Posted on 06/15/2013 2:08:07 PM PDT by Lazamataz
Earlier this year, Edward Snowden went to The Guardian, who then published an article on June the 6th that had numerous damning revelations about the National Security Agency.
Edward Snowden broke an oath he had sworn, and revealed that the NSA had committed acts of domestic espionage far beyond anything most people had ever suspected. He revealed that data about the phone calls of millions of Americans, the entire customer base of Verizon, had been collected and stored in perpetiuty. Experts concluded that the same records were likely collected and stored by the NSA, from most or all of the other telephone carriers.
There are no white-hat-wearing good guys in this story.
Edward Snowden violated an oath of secrecy. Some, including the Speaker of the House John Boehner, have called him a traitor. While I cannot go that far, I do consider his actions unacceptable and unethical.
Yet the NSA has systematically violated the privacy of almost every American who use the telephone. These actions are also unacceptable and highly unethical.
And therein lies the moral dilemma. It seems there is no one to root for in this story. On one hand, we have a man who violated his personal integrity and his oath; and on the other, we have an agency who has overstepped the boundaries most Americans find tolerable with regards to privacy.
Few phone calls were listened to, although a small number were. However, much information can be gleaned by a complete record of who a person calls, and how often, and when. This information should never be collected or kept, unless a warrant is issued for a particular person and for a specific law enforcement reason. While a warrant is rumored to have been issued, if it exists, it was done in secret and it is unacceptably broad. It covers all Americans, even the vast majority who are not under suspicion. It amounts to a fishing expedition. It is not how America is supposed to operate.
These actions by the NSA are violations of all of our privacy, on a grand scale, remind us of nothing so much as the East German Stasi -- that secret-police group in the formerly Communist state that kept tabs on the entire population to ferret out the few lovers of freedom and free markets.
Snowden has said a few things about his revelations:
While the actions of Edward Snowden were underhanded and immoral, the actions of our government were even more so -- simply because of the scale and the number of people affected.
There is an underreported aspect to the story of the NSA intercepts: Text messages and electronic text communications are kept in their entirity. This means that if you have sent a password or a credit card via electronic media of nearly any flavor, it now sits in the data centers of the National Security Agency. Furthermore, the ability and the opportunity to abuse this information against political opponents is huge, and this administration has already demonstrated a great propensity to target its political opposition with any tool at their disposal (c.f., the targetting of 'Tea Party' and "Patriotic" 501-c political action organizations).
Congress must rein the NSA in. The President has already said he won't, and the Democrat-controlled Senate cannot be counted on to do the right thing.
Your 202 calls are Tea Party.
Not Rush, Hannity, Levin, Savage, Boortz, Imus, Gallagher, Reagan Liddy or Elder?
Vendome, that is an awesome compilation of the state of telecommunications and privacy. thank you!
I had forgotten about Carnivore. we used to discuss that and Echelon here on FR many years ago.
Sad but true, dear cynwoody!
We are screwed because no one can stop this government interconnected maze of physical and airborne impulses operating over the earth.
It is a tower of Babel that only God can stop as He did the Babel tower.
It is “1984”. Hussein has the power now to shut off our TVs and radios any time he wants and use those to tell us what to do and what not to do. I have a battery ham radio receiver so “maybe” news could be had from that if Hussein shuts down everything else. I'll have power due to a decent size solar panel with connected charger and new type eneloop batteries of the sizes I need. I wouldn't run out of power to keep the ham receiver working.
Of course, Hussein's Utah project knows I have those. Unless he breaks in my house and goes to my back garden, he isn't getting my power set up. If someone tried that, the weapons he also knows I have, would be used by me.
Thanks so much for working on that long article. I have copied and saved it.
Unlike Echelon, Carnivore was admitted to and spelled by your government.
I still they are wrong.
They are not gathering information from a “free” service, such as yahoo or gmail.
They are gathering information on services that are owned and paid for by subscribers who own those telephone numbers, email addresses, web addresses, txtng, instant messaging, etc.
The have no right to eavesdrop on any portion of layer of the OSI that is paid for by a company, person or group.
Layer 1: physical layer - this is the keyboard, router and every device on a LAN. It is paid for or leased by the company, person or group. It is real property that has been fully paid for or has a buyout option at the end of a lease.
Layer 2: data link layer - I’m going to simplify this part. This is essentially the routers on a LAN/WAN/MAN. It is paid for or leased by the company, person or group. It is real property that has been fully paid for or has a buyout option at the end of a lease.
Layer 3: network layer - This is the service that provides links from one network to another or egress/ingress and transit to and through another network to reach a distant machine/user. Think PSTN services, ISP, MAN/WAN, Frame Relay, VPN, MPLS, Inmarsat(satellite/earthstation), Gmarsaetc(satellite/earthstation), etc. These are services that are contracted for a period of time and sometimes owned outright. They are service that are rented on a session sometimes as well.
In any case, they are services that are paid for by persons, companies and groups but, essentially it’s like renting a car in some instances or leasing a car. You could also make the analogy using a home.
You maintain a certain “Castle Right” over these services, as they are paid for.
If a cop wanted to enter your home, hotel room or vehicle, which you rent or lease, they are barred without reasonable suspicion or a warrant.
Layer 4: transport layer - This is how traffic is really routed beyond your carrier, which you pay for and is built into their business model, as they pay another provider or have a mutual interest and agreement to enable traffic to flow from, to and through another or mulitiple carriers.
Essentially, your service provider has only so much reach or connections to the various highways. Think phone company as an example. Your local phone company can reach many places in the country but, cannot reach all of them, as it is logistically not possible. So they create agreements with other carriers to enable traffic to transit from the most distant end in their network and then pass it off to another provider and this can be done several times just to get to a distant phone.
There is, in fact, a consortium of the top 5 carriers that enable traffic to transit to and through each others networks for reducing traffic loads, cost to transmit and plain a logical link that wouldn’t exist without the consortium.
It is a paid service by persons, companies and groups. You are still paying for service through a private organization, who may rely on partners to complete transmissions to distant ends and is a closed network that does not transit a government service.
Your right to privacy is still unalienable.
Here think of private plane, jet or commercial plane. They too operate on networks of sorts, hubs and airports that are privately operated.
In any case, they are services that are paid for by persons, companies and groups but, essentially it’s like renting a car in some instances or leasing a car. You could also make the analogy using a home.
You maintain a certain “Castle Right” over these services, as they are paid for.
If a cop wanted to enter your home, hotel room or vehicle, which you rent or lease, they are barred without reasonable suspicion or a warrant.
Layer 5: session layer - , Layer 6: presentation layer - , Layer 7: application layer. Without getting into the weeds, I have compiled them as a simple explanation. These layers are how all the computers in the routing talk to each other. They are owned and leased by service providers who are private entities. They in turn logically, because there is no other way for traffic to be routed, to users who are persons, companies and groups.
They pay for the services and immune to 4th amendment piercing, as far as I am concerned.
Here think of traffic controllers, radar, WAAS and ground crew who direct airplanes to gates or to runways and provide logical timing of planes ingressing and eggressing not only the airport but, the traffic space around it.
In any case all this is paid for by private persons, companies or groups to private businesses in the entire OSI model
In my opinion they are immune to piercings of the 4th amendment and ultimately the 1st.
The government has no part in the creation, implementation, maintenance elements of businesses.
Here is one of my explanations to customer on how traffic is routed and what they can expect or what their responsibilities are to ensure complete and secure transmission over any medium they use to send a thought, product or even a spreadsheet to anyone.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3031768/posts?page=106#106
You’ll get the idea by the time you get to Layer three of the OSI model and that may be all you need to know. In fact, I tell customers that the rest may be more detailed and complicated than they care to hear and I can explain it if they honestly have the time(never been asked to)
The important part is what elements they own, lease or rent and have 4th amendment rights the same as if they owned, leased or rented a domicile, room on a ship, hotel room, private plane, commercial plane, Any motorized vehicle, etc.
Once they pierce yoru 4th amendment they can rob you of your 1st. Once they do that they can infringe on your 2nd, in certain quasi ways your 3rd, edges of your 5th and so on.
I don’t think of them as “media,” tho I guess talk radio guys do fall in that category. Maybe I should have said “MSM,” but still, have you ever tried to get thru to any of them?
And what could they do? What would they do? Would they pursue your challenge or just give you 20 seconds on the air? Are they big enough to take on the govt? If they did take on your story, would the word have gotten out beyond their audience(s) or would it have been considered strictly ‘right wing’ anti-Obama propaganda? How easily it could have been cast as another ‘birther’ story, not to be taken seriously.
It’s easier for a big, foreign press (with substantial left wing cred) to get the word out and persist in revelations. Talk radio isn’t really an appropriate format for something this big. Breitbart, were he still alive, might have been a viable option.
We really appreciate your simplifying these technical details for us. It is plain to see that the Constitutional Republic is now dead. With a corrupted court system and complete data enabling for government snooping, there is nothing now that is actually guaranteed by a document which a regime can and does ignore in order to expand their powers over US.
May have to eventually meet on a Green(lawn) in Concord, MA to spell out our grievances....
In 2000, at a National Press Club event for young future journalists, Jack Anderson made the point that We The People are the actual sovereigns in this Constitutional Republic. sadly, we have been complete usurped through treachery of the very representatives we elected. Short of bloody finality, I don't see US ever being the sovereigns again in America. Our elected scoundrels do not want to give up their power over US and they have the means now to crush opposition to their deceitful rule.
You can’t fix stupid...anymore than you can argue with an atheist about proof of God, much less his relevancy in your life and the atheists..
me to, neither did I
What will writers in Great Britain or China do? What can they do that all the people I mentioned couldn't or wouldn't do?
Are they big enough to take on the govt?
How many Americans pay attention to foreign media sources?
Talk radio isn’t really an appropriate format for something this big.
I have more confidence in the ability of our conservative media than in Greenwald, foreigners and the anti-American left.
” That is a beautifully presented, well thought out editorial piece, Lazamataz. Great job!”
Yeah,. Well written, reasoned, and hott damm provocative.
B U M P
I’m sure others have brought this up: what is the worst about all of this is the fact that my private information is being STORED. Who says that it CAN’T be hacked? Who says that some other employee might not divulge, leak or in any manner, give out information to other organizations...crime orgs...huge corporations...UNIONS? That is the scariest part of all of this to me.
oh...and please put me on your ping list.
From the horses’ mouths. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/16/snowden-whistleblower-nsa-officials-roundtable/2428809/
Thank you for this interesting, informative, and convincing post.
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