New Yorker article: Enemy of the State
Anyone read this? I'd say it verified much of what was discussed on this list some years back, about the likely approach by NSA to get "all" the traffic. Of course, getting "all" the traffic would have required building a 1-for-1 fiber optic network, which I think we agreed was beyond even the nearly infinite budget of NSA. Instead, they had to push the trafffic through successive prioritization gates, throwing away a bunch at the edges, and the sending the higher priority stuff through to the beltway. It would appear from the article that the original approach had machines tagging likely traffic needing human review, and that they originally intended to obtain a (perfunctory) warrant for traffic both ends of which belonged to US residents. But they apparently dispensed with the warrant formality and instead sent high priority trafffic direct to immediate review, and stored the rest of it. None of this, of course, is a surpise. We figured it out from fairly straightforward principals. But what Wikileaks has shown us is that the main problem with transparency is that it makes obvious their pathetic and incompetent mangement, and it makes obvious their strong desire to obfuscate their incompetence. Indeed, the persecution of the whistleblower is (at least from the perspective of the article) not so much a punishment for revealing state secrets (which were pretty obviously illegal), but instead revenge for exposing the unneccessary cowboy management of the NSA during the post-9/11 period. -TD
On Wed, 25 May 2011, Tyler Durden wrote:
Of course, getting "all" the traffic would have required building a 1-for-1 fiber optic network,
Not at all. All that would be required is traffic duplication from less than a dozen (less than half a dozen at that time) backbones. Easily doable technically, and from their bugetary perspective.
which I think we agreed was beyond even the nearly infinite budget of NSA.
I think at least one of us is misremembering :-)
Instead, they had to push the trafffic through successive prioritization gates, throwing away a bunch at the edges, and the sending the higher priority stuff through to the beltway.
This is a processing issue, not a collection issue. Collection of 100% of the internet traffic is easily achieved, and we should all assume that it has in fact *been* achieved for close to a decade now. Processing that collection was the big issue, and likely still is - although, great advances have been made in automated language recognition. Anyone who doubts that should forget about Dragon, and just go look at a new cell phone: I have ~600 entries in my address book, and although the phone has no ability to refine it's interpretations based upon prior failures/sucesses, it still gets my verbal dial requests correct roughly 85% of the time. Heuristic systems should be doing some *fabulous* automated processing at this stage of the game.
But what Wikileaks has shown us is that the main problem with transparency is that it makes obvious their pathetic and incompetent mangement, and it makes obvious their strong desire to obfuscate their incompetence. Indeed, the persecution of the whistleblower is (at least from the perspective of the article) not so much a punishment for revealing state secrets (which were pretty obviously illegal), but instead revenge for exposing the unneccessary cowboy management of the NSA during the post-9/11 period.
Exactly. One other thing we've learned is that George Orwell's DoubleSpeak has finally arrived with Obama! "Yes, we can!" was his rallying cry: Yes, we CAN throw fiscally irresponsible scumbags who caused the financial melt down in prison! Yes we CAN help out Main Street before Wall street! Yes we CAN end all of these insane wars (the fact that that these wars are ALL illegal doesn't faze him in the least). Well, prosecution meant giving TARP loans and other financial bailouts; Main Street is being hit with horrific cutbacks across the boards, as well as the virtual dismantling of Medicare and Medicaid; Wall Street *STILL* runs the show! Tim Geither is one of the main Wall Streeters who *CAUSED* the meltdown, yet he's been put in charge of running the economy in recognition of his "fine" and "outstanding" work creating this mess in the first place! Obama has added several new wars [now illegal under the War Powers Act. Yes, we can!... Can war and whore our way across the planet! Oh, did anyone notice that "Mr. Transparency" has been prosecuting "whistleblowers" at a rate that makes GWB look like a lefty! I really would really have preferred the expected rapture ;-) //Alif -- I hate Missouri. Land of the free, home of the perjuriously deranged.
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