[nylug-talk] Broadband withIP addresses

[Chris Knadle]

On Thursday 21 February 2008, Ruben Safir wrote:
> >   No one is suggesting that.  What the chorus of activists are
> > suggesting are the breaches of FISA laws. FISA laws make it difficult
> > for people to exploit our government funded surveillance programs.
>
> Tell me more.  If it is OT here, you can bring it to the NYLXS hangout
> mailing list.

   Perhaps it's OT concerning the original subject of the thread, but 
personally I consider this on-topic for the nylug-talk mailing list, since 
it's an issue of freedom.

> For what it's worth
>
> A) - privacy is not one of the constitution guaranteed rights
>
> B) - I personally couldn't care less if they are listening to
> my phone as long as they are actually protecting me from being
> nuked

   With oversight it makes sense to allow wiretaps; without any oversight 
whatsoever it's ripe for being abused.  I don't hear anybody trying to stop 
wiretaps altogether -- most just want some kind of due process.  My 
understanding is that following due process allows for wiretapping for up to 
three days prior to getting a FISA order; and FISA orders to date have been a 
rubber-stamp and none has been denied.  The White House's claim that they 
need the ability to have wonton wiretaps with no oversight or even records 
(which are kept as secret) is contrary to common sense.

> C) - What they would do with any information they get from me seriously
> would worry me if it was being used inapropriately, especially for
> someone's private gain.

   Homeland Security's plan to integrate all of the various databases together 
increases the risk of a data leak.  There have been plenty of stories of data 
leaks in various companies and agencies, and Homeland Security has had 
several security checkups and routinely get a grade "D" or below.

> D) - The current debate has been over wiretaps of international calls
> THROUGH US systems, which really makes sense to me since SO MUCH of the
> internation phone traffic goes through the US.  I don't see why the
> government should need to put a wiretap in Islamabad if the traffic is
> going through a US controlled satelite.

   From what I've read, the NSA have some extremely smart people.  You can 
absolutely guarantee that there's a whole lot more going on concerning the 
wiretaps than we know about.  Nobody builds a system that gleans as much data 
as they can without some infrastructure for automated processing.

> E) - I'm worried that they are wasting resources using too large of a "net"
> Someone has to go through all those communications.  They'd need to be
> targeted better than the NSA did during the Vietnam era when they just cast
> a larger and larger net without cause and wasting millions of dollars.

   I think about a year ago I read a story about how we now have an 
*increased* risk of missing data because intelligence gathering operations 
are too busy searching all of the false positives.  So it's clear that yeah, 
they're using too much of a net, or at least they were a year ago.

   -- Chris

-- 

Chris Knadle
Chris.Knadle at coredump.us