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US Still Can't Figure Out What Snowden Took
djohnston:
US Still Can't Figure Out What Snowden Took; What Happened To Those Perfect 'Audits'?
From Techdirt:
Remember how the NSA's biggest defenders keep insisting that the NSA's perfect "audits" prevent abuse? Here's Keith Alexander insisting that such audits are perfect:
"The assumption is our people are just out there wheeling and dealing. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have tremendous oversight over these programmes. We can audit the actions of our people 100%, and we do that," he said.
Addressing the Black Hat convention in Las Vegas, an annual gathering for the information security industry, he gave a personal example: "I have four daughters. Can I go and intercept their emails? No. The technical limitations are in there." Should anyone in the NSA try to circumvent that, in defiance of policy, they would be held accountable, he said: "There is 100% audibility." Only 35 NSA analysts had the authority to query a database of US phone records, he said.
Yet, many months after the initial leaks, it's being reported that the US government still doesn't know what Snowden took:
More than two months after documents leaked by former contractor Edward Snowden first began appearing in the news media, the National Security Agency still doesn’t know the full extent of what he took, according to intelligence community sources, and is “overwhelmed” trying to assess the damage.
First off, this shows that the claims of 100% auditability are complete crap. If they can't tell what Snowden took so many months later, they don't have very good auditability at all. Furthermore, this raises serious questions about the NSA's data management capabilities. For all the claims that there are no "willful" or "intentional" violations by the NSA of people's privacy, it seems difficult to believe they can know that. Here's a case where they flat out know that someone got access to all sorts of documents, and over many months they still can't figure out what he got. And, yet, they expect us to believe that they can tell with perfect accuracy what their staffers are doing with the data they have access to? Seriously?
Yes, there have been thousands of "accidental" violations that were caught in audits, but it seems highly likely that there are intentional violations that the NSA just doesn't know about. If they can't track what an outside contractor is downloading, how can they even pretend that they have control over their data and information?
My comments: This is a perfect illustration of one of the inherent problems with so-called "big data". It's increasingly difficult to find a needle in a haystack if you keep making the haystack larger.
patrick013:
I read today in the news that the NSA admits it spied
on people who were not terrorists, sometimes for
lengthy periods of time, in violation of it's authority.
But, it gave no indication of what needed to be done
after this fact was made public.
So, to me it seems Snowden isn't lying about everything.
djohnston:
--- Citation de: patrick013 le 22 août 2013 à 22:07:43 ---So, to me it seems Snowden isn't lying about everything.
--- Fin de citation ---
I'd go so far as to say he probably hasn't lied about anything. (Is that what you meant to say?) I would also have to say, as each new portion of the documents are leaked to the public, that Snowden hasn't exaggerated about anything, either.
patrick013:
Well if you ever worked for a regional corporation
"industrial espionage" is not appreciated. Good
strong customers are hard to find and Mr. Snowden
better not be looking for trade secrets, distribution
factors, and then be giving info to special interest groups
and competitors for that purpose. Promising special
benefits of some kind in the process.
Booz, Allen, Hamilton is a national special interest group IMO.
patrick013:
--- Citation de: ka9yhd le 23 août 2013 à 03:54:26 ---Considering that there is a directive or order of Mosques and Muslims are off limits. I would go so far as to say that the NSA is only spying on the people and it was never about stopping terrorism.
--- Fin de citation ---
Well they did say a few weeks back that they uncovered and stopped
50 terrorists plots while deploying unwarranted surveillance procedures
for lengthy periods of time.
I still think companies are crazy using ISP's for intercompany communications
rather than leased lines dedicated to their intercompany locations only.
Mainframe computers instead of desktop servers, etc..
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