Hacker News Reader

Comment by lern_too_spel | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com