Government snooping, backdoors and #necessaryhashtags

[kladner]

Originally Posted by jasong

The hand isn't letting me highlight anything. I'm wondering if there's a key combo to turn off the hand, which I assume is there to make left-click scrolling a thing.

Do you mean a hand cursor, such as the pointing finger which pops up over links? Or the Move hand cursor seen in many programs? I am writing in Firefox now, and when the cursor is in a text area, it is an I-beam. Most of the other areas it is just an arrow.

So, you are not able to select any text? I know you are running Win 10, but that should not make a difference. I use Win 10 at work, 7 at home. I still use the same select-copy-paste moves in either system.

Am I misunderstanding your situation?

[ewmayer]

The 'hand' I see in FF indicates links, nothing to do with copy/paste. Cursor click-and-drag to select text, ctrl-c to copy the now-highlighted text, ctrl-v to paste it somewhere else.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by jasong

The hand isn't letting me highlight anything. I'm wondering if there's a key combo to turn off the hand, which I assume is there to make left-click scrolling a thing.

I'm not familiar with Firefox, but the cursor problem is something I've seen in other applications, which prompts the question: Does one of the drop-down menus (possibly one of those in the "toolbox" of menus at the top of the screen) have options like "Move tool" and "Select tool?" In the cases where I've had the similar trouble, the check was next to "Move tool," and changing from "Move tool" to "Select tool" solved the problem.

If there's no joy there, then -- does your cursor behave appropriately in other applications? If so, I'm stumped for the moment. If not, there are other possibilities...

[Xyzzy]

In Linux we love how we can highlight a section and just press the middle mouse button to paste the highlighted text someplace else.

[jasong]

In the Customize your Browser section, I get the arrow and can highlight stuff, so the functionality exists, it's just not obviously accessible.

I'm not sure if it's an accidental problem or if the copyright industry has their claws in Opera's back. If it's the latter, that sucks pretty bad.

Edit: Figured it out, dragging hand always works until you double-click, and then you can highlight. I enabled a feature and then forgot I enabled it, so my fault again.

[ewmayer]

Snowden’s Box: The human network behind the biggest leak of all | Harper's Magazine

Not a Harper's subscriber, but since it's been at least a month since I last viewed an article there, the "one free item per month for guests" applied.

[only_human]

Picture this: Senate staffers’ ID cards have photo of smart chip, no security

[kladner]

Originally Posted by only_human

Picture this: Senate staffers’ ID cards have photo of smart chip, no security

Congress, both houses, tend to exempt themselves from requirements which they impose on others. Smells like laziness and self-aggrandizement, to me. Never mind that it makes them sitting cyber-ducks.

[ewmayer]

NSA collected Americans' phone records despite law change: report | Reuters

Of course they did. As to the officially-claimed numbers, I love the official rationalizations as to how warrants for just 42 suspects leading to 151 million records being hoovered up is perfectly reasonable:

The report from the office of Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats was the first measure of the effects of the 2015 USA Freedom Act, which limited the NSA to collecting phone records and contacts of people U.S. and allied intelligence agencies suspect may have ties to terrorism.

It found that the NSA collected the 151 million records even though it had warrants from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court to spy on only 42 terrorism suspects in 2016, in addition to a handful identified the previous year.

...
Officials on Tuesday argued that the 151 million records collected last year were tiny compared with the number collected under procedures that were stopped after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the surveillance program in 2013.

Because the 151 million would include multiple calls made to or from the same phone numbers, the number of people whose records were collected also would be much smaller, the officials said. They said they had no breakdown of how many individuals' phone records were among those collected.

So, figure a typical deplorable terrorism suspect makes or receives a million calls per year ... voila! Extremely narrowly-targeted surveillance, people! And note the numbers cited in the article are what the spooks *admit* to, because we have to take their word for it.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

NSA collected Americans' phone records despite law change: report | Reuters

It found that the NSA collected the 151 million records even though it had warrants from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court to spy on only 42 terrorism suspects in 2016, in addition to a handful identified the previous year.

So, for the purpose of estimation, we'll say 150 million records and 50 suspects, so 3 million records per suspect. That would average over 340 calls per hour, almost a call every ten seconds. Given the time required to make a phone connection -- especially on an international call -- I gotta say, I am impressed at the terrorists' ability to keep their conversations short!

Of course, what this actually indicates (at least in part) is that the warrants may permit the surveillance to go rather far afield from the original target. The idea was worked into the TV series The Good Wife, where the NSA was listening in on the lawyers' phone calls (including the title character, whose husband was the Governor), because they had a "three-hop" warrant -- that is, if their primary target was "A," and "A" called "B," they could listen in on "B." That's one "hop." And, if "B" called "C," they could listen in on "C." That's two hops. And, if "C" called "D," they could listen in on "D." That's three hops.

In the TV story, the NSA was improperly giving the fruits of their labor to law-enforcement, which the title character's husband dealt with by posting an ad to sell a car on a bulletin board in a local mosque, giving the name and phone number of the NSA guy in charge of the operation affecting his wife. Pretty soon, THAT guy was under surveillance, and the NSA was obliged to quit using their operation to tip off law-enforcement based on intercepted conversations between lawyers and their clients.

My guess is, even allowing for multiple "hops," it would still be difficult to get from 50 callers to 150 million records in a year, without some sort of indiscriminate, wholesale gathering of records.

[axn]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

My guess is, even allowing for multiple "hops," it would still be difficult to get from 50 callers to 150 million records in a year, without some sort of indiscriminate, wholesale gathering of records.

If everyone calls 20 other people, you'll get 400000 people in three hops (50*20*20*20). It only takes 375 calls per person to rack up 150 million calls.