[governance] Boundless Informant: the NSA's secret tool to track global surveillance data

[Riaz K Tayob]

Michael

Since McTim had asked me once how I would go about handling the 70 to 
80% fo the "single rooters" (an appelation that I will continue to use 
because the historical trajectory that brings us to some of your 
questions), I thought I would discern some of the tactics that have led 
directly or indirectly to this fork in the road (defending the 
indefensible like 'single rooters' seems a lot easier than this spat):

1. Denial (of point made or its relevance).
2. Demands for evidence.
3. Obfuscation (sometimes even definitional), nuance (I don't fit in 
that box, or don't put me in there because) or calling contradictions.
4. Collective attacks.
5. Appeals to higher authority.
6. Common cause made with conspiracy nuts (of course it is lost on some 
that truth can be stranger than fiction).

But we should not forget adaptation, and it is great if people change 
their minds when the facts change. But the test of that pudding is in 
the tasting.

Can you believe that these kinds of issues were suggested to be labelled 
as tangential?

Thanks for these excellent posts, comments and queries.

On 2013/06/09 11:10 AM, michael gurstein wrote:
>
> What this below appears to say is that the surveillance procedures are 
> done within and in accordance with a broad interpretation of US law 
> which is, of course, designed to protect the rights of US citizens 
> (how well that is being done is another question of course).
>
> What it also says is that "foreigners" i.e. everyone else in the world 
> are to be treated as potential suspects and are thus fair game.  Given 
> the global reach and current dominance of US Internet corporations and 
> the central role of the USG in all aspects of global Internet 
> activities including Internet governance (or lack thereof) and of the 
> US based technical community in all aspects of the technical operation 
> of the Internet the implications of this position need hardly be 
> spelled out.
>
> Thus, at least in this context we, i.e. everyone else in the world 
> appear to have no rights and little protections except those that 
> totally outclassed institutions such as the EU or other national, 
> privacy protection regimes might provide to their citizens.
>
> Of course, since the parties from whom the data is being acquired i.e. 
> the dominant US Internet corporations are not directly subject to any 
> laws outside of the US and since they along with the USG and their 
> civil society and technical community collaborators have been so 
> active in ensuring that no such regulatory regime could be created, 
> such protections seem to be more or less non-operational.
>
> BTW, I'm still waiting for an answer to the question I posed earlier 
> to McTim and others re: the position and response of the "technical 
> community" to these revelations.
>
> M
>
> From the Washington Post, just published:
>
> "Intelligence community sources said that this description, although 
> inaccurate from a technical perspective, matches the experience of 
> analysts at the NSA. From their workstations anywhere in the world, 
> government employees cleared for PRISM access may “task” the system 
> and receive results from an Internet company without further 
> interaction with the company’s staff."
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-company-officials-internet-surveillance-does-not-indiscriminately-mine-data/2013/06/08/5b3bb234-d07d-11e2-9f1a-1a7cdee20287_print.html
>
>   

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