PRISM Part Two

Should we be concerned? Spoiler? Yes, um concerned? At least it's always good to educate yourself as much as you possibly can when you're talking about classified information that is being withheld from people. But let's let's start with talking about a personality, someone who has been identified as being the very center of this controversy, the man who leaked the information to the press that let us know about

about prison period. Yes, Edward Snowdon. Edward Snowdon formerly a technical contractor for the n s A. I am assuming they have terminated that employment. Well he was, okay, so so he is thirty years old right now as of this podcast. He was twenty nine when he leaked this information, which which seems terrifically young for being a whistleblower on one of the largest intelligence gathering entities in the world.

Some might even go so far as to suggest that he has he has effectively, at least as far as the United States is concerned, thrown the rest of his life away, which I mean, in other words, there were some major consequences to his actions, and so that says something right, well, you know, and there's there's a lot of different points of view on on on him and what he's done. Um, but uh, who is this guy? I wanted to say a little bit about him since

all of this stuff that's been swirling around and um. So, so he got his g D and listed the army. In two thousand three, um was was discharged after breaking his legs in a Special Forces training exercise. Yeah, so trained for special Forces. UM then worked at the n s A as a security guard and then I t security in the c i A. Yeah, so he crossed

the cross departments. He's crossed streams. In two thousand seven, the CIA sent him on assignment to Geneva, Switzerland, UM and then later he signed with defense contractor UM Uh booz Allen Hamilton's UM as a assist amin I see right right right, So it turned out that he had

had an ability with computers. So it was because when you think about like he started off like a security guard and now he's overseeing actual information system right right, like like six figure salary, Like pretty pretty important dude for this contractor um uh he was. He was working on an ns A contract out in Hawaii under under bus Allen Hamilton's UM when he copied certain classified documents and removed them entirely from his office before telling his bosses, hey,

I need some vacation. He specifically told them that he needed to leave in order to undergo epilepsy treatments. Wow, and then flew to Hong Kong and contacted the press with all the stuff that we're gonna be talking about in the right. And there's still quite a bit of controversy about him. There are people who consider him to be a whistleblower and uh and someone who has the interests of the American public at heart. There are others who go so far as to say that he's a

trader um. And there are people who say that maybe traders the wrong word, but he certainly has put a lot of people at risk by revealing information that was supposed to be secret. So there's a there's a lot of different views on this, and we're not gonna really try. We're trying not to lay down on one side or the other, but we we you'll probably get a little hint of our own personal but least, but we don't

we don't mean to push them on anyone. Absolutely, Now, this is this is you know, it's it's as as people who talk. We do have opinions. But um, in fact, we're not even sure the crazy thing is exactly what he has leaked to the press. Um. We we know that there was a forty one slide power point presentation

UM about a program called Prism, about a program called Prism. UM, and there was basically what we know, And there was some some information about phone program as well, because Prism Prism really was mainly about uh, internet communication, but there's also this element about phone records. Uh, there was about the the n s A has access to information. I think it's something like seven years worth of information of

Verizon customers phone information. Um, that's a lot of info. Oh, absolutely, Well, you know, I'm just saying that we're not exactly sure what documents exist and where this information has come from overall, aside from this one power point presentation, which are the host of works article about this pointed out that UM, that this proves that, yes, international security is just as

boring as your job, superspies power point. I've also seen quite a few people who took the power point presentation and then uh distilled it down to something like twelve slides and said that, you know, they obviously need some

some some classes on power point uh design. And in my thought is like, well, I'm glad you're able to to take a step back and critic makes a little bit of a joke as opposed to freaking out, but so okay to to catch us up on the climate and overall politics of of what has led to all of this mess two thousand one and to say came under direct fire for failing to catch the plot of the World Trade Center attack UM. And subsequently, the USA Patriot Act was signed by George W. Bush with bipartisan

congressional support. This was the act that gave the government much broader capabilities when it came to surveillance and detecting potential terrorists acts um, and some would argue, in fact, many have argued that it ended up violating at least some freedoms of American citizens in the process. Sure, um in two thousand two, and we didn't actually find out about this. The the American public or the public at large, did not find out about this until two thousand five.

H George W. Signed an executive order that specifically authorized the n s A to UM to monitor international emails and phone calls from people inside the US. Yeah, that was skipping the part where the Special Court outlined in

VISA is supposed to review each case. Right, And we'll talk more about VISA in a bit, But yeah, so this is essentially giving even more broad powers to when when when The New York Times leaked this information, and the officials maintained that they were still requiring the n s A to obtain arrants for entirely domestic communications, right, Um, This is where it gets complicated because again we talked about in our last podcast about how a foreign agent

can be someone who is not an American citizen, who's not in the United States, and then a lot of these protections that we're talking about don't apply because the protections that we mostly talk about American citizens, that's what the Constitution is covering. You know, we can't really cover the freedoms of people in other nations because that's not

the role of one government to say for another. Uh. You know that that kind of falls more on the other governments as well as the United Nations and some other organizations. So uh, but when it comes to American citizens, they're supposed to be certain rules that we follow. This was an example of expanding those rules. All right. So two thousand five that's when The New York Times ends

up publishing this information. Right. Also in two thousand five, that was when the n s ARE created US Cyber Command, which is that network warfare unit designed to specifically protect against terrorist data and network threats. Two thousand six an interesting note, um we it was revealed by a former a T and T technician that um that the company had allowed the n s A to install a computer at San Francisco Switching Center, which happens to be a

key hub for fiber optic cables. Yeah, this was where we learned about the secret rooms. Right. So this is where and we'll we'll probably mention this again later on. But this is where the we we learned about the n s A creating special rooms and various carriers, whether their phone carriers or beyond telecommunications all the way through Internet carriers, that they were putting in these special secret

rooms that would allow them access. Anyone who had the n s A clearance could gain access to it, but otherwise you could not go in there. So, in other words, an A T and T employee, if that A T n T employee did not have special access granted by the n s A, they could not go into this room even though it was within a T and T. This was what was allowing the n s A to two intercept information without having to actually go to A T and T and say, hey, hey, I want this thing.

Yeah there, here's a list. Here's a list of the stuff that we have been authorized to ask for. Give it to us. Now, they don't have to go for the authorization because they just have this special room. All they have to do is show up and go into

the special room and then they run. And I'll talk more about how they collect their data and the kind of queries they are running, and also the sort of mental gymnastics you need to do in order to understand how they look at this as not being not falling under that Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

If you remember from our last podcast we taught that's central to a lot of the arguments against what is going on with the n s A is the idea that under the Constitution, we have this Fourth Amendment right that protects us from unreasonable search and seizure, and the government is supposed to have at least uh, they're supposed to be have authorization and evidence before they can go and search you as an American citizen. Again, the supplies

to American citizens. And it gets complicated again when we talk about foreign agents who could be American citizens that or or an American citizen who's talking to a foreign agent. Right that also American communication lines. Yeah really, Oh, it's so sticky, um and and and and again. All of this is stuff that we already knew about. None of this is new. None of this was leaked by every Yeah, this was stuff that had been revealed over the years

through various means. Sometimes there were things that were just met part of law. So if you just read the law, you would understand it. Some of this was stuff that wasn't laid out in the law but was later uncovered by various news papers, things of the New York Times, Washington Post, etcetera. Yeah. Um, the next big one was in two thousand seven. That was the Protect America Act,

signed into law by George W. Bush. Um. This this was this basically allowed um the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence who we we We talked about that role in the first podcast. UM two explain in a classified document how the US would be collecting intelligence on foreigners overseas over the course of the next year. Right. And it it's also known as Title seven. So that's

the other name for this. If you've ever heard Title seven, that's referring to the Protect America Act of two thousand seven, Right, Um. And the important part about this is that, UM, it does not require them to name specific targets or places. They don't you don't even Yeah, you don't have to do that, which means you don't need a warrant. Obviously, if you if you don't have to name the specific targets or places, then clearly the warrant is not right.

How would you get a warrant if you just said someone somewhere is doing something. Let me look in not that that's so. So essentially this is the warrantless wire tapping portion of law. If you've ever heard about that, about warrantless wire taps, that's where this comes from. And it was supposed to just focus on, like you said, foreign intelligence, right, it's uh, and only if the targets were reasonably believed to be outside the US. Now what

counts for reasonable believability? I don't know, because they're not telling me so. I mean, a lot of these terms are vaguely defined, and many of them are vaguely defined for a reason. It's to give as much flexibility as possible. If you're being less charitable, it's to to to be as draconian as possible. I wouldn't go that far. I'm

I'm thinking of the sense that I want the flexibility. Uh. And if there ever were a point where we defined it, it would likely be in a court case, like you would bring something to court and the court would decide whether or not it met some criteria for reasonable belief of it. But that also will get into a little bit more of a discussion. When we talk about the n s A and uh, and and what their threshold is for believing someone to not be an American citizen

before they start collecting all the data on them. So, anyway, two thousand seven was the Protect America Act. What what happens two thousand eight? Well? Okay, um, So the Protect America Act technically expired early in two thousand eight, um, and was subsumed by if I didn't just make that word up, by the by the two PHISA amendments, Right, that's the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was originally enacted into law in nineteen seventy eight. Now, these amendments changed

that act, right, I mean that they obviously they amended it. Now, the original FISA Act was there to try and put down specific rules when it comes to foreign surveillance, and it's set down a lot of different restrictions that the government had to obey in order to do this in

a way that was seen as responsible and accountable. The amendments started to loosen some of those restrictions to give the intelligence communities more freedom to pursue surveillance in an effort to counteract any sort of uh, any sort of anything that would endanger national security. Right. Specifically, this included, uh one that you might and an amendment that you might have heard of um in the news, which is five A section seven oh two, which basically uh okay.

So so according to the Director of National Intelligence, it facilitates the targeted acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning foreign targets located outside the United States under court oversight. Sounds pretty,

sounds pretty on the up and up court oversight. It's only targeting foreign targets, only foreign targets that are outside the United States as and sound like it's too too bad as far as encroaching upon American citizens rights, well, the problem is that according to the washing To Post anyway, according to two documents that they have since uncovered, um, the their analysts only have to have a certainty rates what someone is foreign, that someone is not of an

American citizen right or not in America even Yeah, there's a fifty one certainty that they have to meet. So, in other words, coin flip plus one and if you watch, don't be dumb, it might just be a coin flip depending upon the coin, you know, the one I'm talking about. Yeah, Like, because the way certain coins are made, they do actually flip on one side. A little more than the other. This is a that's that's all they have to do.

They have to feel a little bit better than a coin flip situation that a person is in fact of foreign nationality not an American citizen for them to move forward, which seems pretty low to me. Also, again, according to the Washington Post, they have training materials that advise new analysts that quote, it's nothing to worry about out end quote if they accidentally collect us content, right, don't worry. We we know what we're doing. We won't do anything here.

We promise we won't look at it. There's gonna be editorializing at the end of this episode, by the way, folks. Uh And and I'm just warning you now because I do have something to say about just just the dangers of pursuing this kind of line of thought without without questioning it. I'm not saying that everything that's been done is bad, but I am saying that you've got to

question things a collective. Some may or may not so anyway. Alright, So so let's pick up with FISA here now that this is still stuff that we knew about before Snowdon's information lead. So FISA created Uh there's the FISA Court. Now, the FISA Court oversees these requests that are are sent in to U to pursue surveillance over foreign targets. Keeping in mind this is still not for American citizens, it's for foreign targets. The is a court is a secret court.

If you listen to our last podcast, you heard us talk about it a little bit. It's hearings are in secret, it's findings are in secret. There are eleven court members. Those eleven court members are appointed by the Supreme Court Chief Justice, and there is no um, there's no process there to approve of those appointments. That's the Supreme Court

Chief Justice. Just as finals say, which some have argued means that it creates a court that doesn't have diversity in it because you only have one person and that person may end up uh completely filling that court with people that that that follow that same person's philosophy, the Supreme Court Chief Justice's philosophy. Uh So there's that argument

as well. Um. Also, whenever they do serve out any kind of warrant or order, if you've listened to our last episode, you know there's a gag order involved with that, which means that the recipient cannot acknowledge the fact that

they received this. They can't talk about it, they can't reveal it, which may explain why some of the companies that were revealed within that presentation that Lauren alluded to at the top of the show, when they were approached about this, they said, we don't know, we don't know anything about this. Well, there are to two possibilities. One is that they actually don't know about it, and that the way that the n s A is gathering information

actually circumvents their internal workings. That's either they were they were completely unaware of it, as they said, or they are under a gag order and cannot say yeah. So either way, we we can't know for sure unless someone from those companies comes out and leaks that information. But either way they disowned any knowledge of this. UH. Going on to the what the what fights it can do?

They define foreign powers as any foreign government or component of a foreign government, whether or not officially recognized by the United States. In other words, there could be governments out there that government is claiming that they oversee a sovereign nation, but the United States has not officially recognized that as a sovereign nation under FISA, that doesn't matter.

They're still classified as a foreign government. Uh. They also defined as any faction of a foreign nation or nations, or any foreign based political organization that isn't substantially composed of United States persons. Uh. Faction and substantially not defined. So don't really know what would meet that criteria. Maybe

it's don't know. Any entity, like a political organization or a business as directed or controlled by a foreign government also is considered a foreign power, and any group engaged

in or preparing to engage in international terrorism. That's broadly defined as activities that involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life, that are a violation of US criminal laws or would be a violation if committed in the US, or that appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, to influence the policy of government by intimidation or coercion, or to affect the conduct of a government by assassination or kidnapping, and occur totally outside the

United States or transcend national boundaries in terms of how they are accomplished. UH So that's the definition of foreign power as far as foreign agent is concerned because remember this is really involving the communications between foreign powers and

foreign agents. Foreign agent is defined under FISA as anyone that is not a US person who is an officer or employee of a foreign power, anyone that is not a U S person who engages in quote unquote clandestine intelligence activities also known as spying in the United States on behalf of a foreign power, or any US person that does the same and maybe violating the law. That's an important distinction their US person who is also not only acting as a foreign agent but also violating the law.

So if you're not a U S person, you don't have to be suspected of a crime. You just have to be foreign That's that's all you have to be. If you are a U S person, then you have to h be suspected of a crime on top of being a foreign agent. And anyone, whether a U S person or not, who engages in or prepares for acts of international terrorism or sabotage is also defined as an agent of foreign power under FISA. So that's what is

really the concern here. That's the n s A says that they are only interested in these communications between foreign powers and foreign agents. Any other information that they gather that happens to be about American citizens is completely coincidental, has nothing to do with what they are interested in, and you should just stop worrying. And so that is the the body of the law as as we have known it. UM. Unfortunately, there are a little bit of extra bits here and there that only came to light

when when Snowden leaked some information. But we will talk about that in the second half of the show. And right now we should take a quick break to thank our sponsors. Sounds good to me. Let's take that break, alright.

So were back. So when we left off, it was just before we started learning about the additional information that was leaked by Snowdon and UM, you had something about you know, we mentioned in that last that last half that you know, if any American citizen information is collected,

that's okay, yeah, well okay. So so part part of what we found out thanks to Snowden is that on July nine, UM guidelines were proved by the Secret fives A Court and also Attorney General Eric Holder UM that that although the n s A is required to UM minimize the collection of data from U. S citizens, UM any inadvertently acquired domestic communications can be kept under certain circumstances with no warrant for up to five years. Yeah, that's um that's a big question mark there, right, I

mean that definitely sounds like without a warrant. So already that seems to violate the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. I'm sure there are other arguments against that, but it's it's under certain circumstances. WHI again unless that's unless we get the full definition of what those circumstances are, then it's hard to say. So so far, it seems to be that that um, if the communications are encrypted and or reasonably believed to contain evidence of a crime that

has been, is being or is about to be committed. Um. Or if the communications are reasonably believed to contain um uh technical information about cybersecurity. See, and this is another one of those things where the reasonable belief is the blaw. Yeah, how do we define that? And again, a lot of these these more or less vague words like reasonable um, A lot of these things are things that only get

defined when we challenge stuff in court. In the United States, That's how we end up getting focus on a lot of our laws is that you know, the laws will be written in such a way, sometimes on purpose and sometimes not on purpose, but written in such a way as to be a little vague. And then in court cases that's when the judges have to decide, how how does this law actually apply? What is the practical application

of it? And that might be the case with these UM In the meanwhile leading leading up to this league between s A hired employees UM mostly in UH comp science, engineering, and intelligence analysis, which makes sense. I mean that they're their focus is on intercepting and decrypting electronic communications communications in general, but electronic in particular, and especially since it's you know, yes, becoming more and more electronic, it makes it makes sense. But it's also like that's that's a

lot of employees during a time of economic downturn. I do foresee a time where, because of the dangers associated now of elector ronic communication being intercepted and eventually decrypted, that we will move to a more raven based communication system all our game of Thrones winter is coming. I'm glad that you're just working that and everywhere you can. UM. In December of Obama and Congress extended the Amendments Act for another five years. That was that was on the

up and up. That was, that was things what people knew about. Yeah. Yeah, so this wasn't like some sort of secret court meeting or whatever. But again, unless you had actually been paying attention to what the FISA Amendments Act, what what that entailed, then you might not you know, you might not have been aware of it. And I don't think I was aware of it, and I certainly wasn't. But then I'm not a very politically aware of person

in general. Yeah. Um. In April, another one of those things that we found out from snowdon Um, the FISA Court ordered Verizon to provide a whole bunch of information about a whole bunch of stuff, um, millions of calls from millions of customers, both within and without the United States. Right now, this was all meta data, which I'll talk more about later, but meta data, justin in general, is

information about information. So in this case, the the order for Verizon was to give all this information about calls, like the duration of the call, the time it was made, what kind of hardware was being used. The content of the call was not in question, right, so you could not This wasn't for a verizon to hand over records of actual like what was actually being said in the

phone call. It was just everything else. However, that being said, there are a lot of examples that people have shown about how just getting the meta data gives you a lot of information about what was going on just based upon the time the location. Although I should also say that geospatial information in general has been left out according to what the n s A has said that they did not collect collect GPS information or anything like that,

at least that's what they've said. But but just knowing when someone called, how long the conversation was, who they were calling, they can give you a lot of information about people, oh sure, about about movement and write what's going on? Um okay. And so so this next point in the timeline is is where everything kind of dovetails, because on June six, the Guardian and the Washington Post published reports based on Snowdon's leaked slides. We didn't know

that it was Edward Snowe yet. Actually, um that was not for another couple of days. But you know, yeah, that's when we got that that forty one slide power point presentation and um or or or we we didn't see all of it at that point, but a bunch of information about it. There was a bunch of misinformation

about it. Actually. According to those initial reports, um uh, it said that PRISM allowed the government to directly access the servers of places like Google and Microsoft and Apple, um and and that has been revealed to be not the case. Yeah, this was this was the company's Again, the companies were allowed to at least deny certain things if they are part of this program. Like we've said before, they're under a gag order, which means they cannot acknowledge

it in any way. And in fact, several of the companies have have petitioned the government to allow them to talk more about what's going on, saying that more transparency would mean more trust because they're they're in a terrible position right if they are being legally bound to participate

in this program. And there's some question as to whether or not the participation or the levels of participation meet or exceed requirements, because there are some companies that have been said they're not only participating, they seem to be eagerly participated. But besides that, I mean, if they're bound to participate, they have to buy law, but they also,

by law, can't talk about it. Then they're putting this position where trust is starting to recede, and so right the consumers are all thinking, well, I don't want to use your product because you're part of this program according to this forty one slide presentation. And you know, they're big companies that were named in this. Microsoft was the first one to officially join that program, I think something along the lines of like two thousand seven according to

the presentation. But then you had Google, Apple, Facebook, YouTube, I mean, big companies that handle millions of people's information on a daily basis, and they were all named in this presentation. So if they were compelled to be part of this because it's it's by law, they have to, but they can't talk about it puts them in a

terrible position. And if it actually ends up being that their participation is not nearly as bad as what our imaginations have created, they want to be able to address that and say, just let us tell people that, yes, we're part of this program, but this is exactly what is going on and it's within these parameters and nothing outside of this is happening. So you are you can you can rest assured that your privacy is still safe. That's the message they want to send out, but they

can't talk about it, right not yeah, yeah. All we've got to go on is these leaked reports UM, which which it now seems like upon closer observation, that UM that actually the companies were setting up UM secure servers or or drop boxes to facilitate transfers between themselves in the n s A. Not that again they have admitted to being part of it yet because they can't UM.

June seventh, The very next day, The Guardian reported that the UKH, the the United Kingdoms UM Government Communications Headquarters UM which which is which is their kind of an essay equivalent, was also involved in prison and has been able to view private Internet user data since UH. June nine was when Snowdon came out and said that he was the guy who leaked the stuff UM, upon which lots lots of of bad news has been rained down upon him from the government because clearly they were not happy.

On June eleventh, a a bill from I Partison I believe Members of Congress was submitted to UM to declassify secret court opinions UM that that drive prison surveillance This is actually a revision of a bill from December twelve, so this has been kicking around for a while. But but people are I mean, people in Congress are listening to the to to what we are saying that they're listening to our concerns and they they want to do

something about it. And you should keep in mind that the politicians involved, even the ones who who object to this, we're also bound by the same restrictions that other people were. They could not talk about it because it was secret, it was classified. So you know, it's a frustrating situation all around when you have this secret court. In fact, there are a lot of people who have argued that the whole concept of a secret court is a bad

idea because it breeds distrust. So even if everyone is behaving perfectly on the up and up, everyone is following all the rules and respecting as much of the you know, as much as they can. Uh, because it's secret, it just engenders this the sense of mistrust, and that alone is enough to need us too. We need to address it. Uh. And like you said, you know, we talked about the FISA court and how many how many requests were denied?

Eleven out of thousands of requests about so if you find out so so eleven or thirty four thousand requests were denied, which makes makes you wonder what's going on? Is is it just that the requests are all that that water tight, they are just that amazing, or is it that the standards are really low? What was it about those eleven that they don't made them be denied? So? Uh, and that's the That's the thing is that it brings up these kind of conversations and no one can talk

about them because they're classified. So it is a really sticky situation. UM. As of June, Snowdon under under attack from the United States. UM. You know, people, I think there were there were like warrants for treason out for his arrest. There were. Treason is one of those tough things. But there were some people who who were saying that maybe this can't count as treason because it's a very specific charge, but that he certainly broke US law that

was beyond question. At any rate. He fled Hong Kong from Moscow, UM which is where he has been held hold up since UM in in like the airport and surrounding hotels, which is the airport is the the area that he's in the international zone is technically not Russian soil.

It's kind of like when you go to an embassy and you're in a foreign country, but you go to the United States embassy, for example somewhere, and then you are technically on US soil while you're on the embassy grounds, but you leave U s simbassy grounds, you're back in the foreign nation. Yeah, okay. So, so he's been hanging out there and petitioning various countries for asylum, um, none of which have really granted him asylum to his um satisfaction.

Ecuador was going to and then backed off. Some say that the president of Ecuador was kind of just trying to grandstand a little bit and and kind of tweak the nose of the United States. Actually, that's a great, kind of funny little story in a way. So I'm paraphrasing here because again I didn't put this in my notes, but this is kind of the story. So the president of says that, you know, they're going to grant asylum to Snowdon, and Snowdon had actually petitioned Ecuador for asylum.

And then there were people who were saying that if they were to do this, that the United States would revoke certain beneficial trade agreements with Ecuador. And so what the President said was that he had he negated those agreements. He said, all right, those agreements are gone. In fact, only are those agreements are gone. I'm going to replace them with twenty three million dollars that Ecuador is going to give the United States so that the US can

research human rights issues. Yeah, which was you know, essentially yeah, it was essentially international burn. But but since then he has back to weigh and Ecuador has has kind of revoked its its offer of asylum, and in the meantime, Snowdon himself has had his international passport revoked, so he cannot travel and he's not you know, so now he's seeking asylum in Russia. But that's currently being held up in in a lot of bureaucratic processes which anyone who

has studied Russian politics will not be surprised by. Um, the Russians and the United States big fans of bureaucracy, you know, I'm not I'm not saying Russia's alone in that. The US certainly has more than its share, uh as as do a lot of nations. And and that that kind of sort of brings us up to up to today, ish UM. You know, right now there are a whole bunch of different people suing the US government UM on on grounds of illegal and unconstitutional programs that tread upon

the Fourth Amendment rights of its people. Right. And again, this all has to be decided in court. It's not like there's just an automax switch or anything. This actually has to go through a process before it's decided an official capacity whether or not it is in fact unconstitutional

of course UM. As of July and an alliance of thirty six companies, investors, charities, and trade organizations, including Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, wrote a letter to President Obama UM asking for permission to take the number of government requests for information about their users public right, to essentially say like, this is why you don't need to worry, because the numbers that are in your head are totally different from the numbers

that exist in reality, right, and might not really matter as we get further into this podcast, but it's an interesting thing to say, Well, you know, it's a lot of these companies do report. UM already report government requests for for ferncuation and they're there are companies like Twitter

that said we are not playing ball with this. I mean, you know, there's a lot of people have praised Twitter because they have a very firm stance on this, saying, unless you follow the specific rules that were laid out, uh and and to our satisfaction, we're not going to just hand over data. So that's kind of interesting, you know. Again,

it all depends upon the individual organization. Also, late breaking news as of the recording of this podcast, so in full disclosure, we're recording this podcast July two, thirteen, UH and today the New York Times reported that the U. S. House of Representatives defeated legislation that would have blocked the n s A from collecting phone records. We'll talk more

about the phone record program and a little bit. Uh. That was defeated at a vote of two seventeen to two hundred five, So it was incredibly close, and it had weird coalitions on both sides that were bipartisan. So you had, you know, libertarians, Democrats, and Republicans on one side, and then essentially Democrats and Republands on the other side because all the libertarians I think sided against sided for

the legislation, but it was eventually it was voted down. Um. Now, there still could be debate within the Senate, so we could still see movement on this in the United States government in the that branch of uh of government, but the House of Representatives have already kind of shot that down.

And also there have been several politicians who have said that the sections and the Patriot Act that essentially allow for this to happen, they come up for renewal again in and that they feel that those sections will not be renewed based upon the reaction that this this information has created, and that it would be very politically difficult to renew that now. They say that, but it's now

is a couple of years away. You never know what can happen between now and then that could change people's minds. But as of right now, they're saying that those those sections that have actually allowed for this to kind of happen, they have given the legal foundation for this, may not be renewed in a couple of years. UM. So that kind of brings us a little bit up to the discussion of what these programs actually are. So let's start

going back a little bit again. There was a program started under George W. Bush called Stellar Wind, and Stellar Wind was really more of an umbrella term for surveillance programs, specifically the surveillance programs main Way, Marina, Nucleon and PRISM. Uh. Now these are paired up. Main Way and Nucleon are both programs that involve telecommunications and phone records and uh and phone content as it turns out, and Marina and

Prism our internet communications. No, no, no, technically Stellar Wind Um, its cover was blown by William Binney a couple of years back. And uh, it only continued until two seven it was shut down, and then the actual programs underneath it still kept going. So so while while the parent program was dismantled, the actual activities continued U. So, for example, the programs the main Way in Nucleon programs the phone communication ones. Um, we're well, well, first of all, Main

Way was all about metadata. And again we've talked about this metadata is that information about information, So all the information about the phone call, apart from the actual content of the call, that was the the the main focus there. And it can, like we said, give a lot of information about the people involved in any communication, even if

you don't have the content. Now, the justification for gathering this is that the U S court systems have said repeatedly the metadata falls outside the information that the average US citizen can expect a reasonable have a reasonable expectation of privacy about so reasonable expectation of privacy involves everything like the actual communication that you would have with someone, but the fact that you talked to someone that you

do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. According to several different court cases, UM and the n s A said it only gathered metadat in the course of an investigation. But these rules are so vaguely defined. And there's that three hop approach that we've talked about before, the three hop approaches that actually maybe we haven't mentioned this yet.

The three hop approaches this idea that you can target a person and then go one person out from your target, then go another person out, and then go another person out when you when you are actually investigating the target. So if you have identified a target as a foreign agent, you can then investigate everyone that foreign agent talked to and then go move outward from there. So it's a

ripple effect. Now, let's assume just for a second that every single person has forty unique contacts, So forty forty contacts that are that are not shared with the other people that they have contacted with. Uh. You know, we have closer to like two hundred total, but a lot of those are going to be duplicates, right, So if I have forty unique contacts and each of them have forty unique contacts, three hop analysis would end up looking at two point five million people because as you look

at those forty contacts and they have forty contexts. So that has raised people to say, well, how can you suggest that you are having a targeted investigation if this rule allows you to look at two and a half million people, some of whom are undoubtedly American citizens in some of these cases. And then I say, is um, Actually they have their own reasons behind it. They say that they're being very responsible with this, but it does

raise those questions. Now again, this is meant to target those foreign agents with a certainty that they are in fact non American citizens. Uh. And it looks like what the NSA is doing is gathering all this meta data and storing it. Now they're the meta data on both of these programs on both Main Way Marina are Uh, you know both the phone and the internet stuff. It's all being stored and it's being collected from everyone. That's

what it looks like like. It's not just the four and it's not like they're targeting foreign targets and saying, let's collect all their informations, pick this one thread out and collect the only that it's everything, and then they pick the threads out of the everything. Yeah, what what

they have? The way, the way it's supposed to work, according to what I've read, is that they collect absolutely everything, all this meta data of both phone and internet communication, and then when they've identified a foreign target, they then provide do a search query on that target within all the information they've collected. So, in other words, they're they're doing searches on everything, but they don't they don't look

at everything. They just have it. Now, some people have said just by having it, just by collecting all this information about people, whether their American citizens or not, means you're violating Americans and Fourth Amendment rights, that that is unreasonable search and seizure. It's at least seizure, if not search. And they're arguing, well, it's not search and seizure because all we're doing is making sure we have access to it. It's not seizure because it is it is free to

us to collect. So they're saying that, yes, we have this information, but we're not doing anything with it until we have the actual authorization and the probable cause to go after. Just because we are technically diverting this stream into a giant hard drive and hanging onto that hard drive doesn't mean that we are quote unquote seizing anything because we have not because we haven't looked at it. Yeah,

that's kind of the the wide boils down to. So then you have to go with does that argument hold water or not? Does that make sense? Uh? And some people have said that that's the wrong way to go about it. They should be getting the authorization and then going after all that data that's related to that authorization, but leave everything else alone. Uh, that might not be practical, and in fact, that might very well technically that that

would be a ridiculous undertaking, honestly. And and it's not like data is color coded as it's running through the Internet tubes to to to let you know these things. So most of these collection systems they have in place are creating databases based on keywords like anything that's anything that's automatically detecting a keyword, and this includes actual phone conversations.

When you get to Nucleon and PRISM, that no longer is dealing just with metadata, that's actually dealing with content itself, the actual stuff that's going on in these communications. So you get these keyword databases that are created and then you can search those uh. And again the n s A says, yes, we have them, but we're not searching them, you know, without reason. We only search them after we've we've established this this uh probable cause, the authorization et

cetera under the secret court that you can't know about. Um. And so that's that's kind of where we are now. So Nucleon is the one with the phones. And again they're actually able to sort out phone conversations based on keywords that are detected within those conversations and then store them. And they're they've built a data center in Utah that is about a one and a half million square feet in size, which for those of you who have been to the Las Vegas Convention Center, that's about half the

size of the Las Vegas Convention Center. If you add up all the convention center space. UM and that's that's huge. It's just filled with computers that are storing information, and of course we're generating more and more information every single day. Um and Uh. And in some cases they have access to special lockdown rooms like we've mentioned before, where they don't necessarily have to ask a provider for anything. They can just go into the lockdown room and then run

the query. Again, they have to have the authorization to do this legally. Now that that includes both Nucleon and PRISM, which cover those content. Uh, let's talk about a little bit, just really briefly, kind of wrap this up and talk about some of the responses we've seen. I've got two specific ones I wanted to mention, uh, responses to this

information coming to light. Keeping in mind that a lot of the politicians knew at least some of this already because they were on the committees that formed this stuff, but we're not able to really talk about it. Representative F. James Simpson Brenner Jr. Who is a representative from Wisconsin.

He's a Republican. He's also one of the architects of the Patriot Act, said that Congress intended the patriotch to allow the intelligence communities to access targeted information for specific investigations. And he says, how can every call that every American makes or receives be relevant to a specific investigation? So again he's asking that same question, how can you justify

collecting everything? Um And then I say says, well, we don't consider the collecting part to be seizure, Like we don't. It's on a server, but we're not doing anything with it, we're not searching it. But there are other arguments that are being made. They're saying this is kind of a slippery slop technicality. Yeah, shut up right, Like like what if you wanted to search it? You totally could write, you know whatever. The legal the legal definition of shut up is is what a lot of people are saying

right now. Yeah. So there and there are people who are pointing out that, yes, if you have someone who has that access, then they can take advantage of it. Even if the n s A is doing everything on the up and up, if there's just one person who has that access, they could have you know. And uh, and so there's like and if your response is well, how could that happen? You point to Edward Snowdon and

you say it has happened. Snowden did it. Snowdon did it in a way that alerted us to this, which for a lot of people means that he's a whistleblower, but that that's an example saying here's someone who did an unauthorized access of that information. And Snowdon had even said that it would be possible for him to listen in on any phone call at all if he wanted to. UH, and the n s A has said that it's not

entirely true. You have to get the approval process. But there are others who say, well, what is that approval process? How how extensive is it? Does it just require you to go to someone and say, hey, can I listen to this call? There's sure that you can do it? Or is it really formal? And we don't really know, We don't know. Yeah, UM, I I like your last one to close this out with. I do have one from Obama um UH. President Obama has has said about the issue. UM I came in with a healthy skepticism

about these programs. My team evaluated them, We scrubbed them thoroughly. We actually expanded some of the oversight and increased some of the safeguards you can't have one percent security and also then have one percent privacy and zero inconvenience. Yeah, there are some Founding fathers who had something to say about security and liberty, but I don't want to go into that. So, but they're the last one. And yes,

that's that's so, that's was the president's approach. And again, it may very well be that all of that is completely sincere and honest, but we just don't know because it's classified, right, and it kind of and I was probably reading that more snarkily than than than the president that it sticks in my crawl a little bit because one of the things I specifically remember the Obama administration championing when they when when they first came into political power,

was that they were going to really focus on transparency in the government. Now, you can argue that when it comes to intelligence transparency is it's counterproductive, it is dangerous, But when you look at this information that's been revealed and you see the reaction, you can understand why transparency is also something that you have to at least consider, at least talk about, here's here's the legal procedure that

we do, and here's how we do it. That doesn't necessarily tell you anything about who's being targeted, although we've got plenty of nations out there who are now up in arms about this, and then we wanted to end this. Uh. The former president Jimmy Carter said about Snowdon, he said, he's obviously violated the laws of America for which he's responsible, but I think the invasion of human rights and American

privacy has gone too far. I think that the secrecy that has been surrounding this invasion of privacy has been excessive. So I think that the bringing of it to the public notice has probably been in the long term beneficial. So in other words, he says, Snowdon is still responsible for his actions and maybe he should be held accountable. That's not what he's arguing here. What he's arguing is that this is stuff that we kind of needed to know.

And keep in mind, this is the same president who signed FAISA into law in place, so that's an interesting thing to end on. Now. Again, we have our own opinions about this, and obviously, I mean, you you can tell what they are. It's not like we've been terribly subtle or but that's not you know, we're not trying to We've not been nearly as secretive as the n s A and sorry, and and and again it may turn out like I'm trying to keep as open in

mind about this as possible. But it's just that a lot of warning flags have been raised because of this, and national securities is certainly extraordinarily important all the time. YEA. So it's not that it's not that we are going to say that we know better than anybody else. Obviously that's not the case. Mostly what we want is just more information, because Uh, it is very easy to come to the wrong conclusion when you don't have enough, and

I am fully aware of that. But it does raise some concerns, and I'm glad that there are people who are looking into it and and really examining this and making sure that this that the n Essays approach is in fact the best one to do, as opposed to some alternative And uh. And so you know, whether you think Snowdon is a hero or a villain, personally, I kind of just I don't really think of him as either. I think of him as a human being who acted on his own principles which were not in alignment with

the principles of his contractual employe er. Um, that sometimes happens. I mean, that's why we have uh that's why things like weight leaks even exist because if there weren't people like that, then there'd be no leaked information. I I agree with with former President Carter. Yeah, I agree. So we're wrapping this up, guys. If you have suggestions for future topics, we do plan on eventually covering topics like the actual technical approaches to things like wire tapping and

this prism approach. How might uh N s A gathered data without even approaching a major company. There are some kind of tricky things they might do. Um, but we'll talk about that in another episode and we'll break it up. We're gonna do something fun next time. So robot puppies. Robot puppies. Yeah, more togogy. So we're wrapping this up. If you have any suggestions for future episodes, please get

into contact with us. We can be contacted at email address, tech stuff at Discovery dot com, or drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter. You can find us their tech stuff hs W and Lauren and I will talk to you again. Really ru Rue for more on this and thousands of other topics, does it, how stuff works, dot com