REPUBLICAN controlled House kills bill to limit NSA snooping

[The Annoyed Man]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... in-in-nsa/
House narrowly kills move to rein in NSA; bill unites Obama, Bush officials

Top intelligence officials from the Obama and Bush administrations, along with senior House lawmakers from both parties, succeeded Wednesday in heading off the first legislative challenge to the domestic snooping program exposed by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.

Arrayed against them was an equally odd cross-section of the political spectrum. Tea party libertarian Republicans and Democratic civil rights advocates — generally at odds — were united behind an amendment to a must-pass defense spending bill that would defund the National Security Agency’s mass collection of Americans’ phone records.

The amendment was defeated in a 217-205 vote.

One commenter at the bottom of the article wrote:

I sent a freedom of information request to the NSA to see what they had about me, and I received a denial letter specifying that they didn't have to disclose this information because an Executive action from Mr Obama.

The NSA appears to have carte blanche and are covered by executive privilege. At this point they seem to be beyond the law.

Beyond me being bothered that they are collecting all this information, the tax payers of the United States are paying for the hardware and software systems needed to collect and store this burgeoning dataset. It has to be an enormous amount if information, each and every day.

you guys DO realize what it is going to take to trim this leviathan's claws, don't you? Apparently, there aren't enough votes to do so, so elections won't do it. I am advocating nothing. I'm merely point out the facts.

[bdickens]

Republocrat, Demopublican, what's the difference?

[Dave2]

you guys DO realize what it is going to take to trim this leviathan's claws, don't you? Apparently, there aren't enough votes to do so, so elections won't do it. I am advocating nothing. I'm merely point out the facts.

We haven't had an election since the NSA story broke. Let's see what happens in 2014 before saying elections can't fix it.

[VMI77]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... in-in-nsa/
House narrowly kills move to rein in NSA; bill unites Obama, Bush officials

Top intelligence officials from the Obama and Bush administrations, along with senior House lawmakers from both parties, succeeded Wednesday in heading off the first legislative challenge to the domestic snooping program exposed by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.

Arrayed against them was an equally odd cross-section of the political spectrum. Tea party libertarian Republicans and Democratic civil rights advocates — generally at odds — were united behind an amendment to a must-pass defense spending bill that would defund the National Security Agency’s mass collection of Americans’ phone records.

The amendment was defeated in a 217-205 vote.

One commenter at the bottom of the article wrote:

I sent a freedom of information request to the NSA to see what they had about me, and I received a denial letter specifying that they didn't have to disclose this information because an Executive action from Mr Obama.

The NSA appears to have carte blanche and are covered by executive privilege. At this point they seem to be beyond the law.

Beyond me being bothered that they are collecting all this information, the tax payers of the United States are paying for the hardware and software systems needed to collect and store this burgeoning dataset. It has to be an enormous amount if information, each and every day.

you guys DO realize what it is going to take to trim this leviathan's claws, don't you? Apparently, there aren't enough votes to do so, so elections won't do it. I am advocating nothing. I'm merely point out the facts.

Yep, the handwriting is on the wall.

[brainman]

Republicans are red,
Democrats are blue,
Neither of them gives a ---- about you.

[mewalke]

I would argue that the vote was a HUGE improvement considering it was bi-partisan and was very close. I think before the NSA scandal broke a rogue congressman wouldn't have gotten a dozen votes for it.

And with the lawsuits challenging the NSA, I don't think it will disappear from the public eye too quickly.

Hopefully it stays in peoples' minds long enough to have a successful vote after the next election cycle.

[VoiceofReason]

I would argue that the vote was a HUGE improvement considering it was bi-partisan and was very close. I think before the NSA scandal broke a rogue congressman wouldn't have gotten a dozen votes for it.

And with the lawsuits challenging the NSA, I don't think it will disappear from the public eye too quickly.

Hopefully it stays in peoples' minds long enough to have a successful vote after the next election cycle.

And meanwhile Edward Snowden is hanging out there with no country to go to paying the price the rest of his life.

[rotor]

And those that believe they are only collecting meta-data I have a bridge for sale. What good is the meta-data if they don't also have all of the phone conversation to track it back to. It takes tons of data storeage but I believe they are doing it now. Brad Thor on O'Reilly said the same thing. Sure, they may not listen to everything now but O'bama wants to know who you talked to yesterday and whet you said, a few clicks and they have it.

[OldGrumpy]

In this generation we have lost our privacy and hope of retrieving it. Today we hear of over 100 million credit card numbers hacked

[bdickens]

And meanwhile Edward Snowden is hanging out there with no country to go to paying the price the rest of his life.

Now we've got people seeking asylum from the US. It used to be that they sought asylum in the US.

[sjfcontrol]

This seemed appropriate...

[xb12s]

I'll throw this on the fire:

Feds want passwords and password algorithms for user accounts from major internet companies:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57595 ... passwords/

[gthaustex]

We're from the government and we're here to help.....

[sjfcontrol]

I'll throw this on the fire:

Feds want passwords and password algorithms for user accounts from major internet companies:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57595 ... passwords/

If the internet company knows what it's doing, they will be unable to comply with this request, as they don't know the passwords. All that is stored is a "hash" of the password. When the user logs in, he enters the password, which is passed thru the hash algorithm, and compared with the stored hash value. If it matches, the user is logged on. So the only thing the company stores is the hash, and there is no way (well, outside of the NSA, anyway) to recreate the password from only the hash.

[xb12s]

If the internet company knows what it's doing, they will be unable to comply with this request, as they don't know the passwords. All that is stored is a "hash" of the password. When the user logs in, he enters the password, which is passed thru the hash algorithm, and compared with the stored hash value. If it matches, the user is logged on. So the only thing the company stores is the hash, and there is no way (well, outside of the NSA, anyway) to recreate the password from only the hash.

From the article it looks like the NSA is looking for the "salt", the algorithm, and the hash and they can come up with the password in a matter of minutes.

But modern computers, especially ones equipped with high-performance video cards, can test passwords scrambled with MD5 and other well-known hash algorithms at the rate of billions a second. One system using 25 Radeon-powered GPUs that was demonstrated at a conference last December tested 348 billion hashes per second, meaning it would crack a 14-character Windows XP password in six minutes.

....

The Justice Department has argued in court proceedings before that it has broad legal authority to obtain passwords. In 2011, for instance, federal prosecutors sent a grand jury subpoena demanding the password that would unlock files encrypted with the TrueCrypt utility.

The Florida man who received the subpoena claimed the Fifth Amendment, which protects his right to avoid self-incrimination, allowed him to refuse the prosecutors' demand. In February 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit agreed, saying that because prosecutors could bring a criminal prosecution against him based on the contents of the decrypted files, the man "could not be compelled to decrypt the drives."

In January 2012, a federal district judge in Colorado reached the opposite conclusion, ruling that a criminal defendant could be compelled under the All Writs Act to type in the password that would unlock a Toshiba Satellite laptop.

Both of those cases, however, deal with criminal proceedings when the password holder is the target of an investigation -- and don't address when a hashed password is stored on the servers of a company that's an innocent third party.

"If you can figure out someone's password, you have the ability to reuse the account," which raises significant privacy concerns, said Seth Schoen, a senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.