Glenn Greenwald: Low-Level NSA Analysts Have ‘Powerful and Invasive’ Search Tool

ABC News ^ | Jul 28, 2013 | Kari Rea

[Texas Fossil]

Today on “This Week,” Glenn Greenwald – the reporter who broke the story about the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs – claimed that those NSA programs allowed even low-level analysts to search the private emails and phone calls of Americans.

“The NSA has trillions of telephone calls and emails in their databases that they’ve collected over the last several years,” Greenwald told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos. “And what these programs are, are very simple screens, like the ones that supermarket clerks or shipping and receiving clerks use, where all an analyst has to do is enter an email address or an IP address, and it does two things. It searches that database and lets them listen to the calls or read the emails of everything that the NSA has stored, or look at the browsing histories or Google search terms that you’ve entered, and it also alerts them to any further activity that people connected to that email address or that IP address do in the future.”

[no-to-illegals]

yep

[B4Ranch]

Well said. I think you are speaking for the majority of educated people.

[who_would_fardels_bear]

IMHO:

The Constitution says we are innocent until proven guilty. That we cannot be subject to unwarranted seizures. That we can't be forced to testify against ourselves.

I don't want anyone in the government, not even the head of the NSA, CIA, or the president (even if he were a rightwing extremist) to collect and scrutinize my emails and phone conversations unless and until I engage in behavior sufficient to grant a warrant to the proper authorities to collect such information.

I would rather live in a country where there is a small chance I could get blown up by a terrorist than in the current one where everyone's information is illegally and unconstitutionally collected and analyzed.

I want freedom more than security.

Which do you prefer?

[Texas Fossil]

unless and until I engage in behavior sufficient to grant a warrant to the proper authorities to collect such information.

There in lies the problem. The Proper Authorities are now the Subversives in the Nation and our Congress refuses to deal with it. They refuse to keep their oaths, to "Protect and Defend the Constitution of the US". None dare call it treason, but it is.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

It’s a bit like an episode from the old Twilight Zone. Back in the day they had episodes like “what if you could read tomorrow’s newspaper today?”. Or “what if you could read peoples’ minds”?

Here it’s what if you could type in a few key search terms and have a complete window into any human being in the US?

As I recall the Twilight Zone episodes the moral to the story was that in the end, like Eve, biting into these sorts of apples “seems like a great idea a the time” in the end it leads to all sort of unforeseen and undesirable consequences.

We’ve opened a giant Pandora’s box and closing it may be impossible at this point.

[butterdezillion]

Goes shaky, like wanders over the page?

[Texas Fossil]

Agreed. Very good example.

It is as F. Bastiat said:

“That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen” (would best had been foreseen)

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15962/15962-h/15962-h.htm

Agreed, Pandora’s box is open. And are the unintended consequences irreversible? Indeed.

[txhurl]

No, the cursor just kind of vibrates and doesn’t move smoothly, get stuck.

Hey, the above people I pinged, what was going on with the Snowden Killshot thread that just got pulled ‘nothing to see here, move along’ I looked around and it looks like Ed didn’t say that, someone punked using his name? What happened?