Daily Archives: October 16, 2013

NSA collects millions of e-mail address books globally

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Well, well. Are we surprised by this latest Snowden revelation (published by the Washington Post)?

Is the pope a Protestant?

Rather than targeting individual users, the NSA is gathering contact lists in large numbers that amount to a sizable fraction of the world’s e-mail and instant messaging accounts. Analysis of that data enables the agency to search for hidden connections and to map relationships within a much smaller universe of foreign intelligence targets.

During a single day last year, the NSA’s Special Source Operations branch collected 444,743 e-mail address books from Yahoo, 105,068 from Hotmail, 82,857 from Facebook, 33,697 from Gmail and 22,881 from unspecified other providers, according to an internal NSA PowerPoint presentation. Those figures, described as a typical daily intake in the document, correspond to a rate of more than 250 million a year.

Each day, the presentation said, the NSA collects contacts from an estimated 500,000 buddy lists on live-chat services as well as from the inbox displays of Web-based e-mail accounts.

The collection depends on secret arrangements with foreign telecommunications companies or allied intelligence services in control of facilities that direct traffic along the Internet’s main data routes.

The failed (United) States – contd.

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From this morning’s New York Times.

Faced with Washington’s march toward a default, the world has reacted mostly with disbelief that the reigning superpower could fall into such dysfunction, worry over global suffering to come and frustration that American lawmakers could let the problem reach this point.

A common question crossing continents remains quite simple: The Americans aren’t really that unreasonable and self-destructive, are they?

“It just goes to show that it’s not only Greece that has irresponsible and shortsighted politicians,” said Ioanna Kalavryti, 34, a teacher in Athens. “We’ve been held hostage by our reckless politicians, and the interests they serve, for more than three years now. I guess our American friends are getting a taste of the same medicine.”

For countries that have had their own experiences with financial crises — often followed by American dictates about the need to be more responsible — the brinkmanship in the United States has produced an especially caustic mix of bewilderment, offense and more than a little eagerness to scold.

Many people in countries like Greece, Argentina, Mexico and Russia still have searing memories of defaults and their lasting effects, including lost power. Especially galling for those who endured crises of their own is the fact that the United States remains sheltered: a default could well hurt weaker countries more than the United States, which has the advantage of the dollar’s being used as a global currency.

I suppose you could say it’s just another example of American exceptionalism.