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Verizon Ordered To Provide All Customer Data To NSA
Rick Zeman writes "According to Wired, an order by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court '...requires Verizon to give the NSA metadata on all calls within the U.S. and between the U.S. and foreign countries on an "ongoing, daily basis" for three months.' Unlike orders in years past, there's not even the pretense that one of the parties needed to be in a foreign country. It is unknown (but likely) that other carriers are under the same order."
I don't know about you, but I am shocked! *ONLY* 3 months?
Thirty four characters live here.
Glenn Greenwald broke this for The Guardian newspaper.
This is a puzzle. What magic line would they cross by demanding names as well, when the amount of information they already require is enough to determine the individuals involved in a call and then some. This smells of a careful exclusion crafted by the AG or some such to skirt a law.
If you ever argued that the second amandment is here to ensure you can protect yourself from opressive goverment, it is about time to stack up on ammo. I'd say its going to go down soon, but in case you haven't noticed, it all already went down.
I am sure it will only be for 3 months and certainly they would not ask again. It is only a one time thing, of that you can rest easy, citizen.
The full story, with link to the court order, is at The Guardian -- http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order
an electronic copy of the following tangible things: all call detail records or "telephony metadata" created by Verizon for communications (i) between the United States and abroad; or (ii) wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls. This Order does not require Verizon to produce telephony metadata for communications wholly originating and terminating in foreign countries. Telephony metadata includes comprehensive communications routing information,.
The story and TFA say "The sweeping order, issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, requires Verizon to give the NSA metadata on all calls within the U.S. and between the U.S. and foreign countries on an “ongoing, daily basis” for three months."
What have you seen that restricts it to a small subset? The actual order is secret, and I didn't find any links to the actual order, though a number of organizations claimed to have a copy.
Learn to love Alaska
Don't worry about it.
Hmmmmm. We're not at war with Eurasia. It's with East Asia. It's kinda the same.
We're not at war with Al Quaeda. We're at war with Iraq. It's kinda the same. Well, that's all over now. Thank god Obama was just elected. Wait, it's 2013, wtf.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The Verizon data is the tip of the iceberg, this is a tiny leak, it only covers an FBI request, it doesn't cover the full data grab. Congressmen, Ron Wyden, Mark Udall etc., ex CIA, everyone keeps hinting at the extent of the data grab and people go into denial about it.
Other data being grabbed:
1. URLs visited, times and ip addresses (sniffed from the network intercepts put in in post 2001)
2. Email headers (right there in the pipe)
3. Linkage data, you sent the email from that iPad/Android tablet? Theres the link between IP address and email address (right there in the pipe).
4. Search data, https is no obstacle to a FISA warrant.
5. Billing records of the phone, the identity of the user of the phone, data linking to their email address etc.
6. Visa/Mastercard/Credit Card/Paypal/WesternUnion, ATM data,.....
7. Bank transactions, (and not just the SWIFT data the EU handed them), handed over under excuse of 'laundering'
8. Facebook, all visible data and all deleted data
9. What you said on slashdot, even as AC, including drafts
10. What you said on every public website on every blog, on everything linked to your ip address and in turn linked to your real id.
11. Every public'ly buyable database
12. Your voting preference (already well analysed for political parties)
13. Your IRS data
14. The contents of all email older than 6 months.
15. Add that to the Verizon data (where you are, who you called, when)
It's a zoo, you're in a cage and those creepy guys outside staring at you, they're your zoo keepers.
Be careful what you say, to whom, who you're with when you say it, re-read you emails with a jaundice eye, can it be misconstrued by a malicious actor?
Are you outside the USA? Do you think you're immune?! Have they got any lever on your elected politicians? Is he a puppet now?
Could you, or have you ever upset anyone with access to that surveillance data?
Have you ever expressed views that might cause you to be targetted by anyone with access to that surveillance data?
Have you expressed pro-gun views? Do you imagine every creep with access to your private data is pro-gun?
Have you expressed anti-gun views? Do you imagine every creep with access to your private data is anti-gun?
Have you expressed strong Republican views? Do you imagine every creep with access to your private data is Republican?
Have you expressed strong Democrat views? Do you imagine every creep with access to your private data is a Democrat?
The only safe views to hold in a surveillance state are bland views. Be grey, keep your head down, express no strong views. Do nothing of note have friends who do nothing of note.
Don't think, that just because you're doing nothing illegal, that you're safe.
Having an affair is not illegal, yet General Patraeus was outed by on FBI agent Fred Humphries as a favor to a friend!
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/holly-petraeus-scott-broadwell-silent-petraeus-scandal/story?id=17718793
And in retaliation his supporters outed General Allen for having an affair with the FBI agents friend, and leaked photos (taken from surveillance of his friend) of a picture of him shirtless he sent her.
Do you really think you've done nothing wrong? That you have nothing to hide?
I'm pretty sure your data contains enough to lose you your job, end your marriage, lose custody of your children.
Timeline seems to suggest that it might be related to the Boston Bombings. FBI took over the investigation on 04/18 and the order extends to 07/19, so 3 months seems to match. The suspects were US citizens...
After many years of travel and living in other countries, my political views shifted from right to left and I felt myself to a "liberal" democrat.
Like so many others, I was caught up in the whole "hope" for change with Mr. Obama.
One could say that regarding the police state, he is worse than nearly all who came before him, but I think that is missing the point. Democrat, Republican, I have come to the realization that it makes not difference at all. The system is simply designed to abuse.
The alphabet soup agencies do not care who is the present. After all, they will still be there after the President is long gone and the next fellow seeking ever greater powers replaces him.
So, does it really matter who you vote for?
I really doubt it. The folks who have enough cash to even register with voters are all part of the same socioeconomic class. Classes look out for their own, not for other classes.
I suspect things will get much, much worse before they ever get better. At least if history is any indication of the future.
Good luck citizens.
Funny how there's such a huge passionate uproar about supposed loss of second amendement rights, but comparitively little concern about actual loss of fourth amendment rights...
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Oh OK, only a small subset of Americans lose their 4th amendment rights. Well thats ok then; fuck those people, they probably voted for that 'other' party. Since the precident has already been set by removing certain Americans Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth amendment rights, I'm looking foward to the time when we remove the fifteenth amendment rights from a 'small subset'; My cotton fields aint gonna pick themselves.
if I voted for Romney. And they were right.
So, apparently, calling Mom isn't protected by the First Amendment. Good to know.
William Biddy, who was involved in the early part of this data grab, explaining why he became a whistleblower:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuET0kpHoyM
This is from 2012, before Boston. He says they've intercepted at least 15 TRILLION communications with the system.
Worth noting, is that despite a decade of data grabs, they didn't stop Boston. The claimed purpose doesn't work.
They told me this would happen if I voted for Mitt Romney. And they were right!
I was watching CNN about a month ago when some ex-FBI guy was on discussing how they'd probably track down conspirators w/ the Boston bombers. He let it slip that the government would rebuild their conversations, to which Erin Barnett [sic] responded "oh, they can do that?" Then they both had a polite little chuckle about how the government is recording our conversations; cut to commercial.
Fast forward just one or two weeks and we find out that the government got warrants for conversations with members of the press. THEN, I start hearing all the ravenous outrage about privacy and rights and freedom of the press. When it was US, they didn't give a shit!
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Verizon can fight this! The government can just wait and let the courts slowly grind.....
Look! A black helicopter that you can hardly hear landing in front of my house!
Hey! You could have let me answer the door you didn't have to kick it in!
You're hurting my arm sir. YOU'RE HURTING MY ARM SIR!
Hey! You can't do that I have righ ^M (carrier dropped)
Anyone want to guess how long it will be until the person who leaked the memo gets arrested and charged? Conveniently, since the Guardian got it, it was on foreign soil, so it is completely legal (in the US's POV) for the NSA to review its logs of those communications.
The court order published by the Guardian refers to Verizon Business Network Services, and NOT Verizon Communications or Verizon Wireless.
Of course, it is also labeled as a "Secondary Order", so there may be many more of these applying to other entities.
And I wonder if the demand is really to get the metadata to annotate the actual voice traffic that they're getting from another source. Hmm.
http://epic.org/privacy/wiretap/stats/fisa_stats.html
Since 2004, when they started spying on Americans, there have been 143,364 FISA warrants, similar to this one, applying to Americans.
This is one warrant among 143364 similar warrants. 0.0006975% of the warrants.
There's a link to the actual order in TFA.
Like everyone else, I have no idea what they're doing, but no, it doesn't rule out focused surveillance. It could easily be a way to obscure who they're surveilling, so that Verizon, for example, has no way of knowing which customer they're interested in.
Say I'm a burglar, and I want to know when you're not home. When you're not home, is the best time to break into your house and take all your stuff.
One strategy is to stand outside your house, staring at it. You come out, we stare at each other for a few nervous seconds, and then you drive off. Aha, you're not home now. So I begin picking the lock on your door. The last thing I think, before you smash in the back of my head with a shovel, is how clever I was to make sure you had left. I was too fuckwitted to think you might be curious by our earlier staring encounter, and that you drove around the block, parked, and came to see WTF I was up to.
Another strategy is that I hang out at a major intersection, seemingly taking notice of every car that passes by. Little do you (or anyone else) know, yours was the one I was interested in. You don't it's it's suspicious at all, to drive by someone standing by the side of the road a mile from your house. That guy was just looking at all the cars going by. Not focused at all, huh? Then how come your house is the one I emptied that day?
If wired leaks a story about how Verizon was forwarding records about Dahamma to NSA, then you know they're watching you. If wired has a story about how Verizon is forwarding records about Dahamma plus a hundred million other people to the NSA, well shit, that wasn't about you. Nothing to be nervous about. They're not out to get you; they're out to get everyone.
Or maybe they're really out to get just you.
If this is what they're willing to reveal, imagine what spying they're *not* telling us about.
Welcome to the United Police States of America.
The Guardian has a copy here. I believe they actually broke the story, not Wired.
And you're right, it's not limited to a subset; it is ALL calls not wholly originating outside the US:
The most worrying part to me is not the call records, which we already knew the NSA was tapping into at the trunk level, but that they have access to all cellphone call metadata, including location vis a vis cell tower triangulation. This effectively means the NSA can roughly track the movements of all Americans, or at least those of us whose smartphone data services are constantly pinging the network.
Verizon also offered a new smartphone today - one that decodes & records your DNA from the spit on the mouthpiece.
So wait, they're not monitoring calls that originate outside the US? Then what the FUCK is the point of this? If you're trying to secure a country against threats, logically one would think the place to look would be to our enemies and their countries. Perhaps they just don't need this order for those calls?
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
What was Verizon's response? Please tell me they told them to go cram it with walnuts!
http://www.zombieapocalypse.tv/
...I remember thinking that no sane citizens of any democratic country would ever allow the the state to amass such abusive and intrusive powers.
And then, I read today's Slashdot article.
So, given that it was bad under Bush, and is now worse under Obama, it is readily apparent that regardless of whichever political party you choose to vote for, all roads lead to the same end. The system will prevail. Is anarchy the only solution then?
Yes, they're monitoring calls that originate outside the US, just not calls whose caller and receiver are both outside the US (which Verizon probably wouldn't have access to anyway). But it's already assumed there is some cross-country sharing between intelligence services going on to get around pesky international laws.
1984 here we are
NSA spying on all electronic communication is (very) old news. Microsoft's Xbox One (increasingly known as the XBone) has been designed from the ground up to massively increase the surveillance abilities of the NSA.
The new console has 8 CPU cores and 8GB of memory. It actually runs as two distinct computers, with two CPU cores and up to 3GB of RAM forming a special 'Kinect' computer system that has its own OS, and is continuously processing the input from the Kinect sensor systems, regardless of what the user is currently using the console for (including AAA games that appear to NOT use the Kinect sensors in any way).
The Kinect computer is constantly generating snapshots of data from the camera and microphone array, and stores these snapshots as encrypted files in a dedicated area of the enclosed HDD. These snapshots include full face photographs of each new person who enters the room. The Kinect computer is designed to compare sound and video/image data with a signature list (that can be changed and updated remotely), so that full video and sound recording can be triggered if the signature patterns are matched. This data can be either stored on the HDD (again, as encrypted streams) or immediately streamed to a remote server over the Internet if the console is currently online.
Signature triggers can include things like gunshots or sounds of explosions, people talking in a given language (say Arabic), or a man shouting at a woman.
Signatures can also (thanks to the body movement recognition ability of Kinect) represent given physical actions by people (for instance, two people engaging in love-making). Yes, you read that correctly- the Xbox One can be set to start streaming video to any remote server on the Internet if it detects people having sex in front of the camera.
Most 'signatures' are quite small pieces of data, and the console can have many thousands of signatures active at any time. Usually triggering a signature will allow an actual Human to remotely inspect some of the snapshot data being constantly generated to determine whether to activate full streaming. This practice is similar to that used by the NSA for decades when spying on ALL phonecalls- phonecalls are also routed through signature systems, and those that trigger on any signature are flagged for immediate inspection (although ALL phonecalls are actually recorded and later subject to much deeper mining).
The NSA (and other security services around the globe) have long dreamed of placing their spying equipment into the homes of every citizen. Mobile phones have gone some way to achieving this (the NSA collects, where practical, all the image data captured on mobile phones, but this is obviously severely limited by the bandwidth issues). The Xbox One puts a dream spy system into the living rooms of millions of people, together with massive amounts of mains powered computing resources to pre-process the data captured.
Microsoft demands that ALL applications and games have some Kinect functionality to encourage owners to keep the Kinect bar fully 'calibrated'. The Kinect system CANNOT ever be deactivated. If the Kinect sensors report any failure, the console refuses to run games/applications. If the sensors detect any problem with visibility (like tape over the cameras, or Kinect turned to face a wall), the console pesters the user to recalibrate the system. One can start a game, and then block the cameras in some sense, but research by Microsoft and the NSA has determined that people willing to buy the Xbox One, even if they are aware of the worst stories about invasion of privacy, will cease taking any measures to protect their privacy after only a couple of weeks of ownership.
Conversely, those who are prepared to ALWAYS block the cameras when not using a 'Kinect' game, or those who forego Kinect functionality altogether and permanently 'blind' the sensors will prove to be the tiniest minority, and can be safely considered to be no different from those who refuse to buy the console in the first plac
Note that this was signed the week after the boston bombings, two days after Ibragim Todashev was killed by the FBI. They were likely trying to follow various other related leads.
Also of note:
- This document is top secret, not to be declassified until 2038, so close your eyes.
Yes, they're monitoring calls that originate outside the US, just not calls whose caller and receiver are both outside the US...
Woohoo! Car analogy time:
I live in Sweden. (Glad Nationaldag till er alla!) My parents live in the US. (Happy D-Day anniversary, y'all.) My daughter lives in Australia. (Sorry, honey, I guess you just get a rainy day today.)
If I drive to visit my parents, the NSA get to watch my car, very place it goes, every moment of the trip, from the time I pull out of my garage in Stockholm until the time I park there again...
If, OTOH, I drive to visit my daughter, the NSA say they're completely uninterested in me or my car, even if I drive through the US to get there.
(So if this makes everything clear, why am I now scratching my head, and saying, "Uh, yeah. Right"?)
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
They told me if I voted for Romney, we'd continue to see NSA spying on citizens... and they were right!
HA Syrria, Irak, or any other country with a dictatorial military just proved that : that the military will never get the power and opress its people or shoot at them.
And I also like unicorn.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/06/verizon-telephone-data-court-order
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
If you're trying to secure a country against threats, logically one would think the place to look would be to our enemies and their countries.
They do exactly that. You simply misunderstand who the enemies are, and where they are located. How can a hungry peasant in a 5th world country hurt a US politician? Pretty much it's impossible. 9/11 was done by people inside the USA.
It's just too bad that everyone is a suspect now. OBL managed to strike the final blow to the already fragile US democracy - not without (after the fact) help from the US politicians who wanted the same.
thinking that your buddies and your machineguns are going to overthrow the most powerful nation in the world is just delusional.
Thinking that the professional military will be the ones trying to stop you when things become bad enough that the average U.S. citizen even considerings the attempt - that is the truest delusion.
We have a professional military made up of independent thinkers from all over the U.S. They are not robots, they are not trained to obey without question. If you ask them to start firing on home towns they are going to want to have a pretty clear reason why.
Citizens being armed just keeps everyone honest and is basically just like using a seat belt. You'll probably never need it, but if you need it you REALLY need it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What terror is rising from the depths? What atrocity will this beget?
Not that it isn't already bad, but a shrill and tiny voice inside me worries that something awful is going to happen with all these ticking time bombs: Rights, jail population, infrastructure, economy, corporate greed, political corruption...
I guess Russia is still on its feet (barely)
Or will the rest of my life be a long slow slide into a wasteland I once used to be proud to call My Country?
-
This seems unlikely to be a focused surveillance effort
Why not? In a focused effort you would want to follow the web of calls from a target or handful of targets as far as they go. In that case you would want the entire possible dataset of calls so you could follow any number of leads to acquaintances.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
it is readily apparent that regardless of whichever political party you choose to vote for, all roads lead to the same end. The system will prevail.
Not if you consistently vote in people who aim for reduced spending and smaller government.
As you say, all roads lead to the same place. But a smaller government with a smaller budget can simply only do so much. The smaller the amount of money the government gets the less money there is to track everyone, store data on everyone, or funnel money back out of government to private citizens who helped elect people.
It truly is the ONLY way to limit the reduction of potential harm from the system.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
After many years of travel and living in other countries, my political views shifted from right to left and I felt myself to a "liberal" democrat.
After years of also traveling a lot abroad and also living abroad at times, I went exactly the opposite way. I was always libertarian but I shrank further away from Democrats. Well not exactly Democrats, but from Statists who want the state to exert control over all aspects of life - which currently is sadly equivalent to Democrat as essentially none of them do anything to block statist activity.
The thing is, going around any former Soviet run country and talking to people about how things were, you could see the Democrats heading this direction a mile away. The Republicans perhaps were overly militaristic but in a whole different way that was healthier for the people.
There's a great book that explains exactly what is happening here - Liberal Fascism. Many people on Slashdot keep arguing liberals are not fascists but then when liberals take control we see actions that were unthinkable even from the worst actions of the non-Statists Republicans (and there ARE a number of Republicans who are also quite Statist, like McCain).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We all suspected something like this was coming eventually. Only question is, what could of been done to prevent this? Where did we all go wrong?
The fact is > 50% of the voters elected the current leader of the US within the last 4 years
And yet how many of them support wiretapping everyone? Do you really think that everyone who voted for Obama supports that action?
When the person who was voted in betrays those who voted for him, it's easy for support to erode to zero rapidly.
It's not like I think any kind of real revolt is imminent. I'm just saying that counting percentages of people who voted for anyone is pretty irrelevant.
I would also question if the military really would follow along with killing members of even a small revolt. It's not like the military is run by the Attorney General...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Plus the US president doesn't rule by fiat.
Haven't been paying very close attention to the Czar count and executive orders, have you?
On a number of fronts Obama very much does rule by fiat.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is our goddamn country, and we need to stand up for ourselves. Forget party lines -- if someone supports this sort of tyrannical measure, don't vote for 'em. Period.
If we just sit and complain, they'll ignore us. If we fire half of congress, they'll pay attention. I say the latter option's at least worth a try.
The authorization has to be renewed every three months. Most likely this is for the John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness Program which was ordered defunded by Congress. Most likely they simply took the program, threw another name on it, and continued funding it anyway. Now we need to look at who authorized this program from whichever party, then impeach them, prosecute them for treason; this is highly unconstitutional.
Here's how it works, they get in real time your drivers licenses, web searches, emails, web sites you visit, phone records, bank and credit card transactions, billing information, information from you from commercial database services, probably medical records, etc. Then they take it all and put it in a gigantic dossier on you.
The dossier will also automatically link you with anyone you have contact with making you an automatic suspect if they commit a crime. Six degrees of separation anyone?
They can then run behavior analysis on this information looking for anything in your information that they can use to begin a investigation against you. It can also be used to directly target you for dirty tricks, if you rise to their level of attention. Do you really know how many laws, rules, and regulations there are; and how many every American breaks on a daily basis...
This story when it breaks and it will; would end up making the Bengazi, IRS, and snooping on journalists combined look like childs play; and could likely end up taking the United States Government down. It makes the East German Stasi look like like rank amateurs.
It's not just Verizon folks. AT&T, Bellsouth, T-Mobile, Qwest, and all the rest are under a similar order. This is just the first one that has become public. See 50 USC 1861 -http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1861. Notice the frequent use of the word shall, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has no leeway in issuing these orders
Land of the free and home of the brave anyone...
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
Let me fix that for you:
"You cannot have a national director of intelligence sleeping around with [security cleared American of good standing], it turns him into a liability."
The woman who got her FBI friend to investigate, got her emails watched, she was found to have communicated with General Allen in sexually charged emails a lot, and he in turn got his emails pulled. Is General Allen also a director of intelligence? Perhaps he is and doesn't know it?
What do we learn from this?
General Petraeus communicated with his girlfriend via gmail draft feature. He wrote a draft, left it without sending it, logged out, she logged in read the draft, deleted it, wrote a draft reply, but again never sent it, logged out and so on. He could not trust email to email send, even all bland email between one bland America and another bland American is monitored. He did not use messaging, SMS from a prepay phone, all of it is monitored. He should know!
The other thing to learn is how easy it is to destroy someone with information. You think you're doing a good thing, defending this, and your probably right, all zoo keepers probably would agree with you. Maybe.
I never vote for (or trust) anyone who voted for the Patriot Act or any of its extensions.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
...I'm calling 100.000 random people every month.
Sort that out, NSA!
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Did they break ECHOLON?
of power...
Around 20 years ago the state troopers in my state, due to too many complaints regarding traffic violations by sheriffs began to pull them over and write them citations for illegal traffic manuevers while not en-route to a call (IE lights and sirens off.)
Seeing as I don't remember all the details, this is making a long story short: Sheriffs began writing the troopers citations, the whole thing ended up in court and the sheriffs won.
What was the net result of this? Sheriffs had pretty much carte blanche to do as they liked, and short of a few civil suits against them have managed to push around other LEs getting 'in their way' and being able to act like a bunch lawbreaking thugs while on the clock.
What is scariest about this is that either the sheriff at the time, or their primary spokesperson actually *BRAGGED* about this on a live news broadcast maybe 5 years back, in response to them making similiar oversteps in the more recent past and basically stating if any other branch of local LE tried to hold them to the law they would get their ass judicially handed to them.
Now tying this back into the NSA/CIA/etc cases: Who the fuck would expect any differently with agencies without even that level of public scrutiny?
Also in regards to the UK: I hope you guys can slap your own representatives back far enough on the legal messes they've either been piloting, or following us on and eventually regain the level of liberty and privacy you'd expect of a first world nation. Because as it is I wouldn't want to visit either the UK or the US (and I live in the latter).
It almost sounds like your law enforcement can do what they want until it's deemed illegal then?
Here they can't do anything until it's deemed legal. They can't just snoop on private citizens until a law has been passed saying explicitly that they can do that, which means it has to get past the elected representatives first.
and if you know the direct extension number of FBI agents, you might want to use those as well But don't ring the NSA.... they'll come and get you.
Sieg Heil! American Fascism at its finest!
The big challenge is the SCOTUS ruled that you could not sue the government for violating your Fourth Amendment rights if you did not know for sure they had been violated. So the secret wiretaps etc were effectively unchallengeable unless you were also being prosecuted for something based on evidence gather that happened in that way.
Here we have the government admitting they are accessing the private call records from Verizon and specifying which calls. This might they have actually kicked the door open to legal action?
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
it is probably just a test. wheee, look at the metal sides of this awesome pool.
wow, amazing.
it also worked for Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Franco, Mussolini... shall i go on?
OK.
Hussein, Ho Chih Minh, King Il Sung, Idi Amin, PW Botha, the Afghan Communist Party, the people in Rwanda......
i mean, it is actually prophetic. the military literally builds toys (video games) to teach kids to kill people.
Because it provides a justification if they do subsequently use the data and their use of it comes out in public. Without it they might get into trouble for having data they shouldn't; with this they have a legal defence - though not enough to resist the people if we could be bothered to stand up to them.
Well, they've got to be full of shit if they say they're uninterested. That sounds like the greatest car ever.
I so often see this argument, not just on /. but all over. "Why do you not vote for someone else then".
Just think about it for a little while. When is the last time that a person running for president was not already extremely rich and a member of the ruling class?
These folks do not care about us no matter what they say. They know what side their bread is buttered on.
I, like I suspect all people would love to vote for a person who is running because he really wants to change the system. To rein in the powers of an abusive and authoritarian government.
But I KNOW that such a person would never make it. Hell, I wouldn't even know he was running.
Do you think that the media, who is controlled by the ruling class would give him coverage? If you think for one moment that you will be allowed to upset the status qua then you are delusional. Open your eyes. It is not about left vs right. It really is class warfare. I know that even if the IRS says I am upper middle class, to the ruling class, I am one of the masses. The tools. The means to an end.
You don't get it do you?
They've ALWAYS done that. Monitoring calls that originate outside the U.S. doesn't require warrants. That is one of their core missions.
This just closes that last loophole.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
IANAL, but how can a court issue a blanket surveillance order for everyone on an "ongoing basis"? Where's the "probable cause"?
If there was a bomb detonated using a cell phone, and they needed to investigate large number of calls made in a certain time window, then MAYBE. Otherwise, they're acting like the bureau of pre-crime.
These F***ers just will not quit. Time to shrink the federal government by about 70% so that they can focus on some genuine priorities.
Oh, I guess that's why we need to be spied upon 24/7/365. We're a "threat" because we might get sick of this $#!T and cut their funding.
40-million Verizon customers cancel their service.
You don't build massive data centers in Utah to record cows grazing grass.
You use it to store the communications of millions of Americans, unconstitutionally of course.
Not if you consistently vote in people who aim for reduced spending and smaller government.
As you say, all roads lead to the same place. But a smaller government with a smaller budget can simply only do so much
Oh, that may be true, but wherever can I find people who aim for reduced spending and smaller government?
Surely, you don't mean Republicans, do you? Because they remember about the noble goal of smaller budget/smaller government only while Democrats are in power. And who's idea was it to keep wars in Afganistan and Iraq off the budget (as "emergency supplemental appropriations bills")? Brilliant strategy to keep a low "budget"
"Not if you consistently vote in people who aim for reduced spending and smaller government."
I've seen a lot of mouthy political bullshit along these lines, but no actual politicians who are interested in implementing it (lots and lots of politicians who want to reduce spending in areas they don't like, while increasing it for areas they do, however).
"Any government powerful enough to give the people all that they want is also powerful enough to take from the people all that they have."
(Note: not a quote from Thomas Jefferson, as often incorrectly claimed, but it hits the mark nonetheless.)
The common statist theory is that because the government represents the people and is voted in or out by the people, that the people can trust the government to serve the people, with perhaps some exceptions and abuses which will need to be curtailed. But what percentage of "the government" is elected? The federal government has on the order of 550 directly-elected officials and millions of employees. The elected officials are notionally in charge, of course, but the bureaucracy is huge and does not turn on a dime. Further, that bureaucracy is the source of most of the information provided to the elected officials.
Even worse, most of those elected officials are lawmakers, not empowered to directly give orders to the bureaucracies, most of which are part of the executive branch. The president is empowered to give orders to the executive agencies, of course, but every president has a strong incentive to increase the power of his office, so he can accomplish more of his goals. The only way to change that is to elect a few presidents whose primary goal is to reduce federal power.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
If they know everything about everybody, they know nothing about anybody.
Though I don't carry a cell phone, that shouldnt change the way I feel about this and the failed and festering governments of the US.
Fuck You USA. I may be AC here, but they know who wrote these words. Add it to my file, bitches.
There is a reason our government has 3 branches of governent. It's to maintain a check and balance, to prevent one branch from getting too powerful.
There is a reason people have the right to keep and bear arms. That too is about check and balance, to keep the government from becomming tyrannical.
A court of secrecy is repugnent. It provides no oversight, and far reach beyound it's own bounds. Calls between two domestic parties does not even come close to the title of the court. And I have to chalange the validity of the court. Is it even a real part of our judicial branch of our government? If so, then why have so many government agencies been trying to keep evidence from courts? Couldn't they just use the super secret court? Couldn't they use jurors that have classified access?
There are a lot of things wrong with this. I can tell you that if I ever received a secret order like this, that I would publish the fact anyways. Those employees at Verizon are still responsible for their part in this.
It's only a matter of time until the public gets pissed off enough that some people end up going after those telco employees.
The last line: "The recent court order suggests that the collection has continued or at least resumed under the Obama administration." How does that make sense? If it is a 'recent' court order then it doesn't 'suggest' anything. It is a clear indication. And the wired article's main source is a guardian article that I can't pull up at the moment. Is it too much to ask for 'journalists' to use their own sources and to reference the original documents instead of writing an article about an article?
FAQs are evil.
Today: NSA orders all the metadata about phone calls from Verizon, which "includes the phone numbers of both parties involved in the calls, the International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) number for mobile callers, calling card numbers used in the call, and the time and duration of the calls. It does not include the name or address of the subscriber or other account information, nor does it allow the content of calls to be recorded and collected."
Tomorrow: Completely separated and unrelated to the above, NSA orders a listing of all account information (names, addresses, etc.) associated with every phone number.
The Day After Tomorrow: Just on a whim and having nothing to do with the above two requests, the NSA orders all the content of calls, but stripped of any personally identifying information (no phone numbers or account numbers)
Who could complain if they did that? Separately, the information is no threat to the individual, right? And after all, there's /no way/ to compile those three data dumps into one huge interconnected database; right?
If, OTOH, I drive to visit my daughter, the NSA say they're completely uninterested in me or my car, even if I drive through the US to get there.
Well, no.
They are just saying they are not interested in gathering that bit of information from Verizon, in this particular NSL/FISA injunction/wiretap order.
If they are willing to record data on every call between every American, then they are surely more than willing to gather data on foreigners. They are probably just getting that information elsewhere, or via another NSL.
Think we're crazy because we want to remain armed, against a government that already views ALL of us as threats.
Seriously, is anything of our Constitution left? Okay, sure, the government is not boarding soldiers in our homes. But let's be honest, with eminent domain laws today. They would simply tell us the homes are not ours anymore.
Seen a lot of posts on Slashdot of the government eroding freedoms and liberties and tracking citizens. But what's the end purpose? Is this the conspiracy stage to shift the US into a fascist state? Are our politicians and federal workers all traitors with a unified goal to oppress the American people? Is it a misguided effort to increase national security?
And what party actually (and not claims) to create a smaller government?
After all, the large government that is doing this was all created by the "small government" republicans, and just merely continued by the democrats.
They cannot even protect their own fellow soldiers from KGB-style treatment. They are supposed to "uphold the constitution", but nobody let Bradly Manning have a proper sleep for several months.
Very much a bunch of idiots who will even abuse and kill each other if the leadership is corrupt. Whatever Bradley Manning did, there was no reason to deprive him of proper sleep. It's uncivilized, it's unconstitutional and they happily complied with the Stalinist Commands of Obama. A civil member of Obama's sphere criticized Manning's treatment and had to resign. Where is the Army general or colonel who personally visited Bradley Manning and stopped this shit ? There is not a single one, as they are all cowards deep down. Cowards who will kill each other like the German Colonels and Generals killed each other because the idiot at the top demanded it. Cowards with guns, not men !
America! Fuck Yeah!
What you gonna do when we come for you... CITIZENS!
Sorry, but while that argument is appealing, it's bullshit because you're not specifying WHAT functions you eliminate with the meaningless statement, "reduced spending and smaller government." Where are you reducing the spending? What functions does this "smaller government" fulfill, and which functions does it not fulfill? Unless you specify exactly what to cut, this is just empty rhetoric with very little meaning - like saying, "We need to get rid of regulations" - which ones? Why? What is the cost-benefit analysis?
Moreover, it is absolutely possible to have a much smaller government that focuses all or most of its efforts on military and intelligence services - the Syrian government is an excellent example of this, focusing very little (in terms of expenditures) on actual effective social welfare functions (providing subsidized housing, etc. which it did, but very badly), but almost exclusively on maintaining a police and military state, and I'm sure the same can be said for many dictatorial regimes. Indeed, libertarian approaches often cede only military and possible intelligence services as necessary state functions, producing exactly that type of outcome.
What "reduced spending" and "smaller government" actually seem to result in is decreased social services (education, health care, etc) while leaving military and intelligence budgets intact (often beyond what the military is actually requesting, as we've seen often enough in recent years in the US, e.g. the F35 controversy). I imagine as the number of people at the bottom increase and become restless due the lack of social services, you'd find even more support from everyone else to INCREASE the domestic intelligence presence and law enforcement, rather than to reduce them.
They still couldn't prevent Boston
Anyone who's read "Puzzle Palace" knows that NSA has been doing SIGINT on telephone calls for a long time.
When calls were undersea, they had lucrative real estate between the cable termination and the rest of the network so they could snoop the microwave link.
At one point, they had SIGINT on all overseas phone calls.
They actually had a lot of lucrative real estate that happened to be between microwave repeaters, allowing more than international call intercepts.
The Owners need to know where all of their sheep are currently located. They need to be made aware of any abberation, so that they can send the Whip-boys after their property.
Maybe this crap is really needed or maybe it's an over-reach. Personally I'm betting on over-reach but I'm willing to listen to counter arguments.
HOWEVER IT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE THAT MASS SURVEILLANCE ORDERS BE KEPT SECRET
Keeping this sort of stuff secret is a betrayal of the Founders and everything I hold dear about the ideals that were the basis for the founding of this country.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
How can we the governed consent to this?
if the cop was singing "Stop Resisting" to the tune of "Happy Birthday", you're still civilly liable for copyright infringement.
Stop resisting my rule!
Stop resisting you fool!
Stop resisting or I'll taze you --
Stop resisting my rule!
In some cases it's worse - they'll do what they will that can be gotten away with whether it's legal or no. News stories on this have been plentiful.
This Order does not require Verizon to produce telephony metadata for communications wholly originating and terminating in foreign countries.
Is this limitation due to the courts jurisdiction?
Sign the White House Petition to repeal this component of the Patriot Act.
Does the release of this order give all Verizon customers standing to sue the government for unreasonable search? That's one heck of a class action lawsuit.
passetspike!
Now I know what all those webinars I get invited to are all about.
none
If this includes a record of dropped calls . . . . they're gonna need a lot more hard drives!
... We'll have to violate them, to pretend to defend them.
They're not even trying anymore.
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
Shrinking the government will only leave a power vacuum. Who or what is there to fill that, again? Still want to follow that line of reasoning?
It's all in your hands, Americans. March up three million people to Ft. Meade and demand an inspection like East Germans demanded an inspection of the Stasi HQ, which they got. The problem is that most people have degenerated into lazy cowards who can be bought/intimidated with an iphone, some candy and some harsh language. There was also a case of 300 German women demanding to collect their Jewish husbands from Police headquarters during the Nazi time and they actually got them. Despite the authorities having machine guns emplaced and doing some posturing. All a matter of a courageous mob.
I was a lone protestor in support of Bradley Manning in front of the Wiesbaden train station, where the US spooks move in and out to 66th MI hq/airbase and to the other european intel facilities, where the federal German police headquarters is. I was a lone guy and displayed my message on cardboard (something like "protest the torture of Bradley Manning in Quantico, USA"). Nothing happened except a group of guys walking in about 30 meters distance and uttering something I think was derogatory. Now, what would happen if thousands of people went onto the street in every city in support of Bradley Manning ? What if they called out Obama what he is ? A Torturer Of Fellow Americans !
YOU can inspect Ft Meade and tear down all that shit if you actually want it. But I assume this means "work I am not being paid for, that's not kosher according to the God Of Money, so FUCK THAT".
Your own laziness is the core problem. Laziness is the beginning of all slavery.
PS: The entire East German revolution in 1989 was , as far as I know, completely non-lethal. Authorities knew there was no backing from Russian guns, so they had nobody to fall back. So gradually, the protests overcame that tyranny. The east German officers were of course pissed, because they indotrinated themselves into their crapola, but they finally realized the time for oppression was over. All the sophisticated technology they had was not help to them. So, don't always think in terms of guns. Ghandi-style methods are often much more effective.
IMHO, bearing in mind the Smith v. Maryland decision that I learned about below, these records are worth preserving.
However, analytic methods applied to the dataset should be open, peer-reviewed, and of proven value. Closing the process leads to fundamental mistakes, as we've seen time and again.
The only fucking point was their civil liberties/secularism platform. What is the point without that? Now they're just statists across the board. I guess they've caught up to the Republicans, at least.
No reason? There was plenty of reason. These were malcontents, disorderly and disobedient peasants who needed to know their place. Examples had to be made, after all, we couldn't have an "American Spring" where "Occupy Wall Street" morphed into "Burn Wall Street." Peaceful protests are dangerous, what if those lemmings knew just how hard they are being fucked over, they would hang each and everyone of us in power. We can't have that now can we?
No no, it's much better that those vocal few and their entitled thinking of "freedom," real freedom, not the fake stuff we peddle them to keep them under control, are crushed under the jackboots of thugs, than our precious system that we have crafted to our liking be threatened. Not to mention they might hang us all if they really knew what we do in secret. That stuff ever getting out makes me really nervous. We had better get our lackeys at the NSA to keep track of any such uprisings in the future, especially with the "system" being threatened perhaps in Turkey. These elements might encourage our "elements" and we need to keep them under surveillance just in case we need to kill them off to head off any more trouble. We almost had to kill their leaders here before with our FBI snipers, but that would have inflamed things.
We'll be steps ahead of them this time. No reason indeed, pardon me while I and my cohorts laugh over our single malt scotch at that one.
Take the Red Pill.
Just a fair warning to ease your decision making/ethics... Do NOT open the linked court order on a NIPR machine, and really you shouldn't do it on your home computer. It's very clearly marked TOP SECRET // SC at the top and bottom of every page. If you open it, you've technically just created spillage and a reportable incident. I doubt anyone will read these comments first, but just trying to help even 1 person.
...who has an Xbox One
The New Yorker
This is a succinct satire in the form of a F.A.Q. that pretty much sums up the attitude our current government has. I wrote up a little better of an article submission but the editors ate it in fury (nah it probably just wasn't good enough or to much of a dupe compared to all these NSA articles).
So I figured I would share it with you guys here. Notice how Obama dresses in a very similar fashion to the Turkish Prime Minister (compare to resent Reuters photo). Tiny flag on the same lapel in a very uniform fashion. I think the New Yoker picked that picture for a reason.
I read to the first answer than hit the floor laughing my ass off. It is good to know that some Journalists still have a head on their shoulders and a good sense of humor about this.
You may mock the Republicans, but the government expanded very little under Bush. Very few programs passed under the Bush Administration still exist today. The wars are over (and thus were temporary expansions). His tax cuts are expired. The Patriot act sunsetted as well. DHS I think is the last remnant of Bush's "government growth", and it came about as a response to an immediate terrorist act on US soil.
Now look at the Obama administration. Obamacare is _permanent_ and a massive government expansion. Obama's tax cuts have been made permanent. The Patriot act has been extended.
Legislation under a Repbulican administration tends to go away over time. Legislation under a Democratic administration expands to government and sticks with us forever (see FDR).
Except that reality says the opposite, since defense spending is a smaller portion of the budget than it has ever been, whereas social spending is at all time highs: http://www.heritage.org/multimedia/infographic/2012/10/federal-spending-by-the-numbers-2012/62-percent-of-the-federal-budget-goes-to-entitlements
Why can't Verizon just say "No". This is a huge company, tens of thousands of employees? Multi-million dollar if not billion dollar company? Hell, many government employees use Verizon phones and their network. This, to me, is a case of the idiot poking the lion with a stick. I bet if Verizon wanted to they could really stand up for the peple here. I for one would support them. Enough is enough, when I was a kid I was taught that the great thing about this nation was that we could think freely and say what we wanted and never have to fear persecution for that. Now I find myself thinking about whether or not I can even post my dumb opinion on /. without sending up a red flag.
It would be a battle but if the big companies like Verizon said no to things like this and we stood by them maybe we could start taking our country back. Honestly think about the ramifications of Verizon saying "No".
A fine, I am sure they could pay.
Shutting down the whole network and putting that many tax paying Americans out of work?
Arresting people? Who and how, I mean these are powerful and rich people and those people do t go to jail. Heck they could probably just up and leave anyways.
Well, to me it just seems like it could be possible. I know I am being naive but I wish it was the world we lived in.