The outrageous behavior continues...

[Evan Thomas]

Honestly, if you can get the metadata, the content is just as easy.

What hasn't been much talked about is how much "content" the metadata themselves can reveal about a person's life. As this opinion piece from Reuters notes, a history of whom you call is very revealing on its own:

Even without intercepting the content of communications, the government can use metadata to learn our most intimate secrets – anything from whether we have a drinking problem to whether we’re gay or straight.
<snip>
Repeated calls to Alcoholics Anonymous, hotlines for gay teens, abortion clinics or a gambling bookie may tell you all you need to know about a person’s problems. If a politician were revealed to have repeatedly called a phone sex hotline after 2:00 a.m., no one would need to know what was said on the call before drawing conclusions.​

The authors go on to point out that the distinction between metadata and data is increasingly blurred when it comes to electronic media. For example, the content of a website is regarded as data, but URLs are metadata, even though they may purposely contain many signposts to the content.

There is a tiny ray of hope from the Supreme Court's decision in U.S. v. Jones (2011), which dealt with GPS tracking. In concurring opinions, Justices Alito and Sotomayor both indicated that given the advent of new technologies, it may be time to revisit privacy questions, including the privacy of information given to third parties. Perhaps, in light of the current revelations, the Court will inclined to revisit these issues.

 

[TXAZ]

I worked in the SIGINT field for some time, and there is more common sense involved than rocket science, but still a lot of tricks of the trade and intuition.

I will disagree that the Comment above that content is "easy" once you have the meta data. If it were, Comsec or Communications Security mechanisms would have no place in the government world.

Most any successful traffic flow analysis is based upon statistics, knowledge about the target(s), typical traits and other indicators. After some period of time of learning who, when, where, you can back fill SOME of the mosaic
Think about the last 5 phone calls you made: You've probably called them before, got a single piece of data (3-5 second call) like open hours, got several pieces of data (20-60 seconds)(like directions, pricing, etc) chit chat socially for10-20 minutes, discussed details of a major upcoming event like your daughters wedding say 1 hour, or planned major operational events, starting precisely at 10:00 AM lasting 2 hours and 4 minutes with a slight overrun.

An easy way to beat this analysis is a counter intel technique called traffic flow security: Make the call and leave the call off-hook for a couple of days, or forever. If you can afford all the phonelines for 'permanent traffic flow security' you could styme some analyst.

 

[I'vebeenduped]

a safer search engine

It is no where near as good as Google but it's better than some. The privacy is the caveat I enjoy. Before you say it, yes, I do realize something is recorded no matter where I go...

https://duckduckgo.com/

 

[tyme]

I'm going to close my Gmail accounts and do all that I can to disassociate myself from Google. To that end,- where would be a good place to take my accounts and business?

Everyone loves to blame Google. Other than being perhaps the largest collector of data in the known universe, they have no specific policy that makes them any worse than any other company. If you use outlook.com and you're worried about email privacy, Microsoft is in the same position, with the same data on you, that Google would be if you used Gmail instead. There's nothing special about Google in this recent PRISM leak.

It's not Google you should be worried about. It's the entire web of web and email and phone and messaging interactions you have with others. It doesn't matter if you don't use any email accounts on major telecoms that are in bed with the NSA... if most of the people you email are using such accounts, the NSA still knows just about as much about you as they would if you used Gmail or Outlook.com yourself.

Using adblock (with the EasyPrivacy list), ghostery, etc. is a basic measure you can take to limit data collection on your web activity. Also see:
https://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=368640

 

[TXAZ]

If you want annominity and security surfing, go get "TOR" and the TOR browser. Short of writing your own security schema it is probably as good as it will get for 99+% of Internet surfers.

 

[KyJim]

I will disagree that the Comment above that content is "easy" once you have the meta data. If it were, Comsec or Communications Security mechanisms would have no place in the government world.

That's true for typical phone conversations. However, even before these leaks, there have been stories about the government pushing for backdoors into Skype, FaceBook, and Instant Messaging systems. They're also pushing for backdoors into encryption systems. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/fbi-seeks-internet-backdoors/

This doesn't even count easy access to emails.

 

[TXAZ]

No western(ized) countries that are signatories to ITAR (International Trafficing in Arms Regulations) treaties will sell a weapons system to current, potential or future advisory, where that country,NATO or other coallitions can't defeat, marginalized, or compromise the system, including systems from "neutral" countries.
Encryption is Category XIII under the ITAR. While alleged legions of basements full of vector processors can break significant numbers of encrypted messages, You can do the math and determine what small % of all the encrypted messages in the world can be decrypted within the available number crunching bandwidth.

You can also do the math and determine how to develop cryptographic systems that cannot be broken in most any basement...

 

[Tom Servo]

You can also do the math and determine how to develop cryptographic systems that cannot be broken in most any basement.

PGP works pretty well. It's not uncrackable, but the resources it would take to do so in a reasonable amount of time are astronomical.

Proxies and such are another possible measure, but we shouldn't labor under the misconception that substantial anonymity is really achievable on the internet.

That said, I consider those things tools to protect me from criminal activity. The fact that we discuss using them to protect us from government intrusion...well, the irony gets pretty thick.

 

[Alabama Shooter]

I don't worry they are doing such a thing.

I assume they are doing such a thing to eliminate political enemies. There is literally no other reason they would need to do this.

Sarcasm?

That said, I consider those things tools to protect me from criminal activity. The fact that we discuss using them to protect us from government intrusion...well, the irony gets pretty thick.

Out of consideration that the government activity may be illegal? Yes of course it is thick. However it flows both ways while it may or may not protect you from government surveillance it may help protect you from other forms of illegal activity such as identity theft.


For those that are still wondering what this is all about the terms are "link analysis" and "pattern behavior".


I will also say for those who want to join the monkey wrench gang it is pretty easy to legally jam up the system and project whatever image you want if you are willing to make the effort. You can send up a red star cluster to make the analysts think you need more attention and thereby pull and waste resources and assets needlessly or you can send out "mostly harmless". All without breaking a single law. And still do "whatever" so long as your behavior is legal.


Remember our society operates on a premise that certain behaviors are acceptable and legal and others are not. Therefore if we operate on the premise that "the other guys" are not following acceptable and legal behavior (and in this case it is likely they are not) they are much more easily manipulated since they will have to give the appearance and in theory be called to account that they are in accordance with law. However; accountability is something that has simply disappeared in the last decade or so from US culture.


A good movie to check out some time is Absence of Malice. The old the rules of abuse of power and dirty politics have not changed much, just the tools. However there is no Wilford Brimely coming in to set things right. Justice has left the building.