Is the NSA reading our e-mail right now?

Great Debates
1

Now, I’ve read several conflicting things about just what this really means. Is it the first step in establishing extremely strict controls over Internet communications and cryptography, or is its importance being blown out of proportion? If someone in government DID try to get something passed that would be a foothold into taking away civil liberties, would anyone notice or care right now, in the emotion of the moment?

Heck, would we know if it were going on right now, and would we be able to do anything about it even if we did? Today’s Seattle Times had an interesting little article on the War Powers Act… At any rate, what do you all think will be the state of our freedoms by the time everything settles down? We’ve certainly been through things like this before and come out of it relatively okay, though I know of some Second Amendment fans who aren’t so pleased at what happened as a result of Oklahoma City and Columbine…

2

I will just point out that it’s not completely unknown for Congress to pass bills in the heat of the moment which are much later struck down as unconstitutional by a cooler-headed Supreme Court.

3

Yes, there’s something you can do about it. You can start encrypting all your e-mail, whether it’s discussing the overthrow of a central american country or discussing how the sky is a particularly nice shade of blue today.

Terrorists or no, the Bill of Rights is still in effect, and that includes the 4th Amendment.

And I’m wondering why the air raid sirens in NJ are blaring at 12:40 in the morning…

4

And to answer the subject, yes. Every piece of electronic communication, from telephone to e-mail is recorded and archived. The NSA has more computer power than you can probably imagine dedicated to just that. Search http://slashdot.org for the word “echelon”

5

Cecil Adams’s article on Echelon

Eerily, the picture that accompanies this article indirectly mentions “Bin Ladin,” even though both the article and the picture were published almost 2 months ago…

6

I’ve got to disagree with that. Even if they had the computer power to actually scan all Internet communications (and phone, and fax, and etc.), there’s no way to get the world’s communication at large to the NSA. There’s an entire industry dedicated to expanding the communication network, and we’re falling behind demand as it is. And it’s not an easy task:

Due to the nature of the net, communication from East Podunk to West Podunk only passes through the Central Podunk exchange.

So in order to monitor all transmissions, the NSA would have to build a second communication network, in total secrecy, parallel to the public one, to carry the transmissions from Central Podunk to wherever the Ecehelon hardware is. Or they would have to install a top-secret node with voice-recognition software decades ahead of what’s commercially available in Central Podunk and a ciouple of thousand other places. I consider neither scenario likely.

Even more so when you realize that there’s no way they could get into all communications without having the telcos knowing it. Telco engineers, as a group, are fond of their network and are not likely to shut up if someone starts to vandalize the equipment on their playground.

The NSA undoubtedly eavesdrops. A lot. But not “every piece of electronic communication”, not even a substantial portion of it. The rumour has circulated forever, though.

S. Norman

7

With their new $20B gift, I’m sure they’ll have plenty of resources to listen to those conversations they’ve missed. Remember that prisoner who ran a drug operation from his cell by making telephone calls (which were monitored) by using pig latin. Etterbay rushbay up on your igpay atinlay.

8

Even if they are listening in, who the hell is going to sift through the eight hundred million E-mails that have been generated since Tuesday morning that happen to use the keywords “terrorist”, “bomb”, and “Bin Laden”, and find that one that happens to possibly hold a single actual clue?

The more keywords the system is designed to pick up (and key phrases, etc) the greater the number of “intercepted” messages. But undoubtedly, the vast majority of them are false trails: A movie reviewer says a show “bombs”, a mother tells a friend her two-year-old is “a real terrorist” when she takes away his Barney video, and - yeah, I know I’m reaching on this one :smiley: - a store manager says he has “a bin laden with ground coffee.”

The system almost certainly looks for the word “gun”. But how many references do they get to staple guns, glue guns, heat guns, soldering guns, air guns, pellet guns, paintball guns, potato guns or even snow guns?

How many E-mails and Instant Messages do the online gamers exchange that use the words “flamethrower”, “missile launcher”, “machine gun” and “did you see Lara Croft’s…” well, you get the idea.

How about the old military afficionados discussing “towed artillery”, “panzer tanks”, “frontal assault” and “here’s where Adolph Hitler really screwed up…”?

How about the thousands of legitimate online orders from farmers for fertilizer, from collectors making a legal purchase of an antique gun, or from buyers picking up wartime memorabilia?

How about this very post? How about the thousands of kids in paintball bulletin boards referring to their paintball “guns”?

And in any case, does anyone think these guys are stupid enough to write out:

To: OsamaB@afghaniwilderness.org
From: HyJaK@safehouse.com

Re: Completed training today, ahead of schedule since we didn’t bother with takeoffs or landings. Bought several utility knives today, plan on hiding them in carryon luggage. Commander Orange has purchased our tickets using his stolen credit card on Expedia.com. Operatives departing for airport in rental car in two hours.

Etc, etc, etc… ?

Of course not. As another poster said, they’d almost certainly say something closer to:

“Yeah, the picnic will happen on schedule. Bob picked up the hot dog buns and Joe got the paper plates. Figure we’ll leave in two hours.”

Etc. and so forth. Innocuous, simple, and no keyword system in the world would pick up the actual meaning. A trained human probably wouldn’t pick up the meaning…

This is one of those things that people speak of when saying let’s not destroy our own liberties when we strike back at these people. Eavesdropping on our 'mail will do very little or nothing to help prevent future events of this sort, but WILL be an erosion of our right to privacy as US citizens.

9

As one expert on the NSA noted last night (either on CBS or NBC – I was flipping between 'em), the NSA monitors a lot of stuff. The problem is that they don’t really have the time/manpower/whatever to go through it all.

10

So, maybe we could all forward our spam to a designated address at the NSA. They may find the sense of the five emails from enlargeyourpenis.com that showed up in my daughter’s aol email account last week.

11

I cannot provide a cite for the following, but I believe it presents an area worth investigating. My wife told me she heard of a survey of U.S. corporations in which 75% of the respondents said that they monitoried employee email.

12

It kinda surprises me, in this day and age, that both of the popular Internet e-mail transfer protocols (POP3 and IMAP) transmit e-mail in the clear, without so much as a hint of encryption.