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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
They're looking for 'leakers' who spread misinformation through government documents. Once they identify which government official's cell phone was in the same vicinity as the reporter who published the leaks they're gonna smack the leaker down.
Oh. They're also digging up dirt to discredit the leakers.
The amount of porn everybody watches online. In thirty or so years when today's youth starts running for government office, mudslinging campaigns based on this knowledge (which by then will be hilariously declassified!) will be hugely entertaining and embarrassing for everyone involved.
I think I've discovered the terrible future of reality TV.
why? forty-two.
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
Did anybody really think they wouldn't find a "use" for all the data they've been collecting?
Every single head-of-department has had his eye on it since day one.
No sig today...
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
But if you have nothing to hide .... oh yeah.
Chicken fried butter sticks? Do
Actually, it's the CIA that is tasked with finding Osama. Well, unless Osama is somewhere in the US and commits a crime that crosses state lines or something.
That was true before 9/11. Now, the CIA and FBI are allowed to collaborate.. in fact, anyone in the DHS is allowed to share information, because they are all one big happy Gestapo now.
This is my sig.
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.
that's the main problem I have with the leftright scale of political idealism, it's not leftright, it's not even circular, if there's any overlap, then it's spherical.... liberal != socialist, "radical right" != and has nothing to do with conservatism, religious radicalism has nothing to do with conservatism, I'm so sick of these generalisations... why must things be explained in 1 dimension? there are not 2 sides to issues, and most positions that are traditionally linked to either side of the leftright spectrum contradict every other position traditionally linked with that side of the 'spectrum'... stop generalizing and maybe you will understand other people's positions, then, MAYBE then you will be able to compromise, AND ACTUALLY SOLVE PROBLEMS P.S. WTF is this guy getting modded troll for? He has a perfectly valid point of view, it's just founded on misconception of reality is all... P.P.S. I read some of the comments this person made to figure out if it is a dude or chick, still haven't figured that out, but it seems like they are all Right vs. Left.... maybe it is Troll, or maybe he/she is just too rigid/stupid to see other points of view in more than one dimension...
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.
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.
Is this the same FBI that has been in the news in the past few years for not being able to get a decent modern computer system in spite of throwing millions of our tax dollars at the problem?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Since when is it not the province of the FBI to look for people in the U.S. engaged in criminal activity? It's their fucking job. That's why it's called the Federal Bureau of Investigation. If all you people can do is trot out the same old "government bad...GOVERNMENT BAD!" knee-jerk conspiracy theories when shit like this pops up in the news, nobody is going to take you seriously. At least RTFA and comment on the actual issues.
For example...
I can see this being a major problem. 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? I can imagine the conversation...
FBI Agent: We'd like a warrant to wiretap this man's phone.
Judge: What did he do?
FBI Agent: He wrote a strongly worded letter to his local police department contesting a parking ticket he received.
Judge: I dunno, that seems pretty weak. What's his name?
FBI Agent: Osama Bin Laden.
Judge: Granted.
Maybe in addition to a terrorist watch list we should have a not-a-terrorist-don't-watch list. Just a thought.
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.
It wasn't until Lopez v. United States (and, subsequently, United States v. Morrison) that the Supreme Court had the balls (well, with O'Connor, the ovaries) to draw the line for the first time in seventy years and keep the Feds out of the State's business.
Yes, that would be Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy, O'Connor and Rehnquist. We can only hope that Alito and Roberts will be "conservative" that way too.
If it was up to those nutbags Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg and Souter, there would be no distinction between the States' province and the Fed's province. Those of you hoping for a democrat president better be aware that democratic appointees will almost surely give the Feds back all the power they lost under Rehnquist. (Yes, I know Souter was appointed by Bush I.)
No Inflation Taxation without Representation
You're arguing from the flawed premise that privacy is about hiding one's sins. It is not. Privacy is about liberty, about the right of each individual to personal sovereignty. That which is private is beyond the legitimate purview of the state, or of society. Privacy is not about the things that people do wrong in secret. It is simply the sum of all that is not public.
You claim you have nothing to hide, but you do. If you were forced to walk down main street without a stitch of clothes on, defecate into a bucket in plain sight, and then present the contents to passers-by for inspection, I guarantee that your respect for privacy would be improved tremendously. It would be even further improved if the details of your paycheck, credit card statements, and bank balance were to be presented to the world via a large electronic billboard on your front lawn. If this idea truly does not bother you, then I invite you to publish those financial details here. Put your money where your mouth is.
The long and short of it is that there are aspects of each person's life that they and they alone have the rightful authority to regulate. The only way to ensure that this right is not abridged or undermined is to keep those aspects secret.
Privacy is the first protector of liberty.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
The largest federal powergrab in the history of the United States? Have you read any history?
Some better examples:
(1) The Reconstruction Congress forcing the ratification of the 14th Amendment as a condition for readmitting the Confederacy to the Union. This eventually gave the federal government final say over whether just about anything the states did was Constitutional.
(2) The massive expansion in size and spending of the federal government under Roosevelt, claiming the right to regulate practically anything under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. Would you believe that the Supreme Court determined that a man growing wheat for his own family's consumption could be prevented from doing so because that consumption, taken together with others doing the same thing, would overall reduce the national demand for wheat? You should, because it not only happened, it's still good law. In fact, the only pushback against it has come from...wait for it...Republicans.
(3) Abraham Lincoln unilaterally suspended habeas corpus on United States soil as applied to United States citizens.
You were saying?
It was my understanding that we pay the FBI to investigate crimes.
I'm not a criminal, nor have any crimes been committed against me, so it seems odd that the FBI would trample my privacy and waste resources mining through my online activity/phone calls/whatever.
If the FBI wants to investigate criminals, fucking wonderful. But they should leave the rest of us alone.
Maybe not
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
For those who think they're safe from all this, or that all this privacy "nonsense" doesn't affect them because they've got nothing to hide...
One of the reasons I admire the ACLU is that they stick up for the privacy even of insane druggie assholes like Rush Limbaugh. For all those Republicans who think this is some sort of liberal propaganda, keep this up -- in the totalitarian state where the neocon policies are taking us, it won't matter too much what your political affiliations are.
The hostility of many modern Republicans toward Lincoln (the first Republican President!) and the Union side in the Civil War generally is fascinating, in much the same way as watching microscopic images of multiplying tumor cells is fascinating. It really explains a lot about modern conservative ideology to see how its roots trace back to the old plantation: scratch a conservative, find a crypto-Confederate.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
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.
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
The important components are authoritarianism and unity with the state. This runs heavily contrary to the "freedom" ideals of the US Constitution. Racism is often involved, but usually as a means to promote unity (nothing unites a group like a common enemy, and racial groups are an easily identifiable target to build up into an enemy.)
The current administration would appear to be using terrorists in a similar way. Terrorists have the advantage of not having any civil rights (since they were all legislated away), and not being a productive segment of the US economy (so it doesn't affect profits when you lock them up without trial). Since they are also stereotypically of a different (arabic) race and culture, they make a great fascist unifier because very few of the general populace actually understand them. If the terror attacks were actually genuine, the other advantage of using terrorists as a fascist unifier is that they are actually guilty of being dangerous, so the government doesn't have to make up stuff about them, it just has to make sure they have a high profile in the news.
You can't get away with using ethnic groups common to the US, because the population is familiar with them and even respects them. How many people in New York have never visited a Jewish deli, for example? America prides itself on being a melting-pot, so if you want a target, you have to use a foreign one. Terrorist are ideal.
Just exactly how many terrorists do you think are in Afghanistan? As a fraction of the population? Think that justifies occupying the country? How about Iraq?
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
Come off it, Republicans aren't facists, Mussolini made the trains run on time. When have this lot made anything work.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Here we are again, at police vs criminals, two MINORITY groups amongst our populous.
I'll tell you how -I- see it, being a member of neither minority. (okay, maybe a little bit criminal, but less so than most of you, I tend to limit myself to 2 MPH over the speed limit, 5 on the freeway) I see it as which one of these groups offers me more trouble, and it's not looking good for law enforcement. They are bullies. You see that period on that sentence, it's there on purpose. Not all of them of course (the sample size is too large for that kind of homogeneity) but you'll find it the trend.
Let me give you an example of the last encounter I've had with each group.
Criminal: I was at a friend's housewarming party and a guy asked me if I wanted to buy a bag of weed. I said "No thanks, don't smoke." He apologized and walked away.
Law Enforcement: I was sitting at my house and get a call from my sister (who lives with me) telling me that she's being pulled over right outside the house. I walk outside and immediately get told (not asked) to go back inside by this large policeman. I say nothing and stand there (in my front yard, at least 10 yards from the officer) and he gets louder, more intimidating "I said, get back in the house" to which I reply "If I go back in, I'm coming right back out with a video camera". Oh, he didn't like that at all, told me that if I did that "things will get bad" for my sister so now, not knowing what my sister did in the first place, I get a bit scared and defensive, send my wife in the house, (I hope he thought for the camera) but I'm not gonna let this large angry and threatening man (who for some reason seems very afraid of being recorded) handle my sister without supervision. So I stand on my porch (5 feet back from my original position) and watch while he stammers out something about how my sister shouldn't be driving through a particular neighborhood. Oh, so THAT'S what she was going to be in so much trouble about. Driving home from work taking the most efficient route, because she's not too scared to drive straight home instead of a 2 mile detour through a more 'pleasant' neighborhood. Yep, her "crime" was being in the ghetto while white at night.
Spare me the "hero police" crap. Some of them CAN BE heros if the situation presents itself, but what profession could that not be said of? They are people, some are hero-stuff but honestly, most people are complete fucking turds who I would voluntarily give not one mote of authority over my life. Because some other complete fucking turd gave them a shiny trinket to pin to their shirt I'm supposed to think that they are somehow to be revered and that they automatically have my best interest at heart?
I'm sorry, but as the old saying goes, I may have been born at night but it wasn't LAST night.
This isn't Disneyland, hell Disneyland isn't even as Disneylandish as starry-eyed conservative hanky-grabbers like to think it is, with Andy Griffith walking the streets. Nowadays Barney Fyfe carries a couple full magazines to go with his loaded pistol, and Andy pulls over young women and intimidates them for driving through (not even stopping) through the wrong part of town.