My suggestion to Namecheap (and other domain registrars or hosting companies) would be to lock them all down if possible, force all users to change the passwords from e-mail or other contact method before they can login again. We don't know what they have and we don't know what their plans are. This is a gaping security hole in the internet.

Reports at the time were that they stole billions of passwords, so why only target the domain registrar? This could be a sign of worse things to come, how many accounts have they accessed without alerting an IDS, and what are they doing once they gain entry. By starting with the domain registrars, they could gain much more information than even their previous massive trove of user data. This is highly troubling.

The intersection of linguistics and technology is fascinating and all, but 90% of the "natural language" data on the internet is sarcasm and/or trolls. Perhaps when the Secret Service finishes up their "sarcasm detector" they can partner up with IBM and be super villains together.

Does it matter? In my opinion, the fact that they can't provide evidence of usage that could be independently verified is absurd.

My opinion? In short - because we as a society have completely lost touch with reality. Many either 1. don't care, 2. don't know, or 3. are complicit. The conversation is going on, but not everyone wants to get up off the couch to come to the table. It's a complex issue that requires more than 140 characters; it requires thought about consequences and compromise - I've found that not many people are really interested in thinking deeply about these things.

So there are some that haven't been identified as US persons and floating around the database? Also how does searching for a minimized record work - ex. would it still come up in a search if you typed the name/number even if it is masked?

Icreach user here. The records are not dossiers, but call metadata, as in this number called this other number. Or did you think there were 850 billion people on earth? Also, congress mandated NSA shared data after 9/11, and icreach was the answer.

Not sure if this is satire or not, but if you have actually used ICReach I am curious about how easy it is to get information on U.S. citizens through the databases with "minimization" etc

I think the most frightening thing about parallel construction is how few shits the officers appear to give about it (from the article). "But two senior DEA officials defended the program, and said trying to "recreate" an investigative trail is not only legal but a technique that is used almost daily." or "Parallel construction is a law enforcement technique we use every day," one official said. "It's decades old, a bedrock concept." - since when is my question.