from the all-your-data-are-belong-to-us dept.
Fluffeh writes:
"Ars Technica is reporting on NSA data retention efforts.
As a result of the myriad of pending lawsuits challenging the legality of the National Security Agency's bulk metadata collection program, the United States government now wants to keep its records beyond the existing five-year limit. ...must ensure that all potentially relevant evidence is retained which includes the [business records] metadata obtained in bulk from certain telecommunications service providers pursuant to this Court's production orders. To meet this obligation, the Government seeks an order that would allow the NSA to retain the [business records] metadata for non-analytic purposes until relieved of its preservation obligations...
Link to Original 14 page PDF."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by r00t on Tuesday March 04 2014, @08:21PM
If the "evidence" was garnered under any of the 2,776 legal violations* by the NSA, then I would say "No" but we all know the law only applies to those who cannot circumvent it by means of affluence, political pandering, or sexual favors**.
*http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-secu rity/nsa-broke-privacy-rules-thousands-of-times-pe r-year-audit-finds/2013/08/15/3310e554-05ca-11e3-a 07f-49ddc7417125_story.html
**http://www.theonion.com/articles/congressional-a ides-withholding-sex-until-budget-c,34151/
(Score: 3, Funny) by frojack on Tuesday March 04 2014, @08:27PM
Please learn to post a working link. Its not that hard.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by r00t on Tuesday March 04 2014, @10:03PM
Wow, did I ever buckfeta that. my [washingtonpost.com] apologies [theonion.com].
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday March 04 2014, @08:33PM
Does NSA try to make us believe they are not rogue and there is a(n obscure and super-rogue) entity which actually tasked them to (collect and) preserve this data, they are only following orders and need to be relieved of their obligation to be able to follow the law?
If positive to the above, the next question is: does someone really believe them? (I mean... except cold fjord)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Fluffeh on Tuesday March 04 2014, @11:15PM
No, it's a rather logical (and brilliant) political play. As there are a bunch of apparently vocal folks snapping at their heels, the NSA is rather worried about losing the their "shiny thing". So, rather than make the conversation about whether or not they should be gathering the data in the first place (and argument that they would be hard pressed to win on a legal or opinion basis) they are trying to change the conversation to "But we have to keep this data for x,y and z".
This has a two fold benefit to them, firstly, they have a better leg to stand on in terms of legal and general opinion (Keeping potential evidence sounds legit right?) but secondly and probably of much better political benefit to them, by changing the argument to this, it is presumed that they will keep gathering the data unmolested by all those pesky congressmen, politicians and public.
This game is about looking many moves ahead - and changing the "rules" of the game to suit their end purpose.
(Score: 1) by Kromagv0 on Tuesday March 04 2014, @08:42PM
And I want a pony.
Actually what I want is the metadata they have collected on my various elected officials. Would have loved for them to not have wasted their effort and my money on this utterly pointless pursuit but since they did at least lets use it for some good and find out how corrupt our leaders are.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday March 04 2014, @09:16PM
their credit card companies, the grocery store chains in your electoral district, Starbucks, McDonalds and the occasional swing club.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Tuesday March 04 2014, @08:43PM
If you or your company is sued, and computer records are involved (and these days they almost always are) you are legally obligated to retain these records for discovery purposes.
If you destroy the records you are hiding evidence.
So the NSA is essentially correct on this point. Some of that data may come under subpoena later in these pending court cases. If they destroy it, there would be a howl of cover-up and evidence tampering.
Of course, this is putting the NSA's intentions in the best possible light, giving them the benefit of all possible doubt.
We've learned that isn't the wisest thing to do.
I suspect some use of this data will be made by the NSA, possibly to investigate those litigating against the NSA.
It should probably be taken from their hands, but into the hands of a Special Master [wikipedia.org] appointed by the court to hold and guard the data. Someone who can be trusted to be totally fair, and knows something about data analysis and extraction of key elements on demand.
Maybe Wikileaks? [ running and ducking....]
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Tuesday March 04 2014, @10:00PM
Having a 3rd party hold the data is the correct course of action. Sadly, I would trust WikiLeaks with it more than most. They at least seem to have the proper ethics for this sort of job.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by etherscythe on Tuesday March 04 2014, @11:37PM
...as opposed to simply redacting all the data before turning it over? They'll rather pull Executive Privilege or State Secrets or some other bald-faced lie than hand over any useful information. But they want to use that excuse to hold onto the data longer? Show of hands: how many people trust them to actually delete the data, ever? Anyone?
I guess they're putting a good show of being "accountable" on, while fishing for an excuse/loophole to continue doing what they do. I'm surprised at the audacity, almost; I just have to remember how the director lied directly to sitting congresspeople, and not only still has his job but has faced no censure whatsoever.
(Side note: I know you're being facetious, but I wouldn't trust Wikileaks with anything critical and not have a backup, considering they lost the entire Bank of America trove (or at least the key to it) before it got released. I was really looking forward to looking through that, too)
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 1) by darkfeline on Tuesday March 04 2014, @08:50PM
How much are they planning to extend it?
In any case, I can't really trust the NSA, I'm sure everyone here understands. If this passes, just watch, X years later, a new bill for extending it further.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 1) by neagix on Tuesday March 04 2014, @08:59PM
(Score: 2, Insightful) by The Grim Reefer on Tuesday March 04 2014, @10:01PM
For as long as they can get away with. And then keep it in perpetuity until they get caught.
(Score: 4, Funny) by snick on Tuesday March 04 2014, @10:25PM
Until the original Mickey Mouse cartoons enter the public domain.
(Score: 1) by thoughtlover on Wednesday March 05 2014, @02:31AM
I was thinking more of Darth Vader saying, "Pray I don't alter the deal further," but you gave me the image of Darth Mickey. So that's how copyright mashups are made legal these days, huh? /digress
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday March 04 2014, @09:08PM
... to collect its metadata.
To prevent mobile analytics, you need to root your device then enter stuff like the following into its /etc/hosts:
0.0.0.0 hosted-pixel.com ... and so on
0.0.0.0 fonts.adobe.com
0.0.0.0 a.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 b.doubclick.net #
0.0.0.0 google-analytics.com
0.0.0.0 www.google-analytics.com
0.0.0.0 ssl.google-analytics.com
You will find that your web browsing goes much faster. It is not due to slow javascript as everyone seems to think, it's due to all the DNS queries that result from one single document being composed of URLs from fifty different hostnames.
Loading the components of a single document from more than one host also breaks chunked encoding, that is, you can't get all the components of the doc back-to-back in one single TCP stream.
That uses more CPU time and memory on the server, your client box, all the routers in between and all the nameservers involved.
It consumes dramatically more energy, and produces dramatically more heat. That's not a problem for the client but it is a problem for the servers.
A good friend of mine owns the prgmr.com [prgmr.com] Xen VM and colocation hosting service. He tells me that his number one cost center is electric power, not bandwidth, monthly transfer, memory, cpu or storage.
Rather more serious than the power directly consumed by his servers, is the power required to keep his data center cool, the cost of all the cooling equipment, the cost of getting Pacific Gas and Electric to drop that fat a power line into his data center.
Everyone seems to think the NSA drops wiretaps into the fiber all over creation. I expect they do from time to time, but they don't need to.
Instead they offer free emoticon servers, with the added benefit of offering their client webmasters free analytics reports, provided that the emoticons are served off the host of the analytics service and not your own host.
Consider that for a graphic designer to purchase the entire Adobe font catalog outright would set them back tens of millions of dollars, but you can get the entire font catalog for your website provided the fonts are served by Adobe and not by your own server.
It seems that Adobe a year or two ago acquired a leading analytics service. Funny that.
I'm working on a KickStarter campaign to put an end to web and mobile analytics. More or less it will consist of radio, newspaper and web ads that explain how to blackhole a server with your hosts file, along with a request for a donation that will be used to buy more ads in other markets.
I have thirty years experience in sales and marketing. Don't think I don't know what I'm doing.
I will be incorporating a non-profit foundation behind Solving the Software Problem [warplife.com] towards the end of next week.
It will not be at first a 501(c)3 tax-deductible corporation. One has to convince the IRS to grant that status, which takes at least a year, sometimes a lot longer.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]