WIKILEAKS: mass surveillance and data mining against the Arab world (US next?)

[kpete]

"For at least two years, the U.S. has been conducting a secretive and immensely sophisticated campaign of mass surveillance and data mining against the Arab world, allowing the intelligence community to monitor the habits, conversations, and activity of millions of individuals at once. And with an upgrade scheduled for later this year, the top contender to win the federal contract and thus take over the program is a team of about a dozen companies which were brought together in large part by Aaron Barr - the same disgraced CEO who resigned from his own firm earlier this year after he was discovered to have planned a full-scale information war against political activists at the behest of corporate clients. The new revelation provides for a disturbing picture, particularly when viewed in a wider context." He warns that this apparatus could be used within the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. Details to come.
MORE: http://www.thenation.com/blog/161590/wikileaks-news-views-blog-wednesday-june-22#node-161590

[DBoon]

1. "could be used within the U.S."??

I'd bet money it is in place

[nilram]

5. but it wouldn't be... because that would be illegal.

 
:rofl:
 

[xchrom]

2. Recommend

[leveymg]

3. This is the just the international side of "The Program" that's been in place since'02.

Every e-mail, every phone call, every Google Search, every database, every DU post gets scooped up and stored away by the NSA.

Other agencies then run the data through their own algorithms looking for everything from Muslim terrorists to identity thieves. It's all been in place for a decade or more. For all practical purposes, the 4th Amendment does not exist anymore.

[hootinholler]

4. Indeed

There may remain a few dark corners here and there, but if you wish to plan anything serious, it needs to be done face to face under other pretext.

-Hoot

[bemildred]

6. Right. Like giant piles of unrelated data are better than small piles.

A waste of the public's time and money, but I'll bet it pays extremely well.

[leveymg]

7. New details emerge today (Thurs., 6/23) about US monitoring and datamining of social networks.

3:28 We were first up today with news of Barrett Brown's big scoop (see below) and now he has posted more at The Guardian. "After having spent several months studying those emails and otherwise investigating the industry depicted therein, I have revealed my summary of a classified US intelligence programme known as Romas/COIN, as well as its upcoming replacement, known as Odyssey. The programme appears to allow for the large-scale monitoring of social networks by way of such things as natural language processing, semantic analysis, latent semantic indexing and IT intrusion. At the same time, it also entails the dissemination of some unknown degree of information to a given population through a variety of means – without any hint that the actual source is US intelligence. Scattered discussions of Arab translation services may indicate that the programme targets the Middle East."

[Kaleko]

8. Do you still have the link to that handy?

Thanks for all you do.

[leveymg]

9. It's Greg Mitchell's Blog at The Nation, datestamp as above. Link>

http://www.thenation.com/blog/161590/wikileaks-news-views-blog-wednesday-june-22#node-161590

And this from one of the sources linked within that Journal entry describing Romas/COIN (Odyssey) program as its referenced in the (RW dirty-tricks and domestic spy shop) HBGary e-mails:

Project PM Leaks Dirt on Romas/COIN Classified Intelligence Mass Surveillance
According to a Project PM announcement, here are some of the 'classified intelligence' details about Romas/COIN (Odyssey) with capabilities to monitor and automatically analyze millions of conversations, and then secretly store a wide range of personal data. It appears as if even Apple, Google, and Disney's Pixar were trying to be brought aboard to help out in this mass surveillance apparatus.
By Ms. Smith on Wed, 06/22/11 - 10:44am.

* Email
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Updated note: To be clear, all analysis and documentation to expose this mass surveillance was done by Project PM.

If you are not sitting, please do so. Although I don't advocate drinking, you might also pour a double-shot of whiskey to prepare yourself for distinctly unpleasant news about immensely sophisticated mass surveillance called Romas/COIN, or soon to be replaced by a similar program known as Odyssey. The nature and extent of the "counter intelligence" operation can be glimpsed in part by closely inspecting hundreds of e-mails among the 70,000 that were stolen in February from the contracting firm HBGary Federal.

After searching through HBGary e-mails for keywords and reading until I wanted to puke or scream, I decided to go ahead and run with Project PM's announcement. Barrett Brown of Project PM will publish these findings in full on Project PM Wiki later, but this is part of that release. According to Project PM: . . .

[Kaleko]

11. Thanks. This confirms what I've been saying for years...

a global surveillance state in which we are incrementally reduced to become forced laborers/prisoners is coming...

And now it is here.

[MadHound]

10. What do you mean "US next?" Where do you think these tactics were perfected?

Oh, yeah, in the US.

Average American is caught on camera or video a couple of hundred times each day, and that is increasing. Our phone conversations, texts and emails are run through seventeen acres worth of computers outside of Quantico Virginia and analyzed for potential threats. Our computers are rife with cookies and other tracking mechanisms that form a profile to be datamined. Our cell phones keep track of us to within a few feet, our purchases are recorded for future datamining, on and on it goes. We are one of the most spied upon populaces in the world.