That is the basic Orwell vs Huxley dystopian dichotomy right there. Will social control come through fear or pleasure? I think Huxley got it closer to correct.
Interesting that both the Guardian and the WashPost have now walked back important details of their stories. It's increasingly clear that Greenwald/Snowden basically did not accurately describe these programs, particularly the scope and oversight for queries.
Here is a new statement from the administration. Pretty interesting.
One new piece of data we have now is the small number of queries actually searched in the telephone metadata database. Less than 300 in 2012!
That's a great article, Kevin. PRISM's actually pretty mellow in terms of the "surveillance" it provides. It's not even actually "server surveillance" software, and you wouldn't be able to build a major information surveillance tool for $20 million anyway, which is a drop in the bucket in terms of major software development.
"PRISM is not an undisclosed collection or data mining program. It is an internal government computer system used to facilitate the government’s statutorily authorized collection of foreign intelligence information from electronic communication service providers under court supervision, as authorized by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) (50 U.S.C. § 1881a)."
That being said, I always kind of assume that any information I transfer digitally would be relatively easy to monitor/capture at some point in the process - SSH over HTTPS is pretty good but nothing compared to TOR (https://www.torproject.org), for example - so unless you're using TOR for all of your online communication, there's no guarantee that it won't ever be read by SOMEBODY.
My MA dissertation was actually about social control through capitalism/pleasure/Google. I'll post a link to the PDF if anybody's interested.
Greenwald/Snowden's reports came in the context of warnings over the last two years from Senators Wyden & Udall as reported by Charlie Savage/NYT in March:
WASHINGTON — For more than two years, a handful of Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee have warned that the government is secretly interpreting its surveillance powers under the Patriot Act in a way that would be alarming if the public — or even others in Congress — knew about it.
On Thursday, two of those senators — Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado — went further. They said a top-secret intelligence operation that is based on that secret legal theory is not as crucial to national security as executive branch officials have maintained.
The senators, who also said that Americans would be “stunned” to know what the government thought the Patriot Act allowed it to do, made their remarks in a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. after a Justice Department official last month told a judge that disclosing anything about the program “could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States.”
And, this story is relevant in light of the Director of National Intelligence recently denying that the NSA collects "any type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions, of Americans". This official's lack of credibility seems a far more serious matter of public concern than Snowden's or Greenwald's.
He's relying on a technicality which is lame but understandable. NSA doesn't collect the data. They store the data. They investigate the data only occasionally (with a warrant) but only when it connects to foreigners under investigation.
I do think the Verizon story is newsworthy and deserves scrutiny. I am not inclined to believe the Greenwald outrage machine's account of it though.
It's interesting, but I think the analogy to the no-fly list is very poor. For example, there are 20,000 people on the no-fly list. There were only 300 queries of the phone records database in a year.
Last week folks were speculating that Snowden took the Booz Allen job just so he could get access to classified docs to leak.
Glenn Greenwald called this a "moronic conspiracy theory."
Today in the South China Morning Post, Snowden said "My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked. That is why I accepted that position about three months ago."
I'm enjoying the shift from "He's a hero" to "his character doesn't matter".
Comments
GIVE UP
(like the Postal Service said that one time)
Interesting that both the Guardian and the WashPost have now walked back important details of their stories. It's increasingly clear that Greenwald/Snowden basically did not accurately describe these programs, particularly the scope and oversight for queries.
Here is a new statement from the administration. Pretty interesting.
One new piece of data we have now is the small number of queries actually searched in the telephone metadata database. Less than 300 in 2012!
It is easier to speculate on Greenwald's, though.
"PRISM is not an undisclosed collection or data mining program. It is an internal government computer system used to facilitate the government’s statutorily authorized collection of foreign intelligence information from electronic communication service providers under court supervision, as authorized by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) (50 U.S.C. § 1881a)."
That being said, I always kind of assume that any information I transfer digitally would be relatively easy to monitor/capture at some point in the process - SSH over HTTPS is pretty good but nothing compared to TOR (https://www.torproject.org), for example - so unless you're using TOR for all of your online communication, there's no guarantee that it won't ever be read by SOMEBODY.
My MA dissertation was actually about social control through capitalism/pleasure/Google. I'll post a link to the PDF if anybody's interested.
I do think the Verizon story is newsworthy and deserves scrutiny. I am not inclined to believe the Greenwald outrage machine's account of it though.
Snowden is a Ron Paul donor.
https://blog.pinboard.in/2013/06/persuading_david_simon/
More from Kevin Drum. http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/06/edward-snowden-says-more-info-about-direct-access-works?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed
Great! No more spying on Iran or North Korea!
http://calagator.org/events/1250464396
Glenn Greenwald called this a "moronic conspiracy theory."
Today in the South China Morning Post, Snowden said "My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked. That is why I accepted that position about three months ago."
I'm enjoying the shift from "He's a hero" to "his character doesn't matter".
http://speculativeheresy.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/wark-mckenzie-celerity.pdf