Doesn't anyone remember the Boston Marathon Bombing?

[jazzimov]

Does anyone remember how long it took to find the culprits, despite the efforts of some the best investigators on the planet?

IF the NSA was spying on all calls by all American citizens as some declare here, wouldn't their identities been known much sooner?

IF, in fact, the NSA was spying on all calls by all American citizens as some declare here, would the bombing have occurred at all? Wouldn't the NSA have known about it beforehand and rounded up the perpetrators before they were able to set off the bombs?

This bombing tells me several things, on the face of it:

1) There are still people who are trying to hurt us
2) Whatever program the Government is using for surveillance, it has limitations.

Now, I was against giving up ALL freedoms just for security under Bush, and I SUPPORTED the increased protections Congress passed in 2008. But a lot of things have changed since 2008 - for one thing, we found and killed bin Laden!

BUT, even though al Qaeda has been beheaded, it is still active - as evidenced by the Boston Marathon Bombing. There are still people who are trying to hurt us anyway they can. But a lot of things have changed since 2008.

Let me pose this question - when you send an email, are you aware that there is a permanent record that anyone with decent computer skills can hack and read? ANYONE! I recently had one of my email accounts hacked and everyone on my list was emailed an endorsement from ME for some Viagra clone. The only reason I knew about it was that I had another email account in my list, so it also sent an email to me.

Don't even get me started on Facebook!

And when you download a program, do you actually READ the Terms of Service or just scroll to the bottom and click "I Read It"?

Yes, we need a full discussion about this. But be prepared, because a lot of people are going to be ready to give up almost anything as long as they can drive to he store while talking on their cellphone without being blown-up.

A serious discussion is needed, indeed!

[Tx4obama]

1. There's no way anyone would know what the two brothers talked about in their apartment kitchen

They shared the same apartment (when they younger brother wasn't at a school).

Not all 'plans' are done over the phone or on the computer.

When folks live in the same town or in the same house then evidence before an event is not going to show up anywhere.

[deurbano]

2. NSA expert James Bamford:The bigger you build the haystack, the harder it is to find the needle

"Interview with NSA Expert James Bamford"
By JOHN McMURTRIE

http://blog.sfgate.com/bookmarks/2013/07/01/interview-with-nsa-expert-james-bamford/

<<No one, it can be argued, knows more about the history of the National Security Agency than James Bamford. The investigative journalist, who served in the Navy and attended law school in his native Boston, has the distinction of having written the first book about the NSA: “The Puzzle Palace: A Report on NSA, America’s Most Secret Agency.

Since that 1982 best seller, Bamford has written three more books that delve into the NSA: “Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency” (2001); “A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies” (2004); and “The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret N.S.A. From 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America” (2008)….

...Q: Privacy concerns aside, one of the problems with collecting all this data, you have written, is that “the NSA is akin to Jorge Luis Borges’s “Library of Babel,” a place where the collection of information is both infinite and at the same time monstrous, where the entire world’s knowledge is stored, but not a single word understood.” What does the NSA need to do to make practical use of this data?

A: The problem is the bigger you build the haystack, the harder it is to find the needle. Thus, despite all this collection, the NSA missed the Boston bombing, the underwear bomber and the Times Square bomber. And most, if not all, of the “successes” they point to could have been discovered using much less invasive surveillance. Thus, they should collect less hay and give analysts better training in ways to find needles.>>

[jazzimov]

3. So, your contention is that

the more data, the less that you can find the data you are looking for.

I can agree with that.

It still goes against the meme that "they are spying on you and all your calls".

Maybe we need to limit our "call spying" to limited specifics - which the FISA courts tried to do as displayed in the leaks published on The Guardian.

[HiPointDem]

29. I think this metaphor of hay & needles does not apply in the case of metadata, because it's

about patterns, not needles.

lots of data is good for creating patterns, and the patterns are generated by computerized processes.

[JoePhilly]

35. YUP, lots of folks aren't familiar with how meta data is mined for patterns.

If the individual data points have a standard structure, you can use that known structure to ask very specific questions about the patterns in the data.

Let's say you want to know the average length of a phone call in PA. If the only data you have is the data for the two people in your house, the average you come up with probably won't be close to the actual state average. If you have the data for your neighborhood, the average you calculate will get closer to the actual, but still be off. If you have the data for every phone in the state, you get the actual average.

Adding more data points that have the same structure makes the analysis more accurate.

And the more structured the data, the larger number of questions you can answer.

[JaneyVee]

4. Wasn't it surveillance cams that broke the case?

[treestar]

20. Yes, they may not have found them yet without those

They had friends who were arrested too - the ones who knew what they might be doing weren't going to turn them in.

[frylock]

5. you make a great argument AGAINST mass surveillance..

doesn't this indeed verify that mass collection of data is not going to prevent these incidents?

[jazzimov]

8. OR does it verify that it is NOT HAPPENING?

as is verified by the leaked documents?

[frylock]

13. which leaked docs are we talking about?

snowden's disclosures show that they are.

[HiPointDem]

30. no, since the tsarnaevs were on certain 'watch' lists.

[treestar]

21. Not 100%

Nothing works 100%.

[RC]

6. You are assuming the mass surveillance is to catch terrorists and to keep us safe.

You would be wrong. It is to keep track of us, you and me. WE are the danger to our government, not terrorists.

[jazzimov]

9. Seriously? do you have any evidence of that?

Or are you just paranoid?

[RC]

15. What has been the main topic of discussion on DU for the last month or so?

You need to pay better attention to what is going on with current events.

Start with this: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023166576

The Secret War

INFILTRATION. SABOTAGE. MAYHEM. FOR YEARS, FOUR-STAR GENERAL KEITH ALEXANDER HAS BEEN BUILDING A SECRET ARMY CAPABLE OF LAUNCHING DEVASTATING CYBERATTACKS. NOW IT’S READY TO UNLEASH HELL.

Inside Fort Meade, Maryland, a top-secret city bustles. Tens of thousands of people move through more than 50 buildings—the city has its own post office, fire department, and police force. But as if designed by Kafka, it sits among a forest of trees, surrounded by electrified fences and heavily armed guards, protected by antitank barriers, monitored by sensitive motion detectors, and watched by rotating cameras. To block any telltale electromagnetic signals from escaping, the inner walls of the buildings are wrapped in protective copper shielding and the one-way windows are embedded with a fine copper mesh.

>SNIP<

Alexander runs the nation’s cyberwar efforts, an empire he has built over the past eight years by insisting that the US’s inherent vulnerability to digital attacks requires him to amass more and more authority over the data zipping around the globe. In his telling, the threat is so mind-bogglingly huge that the nation has little option but to eventually put the entire civilian Internet under his protection, requiring tweets and emails to pass through his filters, and putting the kill switch under the government’s forefinger. “What we see is an increasing level of activity on the networks,” he said at a recent security conference in Canada. “I am concerned that this is going to break a threshold where the private sector can no longer handle it and the government is going to have to step in.”

In its tightly controlled public relations, the NSA has focused attention on the threat of cyberattack against the US—the vulnerability of critical infrastructure like power plants and water systems, the susceptibility of the military’s command and control structure, the dependence of the economy on the Internet’s smooth functioning. Defense against these threats was the paramount mission trumpeted by NSA brass at congressional hearings and hashed over at security conferences.

But there is a flip side to this equation that is rarely mentioned: The military has for years been developing offensive capabilities, giving it the power not just to defend the US but to assail its foes. Using so-called cyber-kinetic attacks, Alexander and his forces now have the capability to physically destroy an adversary’s equipment and infrastructure, and potentially even to kill. Alexander—who declined to be interviewed for this article—has concluded that such cyberweapons are as crucial to 21st-century warfare as nuclear arms were in the 20th.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/?p=58188

It gets worse, the more you find out.

[reusrename]

17. It's adorable that you think terrorists plan their crimes using emails and cell phones.

All snark aside, the way this spying stuff works is much different than what you are claiming.

We are viciously being thwarted in our attempts to organize resistance to our descent into fascism. You must have heard of COINTELPRO or other psyops operations. This NSA spying operation is a new version of that and we now know for sure that it is being directed at us, the public.

The most advanced scientific principles (both in social networking mapping and in computer sciences) are being deployed against us on a daily basis.

People are only now beginning to become aware of the power of the new survielance state, thanks mostly to Snowden and Greenwald.

Apples and oranges.

The spying is seen by most as a 4th Amendment issue, being secure in our papers and such, but much more importantly it is a 1st Amendment issue impacting directly on our ability to freely associate and to peaceably assemble.

Again, sorry about the snark, but it was just too easy.

[graham4anything]

32. The second amendment takes away ALL rights 82 times a day. reinterpret the second. nt.

[reusrename]

37. How would reinterpreting the 2nd make a difference?

[JoePhilly]

36. Then why would we give the government control of our health care?

If you are right and the government sees us as a danger to it, then why in the world would we want the government to manage a universal health care system.

The government you describe would certainly use our medical records against us.

[RC]

39. A better question would be "Why is the government refusing us Universal Health Care?"

Why do we have to pay health insurance companies in the first place? How much money could this country save by eliminating a for profit middleman, that not only drives up the cost of health care in this country, but stands between us and our doctors and decides who lives and who dies?

Comparing Single Payer to hoovering up our electronic communications is a straw man argument anyway. What does health care have to do with with our government spying on everyone. They already have all the health information they want, just from our own E-mails and web surfing.

[JoePhilly]

40. You send emails about the treatment you receive for addiction and

other mental health issues?

You don't think this evil government would blackmail leaders of the Occupy movement using the records of the prescribed drugs they take that are used to treat an addiction to an illegal drug?

The correct question is the extent to which we should trust this evil government that we apparently have.

If the government is evil (as some on DU now claim), we simply can't trust it, not with our communications, and certainly not with our medical records.

[alcibiades_mystery]

7. It took fewer than 100 hours to identify and locate the bombers

What timeframe would be appropriate to you, as that seems pretty goddamned good in my book?

[jazzimov]

10. As I suggested in my OP,

it wouldn't have happened at all - at least according to many theories here.

[alcibiades_mystery]

14. Theories here are stupid as fuck, as is obvious from a cursory examination

Clearly, nobody but the "fascist totalitarian authoritarians" (or whatever the imbecility of the day calls it) would be able to act at all were any of these supposed surveillance systems as imagined by our dumbest fucking posters.

Still, I'd say tracking these bombers in 100 hours is pretty fucking good, considering the alternative of knowing fuck-all about anything. It's easy to talk about "Those who would sacrifice liberty for safety..." when your children aren't getting their fucking legs blown off, isn't it?

[mick063]

16. They found the bombers quickly

Surveillance tape helped immensely.


Storing meta data in a server center is wrong, not because what it is now, but what technology will evolve into later.

Law is about precedence.

Conditioning people to this is bullshit.

[Apophis]

11. If the Tsarnaev brothers had a telescreen in their apartment, they would've got caught conspiring.

We need telescreens!

[Electric Monk]

12. 1) There will always be someone, somewhere, who would like to hurt you.

2) The beatings will continue until morale improves.

[Iggo]

18. Don't you?

They found those fuckers fast.

[RandiFan1290]

19. Shut up!

Open the door and exit your house with your hands up! We are going to voluntarily search your house for the dangerous terrorist!

[Lady Freedom Returns]

24. Another "evil Marshal law" post? PLEASE!

What happen in Boston was people doing what was necessary to stop two bad men.

Joplin MO was under Marshal Law for 1-2 weeks and you did not get asked, you were told. Yet once again it was for a good reason. Yes, you had to show ID, a lot. Yes we had a hard deadline curfew, zero wiggle room. But we had outside people coming in that were out to get whatever they could. So yes, we were happy to follow orders.

Do we need a national debate about what is private anymore. Yes, no question. Boston showed us that. People may think it was horrid, but truth was it was for the public good. The people of Boston went with it because they knew the bad guys had to get caught with no more citizens getting hurt.

The hunting/stopping of terrorist, foreign or domestic, is a national thing. We all need to pull together on this and talk about the new technology out today and what really is private. Is a phone #, something we place online or in a phone book private? Is an e-mail address really private or is it like regular old snail mail? (as in people can see your address, but can't read your mail without a warrant).

But much of it, at this time, will be needed to be trusted to the government. Debate it, yes, but remember that those out to hurt us is not waiting on us to finish that debate. Things will still need to be done that we don't agree with.

So much to do with so little time.And people not even trying to really discuss, they are really just slowing it all down. They can not add to the conversation so they add fearful scandal and "their going to take our guns" type of bull.

Those that are doing such things are not helping the country or the Party.

[RandiFan1290]

25. Try reading comprehension

I know you were in a big hurry to post your screed but I never mentioned Martial Law. Like I said it was all voluntary with guns shoved in people's faces.

I am not afraid of your terrorists.

[Lady Freedom Returns]

26. No, you just showed the same old pics from the same argument.

And I don't see guns shoved in peoples faces. I see Police officers holding guns, trying to get people off the streets and to safety. I also see them checking peoples homes to make sure they are safe.

[RandiFan1290]

28. Well, you should be very comfortable with the mission creep

I will continue to fight it.

[Motown_Johnny]

22. That was basically a "Lone Wolf" who recruited his brother.

There is no reason to assume any electronic communications were used.

[Lady Freedom Returns]

23. I see the point you are trying to make.

One that I have tried to make. But sadly many have started to sound like those that have been the butt of many a joke here in the past. Sadder still is that they don't see it.

[malaise]

27. For me the most important thing about the Boston Marathon bombing

was that Bushco granted asylum to people he knew were enemies of Russia.

Asylum, spying, etc. are all tools for the 1%.

[graham4anything]

31. Benjamin Franklin said "An ounce of Prevention is worth a pound of cure".he is 100% right on. nt.

[baldguy]

33. The best evidence that the NSA is not and can not be spying on every American citizen

Is Ed Snowden.

[KharmaTrain]

34. Poutrage...It's What's In For 2013...

...our personal privacy has long ended once you leave your four walls; either physically or now electronically. Virtually every business transaction is tracked, we're constantly being photographed by security cameras and our personal data is bought and sold. Then once a year everyone is required to supply their income, where they earn that money, what other assets they hold and then there's one's Social Security number that has all but become a national ID. Datamining has become a big business and anyone with the access can learn a lot about you in a hurry; they make the NSA look like Boy Scouts.

Another thing to think about is the amount of manpower required to track every single call, email and PM...billions of messages to be gone through. That'd be a job from hell...and if there was a major ramp-up in this area we'd surely see a big surge in federal hiring...or contracting...rather than dealing with the sequester. Some pieces of this story just don't fit plain math and logic.

Lastly...there's definitely a law of diminishing returns when it comes to collecting too much data. As the Boston case shows, all the best surveillance cannot prevent some crackpot from doing some serious damage. We'll never live in a totally safe world and every attempt to try to make it so just exposes more vulnerabilities. As George Carlin said, "invent a better mousetrap and some schmuck will invent a better mouse".

There's definite need to investigate the abuses of the NSA and how pervasive government spying is into the private lives of Americans. If it's happening, it needs to be exposed. But as far as datamining and the sudden outrage over personal information being harvested, that horse long left the barn...

Cheers...

[WinkyDink]

38. You assume too much, esp. as to whether the NSA wanted/wants to prevent anything.