Former CIA and NSA employee source of intelligence leaks

[Razgovory]

Yes, I live in a democracy.

Relevance? This is not about Norway.

What is it about?

[garbon]

The death of democracy in the us.

[Bluebook]

But they are storing content already. But keep drinking the kool-aid..

http://m.cnet.com/news/nsa-spying-flap-extends-to-contents-of-u.s-phone-calls/57589495?ds=1

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-cables-secret-world-communications-nsa

[Siege]

The death of democracy in the us.

That happened in 2008.

[Viking]

The death of democracy in the us.

That happened in 2008.

Most of us are pretty sure that if it died it died 12 December 2000.

[Razgovory]

The death of democracy in the us.

That happened in 2008.

Where do you get this stuff?

[Siege]

The death of democracy in the us.

That happened in 2008.

Most of us are pretty sure that if it died it dies 12 December 2000.

Nah, 2008 is when the media failed for the first time to vett a presidential candidate and people ended up voting for a dude of whom we know nothing but what he wrote in his autobiography.

I guess this is how the liberals think. They don't care who the guy is or what he have done in the past. They only care about the guys promises for a liberal agenda.

To me, however, who the guy is or have been in the past tells me what his policies are going to be in the future.

[Savonarola]

They are storing the meta data for those calls. Not recording the contents of those calls. The alternative is to have the phone company do that for you - the problem with the phone company is that they aren't accountable to the voters and have a history of being sloppy when it comes to data storage. Right now in the EU Phone companies are being forced to store the info for up to a year and a half, the phone companies don't want to pay for infrastructure and personnel required to save that data, they want to give their customers cheaper minutes and their shareholder larger dividends.

When I worked cellular (in the United States) the companies I worked for kept envelope data indefinitely.  As a traffic engineer I used envelope data to determine traffic patterns.  It's necessary to be able to go back several years in order to observe seasonal patterns.  The companies also needed to keep the data in case it was subpoenaed; I was once an expert witness at a murder trial after one of the killers used his mobile phones on our network.

[Sheilbh]

I thought this was interesting on online privacy:
http://www.aeonmagazine.com/living-together/do-we-have-a-privacy-instinct-or-are-we-wired-to-share/

[Sheilbh]

In the vein of not needing Big Brother because we're already doing it to each other:

This recycling bin is following you
By Siraj Datoo    @sirajdatoo    August 8, 2013
​
Update (Aug. 12): City of London halts recycling bins tracking phones of passers-by

Recycling bins in the City of London are monitoring the phones of passers-by, so advertisers can target messages at people whom the bins recognize.

Renew, the startup behind the scheme, installed 100 recycling bins with digital screens around London before the 2012 Olympics. Advertisers can buy space on the internet-connected bins, and the city gets 5% of the airtime to display public information. More recently, though, Renew outfitted a dozen of the bins with gadgets that track smartphones.

The idea is to bring internet tracking cookies to the real world. The bins record a unique identification number, known as a MAC address, for any nearby phones and other devices that have Wi-Fi turned on. That allows Renew to identify if the person walking by is the same one from yesterday, even her specific route down the street and how fast she is walking.

The technology, developed by London-based Presence Aware, is supposed to help advertisers hone their marketing campaigns. Say a coffee chain wanted to win customers from a rival. If it had the same tracking devices in its stores, it could tell whether you're already loyal to the brand and tailor its ads on the recycling bins accordingly. "Why not Pret?" the screen might say to you. Over time, the bins could also tell whether you've altered your habits.

This kind of personalized advertising was famously envisioned in the movie Minority Report—except, in this real-life example, brands are scanning iPhones instead of irises. Retailers like Nordstrom have tested similar technology in their stores, the revelation of which sparked a minor outcry. Kaveh Memari, CEO of Renew, doesn't think what his company is doing violates anyone's privacy.

"From our point of view, it's open to everybody, everyone can buy that data," Memari told Quartz. "London is the most heavily surveillanced city in the world...As long as we don't add a name and home address, it's legal."

In the European Union, websites are legally required to inform users if a tracking cookie is placed on their computer. Tracking smartphones and other Wi-Fi devices isn't nearly as regulated, in part because the technology is so new.

Renew would like to expand the technology to all of its recycling bins in London as well as those in New York City, Dubai, and Kuala Lumpur. In its test this summer, Renew installed the tracking devices in 12 of its London bins, most of them along a stretch of Cheapside, a busy street lined with retail stores:
​
The company still needs to sell retailers on the concept. Memari said he was working on a proposal for a bar that would install five tracking devices: one by the entrance, one on the roof, one near the cash register, and one in each of the bathrooms. That would allow the bar to know each person's gender (from the bathroom trackers), how long they stay ("dwell time" is the official metric), and what they were there for (a drink outside or a meal inside). And targeted advertising for the pub could follow those people around London on Renew's omniscient recycling bins.

In the first month after installing the trackers, Renew says it picked up over a million unique devices. On July 6, a record day, its bins identified 106,629 people, taking note of their presence 946,016 times, according to the company.  This chart, provided by Renew, shows one recycling bin's readings over the course of a week, with spikes during commutes and lunch:
​
Memari notes that MAC addresses, while unique, don't reveal the owner's name or other identifying information. He says companies like Facebook and Google collect more information about people. Of course, those sites have terms and conditions of use, even if few people read them. In theory, MAC addresses could be paired with other consumer data collection, like a supermarket loyalty card, which could reveal the person's name. Memari says that would go too far.

It's possible to avoid one's phone being tracked by turning off Wi-Fi on the device or filling out an online form. Memari says 80% of people in London leave Wi-Fi on when leaving their home or office. 2

"The chances are, if we don't see you on the first, second, or third day, we'll eventually capture you," he said. "We just need you to have it on once."

Edit: More here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/updated-londons-bins-are-tracking-your-smartphone-8754924.html

And as they suggest the City of London's stopped them.

[frunk]

Nah, 2008 is when the media failed for the first time to vett a presidential candidate and people ended up voting for a dude of whom we know nothing but what he wrote in his autobiography.

I guess this is how the liberals think. They don't care who the guy is or what he have done in the past. They only care about the guys promises for a liberal agenda.

To me, however, who the guy is or have been in the past tells me what his policies are going to be in the future.

We know significantly more about our presidential candidates (and every other national figure) now than at any other point in our nation's history.  The average citizen 100 years ago knew little about the candidates apart from their platform and bits of their history.

[Siege]

I thought this was interesting on online privacy:
http://www.aeonmagazine.com/living-together/do-we-have-a-privacy-instinct-or-are-we-wired-to-share/

Sure, let's justify the goverments encroachment of our civic liberties.
Its not the government, is us.

[Siege]

Nah, 2008 is when the media failed for the first time to vett a presidential candidate and people ended up voting for a dude of whom we know nothing but what he wrote in his autobiography.

I guess this is how the liberals think. They don't care who the guy is or what he have done in the past. They only care about the guys promises for a liberal agenda.

To me, however, who the guy is or have been in the past tells me what his policies are going to be in the future.

We know significantly more about our presidential candidates (and every other national figure) now than at any other point in our nation's history.  The average citizen 100 years ago knew little about the candidates apart from their platform and bits of their history.

Yes, with the exeption of the current President.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/obama

[citizen k]

UK Government "Pulverizes" Guardian Hard Drives In Snowden Retaliation, Says "There's No Need To Write Any More"


While the much publicized Sunday morning detention of Glenn Greenwald's partner David Miranda at Heathrow on his way back to Brazil, in a stunning move that as we subsequently learned had been telegraphed apriori to the US, could potentially be explained away as a desperate attempt at personal intimidation by a scared, and truly evil empire in its last death throes, it is what happened a month earlier at the basement of the Guardian newspaper that leaves one truly speechless at how far the "democratic" fascist regimes have fallen and  fondly reminiscing of the times when dictatorial, tyrannical regimes did not pretend to be anything but.

For the fully story, we go to Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger who, in a long editorial focusing on the tribulations of Greenwald, his partner, modern journalism and free speech and press in a time of near-ubiquitous tyranny when the status quo is questioned, happened to let his readers know that a month ago, after the newspaper had published several stories based on Snowden's material, a British official advised him: "You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back."

It gets better: after further talks with the British government, Rusbirdger says that two "security experts" from Government Communications Headquarters, the British NSA equivalent, visited the Guardian's London offices and in the building's basement, government officials watched as computers which contained material provided by Snowden were physically pulverized. One of the officials jokes: "We can call off the black helicopters."

Reuters adds that according to a source familiar with the event said Guardian employees destroyed the computers as government security experts looked on.

What is shocking is that as Rusbridger explained to the gentlemen from Whitehall, they had no jurisdiction over the forced destruction of Guardian property as it has offices in New York, that Greenwald himself was in Brazil, and that future reporting on the NSA did not even have to take place in London. That did not stop the UK government's punitive measures, and obviously neither did pleas, before the computers were destroyed, that the Guardian could not do its journalistic duty if it gave in to the government's requests.

In response, he wrote, a government official told him that the newspaper had already achieved the aim of sparking a debate on government surveillance. "You've had your debate. There's no need to write any more," the unnamed official was quoted as saying.

What is most shocking is that the UK government was apparently dumb enough to think that by forcing the Guardian to destroy its own hardware it would actually destroy some of the underlying data. It is this unprecedented idiocy that is most disturbing, because when interacting in a game theoretical fashion with an opponent one assumes rationality. In this case, what one got instead, was brute force and sheer, jawdropping stupidity.

Yet that is precisely what happened, and is why the stakes have suddenly been drastically higher: because the opponent now suddenly finds himself hurt, bleeding, ready to lash out at anything and everything without regard for the retaliation, and just happens to be dumb as a bag of hammers.

The full must read excerpt from Rusbridger:

Miranda, a Brazilian citizen in transit from Berlin to Brazil, said he was released without charge after nine hours of questioning but minus his laptop, cellphone and memory sticks.   

    The detention of Miranda has rightly caused international dismay because it feeds into a perception that the US and UK governments – while claiming to welcome the debate around state surveillance started by Snowden – are also intent on stemming the tide of leaks and on pursuing the whistleblower with a vengeance. That perception is right. Here follows a little background on the considerable obstacles being placed in the way of informing the public about what the intelligence agencies, governments and corporations are up to.

    A little over two months ago I was contacted by a very senior government official claiming to represent the views of the prime minister. There followed two meetings in which he demanded the return or destruction of all the material we were working on. The tone was steely, if cordial, but there was an implicit threat that others within government and Whitehall favoured a far more draconian approach.   

    The mood toughened just over a month ago, when I received a phone call from the centre of government telling me: "You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back." There followed further meetings with shadowy Whitehall figures. The demand was the same: hand the Snowden material back or destroy it. I explained that we could not research and report on this subject if we complied with this request. The man from Whitehall looked mystified. "You've had your debate. There's no need to write any more."   

    During one of these meetings I asked directly whether the government would move to close down the Guardian's reporting through a legal route – by going to court to force the surrender of the material on which we were working. The official confirmed that, in the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government's intention. Prior restraint, near impossible in the US, was now explicitly and imminently on the table in the UK. But my experience over WikiLeaks – the thumb drive and the first amendment – had already prepared me for this moment. I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations and the way in which, these days, media organisations could take advantage of the most permissive legal environments. Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him that Greenwald lived in Brazil?

    The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian's long history occurred – with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian's basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents. "We can call off the black helicopters," joked one as we swept up the remains of a MacBook Pro.   

    Whitehall was satisfied, but it felt like a peculiarly pointless piece of symbolism that understood nothing about the digital age. We will continue to do patient, painstaking reporting on the Snowden documents, we just won't do it in London. The seizure of Miranda's laptop, phones, hard drives and camera will similarly have no effect on Greenwald's work.

    The state that is building such a formidable apparatus of surveillance will do its best to prevent journalists from reporting on it. Most journalists can see that. But I wonder how many have truly understood the absolute threat to journalism implicit in the idea of total surveillance, when or if it comes – and, increasingly, it looks like "when".   

    We are not there yet, but it may not be long before it will be impossible for journalists to have confidential sources. Most reporting – indeed, most human life in 2013 – leaves too much of a digital fingerprint. Those colleagues who denigrate Snowden or say reporters should trust the state to know best (many of them in the UK, oddly, on the right) may one day have a cruel awakening. One day it will be their reporting, their cause, under attack. But at least reporters now know to stay away from Heathrow transit lounges.

[garbon]

The Guardian must be loving all of this.