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Snowden embraces American flag in WIRED photo shoot[W:511]

You haven't proven it was only metadata. You seem under a delusion that I will take your word for it.... I don't.

You haven't proven you aren't the one behind the program, and here attempting to lay down a false trail. Why should we believe you when you say you aren't?
 
I've read that the art of interpreting metadata is being refined daily and weekly.

Some claim that more can be learned about an individual by interpreting metadata than can be learned by actually listening to phone calls.
 
Oh, okay. You know some people actually have experience in this field, right?

Mornin' OWO,

Do you have experience in this field? If so, in a generic way, can you describe this experience for us?
 
35P, US Army. That's uhhh...a little bit more than "IT".
 
We do far more than metadata collection, that's a government lie you are repeating.

Of course we do. However, the program that everyone has been trying to grant Snowden some kind of weird, sick, hero status over is a metadata collection prrogram.
 
35P, US Army. That's uhhh...a little bit more than "IT".

Rev has a few tours under his belt. I don't know if he was a siginter, but he probably has familiarity with collection.
 
You haven't proven you aren't the one behind the program, and here attempting to lay down a false trail. Why should we believe you when you say you aren't?

Of course I'm behind the program. What better way to support the NSA than denounce it? Snowden is computer generated hologram - his girlfriend was made up in a conference room in an underground bug proof bomb proof room at Ft. Meade. :mrgreen:
 
Of course I'm behind the program. What better way to support the NSA than denounce it? Snowden is computer generated hologram - his girlfriend was made up in a conference room in an underground bug proof bomb proof room at Ft. Meade. :mrgreen:

well I'm glad you are finally admitting it. I shall link this post whenever the subject comes up again, so that people know who to yell at.
 
well I'm glad you are finally admitting it. I shall link this post whenever the subject comes up again, so that people know who to yell at.

Just make sure you give credit where credit is due - I'm just following instructions from the Pentaverate.
 
Rev has a few tours under his belt. I don't know if he was a siginter, but he probably has familiarity with collection.

Meh. Maybe? I was a 35M in my first two assignments and at the time (2005) the easiest way to get a language (which I badly wanted, for a couple unrelated reasons) was to switch over to a Papa, because you need one to do that, and they had a substantial in-call. I was shocked at what was common knowledge in the HUMINT world that no one knew in the SIGINT world and vice versa.

Likewise, I've had limited experience with military folks that either 1) weren't in MI at all or 2) didn't have substantial exposure to them (senior action arm NCOs, field grade officers), but it's been my experience that unless you're intel, you have virtually no idea how collection works.

(And, of course, reading threads on DP make me positive that 99% of people don't know anything at all about it, let alone SIGINT)
 
Meh. Maybe? I was a 35M in my first two assignments and at the time (2005) the easiest way to get a language (which I badly wanted, for a couple unrelated reasons) was to switch over to a Papa, because you need one to do that, and they had a substantial in-call. I was shocked at what was common knowledge in the HUMINT world that no one knew in the SIGINT world and vice versa.

Likewise, I've had limited experience with military folks that either 1) weren't in MI at all or 2) didn't have substantial exposure to them (senior action arm NCOs, field grade officers), but it's been my experience that unless you're intel, you have virtually no idea how collection works.

(And, of course, reading threads on DP make me positive that 99% of people don't know anything at all about it, let alone SIGINT)

:shrug: my own exposure is coming from the perspective of an all source guy. I never got into world of warcraft = not allowed to do SIGINT in the Marine Corps. Limited experience, however, suggests that you are right about the failure to cross-talk well. Ideally the way you beat that is by creating multidisciplinary teams that are co-located and work on the same problem set together... and organizationally that gives senior intel guys little to nothing to do, and so they naturally resist it. I've been in places that have overcome that institutional roadblock, and it works awesome.

But why would most Americans know about collection? Heck, I went years as an all source guy before I had to sit down and look at even the basics of GSM infrastructure - and I was in a SCIF, reading SIGINT reports.
 
:shrug: my own exposure is coming from the perspective of an all source guy. I never got into world of warcraft = not allowed to do SIGINT in the Marine Corps.

:lol::lol::lol::lol:

So true.

Limited experience, however, suggests that you are right about the failure to cross-talk well. Ideally the way you beat that is by creating multidisciplinary teams that are co-located and work on the same problem set together... and organizationally that gives senior intel guys little to nothing to do, and so they naturally resist it. I've been in places that have overcome that institutional roadblock, and it works awesome.

I was a just a Joe when I wasn't one of those unicorns that knew both (just a little ol title 10 HUMINTer). So even when I became a senior NCO (out now, but I did have an assignment as a 7 before I decided I liked intel more than I liked the military), I was still able to interface with other folks pretty well cause I knew their lingo (except for the real big techies, like cyber; I'm better than the average person there, but by no means an expert). Thankfully, I never had to deal with that turf war pissing contest, for the most part. I wouldn't have had much patience for it and you know much sway an E-7 has: "Thanks for your input, Sergeant, why don't we put you as the battalion ops NCOIC instead, you'll like the hours."

But why would most Americans know about collection? Heck, I went years as an all source guy before I had to sit down and look at even the basics of GSM infrastructure - and I was in a SCIF, reading SIGINT reports.

Of course they shouldn't, but then they shouldn't go balls deep into a thread like this and try to tell people "how it is" when in reality they don't know the first thing about it, period. It's like me sitting here and telling people the ins and outs of Russian grammar, having real strong opinions on it, etc, when it turns out...oh ****...I don't even know how to speak Russian at all, let alone am I not in a position to get technical about grammatical ****. In this analogy, there are a few of us that know Russian and even a couple of us that might have a pretty good grasp of technical grammatical rules of the language. Meanwhile, there's dozens of folks that don't know Russian from Polish from Czech sitting here acting like they have something of value to share. Frankly, I enjoy getting elitist about it. "Guess what, not only do you not know what you're talking about, but you don't matter." I relish the truth in those words.
 
Of course we do. However, the program that everyone has been trying to grant Snowden some kind of weird, sick, hero status over is a metadata collection prrogram.

I consider any person who respects the US Constitution, and attempts to reveal to the public crimes against that document, to be a hero.

Diane Roark, Thomas Drake, Mr. Binney, Edward Snowden, Daniel Ellsberg, Bradley Manning.

Those are the "few good men" in government, and I'm grateful to them for revealing government crimes.
 
35P, US Army. That's uhhh...a little bit more than "IT".







You listened, you don't really implement systems, correct me if I am wrong. what you do vs what the NSA does is sort of bush league.

BTW, did/do you do both ELINT and COMINT? were you/are you involved in cryptonalysis or traffic analysis if so in what capacity?



BTW My company (among other things):

Firewall specialists, security design and implementation
Penetration testing
IT Forensics
etc. etc.

certifications among others:
GSE GIAC Security Expert
GSE-Malware GIAC Security Expert in Malware
GSE-Compliance GIAC Security Expert in Compliance
GIAC
GISSP
CISM
COMPTIA Security +
CEH
NUMEROUS Vendor certifications from checkpoint, Juniper and many others.

One of our core functions is bringing companies to ISO/IEC 27001 certification. (this is our money maker)...


so, yes, indeed "some of us do know", Using protocolled intercept methods as crypto's (or whatever you guys call yourselves) do, is not the same as know what other services and systems are implemented and who the USG is spying on in total. our unique position and understanding of the technology gives us a very clear insight as to what they are saying vs what they are actually doing.
 
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Of course we do. However, the program that everyone has been trying to grant Snowden some kind of weird, sick, hero status over is a metadata collection prrogram.

It's more than "metadata". And do you know what you can decode as to who is doing what with just "metadata"?


Hell enough that we "kill people" because of what they decoded:

Ex-NSA Chief: ‘We Kill People Based on Metadata’ - ABC News

Oh but we don't do that domestically, we just collect the data.... ;)




What the NSA is spying on us:

1. The NSA collects every American's phone records (normally to see who you or I called, required a warrant in the past).
2. The PRISM program lets the NSA access private user data on leading online services
3. The NSA engages in offensive hacking operations
4. The NSA taps long-distance internet connections including domestic.
5. The NSA intercepted data flowing within Google and Yahoo data centers
6. The NSA tracks cell phone locations around the world.
7. From 2001 to 2011, the NSA collected vast amounts of information about Americans' internet usage
8. The NSA has undermined the security of encryption products


The last one is huge. if you come out with encryption and don't provide them a key, you get shut down./
 
They are called Stations.

Yeah, and in Big DOD that's Bad because Reasons. What we really need is large rooms full of all source guys, in an entirely different building from their collectors, messing around on facebook.
 
I consider any person who respects the US Constitution, and attempts to reveal to the public crimes against that document, to be a hero.

Diane Roark, Thomas Drake, Mr. Binney, Edward Snowden, Daniel Ellsberg, Bradley Manning.

Those are the "few good men" in government, and I'm grateful to them for revealing government crimes.

Don't forget Ana Montes, Aldrich Ames, or Robert Hansen! Heroes all!
 
It's more than "metadata". And do you know what you can decode as to who is doing what with just "metadata"?

Hell enough that we "kill people" because of what they decoded:

Ex-NSA Chief: ‘We Kill People Based on Metadata’ - ABC News

Uh.... yeah. Metadata as a subject includes things like "locational data". When you've got the phone number of Abu McJihad, leader of the Jihad Army of the Jihadi's for Jihad (JAJJ), having his communications device pinging off a tower and broadcasting his location is useful as all get out.

Oh but we don't do that domestically, we just collect the data.... ;)

:shrug: can you point to any drone strikes on US soil that have been fed by metadata collection? It seems like random **** blowing up would be fairly difficult to hide.

What the NSA is spying on us:

1. The NSA collects every American's phone records (normally to see who you or I called, required a warrant in the past).
2. The PRISM program lets the NSA access private user data on leading online services

The Judiciary has signed off multiple times on the metadata collection program which is also:

3. The NSA engages in offensive hacking operations

Yup. That is their Title 10 responsibility. There is another organization called the "CIA" which engages in offensive HUMINT operations, actually going out and spying on people through Mark 1 eyeballs rather than via their networks. Heck, there is another organization - the NGA - which spies on people through sattelites which it uses to take pictures!!!! :shock:

Seriously, man. Don't discredit a reasonable constitutional question by going overboard and accusing the NSA of fully lawful (and in fact, required) actions.

4. The NSA taps long-distance internet connections including domestic.

As they should. If Abu McJihad decides to contact his good buddy Ahmed McKillTheInfidels via their gmail accounts to do some joint op planning, the idea that we shouldn't pay attention to their correspondence because the email bounces off one of google's servers between Libya and Tunisia is self-destructively idiotic.

5. The NSA intercepted data flowing within Google and Yahoo data centers

See #4

6. The NSA tracks cell phone locations around the world.

As well they should. Although actually your VLR does this :)

7. From 2001 to 2011, the NSA collected vast amounts of information about Americans' internet usage

I think you are confusing "the NSA" with "google".

8. The NSA has undermined the security of encryption products

The last one is huge. if you come out with encryption and don't provide them a key, you get shut down./

:shrug: welcome to the 21st Century, where national security depends on this stuff. You wouldn't like the alternative (effective government takeover of the major providers) any better.
 
You listened, you don't really implement systems, correct me if I am wrong. what you do vs what the NSA does is sort of bush league.

35Ps often work at NSA. There is no "vs". You can't even go to the training for it without a TS//SCI and access to NSAnet.

For example, I haven't been to the facility in San Antonio; otherwise, there's not a RSOC I haven't had business to conduct in at some point or another. And yes, I've held jobs where they paid for me to go get my CompTIA certs on company time, although I assume they have some type of shelf-life and I'm no longer technically certified.

It's more than "metadata". And do you know what you can decode as to who is doing what with just "metadata"?

Hell enough that we "kill people" because of what they decoded:

Ex-NSA Chief: ‘We Kill People Based on Metadata’ - ABC News

Hey! That was my job in Anbar! But here's the tiny little fact that's a little bit important in this whole discussion: NSA can't look at the metadata that's stored without a specific warrant. They just store it, because Verizon and AT&T and whatnot were not doing so (I dunno if that changed, I don't deal with that anymore), and NSA wanted to be able to go back through it if it needed to and realized it couldn't subpoena these companies for information they actually no longer had.

1. The NSA collects every American's phone records (normally to see who you or I called, required a warrant in the past).
2. The PRISM program lets the NSA access private user data on leading online services
3. The NSA engages in offensive hacking operations
4. The NSA taps long-distance internet connections including domestic.
5. The NSA intercepted data flowing within Google and Yahoo data centers
6. The NSA tracks cell phone locations around the world.
7. From 2001 to 2011, the NSA collected vast amounts of information about Americans' internet usage
8. The NSA has undermined the security of encryption products

Wow! A cryptography agency breaks encryption!?!?!?! I'm shocked! A spy agency having to do with SIGINT conducts offensive operations on computers!? Noooooooo! Like what did you think this agency did, dude? What do you think it should do?
 
Lets get one thing corrected. I am all for the NSA spying on those who wage war or would help those wage war on the US, with a warrant if it involved us citizens, overseas all the power too them.



Uh.... yeah. Metadata as a subject includes things like "locational data". When you've got the phone number of Abu McJihad, leader of the Jihad Army of the Jihadi's for Jihad (JAJJ), having his communications device pinging off a tower and broadcasting his location is useful as all get out.

Harmless... lol


Metadata is the index to all the that E-content. That NSA is able to record, say, a days worth of AT&T phone calls. Its agents can then easily locate any particular call within that huge chunk of metadata. Such "basic" information can be used for geo-location information tracking of physical movements. Metadata showing that you called your doctor, followed by metadata about that labcorp she called next, followed by your trip to a pharmacy might fall into the “something you want to hide” tick box. But in reality, using metadata to learn about your medical history may not be even necessary. some insurance co's based on the insistence of the government have an exception to the privacy policy for example Kaiser Permanente, states: “We may also disclose your PHI [personal health information] to authorized federal officials as necessary for national security and intelligence activities.” HBCBC has a similar exception as do regional medical outfits.

But one mere example. What I can find out about you if I have the metadata would shock you.


:shrug: can you point to any drone strikes on US soil that have been fed by metadata collection? It seems like random **** blowing up would be fairly difficult to hide.

****, obama wouldn't rule it out at first.


The Judiciary has signed off multiple times on the metadata collection program which is also:

The Judiciary once signed off on slavery as well.

Yup. That is their Title 10 responsibility. There is another organization called the "CIA" which engages in offensive HUMINT operations, actually going out and spying on people through Mark 1 eyeballs rather than via their networks. Heck, there is another organization - the NGA - which spies on people through sattelites which it uses to take pictures!!!! :shock:

Again, on foreign folks they suspect of wanting to wage war or terrorism on us, great. randomly spying on Americans on american soil. Why?

Seriously, man. Don't discredit a reasonable constitutional question by going overboard and accusing the NSA of fully lawful (and in fact, required) actions.


I disagree, I think much of what the NSA does is extra constitutional.

For example:

"The Patriot Act elevated a once rarely used tool, the National Security Letter (NSL), into the mainstream of government practice. National Security Letters are an extraordinary search procedure that gives the FBI the power to compel the disclosure of customer records held by banks, telephone companies, Internet service providers, public libraries, and others. These entities are prohibited, or “gagged,” from telling anyone about their receipt of the NSL. Though the Justice Department itself cited abuse of the letters by the FBI in 2008, in 2012 the FBI used 15,229 National Security Letters to gather information on Americans. NSLs do not require judicial approval and the built-in gag orders prevent anyone from seeking judicial relief; indeed, most people will never even know that they were the subject of an NSL. And at the moment, the Department of Justice is trying to keep classified an 86-page court opinion that determined the government violated the spirit of federal surveillance laws and engaged in unconstitutional spying.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper directly lied to that check-and-balance branch of the government, Congress, in a public session. (He later termed his response the “least untruthful” answer.) And we wouldn’t even know that he lied, or much of anything else about the NSA’s surveillance activities here or globally, if it weren’t for one man’s courage in exposing them. The government had kept it all from us for 12 years and never showed the slightest sign of reconsidering any part of that policy. Without Snowden, we would not even know what needs checking and balancing."


Scary **** right there.




As they should. If Abu McJihad decides to contact his good buddy Ahmed McKillTheInfidels via their gmail accounts to do some joint op planning, the idea that we shouldn't pay attention to their correspondence because the email bounces off one of google's servers between Libya and Tunisia is self-destructively idiotic.

I'm not against this.




See #4



As well they should. Although actually your VLR does this :)


again, overseas, fine, but an nsa game of "6 degrees of separation" with no checks and balances, is patently un-American.


I think you are confusing "the NSA" with "google".


Pretty much interchangable with what they are willing to share.




:shrug: welcome to the 21st Century, where national security depends on this stuff. You wouldn't like the alternative (effective government takeover of the major providers) any better.


Why? Why does the USG need unrestricted gag order searches of american enterprises and people?
 
35Ps often work at NSA. There is no "vs". You can't even go to the training for it without a TS//SCI and access to NSAnet.

I would assume it's a special assignment and not all are qualified?

For example, I haven't been to the facility in San Antonio; otherwise, there's not a RSOC I haven't had business to conduct in at some point or another. And yes, I've held jobs where they paid for me to go get my CompTIA certs on company time, although I assume they have some type of shelf-life and I'm no longer technically certified.

Well, we are current on all the above certifications and are IT security experts.


Hey! That was my job in Anbar! But here's the tiny little fact that's a little bit important in this whole discussion: NSA can't look at the metadata that's stored without a specific warrant. They just store it, because Verizon and AT&T and whatnot were not doing so (I dunno if that changed, I don't deal with that anymore), and NSA wanted to be able to go back through it if it needed to and realized it couldn't subpoena these companies for information they actually no longer had.


WHAT????? Neither MARINA nor MAINWAY have any such warrant requirement and are extra-constitutional.



Wow! A cryptography agency breaks encryption!?!?!?! I'm shocked! A spy agency having to do with SIGINT conducts offensive operations on computers!? Noooooooo! Like what did you think this agency did, dude? What do you think it should do?

On American computers d00d.

Again, I don't care about foreign nationals or those overseas.
 
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