Personally, the skeptic in me believes if the NSA is losing interest in a major data collection program like this, then they are deflecting the narrative from focusing on an even more impressive and accurate data collection program that they have developed and are ready to deploy out into the world. I’m putting on my tinfoil hat at this point, but every day I read HN I’m surprised at what is capable, given the right technology, money, and time.
I wonder if recruitment was also a factor in making this decision. Recently they released ghidra which they admitted was mainly for recruitment purposes.
If it's because of this, then it makes sense it's not worth it. Collecting massive amounts of (mostly useless) data versus attracting talented people. I know it's not a black or white situation and they can still attract talented people, but if there's a negative perception of the NSA then the pool of people will be a lot less.
In other words, the NSA found a better way of snooping. If they are asking to drop phone surveillance, then they found a superior method of data collection.
The only conclusion is that the NSA simply cannot be trusted in the future. I'm sure our illogical lawmakers will not draw it, but this is clearly another case of being told this program was crucial and people's rights needed to be trampled on that was simply untrue. The NSA just wanted the power for powers sake. Lawmakers should stop giving this agency what it asks for as it clearly has no bounds or idea of what it's doing with the incredible power it has.
All they really need is metadata, IP-addresses, then they can use network theory to build graphs that shows who is communicating with who. If you for example visit a "terrorist" web site you are now linked to everyone else who also visited that site. Using network mesh graphs they can discover new "terrorist" cells. They can even figure out who the leader of this "terrorist" cell is and effectively destroy the cell. I can imagine they are also tracking location data to see who meets physically.
Are the budgets for these programs public knowledge? How much money have we (taxpayers) spent (or wasted?) on these "tools"? And for historians, will we ever get to see the source code and details of how they worked (other than powerpoint documents leaked by Snowden..)?
We can't trust what they say but either way, most phone traffic is probably VOIP nowadays (not traditional phone, so that program is probably obsolete?)...
We changed the URL from <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/nsa-recommends-dropping-phone-surveillance-program-11556138247" rel="nofollow">https://www.wsj.com/articles/nsa-recommends-dropping-phone-s...</a> because WSJ seems no longer to have a paywall workaround. If someone can suggest a better URL, we can change it again. I just did a Google and picked the first link I found that wasn't illegibly crammed with ads.
I wonder if they realized this back when they lied to congress and tried to take credit for FBI work when they couldn't come up with "a single instance in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk collection metadata collection actually stopped an imminent attack, or otherwise aided the Government in achieving any objective that was time-sensitive in nature". It's always interesting when something crazy is going on and you would think the NSA would have relevant information to help, but they don't.<p>I suppose six years is enough time to save some face from the 2013 fiasco?
The intelligence agencies used to try to find out a persons skills and experience. Now they jest check their LinkedIn profile. They used to try to find who their friends and associates were. Now they check their Facebook friends. They used to try to figure out where the person travels on their day to day routine. Now they can check your Google Maps location history. Instead of going through great expenses to try to do surveillance on individual phones, they should just focus on how to get that data from these American companies that already have them.
For the life of me, I cannot figure out why this comment by "holyend" is being silently ghosted (censored) / flagged. Can a moderator explain the reasoning for it being flagged? Are curse words disallowed?<p><a href="https://ibb.co/f9gVV3Q" rel="nofollow">https://ibb.co/f9gVV3Q</a><p>I'm assuming this comment will also be ghosted/flagged; if so, requesting a reason please.
Surprise: The NSA was lying. Not only in the details of what they were saying but also in taking what looked like a most definitive stance on a topic they couldn't know enough about.
Just an FYI to people trying to view this article, the usual tricks like facebook outlinking, using outline.com and setting google as a referrer didn't work to circumvent the paywall. But I did manage to view the article by changing my user-agent to Safari - iOS. Dunno why it works but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.<p>EDIT: I take it back. This briefly worked, but doesn't anymore. I have no idea what changed. Sorry peeps.
ONCE AGAIN, they're clutching at their pearls and swooning about losing the (straw man) metadata. They think we're stoopid. Required reading,<p>NSA Surveillance: Exploring the Geographies of Internet Interception<p>Andrew Clement<p>Faculty of Information, University of Toronto<p><a href="https://archive.org/download/GeographiesOfInternetInterceptionAndrewClement/geographies%20of%20internet%20interception%20andrew%20clement.PDF" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/download/GeographiesOfInternetIntercepti...</a><p>Might be a mix of hearsay but some pieces of the puzzle are becoming clearer. Skip to the section on 'NSA Splitters' and ask yourself, if they had drop-in access to the baseband circuits, qould they already be able to intercept the Telcom providers' streams that gather the data that is now part of the disclosure programs? And even if the links are encrypted, keys can be leaked. Telcos are finally 'off the hook'.
Url changed from <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/nsa-recommends-dropping-phone-surveillance-program-11556138247" rel="nofollow">https://www.wsj.com/articles/nsa-recommends-dropping-phone-s...</a>, which points to this.