NSA by THGRRI

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

NSA

POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Tuesday, July 8, 2014 11:55
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Sunday, July 6, 2014 12:56 PM

There is a new article out by the Washington Post that all who have cried foul about the NSA, should read very carefully. The program while being intrusive and still in need of scrutiny has had it successes.

"It led directly to the 2011 capture in Abbottabad of Muhammad Tahir Shahzad, a Pakistan-based bomb builder

Among the most valuable contents — which The Post will not describe in detail, to avoid interfering with ongoing operations — are fresh revelations about a secret overseas nuclear project, double-dealing by an ostensible ally, a military calamity that befell an unfriendly power, and the identities of aggressive intruders into U.S. computer networks".

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-nsa-intercept
ed-data-those-not-targeted-far-outnumber-the-foreigners-who-are/2014/07/05/8139adf8-045a-11e4-8572-4b1b969b6322_story.html

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 1:43 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

If a target entered an online chat room, the NSA collected the words and identities of every person who posted there, regardless of subject, as well as every person who simply “lurked,” reading passively what other people wrote.

HI THERE NSA!

SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 2:00 PM

THGRRI

Quote:
…1kiki
If a target entered an online chat room, the NSA collected the words and identities of every person who posted there, regardless of subject, as well as every person who simply “lurked,” reading passively what other people wrote.

I have no problem with that because that is what many terrorists do at their gathering spots on the internet. I have never said anything online that would make me a target of the NSA. If I have fallen into their line of sight for one reason or another so be it. Don’t get me wrong, I surely do love my privacy. That is why google is not my search engine. They read everybody’s emails and not only admit it, but they require you to let them if you want to use their service. Want to talk about who is truly spying on us. Let’s talk the corporate world.

si shen

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 2:22 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

So, I excused corporate spying in my post? Whatever.

Your story didn't indicate IN ANY WAY how SPECIFICALLY targeting anyone else beyond the target led to more data above and beyond targeting - well - the target. As an excuse for spying on innocent civilians because somehow (in a VERY unstated way) it was productive, it sucked.

In addition, it didn't address the massive data center in Utah, the collection of trap and trace data on ALL communications within the US, and other egregious invasions of privacy by the US government.

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 3:04 PM

THGRRI

Quote:
….1kiki
Your story didn't indicate IN ANY WAY how SPECIFICALLY targeting anyone else beyond the target led to more data above and beyond targeting - well - the target.

You need to explain this to me again because it makes no sense to me.

Unless you are trying to express that all others engulfed in the data gathering based only on being present at a contact point where the targeted subject visited, ( on the internet or called)offered up any valuable information.

I would suggest many of the contact points did offer up useful information. It could be a library the targeted person visited. In which case the information gathered by the target would be very useful. It could be a mosque where other terrorists gathered. Once a target is established it is important to know all you can about the person and who he/she interacts with. I would say finding out new information on an overseas nuclear project rates high up on the, is it worth it meter.

Quote:
…1kiki
In addition, it didn't address the massive data center in Utah, the collection of trap and trace data on ALL communications within the US, and other egregious invasions of privacy by the US government.

It address the concept of some of what the NSA is doing, why and if any of it has paid off. This is a big issue that needs to be continually monitored. So in theory it did address the data center in Utah. Just not by name.

si shen

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 3:19 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"the concept" ... "why and if any of it has paid off"

It addressed the targeting of INCIDENTAL and completely innocent people, and the gathering of AND INDEFINITELY KEEPING information on them. It didn't either demonstrate how- or even say that- that INCIDENTAL information led to 'actionable intelligence.'

YOU are trying to make a case neither made in the article nor supported by it. Please read it - again - and point out to me where it said SPECIFICALLY that, or how, all that INCIDENTAL information led to the results the NSA claims.

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 3:48 PM

THGRRI

Quote:

"the concept" ... "why and if any of it has paid off"
It addressed the targeting of INCIDENTAL and completely innocent people, and the gathering AND INDEFINITELY KEEPING information on them. It didn't either demonstrate how- or even say that- that INCIDENTAL information led to 'actionable intelligence.'
YOU are trying to make a case neither made in the article nor supported by it. Please read it - again - and point out to me where it said SPECIFICALLY that or how all that INCIDENTAL information led to the results the NSA claims.

If you understand how the program works you know it relies on alarm bells going off on data mined information before it attains a target. That process is flawed but it keeps the NSA from having to personally monitor what each citizen or noncitizen in the country is doing, what that means and whom are they doing it with. They then keep the information in case something happens and they need to go back and use it to make a case against someone. Otherwise it is not even looked at. I am good with that so long as the monitors are monitored.

I am not trying to make a case for the NSA based on a false interpretation of the article. Read your questions going back to your first post. They are based on what the article does not say, not mine. My comments are based on what the article does say by suggesting ways in which the program has helped maintain the scrutiny of the nation. Till now solid information had not been readily available to show how it has.

As for the victims caught up in the mining. Well, we have all heard plenty about that. I did not hide the article by just cut and pasting the points I wanted to make. You have the article in its entirety to read for yourself. The interesting thing about the story is it does highlight innocent people being caught up in the program. It also shows why it may be imperative for the program to continue regardless.

si shen

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 5:12 PM

BYTEMITE

Quote:
Originally posted by THGRRI:

I have no problem with that because that is what many terrorists do at their gathering spots on the internet. I have never said anything online that would make me a target of the NSA.

"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

- Poem on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Quote:
If I have fallen into their line of sight for one reason or another so be it. Don’t get me wrong, I surely do love my privacy. That is why google is not my search engine. They read everybody’s emails and not only admit it, but they require you to let them if you want to use their service. Want to talk about who is truly spying on us. Let’s talk the corporate world.

Yer on fireflyfans. Welcome to the jungle. XD

Also, it's not just google that allows the NSA and similar agencies to monitor emails without court order. Under the PATRIOT ACT, all email services are required to backlog any emails you have older than 6 months for exactly this reason.

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 5:47 PM

THGRRI

Google is the worst offender. As for the rest, it does not apply much at the moment. The only ones with something to lose is the bad guys. In this country we are not targeting socialists or Jews, and if they do here we can speak out about it.

George Bush said if you all could see the reports I see every morning you would be terrified and I believe him.

si shen

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 7:39 PM

BYTEMITE

Quote:
The only ones with something to lose is the bad guys. In this country we are not targeting socialists or Jews, and if they do here we can speak out about it.

The only ones with something to lose is everyone. The DOD released a training manual that indicated they consider low level civil protest terrorism.

They pulled that specific line of text and the question associated with it after public outcry, but if you think that doesn't still represent their general attitude, you're dreaming.

ANY group with a cause could be an enemy of the state depending on who's in charge of the state and what their agenda is. That's the whole point of that poem. And if you don't fight it from the get-go you'll be swallowed up in it along with everyone else.

Quote:

George Bush said if you all could see the reports I see every morning you would be terrified and I believe him.

I have a deathwish. Try me.

You came onto the board with talk about being a reaper of souls. You don't think no one noticed? And yet, despite all that, you're as afraid of dying as the rest of them. You want to be SAFE, and think you can be safe from both the terrorists AND a witch-hunt.

You're stuck with us. Just posting here means you're tainted by association.

So you're not safe. None of us are. And frankly, even before 9-11, you had a better chance of being struck by lightning or bitten by a shark in America than being a victim of a terrorist attack. Maybe we should declare war against the ocean, in the mean time, better collect our emails and monitor chatrooms to make sure none of us are sympathizers and collabateurs with those briny bastards.

The point isn't "bad guys" and it isn't terrorists. Those are just excuses to implement shit we don't want because someone not you thinks it gives them more control and they're safer - not from terrorists, but from US. If you want to say "them" is the corporations, you're on the right track, but it's also only half of the story.

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 7:57 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"You need to explain this to me again because it makes no sense to me."

YOU claim that what the NSA did - which was collect and permanently keep data on innocent non-target people - helped deter terror. Yet nowhere in the story is it demonstrated, or explained, or claimed, that information on NON-TARGET people yielded useful anti-terror information. If that's the case, and it sure seems to be from this story, then why bother collecting and keeping all that information on innocent people? Why not just focus on the target instead? The target whose communications have a chance of yielding something. Unless, of course they're not really after the target, they're randomly fishing. In which case there's no probable cause.

I hope you can understand this question and provide a rational reason as to why you defend this intrusive and apparently useless practice.

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 8:24 PM

THGRRI

BYTEMITE, I don't agree with anything you say and just for the record, dying today is not high on my list of concerns. I think it was Roosevelt who said a brave man dies but once while a coward dies a thousand deaths.

I just want to keep an open mind to what's out there so we can do a better job of protecting the next set of potential victims regardless of who they may be.

I read your posts and see you are the one going through life afraid.

si shen

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 8:32 PM

THGRRI

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
"You need to explain this to me again because it makes no sense to me."

YOU claim that what the NSA did - which was collect and permanently keep data on innocent non-target people - helped deter terror. Yet nowhere in the story is it demonstrated, or explained, or claimed, that information on NON-TARGET people yielded useful anti-terror information. If that's the case, and it sure seems to be from this story, then why bother collecting and keeping all that information on innocent people? Why not just focus on the target instead? The target whose communications have a chance of yielding something. Unless, of course they're not really after the target, they're randomly fishing. In which case there's no probable cause.

I hope you can understand this question and provide a rational reason as to why you defend this intrusive and apparently useless practice.

Yeah ok. Not only are you misrepresenting what I said and what the article says in some sort of twisted fashion, but by what you post you still clearly do not understand how the program works. When you look it up and find out drop me a post. Until then this is pointless.

si shen

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 8:58 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

By Barton Gellman, Julie Tate and Ashkan Soltani July 5 at 8:46 PM

Ordinary Internet users, American and non-American alike, far outnumber legally targeted foreigners in the communications intercepted by the National Security Agency from U.S. digital networks, according to a four-month investigation by The Washington Post.

Nine of 10 account holders found in a large cache of intercepted conversations, which former NSA contractor Edward Snowden provided in full to The Post, were not the intended surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody else.

Many of them were Americans. Nearly half of the surveillance files, a strikingly high proportion, contained names, e-mail addresses or other details that the NSA marked as belonging to U.S. citizens or residents. NSA analysts masked, or “minimized,” more than 65,000 such references to protect Americans’ privacy, but The Post found nearly 900 additional e-mail addresses, unmasked in the files, that could be strongly linked to U.S. citizens or U.S.residents.

The surveillance files highlight a policy dilemma that has been aired only abstractly in public. There are discoveries of considerable intelligence value in the intercepted messages — and collateral harm to privacy on a scale that the Obama administration has not been willing to address.

Among the most valuable contents — which The Post will not describe in detail, to avoid interfering with ongoing operations — are fresh revelations about a secret overseas nuclear project, double-dealing by an ostensible ally, a military calamity that befell an unfriendly power, and the identities of aggressive intruders into U.S. computer networks.

Months of tracking communications across more than 50 alias accounts, the files show, led directly to the 2011 capture in Abbottabad of Muhammad Tahir Shahzad, a Pakistan-based bomb builder, and Umar Patek, a suspect in a 2002 terrorist bombing on the Indonesian island of Bali. At the request of CIA officials, The Post is withholding other examples that officials said would compromise ongoing operations. And yet, nowhere do they claim that this valuable information came from non-target sources.

Many other files, described as useless by the analysts but nonetheless retained, have a startlingly intimate, even voyeuristic quality. They tell stories of love and heartbreak, illicit sexual liaisons, mental-health crises, political and religious conversions, financial anxieties and disappointed hopes. The daily lives of more than 10,000 account holders who were not targeted are catalogued and recorded nevertheless.

In order to allow time for analysis and outside reporting, neither Snowden nor The Post has disclosed until now that he obtained and shared the content of intercepted communications. The cache Snowden provided came from domestic NSA operations under the broad authority granted by Congress in 2008 with amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA content is generally stored in closely controlled data repositories, and for more than a year, senior government officials have depicted it as beyond Snowden’s reach.

The Post reviewed roughly 160,000 intercepted e-mail and instant-message conversations, some of them hundreds of pages long, and 7,900 documents taken from more than 11,000 online accounts.

The material spans President Obama’s first term, from 2009 to 2012, a period of exponential growth for the NSA’s domestic collection.

Taken together, the files offer an unprecedented vantage point on the changes wrought by Section 702 of the FISA amendments, which enabled the NSA to make freer use of methods that for 30 years had required probable cause and a warrant from a judge. One program, code-named PRISM, extracts content stored in user accounts at Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Google and five other leading Internet companies. Another, known inside the NSA as Upstream, intercepts data on the move as it crosses the U.S. junctions of global voice and data networks.

No government oversight body, including the Justice Department, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, intelligence committees in Congress or the president’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, has delved into a comparably large sample of what the NSA actually collects — not only from its targets but also from people who may cross a target’s path.

Among the latter are medical records sent from one family member to another, résumés from job hunters and academic transcripts of schoolchildren. In one photo, a young girl in religious dress beams at a camera outside a mosque.

Scores of pictures show infants and toddlers in bathtubs, on swings, sprawled on their backs and kissed by their mothers. In some photos, men show off their physiques. In others, women model lingerie, leaning suggestively into a webcam or striking risque poses in shorts and bikini tops.

“None of the hits that were received were relevant,” two Navy cryptologic technicians write in one of many summaries of nonproductive surveillance. “No additional information,” writes a civilian analyst. Another makes fun of a suspected kidnapper, newly arrived in Syria before the current civil war, who begs for employment as a janitor and makes wide-eyed observations about the state of undress displayed by women on local beaches.

By law, the NSA may “target” only foreign nationals located overseas unless it obtains a warrant based on probable cause from a special surveillance court. For collection under PRISM and Upstream rules, analysts must state a reasonable belief that the target has information of value about a foreign government, a terrorist organization or the spread of nonconventional weapons.

Most of the people caught up in those programs are not the targets and would not lawfully qualify as such. “Incidental collection” of third-party communications is inevitable in many forms of surveillance, but in other contexts the U.S. government works harder to limit and discard irrelevant data. In criminal wiretaps, for example, the FBI is supposed to stop listening to a call if a suspect’s wife or child is using the phone.

There are many ways to be swept up incidentally in surveillance aimed at a valid foreign target. Some of those in the Snowden archive were monitored because they interacted directly with a target, but others had more-tenuous links.

If a target entered an online chat room, the NSA collected the words and identities of every person who posted there, regardless of subject, as well as every person who simply “lurked,” reading passively what other people wrote.

“1 target, 38 others on there,” one analyst wrote. She collected data on them all.

In other cases, the NSA designated as its target the Internet protocol, or IP, address of a computer server used by hundreds of people.

The NSA treats all content intercepted incidentally from third parties as permissible to retain, store, search and distribute to its government customers. Raj De, the agency’s general counsel, has testified that the NSA does not generally attempt to remove irrelevant personal content, because it is difficult for one analyst to know what might become relevant to another.

The Obama administration declines to discuss the scale of incidental collection. The NSA, backed by Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., has asserted that it is unable to make any estimate, even in classified form, of the number of Americans swept in. It is not obvious why the NSA could not offer at least a partial count, given that its analysts routinely pick out “U.S. persons” and mask their identities, in most cases, before distributing intelligence reports.

If Snowden’s sample is representative, the population under scrutiny in the PRISM and Upstream programs is far larger than the government has suggested. In a June 26 “transparency report,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence disclosed that 89,138 people were targets of last year’s collection under FISA Section 702. At the 9-to-1 ratio of incidental collection in Snowden’s sample, the office’s figure would correspond to nearly 900,000 accounts, targeted or not, under surveillance.

U.S. intelligence officials declined to confirm or deny in general terms the authenticity of the intercepted content provided by Snowden, but they made off-the-record requests to withhold specific details that they said would alert the targets of ongoing surveillance. Some officials, who declined to be quoted by name, described Snowden’s handling of the sensitive files as reckless.

In an interview, Snowden said “primary documents” offered the only path to a concrete debate about the costs and benefits of Section 702 surveillance. He did not favor public release of the full archive, he said, but he did not think a reporter could understand the programs “without being able to review some of that surveillance, both the justified and unjustified.”

“While people may disagree about where to draw the line on publication, I know that you and The Post have enough sense of civic duty to consult with the government to ensure that the reporting on and handling of this material causes no harm,” he said.

In Snowden’s view, the PRISM and Upstream programs have “crossed the line of proportionality.”

“Even if one could conceivably justify the initial, inadvertent interception of baby pictures and love letters of innocent bystanders,” he added, “their continued storage in government databases is both troubling and dangerous. Who knows how that information will be used in the future?”

For close to a year, NSA and other government officials have appeared to deny, in congressional testimony and public statements, that Snowden had any access to the material.

As recently as May, shortly after he retired as NSA director, Gen. Keith Alexander denied that Snowden could have passed FISA content to journalists.

“He didn’t get this data,” Alexander told a New Yorker reporter. “They didn’t touch —”

“The operational data?” the reporter asked.

“They didn’t touch the FISA data,” Alexander replied. He added, “That database, he didn’t have access to.”

Robert S. Litt, the general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said in a prepared statement that Alexander and other officials were speaking only about “raw” intelligence, the term for intercepted content that has not yet been evaluated, stamped with classification markings or minimized to mask U.S. identities.

“We have talked about the very strict controls on raw traffic, the training that people have to have, the technological lockdowns on access,” Litt said. “Nothing that you have given us indicates that Snowden was able to circumvent that in any way.”

In the interview, Snowden said he did not need to circumvent those controls, because his final position as a contractor for Booz Allen at the NSA’s Hawaii operations center gave him “unusually broad, unescorted access to raw SIGINT [signals intelligence] under a special ‘Dual Authorities’ role,” a reference to Section 702 for domestic collection and Executive Order 12333 for collection overseas. Those credentials, he said, allowed him to search stored content — and “task” new collection — without prior approval of his search terms.

“If I had wanted to pull a copy of a judge’s or a senator’s e-mail, all I had to do was enter that selector into XKEYSCORE,” one of the NSA’s main query systems, he said.

The NSA has released an e-mail exchange acknowledging that Snowden took the required training classes for access to those systems.
‘Minimized U.S. president’

At one level, the NSA shows scrupulous care in protecting the privacy of U.S. nationals and, by policy, those of its four closest intelligence allies — Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

More than 1,000 distinct “minimization” terms appear in the files, attempting to mask the identities of “possible,” “potential” and “probable” U.S. persons, along with the names of U.S. beverage companies, universities, fast-food chains and Web-mail hosts.

Some of them border on the absurd, using titles that could apply to only one man. A “minimized U.S. president-elect” begins to appear in the files in early 2009, and references to the current “minimized U.S. president” appear 1,227 times in the following four years.

Even so, unmasked identities remain in the NSA’s files, and the agency’s policy is to hold on to “incidentally” collected U.S. content, even if it does not appear to contain foreign intelligence.

In one exchange captured in the files, a young American asks a Pakistani friend in late 2009 what he thinks of the war in Afghanistan. The Pakistani replies that it is a religious struggle against 44 enemy states.

Startled, the American says “they, ah, they arent heavily participating .?.?. its like .?.?. in a football game, the other team is the enemy, not the other teams waterboy and cheerleaders.”

“No,” the Pakistani shoots back. “The ther teams water boy is also an enemy. it is law of our religion.”

“haha, sorry thats kind of funny,” the American replies.

When NSA and allied analysts really want to target an account, their concern for U.S. privacy diminishes. The rationales they use to judge foreignness sometimes stretch legal rules or well-known technical facts to the breaking point.

In their classified internal communications, colleagues and supervisors often remind the analysts that PRISM and Upstream collection have a “lower threshold for foreignness ‘standard of proof’?” than a traditional surveillance warrant from a FISA judge, requiring only a “reasonable belief” and not probable cause.

One analyst rests her claim that a target is foreign on the fact that his e-mails are written in a foreign language, a quality shared by tens of millions of Americans. Others are allowed to presume that anyone on the chat “buddy list” of a known foreign national is also foreign.

In many other cases, analysts seek and obtain approval to treat an account as “foreign” if someone connects to it from a computer address that seems to be overseas. “The best foreignness explanations have the selector being accessed via a foreign IP address,” an NSA supervisor instructs an allied analyst in Australia.

Apart from the fact that tens of millions of Americans live and travel overseas, additional millions use simple tools called proxies to redirect their data traffic around the world, for business or pleasure. World Cup fans this month have been using a browser extension called Hola to watch live-streamed games that are unavailable from their own countries. The same trick is routinely used by Americans who want to watch BBC video. The NSA also relies routinely on locations embedded in Yahoo tracking cookies, which are widely regarded by online advertisers as unreliable.

In an ordinary FISA surveillance application, the judge grants a warrant and requires a fresh review of probable cause — and the content of collected surveillance — every 90 days. When renewal fails, NSA and allied analysts sometimes switch to the more lenient standards of PRISM and Upstream.

“These selectors were previously under FISA warrant but the warrants have expired,” one analyst writes, requesting that surveillance resume under the looser standards of Section 702. The request was granted.
‘I don’t like people knowing’

She was 29 and shattered by divorce, converting to Islam in search of comfort and love. He was three years younger, rugged and restless. His parents had fled Kabul and raised him in Australia, but he dreamed of returning to Afghanistan.

One day when she was sick in bed, he brought her tea. Their faith forbade what happened next, and later she recalled it with shame.

“what we did was evil and cursed and may allah swt MOST merciful forgive us for giving in to our nafs [desires]”

Still, a romance grew. They fought. They spoke of marriage. They fought again.

All of this was in the files because, around the same time, he went looking for the Taliban.

He found an e-mail address on its English-language Web site and wrote repeatedly, professing loyalty to the one true faith, offering to “come help my brothers” and join the fight against the unbelievers.

On May 30, 2012, without a word to her, he boarded a plane to begin a journey to Kandahar. He left word that he would not see her again.

If that had been the end of it, there would not be more than 800 pages of anguished correspondence between them in the archives of the NSA and its counterpart, the Australian Signals Directorate.

He had made himself a target. She was the collateral damage, placed under a microscope as she tried to adjust to the loss.

Three weeks after he landed in Kandahar, she found him on Facebook.

“Im putting all my pride aside just to say that i will miss you dearly and your the only person that i really allowed myself to get close to after losing my ex husband, my dad and my brother.. Im glad it was so easy for you to move on and put what we had aside and for me well Im just soo happy i met you. You will always remain in my heart. I know you left for a purpose it hurts like hell sometimes not because Im needy but because i wish i could have been with you.”

His replies were cool, then insulting, and gradually became demanding. He would marry her but there were conditions. She must submit to his will, move in with his parents and wait for him in Australia. She must hand him control of her Facebook account — he did not approve of the photos posted there.

She refused. He insisted:

“look in islam husband doesnt touch girl financial earnigs unless she agrees but as far as privacy goes there is no room….i need to have all ur details everything u do its what im supposed to know that will guide u whether its right or wrong got it”

Later, she came to understand the irony of her reply:

“I don’t like people knowing my private life.”

Months of negotiations followed, with each of them declaring an end to the romance a dozen times or more. He claimed he had found someone else and planned to marry that day, then admitted it was a lie. She responded:

“No more games. You come home. You won’t last with an afghan girl.”

She begged him to give up his dangerous path. Finally, in September, she broke off contact for good, informing him that she was engaged to another man.

“When you come back they will send you to jail,” she warned.

They almost did.

In interviews with The Post, conducted by telephone and Facebook, she said he flew home to Australia last summer, after failing to find members of the Taliban who would take him seriously. Australian National Police met him at the airport and questioned him in custody. They questioned her, too, politely, in her home. They showed her transcripts of their failed romance. When a Post reporter called, she already knew what the two governments had collected about her.

Eventually, she said, Australian authorities decided not to charge her failed suitor with a crime. Police spokeswoman Emilie Lovatt declined to comment on the case.

Looking back, the young woman said she understands why her intimate correspondence was recorded and parsed by men and women she did not know.

“Do I feel violated?” she asked. “Yes. I’m not against the fact that my privacy was violated in this instance, because he was stupid. He wasn’t thinking straight. I don’t agree with what he was doing.”

What she does not understand, she said, is why after all this time, with the case long closed and her own job with the Australian government secure, the NSA does not discard what it no longer needs.

Jennifer Jenkins and Carol D. Leonnig contributed to this report.

Where does it state information from non-target people was valuable?

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 9:07 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Meanwhile:

http://abcnews.go.com/News/Blotter/fbi-spied-peta-greenpeace-anti-war-
activists/story?id=11682844
FBI Spied on PETA, Greenpeace, Anti-War Activists

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/maryland-police-and-their-weird-war-on-te
rror-1.786999
The vigilant didn't even need to look overseas for their targets. They found their terrorists right here, in the Quaker halls, churches, campuses, community centres and neighborhood gathering spots of the most prosperous state in the union.
Oppose the death penalty? Must be a terrorist. Oppose the Iraq war? Terrorist. Anti-abortion? Interested in human rights? Opposed to government policy in general? Terrorist, terrorist, terrorist.

http://www.texassharon.com/2013/12/04/denton-fracking-nightmare-makes-
international-news-residents-make-terrorist-watch-list/
I have a few questions for the Department of Homeland Security regarding this terrorist watch list that:
How does someone like Grawe find out who is on your watch list and can I find out the same information?
How did Grawe know that a very small, close group was planning this action?
Are we under some kind of surveillance where our phones are tapped and our email compromised?

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 9:12 PM

BYTEMITE

Quote:
Originally posted by THGRRI:
BYTEMITE, I don't agree with anything you say and just for the record, dying today is not high on my list of concerns. I think it was Roosevelt who said a brave man dies but once while a coward dies a thousand deaths.

I just want to keep an open mind to what's out there so we can do a better job of protecting the next set of potential victims regardless of who they may be.

I read your posts and see you are the one going through life afraid.

si shen

Really? "I know you are but what am I?" That's your comeback?

Pfft. Not only are you not really a reaper of souls, but the level you're bringing to this thread is green on the watch list. I expect a higher quality effort from you in the future.

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 9:13 PM

THGRRI

1kiki, you just do not understand how the program works so you post the article. You do not understand why so many are caught up in the data mining. They are false positives. They may raise a flag that gets looked at and then the NSA moves on. Lets put some perspective on this shall we.

How many phone calls are made in this country a day. I'll tell you, 6 billion.

http://www.deadzones.com/2011/05/how-many-cell-phone-calls-are-made-da
y.html

Statistics, extrapolations and counting by Radicati Group from April 2010 estimate the number of emails sent per day (in 2010) to be around 294 billion.

http://email.about.com/od/emailtrivia/f/emails_per_day.htm

How many people work for the NSA? I'll give you a hint. The scale of the operations at the NSA is hard to determine from unclassified data; some 18,000 parking spaces are visible in photos of the site.

http://www.quora.com/How-many-people-work-for-the-NSA

If you take those numbers, the amount of people who get looked at by the NSA would not even show up as a percent. You really need to start figuring some of this out for yourself.

si shen

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 9:23 PM

THGRRI

Quote:
Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
Quote:
Originally posted by THGRRI:
BYTEMITE, I don't agree with anything you say and just for the record, dying today is not high on my list of concerns. I think it was Roosevelt who said a brave man dies but once while a coward dies a thousand deaths.

I just want to keep an open mind to what's out there so we can do a better job of protecting the next set of potential victims regardless of who they may be.

I read your posts and see you are the one going through life afraid.

si shen

Really? "I know you are but what am I?" That's your comeback?

Pfft. Not only are you not really a reaper of souls, but the level you're bringing to this thread is green on the watch list. I expect a higher quality effort from you in the future.

No disrespect intended. I just did not agree with any of what you said. Like your post here. I don't think my response suggests "I know you are but what am I "as you perceived. If you took it that way perhaps I should have tried harder.

si shen

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 9:44 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"They are false positives. They may raise a flag that gets looked at and then the NSA moves on."

OK - find me the spot on the article that says so.

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 9:50 PM

THGRRI

1kiki.....Rather than post what I was going to I will just leave it at... Holly Cow.

si shen

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 9:52 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

The DOD released a training manual that indicated they consider low level civil protest terrorism. ... ANY group with a cause could be an enemy of the state depending on who's in charge of the state and what their agenda is.

BYTEMITE, I don't agree with anything you say ...

FBI Spied on PETA, Greenpeace, Anti-War Activists

for at least three recent years, the state police antiterrorism unit spied upon, infiltrated and documented ... Roman Catholic nuns, human rights activists and church groups ... monitored animal rights advocates and cyclists pushing for more bicycle lanes ... They opened a dossier on Amnesty International (That group's crime was listed as "human rights") ... even Quakers, the ultimate pacifists, constituted a "security threat group."
The troopers created files with titles like: "Terrorism: Anti-War Protesters," and "Terrorism: Anti-Govern," and "Terrorism: Environmental Extremists," and "Terrorism: Pro-Life."

(anti-fracking) Denton residents () are on the DHS watch list

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 9:54 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

In other words, you ran across the parts in the article that say the information is kept indefinitely ... and you got nothing. Just more of your usual fact-free idiocy. Got it.

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 10:08 PM

THGRRI

I have been back and forth with you 1kiki in several threads. Sorry but I really don't care what you think on most topics, It's always extreme and unhinged.

si shen

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 10:10 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"T"'s words of wisdom:
""They are false positives. They may raise a flag that gets looked at and then the NSA moves on."

The article:

Many other files, described as useless by the analysts but nonetheless retained ...

The NSA treats all content intercepted incidentally from third parties as permissible to retain, store, search and distribute to its government customers.

Raj De, the agency’s general counsel, has testified that the NSA does NOT generally attempt to remove irrelevant personal content, because it is difficult for one analyst to know what might become relevant to another.

“Even if one could conceivably justify the initial, inadvertent interception of baby pictures and love letters of innocent bystanders,” he added, “their continued storage in government databases is both troubling and dangerous. Who knows how that information will be used in the future?”

Even so, unmasked identities remain in the NSA’s files, and the agency’s policy is to hold on to “incidentally” collected U.S. content, even if it does not appear to contain foreign intelligence.

there would not be more than 800 pages of anguished correspondence between them in the archives of the NSA and its counterpart, the Australian Signals Directorate

What she does not understand, she said, is why after all this time, with the case long closed and her own job with the Australian government secure, the NSA does not discard what it no longer needs.

As for range and magnitude:

credentials (allow a) search stored content — and “task” new collection — without prior approval of () search terms

“If I had wanted to pull a copy of a judge’s or a senator’s e-mail, all I had to do was enter that selector into XKEYSCORE,” one of the NSA’s main query systems, he said.

If Snowden’s sample is representative, the population under scrutiny in the PRISM and Upstream programs is far larger than the government has suggested. In a June 26 “transparency report,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence disclosed that 89,138 people were targets of last year’s collection under FISA Section 702. At the 9-to-1 ratio of incidental collection in Snowden’s sample, the office’s figure would correspond to nearly 900,000 accounts, targeted or not, under surveillance.

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 10:18 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 10:35 PM

THGRRI

This chart represents how many people are in this country,310,000,000 and how many the NSA looked at however it came to be, 89,000. That doesn't mean they were harassed in any way it only means something triggered a look. As for PETA and other groups of that nature. I agree with many of their beliefs but I am not so stupid to not understand extremists are amongst them.

I made a chart in excel (pie graph) but could not transfer it. This is what it looked like exactly.

si shen

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 10:42 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"T"'s words of wisdom:

"the NSA looked at ... 89,000"

The article:

At the 9-to-1 ratio of incidental collection in Snowden’s sample, the office’s figure would correspond to nearly 900,000 accounts, targeted or not, under surveillance.

"T"'s words of wisdom:
""They are false positives. They may raise a flag that gets looked at and then the NSA moves on."

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 10:48 PM

THGRRI

It does not matter what you post. It is all information you do not have the ability to put into perspective.

si shen

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 11:00 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"T"'s words of wisdom:
"It does not matter what you post. It is all information you do not have the ability to put into perspective."

"T"s valid information from the article:

"T"'s words of wisdom:

"the NSA looked at ... 89,000"

The article:

At the 9-to-1 ratio of incidental collection in Snowden’s sample, the office’s figure would correspond to nearly 900,000 accounts, targeted or not, under surveillance.

"T"'s words of wisdom:
""They are false positives. They may raise a flag that gets looked at and then the NSA moves on."

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 11:14 PM

THGRRI

Your response to me again shows you did not understand what I am saying. Shit happens and we have to be vigilant to stay abreast of innocent people being caught up in the NSA's data mining to make sure they are not abused. That said, it is a very small amount compared to what is at stake. I would like to see improvements made and some have, but it is worth the inconvenience.

Your response to me is always repeating quotes from the article and ignoring what I am saying. Suggesting I am implying what I am not or rambling back at me things inconsequential to what I am saying. Much of what you post is repeated over and over again. Clean it up. I first pointed out your style of posting weeks ago. It's nonsense that ignores what is being said back to you.

si shen

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Sunday, July 6, 2014 11:25 PM

THGRRI

Hey, I followed your links. The only one that goes to the story you suggest is the one that goes to an activist page. The other two do not represent what you claim.

Quote:
...1kiki

Meanwhile:

http://abcnews.go.com/News/Blotter/fbi-spied-peta-greenpeace-anti-war-
activists/story?id=11682844
FBI Spied on PETA, Greenpeace, Anti-War Activists

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/maryland-police-and-their-weird-war-on-te
rror-1.786999
The vigilant didn't even need to look overseas for their targets. They found their terrorists right here, in the Quaker halls, churches, campuses, community centres and neighborhood gathering spots of the most prosperous state in the union.
Oppose the death penalty? Must be a terrorist. Oppose the Iraq war? Terrorist. Anti-abortion? Interested in human rights? Opposed to government policy in general? Terrorist, terrorist, terrorist.

http://www.texassharon.com/2013/12/04/denton-fracking-nightmare-makes-
international-news-residents-make-terrorist-watch-list/
I have a few questions for the Department of Homeland Security regarding this terrorist watch list that:
How does someone like Grawe find out who is on your watch list and can I find out the same information?
How did Grawe know that a very small, close group was planning this action?
Are we under some kind of surveillance where our phones are tapped and our email compromised?

si shen

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Monday, July 7, 2014 12:53 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

The first two links break on the second line. You have to get the whole link. DUH.

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Monday, July 7, 2014 12:12 PM

THGRRI

OK 1ikiki , while this has nothing to do with the intent of the thread I started. I will point out that while I agree in principal with these groups they get carried away at times. Your lack of understanding that it is important that all follow the law couldn’t be more apparent. You are wrong to suggest there is no reason for the FBI to show an interest in what these groups are up to.

(Reuters) - French police arrested 57 Greenpeace activists who used a truck on Tuesday to ram their way into a nuclear power plant operated by EDF in eastern France,

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/18/us-france-energy-idUSBREA2H0
CF20140318

While I appreciate much of what Greenpeace stands for. This shit can’t be. You bet I want the FBI paying attention.

As for PETA they have been accused of breaking the law over the years and some say are closely affiliated with the ANIMALL LIBERATION FRONT.

The FBI testified at the hearing that, “From January 1990 to June 2004, animal and environmental rights extremists have claimed credit for more than 1,200 criminal incidents, resulting in millions of dollars in damage and monetary loss.”

During the 1990s, PETA made grants and loans totaling $70,990 in support of a self-described Animal Liberation Front member later convicted of committing arson at Michigan State University, according to the congressional testimony of David Martosko of the Center for Consumer Freedom. PETA also has advertised that its leader, Ingrid Newkirk, “speaks for the Animal Liberation Front,” testified Martosko.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/2005/05/30/peta-or-medical-research/

I love animals and want PETA to continue but not with strong arm tactics that hurts the organization. The FBI has good reason to keep an eye on Greenpeace, PETA and the rest.

Again you are showing a lack of perspective. Both groups are still very active but are compelled to operate within the boundaries of the law. At least more so because law enforcement is watching.

si shen

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Monday, July 7, 2014 12:51 PM

THGRRI

Many are so worried about government intruding into our lives that I will say it again. It is easier for us to take on our own government if they cross the line then it is becoming to take on business. Especially with this Supreme Court. Open your eyes.

Smokers now face another risk from their habit: it could cost them a shot at a job.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/11/us/11smoking.html?pagewanted=all&
;_r=0

si shen

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Monday, July 7, 2014 4:27 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
"They are false positives. They may raise a flag that gets looked at and then the NSA moves on."

OK - find me the spot on the article that says so.

You almost sound like you're willing to fall for this.
Have you never heard of some defense attorney asking that illegally obtained "evidence" be thrown out? Maybe we should all trust the government to honestly decide which rights they should let us have and which rights we no longer have a need for?
This is digital data, folks. You have any idea how easy it is to fabricate this? Like the IRS conferring with FBI to find a way to criminally prosecute Tea Party Patriots for requesting a tax-exempt status. It so much easier that planting O.J.'s blood on the knife, and proclaiming that they knew it was O.J.'s DNA, a week before any evidentiary sample ever arrived at the lab for testing.

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Monday, July 7, 2014 4:33 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

1kiki:
Thanks. If more of your work was posted like this, it would be much easier to read and discern.

Quote:
Quote:

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
"T"'s words of wisdom:
""They are false positives. They may raise a flag that gets looked at and then the NSA moves on."

The article:

Many other files, described as useless by the analysts but nonetheless retained ...

The NSA treats all content intercepted incidentally from third parties as permissible to retain, store, search and distribute to its government customers.

Raj De, the agency’s general counsel, has testified that the NSA does NOT generally attempt to remove irrelevant personal content, because it is difficult for one analyst to know what might become relevant to another.

“Even if one could conceivably justify the initial, inadvertent interception of baby pictures and love letters of innocent bystanders,” he added, “their continued storage in government databases is both troubling and dangerous. Who knows how that information will be used in the future?”

Even so, unmasked identities remain in the NSA’s files, and the agency’s policy is to hold on to “incidentally” collected U.S. content, even if it does not appear to contain foreign intelligence.

there would not be more than 800 pages of anguished correspondence between them in the archives of the NSA and its counterpart, the Australian Signals Directorate

What she does not understand, she said, is why after all this time, with the case long closed and her own job with the Australian government secure, the NSA does not discard what it no longer needs.

As for range and magnitude:

credentials (allow a) search stored content — and “task” new collection — without prior approval of () search terms

“If I had wanted to pull a copy of a judge’s or a senator’s e-mail, all I had to do was enter that selector into XKEYSCORE,” one of the NSA’s main query systems, he said.

If Snowden’s sample is representative, the population under scrutiny in the PRISM and Upstream programs is far larger than the government has suggested. In a June 26 “transparency report,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence disclosed that 89,138 people were targets of last year’s collection under FISA Section 702. At the 9-to-1 ratio of incidental collection in Snowden’s sample, the office’s figure would correspond to nearly 900,000 accounts, targeted or not, under surveillance.

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Monday, July 7, 2014 9:24 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

It is a reminder that facts should rule the thread and not Ideologies nor un-researched opinions (unless stated as such). Pity that’s not the case.

I see you have no reply to the facts of your own post, as reported by The Washington Post.

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Tuesday, July 8, 2014 11:55 AM

THGRRI

Here is you 1kiki quoting me and then trying to change the subject.

Quote:
….1kiki
It is a reminder that facts should rule the thread and not Ideologies nor un-researched opinions (unless stated as such). Pity that’s not the case.

I see you have no reply to the facts of your own post, as reported by The Washington Post.

Something other than facts also needs to be present in a discussion. That is an understanding of what others are saying and addressing that in your replies. I created this thread to tout the successes of the NSA program. Those pointed out in this article because we hear so little about them. To state I think the program is worth the trouble for now because the consequence in not doing so could be staggering. (Remember 911)? That you disagree is completely acceptable. That you dismiss what I am saying as we continue by posting responses that are just a continuation of your prior posts, and ignores what I am posting shows your participation in this debate to be dishonest.

Example: You make a post pointing to the audacity of the government spying on environmental groups or animal rights activists(not a point in the story just subjective posting).When I post in reply evidence showing how they have shown themselves to be more than capable of violence and destruction you do not even acknowledge the post. Why, because you are wrong so you shift away to again post a point that is not relevant to what I said. Something you always do that eventually closes down the discussion. What’s the point of continuing?

Quote:
….1kiki
In other words, you ran across the parts in the article that say the information is kept indefinitely ... and you got nothing. Just more of your usual fact-free idiocy. Got it.

Ok I had posted a response to your post about activists groups and you responded with that. I am cracking up as I write this because I can see you think, judging by your post, that indefinitely means explicitly forever. It means a lot of things including "until someone announces that a situation has changed or no longer exists". Got it.

It becomes a waste of time going back and forth with you. Not because I realize changing your point of view is hopeless, but by not directly responding to what I post in your replies you do not even present an argument that makes me go…hummmm.

si shen

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