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by AtlasBarfed 386 days ago
The black box rooms in the telecom forms two decades ago beg to differ

What you are talking about is small fry law enforcement.

If you don't think the new has total access to the databases of the thousands of social network and advertising/data collection firms, I don't know what to tell you.

Maybe something totally encrypted, but even then there is hardware backdoors, and the NSA can simply pay an employee to legally let them in.
1 comments
globie 386 days ago
They only need to pay off or install a single employee to get total or near-total access. Consider this chart from 2013 showing when various tech companies were added to PRISM:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Prism_sl...

A lot of the companies embattled in the "constant litigation" mentioned by the GP are featured in this very chart.

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JumpCrisscross 386 days ago
> lot of the companies embattled in the "constant litigation" mentioned by the GP are featured in this very chart

Yup. A great first step towards understanding these systems is to disaggregate the monoliths of these enterprises and the U.S. government into their power centres.

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globie 386 days ago
Do you believe the disaggregation of those monoliths helps to put the "hypothesis to bed"? It sure seems like you were listing "constant litigation" over "records request" as counterevidence of the claim that "if a company knows something about you, so does the government(s)".

If anyone in the U.S. government is extracting data from companies in a manner which is unlawful or should be (and they sure are), I see that as strong evidence of the hypothesis. Pointing out that local agencies may have to fight for their access in court doesn't change that it "is exactly the state of affairs the government prefers".

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JumpCrisscross 386 days ago
> sure seems like you were listing "constant litigation" over "records request" as counterevidence of the claim that "if a company knows something about you, so does the government(s)"

Yes. Just because the NSA can access some data doesn’t mean the entire federal government, including the NSA, has it.

> local agencies may have to fight for their access

The White House is fighting Harvard for student records. I don’t think people appreciate the degree to which information is siloed, intentionally and unintentionally, in the federal government. (It’s what led to DOGE likely committing multiple felonies.)

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globie 386 days ago
>I don’t think people appreciate the degree to which information is siloed, intentionally and unintentionally, in the federal government.

Thanks for that. Information can be completely siloed and the statements "If a company knows something about you, so does the government(s)" and "This is exactly the state of affairs the government prefers" still be correct.

Is your belief that the federal government has not actually purchased hordes of corporate surveillance data? Or is it that because there are examples of information being siloed or not available, that means it's okay or a non-issue that Americans' data that was once unlawfully collected is now still unlawfully collected but also collected by corporations and purchased wholesale by the federal government?

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