An Agitator who might not want to be named sent me a .pdf pre-publication copy of an upcoming report, “Bulk Collection of Signals Intelligence.”
It’s from the wittily named “Committee on Responding to Section 5(d) of Presidential Policy Directive 28: The Feasibility of Software to Provide Alternatives to Bulk Signals Intelligence Collection; Computer Science and Telecommunications Board; Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences; National Research Council ” and its aim is apparently (not their words) to find better ways of targeting everybody rather than just randomly spying on everybody. (It’s a fine distinction, I know. But when you’re well-connected enough for the fedgov to let you serve on the august CORTS5(d)OPD28TFOSTPATBSICCSATBDOEAPSNRC such distinctions matter to you.)
The report is officially to be released on Friday. (And you know what a Friday release means; the fedgov wants it ignored.)
Behind the typically unreadable bureaucratic prose, there are some revealing bits. I warn you, it’s as boring as dirt, but if you want a copy of this report, just drop a comment using a functional email address in your login. I’ll email it to you.
But of course, receiving an email from me will mean that you fall under section 3.1 (“Contact chaining”): “Communications metadata, domestic and foreign, is used to develop contact chains by starting with a target and using metadata records to determine who has communicated directly with the target (1 hop), who has in turn communicated with those people (2 hop), and so on. [And hey, pretty soon, you’ve got Kevin Bacon in your terrorist network!]”
So maybe you’re better off just clicking the “Contents” link on the NAP site, ‘kay? It’s all there, anyhow.
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The Agitator who sent the .pdf is — he knows for sure — one of the Target People. He’s had those red circles painted on him for many years and is quite used to it. He sent along some familiar, but always worthy, advice (I’ve massaged the words a bit to disguise his identity):
Think of it from this perspective: If your adversary has documented that they always chase down red balloons, well, give them a sea of red balloons to chase down.
I once established that the govt was beyond obviously reading emails between me and an attorney. These communications were considered privileged and off limits under all laws (didn’t stop the government).
“So they like reading do they?” I told the attorney.
Then I emailed multiple 10,000 page documents to the attorney in rapid succession. I gave them all the red balloons their little bureaucratic hearts could ever desire.
I’m not sure how well the attorney might have appreciated that. But you get the picture. 🙂
Ah, no thanks, Claire… I appreciate the offer (grin), but I’ve got about all I can do right now to figure out my home/car insurance policy. Each year it tells me in more and more detail exactly how much less and less it will do for me in the event of a disaster. I’m sure that’s why the price keeps going up too, having to develop all those new paragraphs and graphs. Because it sure isn’t due to any claims I’ve made. In the last 55 years I’ve made exactly one claim.
But I’m sure the fedgoons are having a ball with my little “contact chains.” I’ve posted information on many blogs, fora and websites so people can send for my free self defense book (I Am NOT A Victim). And I give them permission to send it on to anyone they wish. I’ve sent out nearly 9,000 of those e-books myself, so far, and I have no idea how many have gone out to the “chains.” I hope a million of them. 🙂
Im hoping when Iran gets nukes,and it will,it will lead to MAD where neither nation can afford a war.Seems to have held true everywhere else when a nation has the bomb,they dont go dropping it on others who have it.
It sure is awful this stupid azzed racism,I wouldnt want to be in the Jews position.Such ignorance in these racist idiots.
I DO think the day will come though when the nukes,or something as bad as,will be unloosed,we live in VERY dangerous times.ALL of us.
I might be interested in reading it, but I’m still trying to wade through a social redistributionist plan for the Internet that appears to be written by a Feminist Studies major (with a minor in Underwater Basket-Weaving-Induced Hypoxia). One whose university didn’t even have a Sci/Tech department to protest.
I.e.- the FCC’s “Net Neutrality” report. I’m pretty sure they think “ATM” stands for “Automated Teller Machine.”
Fred, you’re a lot more optimistic/pessimistic about the Iranians’ alleged ability to build a nuclear weapon than I. So far, having started with a decades-old nuke power program, they’ve taken 36 years to not accomplish what every other Nuclear Power managed in a fraction of the time (the US managed to build three nukes of two different types in three years; six years, if you want to count from the first sustained, controlled fission reaction).
I’ll look for my copy publicly. I’m sure we’re both surveilled constantly, and getting my copy by searching with a ‘no data’ search engine just makes the spies earn their pay rather than making it easy.
There are software tools that will collect everything that flies past them and store it. If you have one of them (and fedgov had them by the dozens already in ’03 when I worked with them) you can index the files – docs, emails, recorded phone records – and search either the index or the entire collection. They can listen to voice recordings, interpret and translate (some dozen or so languages 10 years ago), then transcribe to text, or to ‘closed captioned’ video if it’s a video. And they will search multiple gigabytes of data in an hour for particular terms.
There is also an algorithm for determining the importance of two terms by the proximity of one to the other. E.g. if I wrote to someone and said in my email somewhere that I was going to kill a snake in the backyard, and then later stated I would plant a bush in my back yard, that email wouldn’t be flagged. But if I wrote that I was ‘going to kill a bush in my backyard’ that email would be flagged for referral to human eyes. And if I lived in Maine, Texas or Florida I’d likely be getting a visit or seeing strange cars on my street, even after it being reviewed by an analyst.
And there are relationship mapping tools, that would take the database of all my communications, and everyone I communicate with, and everybody they communicate with, etc. and build a map that would – as stated above – quickly include not only Kevin Bacon but also Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Moshe Dayan and Michelle Obama. The computer could do this very quickly – humans will take years to build such a map. The danger is that humans would first check me out more closely and determine not to proceed, but the software will do the entire job in one shot and dump out a direct, 5 step connection to bin Laden. And some analyst with little imagination and zero sense of humor will think I’m a threat.
So, the capabilities are there and have been for over a decade. Data storage is and has been the big deal about doing this – the software tools were under a million by a large margin 10 years ago. That’s fedgov peanuts. The only thing is that it’s apparently still illegal to do this to citizens without probable cause. And of course, the cost of the army it takes to actually listen to shopping lists and read my musings on personal liberty without falling asleep is way to expensive for a government whose credit has already been downgraded twice.
They will get the bomb,its only a matter of money and the will to spend it.Kinda like Kuwait buying Olympic teams.
Though the way things are going,a nice bio weapon has great potential too,and even easier to manage.Nukes may become pointless at some point if a microbe can do the job.
Plus a bio weapon lets you cull the herd on your side too.
Scarey indeed,and the elite are just that evil to do it.
Sorta in the same vein, gotta post this from Tam
Heh, indeed.