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U.S. Gov't To Keep Data On Non-Terrorist Citizens For 5 Years
arnott writes with this excerpt from the Washington Post:
"The Obama administration has approved guidelines that allow counterterrorism officials to lengthen the period of time they retain information about U.S. residents, even if they have no known connection to terrorism. The changes allow the National Counterterrorism Center, the intelligence community's clearinghouse for terrorism data, to keep information for up to five years. Previously, the center was required to promptly destroy — generally within 180 days — any information about U.S. citizens or residents unless a connection to terrorism was evident."
I'm surprised there is even a 5 year limit- figured they would keep that data indefinately. I'm sure they have loopholes to allow them to keep the data on anyone that they think is "interesting".
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
America...
I Hope we Change our President this year
We need to take down these terrorists, and if that means ignoring the Bill of Rights and throwing Americans into concentration camps, like we did in WW2, then so be it. As Santorum said, "We must be united in this war. We cannot allow any criticism."
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
None of the Republican candidates (with the exception of Ron Paul, who everyone ignores anyway) will choose this particular subject to thrash Obama on.
I really fail to understand how this data is used and if anyone actually checks it or if it is kept in order to incriminate you later. See what happened in Toulouse last week: a man who went in and out Afghanistan and Pakistan, was known to the police, went in and out of jail a couple of times, was known to frequent an extremist group, still managed to kill children in a school and keep the police busy for two days under siege.
Shouldn't he have been stopped before?
I don't understand, really.
Obama, Santorum, Romney, etc.. etc.., You only get to choose the one that's gonna stab you ...
Let's see them get by my DRM...
...that the biggest Terrorist organization and biggest threat to American's rights is the US government...
I admit, I used to think any data retention, let alone as long as for 180 days was bad.
But about 3 years ago, I realized that this line of thinking was wrong, perhaps even racist. Now keeping data on everyone for 5 years is good.
My attitude on war has undergone the same growth.
It's ok, everyone goes senile eventually.
If it were Bush it would be 10 years!
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Didn't terrorism end after they killed Bin Laden?
"Oh say does that start spangled banner yet wave....
o'er the land of the free, or the home of the slave?"
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
What a strange country the U.S. is turning into. It's as if the old Soviet Union and eastern bloc transposed with the west in some bad science fiction movie. The old East German secret police, the Stasi, must be green with envy.
Americans seem perfectly happy with it all. That's fine, though. Americans should do as they wish in their own country. It's their business and theirs alone.
I just wish the U.S. showed other countries the same consideration and let people in other countries do as they wish.
We love you, Dear Leader, President For Life Obama! Can this go on my permanent record?
According to the linked article this is due to not catching the underwear bomber in 2008.
Except he was a Nigerian. Not a us citizen. Afaik there were never any citizens associated with that incident.
...Oh, wait.
That info is about USA citizens.
So the situation for foreigners must be much worse...
aside from the obvious reasons, my end users will read it and expect me to be able to archive 5 years of their data and email. We just don't have the storage capacity or funds to buy more for that kind of archival, the state is in a world of financial hurt. Must be nice to be the Fed.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Hosting all that data costs money. From a law enforcement point of view it's probably worthless after 5 years anyway.
They stored the data on MegaUpload!
Thanks to the US govt people can stop worrying about the trilateral commission and smoking old men in dark back rooms. Who needs conspiracy theories are theorists when the govt. can do anything it wants right out in the open. We're all criminals and pirates. Well except for white collar criminals, their just good capitalists.
the united states government is pursuing terrorists so voraciously, it is not because they have your safety as a primary concern. Natural disasters are easily shrugged off, for example little effort was put into katrina and many lives lost due to government neglegence but no real repercussions arose from the incident, just a smooth shuffling of deck chairs so to speak.
the occupy protests, while they included violent police crackdowns on citizens and journalists alike, also received no real repercussions that couldnt be easily dismissed by the government as the rantings of kids and slackers with "no clear message" and "subversive" tendencies.
terrorism on the other hand brings results. it undermines a government in ways that are unchallengeable as it is an amorphous concept. theres no real enemy, despite how badly america wanted it to be osama, or sadam, or al-awlaki. Terrorism is an ideology, and every troop from the legions of rome to the english military officer who stood guard against the irish menace during the troubles understands that no weapon will ever purge it from the earth. terrorism is determination with absolutely nothing to lose; the last resort of a broken people.
you dont disarm terrorists by spying on everyone, because anyone can be a terrorist at any time it simply is not efficient. the only way to stop terrorism is to recognize the demands of the terrorist and try to understand what it is thats driven them to it. so long as we continue to fight, we will meet the immovable object to our unstoppable force each time with no ground gained or lost on either side.
Good people go to bed earlier.
...that he does many of the same types of things.
Vote Obamoppression 2012!
So what's going to happen when this data is inevitably shared and, years from now, you're applying for that dream job that you're absolutely perfect for and, at the last minute, the HR department trots out all the pr0n sites you visited five years ago?
Please prepare for the extended dry season as more and more of your customers are deemed unsafe for the Pentagon building.
--
Sincerely, Your administration
I feel SO much safer now, this is the change he was hoping to provide.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
The dirty little secret is that political power is merely a stepping stone to riches. The Hitlers and Stalins of the world -- those who are motivated by power more than money -- are extremly rare.
We know that all governments only expand in power and revenue throughout their lifetimes. Modern times have seen governments all over the world swell to unprecedented levels. But it wasn't for power or glory. Nearly ALL of that expansion was done in the name of money, not power. Again, political power is merely a stepping stone to riches.
Politicians lie every day, but the balance sheet ALWAYS speaks the truth.
One wonders if hard drive manufacturers had some influence on this decision :P
Even though someone may not be a terrorist now, that is no reason to assume he won't become one later. Terrorists may be plotting attacks even when they are still flying below the radar. That information can be very valuable when they are later found to be travelling to terrorist training camps. Although privacy is important, preventing even a single attack like 9/11 or the French terrorist would make it worthwhile to keep the data longer. Those who have nothing to hide shouldn't have anything to fear from that.
From the joint DNI/DOJ statement:
"The updated Guidelines do not provide any new authorities for the U.S. Government to collect information, nor do they authorize acquisition of data from entities outside the federal government. All information that would be accessed by NCTC under the Guidelines is already in the lawful custody and control of other federal agencies. The Guidelines merely provide the NCTC with a more effective means of accessing and analyzing datasets in the government’s possession that are likely to contain significant terrorism information. They permit NCTC to consolidate disparate federal datasets that contain information of value to NCTC’s critical counterterrorism mission. Furthermore, the updated Guidelines do not supersede or replace any legal restrictions on information sharing (existing by statute, Executive Order, regulation, or international agreement). Thus, the updated Guidelines do not give NCTC authority to require another agency to share any dataset where such sharing would contravene U.S. law or an international agreement.
One of the issues identified by Congress and the Intelligence Community after the 2009 Fort Hood shootings and the Christmas Day 2009 bombing attempt was the government’s limited ability to query multiple federal datasets and to correlate information from many sources that might relate to a potential attack. A review of government actions taken before these attacks recommended that the Intelligence Community push for the completion of state-of-the-art search and correlation capabilities, including techniques that would provide a single point of entry to various government databases."
So who here complained that we couldn't connect the dots with Abdulmutallab, given that we already had an severe adverse report on him, but that report didn't get fused or connected to anything else? Now the government tries to link databases containing information it lawfully has without any new authority, and it's automatically evil?
Sorry, I don't get the connection.
You misquoted Santorum, he actually said: "Strength through Unity. Unity through Faith"
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
1984 was not an instruction manual on how to manage your totalitarian regime effectively.
When y'all voted for Bammy, did you have any clue CHANGE meant worse than Bush?
The US is currently pressuring various European countries to open their police databases to automated queries by US authorities. This kind of stuff is the reason that the smarter European countries are refusing. The US has no concept of privacy laws - once data is released to one agency, you can pretty much assume that they will share it willy nilly with other agencies. The data retention laws are incredibly lax. In the end, you have zero assurance what happens to personal data, once the government has it.
Privacy laws basically do not exist in the US. The European countries (like Germany) that have agreed to data-sharing are almost certainly violating EU law.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
They need legislation to somehow make this legal.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1 ...and the other posters are right...in 5 years they'll make it 10. In 10 years, 15. In 15 years they'll just stop pretending and enslave us all.
File: John Doe
DOB: 03-23-XXXX
Recent data: ...
(03-17-2012) House in foreclosure.
(02-20-2012) Dumped by girlfriend, Jane Doe. See file: JD00393229XXXX
(02-18-2012) Seen drinking heavily.
(02-16-2012) Lost job.
(02-15-2012) Has a meeting with his boss tomorrow.
(02-01-2012) Data from 01-31-2007 and earlier removed. See note A.
(A) ...
Data included:
(10-10-2006) New house.
(08-17-2006) Girlfriend, Jane Doe. See file: JD00393229XXXX
(05-01-2003) New job.
(01-24-2003) Now in AAA.
-------
My point? Perhaps the last five year limit will only apply to page one.
The NSA had a problem with too much data about 10 years ago. Then came an ingenious solution called 'Thin Thread' that allowed them to sift through mountains of data very accurately and very quickly. The designers embedded controls into it so that all data searches were legal (it explicitly warned when US citizens were involved). It was put up against another project called TrailBlazer that was supposed to do the same thing, but after hundreds of millions of dollars and no success, the NSA ditched TrailBlazer and adopted Thin Thread....with one caveat.... they disabled the warning controls. The only thing that would be worse would be if the US government could keep information about Americans for say 5 years. Then it makes like copyright, and 5 years becomes 10, then 20, then 70 years after the lifetime of the citizen.
(05-01-2011) Failed to smile at news story of Osama bin Laden's death. Potential terrorist sympathizer or distracted by waitress's ass? Add to no fly.
I'd like to hear from anyone that has ever seen one of these system that has been designed to actually delete the data. You can be sure that the best it will ever do is simply restrict the date range search for some class of users. Think about it, imagine how scary it is for a software developer to actually delete records. If the company implementing this fucks up and loose data they would have big problems on their hands. You can be sure that no system will ever delete that data.
Invigilation is everywhere. USA is a country with pseudo democracy system.
Recipes for USA bankrupt - http://tinypaste.com/0d66f dd = dollar deluge (printed in the infinity)