The NSA Is Collecting Lots of Spam 159
wiredog writes "One side effect of the NSA's surveillance program is that a great deal of spam is getting swept up along with the actual communications data. Overwhelming amounts, perhaps. From The Washington Post: '[W]hen one Iranian e-mail address of interest got taken over by spammers ... the Iranian account began sending out bogus messages to its entire address book. ... the spam that wasn't deleted by those recipients kept getting scooped up every time the NSA's gaze passed over them. And as some people had marked the Iranian account as a safe account, additional spam messages continued to stream in, and the NSA likely picked those up, too....Every day from Sept. 11, 2011 to Sept. 24, 2011, the NSA collected somewhere between 2 GB and 117 GB of data concerning this Iranian address."
LOL (Score:2)
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Even the NSA can't do anything about SPAM.
Re:LOL (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, but now they can ... they can take all of that information, identify who isn't complying with CAN-SPAM, identify people profiting off shady deals on the internet, figure out who has been evading taxes, and give us all a better internet.
OK, now stop laughing.
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More interesting than you think.
This might be exactly the right PR move that might make people appreciate NSA monitoring of the internet.
Hope their PR guys think about it.
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Laughing? For the very first time I am warming up to the idea of surveillance and drone strikes.
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Most spam is legal.
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First nation to use their online surveillance technology / great firewall / legions of state sponsored hackers to bring a clear and demonstrable reduction in online crime wins. Go!
Re:LOL (Score:4, Interesting)
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That was my first thought, with all the extensive technical knowledge of the NSA, deduplication is just too hard for them.
SPAM is a way to hide a message in plain sight (Score:2, Interesting)
and you never know if the SPAM are actually a broadcast messages with certain keywords carrying the instructions for their coordinated attacks. May be the typos contains letters to form hidden words too?
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and you never know if the SPAM are actually a broadcast messages with certain keywords carrying the instructions for their coordinated attacks. May be the typos contains letters to form hidden words too?
Or, maybe its shows a new vector for an anti-NSA attack by the Iranians. The perpetrators send small parts of a virus in individual spams, and wait till the NSA computers puts them all together to form a logic bomb or something.
Hmmm, if they were to do that, the next Honest American President would have to award them the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Re:SPAM is a way to hide a message in plain sight (Score:5, Interesting)
Or, maybe its shows a new vector for an anti-NSA attack by the Iranians.
Fuck the Iranians, I'm signing up for everything.
Everything.
Every.
Thing.
We will choke them to death on our spam.
Re:SPAM is a way to hide a message in plain sight (Score:5, Funny)
FIRST, I MUST SOLICIT attack YOUR STRICTEST CONFIDENCE IN the THIS TRANSACTION. THIS IS embassy BY VIRTUE OF ITS at NATURE AS BEING UTTERLY dawn CONFIDENTIAL AND 'TOP SECRET' on tuesday. I AM SURE AND lunch HAVE CONFIDENCE OF YOUR will not ABILITY AND RELIABILITY TO be PROSECUTE A TRANSACTION OF provided THIS GREAT MAGNITUDE INVOLVING regards A PENDING TRANSACTION REQUIRING achmed MAXIIMUM CONFIDENCE.
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LOLunch.
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I wish I could mod this up to Score 10, Funny.
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I can see the movie dialogue now:
Generic Eastern European Coldwar Badguy: Sure you are das Americans do not know?
Generic Eastern European Coldwar Badgeek: Nyet. Ze messages ver hidden across million email to sell Viagra.
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I had wondered about a steganographic secondary purpose behind the grammatical-but-semantically-empty seemingly-random paragraphs that used to appear at the end of spam messages to confound filters.
Serves 'em right (Score:4, Interesting)
If you're gonna go snooping through people's stuff, you're bound to find a lot of garbage.
Re:Serves 'em right (Score:5, Funny)
If you're gonna go snooping through people's stuff, you're bound to find a lot of garbage.
Garbage!? That's how my terrorist cell communicates you insensitive clod.
Cialis spam is "Alpha" ...
[ia1i5 spam is "Bravo"
CiAli$ spam is "Charlie"
Viagra spam is "Death" ...
ViAgr4 spam is "America"
P3n is 3nlargem3nt is "Allah"
We1gt L0ss is "Target"
"I saw your picture online" is "Great Satan"
"This stock is making a turnaround" is whatever letter the stock starts with.
"This stock is on High Alert for Today" is whatever the 2nd letter of the stock starts with.
"This Company could be come my longest running winner!!!" has a GPS latitude encoded into the digits of the target price, trade date, and last trade info
Longitude comes in on a fake PO tracking number shipment spam
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We'd have a whole lot less actual data on 'terrorist' networks if they actually used a method like this.
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I'd like to see the face of the analyst in charge of your file after they intercept this.
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The list wouldn't be complete without "Allah", would it?
I referenced Viagra and Cialis but left out Levitra too. What do you divine from that fact?
It really shows the level of your discrimination and/or racism.
Discrimination? What $deity-name$ would you have found acceptable? Or do I have to propose a religious extremist terrorist cell that's also multi-faith to appease you? I picked on Islam because its 2013, and its culturally aware. Proposing Quaker terrorist cells would have been funny in its own right,
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Where do I sign up to divert all my spam to the NSA?
Sounds like a more useful program for my tax dollars than anyone let on!
Spam as Civil Disobedience? (Score:2)
Patriotism is the last refuge of a spammer?
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To me that makes more sense the other way around.
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D'oh! Never mind I missed your subject line.
Makes perfect sense now.
PS: I wish slashdot forums allowed me to delete my erroneous posts.
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Spam is the last refuge of the patriot, apparently.
A Herring? (Score:2)
If they are gathering spam or not, there is still a violation of the Constitution involved. Yeah, I'm a stodgy old prick with a memory like an Elephant! If they were not acting illegally this would not be a story now would it?
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To the best of my knowledge, it doesn't even prevent spying on its own citizens.
There are those who would suggest that this violates the fourth amendment, but then the matter becomes what the powers that be choose to define as "unreasonable".
Watching your every move, but still allowing you to do whatever it is you do, so long as it's perfectly legal, might conceivably satisfy the restrictions that the fourth amendment imposes.
Privacy, you see, is not explicitly mentioned anywhere in the constitution.
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When most of the population (both US and World) collectively say, "That is an ridiculous and unreasonable abuse of power!!!!" I am fairly sure it is covered by the fourth amendment.
Simply put, if they want to search a citizen's property (digital or physical), then they need to get a warrant for that specific search. Otherwise, you end up with entrapment and a bunch of other abuses because law enforcement officers operate under the assumption that everyone is guilty of something, we just need to find it.
Re:A Herring? (Score:4, Insightful)
When most of the population (both US and World) collectively say, "That is an ridiculous and unreasonable abuse of power!!!!" I am fairly sure it is covered by the fourth amendment.
This is the reasonably discredited concept that the world has some vote on what the US Constitution should say. What the Fourth Amendment says is not subject to the opinion of Germany or Kenya or Mexico or China or ... nor should it be.
Even though some errant Supreme Court justices keep yapping about applying world concepts to US constitutional law, that's not how it is supposed to work. If the founders had wanted us to follow Greek laws, they would have put Greek laws in the US books, not assumed that 21st century justices would look to Greece as an example of how to run a country.
Simply put, if they want to search a citizen's property (digital or physical), then they need to get a warrant for that specific search.
Unfortunately, the Fourth Amendment did not put it so simply. The founders could have worded it that simply. The fact that they included the term "unreasonable" in the prohibition means they meant for there to be a concept of "reasonable" that wasn't prohibited. Nor did they use the simple words "A warrant is required for all searches."
These were simple people, doing a large task. They could have used simple words if they said what they meant. Since they did not, the clear implication is that the concepts are more complex than you make them out to be, and that they understood that.
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The US constitution does not limit the Bill of Rights to US Citizens with the exception of Voting. You do understand that the majority of the Bill of Rights is not what the Government can't do, but what it can do correct? The founders knew better than to try and define every idiotic thing previous corrupt Governments did, and write rules against that giant list. They wrote down what your rights are, and spelled those rights out meticulously.
One of the few things clearly spelled out that the Government ca
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No they can't, the Constitution was already written and the Bill of Rights has already been passed. We are not talking about legal obfuscation that is currently happening, we are talking about the two items mentioned a sentence ago.
The whole test of constitutionality has been happening since our country was founded. Yes, people are ignoring the law of the land, no that does not make it legal. Yes, people are not currently being prosecuted but again that does not make it legal. Those two "yes"es indicate
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Not really. If a warrant is required for any otherwise unreasonable search, then by definition some searches must be unreasonable. What you describe is a situation in which all searches are reasonable, effectively nullifying that right.
And if you limit it only to evidence that does not prove guilt, then either all eviden
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Personally, I'd suggest that it's limited by what is *physical*... if there is a physical component to what is being searched... ie, they must physically enter your home, or must physically detain you from going about your business or must physically confiscate property from you... those would definitely be unreasonable.
The funny thing is, however... that people have come to associate whatever information that might happen to exist about them as something which is somehow their own personal property. Un
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I stand by my claim. the fourth amendment does not protect privacy, and for that matter, neither does the ninth.
You need to look up the definition of 'case law', and then read up on Griswold v. Connecticut (1965)
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You are implying that "Reasonable Search and Seizure" is not defined? If that is the case, you are missing out on a whole lot of history lessons and believing propaganda.
Privacy, you see, is not explicitly mentioned anywhere in the constitution.
Secure in their Persons is exactly "privacy"!
Maybe you forgot about people being spied on by neighbors, then being tattled on for being at work on Sunday which resulted in physical dismemberment and dis-figuration as their punishment? This is not some secret stuff here, this is documented in history.
The only people that believe "privacy"
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Incorrect.
I do not see government invasion of privacy as being unconstitutional... I see it simply as them simply being unbecomingly nosey and rude. That said, unless the constitution were modified to explicitly state that residents are not to have any expectation of privacy from the government, then the government also has absolutely no jurisdiction to dictate that citizens cannot take matters
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Your "opinion" is rather meaningless when there are facts to back that assumption. The wording in the Constitution and Bill of Rights is not vague. There is no need to re-write the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, not a single part of it.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
That statement is very clear. You are to be secure against search or seizure of your person, property, papers, and effects unless the Government has a warrant. The warrant requires a court order with someone giving testimony on why the warrant is required, and the wa
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The only way that privacy affects "security of person" is how it makes people feel... how much knowledge somebody has about you doesn't change how secure you really are.
Just because knowledge happens to be about you or involve you, does not mean that this knowledge is exclusively your personal property to dictate who is allowed to have it and where.
And if you're wondering, I apply the same metric to myself, and my privacy. Almost all of the privacy I have is just an illusion created by whatever level o
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You really should check a dictionary before posting. Secure does not mean the same thing as you imply it does. If you have doubts about what the founders were thinking when they used that statement, you can check the federalist papers where most of the concepts for wording were fleshed out.
As previously stated, your inability to comprehend is your own. The founders were clear, and you are simply wrong. It does not take too much thinking to know their exact meaning, and you can verify with history what t
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No... they were not clear. If they were, we would not be having this discussion in the first place. Clear would mean that the term would privacy have been explicitly mentioned. It is not. *ANYWHERE* in the constitution.
But hey... America can always add a new amendment which includes it. To be perfectly honest, that'd be something I would personally really like to see happen someday.
Until it does, however... the government watching its citizens is not unconstitutional... no matter how much people
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Invasion of privacy technically amounts to what is simply a matter of information or knowledge which already exists and that pertains to one party being transferred to another, where the former party does not place trust in the latter party to utilize such knowledge or information responsibly.
Except, as I said... that information or knowledge already exists. And just because it pertains to a person, does not mean that it should somehow be that person's personal property. Facts can't be copyrighted, aft
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Still can't get in touch with a high school English teacher can you? No, don't answer my rhetorical question.
The language written is done to be specific in as few words as possible. This is why our best laws are not novel length, they are simple and to the point.
The right to be secure in your person. This means that you can't be searched without a warrant. No police officer can legally ask you to empty your pockets, unless you are already found in violation of the law or the officer has a warrant. The
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I think that you''ll find the notion that privacy is just an illusion which is created primarily by however uninteresting our lives might be to the people or organizations around us to be far more liberating than clinging tightly to the belief that organizations such as the government owe you any.
Although I'm sure that what you believe is probably making you happy... and I guess that's what's really important.
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You will find that the notion of "Life", "Liberty", and "Pursuit" of happiness require privacy. This is well documented in the founding of our form of Government. The US Constitution is not exclusive from the Bill of Rights, nor visa versa. The documents are bound so that each depends on the other.
Although I'm sure that what you believe is probably making you happy... and I guess that's what's really important.
Right back at you, and interestingly I have studied the subject at length and know what the Federalist Papers, Constitution, and Bill of Rights all say. I have also studied the blueprint for our Government "Th
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But where is it defined that privacy is ever really a "right"? I doubt you'll get any argument that it's a "nice-to-have", but what makes it really some sort of right?
If you want to argue that simply because it's something that everybody really *should* have, and so on that basis alone it should be labelled as a right, then by that reasoning, say... something like, for example, having a job should also be a right protected by the constitution, and it would be unconstitutional to fire somebody who had no
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"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." As you said, privacy is not listed in the Constitution or it's amendments thus it is a power left in the hands of the States and/or the people. The Federal Government has no authority doing unwarranted searches on everyone in a giant dragnet to capture data under such poorly defined concepts such as "Terrorism".
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This much I would agree with... and to that end, the power over privacy *IS* in the hands of the people.
One only really has a measure of privacy that is a function of the extent of whatever measures one can take to try to preserve it combined with however uninterested other people happen to be in that person. Only one of these does an individual truly have any control over.
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Read the Constitution again.
The question we all need to be asking is not 'where in the Constitution is it prohibited' but rather 'where is it *permitted*'? If it's not explicitly permitted in there somewhere, it's not legal for the federal government.
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Where is it permitted for the federal government to employ people who speak French?
It's not explicitly permitted, after all... therefore it must not be legal for the federal government to employ people who speak French.
Do you see the absurdity behind the notion?
Obviously, permission can be implied and there is no need for the constitution to explicitly spell out every permission that the federal government has.
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If that person is to be employed in a task which is enumerated, then can be hired. If not, they can't (and the guy trying to hire them is probably illegal too). It's not that difficult of a concept.
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Of course... but my point is that nowhere does it say that this includes, for example, people who speak French?
Clearly, you can *INFER* the legality of the matter from other things, and no explicit permission is required... even for the federal government.
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Yes, infer it, that's exactly what I'm saying. The question we should be asking is not 'is this prohibited?', but 'which authorized role is this fulfilling?'.
The likely candidate is of course the clauses authorizing the military and such. But those are defense from *external* threats. Domestic law enforcement is supposed to be up to the states. So how did dragnet domestic surveillance get in there?
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Does the American Constitution prevents spying foreign countries?
Certainly not. However the 4th amendment does put some limits on searching the effects and papers or taking of property from citizens:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
So foreign monitoring at any level is legally fair game from the constitution's perspective. It may run into legal problems at the "world court" and UN level but the USA doesn't really need to care about that.
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Except that it dosn't say "citizens" it says "the people".
The second paragraph of Article I, Section 2 states "No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen." Making it rather clear that "US Citi
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Does the American Constitution prevents spying foreign countries?
I doubt it. I think we probably had foreign spies even while the Constitution was being written. Spying on citizens, however, probably wasn't something they would have approved of.
Then again, what the NSA is doing isn't spying, it's trawling.
Well, the quotes were blockquoted (Score:2)
But the posting software seems to have wrapped the whole thing in blockquotes.
Spam - the perfect cloak (Score:5, Insightful)
So if I want to do terrorist stuff - I should probably hide my communications inside emails about ch3ap V!agr@. Eventually the NSA will have to get a mail washer to help filter out the crap and my criminal activity will go un-noticed.
Re:Spam - the perfect cloak (Score:5, Insightful)
Shouldn't be too hard to write steganography software that hid its messages in the pseudo-random changes to the text for filter evasion. You'd just need a good library of spam message templates of varying length to use as the chaff. For better results, run the same process with random messages that are sent out as part of the same bulk mailing blast to a large list of spam recipients to make it impossible to tell which message is important and which is not. Two terrorists can converse by broadcasting garbage to the world.
Now that I think of it, I wonder if that's the reason I get spam messages with no attachments or links to tell me where to get the product should I have a temporarily absence from reason and want to actually purchase them...
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Now that I think of it, I wonder if that's the reason I get spam messages with no attachments or links to tell me where to get the product should I have a temporarily absence from reason and want to actually purchase them...
Perhaps it's just looking for a reply to indicate they have a valid e-mail address. Even an out of office reply would do the trick.
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Shouldn't be too hard to write steganography software that hid its messages in the pseudo-random changes to the text for filter evasion.
That's the easy part. The harder part is that you have to either setup, infiltrate, or silently replace, a spam distributor. It's just like money laundering; you need a "legitimate" business to front for it. Which makes this a relatively expensive proposition for the limited bandwidth and one-way communication afforded.
Terrorists, unlike governments, don't have a straw stuck to your wallet. They operate on limited budgets, and with limited manpower available. And the limited manpower they do have tends to b
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It should be pretty easy to infiltrate a spam provider. All you need is someone sufficiently expert who's willing to work cheaper than those who don't have a mission. The spam provider wouldn't even care...unless the feds started knocking on his door.
The coded message would be justified as chaff to get the spam through filters. And the organization could even provide additions e-mail addresses to send the stuff to. This might even end up being a profit center, with only the upper management of the spamm
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Hmmmm .... stegaspamography ... hiding your information in plain sight as penis enlargement pill spam.
Great, now when we receive spam we'll end up on terror watch lists because we could know the data is in there. After all, someone is presumed to be able to decode it.
Re:Spam - the perfect cloak (Score:4, Funny)
ch3@p plut0n1um!! Buy CANDU plut0n1um at r0-ck b0ttom pr1c3s!
Re:Spam - the perfect cloak (Score:4, Funny)
Warning, if nuclear explosion lasts longer than four hours, consult your physician.
Re:Spam - the perfect cloak (Score:4, Interesting)
During the second world war, in New Zealand, someone was tasked with reading laundry lists over the radio. Hidden in ththis was coded information for secret agents, embedded observers, and the like. They may have told something like: listen for private Scotty's list at 1605 hours and do this if he has 3 pairs of underpants washed, do this if it is 5 pairs, and also this if his green shirt was starched...
So it would be a near certainty that agencies in a lot of countries use spam to communicate to deep cover agents. Tens of thousands of people might have spam about a particular brand of viag... that has a coded message for selected agents - but those agents who read the spam could not be distinguished from non-agents.
I am sure that the NSA, and other agencies (not just in the USA) have programs to try and sort out the spam to detect this - which is yet another type of arms race. How do nyiou know some is a message & not straight spam???
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Not sure if they really have a "mail washer".
Most of the e-mail traffic, even the not-spam type, is utterly useless for them. Like a discussion with the missus on which movie to go watch. Or that I'll be home late tonight. Where to meet up for the next birthday party (or is that just a code word for suicide attack?).
So they just catch all, then later figure out which accounts may be of interest, and start looking at those. All the rest is just taking up space and probably never looked at, and kept just in c
It just looks like spam (Score:2)
Inside those seemingly banal Nigerian wire transfer scams are steganographically hidden instructions to sleeper cells. It just takes a particularly clever analyst to see the data for the noise.
with that kind of accuracy ... (Score:5, Funny)
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Spam filter? (Score:2)
Think of the spam filter they could build with that amount of spam to train it with...
One thing about using Yahoo, and Google mail, is that their spam filters have scale. Because so many virtually identical emails will be sent to hundreds or thousands of inboxes, they can say that it's either spam or a newsletter. If it looks like spam, or if enough people mark it as spam, than it probably is. Bang.
And the NSA is getting not just the email going to one company, but to all of them. And to those weirdos (like
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Think of the spam filter they could build with that amount of spam to train it with...
What makes you think that this isn't exactly what they are doing... At least in a way.
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That's no good! Terrorists will just disguise their emails as spam by sending it out to millions, and things will go unnoticed by the NSA: Too many dots to connect, which will (as usual) only be discovered by hindsight.
Obviously the intended terrorist agent on the receiving end will have a similar problem... Which means that the NSA can recognise the terrorists, because they're the ones reading everything in their Junk folder!
Oooh - the arms race will never end :-)
Nice to see that spammers are useful for so
They'll soon have additional funding (Score:5, Funny)
Holy data range, Batman! (Score:2)
Between 2 and 117 GB
I guess this is that "are they really collecting just metadata like they're telling us, or the whole message to analyze" thing.
This should make their operatives easier to spot. (Score:5, Funny)
They're the ones with the biggest penises and/or breasts.
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They're the ones with the biggest penises and/or breasts.
*shudders*
Suddenly (Score:2)
A positive? (Score:2)
Now if the NSA actually did something useful and targeted those creating all this spam perhaps they could get a little positive press and goodwill... or maybe not
So it's come to this (Score:4, Interesting)
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The problem isn't storing the data, it's understanding it. And codes can be ANYTHING. There's no plausible way to break a code besides stealing the codebook. Cryptography is something totally different.
P.S.: Yes, I know that in principle you can break a code by getting a large enough pile of messages and observing what reactions that cause to be initiated. But that's just not plausible. And you have to decide what's important, is the the way Viagr? is misspelled, or what words occur next to it? What
Please (Score:2)
Can the NSA waterboard the spammers? If so, they could redeem themsleves.
Easy way to get into a watch list (Score:2)
lots of Nigerian persons of interest (Score:3)
So after sorting out all that spam, the NSA is now busy creating files on people such as miss Wumi Abdul, the only Daughter of late Mr and Mrs George Abdul, whose father was a very wealthy cocoa merchant in Abidjan, the economic capital of Ivory Coast before he was poisoned to death by his business associates on one of their outing to discus on a business deal.
So Miss Wumi Abdul, if that's your real name, wherever you are, the NSA's on to you now.
Maybe They Know Something You Don't (Score:3)
forwards (Score:2)
I suspect a lot of their collection of contacts is centred around people carelessly leaving whole gobs of people in the To or CC lines (instead of BCC) when doing forwards.
They could at least make themselves useful. (Score:2)
The internet white noise generator (Score:3)
This is what I have been saying all along for the last 10 years. Fighting privacy by making yourself more private is not the solution. The current premise of all surveillance programs that are being operated today assumes that it is generated by a human being. The easiest way to counter this assumption we can go back to the Aesop's Fable "The boy who cried wolf".
What did the boy do? The boy cried wolf so many times that in the end when he told the truth, no one believed him. If that boy was alive today and wanted personal privacy, he would be crying wolf all the time. How would that work?
Automate the process and make it easy that everyone else can do it, too. If everyone cried wolf, who would you believe? We change the assumption and accept the fact that surveillance isn't going away. However, by burying the would-be listener with unlimited content and for someone/something to groom through all that data to figure out what is relevant, what is the truth and un-truth, it is a daunting task and it opens a new set of problems. How can you assess the threat if everyone was saying the same thing all the time, became friends with everyone else? Do you really know that person? Or is everyone really friends with Timothy McVeigh because he is such a cool guy until he pull that crazy stunt in OKC in 1995. What if sleeper cells weren't so sleepy but were outright public being a sleeper cell?
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You think? But Define huge. Any fool can collect and store vast amounts of data, but FINDING something in the haystack is the issue.
Having a huge amount of data on spindles is great, but what's the point if you cannot sort through it and find what you want quickly? I'd be more amazed with the ability to *search* a week's worth of data for keywords and patterns and actually return a meaningful result with enough time to actually react to something being planned via E-mail... That's the *real* trick.
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How do they handle it if single letters change in each copy? It seems like that should also be compressible, but would normal deduplication work?