Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from House Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Speaker 1: Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry with
Speaker 1: her stories she makes up and this is w should know.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, we have a Jerry story, but not for
Speaker 1: this one. For the oven we're recording and spoiler coming up?
Speaker 1: What's the spoiler? Like, he just gave a spoiler about
Speaker 1: a spoiler that Jerry has a personal story relating to
Speaker 1: the second of the two shows we're reporting today. Not
Speaker 1: much of a spoiler, but people love any nugget from Jerry.
Speaker 1: They're like, oh my god, what is it, right, especially
Speaker 1: when she talks Yeah, um Chuck. Yes. So if we
Speaker 1: weren't on any sort of watch list before, after researching
Speaker 1: yesterday and today for this episode, we most decidedly are
Speaker 1: some kind of red list. Yeah, if that's the highest list,
Speaker 1: I would guess we're probably on it. Yeah. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's the highest, but it's a list that
Speaker 1: we're probably on, or at least on the same list
Speaker 1: as Glenn Greenwald, who I think is a righteous dude.
Speaker 1: Did you read his book? Right? Uh huh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Oh thanks for bringing that up. I think that we
Speaker 1: should point out a few pieces of required reading slash
Speaker 1: viewing for this one. If if, if this episode like
Speaker 1: strikes your fancy, read Glenn Greenwald's book No Place to
Speaker 1: Hide awesome, like all sorts of new revelations in there,
Speaker 1: and like his take on the media and how um
Speaker 1: it's just a great read. Have you read it? You should?
Speaker 1: I will. Um. You should also read why Privacy Matters
Speaker 1: even if you have Nothing to Hide, which is an
Speaker 1: article by Daniel J. Solov in the Chronicle for Higher
Speaker 1: Education that is a must read because I think that's
Speaker 1: a lot of people's argument is that, well, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're known to terrorists, and what do you care exactly?
Speaker 1: It does matter? He dim all, it's just that argument. Well,
Speaker 1: it's not an argument, um, And then argument and then
Speaker 1: you should also watch parts one and two I think
Speaker 1: they're both online of the United States of Secrets, which
Speaker 1: is a front Line. I haven't seen that documentary. It's amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so good. And Frontline, which is always good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just like a great nonfiction magazine article. But for
Speaker 1: your eyes come to life. Yeah, thanks man. So, um,
Speaker 1: was there anything in here that you didn't really know
Speaker 1: about the n S A well, yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: imagine we'll cover it in this order, which is a
Speaker 1: little bit about the organization and then all the scary
Speaker 1: things that they do. Um. But yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: read a lot of uh Edward Snowden's revelations, but there
Speaker 1: were so many. Um, I think you have to read
Speaker 1: a book. Yeah. I mean when we were researching this,
Speaker 1: there were things like that I didn't know about. And
Speaker 1: it's such an ongoing, like ever evolving story too, that
Speaker 1: like if if I was reading an article and it
Speaker 1: was from longer than a year ago, you know, it
Speaker 1: was virtually useless because that was Priest Noden revelations. And
Speaker 1: then even the stuff that came out in like June two,
Speaker 1: it's they seem so naive. Now it's just like, oh,
Speaker 1: the n S as admitted to this. Oh, and it
Speaker 1: turns out that they were totally lying, but so now
Speaker 1: they've admitted to this, and then you know, it just
Speaker 1: kept expanding and every time like they were just just
Speaker 1: admitting just the barest minimum. And then there was another
Speaker 1: revelation and it just showed that whatever they admitted to
Speaker 1: could be magnified times a thousand or whatever. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: listen to an NPR thing on just the the policing
Speaker 1: of the police essentially, or the policing of the n
Speaker 1: s A, and how it's virtually impossible because their whole
Speaker 1: deal is two and I guess this is the beginning
Speaker 1: of what they do. It's not only do they try
Speaker 1: and crack codes and intercept messages, but they're also charge
Speaker 1: with safeguarding their own and a lot of the government
Speaker 1: agency's own, uh important information. So the police and organization
Speaker 1: like that. It's just it's an exercise and futility because
Speaker 1: their job is to avoid that. Yeah, they encrypt and decrypt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's tough and there's no checks and balances. It
Speaker 1: seems like it's scary. Yeah, they're supposed to be. But
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that in a minute. So let's talk
Speaker 1: n say, the whole thing came about in h under
Speaker 1: Harry Truman that stood for nothing. Yeah, And I want
Speaker 1: to go ahead and point out now I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: get to opinion aated, but I don't feel that there
Speaker 1: should not be something like the n s A because
Speaker 1: they serve a valuable you know service. Um, But you
Speaker 1: have to do in the right ways, sure, and I
Speaker 1: don't think they are right. And that's the last thing
Speaker 1: I'm going to say opinion life. Everything else will be
Speaker 1: just fact. I just don't want this to come across
Speaker 1: as like poopooing, like they should shut them down forever. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you just overtly said you don't feel that way.
Speaker 1: Harry Truman, Harry S. Truman and the st for nothing,
Speaker 1: that's right. Um, he created the n s A basically two, um,
Speaker 1: try to get electronic information eavesdropping on other countries and
Speaker 1: do some encryption. So basically from the beginning, the NSA
Speaker 1: has had the same dual mission that it has today. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Officially that's called signets, which, um, everyone loves the acronyms
Speaker 1: and these intelligence agencies and military signal intelligence. That's the
Speaker 1: eaves dropping part. Yeah. And then information assurance, which is
Speaker 1: you know, trying to assure them all that their information
Speaker 1: is safe, so safeguarding and by encrypting it. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: they've been doing that since the beginning. The thing is is,
Speaker 1: since even though they've been around since nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 1: they haven't been publicly acknowledged as existing until the mid seventies.
Speaker 1: Thanks to the Church Committee hearings which sussed out all
Speaker 1: sorts of intelligence community to abuses like the CIA experimenting
Speaker 1: on unsuspecting Americans with LSD and what the n s
Speaker 1: A was up tune. Until that point, it was just
Speaker 1: outright denied that the n s A even existed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, a lot of people might think the CIA
Speaker 1: is the same thing, But n s A is generally
Speaker 1: just intelligence, and c i A is acting on that
Speaker 1: intelligence exactly out in the field. And I say, their
Speaker 1: hold up in some room somewhere, and they've been keeping
Speaker 1: in locks locks step over the years, well especially since
Speaker 1: two thousand one. I shouldn't say over the years, but
Speaker 1: really since two thousand one, they've been kind of symbiotically
Speaker 1: growing with the Internet, um and as a result they
Speaker 1: become incredibly more prominent as far as the seventeen agencies
Speaker 1: tasked with gathering and collecting and analyzing intelligence for the
Speaker 1: executive branch go um, maybe even more so than the
Speaker 1: CIA these days, because their job, what they do, fits
Speaker 1: so nicely into the expansion of the Internet. Like basically
Speaker 1: they can do their job just by tapping into the Internet.
Speaker 1: And they've spent the last decade or so figuring out
Speaker 1: how to do that more efficiently. They love the Internet
Speaker 1: and to gather as much stuff as possible. It's that's right.
Speaker 1: It's basically like they used to have to and I'm
Speaker 1: not saying it's not hard work, but now basically they said, well,
Speaker 1: every all the information we need for the most part
Speaker 1: is now gathered in one big corral exactly called online. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and everybody just just tell your friend whatever you want.
Speaker 1: It's secret. Uh, you know, share what you like on Facebook.
Speaker 1: We can't put it together with all the other data
Speaker 1: and can create a complete profile on you and know
Speaker 1: you better than your mother. That's why number stations, buddy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's gonna go back to the past. I wonder I
Speaker 1: could see it. I mean, I'm surely bad people realize
Speaker 1: that the internet is not a safe way to do
Speaker 1: business anymore. Yeah, but there's such a reliance on that
Speaker 1: kind of communication that it's on. I mean, have we
Speaker 1: passed the point in our return where it's like it's
Speaker 1: just people just don't talk on the phone about stuff
Speaker 1: like that anymore. People don't talk on the phone anymore, right,
Speaker 1: or they don't talk over email anymore. Yeah, you know, alright,
Speaker 1: So the n s a works alongside the something called
Speaker 1: the c SS, the Central Security Service, and they are
Speaker 1: basically the military side that does the same thing that
Speaker 1: the n s A does. Right, So, from what I understand,
Speaker 1: as of two thousand thirteen, there was thirty thousand military
Speaker 1: personnel as part of the n s A, So maybe
Speaker 1: that's what makes up the c s S, and then
Speaker 1: sixty thousand and seventy thousand contractors working for the n
Speaker 1: s A. So basically there's like ninety hundred thousand people
Speaker 1: who work for the n s A. Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: contractor's number maybe going down because, Um, one of the
Speaker 1: fears that the government now has because Edward Snowden was
Speaker 1: a contractor, is that we've got way too many civilian
Speaker 1: contractors working uh for us. Maybe. So the thing is
Speaker 1: is Snowdon was portrayed as a low level, a Booze
Speaker 1: Allen contractor. And did you watch that interview with him
Speaker 1: on NBC I think a couple of months ago. It
Speaker 1: was the only American interview he's given to this point.
Speaker 1: Didn't he basically said, actually didn't even basically said. He said,
Speaker 1: I'm a spy. I'm a highly trained spy. This whole
Speaker 1: thing where they're saying like I was a low level contractor.
Speaker 1: He's like, that's not true. He said, I've been working
Speaker 1: undercover in a foreign country for the c I A.
Speaker 1: I've worked undercover for in a foreign country for the
Speaker 1: N s A. So the whole idea that just some
Speaker 1: low level contractor had access to all this stuff is
Speaker 1: not correct. He was like a pretty high level spy. Yes,
Speaker 1: supposedly they're not interested in him anymore, although I don't
Speaker 1: buy it. I don't buy that. They came out like
Speaker 1: literally two days ago and said, you know what, as
Speaker 1: time goes on here, his information is less and less relevant.
Speaker 1: That's now, that's true, And they said, so we honestly,
Speaker 1: he's because he's trying to cut it the to get
Speaker 1: back to the US and now or at least it
Speaker 1: may change. But now they're saying, I don't really care
Speaker 1: a right, stay over there in Russia, like you're you're,
Speaker 1: you're the stuff you have as old news by now, right,
Speaker 1: And I mean through such a wrench in the works
Speaker 1: that they may have to just go back and start
Speaker 1: from scratch. I'm sure they'd just like to get their
Speaker 1: hands on them, though, And even if they're not having
Speaker 1: to start from scratch. It seems to be that the
Speaker 1: capabilities of the n s A are evolving so quick that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the snapshot that he provided from what April two thirteen
Speaker 1: is you know, now it's more than a year old.
Speaker 1: Who knows how much it's changed. So you're right, like
Speaker 1: this is getting less and less relevant as it goes on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's scary is that you just referred to close to
Speaker 1: two million documents as a snapshot, and that's true, that
Speaker 1: is just a small portion. Yeah, what's going on if
Speaker 1: you're watching the NSA though, UM and a lot of
Speaker 1: people are now more than ever. Uh, they appear to
Speaker 1: be continuing to expand and expand expand. Like they've got
Speaker 1: this data center in UM Salt Lake City that we
Speaker 1: just opened, and it, Chuckers is capable of storing data
Speaker 1: in the range of zetta bytes z e t t
Speaker 1: a bytes. How many terabytes is that? I don't know
Speaker 1: how many terabytes it is, but it's one six tillion bytes.
Speaker 1: Zeros consider this on the low end estimate, So they
Speaker 1: can store at least one sex tillion bytes of data
Speaker 1: in this place in Salt Lake City. There are on
Speaker 1: the low end, ten sex tillion stars in the entire
Speaker 1: visible universe. That's a lot of data that they just
Speaker 1: build a house for out in Salt Lake City. So
Speaker 1: they don't appear to be slow in the role at all. No,
Speaker 1: and they in fact hired UM in two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve about thirty new employees UM. And this
Speaker 1: article very just sweetly points out if you want to
Speaker 1: go work for the n s A, you don't even
Speaker 1: have to be a computer made year. You can major
Speaker 1: in music and history and still engage in cryptanalysis. Right.
Speaker 1: So that's good to know, right, because I mean, if
Speaker 1: you think about it, they sometimes they use more than
Speaker 1: just key codes. Like if somebody wanted decrypt your number
Speaker 1: station key, they would have to be familiar with what
Speaker 1: was it to Kill a mocking Bird? That was that
Speaker 1: the book we use. Yeah, yeah, so you would want
Speaker 1: to hire like a lip major or something like that
Speaker 1: to to crack too, crypt analyze something like that. So
Speaker 1: it makes sense. Yeah. Plus they train them that you're
Speaker 1: not expected to come into the n s A as
Speaker 1: a uh securities encryption expert. They will send you to
Speaker 1: school and class right to teach you how to do
Speaker 1: this stuff. That's right, And then you have to meet
Speaker 1: certain requirements. They also have internships for students. That's right,
Speaker 1: and that crazy. Can you imagine just interning at the
Speaker 1: n s A for the summer, Yeah, and not being
Speaker 1: killed afterwards. Um. Some of the victories over the years
Speaker 1: with the n s A, like the Cuban Missile crisis,
Speaker 1: we should note because of sigint again signals intelligence. Um,
Speaker 1: we realized that the Russians were not just installing uh well,
Speaker 1: we discovered they were installing nuclear warheads and they just
Speaker 1: weren't vacationing in Cuba. And we also found out from
Speaker 1: sigints from the n s A is that the Russians
Speaker 1: had taken over the controls of the Cuban missile system.
Speaker 1: So Russia installed nuclear warheads and had the key had
Speaker 1: Yeah in Cuba pointed right here at the US. But
Speaker 1: during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the n s A also
Speaker 1: diffused the whole thing by eavesdropping and finding some sort
Speaker 1: of transmission among I think the Russian Navy that showed
Speaker 1: that Russia was not going to challenge this quarantine the
Speaker 1: US had put around Cuba, which was kind of like
Speaker 1: the new line in the sand that Kennedy had drawn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: perhaps avoided nuclear war thanks to them to tell agents.
Speaker 1: So they have delivered the goods before. They sure have.
Speaker 1: They were under fired after nine eleven for not delivering
Speaker 1: the goods Um, and I remember Um famously said, you know,
Speaker 1: we had some communications that there was something big going down.
Speaker 1: They had like thirty of them, and to specifically mentioned
Speaker 1: September eleven, right, but we didn't know what it was
Speaker 1: or where it was. And Um, it's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to throw a dragnet over the country and they didn't
Speaker 1: even know it was going to be in the country supposedly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a guy in the UM United States of Secrets
Speaker 1: who was one of the n s A analysts who
Speaker 1: like missed nine eleven, like one of the guys, and
Speaker 1: he is a wreck. Oh I'm sure he's just weeping,
Speaker 1: like sobbing the whole interview. It's really tough to watch
Speaker 1: because guys is gonna go to his grave like every
Speaker 1: day just hating himself for it's really Sam that is sad. Um.
Speaker 1: They since nine eleven, a lot of changes have taken place.
Speaker 1: Obviously we'll get to the online aspects, but it's just
Speaker 1: a different deal these days. The people that you're looking
Speaker 1: for able to hide and plain sight and they're operating. Um.
Speaker 1: Best case scenario, they're operating in a cell of you know,
Speaker 1: a dozen people that you might be able to track.
Speaker 1: Worst case scenario, you've got a single person just acting
Speaker 1: on their own, which is nearly impossible to uh to
Speaker 1: kind of root that person out. You have to wait
Speaker 1: and catch them in the act, which was the case
Speaker 1: in Times Square with what was his name, uh Fazl Shazad.
Speaker 1: I think that sounds Times Square bomber or would be bomber.
Speaker 1: He was a lone wolf. The thing is a lot
Speaker 1: of people criticize the n SAY for even having these
Speaker 1: cases associated with their names because these cases were made
Speaker 1: from regular old, um warranted police work, real police Yeah.
Speaker 1: So UM, there's a lot of criticism that the n
Speaker 1: s A really hasn't delivered the goods for many many years,
Speaker 1: and that um one of the problems is that it's
Speaker 1: drowning in data, like it missed the Boston bombers. Um,
Speaker 1: it missed the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, like there
Speaker 1: was these were even overseas targets. People like planning and plotting, well,
Speaker 1: when you're tracking every cell phone call made in the
Speaker 1: United States, you're bound to be a wash and data.
Speaker 1: And that's that's probably the most salient criticism. Like even
Speaker 1: Glenn Greenwald agrees with you, like that, we don't need
Speaker 1: to do away with the n s A. But the
Speaker 1: problem is if you are doing what General Keith Alexander
Speaker 1: who runs the show there wants, which is collect everything, um,
Speaker 1: then you're a washing data. It's big data with the
Speaker 1: capital being the capital D where you have so much
Speaker 1: data you can't make sense of anything, you can't possibly
Speaker 1: wade through it. And um when when you're in that situation,
Speaker 1: you can easily have something that you need and just
Speaker 1: pass right by. Yeah. So what Greenwalt says is we
Speaker 1: should be targeting people but more effectively, Like, yes, use
Speaker 1: the n s A capabilities, they're awesome, but put them
Speaker 1: to good use. Don't. Don't just cast this wide net
Speaker 1: across the entire world that doesn't do anything. Yeah. One
Speaker 1: of the big controversies that we're going to get into
Speaker 1: right after these messages has to do with UH warrants
Speaker 1: and whether or not you should have to have a
Speaker 1: warrant to UH collect information on someone. So we'll get
Speaker 1: to that right after this. So Chuck, We've been talking
Speaker 1: about the n s A, and um, did we even
Speaker 1: say what it stood for? Surely we did, didn't we?
Speaker 1: I don't think we did. Oh, it's the National Security
Speaker 1: Agency and for many years it had a the nickname
Speaker 1: no such agency because they were just so secretive. Yes, um.
Speaker 1: And under under a law that was past as the
Speaker 1: as part of the Church Committee hearings, UM, this thing
Speaker 1: called the FISI Court was set up. And the FISI
Speaker 1: Court was came out of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act FISA,
Speaker 1: and it basically said the n s A, to do
Speaker 1: its job, can go forth and eaves drop on everybody
Speaker 1: outside of the U S. Please do that's that's your job.
Speaker 1: But we understand that some of those people who you
Speaker 1: need to keep an eye on actually come into the
Speaker 1: US while we have a line drawn there. You guys
Speaker 1: need to get a warrant. And since night, as far
Speaker 1: as anybody knew, until about two thousand, two thousand two, Uh,
Speaker 1: that's how the NSA operated. If you needed if you
Speaker 1: wanted to uh listen in on someone's phone call inside
Speaker 1: the US, you had to go to this court and
Speaker 1: get a warrant. Eleven members and out of thirty four
Speaker 1: thousand warrant applications between nineteen seventy all but eleven we're
Speaker 1: path through. Yeah, so there was a fis A court,
Speaker 1: but they approved ninety nine of warrants, right, So it
Speaker 1: wasn't hard you wanted to. If you wanted to target somebody,
Speaker 1: all you have to do is ask. There was a
Speaker 1: rubber stamp just hovering right over the desk. You know.
Speaker 1: I wonder what the deal was with those eleven They
Speaker 1: just must have been agreedious. Um the paper boy, right,
Speaker 1: the thing who like over charges. Yeah, like I want
Speaker 1: to spy my paper boy in my milkman. Um. The
Speaker 1: thing is is in two thousand two, a lot changed
Speaker 1: as a result of nine eleven. It's part of the
Speaker 1: USA Patriot Act and the name of that act. Um.
Speaker 1: As part of the Patriot Act, the n s A
Speaker 1: was given broader abilities to eavesdrop within the US. That's right.
Speaker 1: So basically what happened was that, George Bush said, the
Speaker 1: n s A can monitor international emails and phone calls
Speaker 1: if they're generated within the US, as long as they're
Speaker 1: going overseas and they're part of a targeted investigation warrant.
Speaker 1: Without a warrant that's right. That's the key, UM, and
Speaker 1: that happened in two thous two. The press actually knew
Speaker 1: about this. The New York Times sat on it during
Speaker 1: an election. Bushes re election and was roundly criticized once
Speaker 1: they finally released it in two thousand five after he
Speaker 1: was re elected. Um. But the point is that as
Speaker 1: part of the Patriot Act and that this Bush Executive
Speaker 1: Order UM, the n s A was allowed to start
Speaker 1: paying attention to business records that the FEDS could get
Speaker 1: from American companies, and they could eavesdrop on domestic initiated calls. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the business records. That was an expansion there. You
Speaker 1: could always subpoena or get a warrant for business records,
Speaker 1: but under the terms UM it expanded to was that
Speaker 1: quote any tangible thing related to an investigation to obtain
Speaker 1: foreign intelligence or protect against terrorism. So any tangible thing.
Speaker 1: It's about as broad as it gets. You can basically
Speaker 1: say anything, and uh, if it's not, hey, I want
Speaker 1: to spy on my paper boy, then you can get
Speaker 1: that warrant. But if you say I want to spy
Speaker 1: on my paper boy and his name is Akbar, the
Speaker 1: FISI Corpus probably be like Okay, here's two take two warrants. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got some stuff on that we'll get too later. Um. So,
Speaker 1: as if that weren't expansive enough, I mean, having to
Speaker 1: go get a warrant and having a nine seven percent
Speaker 1: approval right then not having to get a warrant for
Speaker 1: a lot more stuff. If that weren't enough. In two
Speaker 1: thou eight, Barack Obama expanded it even further. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: should say, reduced the obstacles between the n s A
Speaker 1: and the information that seeks even further. He said that
Speaker 1: he I think he signed an executive order that's that, Um,
Speaker 1: you can monitor the communications between a U S National
Speaker 1: and a foreign national if the foreign nationals a target
Speaker 1: of an investigation. Before it was like, oh, there's an
Speaker 1: American involved n SSAS out, maybe we'll tip off the
Speaker 1: CIA or the FBI or something like that. But the
Speaker 1: n s A is out. That was changed in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight, yeah, and enacted for another five years through
Speaker 1: uh this starting in December. Right. Yeah. It also did
Speaker 1: something really really huge. The big one for the two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight flies, the expansion, um, is that it
Speaker 1: took away the need to get a warrant for bulk
Speaker 1: communications collection as long as it was metadata, which meant
Speaker 1: now that the n s A could go grab as
Speaker 1: much data as it wanted, phone call records, email records,
Speaker 1: all that stuff with the help of the phone companies.
Speaker 1: As long as it didn't content the text of the
Speaker 1: email or it wasn't a voice recording of the phone call,
Speaker 1: they didn't need to get a warrant for everybody's stuff. Now,
Speaker 1: they still were supposed to when they found out that
Speaker 1: and they had an American's information, they were supposed to
Speaker 1: destroy it unless it was related to a cyber crime,
Speaker 1: any crime at all, conceivably was related to some sort
Speaker 1: of security issue or there's some other reason, then they
Speaker 1: could keep it for five years, and then that could
Speaker 1: be extended for another five years. And again this is
Speaker 1: really broad stuff. So if they caught an American stuff,
Speaker 1: they can conceivably hang onto it for five years, no problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the problem here is twofold is not having a warrant
Speaker 1: is shady enough, but to have the warrants not be
Speaker 1: what they're supposed to be, which is an effective checks
Speaker 1: and balances system. It sounds like the warrant system was
Speaker 1: a joke anyway. So even even if they said, well,
Speaker 1: we gotta have warrants again, it's acted that joke of
Speaker 1: a system exactly. So either way, it's kind of like,
Speaker 1: you know, a joke it is in the process, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the joke being that there are any real checks and balances. Yes.
Speaker 1: So what what came out over time over these Snowden
Speaker 1: revelations because all this was secret, Um that that the
Speaker 1: oversight that there was on the n s A after
Speaker 1: two thousand and one was just peeled back more and
Speaker 1: more and more, and there was barely any oversight to
Speaker 1: begin with. And that at the same time they were
Speaker 1: expanding their capabilities to And the third prong in this
Speaker 1: trident of cloak and dagger ishness is um that they
Speaker 1: also had the complicity of telecommunications and internet companies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: with Operation Prism, which was another one of Snowdon's revelation.
Speaker 1: They collect Internet information anything that you do on the Internet,
Speaker 1: your search history, your file transfers, your emails, what you
Speaker 1: do on Facebook. And like you said, it is with
Speaker 1: the assistance of Apple and Facebook and Google and Yahoo. Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't think they've admitted that though, right they have
Speaker 1: said basically the company if the if the n s
Speaker 1: A comes with a warrant A seven or two I
Speaker 1: think is what it's called from a FISA court. They
Speaker 1: hand it over. They don't like it, but they'll hand
Speaker 1: it over. But yes, I don't think they ever have
Speaker 1: publicly admitted and they've denied that they have allowed the
Speaker 1: n s A free access into their servers. But what
Speaker 1: the snowdon files have come out and said is there's
Speaker 1: here's this process where the n s A, somebody, some
Speaker 1: contractors somewhere, types into a computer that he wants this
Speaker 1: guy's everything through PRISM, and then that request is routed
Speaker 1: through the FBI. The FBI sends it out to these
Speaker 1: companies who send back everything they've got on that person.
Speaker 1: And then the FBI turns around and hands it back
Speaker 1: to the n s A. And let's take between an
Speaker 1: hour and a day, depending on who you ask, And
Speaker 1: then you have everything on that person. You have photos,
Speaker 1: you have their Snatchat stuff, you have their UM, dropbox stuff, Facebook, Twitter, everything,
Speaker 1: you have all other stuff, their emails, their phone calls,
Speaker 1: everything through PRISM. So how much the companies were complicit
Speaker 1: or not is still at issue. Yeah, one of the
Speaker 1: things snowden Um said to the Garden, I think The
Speaker 1: Guardian was where he first dumped all this information. Right
Speaker 1: the Guardian, in the Washington Post and the Post. Um
Speaker 1: he said that I, sitting at my desk, could wire
Speaker 1: tap anyone, uh, from you or your accountant to a
Speaker 1: federal judge or even the president if I had their
Speaker 1: personal email. Mike Rogers, Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee,
Speaker 1: said that that's a lie and it is impossible for
Speaker 1: him to do that. Um. But I guess we should
Speaker 1: talk about the program x key score, which UM basically
Speaker 1: makes it look like that's exactly what could happen like
Speaker 1: through x key score. UM, it's supposedly the n s
Speaker 1: as widest reaching system for collecting electronic data. You can
Speaker 1: watch what people are doing in real time on their
Speaker 1: Facebook page, on their Gmail account. Um. All that jazz.
Speaker 1: And apparently, remember when we talked about in the is
Speaker 1: My Is your Employer Spying on You? Episode? That you
Speaker 1: could watch somebody while they were typing, even though they
Speaker 1: hadn't saved the documentary something, and then they'd erase it
Speaker 1: and then re type it a different way. This is
Speaker 1: the impression I have is that that's what x key
Speaker 1: score does. Again, um, without attaining a warrant or even
Speaker 1: having to get your supervisor on board. Yeah, you can,
Speaker 1: just you know, if you have the access to this program,
Speaker 1: you can. Oh yeah, if you're the name the n
Speaker 1: s A contractor, right, Um. And they're supposed to be
Speaker 1: some sort of like approval process, but apparently that's not
Speaker 1: really real either. Um. And then check. There's one other
Speaker 1: that's kind of related to this. UM dropout JEEP is
Speaker 1: a program where some somehow in iPhones there is a
Speaker 1: software implant that's I don't the impression I have is
Speaker 1: that it's in all iPhones and from anywhere in the world.
Speaker 1: The n s A can turn your camera on, turn
Speaker 1: your microphone on, and turn your iPhone this thing that
Speaker 1: you interact with so intimately, um into a mole and
Speaker 1: it eavesdrops on you. That's pretty scary. Stuff like that
Speaker 1: makes you want not not want to like be yourself
Speaker 1: in your own home if your phone is sitting there
Speaker 1: like that's that's paranoia, and but it's well founded paranoia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, Well we'll get right after this mention is
Speaker 1: we're gonna get a little bit into them. The non
Speaker 1: argument that if you have nothing to hide, it's the
Speaker 1: big deal. Okay, so the non argument, if you have
Speaker 1: nothing to hide, then who cares? Um. One of the
Speaker 1: problems is this, Uh, it depends what the n s
Speaker 1: A considers. Well, first of all, they're just mining all
Speaker 1: this uh like bulk material from everybody. Yeah. Can I
Speaker 1: throw a couple of numbers out? In one month? In
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen, the n s A gathered in one
Speaker 1: month a hundred and twenty four billion phone calls, the
Speaker 1: whole call, not just metadata, which by the way, supposedly
Speaker 1: gives a clearer picture of you and your behavior than
Speaker 1: a phone call necessarily would. Um. And if three billion
Speaker 1: of those phone calls were from the United States, that's
Speaker 1: a lot. And that's a single month, three billion phone calls. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then let me give you one more number. There's
Speaker 1: a from the Snowdon files. Um. Some journalists analyzed them,
Speaker 1: and they analyze a hundred and sixty thousand emails and
Speaker 1: I AM chats that the n s A collected were
Speaker 1: from average Americans and they contained identifying, um details, intimate
Speaker 1: details like just the stuff like you would share to
Speaker 1: like your closest confidant. Um. The n s A had
Speaker 1: and of it was just average Americans. Well, uh, remember
Speaker 1: when we talked about Tour in our Deep Web episode,
Speaker 1: UM it's an Internet anonymizer UM that allows you to
Speaker 1: search the Internet supposedly anonymous. The n s A revealed
Speaker 1: recently that they consider everybody that uses tour a potential extremist.
Speaker 1: In that two thousand and eight fives An Amendment Act,
Speaker 1: one of the one of the exceptions for getting rid
Speaker 1: of an Americans off is if it's encrypted. So if
Speaker 1: you are using encryption stuff, that they can target it
Speaker 1: and try their best to decrypt it just because it's encrypted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everybody that. In fact, if if you even visit tours website,
Speaker 1: you're going to be put on the n s a's
Speaker 1: red list supposedly just by visiting the site. And as
Speaker 1: we pointed out in the Deep Web episode, not everyone
Speaker 1: that uses tours on the deep Web is an extremist.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people that just like their privacy. Journalists, attorneys,
Speaker 1: civil rights activists, regular schmos that don't want to be
Speaker 1: spied on are now considered potential extremists because they don't
Speaker 1: want to be spied on under this two thou eight
Speaker 1: executive order by Obama. That's right, who else might be
Speaker 1: looked at how about potential um someone you don't like
Speaker 1: in politics. It was just released. Um. I think Greenwall
Speaker 1: was who exposed this too, that five Americans were surveiled
Speaker 1: under or this program without a warrant. One was a
Speaker 1: Republican Party operative, one was a civil rights activists. A
Speaker 1: few of them were professors. They were all Muslim. That's
Speaker 1: no accident. Uh, just regular folks though nothing not extremists,
Speaker 1: not terrorists. The Republican Party operative was a served in
Speaker 1: the Navy. He's he's like a good dude and was
Speaker 1: being spied on and um. In two thousand eleven, wire
Speaker 1: dot Com revealed FBI training documents that said view all
Speaker 1: Muslims as potential radicals and and say internal training document
Speaker 1: UM as a placeholder for surveillance targets, uses the term
Speaker 1: Mohammed raghead. And that's basically, if you're a Muslim and
Speaker 1: you live in the United States or abroad, then you
Speaker 1: are looked at as the enemy as far as the
Speaker 1: NSA is concerned, or a potential enemy. Well, that was
Speaker 1: the thing when all of this stuff started to come out,
Speaker 1: Obama's administration was saying, like, we don't spy on Americans
Speaker 1: were not like getting all of this inform nation on Americans.
Speaker 1: It's not Americans, it's everybody else. And the internet companies
Speaker 1: were like, um, like a good portion of our customer
Speaker 1: base or overseas, and you're sitting here saying like, we
Speaker 1: still target them, yeah, because their foreigners. It's it's so
Speaker 1: yeah either way, it doesn't really dovetail with your point,
Speaker 1: but you just chog my memory. What about spying on
Speaker 1: your wife or your girlfriend. Surely no one would ever
Speaker 1: use this capability to do something like that, right, it happens,
Speaker 1: and they they have data that said they used a
Speaker 1: warrantless surveillance on wives girlfriends would be girlfriends, uh and
Speaker 1: abuse that spawned the intelligence communities term love ant instead
Speaker 1: of sig NT. So some guy has the program open
Speaker 1: xki stroke and he's like, Hey, I wonder if my
Speaker 1: girlfriend's cheating on me or not even that, I just
Speaker 1: want to spy on this person, this girl I want
Speaker 1: to go out with. That's what And I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that's happening all over the place, but if it happens
Speaker 1: at all, it's an abusive power. UM. The the guy
Speaker 1: Daniel so love and is um why Privacy Matters? Article?
Speaker 1: He makes the point that even if you do have
Speaker 1: nothing to hide or whatever, if everybody has a dossier,
Speaker 1: if everybody has some sort of file, and if you
Speaker 1: ever do decide to say speak out against tyranny or
Speaker 1: or um the the E p A or whatever, they
Speaker 1: can say, Hey, we've got this proublemaker over here, what
Speaker 1: file do you have on them? And all of this stuff,
Speaker 1: whether it's in context or not, can all be pieced
Speaker 1: together to look however they want it to look. And
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you suddenly lose your conviction, Like
Speaker 1: that's at the n s A is at the least
Speaker 1: in danger of having so much information that it can't
Speaker 1: possibly keep track of everything. At worst, it's setting up
Speaker 1: the foundation for a tyrannical government that, by its very
Speaker 1: definition in nature and the capability that it has, can't
Speaker 1: be anything but tyrannical. Even if it tried not to
Speaker 1: be tyrannical, it couldn't with this capability. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: they literally like will install something called fiber opic optic
Speaker 1: splitters at communications hubs. Has to be under the compliance
Speaker 1: of of the of these companies. Like they're breaking in
Speaker 1: there and doing it. There's no way. This is a
Speaker 1: revelation that came up before Snowdon. There was a guy
Speaker 1: by the last name of Klein who was an a
Speaker 1: T and T engineer in San Francisco, and he found this.
Speaker 1: This is in the United States of secrets. He found
Speaker 1: this cable going up from one of the I guess
Speaker 1: main routers of Core's that going yeah, And he went
Speaker 1: and looked on the schematics and he's like, wait, there's
Speaker 1: not supposed to be a room above there, but they're
Speaker 1: a cable going to a room that's not on the
Speaker 1: blueprints for this building. So we started looking. What he
Speaker 1: found was the splitter that you were talking about, where
Speaker 1: it takes the If the communication line is a beam
Speaker 1: of light on a fiber optic cable, it uses a
Speaker 1: mirror to make a copy of it and split it
Speaker 1: in two, and one goes to the intended recipient, the
Speaker 1: other goes to the n s A And that could
Speaker 1: be your information or your life, or your phone, call,
Speaker 1: your email, whatever. How about this. They will intercept hardware
Speaker 1: like a router UH servers and and retrofit them to
Speaker 1: serve their purposes, factory seal it and send it right
Speaker 1: back to be sold. YEA. So it is pre pre
Speaker 1: bugged for your convenience, right, they reroute it from the
Speaker 1: distribution chain without the person who ordered it from like
Speaker 1: Hewlett Packard or whoever, knowing that it was intercepted by
Speaker 1: the n s A and bugged. Well. And because of
Speaker 1: all of this stuff, there's some people that call Edward
Speaker 1: Snowden a hero. Some people call them um Benedict Arnold
Speaker 1: and a big fat trader that should never be allowed
Speaker 1: back in the country. Um. If he hadn't come out
Speaker 1: and said the stuff, it would probably all still be
Speaker 1: going on in secret, don't you imagine for sure? I
Speaker 1: don't think they would have self reported. No, no, they
Speaker 1: definitely would not have. I think we're in total agreement
Speaker 1: on that. So you know, it's up to listeners out
Speaker 1: there to decide how you feel about what this guy did. Chuck. Um.
Speaker 1: There's some other stuff that the n s A did,
Speaker 1: apparently under the auspices of the FISA Court one of
Speaker 1: the UM. So it's it's tasked with eavesdropping on like
Speaker 1: enemies of the state. It's also cracker jack at getting
Speaker 1: economic and diplomatic information to people like the Department of Energy,
Speaker 1: the Department of Agriculture, the ambassadors to the U n UM,
Speaker 1: people who deal with the EU. All of these people
Speaker 1: are bugged by the n s A. And we've just
Speaker 1: recently found out, and they've just recently found out and
Speaker 1: are not very happy about it, and order to give
Speaker 1: the US information superiority in negotiations. Yeah, that's what I
Speaker 1: was talking about earlier, Like basically using it for political
Speaker 1: gain has nothing to do with spying on terrorists exactly.
Speaker 1: It's information superiority. That's the stated aim of the n
Speaker 1: s A. There's another one too that really like before
Speaker 1: the Internet companies were feeling um frustrated that they weren't
Speaker 1: allowed to talk about the seven O two warrant requests,
Speaker 1: that section seven O two that comes from and and
Speaker 1: because in addition to having to give the government this information,
Speaker 1: you also can't talk about it at all. There's a
Speaker 1: gag order associated with it. So the Internet companies couldn't
Speaker 1: say anything in their defense about this, but they were
Speaker 1: still they were frustrated. But then they felt um like
Speaker 1: a thief had gotten to broken into their houses because
Speaker 1: they found out about this program called Muscular, and Muscular
Speaker 1: went around the Internet companies and went directly to the
Speaker 1: fiber optic line between Google servers and Yahoo servers and
Speaker 1: just tapped in and sucked it right out of there
Speaker 1: and apparently decrypted it fairly easily. Um, so they're getting
Speaker 1: information with the complicity of the internet companies and behind
Speaker 1: the Internet company's backs. That was a huge surprise. So
Speaker 1: there's basically like, we have no allegiance whatsoever except to
Speaker 1: our information collections. Yeah, it seems like there are no
Speaker 1: rules and safeguards and checks and balances at all. I'm
Speaker 1: interested to see what happens in the coming years. I
Speaker 1: would my guess is that Snowdon's revelations will become obsolete
Speaker 1: and unimportant and that things will kind of go back
Speaker 1: to normal. I hope they never become unimportant. I hope
Speaker 1: what you're saying isn't right. I know that initially feared
Speaker 1: to him, as he said, the worst thing that could
Speaker 1: happen is that if he did this, he took all
Speaker 1: these risks and and exposed all this and nobody cared.
Speaker 1: That clearly didn't happen. But you know, there's this second
Speaker 1: potential problem, which is that eventually people just become fatigued
Speaker 1: from all of this exposure to all all this information
Speaker 1: that you're just like Okay, I get it. I'm my
Speaker 1: life is not my own. I can't take worrying about
Speaker 1: this anymore. So I'm just gonna detach and not care
Speaker 1: that I hope doesn't happen. I think the vast majority
Speaker 1: of people don't care. That's crazy to me. Like again, yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree with you. You You can feel about Stone however
Speaker 1: you feel. But the concept of being snooped on regardless
Speaker 1: of your political affiliation or anything like that, it's not
Speaker 1: supposed to be that way here. That transcends like anything,
Speaker 1: like how do you not care? At least? That's crazy
Speaker 1: to me. Uh, there's just like this would be an
Speaker 1: eighteen hour episode if we went in all the stuff
Speaker 1: the n s A did. So we'll say, if if
Speaker 1: you like this, go look up the required reading um
Speaker 1: and you'll find plenty of other stuff out there on
Speaker 1: everything you want to know about the N s A.
Speaker 1: These days, it's all out there about all two percent
Speaker 1: of it. You can also learn more about the N
Speaker 1: s A by typing N say into the search bar
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, and that will bring up
Speaker 1: this fine article. Since I said search parts time for
Speaker 1: a listener, ma'am, I'm gonna call this a bit on
Speaker 1: trickling down. Um, hey, guys, wanted to write in with
Speaker 1: a clarification on the episode and trickle down economics. At
Speaker 1: one point, you guys use an example of someone working.
Speaker 1: Do not think it is so worth it to get
Speaker 1: a promotion so it could put push you into a
Speaker 1: higher tax bracket and thus you're barely bringing home any
Speaker 1: more money. I had to write in because of someone
Speaker 1: who loves maths. I absolutely hate to see this misperception
Speaker 1: of how our taxes work. I've heard people I work
Speaker 1: with claim the same thing, thinking that getting a five
Speaker 1: bonus could push them over a line and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden it would bring they would bring home less
Speaker 1: money than before. I want to stay for the record,
Speaker 1: I know this. We were just giving a different example
Speaker 1: that wasn't fully fleshed out. Uh, this is completely wrong
Speaker 1: based on how the tax structure works. Even if you
Speaker 1: make one million dollars a year, the first nine thousand
Speaker 1: will be based at ten um, the next twenty eight
Speaker 1: thousand will be based the next at fifty two, and
Speaker 1: so on. I think you guys know this since you
Speaker 1: kind of allude to it in other places, but I
Speaker 1: was hoping you can make it perfectly clear. So those
Speaker 1: people who might be mistaken realizing that making more will
Speaker 1: never push all of your income into a higher tax bracket. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you make, for example, thirty six thou dollars, you
Speaker 1: will be in that fifteen percent bracket, and if you
Speaker 1: get a raised to forty dollars and the bracket, you
Speaker 1: will only be paying on the above that bracket line.
Speaker 1: The same is true of Josh's claim of the richest
Speaker 1: people in the US used to pay. True, but they
Speaker 1: only paid on the amount over the previous bracket. Right.
Speaker 1: But let's say the previous bracket in half a million
Speaker 1: and then the next million dollars or no, you made
Speaker 1: another half a million and it was tax. That's a
Speaker 1: disincentive to work. That's what we were saying, Like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we could have been clear on how it works,
Speaker 1: though I'm sure we could have. UM. Anyways, thanks what
Speaker 1: you do, and that is from charity. Thanks a lot
Speaker 1: of charity for clarifying. I appreciate it. UM. If you
Speaker 1: have a clarification for us for anything we want to
Speaker 1: hear from you, you can tweet to us at s
Speaker 1: Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook
Speaker 1: dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You can send
Speaker 1: us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, and,
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