, the poor level of transparency, and the even poorer job its officials have done in explaining the actual nature of the program.

Let's suppose you call someone, either here in the US or abroad. The metadata for that call ("Phone number 333-444-5555 called phone number 111-222-0000 on January 17 for 14 minutes") is stored somewhere (incidentally, in a database accessible to your cell phone provider and any other corporation they feel like giving access to it, with almost no oversight).

For any US government entity to access that record, they would need a warrant. And that is just to get the record of the call - not listen to the call itself.

The fact that these bulk records were put into storage where they could be accessed in the future, for metadata mining and in the event that such a warrant is issued, might be problematic for a few reasons, but it does not constitute "monitoring internal communications."

Amadan said:

...

For any US government entity to access that record, they would need a warrant. And that is just to get the record of the call - not listen to the call itself.

The fact that these bulk records were put into storage where they could be accessed in the future, for metadata mining and in the event that such a warrant is issued, might be problematic for a few reasons, but it does not constitute "monitoring internal communications."

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I think historically sometimes they just asked. That appears to have changed since folks got more vocal about it, but I'm sure I've read where companies voluntarily turned things over to law enforcement.

backslashbaby said:

I think historically sometimes they just asked. That appears to have changed since folks got more vocal about it, but I'm sure I've read where companies voluntarily turned things over to law enforcement.

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True, and that's not illegal. Metadata belongs to the service provider and they can voluntarily provide it. So you're right, when I said "the government needs a warrant," that should be caveated with "unless it's provided voluntarily." Just like the police can search your home without a warrant, if you give them permission.

Note that metadata is not the same as communications content, which the Supreme Court has ruled falls under Fourth Amendment protection. Your phone company or ISP can give the government permission to trawl through phone record logs - it cannot give the government permission to listen to your phone calls or read your emails.

Should the government be more open when it's making these requests? Probably. But direct your anger at the companies who gave it up without a warrant if you think anger is warranted.

robjvargas said:

Having used them to troubleshoot a user's phone, yeah, I do, down to the cell tower used. This does not alter that the NSA did, in fact, send an order to carriers demanding all such records.

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No, the NSA requested the records (the NSA has no authority to "order" them to do anything - only a court can do that) and some provided them. There perhaps should have had more transparency and oversight. But it is not what you are implying.

This isn't some moon-landing-conspiracy theorizing as was so crassly intimated previously. This *did* happen.

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What happened is that the government asked telecommunications networks to turn over their proprietary metadata, and the corporations did so.

No court has yet ruled that anything the government did was illegal. Even in the case you cite, Judge Leon only ruled that the plaintiffs "have also shown a strong likelihood of success on the merits of a Fourth Amendment claim." In other words, he thinks there was a Constitutional violation there, but that was just a preliminary opinion.

You may have an issue with all of this, but extrapolating from that to "The NSA is conducting domestic surveillance" (the implication being that your communications are being monitored and there is no legal authority or auditing or oversight to pass Constitutional muster) is conspiratorial nonsense. At worst, the government overreached itself in preemptively collecting bulk data without adequately explaining what it would do with it or how it would protect privacy rights.

robjvargas said:

I didn't say it was illegal. Hence, straw man. In fact, I was the one saying NSA had the authority conduct such surveillance.

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Except the NSA does not have the authority, and is not conducting, the kind of surveillance you describe.