Indeed. But nothing in these slides suggests that this stuff wasn't used that way. In contrast to PRISM a lot of the techniques Jacob presented seem like they would only be useful for targeted work. The crucial question of where those targets are located and how many there actually are is left open. That is what makes me uncomfortable about this sort of presentation. I'm concerned that it does real harm to legitimate intelligence programs by conflating them with unrelated mass internet surveillance programs.

> But nothing in these slides suggests that this stuff wasn't used that way.

that's true of course. but i'm afraid that the revelations of the past months have almost turned "jumping to conclusions" into a legitimate response to this kind of information.

When terrorism in the big concern, droid strikes are used against real threats. General espionage is used to figure out what the real threats are.

I guess they'd still be hoovering up everything they could, just in case, if it weren't for the threat of terrorism. Public opinion is strategically important (if a foreign power starts a war, how will their people react?), but it wouldn't be so important.

> droid strikes

Next on the NSA revelations list: A backdoor software "implant" capable of exploiting holes in everything from Froyo to KitKat, and which subverts the device's power management circuitry, such that a remote command can short-circuit and overheat the battery. Results, and especially the likelihood of explosion, depend strongly on battery capacity and charge state, but in-house testing suggests probability of fire should be ca. 95%+ across all device models susceptible to the implant.

(Speaking of which: "Implant", I like that choice of term, it's got just the cyberpunk flavor today's world needs.)

true, but as we've come to see, a big proportion of the spying efforts of the NSA are being directed towards information gathering, for various other reasons than threat assessment. e.g. i don't think many people would have believed the NSA to be spying on US allies, or being involved in industrial espionage.