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Comment by Bender | Hacker News Reader

The best example of the Snowden fallout and the apathy around it was when John Oliver interviewed both Snowden and many people on the street. People on the street did not comprehend what NSA monitoring meant and did not care until John put it in terms they could understand. "So you are ok with the NSA seeing pictures and videos of your significant others junk you text (sext) back and forth?" "Oh, I would be furious if they were seeing that". That was how nearly every conversation went.

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I think THAT is where the apathy comes in. THAT is probably the biggest concern of your average internet surfer. They think, "I don't trade any high level secrets... I'm a nobody". So the worst thing they can conceive is, "but I did send some pics to that person I met on Facebook. I sure would hate for my significant other to find out". That's something that can resonate with a far larger group. Many honestly don't care because they feel there's nothing they can do. Perhaps they're right. It's not like the US Gov (or any other) said, "oh, you caught us.... fine we'll shut down the program"

I totally agree that it's sad that we're in this place of apathy. But it's hard to get folks all excited when they don't believe it'll really affect them personally.

But that is not what the NSA monitoring meant. They do not get to see pictures of your SO's junk. They do know who you called and when but not tied to your name.

Maybe, but they do for sure listen to your calls. I used their software in a wireless provider. "She" was fascinating. She could understand any language, dialect, voice inflection, and so much more. No training required whatsoever. She listens to all international calls and flags phrases and key words.

They don't listen to your phone calls either. If they did, Snowden would have leaked it, and it would have been a bombshell revelation. If you have information otherwise, you should blow the whistle.

There is no whistle to blow. It is fairly well known that all international calls into or out of each country are monitored by bots using speech recognition by the related agency for each repsective country. This has been the case for a very long time. Before bots, there were listening stations with thousands of people monitoring calls. There would be nothing for Snowden to leak in that regard. The only place this has been taboo is when the NSA is doing it within the country. They too use bots, as there is no way you could hire enough people to listen to the calls. Only flagged calls are listened to by people.

Confirmed in this gem:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200618030047/https://www.balti...

I am almost certain this has never been reported, I am also almost certain it is not the case. Can you provide a link?

What you claim is "fairly well known" is directly disputed by Snowden's leaks, which say they cannot. They can only tap calls where both endpoints are outside the US and are people who they have reason to believe are not US citizens.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-jan-16-na-wiret...

They do, Snowden and others have leaked it. https://www.cnet.com/news/nsa-spying-flap-extends-to-content...

None of Snowden's documents say so. If they did, that would have been the biggest story in his leaks. Your own article says that they cannot.

He released the details of xkeyscore, which details the system involved with tapping into anyone's personal communication. It doesn't explicitly mention wiretapping, but it seems likely that connecting to a server containing those recordings would also show up in a search.

And we know that they have such servers from the events surrounding Room 641A. Snowden also released documents from that incident, such as the NSA attempt to stop publication.

And in my article, the NSA claims they can not legally search such data without a warrant. It doesn't say they are unable to access the data illegally though

> He released the details of xkeyscore, which details the system involved with tapping into anyone's personal communication.

No, that is not what xkeyscore is. Xkeyscore is a database for metadata.

> And we know that they have such servers from the events surrounding Room 641A.

And thanks to Snowden's leaks, we now know that these are for tapping communications between foreigners where both foreigners are outside the US.

> It doesn't say they are unable to access the data illegally though

Within the US, they can only do so by asking the phone company to set up a tap, just like the FBI. Your article does not dispute this.

This is a bit of a term of art. "They" don't "listen" to your calls. A computer does.

Says who? Not Snowden's leaks. Not the NSA. Not Ron Wyden.

> They do know who you called and when but not tied to your name.

For a state-level actor (or the mobile provider itself or those other corporations to which it sells data for advertising purposes) to identify by name the human being who is the source of phone calls, is trivial in most countries today.

However trivial it may be, it is illegal for them to do so even under their lawyers' interpretation, and Snowden's leaks did not show that they did so.

according to Snowden, they did:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/gchq-nsa-webca...

That is not the NSA, which (as your article says) cannot access any of that data that comes from Americans without a warrant.

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