PRISM - Who else is disgusted by this?

[tvbcof]

Remember the Boeing/Airbus scandal?
And that was Echelon only, i dont even want to think what they are doing nowadays.

I guess the NSA will just have to go to some really secure method for making their bribes and payoffs.

Like using bitcoin.

I don't think it Bitcoin a very useful vehicle unless the recipient has the same sorts of speculative hopes that some of us (like yours truly) hold.

The persistent and public ledger makes Bitcoin transactions highly prone to analysis by anyone with technical skill are resource, and it's a bloody nightmare to covertly cash out into fiat which 99.9% of the potential recipients would wish to do if the solution is used to pay off independent conspirators.  Currently the market cap is to small for anything meaningful anyway.

Indeed, one of the biggest arguments in my mind for Bitcoin being a wholly private development effort is that it suck so badly for typical covert work.

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[tvbcof]

I was musing about LOVEINT and such things today while working and my mind wandered back to an earlier time when I (in theory) served our country in the armed forces.

We had an officer who, IIRC, served in S2 (battalion intel.)  We'll call him Lt. Man.  He apparently had a neighbor who was female and he had a habit of sneaking over to her window and spying on her.  He was caught.  Friends in S1 (battalion admin) pulled his records and the victims testimony.  When she caught him he said "I'm looking for my cat.  Have you seen it?  Meow, Meow."  We were rolling on the floor laughing at the thought.  He was found guilty of 'conduct unbecoming and officer' and demoted to buck private.  Dunno what other punishment he may have received.  We didn't see him around after that which is unfortunate because we would have had great fun making cat noises when we saw him.

Anyway, someone amusingly asserted 'It's not like some creepy stalker would be interested in working as an NSA analyst or anything.'  Hit the nail on the head.  Had Lt. Pvt. Man been a little more careful/lucky there is every possibility that he would be a higher-up in NSA right now, particularly if was able to supply his superiors with the kind of glossies that got them off.  One senses that Porter Goss might have had a weakness for such things.

[tvbcof]

I've 'quasi-known' that the story-line about B. Assad using his chemical weapons at all is a bunch of BS in the same way I 'quasi-knew' that S. Hussein had a WMD store that in any way threatened us (though it took me by surprise that he was able to destroy everything he had which I didn't think possible even if he tried.)

For one thing, Assad (both father and son) are/were highly inteligent and practical.  B. Assad would not shoot himself in the foot like this, and especially since there is no need since he is already winning the war against Western funded mercenaries anyway.

For two, it would be trivial and obvious for the chems to be be false flag operations.  The US has few qualms about seeing gas attacks against geo-political enemy personnel as our support for Iraq in the Iran/Iraq war demonstrated.  We tend to use proxies for such things and the likes of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc are in abundance for such operations.

Unsurprisingly (to me) evidence is mounting that false-flag operations to gas civilians were planned and executed.  The e-mail hack of the British-linked defence contractor (http://stormcloudsgathering.com/leaked-documents-us-framed-syria-in-chemical-weapons-attack) strike me as credible although I have not studied them in detail yet.  Then there is the material that Syria claims to have found in tunnels they overran with precursor chemicals.  And assorted observations like the unlikely fusing material found on the rockets and such.

Bringing this back to 'PRISM'...  I've long felt that Google is one of the most powerful voices in the media because I and I am sure a lot of others click the update button on google/news like a monkey with an electrode in it's brain when interesting things are happening.

This morning I notice twice that stories disappeared immediately.  One was of a Syrian ambassador imploring the UN to take on the question of _who_ used chems.  That was Reuters.  The page was extremely hard to load, and it hung for a particularly long time trying to load an asset from "Media Innovations Group, LLC".  Another was also related to the suggestion that the rebels used chems.

I believe that there pretty likely another PRISM-like program which forces Google to keep their news search 'clean' during times when propaganda is of particular importance to the West.  Another possibility is that Google themselves take such action autonomously, but my experience is that this is not as likely as being forced on them.  Another would be, I suppose, that such alternate views are attacked at the network level and Google's algorithms respond by removing them.  I don't know the news search algorithms they use of course.

[Spendulus]

....

I believe that there pretty likely another PRISM-like program which forces Google to keep their news search 'clean' during times when propaganda is of particular importance to the West.  Another possibility is that Google themselves take such action autonomously, but my experience is that this is not as likely as being forced on them.  Another would be, I suppose, that such alternate views are attacked at the network level and Google's algorithms respond by removing them.  I don't know the news search algorithms they use of course.

You may have a point there and here's why.

I just googled...

"Media Innovations Group, LLC" syrian ambassador chemical weapons

All that came up was this thread on bitcointalk.

Then I went to Duckduckgo and used the same search prhase and got...

hundreds.....

[tvbcof]

....

I believe that there pretty likely another PRISM-like program which forces Google to keep their news search 'clean' during times when propaganda is of particular importance to the West.  Another possibility is that Google themselves take such action autonomously, but my experience is that this is not as likely as being forced on them.  Another would be, I suppose, that such alternate views are attacked at the network level and Google's algorithms respond by removing them.  I don't know the news search algorithms they use of course.

You may have a point there and here's why.

I just googled...

"Media Innovations Group, LLC" syrian ambassador chemical weapons

All that came up was this thread on bitcointalk.

Then I went to Duckduckgo and used the same search prhase and got...

hundreds.....

Well, the 'asset' that was causing troubles was likely just some pixel from a piss-ant marketing firm.  The domain was actually "mookie1.com" and it is very possible that their servers were just overloaded from the traffic or something silly like that.  I would not expect a search of "Media Innovation Group, LLC" (which I looked up through whois) to yield much of anything.

OTOH, it is poor design to have a page fail to load due to a timing-out asset.  I wish now that I had spent some time analyzing the page assets, but at that moment I was more interested in understanding the latest goings-on on since my country was an the war-path and about to cause the deaths of god knows how many more souls by stretching out the Syria conflict by another year or two.

One way or another, a story from Reuters about the Syrian ambassador imploring the UN to research who actually fired the various chemical weapons salvos (there have been many) appearing on Google then disappearing a minute later is suspicious indeed.  Something caused it to disappear.  What, exactly, is kind of an important question.  Or is to me. 

If Duckduckgo is producing more trustworthy and less censored and manipulated data than Google, hopefully market forces will bring people to them.

[bernard75]

Not that i support Google in any way, but you have to give tham that their algorythm is just miles ahead.
I sometimes wonder if Duckduckgo has any at all, it seems they just give me pages containing the words i enter.

[sidhujag]

watch google get the software contract and then they will have data on everyone and create an amazing os to drive more money back into us economy case closed.

[UPENtXF]

It's telling that they name the biggest of these illegal surveillance programs after US Civil War battles - Bullrun, Manassas - because it's really an agency of the US Department of War fighting a cyberwar against the US citizens who pay taxes in order for the NSA to exist!
1984 is finally here!
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet-encryption.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&hp

[KonstantinosM]

A conversation needs to begin to switch ourselves from using corporations that are in bed with the NSA (Facebook, Google, Skype, Microsoft) and replace as many of their services as possible (e-mail, social outlets, video/photo/sound sharing sites, financial sites, authentication) as possible.

All the developments in P2P, routing and cryptography must be utilized.

We also need alternative networks, whether that is long range radios, information transmitting lasers or trained pigeons with encrypted flash drives.

Let's make our communications (or part of them) not easy to be spied upon on any scale.

Bitcoin is just the tip of the iceberg....

Also speak against the NSA's plans and their ideology. If you get enough people on our side, those clowns will be shown as what they really are...

This is an awesome video (recent) of one of my favorite people on YouTube about the NSA:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU9WmcAa5So

[UPENtXF]

A conversation needs to begin to switch ourselves from using corporations that are in bed with the NSA (Facebook, Google, Skype, Microsoft) and replace as many of their services as possible (e-mail, social outlets, video/photo/sound sharing sites, financial sites, authentication) as possible.

All the developments in P2P, routing and cryptography must be utilized.

We also need alternative networks, whether that is long range radios, information transmitting lasers or trained pigeons with encrypted flash drives.

Let's make our communications (or part of them) not easy to be spied upon on any scale.

Bitcoin is just the tip of the iceberg....

Also speak against the NSA's plans and their ideology. If you get enough people on our side, those clowns will be shown as what they really are...
>>>>>

+1 It will be a difficult battle, because the majority really don't care that they are paying taxes to be under blanket surveillance by the military in this 1984 dragnet, and even consider it beneficial overall.

So, we will continue to be considered by most people we know to be paranoid extremists, who have something illegal to hide... We'll just do our usual best, with the hope that we can some day become the majority.

[aigeezer]

It's telling that they name the biggest of these illegal surveillance programs after US Civil War battles - Bullrun, Manassas - because it's really an agency of the US Department of War fighting a cyberwar against the US citizens who pay taxes in order for the NSA to exist!
1984 is finally here!
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet-encryption.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&hp

Yes, the emerging narrative appears to be far bigger than PRISM alone ("Funding for the program – $254.9m for this year – dwarfs that of the Prism program, which operates at a cost of $20m a year, according to previous NSA documents." from link below).

Here's the companion piece to your NYT link, from the Guardian:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryption-codes-security

"This story has been reported in partnership between the New York Times, the Guardian and ProPublica based on documents obtained by the Guardian."

One chilling item among many: "Intelligence officials asked the Guardian, New York Times and ProPublica not to publish this article, saying that it might prompt foreign targets to switch to new forms of encryption or communications that would be harder to collect or read."

Another: "Among other things, the program is designed to "insert vulnerabilities into commercial encryption systems". These would be known to the NSA, but to no one else, including ordinary customers, who are tellingly referred to in the document as "adversaries"."

[Spendulus]

A conversation needs to begin to switch ourselves from using corporations that are in bed with the NSA (Facebook, Google, Skype, Microsoft) and replace as many of their services as possible (e-mail, social outlets, video/photo/sound sharing sites, financial sites, authentication) as possible.

All the developments in P2P, routing and cryptography must be utilized.

We also need alternative networks, whether that is long range radios, information transmitting lasers or trained pigeons with encrypted flash drives.....

Might I suggest the establishment of a simple to read....

"Rating System"

...that provides info to consumers on key parameters of privacy?

[tvbcof]

...
Bringing this back to 'PRISM'...  I've long felt that Google is one of the most powerful voices in the media because I and I am sure a lot of others click the update button on google/news like a monkey with an electrode in it's brain when interesting things are happening.

This morning I notice twice that stories disappeared immediately.  One was of a Syrian ambassador imploring the UN to take on the question of _who_ used chems.  That was Reuters.  The page was extremely hard to load, and it hung for a particularly long time trying to load an asset from "Media Innovations Group, LLC".  Another was also related to the suggestion that the rebels used chems.

I believe that there pretty likely another PRISM-like program which forces Google to keep their news search 'clean' during times when propaganda is of particular importance to the West.  Another possibility is that Google themselves take such action autonomously, but my experience is that this is not as likely as being forced on them.  Another would be, I suppose, that such alternate views are attacked at the network level and Google's algorithms respond by removing them.  I don't know the news search algorithms they use of course.

I just noticed another interesting and relevant story vanish from Google's new page in the few minutes it took to read it.  This by representative Grayson noting that the intel about Assad ordering CW strikes was weak and questionable:

  http://obrag.org/?p=76716

It was the top story (in a date sort) and then it just vanished.

I suspect that the communication intercepts which supposedly demonstrate Assad's culpability in the CW attacks are very sensitive subject matter for a couple of reasons and worthy of high priority 'media information management.'

Veering off-topic a bit more:  It makes no sense to claim that the methods will be compromised by a full transcript release given that the government has already made it known that they (or someone) can do the intercepts.  Likely the big problem here is that it is not going to go over well if it is know that edited (if not invented) material, probably from Mossad, is being stove-piped directly to the executive branch.  Again.

[bernard75]

This is Saddam's WoMD happening all over again.
When will people finally wake up and realize that those in power will stop at absolutely nothing to achieve their or their masters goals?

[bernard75]

And whats up with all the pacifist discussion that America doesnt need another war?
Its about time for another 9/11.

[Spendulus]

.... It makes no sense to claim that the methods will be compromised by a full transcript release given that the government has already made it known that they (or someone) can do the intercepts.  Likely the big problem here is that it is not going to go over well if it is know that edited (if not invented) material, probably from Mossad, is being stove-piped directly to the executive branch.  Again.

a hint...

pipelines...

[aigeezer]

"The NSA Isn’t Evil, It’s Trying To Protect Us, Says PayPal’s Max Levchin", article from TechCrunch: http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/10/nsa-evil/

From the article's author, Josh Constine (bolding mine):

"He has a point. What the NSA is doing may be evil, but the organization as a whole isn’t, necessarily. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t question why this snooping is necessary, and it doesn’t mean we should protest and demand change, but we shouldn’t blindly hate the NSA."

Freudian slip or just a typo? No way to know.

More from PayPal's Levchin:

"Levchin went on to try to explain that the government spy agency is made up of hard-working people trying to help their country. He explains from his own experience,

    “These people are making $40,000 a year. Not because it’s a path to wealth, it’s not a way to get recognized.

    In college I applied to the NSA...."

I imagine there will be a lot of "it's not so baaaad" damage-control rhetoric coming our way.

Frankly, I don't care about the debate over whether an organization "is evil" or whether the people in it "are evil". I just want them to stop doing evil things, especially any organizations that do evil things "in my name" or "on my behalf". I'm not American, but my country (all countries) seem to have such organizations. The NSA just happens to be in the spotlight recently.

[tvbcof]

...
More from PayPal's Levchin:

"Levchin went on to try to explain that the government spy agency is made up of hard-working people trying to help their country. He explains from his own experience,

    “These people are making $40,000 a year. Not because it’s a path to wealth, it’s not a way to get recognized.

    In college I applied to the NSA...."
...

Jesus, what a pathetic wannabe.  I expect that almost none of these guys know who their 'customers' are and from what I've seen are actively discouraged from even speculating about it.  They are the proverbial cog in the wheel.

It does seem that once these guys have reached a certain level they are not discouraged from making a dime off the info.  The 'right' way is as Hayden did.  That is, by use of the revolving door, and Hayden is taking his pay-out in the private sector.  No matter what, it is unacceptable to embarrass the higher-ups like Buzzy Krongard did in shorting American Airlines on 9/10.  He was punished insofar as he didn't get to keep the weenie (or his job) but he never got in any trouble beyond that as best I can tell.

[tvbcof]

...
Along these lines, I by happenstance receive a spam mail every few minutes because I've owned my domain for decades.  I also invent a new e-mail address for each different use.  It was not my initial plan to thwart analysis, but it's probably causing a lot of grief for the poor schmuck who pulls me up on his XKeyscore terminal.

  http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/10/14/remarkably-timed-spamouflage/

Hehe.

As I've proposed already, this general technique of garbage overload could be leveraged and ratcheted up as needed to to a crimp in the NSA's pipeline and balloon their storage tanks.  Most of us use a tiny fraction of our bandwidth allotment so there is a giant capacity to utterly swamp the totalitarian surveillance state.

Actually, a spam-house could potentially make some bucks and do something decent for humanity at the same time by selling a service which would inject real messages into their stream of garbage.  For a fee.

[hawkeye]

I hope nobody is surprised.

That says it all really.  If you are surprised by this, then you just haven't been paying attention.