Congress grants more warrentless access to your data

[TheDan]

A few days ago Congress passed the Intelligence Authorization Act for 2015. The congressional leadership wanted to pass it with a voice vote which would mean it would have passed with no debate and no record of who voted for and against the bill, but fortunately Rep. Justin Amash demanded a role call vote so we can see which turds voted for this bill. What's so terrible about this bill you ask? It allows intelligence agencies to acquire and store your data from "the cloud" (psst... they are already doing this), and more importantly it allows them to disseminate that data to any law enforcement agency. All without a warrant. Any data you have on Google drive or Dropbox or elsewhere can be turned over to the IRS, ATF, DEA, FBI, etc... without a warrant. Hey I got nothing to hide, right?


Look how all our wonderful Texas representatives voted:

vote	party	rep​	district
YEA	R	Johnson, Sam	TX 3rd
YEA	R	Hensarling, Jeb	TX 5th
YEA	R	Barton, Joe	TX 6th
YEA	R	Culberson, John	TX 7th
YEA	R	Brady, Kevin	TX 8th
YEA	D	Green, Al	TX 9th
YEA	R	McCaul, Michael	TX 10th
YEA	R	Conaway, Michael	TX 11th
YEA	R	Granger, Kay	TX 12th
YEA	R	Thornberry, Mac	TX 13th
YEA	D	Hinojosa, Rubén	TX 15th
YEA	R	Flores, Bill	TX 17th
YEA	R	Neugebauer, Randy	TX 19th
YEA	D	Castro, Joaquin	TX 20th
YEA	R	Smith, Lamar	TX 21st
YEA	R	Olson, Pete	TX 22nd
YEA	D	Gallego, Pete	TX 23rd
YEA	R	Marchant, Kenny	TX 24th
YEA	R	Williams, Roger	TX 25th
YEA	R	Farenthold, Blake	TX 27th
YEA	D	Cuellar, Henry	TX 28th
YEA	D	Green, Gene	TX 29th
YEA	D	Johnson, Eddie	TX 30th
YEA	R	Carter, John	TX 31st
YEA	R	Sessions, Pete	TX 32nd
YEA	D	Veasey, Marc	TX 33rd
YEA	D	Vela, Filemon	TX 34th
NO VOTE	R	Hall, Ralph	TX 4th
NAY	R	Gohmert, Louie	TX 1st
NAY	R	Poe, Ted	TX 2nd
NAY	R	Weber, Randy	TX 14th
NAY	D	O'Rourke, Beto	TX 16th
NAY	D	Jackson Lee, Sheila	TX 18th
NAY	R	Burgess, Michael	TX 26th
NAY	D	Doggett, Lloyd	TX 35th
NAY	R	Stockman, Steve	TX 36th

To see the bill and how all of them voted go here:
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/113-2014/h558

More details:
House, in rush vote, passes Intelligence Authorization Act - SC Magazine
Congress Passes Bill Granting ?Unlimited Access To Private Communications Of Every American? Without Legal Process | Global Research

 

[Tony2]

That's great. You ever think about all the pictures you see of communist countries. Nobody smiles. Shit like this is why

 

[jrbfishn]

Yeah, who needs those pesky warrants anyway?

from an idgit coffeeholic

 

[TheDan]

That's great. You ever think about all the pictures you see of communist countries. Nobody smiles. Shit like this is why

Hello Tony, we're from HHS. Our systems detected that you are only smiling in 12% of your iCloud photos. We have determined that you require re-educa... er, I mean "treatment for depression" at your local National Mental Health Hospital. Please come with us.

 

[Ole Cowboy]

I keep telling folks: You don't need to be on the cloud, there is nothing there for you, nothing to see. I am not on the cloud, never have been and not sure why I would want to...

 

[Pilgrim]

I keep telling folks: You don't need to be on the cloud, there is nothing there for you, nothing to see. I am not on the cloud, never have been and not sure why I would want to...

Which means every single gun porn pic posted on this site with links from the cloud are up for grabs

Everyone had better start posting their leaky boats with gun safes on the poopdeck... need the proof.

 

[Younggun]

Wonder how many people actually know what "the cloud" is.

 

[breakingcontact]

Which means every single gun porn pic posted on this site with links from the cloud are up for grabs

Everyone had better start posting their leaky boats with gun safes on the poopdeck... need the proof.

I post pix of other peoples guns. Same in the classifieds.

 

[breakingcontact]

We still have free speech and freedom of association so long as "they" know what we are saying and to whom we are talking.

My rep is a good ol GOP country law and order, give the cops whatever they want type.

 

[TheDan]

Wonder how many people actually know what "the cloud" is.

Nobody knows what the cloud is!



...it's just online file/document/media storage.

 

[Tejano Scott]

Tag

 

[peeps]

Soooo, they can just scoop up things that are private, and password protected, and do just about whatever they want with it....nice...how can they justify hacking???

 

[TheDan]

how can they justify hacking???

No hacking needed. They can either intercept the data (like this Room 641A - Wikipedia) and store it for later use, or they can have FISA issue a secret subpoena to your data storage provider or internet provider. Often times your provider isn't even allowed to tell their lawyer about their actions. They've already been doing both for awhile now, but the new twist is your data can be turned over to any other government agency. The data collection will no longer be used for "only" counter terrorism and inelegance.

Imagine snapping some pics of a new tank you're building with your phone, and then you get a visit from the EPA because you violated the clean water act by building a new body of water. Who needs secret police when we all tell on ourselves?

 

[breakingcontact]

No hacking needed. They can either intercept the data (like this Room 641A - Wikipedia) and store it for later use, or they can have FISA issue a secret subpoena to your data storage provider or internet provider. Often times your provider isn't even allowed to tell their lawyer about their actions. They've already been doing both for awhile now, but the new twist is your data can be turned over to any other government agency. The data collection will no longer be used for "only" counter terrorism and inelegance.

Imagine snapping some pics of a new tank you're building with your phone, and then you get a visit from the EPA because you violated the clean water act by building a new body of water.

But they are gathering so much data that they cannot make sense out of it in a timely way right?

 

[TheDan]

BTW, this is a another reason why Net Neutrality is bad... by regulating service providers as telecommunications utilities, the providers have immunity when cooperating with the government. They cannot be sued for handing your data over.

 

[TheDan]

But they are gathering so much data that they cannot make sense out of it in a timely way right?

Depends on how good their crawlers are I suppose. Additionally, don't think a VPN or encryption can necessarily protect you. Parts of the Snowden release showed that many of the industry standard encryption has been compromised by the NSA; in some cases since it's inception. Hardware encryption from major vendors like Cisco is most certainly not secure from intelligence agencies.

 

[peeps]

No hacking needed. They can either intercept the data (like this Room 641A - Wikipedia) and store it for later use, or they can have FISA issue a secret subpoena to your data storage provider or internet provider. Often times your provider isn't even allowed to tell their lawyer about their actions. They've already been doing both for awhile now, but the new twist is your data can be turned over to any other government agency. The data collection will no longer be used for "only" counter terrorism and inelegance.

Imagine snapping some pics of a new tank you're building with your phone, and then you get a visit from the EPA because you violated the clean water act by building a new body of water. Who needs secret police when we all tell on ourselves?

Well it's one thing to intercept unsecured files, but what about password protected files that you upload to your cloud account? That would require a level of decryption to open yes? Breaking said file seems like hacking to me

 

[TheDan]

Well it's one thing to intercept unsecured files, but what about password protected files that you upload to your cloud account? That would require a level of decryption to open yes? Breaking said file seems like hacking to me

Yeah, I see what you're saying. Depending on your method of encryption it could be easy or hard for them to decrypt, but that's not hacking silly goose. If you or I were to do it, it would be hacking, but when the government does it it's lawfully gathering intelligence and/or evidence.

Just curious, but are you talking about password protected zip files or similar? Those are ridiculously easy to crack, just FYI.

 

[peeps]

Yeah, I see what you're saying. Depending on your method of encryption it could be easy or hard for them to decrypt, but that's not hacking silly goose. If you or I were to do it, it would be hacking, but when the government does it it's lawfully gathering intelligence and/or evidence.

Just curious, but are you talking about password protected zip files or similar? Those are ridiculously easy to crack, just FYI.

True, it wouldn't be hard for them to crack stuff like that or Microsoft office file pw's. But where's the line, you know? Irritating....

 

[Ole Cowboy]

But they are gathering so much data that they cannot make sense out of it in a timely way right?

Its nowhere as complex as most think. We can do some amazing things with electrons, they can be made to do our bidding. I have worked with software that could read 10,000 pages of word documents in less than 30 sec and extract from there the key words that are being looked for. We use data dictionaries and or encyclopedias what ever you wish to call them. Its complex so I will distill it into a couple of sentences: Its data design theory based upon a structured methodology that links all data in a matrix. The top level data element is DoD databases properly designed that deals with people is 'individual'. Linked to that are sub elements such as 'student', 'soldier', personnel, enlisted, officer, civilian. There are of course lots of models. Individual, terrorist, soldier, and we continue to populate and cross link in our model...bomb, AK, explosive, etc. Now we have these models and we can look at millions of pieces of data in minutes and from that they use algorithms to get the data they are searching for. All this is is done thru software and computing power then turned over to analysts for final interpretation and going for the bingo.

Well it's one thing to intercept unsecured files, but what about password protected files that you upload to your cloud account? That would require a level of decryption to open yes? Breaking said file seems like hacking to me

Well it is hacking and breaking passwords is generally not too difficult. I had a lot of user, nearly 500 folks, not everyone who left, left happy and from time to time some guy left and had it computer PW protected. Some help desk guy had to crack it, if they could not, then it kept getting elevated and would sometimes end up in my lap, not so much because I was the boss but because I could hack it. Example: I would sit down and interview all the folks that sat or worked with the individual, trying to learn who they were, what was their interest etc etc. I hacked on using this NYCGIANTS. Found out the guy was a major NY Giants fan, he was from NYC. I tried a lot of combos before I hit but I finally hit on it. The first thing I had my folks do was remove all the drawers from the desk and turn everything upside down, looking for the piece of paper with PW on it or just find it written on the bottom of a drawer.

Few folks have anything that anyone wants to hack into. The first step is to ascertain if you its worth the effort and is there something there, see my comments above...if that pans out then hacking is next and at that points they know if you are a Giants fan or not...

There is nothing you need to store in the cloud and if you are an Apple guy and want all the benefits of iCloud you can get them and not store your data in the icloud. I don't use the icloud, no need...