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The NSA Knows Who You've Called
Jamie adds: Traditionally, the devices which record dialed phone numbers are called pen registers, and trap-and-trace devices. The ECPA provided some legal privacy protection. It was controversial when Section 214 of the Patriot Act amended 50 USC 1842 to allow the FBI to record this information with minimal oversight. The Department of Justice has been required for some time to report to Congress the number of pen registers and trap-and-traces, though in recent years [PDF, see question 10] it declared that information classified.
If anyone has information about how the NSA, as opposed to the FBI, has been involved in domestic phone number collection, please post links in the discussion.
In related news, the National Security Agency has closed down an inquiry into the so-called "Terrorist Surveillance Program," a separate program from this one, by refusing to grant security clearance to the lawyers in the Department of Justice. The NSA and the DoJ are both established under the executive.
Thank goodness the UK isn't planning anything like that.
One (TLA) word for you: GCHQ.
Think NSA without the silly "no-domestic-spying" rule.
Have a nice day.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Not that big a deal. All of these companies already maintain similar databases for marketing purposes. ATT has had a database of over a decade's worth of long distance calls up and running for about 10 years. We're talking 10's of terabytes. This used to be awe-inspiring - now its just cool.
Mostly because it is the ultimate example of citizen rights and the rights granted under the constitution. It has always been true that governments understand that it is difficult for the populace to rise up if they are denied the tools with which to do so.
The right to keep and bear arms is indeed an acknowledgement that a mere 200+ years ago this country was won with arms used to rise up against an oppresive government (you've gotten much better, UK ;) and that the time may come again when action is necessary. Removal of this right - in the US, anyway - is the final straw against the very method that a common people used to win the independence of this nation.
And that's why we hold this right so very dear.
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
It's not a very large number either (not as low as 6 though)
Actually, in the book Linked it was argued that the degrees of separation are generally less than 6. The older model created by Erdos and Renyi (random) was an attempt at mapping a completely random network. This was the predominant model used by many until Duncan Watts and Steven Strogantz (clustered) offered a different approach that showed a relatively small number of social links were sufficient to drastically reduce the distance of one person to another across the world.
I can't remember who introduced the idea of connector social nodes off the top of my head, but this idea contradictided the previous two models. The idea that a connector node, a social node that had a disproportionate amount of connections to many other nodes, was not possible in the random or cluster models - yet it was an accurate description of social networks and how they function. If I remember correctly, this meant that people were generally about 3 degrees separated from each other, they were just unaware of the relationships they needed to utilize to make the connection in that short a span of hops.
Article the sixth [Amendment IV]
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Go for it. In fact, anyone who wants to use what I wrote is free to do so. The more the merrier.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Just to make sure we understand one another, by far the majority of people over here think that's a big, big plus.
Incidentally, we did have the head of our police on the radio the other day clarifying what you can do if you find a burglar in your house: hit him as hard as possible with the biggest thing you can find (eg baseball bat, golf club etc). This seems sufficient to me.
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Having a gun in the house is no more dangerous than having a kitchen
knife in the house. Having a gun in my hand is an excellent deterrant
to those who might want to take advantage of me or my property.
If everybody were armed, society would be a lot more polite.
*sigh* back to work...
On a related spooky note, the department of Immigration and Naturalization already tracks vehicles (via an automated photo matching system) driving both directions at their (highly unconstitutional) "checkpoints". On the way towards the border you drive through an array of cameras over the highway, on the way back you stop at the checkpoint. I'm not talking about crossing the border here...I'm talking about getting within 50 miles of it and getting searched just because you drove to the most southern part of this country.
The telephone company, at police request, installed at its central offices a pen register to record the numbers dialed from the telephone at petitioner's home. Prior to his robbery trial, petitioner moved to suppress "all fruits derived from" the pen register. The Maryland trial court denied this motion, holding that the warrantless installation of the pen register did not violate the Fourth Amendment. Petitioner was convicted, and the Maryland Court of Appeals affirmed.
Held:
The installation and use of the pen register was not a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and hence no warrant was required. Pp. 739-746.
SMITH v. MARYLAND
Where I'm from (New Zealand)...We don't have no NSA, FBI, CIA...
No, you have the GCSB. NZ is extremely close with the US and others on intelligence activities. There are no tighter partners than this group: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA
Perhaps you don't know about this because your papers only report cats stuck in trees.
This information can already be bought from telephone companies by anyone. The NSA asked for and recieved the information. They didn't demand it from the companies or force them to hand it over. QWest even refused to do so without a warrant and the others could have done the same.
This is a story more about companies handing out personal information then what the NSA is up to.
See:
AMERICAblog just bought General Wesley Clark's cell phone records for $89.95
Stupid things kids do.
Here's a brilliant article by the equally brilliant Malcolm Gladwell, discussing the original six degrees research, the social connector aspects of it, and how they apply to social interaction in general. I don't know that he introduced the idea but he sure did do a good intro and summary.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
The NSA was never banned from domestic spying. The CIA was. but the NSA was used throughout the 1970's to spy on drug lords becuase they were not limited in wiretapping payphones like everyone else was.
Go read the Puzzle Palace for an interesting history of the NSA. The NSA was always allowd to operate and spy in the USA. It is nothing new.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/domestic_spying;_ylt=Al tzCvZmCXzQ.QsFg5wYT2Os0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBH NlYwN0bQ--
By DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press Writer Thu May 11, 6:59 AM ET
The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance to probe the matter.
The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, sent a fax to Rep. Maurice Hinchey (news, bio, voting record), D-N.Y., on Wednesday saying they were closing their inquiry because without clearance their lawyers cannot examine Justice lawyers' role in the program.
"We have been unable to make any meaningful progress in our investigation because OPR has been denied security clearances for access to information about the NSA program," OPR counsel H. Marshall Jarrett wrote to Hinchey. Hinchey's office shared the letter with The Associated Press.
Jarrett wrote that beginning in January, his office has made a series of requests for the necessary clearances. Those requests were denied Tuesday.
"Without these clearances, we cannot investigate this matter and therefore have closed our investigation," wrote Jarrett.
Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the terrorist surveillance program "has been subject to extensive oversight both in the executive branch and in Congress from the time of its inception."
Roehrkasse noted the OPR's mission is not to investigate possible wrongdoing in other agencies, but to determine if Justice Department lawyers violated any ethical rules. He declined to comment when asked if the end of the inquiry meant the agency believed its lawyers had handled the wiretapping matter ethically.
Hinchey is one of many House Democrats who have been highly critical of the domestic eavesdropping program first revealed in December. He said lawmakers would push to find out who at the NSA denied the Justice Department lawyers security clearance.
"This administration thinks they can just violate any law they want, and they've created a culture of fear to try to get away with that. It's up to us to stand up to them," said Hinchey.
In February, the OPR announced it would examine the conduct of its own agency's lawyers in the program, though they were not authorized to investigate NSA activities.
Bush's decision to authorize the largest U.S. spy agency to monitor people inside the United States, without warrants, generated a host of questions about the program's legal justification.
The administration has vehemently defended the eavesdropping, saying the NSA's activities were narrowly targeted to intercept international calls and e-mails of Americans and others inside the U.S. with suspected ties to the al-Qaida terror network.
Separately, the Justice Department sought last month to dismiss a federal lawsuit accusing the telephone company AT&T of colluding with the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program.
The lawsuit, brought by an Internet privacy group, does not name the government as a defendant, but the Department of Justice has sought to quash the lawsuit, saying it threatens to expose government and military secrets.
___
On the Net:
Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility: http://www.usdoj.gov/opr/index.html
National Security Agency: http://www.nsa.gov/home_html.cfm
Can you give me a stand Kerry is firm on?
Didn't think so.
The democrats are for larger government and openly say it.
The republicans say they aren't for larger government but do it anyway.
To hell with both of them.
Democrats want my money to give, GIVE they say, to some lazy ass bum that doesn't want to work.
I'm not happy with either of the 2 large parties but I dislike the democrats more because of entitlement and redistribution of income.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
Quoting USA Today:
So: the NSA asks for a massive database of call records, not limited to a specific group of people, without a warrant. Qwest asks them to please take it to the FISA court. The NSA refuses on the grounds that the FISA court might say no. (Note: the approval rate for FISA requests is signfigantly higher than 99%.)
As I said. The current administration simply does not want to be constrained by the rule of law.
So a joe-blow that maxes out his three credit cards on frivolous junk is less of a credit risk than me if he pays the minimum payments every month, according to the credit industry.
For the CCs it is a risk/reward scenario. A consistent minimum payer is the holy grail of the credit card industry. Even if they go bankrupt after five years without paying off the initial balance, the credit card people would make as much or more money off them than they would make off a person who uses their cards as little as possible and pays them in full all the time.
Second, consumer debt is not even close to the primary cause of bankruptcy. The fact is that CRA/IRS can and will pretty much arbitrarily assess you penalties and interest far in excess of any consumer debt you might owe (almost every section in the Canadian Income Tax Act includes something to the effect of "...or if we say so.". I suspect the US Act is similar). That means that the odds of a person defaulting on their debt is largely independent of their borrowing habits.
47 U.S.C. 222 makes it illegal for communications service providers to disclose customer proprietary network information (calling records fall under this category) without a court order. No court order was issued compelling the telcos to cooperate with the NSA. They did it voluntarily. The absence of a court order means that the telcos broke the law.
That is the legitimate complaint.
Despite what EULAs say, most software is sold, not licensed.
I am from Florida, we never really voted for him to start with!
You morons couldn't figure out how to vote...you get no sympathy....
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I am not a USian, but surely it should be clear to all USians that your president has overstepped the bounds of his office. He should be impeached.
meh