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And with more and more going to "the cloud" that makes the work of the NSA that much more easier.
Centralized data stored away and all they need is "access".
When people have data, they match it to other data, use it, and sell it for many other unrelated things. I used this example in another thread. What's to stop the IRS from obtaing a copy of that Verizon database and matching it to your Obamacare health file/record to deny treatment? Let's see who calls pizza places X number of times per month to place an order. All they need are the 2 telephone numbers.
Unrelated, most of the reasons for using these kinds of "tools" in my opinion is for after-the-fact detective-type work not preventative. It's like street cameras. You can't stop the crime but later on the images may help you catch the perp.
A worse scenario in my opinion, is what is to stop a for-profit health insurance company from somehow obtaining your medical records, especially since so many hospitals and providers are implementing cloud-based medical record data banks.
It's computationally impossible to scan simultaneous calls for keywords, above a small amount and it will never be possible. It defies the laws of physics with relationship to bandwidth and, well, reality. Speech recognition, even at the state-of-the-art, has significant trouble recognizing lisps, heavy accents, and background noise.
Really? Google Voice today handles millions of users. It auto-transcribes them and sends it as a text email to my inbox. Where the call generates a pop-up add if certain keywords are shown. Now i'm not saying its perfect. . .its not. Yet everyday it gets better. . .the more google does.
If Google can do this. . and does it for millions. . .scale doesn't seem to be a concern for govt.
Quote:
Originally Posted by summers73
The NSA is interested in "clusters" and "patterns of interest". This is a problem when it comes to targeting political dissidents, but again the only information that is stored is metadata: origin-destination phone number, nearest cell tower, and call duration.
People think NSA analysts are gods and that Bourne movies actually represent reality. They do not. If you are truly paranoid about security, use PGP and MAC spoof at a public wi-fi spot. Your identity is untraceable at that point without extensive detective work that goes beyond IP backtracing.
Do we really want a world If you want privacy you must go off the grid. live in a hut. put on a tin foil hat. Use burner phones. The ironic thing is. . the bad guys, that is what they would do. So this is akin to NSA fishing through good guys because bad guys know to use PGP, Voice over IP, etc
The problem here isn't specific to NSA issues. The problem here is speicfic to technology. Goverment can slowly take away your rights as an indvidual not by reapaling our rights or ammendments but by not extending our rights to the technologies and capabilities we use today.
Our protection from unreasonable search and seizure, privacy, etc. is all being stripped away by us moving outside of the protection of our home, and into the cloud.
That is the issue, and the concern.
Before cellular telecom what the NSA is doing would be called a fishing expedition, and we wouldn't allow it.
After reading this thread I have to ask: why would a person that allegedly works for a Government Agency actively involved in this work try so hard to convince us that cannot do their job as it is too complex or difficult?
A worse scenario in my opinion, is what is to stop a for-profit health insurance company from somehow obtaining your medical records, especially since so many hospitals and providers are implementing cloud-based medical record data banks.
Uh - their the insurance company. They already have your medical records. What do you think claims are for?
20+ years in software development and I worked on some joint projects with the FedGov and their national labs.
I don't do social media, my iPod is NOT connected and I avoid "the cloud" whenever possible and try to keep all my data local.
Sure there's stuff you can't control like mail servers but there's a lot you can control and keep local.
The proliferation of netbooks and chrome books especially in the schools is quite alarming.
With all the talk of the dangers with young kids being on the internet they have no choice when netbooks/chromebooks is purchased by elementary, middle and high schools. And then offered at deep discounts to the students to purchase for personal use.
Look at the youth today..smart phones, netbooks/chromebooks, etc. All connected, much of their personal stuff stored off on some server and they live their lives via social media.
That is a goldmine to both government and corporates.
Storage is cheap and processing power is cheap when compared to what they can do with that data.
I'm against the whole phishing expedition, but isn't it important to establish some grounding on the subject?
It's computationally impossible to scan simultaneous calls for keywords, above a small amount and it will never be possible. It defies the laws of physics with relationship to bandwidth and, well, reality. Speech recognition, even at the state-of-the-art, has significant trouble recognizing lisps, heavy accents, and background noise.
The NSA is interested in "clusters" and "patterns of interest". This is a problem when it comes to targeting political dissidents, but again the only information that is stored is metadata: origin-destination phone number, nearest cell tower, and call duration.
People think NSA analysts are gods and that Bourne movies actually represent reality. They do not. If you are truly paranoid about security, use PGP and MAC spoof at a public wi-fi spot. Your identity is untraceable at that point without extensive detective work that goes beyond IP backtracing.
In before "how do you know what they are capable of?". Quick answer: I work on the system that won Jeopardy, and it is used in government (not at liberty to discuss which agency however). I am also a machine learning/data mining researcher. I know the NSA's capabilities without actually having to work there.
That's great except one problem, what is possible or not could very well be above YOUR need to know or pay grade wouldn't you think? Think about it, it was even said in Obama's defense recently "the government's gotten so big not even the president knows what all is going on" so we're to believe that someone who has the clearance to "know" would be anywhere near a forum that would most likely violate national security?
Ok, sure.
Really? Google Voice today handles millions of users. It auto-transcribes them and sends it as a text email to my inbox. Where the call generates a pop-up add if certain keywords are shown. Now i'm not saying its perfect. . .its not. Yet everyday it gets better. . .the more google does.
If Google can do this. . and does it for millions. . .scale doesn't seem to be a concern for govt.
I've seen google's transcription service. Keywords are ancient in the NLP community. Google voice is EXTREMELY poor with accents, lisps and background noise. The transcription is done offline and there are a TINY % of people using the service relative to the amount of people using telco in general. If 50x more people used google voice, you'll see what happens to their servers.
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