NSA Data Mining Much Larger Than Reported

silassewell writes to tell us The New York Times is reporting that the "volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged." The NSA gained the cooperation of many American telecommunication companies after 9/11 to access streams of communication, both domestic and international, as a part of a presidentially approved program to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity.

Comments

I'll scratch your back...

[ThatGeek]

I've always wondered what huge companies get by turning over data to the Feds. Companies never do anything to "make the world a better place" unless they are getting something in return... reduced regulation? maybe tax reductions?

All I know is that democracy dies behind closed doors. What exactly is going on in this country?

This is EXACTLY why I'm learning Spanish! Costa Rica by the year 2010, baby.

The Network Architecture of Treason

[Ivan Raikov]

Lambert over at CorrenteWire has a pretty interesting article on Internet surveillance by the NSA:

By carefully examining how Republicans parse their statements about Bush's warrantless, openly felonious, and treasonous[1] domestic surveillance program, and combining that with network engineering knowledge available through open sources, alert reader philosophicus has advanced our understanding of the NSA surveillance system Bush set up. Long story short: (1) Internet surveillance is Bush's goal, not voice calls; (2) the Republican "wiretap" talking point is a diversion, to voice, away from from Internet surveillance; (3) Bush's domestic surveillance system would pose no engineering challenges whatever to NSA. No rocket science--or tinfoil hats--required.

Re: KGB

[Black Parrot]

> Is there anybody out there who doubts that Bush is not good for our country?

There's some as to whether he's even in the loop.

When fourth estate fails to hold liars accountable

[NZheretic]

From The Mass Media as Fourth Estate:

The term fourth estate is frequently attributed to the nineteenth century historian Carlyle, though he himself seems to have attributed it to Edmund Burke:

Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important than they all. It is not a figure of speech, or a witty saying; it is a literal fact, .... Printing, which comes necessarily out of Writing, I say often, is equivalent to Democracy: invent Writing, Democracy is inevitable. ..... Whoever can speak, speaking now to the whole nation, becomes a power, a branch of government, with inalienable weight in law-making, in all acts of authority. It matters not what rank he has, what revenues or garnitures: the requisite thing is that he have a tongue which others will listen to; this and nothing more is requisite.

The mainstream media has failed to hold either side accountable for claims that diverge widely from the known facts. The inevitable result is a current administration that, like Nixon, believes it is above the law.

If the first attempt at FUD doesn't work, repeat

[FredThompson]

So...the first attempt by the NYT to create panic about supposed "spying" against American citizens turned out to be a total joke (since it was only international calls between known terrorists and people/numbers inside the U.S.) so they're trying again in an attempt to boost book sales. It's not THAT hard to track the author's names, editor's names, etc. and see that.

Do a little research and you'll find there has always been government monitoring of communication. Think about it a little and you'll realize that an essential part of providing security. There's this little blurb in the founding documents of the U.S. which talks about "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Life is first in the list, before liberty. You can't have liberty if you don't have life and the only way to have life is to protect against those who wish to take it from others.

What's next? They will discover that cell "phones" are actually radios so monitoring isn't that difficult nor subject to the laws which apply to land line telephones? They'll discover it's possible to read the contents of a sealed envelope without reading it? They'll discover most email is non-encrypted?

No, wait, I've got it. They'll "discover" frequent buyer discount cards are actually used to gather customer demographics. Yeah, and Diebold is part of the plot to "spy" on every person in the world.

Oh, yeah, that's a start. Let's also claim the large banks of the world are involved because they monitor credit card use under the guise of looking for fraudulent behavior. (Let's ignore how the Patriot Act allows real-time tracking and reporting of credit card fruad as it happens which has lead to many arrests of the thieves while they're on their shopping sprees.) Yeah, that's good, too.

OK, we've got the leftwing cooks, let's do something to bring in the rightwing cooks. Uh...we'll claim all this data is stored in a giant computer in Switzerland (built by IBM for the Nazis) called The Beast. We can't pull off the number trick which gave the numeric value of 666 to the names Reagan and Hitler this time so we'll claim GWB = 666. Yeah, that's good. Oh, and he drinks raw goat's blood during the full moon while burning black candles. All that churchy stuff is just a cover-up.

Yeah, that about covers it.

--

Honestly, this is just a bunch of stupid FUD. Of course, the American intel monitors communication. So does every other country and intel/security force. This is the real world, not cartoons. The "bad guys" don't stand out and identify themselves.

Re:Ohhhh say can you see ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps its time to remember this quote, which speaks a timeless truth:

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done, and I am Caesar."

-Julius Caesar

It's dead Jim, but it has been for a while.

[nbahi15]

I know that it is typical for the Slashdot libertarian crowd to have an aversion, almost knee-jerk reaction, to any privacy related issue, we Slashdot liberals feel the same. Bush has once again crossed the line, but as a neo-pinko liberal I am not surprised, I am not even particularly annoyed. My disgust with the United States and its inability to provide an open inclusive society runs far deeper than this single incident. I am annoyed with Missle Defense, drilling in ANWR, Intelligent Design, pro-life, pro-death penalty, secret prisons, prisoner abuse, tying iraq to terror, no child left behind, get tough on immigration, get tough on crime, christian coalition, anti-welfare, anti-healthcare, anti-gun control, pro-business, anti-environment, crap. Really the entire political dialogue of the so-called United States has been broken for years, and Bush certainly doesn't see anything less than absolute god-granted carte blanche on the war on terror. Remember this guy doesn't answer to the voter, he answers to god. So my question is when can we vote on the new constitution, because I feel that I am the one living in Iraq, but I don't have the excuse of invasion?

How is the data used?

[wasted]

The real privacy concerns to me are whether the NSA is sharing this information to be used by others for purposes other than those used to justify the monitoring. For instance, if they hear that I have a real big order of yeast and barley malt enroute from one company, and a lot of lab equipment on order from another company, will they alert the ATF that I have just ordered the necessary ingredients and supplies to start distillng alcohol? Although illegal where I reside, a still is not a security risk, and passing on that type of information seems to me to be the greater privacy risk, and goes against the whole reason for the monitoring in the first place. Of course, others may disagree, and no, I don't have a still.

Re:How is the data used?

[keraneuology]

Rumors have it that information obtained by the NSA is routinely passed along to US corporations to assist them in obtaining contracts. Read here.

Oh, he probably does.

[jd]

Unfortunately, Dubya also understands what it means to have majorities in both houses, soon to be the Supreme Court as well. It means that the odds of an impeachment crossing BOTH houses AND surviving an appeal would be next to nil. Especially as he is popular with the extreme right and it's the extreme right that'll probably decide 2006' elections. After that point, impeachment proceedings would last longer than the remaining presidential term.

In short, there's absolutely nothing anybody can do about him. There are no effective safeguards and no meaningful counterbalances for this kind of situation. The best any moderate can hope for is that both the 2006 and 2008 elections are decided by great enough margins towards those who want effective safeguards, that it'll be as easy to stabilize and secure the system then as it has been for the current administration to corrupt it.

My personal preference would be for a constitutional amendment that added a wholly new branch of Government - outside the Executive, Legislative and Judicial - that has all the necessary powers, clearances, means and protections to investigate corruption at absolutely any level in every branch of Government. That is it. That is all it would do. Just investigate. Because it was independent of all other branches, it would not have political appointments made to it, could not be ordered to stop, or indeed even ordered to start. The power of such a body is not in what it could do, but in what it could know.

Government is often corruptible, not because it is powerful - most humans are powerful over something in their lives, but aren't necessarily abusive - but because few in Government have any reason to believe anyone'll know about it. The moment you can guarantee that (a) someone WILL know about it - no matter how classified the information, and (b) they're utterly protected against reprisals if they talk, then those in power will be much less likely to step over the line. (And, if they do genuinely feel as though they have to, they're going to put every ounce of effort into establishing WHY no alternatives are viable, because they WILL be asked questions later.)

Re:Oh, he probably does.

[SilverspurG]

My personal preference would be for a constitutional amendment that added a wholly new branch of Government - outside the Executive, Legislative and Judicial

Given the size and scope, much of it unconstitutional, of our current government the best answer can not possibly be more government. The only way to fix bloatware is to hack it down.

Re:If the first attempt at FUD doesn't work, repea

[Sri Ramkrishna]

Nobody is arguing that intel on communications is a bad thing. The real news is bypassing the courts to make sure that what and who they are spying on is legitimate. For instance, we don't want them spying on democrats in order to get the jump on them politically so that they can consistently stay in power by being to outmanuever them. Information is power, and how they get that information should be regulated.

Secondly, if the President can do all this. Why bother with a the patriot act at all? Seems like he has all the power he needs to do what he's doing. Thirdly, he told the American public that he's going to the court to do wire-tapping. Now we find out thats not whats going on at all. Somebody isn't playing straight with us. That's the news. The NSA/FBI/CIA spying is not news and that I agree with you.

sri

Re:Who cares what the (out-of-touch) NYT thinks?

[Hartree]

Interesting that the parent gets modded "troll". Slashdot modding at its best.

Note that "for years now" should be "for decades now".

Stick the term "NSA line eater" into google groups and see the output in 1986.

Echelon has been around a long time, people. It's been pretty widely known for a long time as well.

It's fine to debate whether the program is wise, or legal, or whether it should be legal. But implying this is something relatively new and shocking is reminiscent of Claude Raines in Casablanca.

The more interesting question is, what were the specifics of the bypassing of the FIS court, and what the reasons for that were. Was there a new interpretation for the existing exceptions, or did the increasing ability of technology turn an existing exception into something beyond the original intent of FISA? This isn't clear to me. Frankly, this is a case where details matter, and they are quite lacking.

As is common, those that know the full story aren't talking, and that that are talking, largely don't know the full story.