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Latest Revelations on the FBI's Data Mining of America
An anonymous reader writes "You probably already knew that the FBI was data mining Americans in the "search" for potential terrorists, but did you know that they're also supposed to be looking for people in the U.S. engaged in criminal activity that is not really supposed to be the province of the federal government? Now the feds are alleged to be data mining for insurance fraudsters, identity thieves, and questionable online pharmacists. That's what they're telling us now. What else could they be looking for that they are not telling us about?"
People comiting "moral crimes".
They have a history of blackmail using that sort of thing.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
I've been assuming that since before they admitted they were using it to look for terrorist.
thats right, I rarely use capitals. deal with it. but don't mistake my laziness for stupidity
Is there anyone who doubts that Karl Rove has the wiretaps indexed for the most effective political control of both his Republican "friends" and Democratic enemies? I'm sure Rove knows who you are.
--
make install -not war
Except when the leakers is thier boss in the White House, then they work to discredit and intimidate the whistle blowers.
If they're able to form a behaviour pattern from that and provide it to the state law enforcement agencies the I say that it would be okay.
As long as the FBI removed any individual identifying info (names, aliases, addresses, etc). Even in their database.
Fuck you, Boyd. What is "lawfully acquired" varies with the laws passed. When a private person does it, we often refer to that as "stalking" and it is illegal.
There's never been a power given to a federal agency that its members haven't immediately sought to abuse. But the same goes for state, local, federal government of all stripes, insurance agencies, organized religions, etc. It's human nature. Power will be abused so it's just common sense to restrict it as much as possible.
When the FBI honchos go wringing their hands and lamenting over all the crimes they could have prevented if only they had more powers, the first question should be "why aren't you able to do your job with the resources you have?" Throw more money and more powers at the problem and you'll just get the same song and dance during the next budget hearing.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Pardon my conspiracy theory, but hasn't the government been spying on us, well, forever? Sure, legally it's a faux pas, but an "Echelon" type system must exist by now if it has not been with us since the dawn of the computer age. I say privacy is pretty much a thing of the past. Everyone wants everything NOW and WIRELESS. Pretty much in the next 10 years just about everything will be wireless. This means that a conversations/data will be able to be plucked out of the air by just about anyone (as is being done now.)
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
The FBI^W Gestapo is trying to find people breaking the law? This must be stopped!!!
The FBI^W KGB is trying to find people breaking the law? This must be stopped!!!
The FBI^W CIA is trying to find people breaking the law? This must be stopped!!!
The FBI^W FBI is trying to find people breaking the law? This must be stopped!!!
There, fixed that for you, asshole.
The law is what "Big Brother" says it is. Try to pay attention, will you??
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
No, no.
Data mining does not necessarily mean that each and every data must be exact. Data mining is creating probability relationships in large populations.
There are mathematical and statistical methods where data can be obscured whilst the data mining still be accurate. Look up the field of privacy preserving data mining.
My point is that it is possible to data mine whilst preserving privacy. Privacy and benefits of data mining and not mutually exclusive.
I would argue that the vast majority of liberals in America aren't trying to push central planning aspects of socialism.
Not to mention the fact that data mining like this would be a pretty ineffective way to do it.
Yeah, insurance fraud, identity theft and questionable online pharmacies aren't matters for federal law enforcement, because they don't cross state li... oh, wait.
*plonk*
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Aren't all of these 5 categories of data they are looking into correlated with prior terrorist conduct?
- Identity theft? Check - think some of the 9/11 driver's licenses.
- The other four categories of fraudulent monetary theft? Check - think past uses by terrorist asshats of, for example, counterfeit money to fund their violent activities.
If catching and stopping terrorism is the goal, then using these investigative methods certainly should sound reasonable to any observant lay person like us.
Is that our lives are becoming more and more transparent to the government, but the government is becoming more and more opaque to us. This is the exact opposite of how it should be and should be a huge flashing warning light to everyone.
One reaction to abuse of governmental power is to restrict it as much as possible. The other is to have transparency in government and checks and balances. The secrecy of the current administration is a dangerous precedent, even if you agree with their policies. They should be working for us and shouldn't be able to hide so much of their work. Thankfully we have things like the FOIA and the Sunlight Foundation. Checks and balances are part of the foundation of our system of government. Again, the current administration's "unitary executive" theory is a dangerous precedent.
No, the data Amazon collects results primarily from my voluntary interactions with it. Thus, if Amazon abuses my trust, I can sever my relationship with it.
The government, on the other hand, retrieves this data without my consent and has the power to coerce me.
There's a big difference between those two scenarios.
This is the FBI, not the NSA or CIA.
WTF do you think we pay the FBI to do? Sit on their asses?
Maybe you think we should disband the FBI? Maybe the state police, county sherifs, and city cops too?
Sorry, anarchy doesn't work so well. Anarchy is a vaccuum that will get filled by something, and that "something" might be a whole lot less to your liking.
And by "big brother" you mean the local government representative YOU elected for your area to vote on issue like this for you.
We have no one to blame but ourselves for the way our governments act.
I know you're kidding, but prior to 9/11 the Justice Dept. did seem to be transforming itself into a federal vice squad, wiretapping a brothel in New Orleans and cracking down on medical marijuana clubs in California--clubs that state voters and local law enforcement approved. Their emphasis on "moral" crimes was unprecedented. I have no doubt medical marijuana clubs were a higher priority for the senior leadership than counterterrorism. In their minds, those dirty marijuana-toking, pornography-loving hippies *are* "the terrorists."
There is very little that you could say about this administration that I would find too insane to be plausible.
More on Ashcroft's Justice Dept. here.
And from recent testimony re: the NSA wiretapping it appears that Ashcroft was actually *less* disrespectful of the Constitution and rule of law than Gonzalez.
avoteforrepublicansisavoteforvictory, republicansarefuckingfascists
That's so lame. It just makes the opposition look like a bunch of twerps.
What?
Yeah, the nerve of the "radical left" to cry foul... </eyeroll>
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
I guess that is why you only hear liberals "griping" about stuff like:
- Providing adequate health care to all citizens of the country we live in
- Sensible foreign policy
- Finding alternatives to oil
- Abolishing capital punishment
- Making taxation more fair
- Taking better care of our environment
Yep, nothing but total mud-slinging at the Republican party....
FIRST: realize that the F.B.I. is INEPT, then whine all you want. The more data collected, the more it buries the whole lot. Do you really think TBs upon TBs of raw data is somehow magically processed and folded into a nice, neat folder on you? Get real! It's like throwing a 1000s fish in a pond and letting a bunch of urbanites loose to catch their dinner. They look awfully funny trying, and by-golly, sometimes get lucky! The poor fish, you say. BFD! You are much, MUCH more likely to be killed by the likes of a Paris Hilton than some Waco-notched, cowboy federales.
Since when is it not the province of the FBI to look for people in the U.S. engaged in criminal activity?
Since forever. The FBI's job is to discover who committed crimes. A subtle distinction to be sure, but dig deeply enough in someone's life and you are likely to find some crime. Rather, when a crime has been committed and brought to the FBI's attention (subject to juristiction), the FBI is supposed to determine who committed it.
. I'd hate to have a name like, oh I dunno, Osama Bin Laden, and try to get through an airport security checkpoint. More importantly, what if I do something mildly suspicious that comes to the attention of the authorities?
Yes. Or any celebrity name. My friend, who prosecutes traffic offenders, recently had OJ Simpson (not that OJ Simpson) show up in his court. Naturally, the most experienced attorney was the one passing out the assignments. Naturally, he assigns himself OJ Simpson. So because of this guy's name, he unjustly has more zealous prosecution. I bet he gets off a lot fewer tickets than most people for the same reason.
But your solution ignores the context. TFA's context was not that agents would mistake your mythical person for a terrorist leader, but that the automated system would. How is the agent supposed to know why you were red-flagged (I imagine two terrorists with the same name are possible)? Having to prove that you don't deserve to be on those lists, that it is a case of mistaken identity, seems like having to prove your innocence. Which, IIRC, is the presumption in America anyway.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
A you are a person with nothing to hide, May I have your pin number.
I mean if you have nothing to hide surely you don't need to keep your pin number a secret, or your account numbers, or the amount of money/debt you have or where the spare key to your house is kept.
You have nothing to hide after all.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I think I can: if I recall correctly it was elected by Americans not only once but twice.....
Browsers shouldn't have a back button!! It's all about going forward...
"If they're able to form a behaviour pattern"
;-) I knew a guy who did a lot of on-site tech support. Lots of flights around the country with very little time spent at the destination. Once when flying home the DEA questioned him for about 15 minutes. He fit a travel profile they look for, this was the early 1990s. He explained his job, they apologized for the inconvenience. I expect that nearly all false positives go something like that.
This assumes there are more chances that if someone has a different behavior to the majority's, then he is an undesirable person. This damages diversity by encouraging homogeneity.
I think you need to loosen the wrappings on the tin foil hat.
I expect that the article that started this thread misrepresented the details. Aside from behaviors like traveling to Pakistan for a couple of months, having wads of unexplained cash(1), etc they are not looking at many behaviors. Past law enforcement data mining that I saw had to do with associations. Who you called, who you had interactions with, what locations you frequented, etc. Such networks do help identify criminal networks - gangs, organized crime, etc. Might help for terrorist cells as well.
(1) Wads of unexplained cash have been reported for many decades. I think the laws requiring cash transactions above a certain to be reported are from the 1970s, but I'm not 100% sure about that.
He says the most dangerous criminals are government law enforcement agents.
You say you need police, and that they are a necessary evil.
Ok. So what's your disagreement with him exactly? He's not suggesting dismantling the police.
However the trend of giving them ever expanding power to make it easier and more efficient to catch criminals only sets us up for an abusive and corrupt haven for criminals that is effectively untouchable. But recognizing that means we need to keep their power in check... not dismantle them altogether. Its patently obvious that we need law enforcement. The question is what should they be allowed to do, and how do we ensure they only do what is allowed.
He says the most dangerous criminals are government law enforcement agents. You say you need police, and that they are a necessary evil. Ok. So what's your disagreement with him exactly?
You mean beyond his being an idiot that thinks law enforcement agents are the most dangerous criminals? You do realize that the "evil" in "necessary evil" is figurative not literal, and that if there is anything evil it is the flaws in human nature that require large social units to have a professional policing force so that personal security is reasonably assured, and so that a stable social setting permitting art and commerce is established?
And from recent testimony re: the NSA wiretapping it appears that Ashcroft was actually *less* disrespectful of the Constitution and rule of law than Gonzalez.
That's the really scary thing. When Ashcroft ruled the legal roost, I remember being appalled at some of his attitudes, priorities and actions, and was pleased to see him go. Then along came "Seedy Gonzalez." Never, ever believe that things have gotten as bad as they can -- they can always get worse.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
>democracy doesn't work. People are too dumb for it.
This is exactly why a decent education for everybody is crucial for democracy to keep working.
Without good education, over the course of one or two generations a society will devolve into mob rule... and eventually fascism.
The modern Republican party is the result of Richard Nixon's conversion of old Southern Confederates from the Democratic party. This conversion was so successful that these Confederates now in fact form the Republican party base, and the party in turn has become a Confederate body.
The idea of the Republicans as the party of corporatism and big business is true to a degree, but only by degree in comparison to the Democrats or any other modern political party. Corporate influence permeates our political landscape too completely to distinguish party boundaries. Instead the true distinction between the Republicans and the Democrats is that old Confederate streak in the former, by now faded and disintegrating in the latter.
But in the GOP the stainless banner shines unsullied, albeit not in a public fashion. But it's a safe bet to assume that a great many in the Republican party hold the Confederate flag in no less reverence than they do the Stars and Stripes. Many have said that the Republicans are verging on, or have already committed, treason against their country. This may indeed be true, but only if that country was the old union. To a Confederate mind, their loyalty to the "true" United States is beyond question.
The effect of all this has been the general regression of American society. Essentially your entire country is reverting back to the southern mindset, but one for the modern world of course. Slavery might not be on the cards, but racism, xenophobia, jingoism, militarism and of course social conservatism all are.
The sad truth is there is little to nothing you can do to stop any of this. The American people have chosen this path. They vote for it, with ballots, feet and wallets. This isn't the result of some grand plan of Richard Nixon. He did not set any of this in motion. Rather he simply foresaw it, forty years ago, as he foresaw the rise of China and the end of the Gold Standard, and moved his party to a favorable position to take advantage of the inevitable flow of history.
May the Maths Be with you!
More on Ashcroft's Justice Dept
And this is the Ashcroft who ended up quiting because he wouldn't go along with wholesale spying on the American public. If someone like Ashcroft turns out to be a hero, what kind of atrocities are going on behind the scenes? It's all legal as far as Alberto is concerned.
What a horrible chapter in our nations history.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I've got a feeling that the worst about Abu Gonzales has not yet seen the light of day. It's bad enough that he ran the Justice Dept. as an in-house campaign office for the Republican Party, but thanks to the innate fairness of the American voter, we're finally getting a little insight into what else is going on in his capacious closet.
I feel bad for folks of Hispanic descent, who, after seeing one of their own achieve such high office in the US, have to learn that the guy's a total schnook. With all that's come out recently regarding the Justice Dept, Surgeon General, Homeland Security, Budget Office, EPA, FDA, etc., is there a single agency under the Bush Administration that's not been tainted and crooked? Education? no. Housing? hell no. This is a tough one.
You are welcome on my lawn.
What is really scary is that there were millions of Democrats who probably could have beaten Bush, and they nominated one of the few who couldn't.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I'm convinced you know the saying about being able to bring the donkey to the well but being unable to force him to drink.
You can't force people to learn. Education is free here up to university level and university fees are laughable compared to other countries (or would you consider about 500 bucks a semester crippling?). Still, we have the same consumerdrones. Decent, free education has no power against marketing.
Let's look at the role models our teenagers have today. You have American Idol (or the localized version thereof), where they learn that all that matters is looking cute (voice is secondary, praise to the computer). You have Big Brother, where they learn what matters is to be fun, easy-going, sociable and likable, and to brownnose to the ones that can throw you out, if you want to win. What it comes down is that success depends on being liked. Liked, in turn, depends on fitting in. Don't stick out, don't raise your voice, don't differ from the pack. Neither in appearance, action nor opinion. And you're liked and you're loved, and you succeed. And here's where marketing steps in and tells you you gotta wear this junk, eat that junk and be at this party to be liked and loved.
Education has no power against this message.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The system should use the popular vote and not the electoral college. How broken the EC is has been debated, but I think a change might not be a bad thing. (How can it be a good thing to have someone win an election that more people voted against then for?)
We are a republic of individual states. The Electoral College system makes sure that those states still have power. In a popular vote system, presidential candidates would only have to campaign in LA, Chicago, and NYC. The first two caucuses that can give a candidate enormous momentum are in Iowa and New Hampshire. How amazing is that? We had presidential elections turn on the outcomes of voting in Florida and Ohio. For me that's evidence that the Electoral College system works.
The population of my entire state is similar to the number of people just in the San Francisco metro area. That shouldn't make our votes worthless, guarantee that we never get a chance to meet candidates, or reduce or access to government. That's what will happen if you get rid of the Electoral College system.
--Obyron
I think I've discovered the terrible future of reality TV. Mod parent insightful. I don't doubt this one for a minute. It's just so obvious. And with the face recognition technology being developed, just imagine doing a name and age cross-reference to find out if any of the performers were under 18. 17 years, 8 months? Oh my God! He's a porn-hoggin' pedo!
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Right. Because I haven't dedicated my life to fighting the inevitable expansion of government power, everything and anything my oppressors do is, in fact, my own fault. Even as no government in the history of organized coercion has ever significantly and permanently reduced its power or revenue through the process of democracy (go ahead -- try to find even one example), I still ought to hold on to that impossible dream. I am the government! Don't pay any attention to the fact of inequality of power -- that special "right" to employ coercion as one's means which by necessity divides the people into ruling class and subject class -- it doesn't really exist, because I am the government!
Right.
How's the weather down in that rabbit hole? Apologetic towards government?
You're right to a certain extent -- our own civic apathy certainly hasn't helped -- but it's not as simple as that. The "need to know" culture of the alphabet soup agencies opens up a barrel of worms. Un-elected people in covert scenarios use tools/resources that the civilian leadership itself fears.
Up through the point where we have good documentation we know for a fact that the FBI always abuses whatever powers it has. Martin Luther King Jr. was surveilled and harassed. Later that approach was formalized in the COINTELPRO program. COINTELPRO was directed against the Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement, the Vietnam era peace movement. After COINTELPRO was officially stopped, the same tactics were used against people who protested/organized against Reagan's Central American Policies in the '80s. In the late '80s and early '90s the same tactics were used against the environmental movement. Now we have evidence that the FBI abused their National Security Letter powers.
So is this NEW? No.
Is it NEWS? Absolutely!
This time we are learning about the abuses as they are happening instead of 20 years after the fact when the government is forced to declassify old documents. The excuse has always been, "well that was unfortunate, but we don't do that anymore." They can't use that excuse this time.
-- QED
By whose standards?
Have a wife? Happen to enjoy oral or anal sex? There have been times and places (and still are, actually) where that's a fairly serious crime. I'm not talking about other countries or the middle ages, either -- right here in the US. In fact, it's a pretty safe bet that you've violated several laws without even knowing about it. You weren't caught because either A) Nobody saw you, or B) Nobody cared.
A law isn't some magical construction based upon something that is universally wrong. Laws (at least here in the US) are drawn up by a very small minority, enforced by a larger minority. As long as the enforcers (police, FBI, etc, and even possibly the military) are willing to enforce a law, it doesn't matter how much the majority dislikes it. Here in the US, there are some checks that would keep things from going from where we are today to instant dictatorship, but a slow transition to a totalitarian government is quite possible. Keeping everyone under watch is a step that would aid that cause.
If you're fine with being filmed all the time, then by all means, have at it. I'm sure there's a firm that is more than happy to do the job, and if ever you're mugged, your house is robbed, whatever...it may very well make finding the culprit afterwards quite a bit simpler, as well as make convicting him or her much easier. Many of us don't find the loss of our privacy, or the granting of further powers to the government worth it.
Fill in your four or five-letter word of wisdom here _ _ _ _ _.