# Why the NSA is Not Spying on You



## WechtleinUns (Jun 16, 2013)

We've all heard the big news scandal. Mr. Edward Snowden made a big brouhaha about this massive NSA security scandal. The watergate of the postmodern age, the news organizations ran with it like there was no room for news about Syria. Within minutes, the approval ratings of the exectuive office plummeted. Memes were started on facebook, imgur, 9gag, reddit, and all the other social media sites. And amidst all the panic and fear, people forgot how to think. That, or they never learned.

The NSA application is called PRISM, and it conjures up scary images of NSA Agents watching every mouse click or key-stroke on your device. We, as americans, have watched more than enough science fiction to imagine the scene. A big room in the dark, with thousands of trained technicians, watching everything you do. I think it's safe to say that the popular image that enters people's minds is not entirely accurate.

The PRISM dragnet catalogues two main types of data: Socket Connections, and Packet-Switched Telephony Connections. There is no audio, video, or any other data being stored, for reasons that we shall soon see.

A Socket connection is very simple. If you type a URL into your browser bar, then you are creating a socket connection. Socket connections basically tell the technician that network A connected to network B, and so on. They do not give any kind of indication as to what kind of data was passed between the two networks, or even if data was passed at all. Furthermore, the data can not be replicated with just a socket connection.

Packet-Switched Telephony Connections are very similiar to Socket Connection. Sockets use TCP protocol, while Packet-Switched Telephony is used more with cell-phone networks. These records are kept by the phone-companies themselves, and are regularly sold to other companies who are looking for advertising information. The actual prism application was developed in early 2002-2003, when George W. Bush was president, during the height of post-9/11 paranoia.

But the bottom line is that both records only describe who connected with what. Most home internet set-ups use DHCP types of connections, which lessens the utility of a Socket Connection Descriptor. (Indeed, with your typical home internet set-up, a socket descriptor would not even be able to pin-point the house. At the best, it would give a general geographic region, depending on your Internet Service Provider.) Packet Switched Connections would be able to pin-point your cell phone, of course, but they wouldn't yield any actual data about what is sent over the line.

Bottom line: No Audio, No Video, No Pictures, No Data.

But wait! There's more! The government doesn't have any data about your hard-drive, or anything that is actually on your local area network. Why? It's really quite simple, actually. It doesn't matter is some guy over at the NSA has a degree in advanced mathematics and Assembly Programming; software is software. And the windows XP operating system is set-up by default to reject most incoming network requests. It is possible to set up your computer to allow such access, but the vast majority of people don't do it, because they don't know how. And those that do know how don't use Windows XP.

In the absence of any explicitly coded Microsoft Back-door, the only way a person is going to get access to your computer is by hacking it individually. Now, this is certainly possible. There is a wide network of cyber-criminals hacking grandma's pc every day. But the methods involved in such undertaking would make it completely incompatible with a large scale dragnet application like PRISM.

So what really happened with this program? Well, you might be surprised to find that most of the data that prism collected and centralized was all-ready available to the federal government. The only difference was that the PRISM database was centralized and operated by the feds themselves, where traditionally the databases were decentralized and operated by local governments.

Bottom line: Before 9/11, the federal government needed a warrant to access your phone records. After 9/11, the federal government did not.

This actually quite interesting, because this isn't really a scandal. The exact same story was broken in early 2002-2003, with the Bush wire-tapping scandals. You remember those stories? They made 6th page from the back in my local newspaper. Oh. That's right. When the story broke back then, Nobody cared, did they? The iphone wasn't even around until about 2007-2008. The internet was new and shiny, and most people didn't have a good grasp on the technology. My parents certainly did not, and I was about 11 or 12.

So... yeah. Let's try not to overreact next time. Ok, America?

:edit:

Nevermind.


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## Sam (Jun 16, 2013)

I have two words for you: Menwith Hill. 

If you think the NSA haven't the means to disable a couple of puny preventative measures on Windows XP, you have no idea the extent of their capabilities. In 1960 they created a system called ECHELON to collect information from high-level Soviet government officials, which included but was not limited to telephone conversations, fax, and other data communications. That was fifty-three years ago. Think about that. I remember playing Pacman on an Amstrad CPC-464 home computer in 1988. The games were simple, the graphics pathetic, and the loading times insane. In twenty-five years the technology has become unrecognisable from what I saw growing up. That's only _half _the time NSA have had to perfect a system that spies on people. They're not called 'espionage agents' for nothing. 

It's possible that they haven't done all the things being levelled at them, but to believe they haven't the hackers or programmers required to attempt it is a little naive.


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## ppsage (Jun 16, 2013)

> Most home internet set-ups use DHCP types of connections, which lessens the utility of a Socket Connection Descriptor.


Although the basis of my comprehension is a bit later than 1960, I'm still pretty dimwitted about this stuff. Are you saying that no record is kept of DHCP assignments? How does that screen me exactly: something is allowing Google ads to pop up 10k notices for 50 watt flood lights .7 nano seconds after I check the prices on bulbs-r-us.

Edit. Oops. Sorry not to critique more appropriately. I like this writing/subject a lot. The argument is well conceived. It needs, I think (as my response above perhaps indicates), some simplified examples for a wider comprehension. Thanx. pp.


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## IanMGSmith (Jun 17, 2013)

Hi Wecht,

Not a bad piece in terms of lay out and emotive content. Have I just read my first "technical rant"? 

I'm not qualified to judge the accuracy of your technical explanations. They do seem knowlegable but somehow I was left feeling unconvinced. Why? Probably because I was trying to relate this to the claims of internet spying which has been so prominent in our news lately.  

Example news, “T_he stories published over the last two days make clear that the NSA -- part of the military -- now has direct access to every corner of Americans’ digital lives,” said the ACLU’s Jaffer, who argued the case before the Supreme Court. “Powers exercised entirely in secret, without public accountability of any kind, will certainly be abused._”  - U.S. Defends Data-Collection as Legal Anti-Terror Tool - Bloomberg

Private data collected legally by USA agencies does not comply with privacy laws in UK so our government is talking about changing the law because the info is vital in the war against terrorism.

Perhaps that is something different?  

I did notice a couple of awkward grammar skews but I'm sure this is nothing you could not iron out if you want to i.e. "Memes were started on facebook, imgur, 9gag, reddit, *and a*ll the other social media sites. *And *amidst all the panic* and *fear, people forgot how to think."

You gave me a lively read and raised a few questions, for that I thank you.

Keep writing my friend,

Ian


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## WechtleinUns (Jun 17, 2013)

Yeah. It turns out that I misunderstood the extent of the surveillance as well. To be perfectly fair, I don't actually have access to the source code, and I most certainly don't have access to the underlying VPN. A lot of what I wrote is somewhat accurate. But a lot of what I wrote is also off the mark.

My bad. XD


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## Lewdog (Jun 17, 2013)

If I read things correctly, in a recent article about the 'leak,' it came out that the U.S. recently hacked China's government internet.  Now don't get me wrong, I believe there are certain things that need to be done to protect our country preemptively and not after-the-fact, but the government shouldn't be so hypocritical and make a big deal every time China or another country hacks into the U.S. government then.  The U.S. just needs to handle its business and not try to play a hero role in the media while stopping to the same level of its enemies behind the scenes.  I know that's asking a lot...especially from politicians...but that's really the only problem I have with most of this.


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## Smith (Jun 26, 2013)

I think that people are really under-reacting. If nothing comes of this incident, and the people don't rise up for change, I foresee worse things on the horizon. Unfortunate, if all the things we've fought for and worked for gone to waste. Well, hopefully that will not be the case!


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## SarahStrange (Jun 27, 2013)

I don't care if the NSA is spying on me. When I have a missing limb because of a terrorist attack or one of my family members/friends is killed I'm not going to think, 'well at least the NSA wasn't listening to my phone calls.' Hell to the NO. We are not in a time of peace. I don't expect my government to act like we are. 

With this whole debacle, I've also realized how arrogant people are. I've heard a lot of "they're listening to _my_ phone calls!?" "they're intercepting _my_ emails!?" "they listen in on _me_!?" I just want to smack 'em one and say listen buddy, you're not that important. Get over yourself. 

That's probably just my opinion, but there you go. 

Also, it was a really interesting read. I really liked it until you said it wasn't entirely factual. The jargon also confused me a bit, but that is probably because of my limited knowledge of computers. The crack about Windows XP made me laugh though. That isn't something I expect from an essay and it was welcomed. As rants go it wasn't unbearable, which is a special occurrence lol.


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## Terry D (Jun 27, 2013)

*Remember to keep the comments in this thread about the writing itself not about the topic. Non-fiction critique can too easily slide into a debate.*


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## tinacrabapple (Jun 27, 2013)

Nice article.  It informed me better about how exactly the NSA is "spying" on us.


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## Abrahamburger (Jul 2, 2013)

It's the fact that they have the ability to spy and the law would be behind them, not if they're actually doing it or not


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## Robert_S (Jul 9, 2013)

I feel the piece is condescending, especially in light of the fact that the NSA chief admitted to out right lying about spying on millions of US citizens, warrantless search and seizures, etc.


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## vickinicole (Jul 9, 2013)

This was interesting to read and you broke down the technical reasons very well. I don't think the NSA is spying on *every* American primarily because I just don't think they care to bother all that much. On the other hand I do think they may spy on a few people for terrorism related justifications.


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