Secret to Prism

Secret to Prism program: Even bigger data seizure

By STEPHEN BRAUN, ANNE FLAHERTY, JACK GILLUM and MATT APUZZO

— Jun. 15 2:53 PM EDT

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the months and early years after 9/11, FBI agents began showing up at Microsoft Corp. more frequently than before, armed with court orders demanding information on customers.

Around the world, government spies and eavesdroppers were tracking the email and Internet addresses used by suspected terrorists. Often, those trails led to the world's largest software company and, at the time, largest email provider.

The agents wanted email archives, account information, practically everything, and quickly. Engineers compiled the data, sometimes by hand, and delivered it to the government.
 

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/secret-prism-success-even-bigger-data-seizure 

Not a big surprise

NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

National Security Agency discloses in secret Capitol Hill briefing that thousands of analysts can listen to domestic phone calls. That authorization appears to extend to e-mail and text messages too.

by Declan McCullagh

June 15, 2013 4:39 PM PDT




The National Security Agency has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed this week that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed "simply based on an analyst deciding that."   (Read the Rest below)

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57589495-38/nsa-admits-listening-to-u.s-phone-calls-without-warrants/

On NSA spying and who we are going to convict.

Congressman Peter King wants to prosecute the whistle blower.  That's a way to handle it.  Arrest and prosecute the messenger. 

Isn't it time to stop pointing fingers and start looking at ourselves and how much we are part or maybe the whole of the problem? I look at my Verizon bill and I can see all the phone calls made and to what number and length of time. The same thing with my internet house phone. My cable company knows what I watch and has access to what I DVR. Netflix tells me what I recently watched and makes fairly accurate predictions of what I might like to watch.. Amazon has my wish list and does the same as Netflix. I'm bombarded by spam. How did they get my email address? My internet provider knows what websites I go to even if I have a privacy setting. They know my banks. How far away is it that someone can crack my passwords? (It's easily done by those in the know BTW). I guess the difference is that the government who can easily access anything these days as major corporations do have a different POV for all this. They are looking for suspicious things and anyone associated with someone under suspicion becomes suspicious whether they do something wrong or not. Re: "National Security letters" for example. So we do have something to worry about, but pointing fingers at whistle blowers only makes it worse.

The Banality of "Don't be Evil"

“THE New Digital Age” is a startlingly clear and provocative blueprint for technocratic imperialism, from two of its leading witch doctors, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, who construct a new idiom for United States global power in the 21st century. This idiom reflects the ever closer union between the State Department and Silicon Valley, as personified by Mr. Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, and Mr. Cohen, a former adviser to Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton who is now director of Google Ideas.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/opinion/sunday/the-banality-of-googles-dont-be-evil.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

Boyhood

Boyhood is an attempt at climbing as high as the stars. And once forgotten one is still climbing. I am looking out at the street from my window through glass that ripples and has bubbles but is always clean. I have many friends, but I am always up before them watching the street for the first to emerge. I never am out first. On most Saturday mornings the sun glints against the windows on the other side of the street blanking them out and sometimes hurting my eyes.

On some mornings when it's raining the Astoria, Queens summer streets are steamy and bathed in purple light while streams run along the gutters with bits of paper racing to the sewers. Behind me through the open window in the bathroom I hear the water running down the drains and splashing into the courtyard and as the drops get slower I know when the rain is over.

I sometimes have to wait a long time for Billy K. I can't say his last name but I like the name "Billy K" because it reminds me of the cowboy, Billy the Kid. Billy K still is missing two teeth in front. Mine came in real early before I was seven. Billy and I go to the library a lot. I never went to a library before Billy K. I didn't know there was such a place. The first time I was there I was scared.

"They're going to give me books for free, Billy?"

"That's what they're supposed to do."

The way Billy said it, I was expecting to be called stupid or silly. But he never said anything to make me feel bad. Billy K was a quiet boy and mostly we sat on his stoop and looked at books or played Go fish or talked about the war that had past us almost before we were born as if we were old men who lived through it all. Billy did most of the talking especially about his father who was in the war, but who I never saw.

Still I didn't always play with Billy K and one day when I walked past him to go down the block to where Larry and Dennis lived, he looked up at me with those missing teeth showing and said, "Want to go to the library today?"

"No. Not today Billy. Today I'm playing a different game."

"With who?"

"You know Larry and Dennis?"

"I don't like them. They always pick on me." He said.

"They don't pick on me. They like me. Dennis showed me his father's Japanese rifle that he got during the war. We always play war." Billy smiled up at me, a knowing smile, and then looked down at the ground between his legs and I walked by.

One morning on my way to school I walked past Billy K's stoop hoping to see him come bounding down arms flapping and book bag by the handles. There was a truck opposite his stoop and a ramp touched the street from a door in its side like a great tongue. Two men were struggling up the ramp with a green plastic covered couch. Billy K was standing next to the stoop watching not dressed for school.

"You're going to school today, Billy?" I asked.

"No. Today I'm moving."

"So you're going tomorrow?"

"I don’t know, probably."

"Where are you moving to?"

"I don't really know. . . I think the Bronx."

"Where's that, around the corner?"

"It's around lots of corners far away, maybe as far as

Japan."

"That far? I won't see you then tomorrow?" I asked.

"Can you go to the Bronx?" he asked.

"The Bronx? I don't know. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. Can you come here?"

"I'll come if my mother lets me. I know this place pretty good." Billy said.

"Ok. Goodbye Billy, I have to go to school. I'll see you then. Maybe we can go to the library."

"Yeah, ok. Goodbye," he said. "I hope I see you some place."

I never saw Billy K again.