In short, "upstream" capabilities are tapping the backbone itself, via the willing assistance of the telcos (who still have remained mostly silent on all of this) as opposed to "downstream" collection, which requires going to the internet companies directly. The internet companies have been much more resistant to government attempts to get access to their accounts. And thus, it's a big question as to what exactly the NSA can collect via its taps on the internet backbone, and the NSA and its defenders have tried to remain silent on this point, as you can see from the redactions above.
However, as Kevin Bankston notes, during Thursday's Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Dianne Feinstein more or less admitted that they get emails via "upstream" collection methods. As you can see in the following clip, Feinstein interrupts a discussion to read a prepared "rebuttal" to a point being made, and in doing so clearly says that the NSA can get emails via upstream collections:
techdirt
Dianne Feinstein Accidentally Confirms That NSA Tapped The Internet Backbone
from the but-of-course dept
2 comments:
Revelations about NSA domestic and international spying is probably just the tip of the iceberg. What else can you expect from a society that spies on itself? Boy friends and girl friends spying on each other, spouses spying on each other, employers and employees spying on each other, neighbors spying on each other, relatives spying on each other..... and all of this done via media like Facebook. Think of it as Facebook fascism. NSA spying misdeeds are just a reflection of our society and culture at large.
A friend recently sent me an email with a cartoon attached lampooning social media as an Orwellian-privacy scheme. It depicts George Orwell in a left side panel behind an old typewriter mulling over how to present a futuristic totalitarian society. Orwell is thinking: "Hmmnnn, I could go with the concept that a future society would willingly give away their information to BIG BROTHER, but readers will reject that level of stupidity." Meanwhile, the left side panel features some guy on Facebook saying..... "Hey Honey, I just uploaded our vacation pictures on Facebook, opened a Gmail account and checked in on Foursquare."
Rombach is NA population made of a majority of control freaks?
If so, it's not that weird he majority hatred of government and authorities, as usually people reflects their own behaviour on others.
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