Sunday, April 06, 2014

"We Know Who You Are and What You Said"

Schneier points out that the Feds will be collecting data no matter what Obozo says.

...The main focus of massive Internet companies and government agencies both still largely align: to keep us all under constant surveillance. When they bicker, it's mostly role-playing designed to keep us blasé about what's really going on. 

The U.S. intelligence community is still playing word games with us. The NSA collects our data based on four different legal authorities: the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, Executive Order 12333 of 1981 and modified in 2004 and 2008, Section 215 of the Patriot Act of 2001, and Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) of 2008. Be careful when someone from the intelligence community uses the caveat "not under this program" or "not under this authority"; almost certainly it means that whatever it is they're denying is done under some other program or authority....

But it's not just the Feds.

...Google could change that. It could encrypt your e-mail so only you could decrypt and read it. It could provide for secure voice and video so no one outside the conversations could eavesdrop.
It doesn't. And neither does Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, Apple, or any of the others. 

Why not? They don't partly because they want to keep the ability to eavesdrop on your conversations. Surveillance is still the business model of the Internet, and every one of those companies wants access to your communications and your metadata. Your private thoughts and conversations are the product they sell to their customers. We also have learned that they read your e-mail for their own internal investigations....

There is a difference.  Google just wants to maximize its revenue.

Obozo & Co. want to track the opposition and sic IRS or even less-"civil" servants on them.

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