NSA's backdoors to the internet, and GCHQ's beyond-top-secret spy base

[daschnek]

[QUOTE=catbarf;45030958]Has this kind of thing actually happened? Can you give any examples of the leaders of popular movements suddenly getting discredited by an unnamed source with very personal information?

I think it's a bit silly to think that the government cares or has the resources to do anything about you, random human #2,349,153,564 out of seven billion and rising, let alone has a dossier on all your most private, embarrassing details. There are just too many people for that kind of conspiracy to be going on. Governments want to intercept communications going to Al-Qaeda/Taliban/Al-Shabaab/etc terrorist groups, and from agents to their contacts back home, so that's probably who they're targeting- people of interest, not everybody. It's still a privacy concern that that power could easily be abused, but the Big Brother sort of fears that the government is watching everything you do (via a telecom line that is only used for intercontinental traffic) are a little excessive.[/QUOTE]

Didn't we already go through this [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO"]more than 40 years ago during the Civil Rights movement[/URL]?

The FBI was essentially created to dig up information on political dissidents so they could be arrested or discredited, iirc. Who's to say that online surveillance in the post-9/11 era couldn't be used the same way FBI surveillance was after the First Red Scare and during the Civil Rights era?

[🅱️🅰️LLS. ➿]

[QUOTE=orcywoo6;45028978]Seems to me like they just want dirt on everyone and anyone to make it easier to remove anyone that may dare question their regime. Fucking democracy my ass.[/QUOTE]Sounding more like the thought police each day.

[catbarf]

[QUOTE=daschnek;45039871]Didn't we already go through this [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO"]more than 40 years ago during the Civil Rights movement[/URL]?[/QUOTE]

Yes, yes it did happen. It eventually resulted in a reorganization of FBI operations and much more stringent oversight from the HPSCI and SSCI but that's beside the point- why on earth would an intelligence agency target international communication to run a smear campaign against domestic enemies? If you wanted to discredit someone within the US, why would you tap a cable that routes data from the US to other countries, when most American network traffic is routed such that it never leaves the country? And where is the evidence that turns this idea from wild speculation to a credible theory?

[QUOTE=daschnek;45039871]The FBI was essentially created to dig up information on political dissidents so they could be arrested or discredited, iirc.[/QUOTE]

No, not even close. The FBI was founded to handle all HUMINT intelligence operations in the western hemisphere while the CIA handled HUMINT in the eastern hemisphere. This was overhauled in the late 50s when the CIA took over all foreign HUMINT operations and the FBI switched to strictly domestic law enforcement, and the bad blood from that rift is why the FBI doesn't play nice with the intelligence community.

[QUOTE=daschnek;45039871]Who's to say that online surveillance in the post-9/11 era couldn't be used the same way FBI surveillance was after the First Red Scare and during the Civil Rights era?[/QUOTE]

Sure could be- is there any reason to think it has? Because speculating on possibilities is one thing, but to actually state outright that the government is compiling dirt on every single citizen (a monumental, downright impossible task) and is using that to discredit leaders of populist movements years or decades later is pure conspiracy theory if there's not a shred of evidence to back it up.

The Citizen's Commission to Investigate the FBI and other counter-FBI groups were formed because there was evidence and suspicion that someone in government was abusing investigative powers against politically disliked people within the US. If you can't point to any similar examples of people being suddenly and inexplicably discredited, what evidence do you have?

I'm not sure you realize how ludicrously impossible it would be for an intelligence agency to be collecting all information all the time from everyone in the country, then processing through all that data to find the juicy, incriminating bits parsed individually and by hand (since this is not simply data, these are connections and relations, you can't just control-f 'extramarital affair' on everyone's email and hope to get something), then storing that in a massive database for [i]decades[/i] just to have some dirt on the kid who ends up being a presidential candidate. In the world of Congressional budgets a project like that would be shitcanned at the earliest opportunity and if you [i]really[/i] needed someone out of the picture, some falsified or trumped-up charges or an assassin would do the job just as well.

[Deunan]

[QUOTE=Rubs10;45034741]That's not a realistic comparison. The NSA can't personally review all the data that they get, and they don't bother because there's no reason to. There might be copies of my personal information sitting somewhere in government storage, but it doesn't matter because no one will see it, and if they do, they won't care.[/QUOTE]

Sure - but take it this way - if one were to install big brother like surveilance in your home and create an automated system that picks up on only certain actions you would have a very similar situations. The only thing you are essentially doing in this case is creating a buffer between the human who makes decisions based on the information and the information itself.

Unless sometimes flags the system, actual people will probably never ever see the information itself. Merely automated systems.

[QUOTE=catbarf;45037036]This is where there should be a great big [citation needed]. It's a huge jump from monitoring groups and persons of interest to creating files on every single person using the Internet, then identifying and storing 'dirt' on every person from birth. It would be an absolutely impossible task even for the most motivated of shadowy government agencies.

I remain convinced that anyone who thinks such a scheme is even feasible for any government, let alone is actually happening, has never worked a day in public sector. Spy agencies pull off cool (and scary) tricks but they're just as budget-limited and dysfunctionally bureaucratic as any other part of government.[/QUOTE]
The fact the likes of google have no problems creating similar profiles already and storing them for very long periods of time should pretty much indicate, that a government agency, who has even deeper access to your information may very well create such profiles.

The bigger question is, if they can create an identifier that allows them to figure out who is what profile. Making the profile itself is easy. Linking the profile to actual people is much harder.

[daschnek]

[QUOTE=catbarf;45042797]I'm not sure you realize how ludicrously impossible it would be for an intelligence agency to be collecting all information all the time from everyone in the country, then processing through all that data to find the juicy, incriminating bits parsed individually and by hand (since this is not simply data, these are connections and relations, you can't just control-f 'extramarital affair' on everyone's email and hope to get something), then storing that in a massive database for [i]decades[/i] just to have some dirt on the kid who ends up being a presidential candidate. In the world of Congressional budgets a project like that would be shitcanned at the earliest opportunity and if you [i]really[/i] needed someone out of the picture, some falsified or trumped-up charges or an assassin would do the job just as well.[/QUOTE]

I wouldn't assert that US intelligence is building a profile on every person. I simply don't trust them to not persecute people with what information they do have, however.

And based on all the other crimes the CIA and the FBI have been guilty of in the past, and the fact that the NSA can and does transfer information from their data collection to other federal agencies, I think it's a justifiable fear.

[smidge146]

It will always happen and there is pretty much nothing you can do about it :)

[Sableye]

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;45027493]welp

I guess I can't trust [I]any[/I] part of the whole Internet anymore. Americans, you better do something about this. Please start bitching out your Congressional representatives until this stops.[/QUOTE]

Well I thought its been documented that the jimmy carter rather ironically was used for spying for years since they did exactly this mission in the 80s with soviet cables