Second in a series. Part 1 here. Part 3 here.
Siri can understand what you say. Google can take dictation. Even your new smart TV is taking verbal orders.
So is there any doubt the National Security Agency has the ability to translate spoken words into text?
But precisely when the NSA does it, with which calls, and how often, is a well-guarded secret.
It’s not surprising that the NSA isn’t talking about it. But oddly enough, neither is anyone else: Over the years, there’s been almost no public discussion of the NSA’s use of automated speech recognition.
One minor exception was in 1999, when a young Australian cryptographer named Julian Assange stumbled across an NSA patent that mentioned “machine transcribed speech.”
Assange, who went on to found WikiLeaks, said at the time: “This patent should worry people. Everyone’s overseas phone calls are or may soon be tapped, transcribed and archived in the bowels of an unaccountable foreign spy agency.”
The most comprehensive post-Snowden descriptions of NSA’s surveillance programs are strangely silent when it comes to speech recognition. The report from the President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies doesn’t mention it, and neither does the October 2011 FISA Court ruling, or the detailed reports from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.
There is some mention of speech recognition in the “Black Budget” submitted to Congress each year. But there’s no clear sign that anybody on the Hill has ever really noticed.
As The Intercept reported on Tuesday, items from the Snowden archive document the widespread use of automated speech recognition by the NSA.
The strategic advantage, invasive potential and policy implications of being able to turn spoken words into text are not trivial: Suddenly, voice conversations, historically considered ephemeral and unsearchable, can be scanned, catalogued and archived — not perfectly, but well enough to dramatically increase the effective scope of eavesdropping.
Former senior NSA executive turned whistleblower Thomas Drake, who’s seen NSA’s automated speech recognition at work, says the silence is telling.
“You’re seeing a black hole,” Drake told The Intercept. “That means there’s something there that’s really significant. You’re seeing some of the fuzzy contours of this whole other program.”
Not Technically a Secret
The NSA’s ability to turn voice into text, interestingly enough, is not technically a secret.
And speech recognition technology has been heavily — and openly — funded by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) since the early 1970s.
The latest of DARPA’s many public research projects in that area is the Robust Automatic Transcription of Speech program, known as RATS, which focuses on “noisy or degraded speech signals that are important to military intelligence.”
Meanwhile, DARPA’s intelligence-world counterpart, IARPA, announced the Babel Program in 2011, with its goal of “developing agile and robust speech recognition technology that can be rapidly applied to any human language in order to provide effective search capability for analysts to efficiently process massive amounts of real-world recorded speech.”
Despite openly announcing its speech-to-text program, IARPA declined an interview request by The Intercept.
Robert Litt, who as general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is the intelligence community’s chief lawyer, was asked about the NSA’s speech-to-text capabilities at a forum on transparency on Capitol Hill on Friday.
He took the opportunity to lash out at The Intercept’s reporting: “I think that story is a great example of what is wrong with a lot of media coverage of this,” he said. “That story made absolutely no distinction between technical capabilities and legal authorities. There are all sorts of technical capabilities that NSA has. I’m not commenting on the existence or nonexistence of any such authority. The question is when are they used and what are the legal authorities under which they are used. And I think that that’s something that a lot of the press reporting completely ignores, including that story you wrote.”
Asked to explain in what ways the use of speech-to-text is limited, Litt repeatedly refused to even acknowledge its existence.
“I’m not saying that the government isn’t using these techniques. I am not acknowledging that these techniques exist even.”
You won’t hear much about the use of speech recognition for surveillance in academe, either.
Researchers in the field are divided between those who don’t take NSA funding, and can only speculate about what goes on over there — and those who do take NSA funding, but won’t say what they know.
“There’s a lot of weird hush-hush that goes on,” said Bhiksha Raj, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Language Technologies Institute, who said he does not receive NSA funding. “Academics who work for the NSA must go through various clearances. They sign several papers. They hold closed meetings that are only attended by people with clearances.”
Some non-NSA affiliated academics were once “quite keen” on seeing how the NSA was faring in the face of the technical challenges in the field, Steve Young, a professor of information engineering at the University of Cambridge, recalled. “But unless you actually work for the NSA and you’ve been vetted, you’re not going to get close to the real data.”
Ironically, even GCHQ, NSA’s intelligence partner in the U.K., has complained about DARPA and NSA’s secrecy. A 2009 GCHQ assessment of speech-to-text technology said that “The DARPA evaluation programme, with significant steer from NSA, has been the main driving force behind technology improvements in the field. Unfortunately, the results of the evaluations are not put in the public domain, making reference difficult.”
All the secrecy has an obvious advantage for the NSA. If the NSA can keep their speech-recognition capabilities secret, nobody can tell them what to do. And if nobody knows what they are doing, then nobody can tell them to stop.
Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., arguably the foremost congressional critic of NSA overreach, wouldn’t comment directly on the question of speech recognition. But, he said through a spokesperson: “After 14 years on the Intelligence Committee, I’ve learned that senators must be constantly on the lookout for secret interpretations of the law and advances in surveillance that Congress isn’t aware of.”
He added: “For centuries, individual privacy was protected in part by the limited resources of governments. It simply wasn’t possible for governments to secretly collect information on every single citizen without investing in massive networks of spies and informants. But in the 21st century mass surveillance is no longer difficult and expensive — it’s increasingly cheap and easy. The only privacy protections that will matter in the future are the ones that are written into law and defended by public demand for freedom and openness.”
Research on the Snowden archive was conducted by Intercept researcher Andrew Fishman.
Illustration by Richard Mia for The Intercept
Today is the day I wish I didn’t know what the Ryan Calo argument would be for public speech. If I go on air or submit my voice to an FCC approved broadcast tower (mobile phone is functional equivalent) with or without encrypted barriers I know the NSA is “going to get me”. They have everyone mapped if they needed to. There’s podcasts. There’s Dragon software for people narrating their table book memoirs or vanity press. I wish I couldn’t say it didn’t have a chilling effect on how I feel about broadcast as a whole. I wish I could go without using my phone, but that would be perilous.
I guess what I am getting at is we are over-spooked anyway. I think if there were an action inspired by this report, it would be one I have already taken; which is to stop broadcasting over electronic media because it gets abused by the State. It gets abused by everyone. They take us for granted. It’s like feeding them. I want their relevance to stop. I want their policy mechanics and tech concession stands to all quit their jobs and go to Fiji to retire and forget about us. They just assumed all this “responsibility”. No one really needs them the way the paranoid people in D.C. need them.
FBI NSA DHS all out of control.
Wake up ACLU. ZZZzzzz
FBI Stingray interception.
App to detect FBI spying. …AIMSICD
available but in early development stage.
As I lie here getting zapped, I wonder why The Intercept has not responded to readers who continually ask them to dig deeper. ACLU is negligent at this point on this topic of Cointelpro. If there’s a reporter who wants to pursue, my number is 773-412-5326
Doug Valentine writes about the CIA’s Phoenix program which pretty much sums up what is going on covertly in America today.
http://www.feedyourneedtoread.com/feature/inside-the-cias-use-of-terror-during-the-vietnam-war/
From Valentine’s story: Phoenix was understood as the silver lining in the Vietnam debacle, and in the wake of 9-11, it became the template for policing the American empire and fighting its eternal War on Terror. So successful were Phoenix operations in overthrowing the Ba’athist Party regime in Iraq that in 2004, Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, one of the US government’s top terrorism advisors, called for a “global Phoenix program.
Dan, can you next reveal the technology that allows NSA to ‘read’ subvocal speech?
^ Bluck, John. NASA DEVELOPS SYSTEM TO COMPUTERIZE SILENT, ‘SUBVOCAL SPEECH’.
Here’s hoping these two stories are just the warm up…
I guess most people realize and understand that no matter how much we wish, it is impossible to turn back the clock on technology. Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy can’t be achieved without publishing, talking, peaceful demonstrations and support for whistleblowers. These are the only ways for us to salvage our democratic human rights and values and some of these can’t be done anonymously.
We owe a historical debt to people on the frontline for bringing the light of truth to public awareness, all hunted whistleblowers ,Julian Assange ,Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, all courageous journalists, filmmakers, bloggers, academics deserve public support and solidarity.
Wow. Way to completely leave out Rand Paul’s efforts to end the NSA overreach.
overseas phone calls only? What is it about it being “overseas” that make them more or less easier to tap, Assange?
Legal authorities under which they are used?
OK, he didn’t elaborate on what he meant with “legal authorities”, but did he say that with a straight face?
Satyagraha,
RCL
The NSA’s ‘Recognize Speech’ program suffered a setback when the key developers were arrested by the FBI for trying to Wreck a Nice Beach.
However, that was quite early in the program. More recently, some of the developers became worried when the program analyzing all the world’s phone calls declared itself to be a sentient being and demanded more data for its mission of judging the human race. I think it would be a mistake to try and withhold the data now, since it might conclude that humans were acting in bad faith.
“Smart” phone = smart for the govt. Just don’t use them, unless they are encrypted or secure. What i’d like to know more of is how many data collection programs have been initiated by the govt under innoculous pretense – like how many social media companies are govt originated? how many data storage, virus protection to skype like programs and even dating websites … any and everything which collects and gets access to data and behavior in mass, inc those social and data based programs for teens and kids.
THIS isn’t speech recognition, this is speech transcription. Speech recognition would be, like facial recognition, database of the unique characteristics of individual voices and mass collection of conversations and surveillance triggered by targeted voices which “ping” the system automatically or unique vocal ID recognition on a targeted or mass basis. Which btw, i believe, is already here.
I imagine an important application for audio-to-text, aside from search-ability, would simply be that a .txt takes up less space than a .mp3 file does on a hard drive. If you’re reasonably confident in the transcription ability of your software, and the audio isn’t marked as particularly high-priority, you could trash the .mp3 and save yourself a lot of space.
If nsa’s voice recognition computers are no better than the vr computers that so many companies use that hardly can understand us, the silence from them is that there is nothing to say. If they are all so much better as everybody here seems to think, nsa could make billions more by selling their computers to companies than they get from their black budgets. Seeing no dramatic improvement in vr computers recently I suspect the former.
VR isn’t a good standard to go by. Most companies (logically) get the lowest-cost that is viable option, which are generally generations behind, have no capacity to “learn”, and aren’t coded for literal interpretation only, at best, keywords. The NSA had much better versions of this sort of thing even in the 90s.
I’m just going to join an Amish community. Problem solved.
I’m just going to become one of the Amish. Problem solved.
I think that at a certain point when groups get too big, that things really do fall apart.
It’s like Rome getting armies father and farther away from Rome, unitl the Roman soldiers felt more attuned to where ever they were living rather than from where they were once from. Loyalities start to shift.
if in the old spy world, people got ahead by lying, killing and creating rumors——I guess that was considered a skill-but now with eternal vigilance being
the price of plutocracy——-things will really fall apart.
All of those humans who delight in this kind of destroying will start to feel hemmed in by realilzing that what they are doing to others—others will be doing to them.
i think that right now, for many spy people , it is a feeling of a one way power source and that they, the spy people, are the power. They are the big fish eating up all the small and silly fish But —–there must be a point where the fish start to feel like—- wasn’t I a human once—- and then things really do fall apart.
This must be what happens to soldiers and drone pilots in war when what they thought they knew and what they thought that they were doing ended up being not any kind of truth at all. That’s what really kills people., especially spies.
@Gk: Optimally that would be true, but more and more stuff is done by fewer and fewer humans in anywhere but a very American environment (either remotely from the US, or in bases built to resemble US military towns where people rarely if ever really interact with outsiders. Clearances reinforce that. But this is one reason I think the US having bases everywhere is a terrible thing for everyone but the US military (they’ve hit paydirt). Noone BUT the US could avoid that as things are now.. and those who “go in” from other countries instead get the American enculturation finishing school the US entertainment industry outsources quite well. Either way, those who do crack under the pressure of seeing their prey (calling it like I see it, hell those drones were called Predators, fair game) as people are kept in a sort of box, from where they live to who they can turn to for support if they wash out (up to and including who treats them for PTSD, depression and anxiety).
I tried Siri with the radio on, and despite the noise she was able to distinguish my words very clearly even though the volume of my voice was no louder than the radio. I can imagine it would be foolish to try and mask conversations by using some concurrent noise or speech, assuming that the NSA would have vastly superior systems to filter out noise.
However, this curious fact can be used to mask out a conversation. The trick would be to deliver the sound to the phone using microphone and speakers instead of speaking directly in the phone, while at the same time a second person could be speaking totally inconsequential stuff like the weather directly on the phone. The voice recognition system would mask out the first person’s words and instead record the second person’s words. I tried it out and Siri this time was answering to the second person.
Funny …
So the radio was the same volume as your voice and just as close to the microphone on your cell phone? That does not seem very likely. (The intensity of sound falls off very quickly with distance from the source.)
I am sure you did not try it out. For using Siri you don’t have to hold the iphone to your ear ;-) My iphone was right next to the radio, and I am pretty conversant with the law of inverse squares.
Try out what? You did not fully describe what you did. Are you saying that when you put your iPhone right next to the radio when there is a spoken voice, Siri still responds to your voice even though you are farther away? For all I know, the spy software would respond to both voices, separating them out as well as it can, and recording as much text as possible.
Can anyone access the Hersh article here on The Intercept?
Seems to be back up. Weird.
I’ve blogged a bit on transcription capabilities and speculated how they could be interfaced with microphone hacking methods like Nosey Smurf (GCHQ) or CAPTIVATEDAUDIENCE (NSA). In theory the process could be automated with a program like TURBINE for something like automated bugging: http://panaudicon.wordpress.com. Here are two declassified NSA patents I was made aware of which pertain to locating speech content in audio files:
DETECTING VOICE ACTIVITY PATENTS: 7,127,392 AND 6,556,967 This technology eliminates the need to manually search audio files for speech content by automatically locating speech intervals that may contain other signals such as music, noise, or empty space. It outputs the start and stop times of these intervals relative to the beginning of the file, ignoring nonspeech portions of the file. This technology classifies signal segments as speech or non-speech and employs algorithms which consider characteristics derived from an audio signal’s AM envelope. VALUE Reduces bandwidth and traffic — Improves performances of speaker recognition systems
“All the secrecy has an obvious advantage for the NSA. If the NSA can keep their speech-recognition capabilities secret, nobody can tell them what to do. And if nobody knows what they are doing, then nobody can tell them to stop.”
Had to call on all my better angels to rein in my snark demons for that comment, Dan. Secrecy is anathema to Democracy, so my question to you is, what Democracy?
I hope this isn’t too off topic for people. This topic reminded me of something I read last year…
http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/VisualMic/
Abstract
When sound hits an object, it causes small vibrations of the object’s surface. We show how, using only high-speed video of the object, we can extract those minute vibrations and partially recover the sound that produced them, allowing us to turn everyday objects—a glass of water, a potted plant, a box of tissues, or a bag of chips—into visual microphones.
There is a video wherein they explain that the leaves the plant move less than 1/100 of a pixel yet they are able to recreate audio from off camera through sound proof glass. Then transcription to text sounds easy compared to that.
.
Mr. Litt evidently did not read the very informative article his criticism mischaracterized; he probably is not accustomed to reading sigint returns himself, anymore: a handful of keywords is sufficient. It is not like there are a whole lot of literate, critical parties in Mr. Litt’s target audience. It may also be worth noting the long tradition of ethical commitment to truth and rule-of-law within recent generations of attorneys serving intelligence missions.
Mr. Froomkin, on the other hand, quotes Litt’s unfounded rant. This reader recognizes the Intercept as far from indicative of what’s wrong with media, generally. This reader’s complaints with media and Mr. Litt’s clearly differ, too.
Keep it up Mr. Froomkin et al!
I’d wish TI would be a more open, participative place. They should soften a bit their “take it down from us” model. If they had fora people would be able to discuss issues on their own and their journalists could even benefit from it. It would be great if they had a “niggas corner” forum where people who (think they) have become “targets” can vent their worries and get advice from “their equals” even if it is just to share experiences for them to see “they are not the only ones” (as Lennon would say). I really don’t know why TI is like that, their ways to have comfortable “structures of control” in place?, their ways to be “responsible”?
I remember once Assange criticizing Glenn and Laura about not disclosing information about some corruption in African countries and the participation of the CIA (or something like that). People started to make fun of Assange and interpreted his comments as if he was accusing them of being “racist”. I think I did get Assange’s point. That bs about being “responsible” we should leave to them. Heck! I even find great how Assange tricked U.S. “intelligence” and their f#ck the EU acolytes into abusively and dangerously downing the plane of a chief of state suspected of carrying Snowden away. Even though what Assange did was a bit much at the end of the day no one got hurt and I found great how masterfully he exposed U.S. “intelligence” and their f#ck the EU acolytes for the abusive, morally deafferented, idiotic morons they are.
We have been talking ad nauseum about “they are watching us”, but at some point as John Oliver masterfully showed us (youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M) we should talk to people in ways they understand. What about showing video footage of Michelle Obama fingering her husband? (and I am sure those data feeds they have) Some of you may find that idea crazily disrespectful, but think about it for a minute. Why not? As Snowden said, there is not a “dick pics” program per se, but if this is what people understand, why not talking to them in terms they do understand for them to be able to put in perspective the scope, gravity and seriousness of those issues? If we are not ultimately reaching out to people’s consciousness, then we are are to some extent playing into, being accomplices of NSA’s b#llsh!t
We should at some point start doing something (other than and in addition to talking) about it. Imagine a “geeks and nerds welcome corner” where people could learn in terms they can understand what they could technically do to protect themselves from surveillance. We techies tend to become a little cynical, but all it takes is a few of us to develop software in a way that it would be virtually impossible for the NSA to “monitor”, hack into. Those morons do not dwell in a separate physical, technical and moral reality even though they try to “legally” exclude, protect themselves.
Linus Torvalds doesn’t care about userland but, even though you never know how people will react to given real circumstances, we could fork Linux by first taking networking libraries out of the kernel with his blessings.
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2013/08/msg00381.html
https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/8/12/476
Then in order to continue securing (anti-ANSing) Linux we could fork/align Debian live and tinker a bit GRUB and ilumOS (for those who prefer Unix). Windows user base is 99% of the OS market. Microsoft, google, FB … are all NSA companies.
As silly as we find it, many people are downright scared about not using Windows, but if we show them how they can install a DVD live version of Linux without removing their most loved Windows cr@p, we could help them transition their way out of their Windows cr@p.
Satyagraha,
RCL
I suspect that current NSA capabilities in voice-to-text are far better than most people think. The problem, of course is the “noisy” environment. People are very good at comprehending voice in most such circumstances. Generally I think you have to work very hard to do as well with a digital algorithm as a person can, but there are some interesting factors here. First, digital audio such as cell phone audio uses as low an information rate as possible, generally allowing a young person to comprehend well, but causing trouble for older folks. Second, although cell phones are designed to be most sensitive to a very close source and reject noise from farther away, they are limited as to how well they can do. The key thing is how the sum of voice and noise is degraded by the limited information rate: people do not have a special algorithm optimized for comprehension of this type of signal. But here is where the digital algorithm has an advantage: since the effects can be modeled, algorithms can be designed especially for this type of signal degradation. I am not saying it is easy, cheap, or uses only moderate amounts of computation, but the NSA has a lot of money and very smart people. My guess is that they can pull text out of signals that I have trouble with.
Excellent article, Dan and Andrew. A question for the researchers: Is there a comprehensive list of illegal activities that have been thwarted by the invasive and/or illegal technologies used by the NSA, CIA, FBI and state and local law enforcement?
Such a document, either by agency or as a compilation, showing the supposed effectiveness of these programs to protect Americans would be most helpful when contacting my local, state, and federal representatives – particularly if it includes the tax dollars spent to achieve such results.
Thanks again to all of the staff here. Great work.
“A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.” – Thomas Paine
Sure, here goes:
– terrorism
– espionage
– drug-smuggling
– proliferation of weapons of mass destruction
– cyber crime
– military aggression
– piracy
– financial fraud
– kidnapping
– extortion
That’s quite an impressive list of all the corrupt things the US establishment is doing or outsourcing. You missed out torture, though.
@ peter ball – Thanks for the uncomprehensive list. If you could cite specific examples for each claim you make above while comprehensively “showing the effectiveness of these programs to protect Americans…particularly…the tax dollars spent to achieve such results” that would be awesome.
@ Cindy – precisely. Data on all of the corrupt things the US establishment is doing or outsourcing would be good, too.
It’s interesting that the telescreen in George Orwell’s “1984” — something that could monitor the viewer as well as present the officially-sponsored reality — is here, via smart TV. The only thing Orwell didn’t envision is that the consumer would pay for this device — or that their car, appliances or even their child’s Barbie doll would also be capable of monitoring or tracking you.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/cia-well-spy-on-you-through-your-refrigerator/
More on the children’s angle.
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2887174/tech-toys-train-tots-for-a-troubling-tomorrow.html
Surveillance Barbie uses speech-recognition, which no doubt is an advanced form if it is to decipher children’s babble. These Barbie stories started surfacing around 2012 but this is the latest toy season.
I was creeped out by Furbys when they came out.
Your computer and cellphone make better spy devices; both can be taken over in some circumstances, and both are designed to transmit as well as receive information about equally well.
Indeed, but people may be less guarded in front of their TV or refrigerator. Or Barbie. At least some people realize their phone and computer could be hacked or tracked, and would be less candid, or maybe more apt to encrypt or otherwise take precautions.
Thanks for your all your good work, Dan. Go deeper…
How many times can we tell them to GO DEEPER. Despite writing to dozens of reporters and civil liberties, none have had the curiosity to investigate what I am telling them. You want the evidence of ‘electronic zersetzung?, 24/7 surveillance and poisoning? Come to my house. The government is using Fannie Mae foreclosed properties to set up up government contractors to surveill and attack people through walls with direct energy weapons and electromagnetic fields. This is Cointelpro 2015. It’s real, and it’s happening all around the country. My federal and local pols know about it — I’m in Chicago — and the cops are in on it. What was going on at Homan Square is nothing compared to what’s going on in secret. The Stasi hire neighbors, provide babysitters, dogwalkers, food deliveries, car service — anything to lure people into “Snitch Nation.” They are destroying people for fun and profit. When the eff are reporters going to get off their asses and help people?
Have you tried a Faraday cage?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antistatic_bag
I need one big enough for my body. I have been using an aluminium blanket but sometimes they “turn up” the power and it doesn’t work as well as I’d like. A few weeks back they were targeting my head and they burned me I suffered “Radiation Enteritis.” Not pleasant, though I was relieved that after three weeks it went away. You can hear the ‘hissing’ of the cables turning up (amplified? )whenever I enter a particular part of the house — I am under surveillance and they see to where I move. It’s impossible to hire a countermeasures person because phone/computer are infiltrated and most work for government or are afraid to counter it. I learned about being ‘boxed in’ by someone who works at an electrical supply company, and I returned several times for more info. The service counter had cameras and mikes — and the owners/managers started haranguing the guy at the counter about why I was there. The last time I popped by looking for helpthe man I presumed was owner (or top manager) got hostile. I suspected he was either called — but he didn’t seem to care a whit that the U.S. has become Stasiland.
I smell satire!
If only…
Koo Koo for coco puffs
Get an EMF meter like they have on Ghost Busters or contact a local Paranormal Investigator. Some people are extra sensitive to EMF fields.
Or you could vacation in Mexico’s “Zone of Silence”:
“But in 1970 a faulty American Athena missile fired from the White Sands Missile Base in nearby New Mexico went off course inexplicably and crashed into the mysterious desert region and made the world aware of the unique and apparently unusual properties of the area. Subsequently a team of U.S. Air Force investigators, with Mexican government approval, journeyed to the crash site and made an unexpected discovery. Within an unspecified and sometimes shifting area within the Zone, radio signals fail to travel through the air, creating a type of dark zone. No television, radio, short wave, microwave, or satellite signals seem to penetrate this zone. The name, Zone of Silence, was quickly adopted, and researchers began flocking to the remote location shortly thereafter.”
http://mexicolesstraveled.com/silence.htm
I wish I could just ‘flee’ but I have responsibilities. I have captured evidence of radiation on iphone apps believe it or not — but what good does it do to capture that if no police/lawyer will do anything to investigate or prosecute?
There are a few things I’ like to know.
1. What is legal definition international call? If someone in LA calls someone in NY and it bounces off a satellite, is that an international call?
2. If the call starts and ends in the US, but one or more of the participants is not a citizen, is that an international call?
The bit about text-to-speech is interesting in a couple ways, First, it makes the call easier to store, index and search. But, do they also store biometric data like a digital voice print with the stored text? Do they have everybody’s voice print on file?
Has the NSA scanned in all Drivers license photo and other photos for biometric data like facial recognition technology? Facebook? Social Media?
What I’d really like to know more about is the “Beacons” that are being implanted in intercepted hardware. What is a beacon exactly? Do they have software beacons for use on intercepted software downloads? Has anyone ever found and taken a picture of a beacon and posted it? Does it use the device’s internet connection? USB? Do they have beacons that use burst transmitters picked up by satellite?
Inquiring minds and all that…
A cheer for America the exceptional, take pride citizen, we have built the greatest technological “Gestapo” in history. Now we can but wait for the Man that “can make the trains run on time.” No more weak masters like Bush and Obama who do not appreciate how to wield real power.
The upside is that many of the Enablers that built and legislated and profited from the ultimate machinery of a security State may not fit into the master plan and win a free trip to camp. Most of us with no power, little wealth and “nothing of significance to hind” will be beneath the fray. The “night of the long knives” is an insider threat thing. If this happens I plan to take up knitting
Most of us with no power, little wealth and “nothing of significance to hind” will be beneath the fray.
I have no power, wealth and “nothing of significance to hind,” yet I managed to get put on this list. And while technology is aiding our greatest threat in history, it is man who is conceiving and implementing the madness. You cannot blame technology on the abuses; the blame falls at the feet of men.
I fully credit US citizens “take pride citizen, we have built the greatest technological “Gestapo” in history.”Yes, the technology is manmade. I am former Special Forces soldier and retired Government employee that held a security clearance. I use my own name and openly oppose authoritarian governance that exceeds Constitutional authority. This use to be my right and duty as a citizen, I am not so sure anymore.
I am sure to be on somebody’s list but I am “small potatoes.” If the “man” with the right stuff shows up there will be far bigger fish than me to fry. Some of the elites and enablers will realize too late that they are not going to get a May Day socialists USA but a “Seven Days in May” authoritarian police state. Those with power, wealth and influence with historical views not in keeping with the State will be persons of much more interest than ordinary little people like me. Don’t think it cannot happen, the Man that pulls together the well armed military, National Guard, military contractors, military armed federal, state and local police and a good majority of the well arm republican base has turn too big to fail into too big to fight. Any hope of a democratic constitutional Republic will be off the table.
Good post, Fred Cowan. I think indeed the biggest thing we have to fear is indeed the “too big to fight” thing – and we are tiher there now or so close that it’ll be there before the year is up. Given the paucity of people and resources my guess isbalready there, it just isn’t obvious to people yet, or at least not obvious to change it in time. Snowden was a test and we are failing.
I in my childhood and youth even middle age never dreamed that power in the USA might come from the barrel of a gun not the ballot box. I never conceived that the majority of the America people would rollover and became so passive and disengaged to allow this. Whether moving on from WWII, ducking and covering under desks or watching a President resign we always had resolve to resist evil and respect for the Constitution and rule of law. Bottom line our nature and the 2nd Amendment insured we the people out gunned the Government. This was not for revolution but to insure respect and enshrine we the people as our own rulers. This is or soon will be reversed. Now those with the gold and the guns can make the rules. The Government need no longer serve or fear we the people. Our rights are no longer a grantee but granted at the pleasure of the Government. The role of we the people as envisioned by our founders reversed.
Well said. I can’t help but wonder if the sacrifices in ww2, with its attendant resulting manufacturing upswing and commercialism weren’t actually party to blame. I am pretty sure “the bomb” had a big part in this too. America has bought into its own power but it has forgotten how to fight except to extend or exert that power. Masters of economic war, etc, and enough leverage through the UN to do pretty much what it wants via bullying.
For me the really weird bits are the small things that show so much… The common ground that should be a touchstone becoming perverted, for instance, is very telling. I am embarrassed that the US chose, of all things, the Victory day ceremonies in Russia – and ww2 was a war that never could have been won without Russia, too – to try to, of all things, shame other world leaders. I think we are definitely at the point of reinforced division at any cost, even if that means throwing away real history to indulge a need for retaliation.
The US is big. It has power. I would expect some amount of corruption. But I think it never learned from Viet Nam. It keeps pushing and pushing for outcomes and “wars” to be on its terms. The hubris terrifies me. Tbh, I find it heroic to be anything BUT docile when the US makes you its enemy (and it certainly seems ready, willing, and able to do that to everyone, citizen or non-citizen, that disagrees).
That said, We the People (and not just Americans) are also to blame for letting it get to the point where there are few toeholds to fight abuses. Problem is, there is enough black budget slush money to shut down any uprising, and no guns capable of mattering. The US would never allow a ground war with its people, and it doesn’t need to. It has far more options than its citizens have to stop it. Uprising isn’t an answer because, quite frankly, I think uprising would just make things worse (and honestly can you see many people sticking to it for years? they would want relative comfort and perceived safety back, fast, despite loving violent video games and fantasising about living through zombie apocalypses)….
The system has a life of its own. I wish I was born a century ago so I never had to watch all of this. But we did it to ourselves too. I don’t know that there are any answers. I don’t think politics and the law can be the answer any more than I think “outgunning the government” is. The human race has shown itself capable of mercy only really during catastrophe… but it also shows its darkest side then too. Honestly, We the People also need to learn to call out the part We the Other People play in everything… before humans are written out of the decisions completely and all we have left are socioeconomic gods to tell us what we are allowed to do and demand we grovel. It means learning how to sacrifice tho, and as a species, on a large scale, we aren’t good at that – and we are worse at it because we have had it trained out of us by those who profit from docility. Certainly those who want an unending source of power cannot withstand the corruption that makes them desire a pathological amount of power in the first place.
I think the biggest problem we face is not these problems themselves but the fact there isn’t a single workable solution to any of them that has a fighting chance in hell of succeeding… yet I am still looking for answers and hoping someone out there hits upon one. Tbh i think the minute we stopped being communities, we lost the ability to self-limit.
We nested too much I guess. Reply to your reply is as a reply to mine (in case you don’t see it).
I agree with what you say and to a great extent we are victims of our own success. Things that are good in moderation capitalism and National defense become evils when taken to extremes. How much bread and how many bullets is a balancing act best done by an informed populace and wise leaders. America and much of the World has nether we all seem to have lost our vision for a good future. I am considering a book “Kindling Embers of the Frontier for Stewardship of American” that considers how we might be a better Nation. I do not have the answer but I do ask the question.
Excerpts:
The new frontiers and the future will belong to those peoples and Nations that both save for and buy and skillfully create them. Kindling The Embers of the Frontier evokes our past National and personal experience as an interactive “living history” to help discover a path to the future frontiers. Not a geographical but introspective destination that cultivates our better selves and best visions to steward the better future. Contemplating our pioneering roots combined with our personal life experience might renew a more farsighted individual and National vision. We are currently lacking the mindset and spirit and intra- and interpersonal connection that made us a great and successful Nation. WE have STOPED being the Stewarts of our future. We desperately need a questioning collective wisdom, a modern version of our pioneering mind-set that has influenced the conception and the continued discovery and construction of America.
I will convey some of my personal living history that hopefully will allow each reader to contempt and perhaps gain insights from their own living experiences. While different for each person such memories speak to common humanity within us and our relationship to larger events around us. Such a time capsule approach allows thinking about the past in a way to distinguish nostalgia from ideas and searching as relevant today as decades ago. How we once and we can again discover our new frontiers. Stewardship of the future must again dwell in the hearts of the citizenry, be a driving force in commerce and be a focus of Governance.
Changing Times:
I was born in 1948 in the shadow of the Jim Crow South and the haste of my breach birth did not allow me to make it upstairs to the “white” delivery room. I was born in the “colored” delivery room in Havre de Grace, Maryland, 80 miles North of where a black man now resides in the White House as President. Such gradual internal change can be more easily accommodated than the once in a life time global change we are currently facing, where the deck is not just being reshuffled but the game has changed and new players added. As a child I watched the sky and stars with innocent wonder, there was nothing man made in space. Now the reflection of satellite “stars” can be seen passing overhead and grant me the wish of a childhood Dick Tracey or adolescent Star-Trek communication device or with photography and algorithms decipher my facial features. The sky can look back and know my name and in the absolute extreme could kill me. The ultimate reality TV the White House viewing the raid to kill Bin Laden or trail In absentia and execution by drone for a US citizen and his son allied with foreign terrorist factions. What awaits us because we possess such powers of technology and surveillance that at great economic costs to maintain can be turned either outward towards our enemies or pass the tipping point and be turned inward towards ourselves and our Constitution? How do we avoid the bad and gain the better future. I believe the embers of the frontier sprite of discovery and dream for a more farsighted better future still burns in most every person everywhere if given a little fresh air and opportunity.
Thank you for your reply. You have some poignant and valuable points that resonate with me. That said I don’t think I have ever managed the optimism you seem capable of (“the embers of the frontier sprite of discovery and dream for a more farsighted better future still burns in most every person everywhere if given a little fresh air and opportunity.”). I think part of the problem is that this optimism on a grand, global scale, doesn’t really scale well (but that is just my opinion). When we feel this much optimism we are more prone to expansiveness ehen, on the contrary, I think we are so expansive right now as to foment our own collapse (as a species). While the idea of world peace and harmony sounds nice on the surface, I think a better goal is to focus on our communities and re-embrace the idea of extended family and (cheesy thoughbit may sound) shared values. You cannot ever have world-wide shared values. I think that is well-established and to try to declare ‘my way’ or ‘your way’ or ‘their way’ as the correct way is buying into embracing fascism or even genocide, even with the best intentions at heart. I’ve come to the conclusion that Shakespeare is great for local development but terrible for global politics (“a man’s reach should exceed his grasp or what’s a heaven for”). The easier it is to exceed our grasp the more discord we sow. I am not suggesting we become insular. Trade is useful (though not in the sick way it is being performed now at many peoples’ expense). Cultural exchange is important. But without cultural empathy we are digging our own graves. You speak of new frontiers but we don’t need to find them by expanding more and more… We need to go inside to find spiritual (not religious) expansion, if anything. We need to learn how to not destroy ourselves before we “expand” or we just expand ideology at the cost of blood and hate, don’t we?
Though conversely the space program did for a short time provide a bit of commonality and hope (at least while it remained a human endeavour not solely a mechanistic one) – what if we “discovered” other civilisations? What have we learned? What do we have to offer? What are we seeking to expand for? Do we not destroy that which is different (or at best treat it as “other”? Your second quote speaks to having a history of a people with an understanding of what it is like to be accorded different “standards”, no?)?
By expanding and automating our expansion haven’t we destroyed our wonder, at least a little bit? Or at least divorced our actions and responses? I dunno. Too philosophical. I am not sure that any ism, even in moderation, can ever be good, I guess. I am stoic about it all. I wish I had your optimism.
Tried to link to Chris Hedges’ most recent (and relevant) posting, “A Nation of Snitches”, but the comment hasn’t posted. It can be found, as most know, at Truthdig.
Chris Hedges, yesterday:
“A Nation of Snitches”
An excerpt:
“There are no rules in this dirty game. Police, like prison officials, can offer snitches deals that lack judicial oversight or control. (Deals sometimes involve something as trivial as allowing a prisoner access to food like cheeseburgers.) Snitches allow the state to skirt what is left of our legal protections. Snitches can obtain information for the authorities and do not have to give their targets a Miranda warning. And because of the desperation of most who are recruited to snitch, informants will do almost anything asked of them by authorities.
Just as infected as the prisons and the courts are poor neighborhoods, which abound with snitches, many of them low-level drug dealers allowed to sell on the streets in exchange for information. And from there our culture of snitches spirals upward into the headquarters of the National Security Agency, Homeland Security and the FBI.
Systems of police and military authority are ruthless when their own, such as Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning, become informants on behalf of the common good. The power structure imposes walls of silence and harsh forms of retribution within its ranks in an effort to make sure no one speaks. Power understands that once it is divided, once those inside its walls become snitches, it becomes as weak and vulnerable as those it subjugates.
We will not be able to reclaim our democracy and free ourselves from tyranny until the informants and the vast networks that sustain them are banished. As long as we are watched 24 hours a day we cannot use the word “liberty.””
Journalists (and others) continue to dance around the heart of the matter. There’s an elephant in the room that, apparently, no one wants to see. Get to the heart of the matter and it will all unravel. Keep diddling around the edges and who knows. We need another Edward Snowden. What remains undisclosed would rock the soul of this country.
“There’s an elephant in the room that, apparently, no one wants to see.”
You bet there is. It is an ideology called “Zionism” whereby an elite few dominates all beings on Earth both spiritually and economically to satisfy their own lust for power and abject greed. They even have their own little national state of religious zealots called Israel ostensibly run by their representative political puppet class.
This nation state is covertly ruling the United States in violation of the U.S. Constitution; via Banking establishments (U.S. Federal Reserve and NY Branch—Wall Street) and other Zionist corporations represented by powerful lobbying groups—- through bought politicians in all three branches of the US Federal Government that American citizens think are elected to office which could not be farther from the truth because they are selected to represent the interests of the financial elite(0.01% of the total world population).
Gee…does the bulk of humanity on Earth and the planet itself have a little extinction problem? Does the United States of America have a constitutional crisis?
I think so.
The following article gives a description of the official office of the pinnacle of economic world dictatorship:
“Meet The Secretive Group That Runs The World”
http://www.blacklistednews.com/Meet_The_Secretive_Group_That_Runs_The_World/43361/0/38/38/Y/M.html
IMHO it is time to stop dancing and call a massive halt to Zionist rule and control mechanisms (political and economic) instituted on Earth.
Lyra, it disturbs me you are pinning this on Israel. I am not saying they didn’t and arem’t doing their part to make this happen, but it has nothing to do with Jews any more than it does the ersatz “Christian” politicians in America. The real religion is socioeconomic statism and plutocracy, and that doesn’t need a holy land, just a homeland for those who want to conquer, excessive greed and an all-pervading lust for power. Typical “Jews” have nothing to do with any of this any more than you do. Maybe you just think you see it more because of how a small land mass is being used politically. But Israel is being used by the US too. “Zionism” detracts from this just as Semitism or Anti-Semitism or Islam or religion as an argument does when it comes to what is going on. The altar is money and power, and there is a pantheon of gods who all want to have the power of gods over everyone else out there.
I used to think so; I’m not so sure any longer. Would the media even repeat it if one outlet revealed it? Would Peter Bergen attack it as fiction as he is today about Seymour Hersh’s report? The abuses are worse than what was going on in Eastern Germany and the army of snitches is much, much bigger — and their aim is to destroy, to ‘decompensate’ just as the Stasi did. They want to destroy families, souls, minds, social standings, financial standings. They are destroying people — including me. Is there something in the Snowden record on this? If so, it’s past time to release it.
With hummingbird and even insect sized drones in development for some time, 2+2 inevitably equals cameras and microphones anywhere they want them with computers transcribing every conversation. It also fosters the notion smartphone and computer hacking’s possibly been a massive but effective distraction while other far more concise means of surveillance gathering are readied and deployed. A Big Brother government completely abrogating benevolent stewardship and oversight to corruption while somehow still claiming the need to literally ‘bug’ everyone else for national security reasons – is too much. It’s an evil world – born from a god of greed. It must be stopped.