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Report suggest: NSA mass surveillance is a waste of resources (and will make us less safe)

By on January 10, 2015 in NSA & Snowden, surveillance, US

We already know that–this far–NSA mass surveillance has led to no convictions of any actual terrorists in a U.S. court of law.

Now, an New America Foundation study (PDF) shows that the vast majority of terrorist investigations in the U.S. are initiated by information from other sources than NSA.

Only 1.8 per cent of terrorist investigations in the U.S. are initiated after “NSA Bulk Collection under Section 215”. 4.4 per cent after “NSA Surveillance Targeting Non-U.S. Persons under Section 702”. And 1.3 per cent after “NSA Surveillance under an Unknown Authority”.

Most investigations are conducted after tips from community and families, informants or traditional human intelligence and police work.

The report states…

“Surveillance of American phone metadata has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism and only the most marginal of impacts on preventing terroristrelated activity, such as fundraising for a terrorist group.”

Obvious to all, this do not correspond with the picture the U.S. administration is trying to sell to the public.

And it confirms that more information from mass surveillance (a bigger haystack) only will make a system already under information overload to work even worse…

“Finally, the overall problem for U.S. counterterrorism officials is not that they need vaster amounts of information from the bulk surveillance programs, but that they don’t sufficiently understand or widely share the information they already possess that was derived from conventional law enforcement and intelligence techniques.”

So it seems that shifting resources from traditional (human) intelligence and law enforcement work to automated mass surveillance might make us all less safe from terrorists.

But then again, this is not about terrorism. It’s about power and control.

/ HAX

Link: Do NSA’s Bulk Surveillance Programs Stop Terrorists? (PDF) »

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What Snowden exposed was already known. But nobody cared.

By on January 6, 2015 in Big Brother, Democracy, EU, Hacktivism, NSA & Snowden, surveillance

In the blog post below, you can see a video from the 31c3 conference with Caspar Bowden. In the second part of his speech, he describes how he warned about specific mass surveillance issues long before Edward Snowden came along.

The Snowden files do, in essence, confirm everything Bowden warned us about.

The thing is–at the time, nobody cared.

The European Commission and the European Parliament was informed. But people didn’t take in the information. The information lay open for the media. But no journalists bothered. Bowden explained his findings for various net activist and civil rights groups–but nothing happened.

And I must admit that prior to the Snowden revelations, I my self had no idea that this information existed–even though I used to work in the European Parliament. I’m very interested in these issues, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

This points to an information and communication problem. Most of what’s going on is out there. You just have to know what to look for. And whom to listen to.

An important component in internet and civil rights activism is to simply take what’s already out there and make it understandable, to serve it up in digestible pieces. And to listen to the real experts, to find the golden nuggets in their extensive research material.

To hack politics to win, you must know. And you must be right. That is within reach–because politicians and bureaucrats often doesn’t care enough to do their homework.

/ HAX

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Friend or foe in the surveillance state?

By on December 19, 2014 in Big Brother, NSA & Snowden, surveillance, Sweden

In Norway and Sweden, false mobile telephone base stations of unknown origin have been discovered in government quarters. In both cases the media, not the authorities, has been behind the discovery.

The question is who? And why?

The prime suspect is Russia. Lately, the country has been military active in the Scandinavian neighbourhood. And what good are military provocations, if you cannot get feedback about the reactions?

Another possibility is the US and the NSA. If they can listen in on German politicians–why not Norwegian and Swedish ones?

Then there is a chilling possibility that national intelligence organisations are spying on their own governments. (The Swedish police has got the equipment to set up false base stations. Probably the Norwegian has, as well.)

These days it’s not a given who is friend or foe.

/ HAX

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Taking the fight against mass surveillance to the next level

By on December 8, 2014 in Big Brother, Democracy, NSA & Snowden, Privacy, surveillance

I just read Rick Falkvinges piece “You Can’t Have Consent Of The Governed Without Privacy” at Privacy Online News. He points at something very serious and all to obvious: blanket mass surveillance is incompatible with democracy.

Apart from some small semantics I couldn’t agree more. I guess you will as well.

Rick has published a lot of texts along these lines. I have too. And so have countless others. Still, the seriousness of the matter doesn’t seem to sink in with people. I guess it’s too abstract.

To some extent the same is true for the Snowden files. They are hard evidence, from inside the NSA. But still, most people seems to be unable to relate to this information.

To make people listen–and react–mass surveillance and it effects must feel real to the common man.

We need to be on the lookout for stories like this one: Looks like Chicago PD had a stingray out at the Eric Garner protest last night »

We need to find the people who have had their lives messed up by warrantless mass surveillance. They are out there and we must tell their story.

To do this we shouldn’t just look at the NSA, GCHQ and other organisations collecting information–but at their “customers”. Where do the information go? And how is it used?

In Sweden, we know that our local NSA/GCHQ partner FRA relays information not only to the military, some branches of the police and the counter espionage–but also to the government, to the political administration. But still we don’t know what kind of information or how it is being used.

We also know that the FRA has access to NSA “Spy Google” data base XKeyscore. And it is pretty obvious that it contains information about our own nationals and domestic Swedish matters. It’s at our governments fingertips. But then secrecy kicks in. We don’t know how XKeyscore is used. We don’t even know the legal basis–or where the legal mandate comes from.

This is the kind of things we must look into. Now, when we know that mass surveillance exists (told you so) we must start to find out how it is being used. That’s when it all gets really interesting. And ugly, for sure.

Mass surveillance is not “just” a fact. It is not “only” something to have theoretical discussions about. It has real implications.

/ HAX

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The new dissidents

By on December 1, 2014 in Democracy, Hacktivism, NSA & Snowden, US

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is stuck in Russia, only being able to reach out to the world by video link. The same goes for Wikileaks Julian Assange, in limbo at Ecuadors embassy in London. Journalist and web activist Barret Brown spends his time in custody, waiting to be sentenced after looking too close into outsourcing of US national security matters.

This is in a way better for the US government than just throwing people in jail.

If you compare this to the case of whistleblower Chelsea Manning–her 35 year prison sentence for exposing the truth is clearly a stain on US reputation.

It’s more convenient for government to corner trouble makers elsewhere in the world or to constrain their actions with seemingly endless legal proceedings. It might not silence them–but it will hamper their work seriously. And you can (normally) do this without enraging human rights activists, hacktivists, the media and the general public too much.

It all bears a chilling resemblance to the way the Soviets treated many of their dissidents during the Cold War.

/ HAX

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Sanctuary for Snowden

By on November 30, 2014 in NSA & Snowden, Sweden

In Sweden tomorrow Monday, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden will receive yet another award: The Right Livelihood Prize (a.k.a. the alternative Nobel Prize).

The outgoing (center–right) government bluntly stopped the prize ceremony from being held at the Swedish Foreign Office.

And when a Swedish green member of parliament today suggested asylum for Snowden the new (socdem–green) government went notably blank.

Considering the close ties between Swedish FRA and its US counterpart NSA, Sweden might not be the best option for Snowden anyhow. But it is interesting what a hot potato the Snowden affair is, regardless the political colour of government.

When it comes to the wider question of the future for Edward Snowden–it’s a disgrace that no western country is willing to provide a safe haven.

The reason Snowden is stuck in Russia is because the US has revoked his passport and all European liberal democracies have closed the door in his face. It’s not a free choice–but because of us and our elected political leaders.

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