Here's The NSA's Supposedly Non-Existent Tool To Track Global Metadata

Young_Chitlin
Young_Chitlin Members Posts: 23,852 ✭✭✭✭✭
edited June 2013 in The Social Lounge
Here's The NSA's Supposedly Non-Existent Tool To Track Global Metadata

By: MAX RIVLIN-NADLER

Glenn Greenwald and the Guardian have another leak: Meet "Boundless Informant" the NSA tool that records and analyzes where NSA intelligence comes from, including over 3 billion pieces of intelligence from US computer networks in just a 30-day period. This is a direct contradiction to the NSA's assurance to congress that it does not collect any type of data at all on millions of Americans. In fact, according to the NSA documents, America is one of its most surveilled countries behind Iran, Pakistan, Jordan, and other Mid-Eastern countries.

"The tool allows users to select a country on a map and view the metadata volume and select details about the collections against that country," the NSA factsheet obtained by The Guardian says about the program.

Metadata, which has been downplayed by security officials and politicians as not actually containing that much data, is in reality an incredibly useful tool for monitoring Internet users. As Jane Meyer points out in the New Yorker, Metadata can help you know who is being emailed and CC'd, where (not exactly, but pretty close) they are emailing from, and in what sequence emails are being sent.

Speaking with a former data system engineer, Meyer observes that "Metadata... can be so revelatory about whom reporters talk to in order to get sensitive stories that it can make more traditional tools in leak investigations, like search warrants and subpoenas, look quaint."

Boundless Informant shows that the NSA has been collecting metadata, on a massive scale, on Internet users inside of America. It also shows that the NSA, which has said it has no way to process all the information of Internet users (if they had it), has developed (and is improving) a system to do exactly that.

So who is leaking this information to Greenwald and why are they leaking it? The data shows that the NSA, while obviously spying on Americans, is also doing some pretty serious work on foreign soil, especially where America is supposedly looking for terrorists. Do they want to show off that the NSA is both covering its bases in terms of terrorism and not spying as much on tenuous allies like China and Russia, or is someone risking their freedom to expose the decline of civil liberties in the United States?

Or, alternately, is someone just hacking the NSA?

On top of that, can Greenwald ever come back to the United States without getting put in front of a grand jury and asked to name his source?

Update 3:00 PM: It's option #1. Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old technical assistant is the whistleblower.


k-bigpic.jpg

Comments

  • BelovedAfeni
    BelovedAfeni Members Posts: 8,647 ✭✭✭✭✭
    the FEDS watching
  • kingblaze84
    kingblaze84 Members Posts: 14,288 ✭✭✭✭✭
    The unPatriot Act seems to have grown and expanded under the Obama administration according to these leaks....Obama said he was gona create the most transparent govt in history but he's just expanded the biggest spying program the world has ever seen. ? knows what the govt is doing with this information, for all we know, govt officials are selling our information to the highest bidders worldwide. Imagine what a corrupt govt employee can do with this information. And some people want the govt to spy on us like this??
  • kingblaze84
    kingblaze84 Members Posts: 14,288 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited June 2013
    http://washingtonexaminer.com/edward-snowden-i-mistakenly-believed-in-obamas-promises/article/2531439

    Edward Snowden, the self-revealed whistle-blower at the National Security Agency, explains that part of the reason he decided to come forward was because President Obama did not roll back the surveillance measures put into place by the Bush Administration.

    “A lot of people in 2008 voted for Obama. I did not vote for him. I voted for a third party,” Snowden said in an interview with the Guardian. “But I believed in Obama’s promises. I was going to disclose it [but waited because of his election]. He continued with the policies of his predecessor.”

    Snowden acknowledged that he watched Obama struggle as he attempted to justify the surveillance programs during his press conference on Friday.

    “My immediate reaction was he was having difficulty in defending it himself,” Snowden said about Obama. “He was trying to defend the unjustifiable and he knew it.”

    --So what's the difference between Bush and Obama again?
  • kingblaze84
    kingblaze84 Members Posts: 14,288 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited June 2013
    http://washingtonexaminer.com/glenn-greenwald-i-have-more-secrets-to-reveal/article/2531427

    On ABC’s ‘This Week,’ journalist Glenn Greenwald explained that Americans could expect him to reveal more secrets about the government surveillance programs.

    Greenwald wrote two bombshell stories last week in the Guardian newspaper – one about the National Security Agency obtaining phone records from Verizon customers and one about the agency’s PRISM program.

    “Should we be expecting more revelations from you?” asked Stephanopoulos.

    “You should,” Greenwald answered shortly.

    Greenwald remained quiet about his sources, reminding Stephanopoulos about the importance of whistle-blowers.
  • twatgetta
    twatgetta Members Posts: 6,705 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Americans = the new Terrorist.

    Blame that HOUSENIGGA , Barry Soetoro.
  • kingblaze84
    kingblaze84 Members Posts: 14,288 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited June 2013
    twatgetta wrote: »
    Americans = the new Terrorist.

    Blame that HOUSENIGGA , Barry Soetoro.

    Very, very true. Americans are the true terrorists worldwide, we ? and destroy for oil, minerals in Afghanistan (and ? knows where else), and to help Israel steal more land and water from its neighbors so Israel can do what America did for hundreds of years, steal land to get more powerful. America hasn't changed at all under Uncle Tom, ? ass ? Barack Obama, it's obvious he read George W Bush's playbook "How to ? Up a Country in Two Terms"