Tag Archive for: exactly

NSA Blew $100 Million On Phone Records Over Five Years, Generated Exactly One Usable Lead

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The telephone metadata program the NSA finally put out to pasture in 2019 was apparently well past its expiration date. Since the initial Snowden leak in 2013, critics have argued the program needed to die since it was obviously the sort of general warrant rummaging (only without the warrant!) the founding fathers headed off with the Fourth Amendment.

The program wasn’t remade/remodeled until the passage of the USA Freedom Act in 2015. That took the phone records away from the NSA and left them at their place of origin — the databases maintained by telcos and other service providers. The government was also required to put forward some sort of articulable suspicion before asking for phone records from telcos.

The NSA was uniquely unprepared to handle these sorts of transactions, having been built from the ground up to collect everything and sort through it later. Now that its searches were more confined, it frequently found itself obtaining more records than it could legally justify having. The cost of compliance managed to outweigh the benefits of the program and the NSA just kind of stopped approaching the FISA court with requests for communications metadata.

Still, proponents argued the program had value — possibly unrealized — and that it should not be written out of existence by the periodic surveillance powers renewal process. I have no idea what they planned to use as evidence for these claims. A new report by Charlie Savage for the New York Times makes it clear even the most obligatory cost-benefit analysis should lead Congressional oversight to question why it allowed the modified Section 215 collection to limp along for another five years.

A National Security Agency system that analyzed logs of Americans’ domestic phone calls and text messages cost $ 100 million from 2015 to 2019, but yielded only a single significant investigation, according to a newly declassified study.

$ 100 million for a single investigation lead. How’s that for ROI? It actually produced two leads, but the other lead was a dead end that terminated an investigation before it could get past its initial stages.

Not only was the program useless, it was also redundant.

It also disclosed that in the four years the Freedom Act system was operational, the National Security Agency produced 15 intelligence reports derived from it. The other 13, however, contained information the F.B.I. had already collected through other means, like ordinary subpoenas to telephone companies.

Killing the program just makes sense. And Congress can do it with during the renewal process for the USA Freedom Act, which expires in March of this year. With this information in the public domain, no one can seriously argue the program should continue to consume tax dollars and provide almost zero usable intel for another five years. Given the fact these agencies can still use subpoenas to target phone records, it would seem far more beneficial for everyone if the NSA and FBI did a bit more targeted snooping, rather than use the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to sweep up Americans’ phone records.

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Good Morning, News: Election Meddling Counter Strike, Christians vs. Trump, and What Is Boxing Day Exactly? – The Portland Mercury

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Good Morning, News: Election Meddling Counter Strike, Christians vs. Trump, and What Is Boxing Day Exactly?  The Portland Mercury
“cyber warfare news” – read more

Needless Trademark Spat In Canada At Least Has Exactly As Polite Ending As You’d Expect

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It probably shouldn’t be all that surprising that there is a decent volume of trademark disputes that occur over restaurant menu items. Somewhat like the craft beer industry, the restaurant industry has for a long, long time looked toward creative output for menu items as a way to stand out. Because there are only so many ways you can name food or a dish, occasionally this creative naming practice causes trademark issues.

A recent example of this occurred in Canada, where multiple diners were making omelettes and calling them “mish-mash.” Beauty’s is a Montreal staple that has served a mish-mash omelette, composed of the normal egg ingredients alongside items like hotdogs, peppers, and salami, for several decades. It was only in 1989, though, that Beauty’s got a trademark on the name. Other diners, such as Cosmos and Bagel Etc., have offered up their own mish-mash omelettes going as far back as the early 1980s. Despite the trademark, there were no disputes over the menu items until this year, when Beauty’s sent C&D notices to several restaurants.

So last month Beauty’s sent out cease-and-desist letters from its lawyers to prevent Cosmo’s and Bagel Etc., among others, from having its trademarked Mish-Mash, or variations of the Mish-Mash name, on their menus.  

Beauty’s has also requested those who use the Mish-Mash name to make a goodwill donation of $ 100 to the Jewish General Hospital.

By all accounts, the C&D notices were as polite and relatively benign as you would expect to come from a Canadian business. Still, it’s worth wondering aloud both why such notices needed to be sent given the peaceful coexistance of these restaurants for decades, as well as whether Beauty’s claim is actually valid, considering the length of time during which it failed to police its trademark at all. Were these other restaurants to decide to argue in court that the term had become generic for Beauty’s lack of policing, it’s hard to see how they wouldn’t win that argument on the merits.

Instead, however, both Cosmos and Bagels Etc. responded with equal congeniality.

Regardless, it’s worth noting that Bagel Etc. and Cosmo’s have agreed to the cease-and-desist demand and have now changed the names of their Mish-Mash creations — with no fuss. The identities of the other eateries affected are not yet known, so it’s not certain if they will challenge.

Furthermore, Bagel Etc. co-owner Simon Rosson has also obliged with the $ 100 donation to the Jewish General Hospital, and even made out his money-order contribution as coming from Beauty’s and not Bagel Etc., so Beauty’s could get the resultant tax receipt.

Rosson has no issue with the Beauty’s request, considering it has the trademark, but wonders, like so many others, why this issue is coming up now.

“I just find it a little weird with the whole lawyer’s letter,” Rosson says. “Just give me a call and I’d do it, no problem.”

And so it all ends with very little fuss. That doesn’t change the facts, however, including that the sudden decision to police a trademark, even politely, is itself annoying.

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