Bonum Certa Men Certa

Surveillance on Customers of US-based Companies: the CIA (US Taxpayers) Pay for This

National Security Agency



Summary: New revelations about the surveillance infrastructure laid out by the United States and those who bankroll it

WHENEVER we speak about Microsoft and the NSA we should remember that Microsoft pretty much kick-started PRISM -- the programme under which everything which resides on a company's pool of data becomes available to secretive spies, including the murderous NSA.



According to a new report from the New York Times [1], US taxpayers essentially pay to be spied on whether they like it or not. The CIA is doing this. iophk wondered: "Isn't this also just the same data they are getting from social media and e-mail logging?"

We already know, based on plenty of evidence, that black (hidden) budgets are still where trillions of dollars come to disappear, with no public oversight whatsoever. What the CIA does here is simple; it provides corporate subsidies at taxpayers' expense (or growing national debt), essentially paying private entities like Microsoft to help incriminate customers, based on private data and communications. We already know about misuses of the NSA powers, e.g. the handing over of data to the DEA. It's not about terrorism. For the sake of national 'interests' (the interests of those in power), companies which may be running at a loss are getting subsidised. And at whose expense? At the expense of national debt, which the public as a whole is required to pay back.

Speaking of Microsoft and the NSA, there is a new Microsoft back door which the NSA can now exploit. As iophk put it, given some NSA background information, those back doors should be called what they are because '"zero day" is just a marketing term for holes that the vendor can't be bothered to fix.'

The Internet seems to have become just another way for spies to raid homes (or digital equipment at homes) without a warrant and without being noticed. This is a serious problem. The Internet as a whole has devolved into a militarised surveillance apparatus -- a fact that even the founder of the World Wide Web (and DRM apologist) seems to have finally accepted [2]. We need an alternative to the Internet because it is probably too late to fix the Internet. The Internet came from the US military and it is still serving the US military for the most part; it's a control mechanism -- control through total oversight and assassination/marginalisation of opposition. Even the CIA turns out to be deeply involved.

Related/contextual items from the news:



  1. C.I.A. Is Said to Pay AT&T for Call Data
    The C.I.A. is paying AT&T more than $10 million a year to assist with overseas counterterrorism investigations by exploiting the company’s vast database of phone records, which includes Americans’ international calls, according to government officials.


  2. Tim Berners-Lee calls for international protections for whistleblowers
    Having already made his feelings perfectly clear about the revelations of NSA and GCHQ internet surveillance, inventor of the World Wide Web Sir Tim Berners-Lee is calling for an international protection system for whistleblowers.


Recent Techrights' Posts

SoylentNews Grows Up, Registers as a Business, Site Traffic Reportedly Grows
More people realise that social control media may in fact be a passing fad
 
Garden Season Starts Today
Outdoor time, officially...
More Information About Public Talks That Richard Stallman Gave This Week in Europe
Two talks in Switzerland
Engadget is Still a Spamfarm, It's Just an Amazon Catalogue (SPAM/SEO), a Sea of Junk Disguised as "Articles" With Few 'Fillers' (Real Articles) in Between
Engadget writes for bots now, not for humans
Richard Stallman's Talks in Switzerland This Week
We need to put an end to 'cancer culture'; it's trying to kill people and it is even swatting people
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 28, 2024
IRC logs for Thursday, March 28, 2024
[Meme] EPO's New Ways of Working (NWoW), a.k.a. You Don't Even Get a Desk at Work and Cannot be Near Known Colleagues
Seems more like union-busting (divide and rule)
Hiding Microsoft's Culpability in Security Breaches and Other Major Blunders (in the United Kingdom, This May Mean You Can't Get Food)
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is vast
Giving back to the community
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 28/03/2024: Sega, Nintendo, and Bell Layoffs
Links for the day
Open letter to the ACM regarding Codes of Conduct impersonating the Code of Ethics
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
With 9 Mentions of Azure In Its Latest Blog Post, Canonical is Again Promoting Microsoft and Intel Vendor Lock-in, Surveillance, Back Doors, Considerable Power Waste, and Defects That Cannot be Fixed
Microsoft did not even have to buy Canonical (for Canonical to act like it happened)
Links 28/03/2024: GAFAM Replacing Full-Time Workers With Interns Now
Links for the day
Consent & Debian's illegitimate constitution
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
The Time Our Server Host Died in a Car Accident
If Debian has internal problems, then they need to be illuminated and then tackled, at the very least in order to ensure we do not end up with "Deadian"
China's New 'IT' Rules Are a Massive Headache for Microsoft
On the issue of China we're neutral except when it comes to human rights issues
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 27, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, March 27, 2024
WeMakeFedora.org: harassment decision, victory for volunteers and Fedora Foundations
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 27/03/2024: Terrorism Grows in Africa, Unemployment in Finland Rose Sharply in a Year, Chinese Aggression Escalates
Links for the day
Links 27/03/2024: Ericsson and Tencent Layoffs
Links for the day
Amid Online Reports of XBox Sales Collapsing, Mass Layoffs in More Teams, and Windows Making Things Worse (Admission of Losses, Rumours About XBox Canceled as a Hardware Unit)...
Windows has loads of issues, also as a gaming platform
Links 27/03/2024: BBC Resorts to CG Cruft, Akamai Blocking Blunders in Piracy Shield
Links for the day
Android Approaches 90% of the Operating Systems Market in Chad (Windows Down From 99.5% 15 Years Ago to Just 2.5% Right Now)
Windows is down to about 2% on the Web-connected client side as measured by statCounter
Sainsbury's: Let Them Eat Yoghurts (and Microsoft Downtimes When They Need Proper Food)
a social control media 'scandal' this week
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 26, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
Windows/Client at Microsoft Falling Sharply (Well Over 10% Decline Every Quarter), So For His Next Trick the Ponzi in Chief Merges Units, Spices Everything Up With "AI"
Hiding the steep decline of Windows/Client at Microsoft?
Free technology in housing and construction
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
We Need Open Standards With Free Software Implementations, Not "Interoperability" Alone
Sadly we're confronting misguided managers and a bunch of clowns trying to herd us all - sometimes without consent - into "clown computing"
Microsoft's Collapse in the Web Server Space Continued This Month
Microsoft is the "2%", just like Windows in some countries