The Keystone Cops in "NSA Story"

    The NSA is involved in a vast data-mining project in the United States and overseas. Multiple scenarios with an authoritarian government using misinformation to get the public like a puppy on a leash have been proposed. Recent history with Colin Powell telling the UN that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and the cheerleading stories written by Judith Miller in the New York Tims.shows that high tech solutions are not required to get the public to respond in a Pavlovian manner.

    NSA went into high-gear after 9/11. The agency sent tons of phone and email data to the FBI. GW Bush called the NSA program a "vital Tool" and Cheney said that the program saved "thousands of lives". FBI agents responsible for tracking down the "leads" provided by th NSA had different opinions. For the FBI, there were nothing but dead ends. NSA focuses on data collection and if only a few useful nuggets are found. The FBI focuses on law enforcement and prosecution. There was no solid data that the NSA program prevented any terrorist attack at the time of a January 2006 NYT article.

    A PBS documentary on NSA "The Spy Factory" found that the agencyhttp://dagblog.com/node/add/reader-blog had key pieces of information on Bin-Laden and an imminent attack but never put the pieces together and never informed any other agency of the intelligence the NSA gathered. The documentary proposed one reason that NSA failed to focus on Bin-Laden was the sheer volume of information the NSA had to decipher.

    The more volume that the NSA takes in the less effective the agency will be. The failure of the NSA was never addressed by the 9/11 Commission. The agency was never forced to address its shortcomings. Instead, the push was to increase the NSA's powers by empowering the agency to do domestic spying.

    Has the agency been able to adapt and improve despite not being called to task? General Keith Alexander the Director the NSA, Commandant of Cyber-Command and Chief of Central Security Service told the House Intelligence Committee that the Agency had prevented 50 terrorist plots in 20 countries. The argument was made that the reason that the secret court had not rejected any requests was due to the care the NSA put into investigations prior to requesting a warrant.

    Critics of the NSA point out that the alleged successes are on pretty flimsy ground.The NSA takes credit for preventing a New York Stock Exchange attack but the man, Khalid Quazzani,  was never charged with the crime. In addition the man's lawyer knew nothing about his client being accused of a terrorist attack. His client pleaded guilty to sending money to Al-Queda, not with terrorism. One NSA terror success down the tubes. There was a claim that the NSA prevented an attack on the New York subway system by Najibullah Zazi. The Guardian pointed out that it was plain old shoe leather that solved the case  the NSA data was an afterthought. Court documents support the Guardian story. NSA takes strike two. The Guardian article also debunks the idea that NSA played a role in the conviction of David Headley the mastermind of the deaths of 166 people in Mumbai and a foiled bombing plot on a Dansih newspaper that published a cartoon featuring Muhammed. Juan Cole notes police work not the NSA was responsible for the conviction. NSA strikes out.

    I don't fear the NSA as it currently exists. It is unfocused.I don't see fearful scenarios given the Keystone Kops nature of what the NSA is doing. It cannot handle the massive data it takes in. Perhaps we will learn that they are more efficient than we believe, but if they had successes they would be front and center.

    If George Zimmerman was an NSA neighborhood watch person and had  Google Glass like gear supplied by NSA, Tryavon Martin would be alive today. Martin would have seen an ominous figure behind him. He would have heard Zimmerman yelling into his glasses "Facial recognition". "Criminal record". Martin would have realized that there was a psychotic man behind him and taken off running. Zimmerman being a poor shot wouldnot be able to hit a moving target in the dark struck Martin even if he fired his weapon. Martin would have gotten away and be alive today. If only the NSA had been involved, Martin's parents would not be going through the traumas of a burial and a trial.

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Comments

    The more volume that the NSA takes in the less effective the agency will be.

    The less effective they will be at doing the right job, but the more effective they will be at doing the wrong job.


    I NSA as being more incompetent than scary, as I note in the Zimmerman analogy. Instead of doing screening themselves NSA privatizes background checks. Snowden slipped through the cracks from an NSA security standpoint. A private company, US Invesigations Services, does the bulk of the background checks for NSA.The company wants rapid turnaround on security clearances so shortcuts are taken. Employees falsify security checks. More evidence of slipshod work.Name an NSA success.

    I am not concerned at this point because we are nowhere near the competence required to carry off the cover-up of crime depicted in "Minority Report". There is certainly nothing to indicate the the NSA is capable of the rapid analysis of data seen in "Person of Interest". The NSA focuses on quantity over quality and gets stuck in the quicksand. After detective work has been done the NSA comes in to say that there metadata revealed clues (that they found after the fact).

    If you feel threatened, there are things you can do to decrease your online footprint.

     


    Nicely written diary, at least first 6 paragraphs focused on evidence & results. Write more.


    For paragraph 7, EmptyWheel describes some of the Keystone Kops software the FBI's been dealing with - software that has certainly been improved since then such as the 2009 update - for better and worse:

    First, the FBI’s database of intercepts sucked. When the first Hasan intercepts came in, it allowed only keyword searches; tests the Webster team ran showed it would have taken some finesse even to return all the contacts between Hasan and Awlaki consistently. More importantly, it was not until February 2009 that the database provided some way to link related emails, so the Awlaki team in San Diego relied on spreadsheets, notes, or just their memory to link intercepts. (91) But even then, the database only linked formal emails; a number of Hasan’s “emails” to Awlaki were actually web contacts, (100) which would not trigger the database’s automatic linking function. In any case, it appears the Awlaki team never pulled all the emails between Hasan and Awlaki and read them together, which would have made Hasan seem much more worrisome (though when the San Diego agent set the alert for the second email, he searched and found the first one).

    First, the FBI’s database of intercepts sucked. When the first Hasan intercepts came in, it allowed only keyword searches; tests the Webster team ran showed it would have taken some finesse even to return all the contacts between Hasan and Awlaki consistently. More importantly, it was not until February 2009 that the database provided some way to link related emails, so the Awlaki team in San Diego relied on spreadsheets, notes, or just their memory to link intercepts. (91) But even then, the database only linked formal emails; a number of Hasan’s “emails” to Awlaki were actually web contacts, (100) which would not trigger the database’s automatic linking function. In any case, it appears the Awlaki team never pulled all the emails between Hasan and Awlaki and read them together, which would have made Hasan seem much more worrisome (though when the San Diego agent set the alert for the second email, he searched and found the first one). - See more at: http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/06/26/the-fbi-and-cia-unminimized-collect...

    But while the feds may be slow in writing useful analysis & distribution tools, they're doing a bang-up job of getting authorization to suck up more and more previously thought 4th Amendment protected info - in secret rulings.

    (That a secret uncontested ruling is used to circumvent the 4th Amendment hardly seems to uphold its constitutionality. "Hey, I just designed a perpetual motion energy machine that works! But you can't see it or test it. Trust me - one of my engineering friends looked at it and says it's true.")

    What's also obvious is that more and more people will be sticking their dicks/software into that ever-expanding pool of data, and not all of them will be Keystone Kops. Even now, you seem very upset of the abuse by Edward Snowden. But Snowden released his info to the Guardian and Washington Post for them to decide what to publish. What are Booz, Allen, Hamilton's other 80,000 contractors doing that we don't know about (and that quite possibly BAH & the government don't know about)?

    Is surveillance of a Goldman Sachs exec over SEC violations also giving someone at BAH insider trading info? Did the recent government tapping of 100 AP reporters not only find a leak, but divulge privy information about KeystonePipeline or Gitmo hunger strike reporting?

    Here Digby gives a big overview about surveillance issues, including a reminder that Endgame Systems is selling subscriptions to 25 zero-day exploits (i.e. unpatched exploitable bugs) for $2.5 million a year - not just to government. People don't pay that much if they're not getting good info - info that pays back at the very least double that amount. What could be so valuable about being able to hack thousands/millions of PCs or mobile phones for a year before a patch is put out? Clearly not everyone is being so Keystone Kops about this. (if Rupert Murdoch was able to hack celebrity voicemails, is there any doubt the CIA, NSA & M5 are able to?). And Snowden just proved there's no good wall keeping NSA info or techniques from going rogue. But we should only get upset when we find out, when he tells us, not when it's going on all the time but with our blessed ignorance?

    Snowden got hacking training from the NSA - it seems to have served him well. The US created the Stuxnet virus with Israel it appears. The virus did its job well - took out Iranian nuclear data systems - but by misdesign got released in the wild but had limited damage due to its target, Siemens-controlled nuclear facilities. But then 2 new variants have appearded, Duqu and Flame which attack general computers (i.e. general purpose malware, no longer just government espionage). Plus we just paid for a primer on how to sneakily destroy billions of industrial control systems. Thanks for the tips guys?

    How many other secret systems do we need to worry about with the the Frankenstein effect or rogue employees abusing massive "legally" gathered information sets? Or if we haven't hit apocalypse now, do we just assume we never will, it's okay?


    Snowden got hacking training from the NSA - it seems to have served him well.

    I have a question which has some bearing, I think, on the whole Snowden leak discussion which I will try to ask through analogy. Snowden is usually described as being an accomplished hacker with the implication that as a hacker he has the mind-set of someone who gets off on breaking into computer systems for various reasons. That may well be true but from what I have read it seems that an ability to ‘hack’ was not necessary for him to gain access to the information which he downloaded and carried away. He needed only to be put at a computer hooked up to the NSA data base and maybe an operating skill approximately equivalent to knowing Microsoft Word and how to click on Google. Maybe not even that much.
     My analogy is that determining that Snowden was an accomplished hacker based on his leaking is like determining that Mario Andretti must have been one hell of an engineer or at least a good mechanic to drive the way he did when in fact the ability to design or repair a great high performance engine was not necessary in order to drive the car it was installed in even if he also had those other skills. What I am getting at is questioning whether any high level of computer software design ability was/is necessary for what Snowden did or is it merely a matter of being in the seat he was given. I have extremely limited computer skills and zero software design ability but from where I sit I can get whatever Google’s got. I think that Snowden has said that the system gave him access, not his ability to hack the system.
     


    And, if it was hacking that gave him access to everything, then:

    Another Problem with Mass Spying: Centralized Data Creates An Easy Mark for Hackers

    http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/07/another-problem-with-mass-spying-...

    As if we needed another reason to oppose mass spying on the American public, Zdnet reports that the NSA database could be hacked by Chinese or -other lurkers:

     

     

     

     


    What you  are asking about was explained in this NYT piece of June 30: Job Title Key to Inner Access Held by Snowden.

    For the new job at Booz Allen, Infrastructure Analyst, rather than the Systems Analyst he had been at the NSA, he gained special access owing to hacking-type skills. The new job was basically a job hacking.

    He also had to take a special course of training for before he could start that job.

    He himself admitted in Hong Kong that he took that job, which also meant a pay cut, in order to have that access. From the article:

    “My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the N.S.A. hacked,” he told The South China Morning Post before leaving Hong Kong a week ago for Moscow, where he has been in limbo in the transit area of Sheremetyevo airport. “That is why I accepted that position about three months ago.”

    He did not stay long on the Booz Allen "hacking" job with the special access that he did not have before. Went through the training (at Fort Meade, I believe I read somewhere,) started the job, soon took a medical leave and then didn't come back fromit. Hence, it makes it easier for some people (including a U.S. prosecutor, I would imagine,) to classify him as an intentional treasonous spy rather than a simple whistleblower.

    Supporters have implied that he only told the stuff about infiltrating Chinese computers because he became frightened of what the U.S. would do to him and was trying to get sympathy of the Hong Kong public. But his own statement above and the circumstances surrounding his taking the new job also do very much have appearance of the story of what a spy would do once he found out how he could get access.


    Thanks for that. I had in my head that he was employed as a 'Data analyst' rather than 'Infrastructure analyst'.  Still, I don't think the question is entirely answered. His job being hacking other systems doesn't necessarily mean that he had to hack the system he was working within to download information from that system.  Or maybe it does.


    The hacking course would have alerted him to go for small amounts of data over a long period of time rather than grabbing the usual TV/movie style 100% download onto a thumb drive. He would also have enhanced his encryption skills to avoid detection when communicating. Greenwald noted that Snowden provided him with decrpytion capability.


    Right, but it does explain him knowing and spilling about who was hacking who, which is one of the main reasons used by those decrying him as treasonous. And he did say that to the Hong Kong newspaper, and it does imply intent. I think this is what disturbs people like Ramona, for example. Certainly it struck me as the main thing a prosecutor is going to go after.

    Looking at the complete picture, I myself see him becoming disturbed about what he found out working as a Systems Analyst, then purposefully taking the Infrastructure Analyst job in order to find out more about what we were doing.

    I too am interested in finding out how easily a Systems Analyst, non-hacking type job, can access things. But I doubt Snowden's forthcoming leaks are going to explain that to us, because he/Greenwald will probably not clarify that as they dribble things out.

    I believe Greenwald is doing vetting about what should be published and what would be imprudent to publish? But it is probably not going to be explained why something was not published. This is something that also probably drives some people nuts, as in: who made you king to decide?


    I could pick at your first paragraph but it is a different subject which has been hashed out plenty.

     I agree that your second paragraph identifies the best bet. I expressed the exact same idea in a comment previously, I think to mrdooo.

     Third para, I do not see any reason to expect Greenwald to know the full spectrum access.

    And finally, whoever plays decider in any of these questions will be open to strong and legitimate questioning, not just Greenwald. and depending on the point of view, any who do make decisions might be derisively called 'Decider-King'. But, within The Guardian's own hierarchy there are others besides Greenwald who are doing some serious vetting and decision making, or at least who claim to be.

    Guardian editors Alan Rusbridger and Janine Gibson on Edward Snowden and the NSA leaks
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pdzzZB7Xgo


    New in Der Spiegel today, he spilled more of the international stuff while in Hong Kong, including that Germany is no innocent victim:

    Snowden Claims: NSA Ties Put German Intelligence in Tight Spot

    Spiegel Online, July 7, 2013

    The German foreign intelligence service knew more about the activities of the NSA in Germany than previously known. "They're in bed together," Edward Snowden claims in an interview in SPIEGEL. The whistleblower also lodges fresh allegations against the British.

    [....] In an interview published by SPIEGEL in its latest issue, Snowden provides additional details, describing the closeness between the US and German intelligence services as well as Britain's acquisitiveness when it comes to collecting data.

    In Germany, reports of the United States' vast espionage activities have surprised and upset many, including politicians. But Snowden isn't buying the innocence of leading German politicians and government figures, who say that they were entirely unaware of the spying programs. On the contrary, the NSA people are "in bed together with the Germans," the whistleblower told American cryptography expert Jacob Appelbaum and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras in an interview conducted with the help of encrypted emails shortly before Snowden became a globally recognized name.

    Snowden describes the intelligence services partnerships in detail. The NSA even has a special department for such cooperation, the Foreign Affairs Directorate, he says. He also exposes a noteworthy detail about how government decision-makers are protected by these programs. [.....]


    This is why Obama was comfortable saying that the US was not doing anything the Europeans weren't doing. The European bluster may have bee to get US concessions from upcoming trade talks.


    Re: paragraph 7

    An earlier NSA program, "ShellTrumpet" gathered its trillionth metadata record in 2012 after 5 years collection - but it was able to process a half-trillion of those records in 2012 - clearly its processing ability is improving.

    The same article notes that 75% of the data flowed unfiltered (uncaptured) through its pipes - but as of Dec 2012 with "EvilOlive", they're able to capture over half the data.

    The article then notes that there was an improved way of querying metadata introduced in fall 2012, and that two new ones, "MoonLightPath and Spinneret', would be out by Sept 2013.

    Additionally, the British have directed a major new source of data to the NSA as of last August under the "Transient Thurible" program. Clearly the NSA is not standing still.

    Here whistleblower William Binney describes the analysis system ThinThread he built for the NSA back in 2001 that became part of StellarWind. Can even pop out your taste in pizza real time, eh? And that's somewhat dated capability - the NSA marches onward.

    So no, I don't believe the Keystone Kops scenario. It may not have trickled down to George Zimmerman associates/Google glass beat cops yet, but there is extremely efficient processing of metadata and actual recordings being developed, and it's becoming more and more intrusive even as the courts & Congress have become more & more sidelined since the new FISA act of 2008. And I'm sure the Boston Marathon bombings 3 months ago have greatly increased the permissions in "what's acceptable" to surveil at all levels of government.


    The Boston Bombing case proves the incompetence. OWS was the focus.They had the necessary information but did not think that it was necessary to inform the local authorities. The more data they collect, the more they get lost in the woods.

    FBI Director Mueller told Congress that the metadata program played a large role in tracking down Todashev after the Boston Bombing. When you realize that the FBI would have had access to phone records  I still don't see NSA efficiency.

    The system may be efficient, but the administration seems to be bogged down. Gen. Keith Alexander is the Director of NSA, the Commandant of Cyber-Command and the Chief of Central Security Service. Do you really think he can oversee all those organizations? Inefficiency is not a bug its a feature.

    You point to the fact that Snowden got training to be a hacker while working for an NSA contractor. None of the folks at NSA thought that there could be an internal threat after people got this training. This is something the Keystone Kops would do.

     


    These people have lied to Congress before and they'll lie again. Think Mueller's going to tell Congress, 'no, our multibillion dollar metadata program isn't very useful"? Of course it helped them cure cancer and solve ice cap melting and makes a mean martini to boot. If only OWS hadn't distracted.

    We don't know how much info was at Snowden's fingertips and how much he had to "hack" to get. For Bradley Manning, it wasn't rocket science.

    Here's Mueller getting his ass handed to him courtesy of Congressman Gohmert. Yeah, I guess Occupy Wall Street kept them from looking up a terrorist mosque as well - bad hippies, no patchoulie for you.

    Posted by smarko1 on June 16, 2013

    Last week FBI Director Robert Mueller was questioned by Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert during a House Judiciary Committee hearing.  In a tense exchange included in the video below Mueller admitted to what was FBI incompetence relating to the Boston Marathon bombings.

    Mueller testified the FBI did not know that the mosque where one of the bombing suspects attended was started by radical Islamists.  Gohmert asked Mueller if the FBI was aware that the Islamic Society of Boston was started by a convicted terrorist supporter Abdurahman Alamoudi:

    Gohmert – “The FBI never canvassed Boston mosques until four days after the April 15 attacks.  If the Russians tell you that someone has been radicalized and you go check and see the mosque that they went to, then you get the articles of incorporation as I have for the group that created the Boston mosque where these Tsarnaevs attended and you find out the name Alamoudi.”

    Gohmert – “Were you aware that those mosques were started by Alamoudi?

    Mueller – “I’ve answered the question

    Gohmert – “You didn’t answer the question, were you aware they were started by Alamoudi?

    Mueller – “No.”

    Gohmert – “You were not, thank you”.

    In 2004 Abdurahman Alamoudi pleaded guilty for playing a part in a plan to assassinate Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah.  He is now serving a lengthy jail term for that crime.

    It is troubling that with multiple agencies who employ tens of thousands involved with issues relating to homeland security that the FBI didn’t know the mosque attended by at least one of the Boston bombing suspects was radicalized.  This brings into question the efficacy of the government’s current intrusive programs that include snooping the phone records on tens of millions of Americans and servers of the major Internet providers.  It is likely that political correctness has become so ingrained in our security agencies that time proven basic detective processes are no longer allowable.  The result is less individual freedoms and less than optimal security.

    But I've no doubt that the FBI will be able to use information to track Occupy Wall Street or some ecology group. They have priorities.


    The NYT article that I just pointed to in reply to Lulu elsewhere on this thread does have something supporting rmrd's P.O.V., and it doesn't come from lying to Congress, but from Snowden's own purloined documents:

    Indeed, an obscure passage in one of the Snowden documents — rules for collecting Internet data that the Obama administration wrote in secret in 2009 and that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved — suggested that the government was concerned about its ability to process all the data it was collecting. So it got the court to approve an exception allowing the government to hold on to that information if it could not keep up. The rules said that “the communications that may be retained” for up to five years “include electronic communications acquired because of the limitation on the N.S.A.’s ability to filter communications.

    As one private expert who sometimes advises the N.S.A. on this technology put it: “This means that if you can’t desalinate all the seawater at once, you get to hold on to the ocean until you figure it out.”

    Collecting that ocean requires the brazen efforts of tens of thousands of technicians like Mr. Snowden....

    Of course, the whole point in requesting more time is in hopes that they will develop the capability to use the data more within the foreseeable future.

    And this portion before the "Indeed" also refers to the same:

    After the 2001 terrorist attacks, the documents suggest, the N.S.A. decided it was too risky to wait for leads on specific suspects before going after relevant phone and Internet records. So it followed the example of the hoarder who justifies stacks of paper because someday, somehow, a single page could prove vitally important.

    The agency began amassing databases of “metadata” — logs of all telephone calls collected from the major carriers and similar data on e-mail traffic. The e-mail program was halted in 2011, though it appears possible that the same data is now gathered in some other way.

    The documents show that America’s phone and Internet companies grew leery of N.S.A. demands as the years passed after 9/11, fearing that customers might be angry to find out their records were shared with the government. More and more, the companies’ lawyers insisted on legal orders to compel them to comply.

    So the N.S.A. came up with a solution: store the data itself. That is evidently what gave birth to a vast data storage center that the N.S.A. is building in Utah, exploiting the declining cost of storage and the advance of sophisticated search software.

    Those huge databases were once called “bit buckets” in the industry — collections of electronic bits waiting to be sifted. “They park stuff in storage in the hopes that they will eventually have time to get to it,” said James Lewis, a cyberexpert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “or that they’ll find something that they need to go back and look for in the masses of data.” But, he added, “most of it sits and is never looked at by anyone.”


    Some thoughts when I re-read this all, is it comes down to this:

    We never really had control over our own data of this type, the communications companies do. The government decided that they should have this control too, for quicker access than the communications companies might give.

    To argue that the communications companies have greater incentive to care about privacy is in reality and in essence the same argument that those who advocate privatization of government make. If communications were a state-owned monopoly, there'd be no question. Of course, some socialist systems have done this in the past precisely in order to control communication and/or spy on citizens.

    One can't get away from the anti-government libertarianism here. Either you trust government more or you trust large corporations more.  To think you have control of your privacy when you use a system that you cannot create, own and run yourself is an illusion. Other people have control of your data when you are a user of such a system.

    We all trust Wolraich not to divulge our IP and email addresses. Why? Do you really think he would fight it if he got a Federal subpoena to give an ID up?

    Do you believe it when a website it says: give us your email address, we will never share it? Why? Because you figure you could sue them if they were lying? That that deters them from lying?

    It's mainly a privatization argument that the incentive to keep customers happy works better than laws regulating government spying.


    A tech writer told of how Facebook obtains demographic information on his followers.In addition Facebook misuses  the "like" option to suggest to his followers that he approved of websites he had never visited through very liberal use of the "like" option.


    I've actually thought about Michael in knowing my email, whatever other details. Made the conscious decision I didn't care or that I trusted him as far as I needed to trust him. No, I don't think he'd go through waterboarding to keep it confidential.

    The main point is that I make conscious decisions who I share info with, and they have terms & conditions I can read and agree to or refuse. If I don't like Facebook, I can refrain from using it. I pulled out of Quora as being one of the more ridiculous social media sites.

    If the government wants to tell me how giving them all my data fits the greatest good, helps the fight against terrorism, I'm all ears. Really. We get vaccinations with the idea that it may not specifically help in every case but in the aggregate it raises resistance. So break it to us - what's the actual principle that government needs all this data for, what are the realistic expectations that the data will be used for the purposes they say they will be? And if these people handling this are so grown up, how come they stripped Manning down in his cell for months and put him through 24 hours a day hazing just to show their superiority and break him in some way - where's the believability in that? Where's the seriousness about terror and security when they act like a bunch of dipshit frat boys giving high fives over cretin abuse? And that one went all the way up to Obama who responded "appropriate and meeting our basic standards."

    If Michael had liked to me a dozen times, no, I wouldn't trust him with any info.


    You are proving my point. They are incompetent. They focus on nonsense. The NSA has trouble pointing directly to a success If the NSA was a fire department, they would be in the plant cafeteria because they detected heat coming from a hot dog stand while totally ignoring the fire and billowing smoke coming from the tanks filled with hazardous materials just yards away.

     


    They may be incompetent, but that doesn't mean they're not dangerous.

    Blocking the plane in Austria only to find Snowden wasn't on it? Wow. Look ineffective and petty and rather thin-skinned all at the same time.

    But since they find it easier to focus on drug busts (even with medical marijuana legal), it's no suprise they'd rather hassle hippies than find terrorists. Should the hippies relax & enjoy it?


    I'm not sure if the incompetence in that case was at the electronic level or due to on the ground observation. A Spanish official said European nations were told Snowden was aboard the jet.

    Police departments have financial incentives to go after low-level drug offenders.


    We are having a debate about PRISM, BLARNEY and the Constitution. I don't think that the we are a 1984 scenario. I do think that under Bush/Cheney the discussion would be suppressed. Cheney feels that Obama is weak because he is attempting to justify the program as noted in the link.

    Metadata gets picked up at choke points that do not seem to really "belong" to anyone. If the courts find the NSA practice to be Constitutional, we are going to have to rely on Congress to enact specific laws. We have options to get things changed. There is a way out.

     


    Read a story a week or so ago about a court case where the prosecution was using the GPS tracking of a defendant's cell phone as proof he was at the crime site when it occurred. A co-defendant asked them to track his cell phone to prove he wasn't but since he used a different carrier who did not retain his records. 

    Apart from that situation creating enough reasonable doubt to render its cell phone evidence useless, why would where someone's cell phone was located constitute any sort of proof or alibi?

     


    why would where someone's cell phone was located constitute any sort of proof or alibi?

    I was pointing out the same thing with the license plate photo tickets, when discussing the tracking of license plates on another thread. that the laws are set up that the driver of the car is supposed to be responsible for driving violations, not the owner of the car.

    And that the photo of the one I got did not show who is driving the car. And that the ticket I got was obviously not defensible that way, but they make the fine low enough (and without any record that insurance can see,) that you'll pay rather than fight.

    But then Lulu said a relative got a photo ticket in CA that clearly showed the face of the driver of the car as well. Clearly a more expensive system.

    Donal later posted a link to a story showing how the kind of system that captured me going through a yellow-to-red light (in a borrowed car, with ticket sent to the registered owner) is basically sold and run by for-profit private companies as a way for communities to get extort some extra dough.

    While it sounded like the program that caught Lulu's relative might have been set up and run by the local government with intent to catch violators and therefore more attentive to the legal considerations.....

    The same issues are brought up with EZ Pass toll cards or credit cards. You can always claim that it was not you using your EZ pass or not you using your credit card.

    But then, most of the stuff done by law enforcement when researching a case, perhaps especially when trying to prevent crime rather than find a perp after one has been committed, is not trying to build a prosecutor's case. They use a lot of the info on the street, stuff that is not included in the court case, not considered for making a case, just for research, trying to get leads, etc.


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