Right from the start it sounds strange. They cite the case of Petreus as a proof FBI has access to everybody's email. But it is certainly wrong - FBI can obtain access to everybody's email if it is hosted by US provider such as Google, given enough cause to obtain warrants (such as suspicion that CIA director's email account was compromised). This is not news - hardly anyone in the US has doubts that given strong enough cause, FBI can solicit and receive access to specific accounts at US providers. Calling this "everyone under surveillance" is misleading. And how is it related to NSA? And why does not Binney point out Petreus' case is not about surveillance?
The key to this all are these two things (and someone who knows more please correct me):
1) Constitutionally they (NSA) seemed to have found a loophole that states that just storing the data on the disk doesn't constitute spying|invasion of privacy. Only when someone (a human) looks at the results then it triggers all the Constitutional restrictions. Sounds like a bunch of bullshit to me, but that's how they are justifying it.
2) A court subpoena or an executive "magic-Patriot-Act-Federal-Injunction whatever it is called?" when issued can apply to all the data, including historic data from the beginning of time associated with that individual. So, if they ever get a subpoena say when you are in your 50's they could legally pull all the data you generated, created, accessed since the day you were born.
Basically it is pretty obvious they are just planning on storing all the data they can. Therefore the big new data center with a 65MW power station next to it.
My hope is only that someone who is involved in this, just like this whistle-blower, will realize that this is wrong and will expose it and the public in general will start caring enough about this to turn this into a major political issues.
This is a story that hasn't shown itself to have legs, I think largely in part because both political parties are fully complicit, so neither are interested in driving the narrative.
So the problem is, what does it mean for the public in general to care? Or rather, what is the value of truth in a world where we have no agency?
> So the problem is, what does it mean for the public in general to care? Or rather, what is the value of truth in a world where we have no agency?
The troubling truth is that many people would be either happy (or at least accepting) if the people doing the monitoring were also making big dents in the amount of spam being sent, or catching major criminals.
> So the problem is, what does it mean for the public in general to care?
That's actually simple - public should use strong encryption. That's it. I.e. those who care about such violation of civil freedoms have no other option anyway, if attempts to prevent this surveillance will continue to fail (and with the current power - they most probably will).
They should. I agree, however effectively using encryption not as simple as it sounds (both hardware, software and user interfaces need to work together and well) for this to work. On the other side I predict using encryption is becoming strange/weird/suspicious. There is an already well designed propaganda framework to portray those who care about these issues as associated with all kinds of scary crimes.
I predict in the future after a couple of high profile scape goat cases where a famous suspected terrorist, illegal movie downloader, or say whistle blower, cannot be prosecuted because they used encryption, the use of encryption will become illegal.
The problem with outlawing encryption is: everyone needs it for business purposes and to protect public / private infrastructure. If SSL encryption were to be forbidden, e-commerce would become very difficult...
> So the problem is, what does it mean for the public in general to care?
For instance many care about some "moral" or "religious" issues that have no bearing with objective reality. So a lot time, mental and emotional effort goes into those issues.
It is kind of interesting that caring about privacy in general is become weird it is almost demonized and relegated to criminal sphere by default -- terrorism, child pornography, drug dealing, piracy all those "hot" issues can be triggered in order to argue against privacy. A few fear words sprinkled here and there, a scapegoat show trial and we are not too far from just using encryption becoming illegal. By default it has become "weird" defending privacy when the opposite should be true -- it should feel "weird" defending erosion of privacy (at least in this country given its Constitutional principles).
Worse, they'll go public with the world's most awesome restore-from-backup service and everyone will love it, for the low price of incriminating yourself in future crimes (but you're not planning to commit any crimes anyway, right?).
Public in general is indifferent or worse, supportive, when it is being literally grabbed by their balls and photographed literally without their clothes - if only this is done under the guise of more security. And you want to talk about couple of emails? Forget about the public in general.
However this still does not justify mixing up signal with noise. If you want to talk about NSA surveillance - fine. But then don't start with Petreus who has nothing to do with it.
The FBI accessed all of Broadwell's IP address info and email accounts with nothing more than subpoena's.
I believe they are storing this information, they just don't have the technology yet that can sort it and allow access to it. So the Petreus emails are probably being stored at the NSA as well, it was just easier for the FBI to get them from Google.
