How many “Hops” does it take to include EVERYONE? Does the NSA only go "3 hops" as they now claim?

[rhett o rick]

Now the NSA has changed their tune (read modified their lies) to say that they only look at data that involves those that are in a “third hop query” from suspects.

"Hops" refers to a technical term indicating connections between people. A three-hop query means that the NSA can look at data not only from a suspected terrorist, but from everyone that suspect communicated with, and then from everyone those people communicated with, and then from everyone all of those people communicated with.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/17/nsa-surveillance-house-hearing

Of course each “hop” increases the number of suspects geometrically (or is it exponentially?). So if we assume that the number of “suspects” includes all those that protest as well as those that encrypt their emails, etc. and then multiply that by the number of each of their contacts, and then multiply that again by the number of “their” contacts, the number of individuals gets very high. I hope we have a mathematician among us to help me out here. Would a fourth hop include the entire population of the USofA?

Some questions come to mind:

1. What makes it legal to analyze individual’s data out to three “hops”? The Constitution doesn’t even mention “hops”. The FISA law neither.

2. What limits the NSA or Booz-Allen to three “hops”? They lied about the two hops, are they now lying about the three hops?

3. Then there is the ‘hugh’ elephant in the room that is just now being recognized.

“The statute says 'collection'," congressman Jerrold Nadler told Cole. "You're trying to confuse us by talking use."

This is a very important point. Remember when Gen Clapper was being interviewed by a reporter (he struggled with his lies to Sen Wyden so he thought he’d use a reporter to massage his lies). He revealed a great deal that was missed by most. He said that the data was like a library and the NSA only looked at a book here and there when they needed to but with specific FISA authority (which we are learning was another lie. It now appears that the NSA is looking at lots of books in the library and haven’t explained where they are specifically getting the authority). Back to the elephant. Clapper was speaking of "use" and not "collection". The bigger story that is being ignored so far is the collection of data. Who puts the library together? How many Americans are in the library? And has all the data (each and every book) been analyzed on every American? To reword the big question. Does the NSA have to analyze the data on specific individuals when selected? Or has Booz-Allen already have a “library” of analyzed data on everyone?

4. Who has the "library"? Booz-Allen-Hamilton? What a powerful tool.

5. Do entities other than the NSA have access to the "library"? Maybe Bank of America, for example?

Of course all this would go away if we simply could prosecute Snowden. Sorry couldnt pass up the

[leveymg]

1. They already do. There's 117K names in the NSA "terrorist" list. Times 3 hops is over a billion

profiling investigations the agency would have performed. That's basically every adult in America and one-in-six phones in the world.

[rhett o rick]

5. Yikes. Thanks for the data. nm

[leftstreet]

2. Meh. I thought this post was about beer

DURec

Interesting Guardian article, thanks for posting it

[rhett o rick]

6. If you like hops, you will love Silver City Brewery's Whoop Ass Double IPA.

8.5% alcohol and 85 IBU's. I prefer their Saint Florian India Pale Ale at 55 IBU's and 6.9% alcohol.

http://www.silvercitybrewery.com/restaurant/beer.htm

The NSA should try "double hopping" beer in lieu of Amerikans.

[pinboy3niner]

7. I fermently hop you have realized your mistake

And another K&R.

[rhett o rick]

15. I'm alerting. I think korney violates community standards or something.

[pinboy3niner]

16. Are you accusing me of being a cereal violator?

[rhett o rick]

22. No, I am not even sure that cereal can be violated. No I was objecting to your hopping into this

thread. Next thing we know you'll be malting.

[pinboy3niner]

23. Then I guess we shall remain at lager heads on this

But despite our differences, I Amstel your friend.

[rhett o rick]

24. This discussion is starting to make me ale.

[cascadiance]

3. Kevin Bacon and everyone who plays that game must feel "in play"...

[Buns_of_Fire]

21. That's why they've self-restricted themselves to three hops.

They know that once they've hit six hops, everything on earth eventually leads to Kevin Bacon, and once he's been arrested, all their funding will dry up since there's no further need for their services.

[dickthegrouch]

4. Any two randomly selected people on the planet can be connected in 6 hops

What'll kill the NSA efforts is all the spam that's flying around. After opening the wrong mail a few years ago I now receive about 10 sexual spams a day on average. There's hundreds of thousands of email accounts that last only for minutes while pumping out this barrage of unwanted mail. If the NSA's filters are as bad as my ISP's, they don't stand a chance.

However, nothing makes it legal to analyze even the original subject's mail WITHOUT A FUCKING WARRANT. No amount of constitutional scholar spin :contempt: will ever make me change my mind on that.

I call on our Constitutional scholar to restore the order in the "Nation of Laws" and GET A FUCKING WARRANT.

[rhett o rick]

8. I am sure Booz-Allen's computers can deal with spam.

With respect, getting a "warrant" isnt enough. We've seen one warrant that basically said, "You have authority to gather all data on everyone." I am picking on that because some here claim, "if you have a warrant, it's legal." Not if the warrant is not per the law.

[dickthegrouch]

10. Picky, Picky

What I meant was GET A FUCKING VALID WARRANT that complies with the law written in the 4th amendment, i.e. one that names me, covers the specific things to be searched for and specific places to be searched and is signed by a judge. Is that comprehensive enough?

[rhett o rick]

13. Oh my! I didnt intend to insult. I think it's an important point that

simply "getting a warrant" is vastly different than "getting a valid warrant". I wasnt aiming this clarification at you, but at the nitwits that use the rational that spying covered by a warrant is legal. NO, it must be a valid warrant.

[snooper2]

9. "Hops" refers to a technical term indicating connections between people."

mkay-

The Guardian is trying to get all techy now...well, not really
Also, nobody ever answered my question about the multiple call legs from months ago. I guess the NSA has 5-20 copies of every single phone call LOL



Diagnostic Responses for Session Initiation Protocol Hop Limit Errors
draft-ietf-sip-hop-limit-diagnostics-03

Abstract

The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) imposes a limit on the number
of hops a request can transit on the way to its destination. When
this limit is reached, a 483 (Too Many Hops) error response is
returned. The present form of the 483 response does not provide
enough information for the UAC or proxy on the path to diagnose



Lawrence, et al. Expires December 18, 2006 [Page 1]

Internet-Draft Diagnostics for SIP 483 Hop Limit Errors June 2006


failures whose symptom is that the hop limit is reached. This
document specifies additional diagnostic information to be returned
in a 483 response.


Table of Contents

1. Conventions and Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Diagnosing Hop Limit Exceeded Failures . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1. Limitations of the 483 Error Response . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.2. Improved Diagnostic Information in Responses . . . . . . . 5
3. Proxy Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.1. Pruning Responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4. UAS Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5. UAC Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
6. Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
9.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
9.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . . . 17

2. Diagnosing Hop Limit Exceeded Failures

The SIP protocol imposes a limit on the number of hops a request can
transit on the way to its destination. The number of hops remaining
for the request is carried in the Max-Forwards header, and is
decremented each time the request is forwarded. When a SIP User
Agent receives a request whose Max-Forwards is zero (0), it returns a
483 error response to indicate that the limit was reached.

The 483 response alone does not provide enough information for the
originating UAC to determine where the problem lies. The problem is
rarely that the target of the request was actually further away than
the Max-Forwards limit allowed. The problem is usually incorrect
routing; often a routing loop.

2.1. Limitations of the 483 Error Response

Section 20.22 of RFC 3261 [RFC3261] says:

The Max-Forwards header field must be used with any SIP method to
limit the number of proxies or gateways that can forward the
request to the next downstream server. This can also be useful
when the client is attempting to trace a request chain that
appears to be failing or looping in mid-chain.

In practice, there is too little information returned in a 483
response for it to be of much use as a diagnostic tool. When a
request has traversed a series of proxies, the response follows the
Vias back to the requester - in the case of a typical 483 response it
can be difficult to determine even what server the response came
from. Even when the rejecting server does identify itself, it can be
difficult to figure out why the request got there.

The following is an actual example request; the IP addresses and
domain names have been changed, but it is otherwise complete (it was
intentionally sent without SDP for brevity):

INVITE sip [e-mail] SIP/2.0
Via: SIP/2.0/TCP 10.1.1.20:59449
;branch=z9hG4bK-56ec69968c31f498c9a5573a00c8fc04
To: sip [e-mail]
From: Sip Send <sip:sipsend@10.1.1.20>;tag=08e2f515
Call-ID: 159213b1aa5a67bc6eca6c4c2bad9f94@10.1.1.20
Cseq: 1 INVITE
Max-Forwards: 1
User-Agent: sipsend/0.02
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 20:09:29 GMT
Content-Length: 0



Lawrence, et al. Expires December 18, 2006 [Page 4]

Internet-Draft Diagnostics for SIP 483 Hop Limit Errors June 2006


This request was sent with the Max-Forwards header field value set to
only 1 to force the error response: it should traverse only the first
outbound proxy, and then be rejected by the next system that it
encounters.

The response received in this case was:

SIP/2.0 483 Too Many Hops
Via: SIP/2.0/TCP 10.1.1.20:59449
;branch=z9hG4bK-56ec69968c31f498c9a5573a00c8fc04
To: sip [e-mail];tag=-1574266585
From: Sip Send <sip:sipsend@10.1.1.20>;tag=08e2f515
Call-ID: 159213b1aa5a67bc6eca6c4c2bad9f94@10.1.1.20
Cseq: 1 INVITE
Content-Length: 0


There is no indication in the response of what server returned the
error. Even with the error only one hop beyond the first proxy,
there is no way to determine if that first proxy has routed the
request incorrectly.

more if you want to know about "hop"

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-sip-hop-limit-diagnostics-03

[Pholus]

11. According to Atlantic Wire, a study showed 4.75 hops connects everyone on the internet.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/07/nsa-admits-it-analyzes-more-peoples-data-previously-revealed/67287/

I guess that means the average American internet user is closely connected to:

(313 million)^(1/4.75) = 61 other Americans.

Sounds reasonable.

And that if someone considered the average American and then did a three link metadata search on them that means how many people had their data analyzed as possible co-conspirators?

(61)^3 ~ 250000 suspects

I guess I can see why they need computers and would rather work without the warrant thingie...

[rhett o rick]

17. They think they dont need a warrant to "collect" data, only to "use" the data. nm

[Pholus]

19. Isn't it more nuanced than that?

I thought that the warrant is for examination of the data by a human. Software is allowed to troll the data as long as our "identities" are protected.

That is the creepiest thing to me about the whole affair. The idea that all US citizens will be held to the precepts of "big data" where a deviation from the expected average behavior becomes suspicious in and of itself.

Enforced conformity -- one way to keep large numbers of proles in line.

[rhett o rick]

20. Bad analogy time. It's as if they tell the American people that video cameras

are going to record their every move, even in their homes, BUT it wont be viewed unless there is a good reason. (or unless someone hacks the system, or unless the company that has position of the videos decides to sell them to someone, or....).

Of course the "good reason" will be overseen by Congress (who mostly dont give a shit and/or cant oversee anything because it's all classified) and overseen by the FISA Court (which is made up of hard line conservatives that are totally in the pocket of the spy agencies).

End of bad analogy.

I bet Bank of America would pay big bucks to get a list of Americans that participated in the "Move Your Money" campaign. People that actually moved their money, people that protested outside BoA, people that blogged about it, people that discussed it in emails, etc.

[woo me with science]

12. The desperation is full tilt now by the government.

Last edited Fri Jul 19, 2013, 05:44 PM - Edit history (1)

One hop, two hops, three hops. Fucking absurd. What desperation to try to simultaneously pretend that their dragnet has limits *and* explain why millions are being spied on. Even if the "criteria" for looking at the data in the library were stringent instead of utterly meaningless, they have no right to sweep up everything into a library in the first place.

Former AF intelligence agent and whistleblower, Tice: They are "collecting everything."

"NSA, today, is collecting everything -- including content -- of every digital communication in this country, both computer and phone, and that information is being stored indefinitely," Tice said. "And that's something that they're lying about."

Former counterterrorism agent, Clemente:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57589495-38/nsa-spying-flap-extends-to-contents-of-u.s-phone-calls/

"Former FBI counterterrorism agent Tim Clemente told CNN last month that, in national security investigations, the bureau can access records of a previously made telephone call. "All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not," he said. Clemente added in an appearance the next day that, thanks to the "intelligence community" -- an apparent reference to the NSA -- "there's a way to look at digital communications in the past.""

[rhett o rick]

14. I am glad that Congress is taking some interest but they still are not asking the correct questions.

The information about the third hop is a distraction and most likely another lie.

What is the extent of the data being COLLECTED? Not just what's being looked at by the NSA, but how much data on how many people is being COLLECTED?

What are the sources of the data being collected?

Who is doing the collecting? Booz-Allen?

Who is doing the compilations and analysis of data?

Is all of the collected data being compiled and analyzed?

Who can access the data?

What specific laws apply here?

Does Snowden where briefs or boxers?

[KoKo]

18. Might even be a "low estimate" of the HOPS...

That's the worry.

[woo me with science]

25. It's a total fabrication, IMO.

They are making up explanations in desperation now, IMO.

They are in the impossible position of needing to produce some "rules" by which they are ostensibly restricting the spying, while simultaneously explaining why they are spying on MILLIONS of people. The "hopping" is the best they have come up with so far.

They are collecting everything, and they have been exercising access indiscriminately. I believe the whistleblowers over these lying authoritarians, any day of the week. And in addition to the whistleblowers I quoted above, Dianne Feinstein has also already let slip that they can access content after the fact.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57589495-38/nsa-spying-flap-extends-to-contents-of-u.s-phone-calls/

We have been lied to brazenly and incessantly. Anyone throwing out bombast that "it's only metadata" at this point is either willfully ignorant or working the propaganda hard. The upshot is:

"Collect it all."

The Crux of the NSA Story in One Phrase: 'Collect It All'
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023261311

[Fumesucker]

26. Six degrees of separation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation

[Vinnie From Indy]

27. Can't you just see them in your mind right now...

"Sir, They just went one more hop" said specialist Jones looking up from the bank of monitors in front of him to the watch officer perched on a captian's chair behind him.
"God dammit to hell" said Captian Smith throwing down his headset. Rubbing his eyes he leans back in his captain's chair and sighs deeply.
"That makes four hops doesn't Jones" he asked still rubbing his eyes.
"Yes Sir" replied Jones.
"Alright! Go ahead and shut her down" he said while wondering how many old people, puppies and children would be killed because of those damn hippies and liberal politicians in DC endlessly sqawking about the Bill of Rights or some other stupid shit. Damn them to hell he thought.

[GreenStormCloud]

28. In three hops most networks will bend in on themselves.

The posters who are posted the huge numbers that can be reached in three hops are assuming that each hop brings in a new person. In the real world calls cluster into nodes of contacts that tend to call within the organization a lot. Call tracking won't be of much use against a well organized group that is well funded. They will know how to do electronic security. What it can catch are those who are not yet recruited into a hard-core group . The soft-core supporters can be discovered by these means.

The potential for abuse of that much data gathering ability is still immense.

[KoKo]

29. People see "Hops" and think that "3 Hops" is of no concern...yet....

It's what's SECRET about the NEXT HOPS that are the Decider.. imho.

[rhett o rick]

30. The number of hops is a distraction. They should have been asked, how many Americans have you

collected data on?