The NSA..Plausible Deniability and 'Internet traffic'

[Ichingcarpenter]

NSA claims it 'touches' only 1.6 percent of Internet traffic


In an unsigned document, the agency says that its communications data collection is comparable in scope to a "dime on a basketball court."

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57598043-38/nsa-claims-it-touches-only-1.6-percent-of-internet-traffic/






'Internet Traffic' includes everything on the net.
They don't need:

Infrastructure stuff. (Router queries, ARP, DNS, Keep Alives, Broken Packets, PINGs etc)

Streaming Media content such as netflix, youtube etc.

Game content or static web session content and dynamic advertisement delivery etc. (a header grab will do just fine for that) They wouldn't even need social site content if the host is US based cos its effectively recorded for them.

I'm pretty sure that accounts for about 95% of the available total.
Filtering out the mail spam would account for a good few percent more.

They "only" grab 29 petabytes. A day.
Or ~30,000,000 gigabytes. A day.


The lack of context really makes this highly questionable

In NSA-speak, "touch" means "grab". They redefined "collect" to mean "look at what we already have", so I guess they needed some other word here to use in place of what is normally "collect" or "grab", and decided to use "touch".



The Government's Word Games When Talking About NSA Domestic Spying

https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/wordgames#collect

[Pholus]

1. I wonder WHICH 1.6% gets taken...

My bet is that the green part of the plot is the 1.6%. In other words, all emails.

[Ichingcarpenter]

2. I'm sure they filter out junk mail

Which is a large part of e-mails. Viagra, Nigerian wealth, canadian drugs, porn
etc but include it as traffic.

The article on their language is interesting and forms a back drop into their double speak history.


Also why wasn't the white paper signed?


Also thanks for the graphic.

[Pholus]

4. Even when they quote a number it is meant as an insult to the rubes.

They're counting on that 1.6% making people say "That's a 98.4% chance I'm NOT being watched" instead of "OMG, 1.6% easily scoops up all emails and a fair bit of other stuff too."

So a few years back there was an obvious bit of an interest in steganography, hiding messages in other types of traffic like pictures or video. I guess that was probably about the point where they knew they could get all the emails but were afraid that some communications could be hidden in other types of traffic as well.

[Egnever]

3. Sigh the people that write this stuff..

The 29 peta bytes number was pulled out of the blue that is not an official number its a made up one by someone speculating.

Basing your analysis on that number is silly.

Yes they mean they only look at a tiny fraction of the data they collect. They have not denied collecting everything.

The Data collected has no personal identifying information on it. The data they look at has no personal information attached to it. it is only after they identify possible targets and hand it over to the FBI or another agency that personal data starts being tied to it.

You can read the paper yourself instead of reading conspiracy theories written about it.

http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/750223/obama-administrations-legal-rationale-for.pdf

I lays out pretty clearly what they are doing.

Also you can read the section of the law they are talking about here

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/110/hr6304/text

[Pholus]

5. You didn't read your own document.

29 petabytes is just 1826 petabytes (estimated worldwide traffic) multiplied by the 1.6 percent "touched" (or hoovered more appropriately) by the NSA.

Both FROM your first link if you read the last seven pages.

And it is clear that the FISA reauthorization of your second link is NOT the entire story. See, FISA builds a secret internal set of case law we're not allowed to know.

That's kind of the problem.

[Egnever]

7. Ok I concede the number

Now tell me how it is double speak when they lay it out for you themselves?

If as you claim they have their own laws to skirt the laws laid out in the re authorization act then I agree it is a problem. Do you have a source for that other than speculative blogosphere stuff?:

[Pholus]

9. Replies:

1) The OP had a useful link to the EFF that describes the known cases where the NSA redefined key terms internally so that when they make a statement it actually means something different to them than to the uninitiated. The 1.6% number is simply a continuation of making a "true" statement while hiding its actual significance. The addition of the basketball court analogy is a prime example of deliberately misleading while presenting facts. A dime on a basketball court sounds rather harmless. But far more than 98% of that basketball court wasn't worth searching to begin with because it wasn't even the type of information the NSA was interested in.

So, given that email is less than 1% of all internet communications (I have one recent estimate of 0.38% -- text is small) and 1.6% is hoovered it is rather safe to conclude that all emails/texts are "touched" (read hoovered) and scanned using an undefined set of criteria for evidence of disloyalty. Furthermore an unknown fraction is stored for an indeterminate length of time which will become longer when the Utah storage facility comes online.

I don't consider that an act consistent with the values of the country I was indoctrinated with and I either want the abuses to stop, or I want to be reimbursed for the time I wasted learning all these wonderful American ideals that we tossed out the moment it becomes inconvenient.

2) No. My personal FOIA request is still pending. However, in its absence I will trust the opinions of a former FISA judge who discussed the court's numerous problems with the finally-actually-created Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Boils down to the realization that a court that only hears ONE side of an adversarial argument cannot truly be impartial. That among many other criticisms. There is more, of course, but this is sufficient to establish that the concerns are hardly "blogosphere" stuff.

http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2013/07/09/privacy-board-hears-concerns-about-surveillance-efforts/

[Ichingcarpenter]

10. Thanks couldn't have said it better

I hope the poster reads that article on NSA language its where it started in the Bush regime and the NSA hasn't really changed bosses since then fto speak of.even under Obama.
Just a reshuffling of Bush appointed guys.

[Pholus]

12. I guess it shows that President Obama truly ISN'T in charge here.

Leaving Bushies in charge of such a dangerous program was a rather stupid political move. Because I don't think the President is a stupid man by any stretch, I guess it has to come down to his inability to actually control these guys. That is frightening.

[Ichingcarpenter]

6. Sigh.... How do you like these apples?

A separate block of text on page six, which states:

According to figures published by a major tech provider, the Internet carries 1,826 Petabytes of information per day


Its from their report now do the math if you can and stick that where the sun doesn't shine.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/dont-worry-nsa-sayswe-only-touch-1-6-of-daily-global-internet-traffic/


Double speak is getting thick.

[Egnever]

8. They taste good

I concede the number.

Just curious what amount of data would it be acceptable for them to look at in the act of trying to chase down terrorists?

There has to be some number you would accept.

[Civilization2]

11. Does there? Why? "Terrorist" is a term with wide ranging meaning. eco-terrorist = sabotaged a,. .

tractor. You are far more likely to kill yourself than be killed by a terrorist,. far more likely to be killed by a police officer,. just statistics. The war-OF-terror is a corporate control war, for profits.

No,. naming a tactic, calling for war on a tactic does not justify the secret budgets and the corporate-mercenary invasion of privacy. see; http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023447944

[Egnever]

13. So there is never a justification for gathering intel ever?

[Civilization2]

14. Collecting and organising intel could be useful,. however it should all be made public knowledge.

The people pay for the intel, through taxes, and should be able to access the work product of our agents. Many people working in many fields could benefit from useful intel on many issues, when it is made available to the people.

Also true of the budgets, all government budgets should be maintained on the net,. accessible and searchable by all who payed for them. The government must have nothing to hide,. must operate in the light of day always, or democracy ceases to exist. This practice of voting every few years and then giving up all control to the "representatives" is farcically called democratic, when it has become anything but. The will of the people is not implemented, nothing near it. (public opinion polls show this over and over) This is not democracy.

[blackspade]

15. As I pointed out in your other thread, this is the primary problem:

Yes they mean they only look at a tiny fraction of the data they collect. They have not denied collecting everything.

It is not legal under the Constitution for them to collect the data and store it for future use. It doesn't matter that they look at 1.6% or any other number. The fact that they collect it all without a shred of evidence of wrongdoing is the root of the issue.

[Ichingcarpenter]

16. That's why I started this thread

to clean the air of the bullshit of the other thread.