Activity code android foreign key database example

There's a notion I've been calling the Podesta Test, exploring whether it possible for high-profile individuals to use information regimes with roughly an equivalent degree of assurance as, say, paper or other non-electronic data stores. John Podesta, if you recall, was Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman who, despite a team dedicated to managing and securing his online communications, his security was completely compromised in a single click. As The New York Times reported:

Given how many emails Mr. Podesta received through this personal email account, several aides also had access to it, and one of them noticed the [phishing] warning email, sending it to a computer technician to make sure it was legitimate before anyone clicked on the “change password” button.
“This is a legitimate email,” Charles Delavan, a Clinton campaign aide, replied to another of Mr. Podesta’s aides, who had noticed the alert. “John needs to change his password immediately.”
With another click, a decade of emails that Mr. Podesta maintained in his Gmail account — a total of about 60,000 — were unlocked for the Russian hackers.

Elsewhere in the article it's mentioned that "hundreds of similar phishing emails" were sent to other Americans, giving a sense of the scope of the operation.
The question I have is just how large this highly exposed group is. And I think I've found a useful tool, on which I've some further questions below.

PEPs: Politically Exposed Persons

There is a term I'd run across in connection with the ICIJ's Paradise Papers reporting:

Appleby, like all legal firms in this field, uses a term for such clients and potential clients --- politically exposed persons, or PEPs. A PEP is someone with a prominent profile --- a celebrity of the political, diplomatic, military or judicial worlds --- who, through their prominent position or influence, is more susceptible to being involved in bribery or corruption. By extension, any close family member of a PEP, is also a PEP.

"Paradise Papers: Who are Appleby, the lawyers at the centre of the leak?" , BBC. 5 November 2017
(Emphasis added.)
This is, it turns out, a term of art. Wikipedia: "Politically Exposed Person":

In financial regulation, "politically exposed person" (PEP) is a term describing someone who has been entrusted with a prominent public function. A PEP generally presents a higher risk for potential involvement in bribery and corruption by virtue of their position and the influence that they may hold. The terms politically exposed person and senior foreign political figure are often used interchangeably, particularly in international forums. Foreign official is a term for individuals deemed as government persons under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act or FCPA, and although definitions are similar to PEP, there are quite a few differences and should not be used interchangeably. The term PEP is typically used referring to customers in the financial services industry, while 'foreign official' refers to the risks of third party relationships in all industries.

There's no standard definition, but:

In February 2012, the FATF's [Financial Action Task Force] latest definition of politically exposed persons (PEP), revised from 2003, is as follows:

• Foreign PEPs: individuals who are or have been entrusted with prominent public functions by a foreign country, for example Heads of state or Heads of government, senior politicians, senior government, judicial or military officials, senior executives of state owned corporations, important political party officials.
  
• Domestic PEPs: individuals who are or have been entrusted domestically with prominent public functions, for example Heads of State or of government, senior politicians, senior government, judicial or military officials, senior executives of state owned corporations, important political party officials. (Not all countries subscribe to the concept of domestic PEPs with respect to regulatory requirements/application of due diligence. For example, US law, specifically Section 312 of the USA Patriot Act and its implementing regulations provide for enhanced due diligence for SFPFs (Senior Foreign Political Figure) only, defined as: "a current or former senior official in the executive, legislative, administrative, military, or judicial branches of a 'foreign' government...a senior official of a major 'foreign' political party; and a senior executive of a 'foreign' government-owned commercial enterprise.)
  
• Persons who are or have been entrusted with a prominent function by a state owned enterprise or an international organisation refers to members of senior management, i.e. directors, deputy directors and members of the board or equivalent functions.
  

EveryPolitician has a database compiled of 74,963 politicians, but not other classes of PEP. Another crowdsourced system is PEP. org.ua, maintaining a "Public Register of Domestic Politically Exposed Persons of Ukraine", with 26,677 profiles, 11,300 profiles of politically exposed persons, and 15,377 profiles of close associates and family members.
LexisNexis, ThompsonReuters, Dow Jones, GoldSchaff & Wolfson, Reed Elsevier, and Regulatory DataCorp have PEP-based or -oriented services (mostly aimed at money laundering and banking compliance).
WorldCompliance's database contained 325,000 profiles as of July 18, 2005 (by way of the Internet Archive), with 25,000 new profiles and 5,000 updates per month. The page was last updated in 2010, with 880,000 profiles given, with the same update rate as in 2005. The actual net rate of addition is closer to 9,250 profiles/month. If sustained, the current list would be double the 2010 size, or roughly 1.6 million entries. Allowing for scope expansion, we might double that for a high-range estimate, call it 3.2 million individuals.

Questions Regarding PEP Databases and Information Security Usage

This leaves me with two immediate questions, and a call for assistance.

Can any of my readers provide a count and classification of PEPs?

Based on my research, most of the tools are of a query/response type: enter a name, and see if it is on a given PEP list. I am not interested in the listings themselves, but would very much like to see a breakdown of how many PEPs there are, and by category: primary vs. secondary (e.g., family or associates), and politics, business, military, or other classifications. Country counts might also be of interest.

Is there any use of PEP or similar target-risk classification in the information security world?

I'd checked for any mention of the terms "PEP" or "Politically Exposed Persons" on Bruce Schneier's blog, without luck. Searching for "high risk" (person|individual|target) is slightly more productive, and Google announced a service, in the best bolted-horse-barn-door tradition, in October 2017, 18 months after Podesta's mishap. Which the Wired article specifically mentions.
Are there lists maintained, either within organisations or shared across them, of high-consequence accounts or profiles? Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and other firms should be amongst those with such practices, and I am aware of programmes at at least Google (see above) and Twitter (various political leaders).
In an information context, the term should also be broadened to cover those with control or access to critical infrastructure: chip specification, design, and fabrication, operating system development, major application and online systems development, network physical and logical infrastructure (backplane, routers, BGP, DNS, CA), release engineers, and hosting administrators (say, such as the Debian FTP Masters). This would include major technical teams at companies such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, IBM, Cisco, Comcast, Verizon, Level 3, and more, as well as non-corporate structures such as the Debian Project, the Linux Kernel development team, various BSD teams, and academic groups working on hardware, software, networking, and/or crypto and security protocols.

What other scoping tools or estimates are there?

I've been saving references looking at the scale of various attacks, and trying to get a sense for what scope of operations can be sustained. A few items:

• A major U.S. Department of Justice operation involves some 9,294 indictments.
  
• Vietnam's Internet monitoring force has over 10,000 members. From work elsewhere, these might scan a maximum of about 300 -- 800 items daily, if they operate with the efficiency of Stephen Wolfram on email, or the New York Times comments moderation team on comments.
  
• Various estimates of Russian phishing operations suggest a scale of 100s of targets. If there are undetected targets, this might be expanded to 1,000s. But it doesn't appear to be 10s of thousands to millions.
  
• Amongst the larger operations seems to be China's 50 Cent Party, with 2008 estimates being of tens of thousands of operatives, perhaps as many as 280,000 -- 300,000.
  (Citing: Bandurski, David (July 2008). "China's Guerrilla War for the Web". Far Eastern Economic Review.)
  
• And amongst the more technically capable, the U.S. National Security Agency, with 30,000 -- 40,000 employees, and an annual budget estimated at $10.8 billion (2013). It conducts surveillance at a scale of hundreds of millions (U.S. phone intercepts, PRISM) to billions (global communications). There are also specifically-designated "high value targets". Information on this is a) hard to acquire and b) I wouldn't tell you if I knew, though from published sources, the "Nymrod" database lists 122 world leaders. A "Target Knowledge Database" (TKB) is "the central database of individual targets":
  

  The manual maintenance of the database with high-ranking targets is a slow and painstaking process, the document notes, and fewer than 200,000 targets are managed through the system. Automated capture, by contrast, simplifies the saving of the data and makes it possible to manage more than 3 million entries, including names and the citations connected to them.
  

  This is roughly commensurate with the scope of PEP lists, mentioned above, and would in fact represent a fraction of them. The NSA may wish to obtain (and secure) a Lexis-Nexis account.
  From: "GCHQ and NSA Targeted Private German Companies and Merkel".
  

Data are Liability, and "Who are you?" remains the most expensive question in information technology

No matter how you get it wrong, you're fucked.
I'd first pointed this out nearly three years ago (in comments), and again later in 2015. Though the instigation was my own experiences (with Google), it was clear to me then that the problem was larger, and that extant authentications schemes simply are not working, nor are they sufficient.
Combined with the recognition that data are liability, the combination of identity (and authorisation / authentication misattribution) can care dire, national-security-level implications. (The notion of just what issues are wrapped up in "identity" is another area for later expansion.)
The question's occupied me for some time, and scoping magnitude of the risk, is a significant aspect of the matter. There are numerous other dimensions I hope to expand on later.

Additional References & Projects

DigitalSecurityExchange: Via Bruce Scheier, "Building a Digital Security Exchange", by Josh Levy, on a project which is "helping the U.S. digital security community be more responsive to the needs of civil society groups and high-risk communities." People include: Ethan Zuckerman, Bruce Schneier, Harlo Holmes, Sara Haghdoosti, Matt Mitchell, Deanna Zandt, Matt Holland, Jamie Tomasello, Danny O’Brien, and Nathan Freitas. URL: https://www.digitalsecurityexchange.org/
Google Research: "Data breaches, phishing, or malware? Understanding the risks of stolen credentials", also via Schneier, provides more problem-scoping:

Over the course of March, 2016--March, 2017, we identify 788,000 potential victims of off-the-shelf keyloggers; 12.4 million potential victims of phishing kits; and 1.9 billion usernames and passwords exposed via data breaches and traded on blackmarket forums.

Note that Google's total user profile set was on the order of 3.3 million by way of G+ / Android registration data, when that was available online ~2016.
"Risk-based Authentication: A Primer " (2013) ties into another area of recent interest, risk, and suggests a risk-based approach to each authentication action:

These solutions work by developing a risk score for each log-in attempt, and then weighing this score against allowable risk thresholds for various systems. Adapting authentication levels based on risk reduces the fallout organizations experience when the single form of authentication they rely on (such as a password or biometric scanner) gets compromised.

The article links to two interesting sounding additional studies:

• Enemy at the gates: What executives need to know about the keys to the organization’s front door
• The Changing Landscape of Digital Identity Management

Verified? (This bot cannot verify AMAs just yet)
Date: 2013-06-14
Link to submission (Has self-text)

Questions	Answers
What can those outside of the US do? For example, I am from the UK and would like to help however I can.	Everyone can sign at Link to StopWatching.Us Many of the people who built the site (me included) don't live in the US.
	Others will surely have more to say -- Access and OpenMedia and other orgs involved here do a lot of international work. I really think that one useful angle is to put pressure on web corporations that are based in the U.S. but also operate (and frequently have way more users) abroad.
	One thing PCCC has been doing is fundraising for Edward Snowden's legal defense fund. Recall that Snowden has unveiled the scope of spying not only on Americans but on foreign citizens as well. You can donate here: Link to pccc.me
	Hey there! There are a few things that people can do to help. As taliesan said, you can sign the petition at StopWatching.Us. We'll be continuing to evolve the site so that international folks can better take part, and then we'll be delivering those petitions to Congress.
	You can also sign onto a joint petition by Access and EFF to the CEOs of the nine internet companies listed in the Guardian and other reports. A huge part of their existing and growth markets are outside the US. Tell them that as a customer, you demand they use their influence and stature to call on Congress for reforms. They all have big offices in DC and contacts in Congress. Here's the link to Access' petition: Link to www.accessnow.org and here's the one from EFF: Link to action.eff.org (they're the same letter).
	Finally, as a UK -- or European -- citizen, you can get in touch with your MEP from the UK and demand they support the European Commission's inquiry into PRISM] ([Link to europa.eu.)
	While you're at it, you probably want to tell those MEPs to support a strong Data Protection Regulation -- legislation currently in front of committee that will be critical to preserving privacy in Europe: Link to nakedcitizens.eu
	Edit: embedded links.
How big an effect do you think the petition can have? Are any of the elected "leaders" supporting the petition?	The only way to stop secret surveillance is to organize a movement against it and to hold our elected officials accountable. They're the ones who passed the laws that are letting this happen; they're the only ones who can pass the reforms we're calling for.
Isn't there the danger of losing the whole debate and goodwill of people by relying so heavily on Snowden? he could be the main source for everything good that comes out of it, but it could end the questioning of secrets entirely when he ends up being an overly engaged but mistaken idealist.	We're defending Snowden because he did the right thing -- and if he's demonized in the public sphere, it may harm the entire cause. But PCCC in the coming weeks is going to be heavily engaged on the larger issue of indiscriminate government spying, and continue to demand that Congress investigate, share its results with the public, and then take action to change the law.
My support of Snowden has been met with disdain. Not from everyone, but from most. It is very difficult to talk about his patriotism and whistleblower status. Do you have a cleaboiled down/easy for people to hear explanation of the significance of his actions in relation to civic duty etc?	Curious, what's the political affiliation of the people giving you this response?
demand that Congress investigate, share its results with the public, and then take action to change the law. Do you think it will work? Why or why not?	We do think it will work, that's why we're pursuing it :)
They range from politically underactive democrats to bleeding heart liberals. Some of whom are 'on the fence'. (edit -I was not expecting this response - some view me as naive) The republicans are not talking to me right now :)	Link to www.huffingtonpost.com
I have a question for anyone who is willing to provide a good response for people to read. There are a lot of people that are under the assumption that just because they are doing nothing illegal, means they have nothing to hide. What would you tell them to get them to open up there eyes a little?	Mass surveillance is used by institutions to entrench their power. The U.S. has a recent and ongoing history of spying on activism of all sorts, disrupting attempts -- via peaceful, legal means -- to turn the country/world into a better place. Including, of course, the OWS movement. (And anti-war and labor and racial justice movements, and so on, before that.) So if you love everything about the state of the world and you trust a crony-capitalist government to do what's right then perhaps you can rationalize not having much to worry about. But if you can imagine ways in which you'd like to see governance and/or the corporations who have outsized influence over it improve... a broad surveillance state is a great way of ensuring that the status quo will be entrenched.
Has there been any evidence or suggestion that information gathered by the NSA that detects crime but not terrorism, has been shared with domestic law enforcement? Is there any history of such sharing? Are there any laws that prevent this type of information sharing?	FISA information has been used at least once in an ordinary criminal case when a subject under FISA surveillance was recorded murdering his daughter. The metadata program operates under §215, and the law states that the "minimization procedures" governing that data shall: "allow for the retention and dissemination of information that is evidence of a crime which has been, is being, or is about to be committed and that is to be retained or disseminated for law enforcement purposes. "
off - thank you all. For all the tremendous work that you do to fight and educate.	Also, I want to share a personal story. I once attended a meeting of for-profit college lobbyists. They had brought in Doug Sosnik, who was an advisor to President Clinton and also worked on Kerry's presidential campaign. Sosnik explained that he had worked for the MPAA and they thought they totally owned the issue of SOPA/PIPA and would win because they had Washington's lobbyists all on their side. Then he bluntly said they were "roadkill" because they didn't think about people outside of Washington. They didn't realize they would protest and wake up and work really hard to stop the legislation.
What can an average Jane desk-jockey (who needs to keep her day job to pay the bills) do to compete against a government who can not only set this up, but get my representatives to pass laws to make (most of) this legal?	You can call your member of Congress once a day, every day, and help others do the same. Right now, there is a culture on Capitol Hill where many Members think their only vulnerability on this issue is that they aren't supportive enough of overly broad government spying programs. By mobilizing, we can change that culture and let politicians know that there is actually a vulnerability to violating our basic freedom to privacy and other freedoms related to civil liberties. We saw Congress fall back during the SOPA/PIPA fight. Washington's special interests -- in this case the military-industrial-intelligence-contractor complex -- are very powerful, but when ordinary people get into the game in huge numbers, they can lose. They WANT you to think you don't have any power. That's the way they win.
To risk being rude, I'm not looking for the answer "Donate to the EFF and other orgs". While I understand that does help... I'm still sitting here at my desk clicking "submit" on another form of petition. And I do. And I will continue. But there has to be something more...	To answer this and a related question above — there's always something more you can do. And you can become an organizer yourself, build out a network of other activists, and use the collective wisdom of the group to develop other, more creative tactics.
Do Google, Microsoft, Skype, AOL, Facebook and the others have any legal recourse now that the public is aware of the problem? Is there any form of civil disobedience they could reasonably engage in to fight for our privacy?	This morning we sent the following letter to the offices of the Attorney General and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Read the full text below. -Ed.
	Dear Attorney General Holder and Director Mueller.
	Google has worked tremendously hard over the past fifteen years to earn our users’ trust. For example, we offer encryption across our services; we have hired some of the best security engineers in the world; and we have consistently pushed back on overly broad government requests for our users’ data.
	We have always made clear that we comply with valid legal requests. And last week, the Director of National Intelligence acknowledged that service providers have received Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requests.
	Assertions in the press that our compliance with these requests gives the U.S. government unfettered access to our users’ data are simply untrue. However, government nondisclosure obligations regarding the number of FISA national security requests that Google receives, as well as the number of accounts covered by those requests, fuel that speculation.
	We therefore ask you to help make it possible for Google to publish in our Transparency Report aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures—in terms of both the number we receive and their scope. Google’s numbers would clearly show that our compliance with these requests falls far short of the claims being made. Google has nothing to hide.
	Google appreciates that you authorized the recent disclosure of general numbers for national security letters. There have been no adverse consequences arising from their publication, and in fact more companies are receiving your approval to do so as a result of Google’s initiative. Transparency here will likewise serve the public interest without harming national security.
	We will be making this letter public and await your response.
	David Drummond Chief Legal Officer.
Will this act affect those outside of the US as much?	This affects those outside the US as much, if not more, than those inside the US, as foreign nationals are explicitly the targets of this surveillance, and are not subject to the same protections afforded American citizens under law.
	Much of the response to these revelations from the US administration and Congress has been to emphasize that "Americans" are not targeted (although that's a really low barrier of assessment, of just 49% likelihood that you are not a 'US person'). That reinforces the fact that these programs are explicitly intended to capture the communications of individuals outside of the United States.
	This is a fairly clear violation of your rights to privacy and free expression as outlined in Articles 17 and 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) -- to which the United States is signatory -- as well as Articles 12 and 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
	As Katherine points out, it arguably affects those outside the U.S. even more. Information about Americans is at least subject to somewhat stringent "minimization procedures" that limit how it can be retained and circulated. There are no such protections for people outside the United States, and we do know our intelligence agencies selectively share the information they gather with allied foreign governments.
What exactly can they see with this program?	One of the biggest problems right now is the complete lack of transparency. We have no idea how much they have access too, but if Edward Snowden's claims are true, they can access almost anything you might be storing online: including emails, chats, video calls, etc. We're asking Congress to set up a committee to investigate because it's crucial that we find out.
Personally, I am in complete support of what you are doing and already signed, but I have heard a lot of opposition particularly from older generations and those who are not tech savvy. If you had to convince someone (who maybe isn't as up to date on current technological affairs*) in 30 seconds or less why they should sign this petition, what would you say?	Imagine if the government opened all of your physical mail before delivering it to you.
	Imagine if the government went into everyone's homes and ripped off the window curtains.
	An engaged democracy depends on the freedom to communicate and associate in private. (1st and 4th amendments.)
	Remind people old enough to remember the Church Committee what happened last time there was unchecked intelligence surveillance for "national security." Then ask them what it might have looked like if, say, J. Edgar Hoover had enjoyed access to the sheer quantity of data flowing through NSA today.
Do we know any more about how much and what kinds of data have been collected?	The Wall Street Journal has reported that the metadata program encompasses records not only from phone carriers, but also Internet Service Providers and credit card companies. The one order we've seen encompasses all "routing information" which for cell phones would almost certainly include location information. The records obtained are "anonymized," though that means relatively little given the ease with which you can tie a number to a name even if you're not the NSA.
	Link to www.nytimes.com
If surveillance is really global, can the US afford to not play the game? If you are successful will US citizens find themselves under surveillance by every great power except the United States?	Not really. A huge percentage of global Internet traffic flows through the United States, but the reverse is not true; other countries are not really in the same position to spy on US-to-US traffic.
What steps are your companies taking to ensure that our information is kept secure from PRISM and other programs like it?	At Mozilla, data associated with our user's browsing and search history is stored locally in the browser. We don't have any centralized database of our users browsing and searching data that is readable by Mozilla.
How Can We Take Better Measures To Protect Our Own Privacy?	Alex Fowler, head of privacy for Mozilla, will be here in about 30 mins. He'll have good answers.
	If you use an Android phone, I'd highly recommend Redphone and TextSecure by Open Whisper Systems: Link to whispersystems.org
What is your answer for those concerned that joining this list won't do much good and instead just solicit unwanted attention from big brother?	Big Brother is watching anyway :)
	But seriously, as I mentioned in the comment above, taking this action WILL do something if we form a critical mass. Our elected officials actually do listen to constituents when they speak loudly enough, and as others have already noted, there members of Congress who are already speaking out against this.
The Tea Party runs people against incumbents for voting for resolutions to keep the government operating -- will it also run people against Repub incumbents who support surveillance, oppose civil liberties, etc? (Looking at you, New Hampshire's Sen. Kelly Ayotte...)	These left-right coalitions can be incredibly powerful.
I'm not american. Should I care? Why?	Yes. The NSA is being much more aggressive about spying on YOUR traffic, and doesn't recognize any legal restrictions on what they can do with your data. They're at least SUPPOSED to try not to look at or circulate our Gmail messages; yours are fair game, and can be shared with your government.
Why should someone like myself be concerned about all of this? I am just a regular guy, 9-5, with a family, living in the suburbs. Obviously I find it scary, but I hear the argument everyday from less informed people around me that they don't really care because they are not doing anything wrong. Is it just the principal of it all, or is there a legitimate reason to be concerned?	Ask the people you talk to if they really want an individual -- not just an amorphous concept of "the government" -- somewhere far away knowing who they call, how long that call is, where they are calling from (which is really to say, where they are) every time they pick up the phone. Or when they send an email. A random stranger knowing all of this about them.
	The ability to live in a democracy, and to stay informed, depends on everyone's freedom to communicate with each other and to share important information without interference. It's the foundation of a free press.
	Even if you feel like you have nothing to hide, other people — people who are helping you be an informed citizen/resident — are being threatened by overzealous surveillance. And because of that, we all lose.
Do you guys think that there are other countries out there watching its users too? What can one do if they found out their government is spying on them? (especially if the country is democratic)	Yes. Some EU countries have raised an outcry over this program, but most are no less aggressive about surveillance, though few have quite the resources the NSA commands.
What is your response to people who say, "I have nothing to hide"?	I responded to the "Nothing to Hide" argument in a piece for Mashable: Link to mashable.com
About how many people do you estimate it would take to sign petitions/protest for the government to actually do something?	I'd also recommend reading this: We Should All Have Something To Hide - Link to thoughtcrime.org
What was your initial reaction when Obama said that "You can't have 100% security and 100% privacy"?	That was a strawman. There is no one arguing that you can have 100% security and 100% privacy. What we are saying, however, is that it is wrong for the government to keep the extent of its spying so secret that Americans can't even fairly debate whether these are necessary intrusions on our privacy.
Also, thanks for doing this AMA! I appreciate the effort that you guys are doing to help educate people on this.	You can't have 100% of either. What's really dangerous is the wishful illusion that 100% security can be achieved, and that if bad things still happen now and then, it must mean we need a few percentage points less privacy until we achieve perfect security.
Edit: Wording.	My first reaction was to note its unfortunate inverted echoes of the Ben Franklin quote, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Obama's response avoids addressing the need for public discourse: what are the threats we face, and what choices does an informed electorate make in response?
What's the plan once this falls off the Media radar? I already couldn't find it on CNN's front page last night.	This is part of why getting investigations moving is so important -- so there'll be ongoing attention on this issue, with a trickle of actionable revelations that keep it on the media's radar.
Q2: How do you reconcile the lack of outrage from the massive invasion of privacy by ordinary people enabled social media and consumer technology, like those on /findbostonbombers?	Q2: There should be more concern about all sorts of privacy intrusions. But to have it all centralized in the hands of a single entity -- and the military, particularly -- is especially problematic.
Does the ACLU have a chance in the courts?	A thin but not nonexistent one. The easiest win would be on statutory grounds: The argument that the Patriot Act's §215 does not actually authorize data collection on this scale.
	More of a longshot: A First Amendment argument based on the right to anonymous speech or chilling of expressive association. Also a longshot: A Fourth Amendment win extending the logic of the concurrence in United States v. Jones (a unanimous ruling) that extended, comprehensive surveillance, even of something not normally protected (like public travel) can rise to the level of a Fourth Amendment search requiring a probable cause warrant.
What are some easy ways to send a message to those who support this stuff, besides the obvious like writing Congressman?	Congress does a series of town halls during the summer. See if your Member is holding a town hall (you can call their office and ask). Go to the town hall. Tell them you don't want the government to engage in indiscriminate spying on you and your neighbors, friends, and loved ones. Bring as many people with you as possible to say this message. Take video of yourself saying it, and upload it to YouTube. Share it.
of all, thank you for doing this AMA. Now, to my question. Without trying to sound defeatist, isn't it true that your efforts, all the talk about lawsuits against the U.S. Government, all the criticism from various parties etc. won't make the slightest difference for most Internet users since we are neither located in the U.S. nor are we U.S. citizens? Isn't it the truth that no matter what you may achieve domestically, the rest of us will all still be subject to this surveillance, without possibility of challenging it in any real way (because frankly, signing a protest list won't actually do diddly squat when the U.S. intelligence community is on the other side)?	Our domestic aims will help everyone. The NSA's spying programs technically target foreign communications (though nearly everyone in the U.S. gets caught up in them), so if Congress passes the reforms we're pushing for, people outside of the U.S. will benefit.
What are some things people can do to secure themselves, if anything, from this intrusion of privacy? Activism of course, but what measures at home?	Use TorBrowser; use Spider Oak instead of Dropbox; use OTR when you chat on IM; install Silent Circle on your phone and get friends to do the same; actually turn off your cell when you're not using it (which your friends will probably appreciate anyway).
What do I need to do to get the people around me to pay attention to this scandal and educate themselves?	Tell them to read Glenn Greenwald's articles on this issue. Not only is Glenn incredibly detailed, but once they're at The Guardian they'll probably enjoy reading so much actual substantive news that they won't want to stop reading on the scandal...
How realistic is it to expect a congressional committee to discuss anything more than what has already been publicly released about these surveillance programs?	This stuff that Binney speaks about goes deeper than what's come out in the last couple weeks. I think hearings of some sort are a real possibility, but they're not the end game in their own right.
It has been hinted in some stories about the leak that this is the "tip of the iceberg", what other capabilities could the NSA or other intelligence organizations possibly possess that go beyond what we know of?	Link to www.nytimes.com
How great is the danger that the public will lose interest in this topic and nothing will get done? how can we prevent that from happening?	Every action that you take, online or offline, share it with your friends. 5 people. Just tell them, inform them about what you're doing.
Beyond supporting organisations like the EFF financially, signing petitions and generally trying to raise awareness, what can people do if they want to get more involved, or really make a difference?	Hi - see my reply to a similar question here.
What are you doing on the 4th?	I think it's most useful for us to turn our members (many millions of people between all the orgs involved here) out to events that are being planned across the country by those who've come together under the restorethefourth banner.
What can I do to make a difference? I wrote my congressman and senator last week and haven't gotten any response. I wrote a letter to Obama also. I don't know if writing letters makes any difference at all.	Writing letters and making phone calls makes a huge difference when large numbers of people do it. Congressional staff log that input and if tons of it starts coming the Members tend to change their behavior, at least are forced to acknowledge it if not change their position on the issue.
My question is, if we halt all domestic spying programs, won't we leave the door open to more home grown terrorist attacks in our country? While the intelligence services did not catch the Tsarnaev brothers as an example, what happens if we halt these kinds of activities and we then miss even one other attack that could have been prevented? How many attacks have been prevented to this point, that we aren't aware of, because of this kind of monitoring?	The focus of this program is still on people with links to foreign groups. And there's a pretty strong consensus that "predictive" data mining to look for patterns suggesting terrorist activity (as opposed to mining to re-identify a particular known subject using a new mobile device) just doesn't work for terrorism. Our standard should not be to surrender privacy on the theory that it might somehow keep us safer. Actual terror attacks aren't rare because the NSA is so brilliant; they're rare because there aren't that many people in the U.S. with both the desire and the capability to pull them off. There are, of course, the mass shooters, but you're not going to find those people by mining cell records.
What are the many different ways someone can contribute to this issue and help Edward Snowden? I have already written to all three of my Congressman and I have signed a couple of White House petition relating to the issue, along with your petition, but I feel like there is still more out there.	One thing PCCC has been doing is fundraising for Edward Snowden's legal defense fund. Recall that Snowden has unveiled the scope of spying not only on Americans but on foreign citizens as well. You can donate here: Link to pccc.me
Shouldn't we be making a big deal out of the fact that the NSA is part of the Department of Defense and there's some line being crossed using the DOD for domestic investigation? It feels like using heavily armed Marines to do traffic stops (because you know, they might catch a terrorist.)	One thing we should definitely make a big deal of, as Derek pointed out upthread. From DNI Clapper's 2013 testimony.
	Wyden: And this is for you, Director Clapper, again on the surveillance front. And I hope we can do this in just a yes or no answer because I know Senator Feinstein wants to move on. Last summer the NSA director was at a conference and he was asked a question about the NSA surveillance of Americans. He replied, and I quote here, '...the story that we have millions or hundreds of millions of dossiers on people is completely false.' The reason I'm asking the question is, having served on the committee now for a dozen years, I don't really know what a dossier is in this context. So what I wanted to see is if you could give me a yes or no answer to the question: Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" Clapper: "No, sir." Wyden: "It does not." Clapper: "Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect, but not wittingly." Wyden: "All right. Thank you. I'll have additional questions to give you in writing on that point, but I thank you for the answer." (video here: Link to www.youtube.com)
As a non-US citizen of the Internet, I feel the issue touches me directly, however I am powerless to do anything. For this reason, I didn't take part yet. Should I? Why (not)?	You're absolutely affected by this -- likely more than those inside the US, as foreign nationals are explicitly the targets of this surveillance, and are not subject to the same protections afforded American citizens under US law. You should definitely take part -- this is a fairly clear violation of your rights to privacy and free expression as outlined in Articles 17 and 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) -- to which the United States is signatory -- as well as Articles 12 and 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And you're not powerless. As a UK -- or European -- citizen, you can get in touch with your MEP from the UK and demand they support the European Commission's inquiry into PRISM] ([Link to europa.eu) While you're at it, you probably want to tell those MEPs to support a strong Data Protection Regulation] ([Link to nakedcitizens.eu) -- legislation currently in front of committee that will be critical to preserving privacy in Europe! Finally, you can sign the petition at Link to StopWatching.Us where we'll be delivering your signature to the US Congress.
	Edit: embedded links.
How likely is it that the class-action lawsuit against the NSA will gain traction? What can we do to help?	The ACLU has actually already filed a suit. But unless you're a techie or attorney who can round up colleagues to sign an amicus brief, public action usually doesn't influence courts too much.
Hi there! Great work so far with answering. How effective do you think the current government is at being a democracy in any sense. What do you think about Direct Democracy? Do you think the American populace as a whole is educated enough that such a transparent system would stand for progression rather than regression?	The American system of democracy is deeply flawed, one major reason being that Big Money often controls the process rather than public opinion. PCCC just launched a campaign for citizen-funded elections -- you should join on. Link to pccc.me
Hi, Can you explain why this violation of privacy can lead to more violations in the future? Also, do you know why (besides terrorism) the government is spying us in the first place?	Targeted warrantless wiretapping of 10 years ago was first an illegal outrage, then a (supposedly) legal outrage, then accepted as standard operating procedure.
1) As we saw during the SOPA/PIPA protests, many US lawmakers seemed to lack the technological literacy needed to discuss these issues intelligently and make informed decisions. What efforts are there aimed at educating lawmakers about how technology actually works?	There's lobbying by myriad organizations all of the time. Some of it sticks, some of it doesn't, and we're always outgunned by the interests on the other side.

Last updated: 2013-06-18 12:17 UTC
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