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The NSA: Never Not Watching
Trailrunner7 writes "For many observers of the privacy and surveillance landscape, the revelation by The Guardian that the FBI received a warrant from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to require Verizon to turn over to the National Security Agency piles of call metadata on all calls on its network probably felt like someone telling them that water is wet. There have been any number of signals in the last few years that this kind of surveillance and data collection was going on, little indications that the United States government was not just spying on its own citizens, but doing so on a scale that would dwarf anything that all but the most paranoid would imagine." And now the Obama administration has defended the practice as a "critical tool."
But the NSA intercepted the packets and caused a bit of latency..
It's what authorizes legitimate government. Anyone think this is authorized? 4th amendment? Anyone?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
run the world
and they want to know everything about you
Not only is the Executive branch in favor, but there's strong bipartisan support in the Legislative branch: immediately after this leak, both parties' ranking members on the Senate Intelligence Committee (Dianne Feinstein for the Democrats, Saxby Chambliss for the Republicans) held a press conference to defend the necessity of this kind of dragnet surveillance, and to claim that it's not a big deal since it's "just" metadata.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Seriously, I thought it was fairly common knowledge that the NSA had a 'who knows who' database sense before AT&T was broken up.
No matter how careful you are about not leaving tracks the government knows about who you are by who you regularly call.
For example, I've never been arrested. But the government knows I'm not a stinking law abider because, basically, none of the people I'm in regular contact with are god damn law abiders.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Yeah, I think we know who the tool is.
-
As someone who frequently gets accused of having the tinfoil hat on a little snug, this is pretty much the worst case scenario.
"We're going to monitor everything, and maybe we'll get lucky" -- and how long before the technology progresses to the point that they can come back and say "hey, we see from phone records you called this alleged drug dealer 5 years ago, so we'll be charging you".
If this isn't about as Orwellian as you can get, I don't know what would be. Give up all your freedoms so we can make sure you keep your freedom is a joke -- Freedom is Slavery, War is Peace.
America is quickly ceasing to be free. And I'm pretty sure this doesn't pass Constitutional muster -- everything nowadays is driven by "we have an opinion which says this is ok, so we're going to do it".
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The real question is now if the American people aim to do shit about it.
We, the voters have a choice. Either start supporting ONLY politicians who fight back against this suppression of our Constitutional rights, or our Republic is doomed.
Today is the 64th anniversary of the publication of George Orwell's 1984. Support candidates who fight that suppression. Rand Paul is looking really good for 2016.
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
If our government believes throwing out the Constitution is what it takes to protect our nation from terrorist threats, I'm less scared of the terrorists than I am of the government.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
These have been requests for massive packets of communications from phone number to phone number, who is calling (or texting) whom. It is not the content of the messages. What is dangerous is whether they are confined to what they can do with that information, IE can they find out about frequency of my calls to my 900 number mistress and leverage/blackmail me? There are things that could be done with that information that I trust they do not intend, but nevertheless may allow to get out.
In this case, the "critical tools" are Obama, Eric Holder, or who-ever is behind this large-scale invasion of privacy. I know plenty of people (mostly liberals) complained when the warrant-less wiretaps happened under Bush. It appears that these are considerably larger in scope.
Now that this information is known to be collected, it should be subject to subpoena. One application is to detect bribery of politicians by correlating who they talk to, who they get contributions from, and their voting records. It should be possible to statistically demonstrate corruption with a specific confidence level using Bayesian statistics.
Politicians need to be informed of this option.
I've heard people say repeatedly that complaints about privacy make little sense in the age of Facebook. After all, the line goes, when people willingly share so much about themselves on the internet why should the government requesting phone logs matter? You've nothing to hide, do you? At least, nothing you've not already shared on Facebook.
I've never joined Facebook because I find the whole system rather intrusive. But these days, being on FB is so expected that you can't even arrange an office party without having to confirm on FB. At some point it becomes a great inconvenience not being on FB. If I didn't dislike the hassle of FB (or its corporate) I might now even be willing to entertain the opposite of the above argument: When the government so regularly spies on all of your activities, no matter how private you might deem them, why should joining Facebook matter?
Because frankly, it isn't paranoia.
Assume all communications are open to government, and corporate, snooping unless you're whispering in someone's ear, and pssst... between you and me, I don't trust you.
...but for what diabolical purpose? That's the reason to be concerned.
The ultimate goal of any police state is merely to justify more spending and expand the business of government. Power and control are merely the stepping stones to riches, not a goal in itself. Many people have trouble accepting this, because they focus on the injustice and assume that injustice is the goal. Or they focus on the power and control and assume that power and control are the goals. Or they focus on the failures and assume that the "intentions" are correct but the "implementation" is wrong.
On the contrary, intentions are the smokescreen, power is the stepping stone, injustice is the "collaterage damage", and money is the goal.
Metadata isn't data - it's data about your data. So it's not really subject to protection, because it's not what you're doing, it's information about what you're doing. It's not an illegal search, because we just want to know about what you're doing, not what you're actually doing. OK?
It's not like we're listening in on your calls, we're just watching to whom and when you call. I mean, it's not like we're doing a database join to find out who's on the other end of the call. That would be an invasion of your privacy. It's just their phone number, IMEI, network identifier, and the start/end geopoints. That's OK. I mean if your parents were at home they could see your phone bill and see who you called too. So we're like your parents that way. We would't give that data to another agency either. Well, unless they asked for it. But they probably won't do that.
So you see, you really have nothing to worry about. It's not a violation of your rights, it's a strengthening of your rights. Because like other government agencies, we only have your best interests at heart. Well other agencies that aren't the IRS. But you know what I mean.
I would consider the 4th Amendment a critical tool as well. I guess it's just a matter of choosing which tool is right for the job.
No, not yet. A surveillance state already ? Sure enough.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
they joined the Verizon Share Everything plan.
Would be rad if someone leaked this, then we could all take a peek instead of just The Watchers.
Yeah, thanks for being anti-Republican bigots assholes.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/expd/8964398709/
The "instead of Libertarian or Green" is a saving grace. It would be naive to suggest that voting (R) rather than (D) would get you anything different.
(Full disclosure [why not? NSA knows it anyway]: I'm registered as an (R) so I can vote in primaries in my red state, but I've never voted (R) in a presidential election. I cannot justify voting for either head of the beast, as much as I might loath whichever one is in power at a time.)
This large scale surveillance bullshit has been so useful against terrorism that nothing happened in Boston.
They've built something which is demonstrably (unable || unwilling) to do its job.
Whatever they say its job is.
And now the Obama administration has defended the practice as a "critical tool."
I might be willing to believe that if they would explain what they are doing and why and do so like we are all adults. Instead we get nonsense like the TSA claiming that someone is somehow going to blow up a plane with 4oz of liquid but it would be too dangerous to actually explain and details of this improbable threat to our safety. Frankly I just don't find their explanations (when they bother to provide them) satisfactory and so I'm forced to conclude that they are not acting in manner consistent with appropriate respect for my civil rights.
If there is a genuine threat out there I expect our government to explain what they are doing and why in terms that a reasonable adult can understand. I'm willing to extend some amount of trust to our elected leaders but that trust has very sharp limits and is contingent on continued evidence that they are behaving in a rational and respectful manner. I've seen rather little of that in recent days.
OH my dear lord the only saving grace this administration has had is the laughter factor. Being able to laugh at all his supporters takes some of the edge off the miserable times he has perpetuated upon this nation.
Just for those that voted for him and reflexively hate Republicans.
"In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."
Ronald Wilson Reagan-January 20, 1981
I'm curious why the vocal Tea Party doesn't trust the government on anything else, but doesn't seemed particularly bothered by the govt's growing domestic snooping. (Yes, they give it a passing mention every now and then, but never seem to push for change.)
I'm not criticizing here, I just want to know their reasoning on that. Are there any Tea Party members or defenders here who can comment on that?
Table-ized A.I.
Finally, the truth wins out. All of us "gun lovers" have been trying to tell everyone that Dianne Feinstein is anti-freedom, anti-civil-rights, ant-privacy, and anti-American.
Subjugation masquerading as protection. It's always the same, even if your cultural identity is based around worshipping the constitution.
They told me if I voted for Romney, we'd see this sort of thing... and they were right.
Let's pool together and ask Verizon for the exact same data and see what happens. As the recent legal hack to get Indian test scores shows, the public processing and dissemination of data can be more effective tool for positive change than any private or secret analysis.
Our government - BY the people, FOR the people, OF the people.
Remember folks, WE ARE the people! That's our data they're playing with, and they are supposed to be working for us!
AT&T was proved to be doing this years ago when that AT&T engineer blew the whistle. They ALL do it. Everything you do online is watched. Has been for decades.
Of course they're bored stiff. That's not the point. My boring life is my own. I'm no man's slave; no man's property. Yet with so much surveillance over people, control becomes possible. We become an increasingly servile state as we become a police and surveillance state. Not because we're necessarily doing anything wrong, but precisely because we are watched. The whole world becomes Foucault's panopticon.
And then some false flag gets tripped and suddenly you're a public enemy. Because computers are never wrong. Especially theirs.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
These agencies were able to do all this through a secret court with a gag order. Why do they have a secret court available? What else can they request at this secret court? Black bags over suspected terrorist's heads?
I predict that the US will still be known as "The land of the free" (TM) long after it is anything but. Good luck to you. Good luck to us all, as we're probably not far behind...
"You've grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's at the root of all our problems," Obama said. "You should reject these voices. Because what these suggest is that somehow our brave, creative, unique experiment in self-rule is just a sham with which we can't be trusted."
Got Code?
The suppressive minority do not rule the world.
Some news sources have speculated that this program was related to the Boston Marathon Bombing. However The Washington Post sys that
... the order appears to be a routine renewal of a similar order first issued by the same court in 2006. The expert, who spoke on the condition
of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues, said that the order is reissued routinely every 90 days and that it is not related to any particular investigation by the FBI or any other agency.
This particular order was classified as Top Secret/NoForn/SI. The routine nature of the order was likewise highly classified.
Ordinary people-- those not initiated into the orders of nobility associated with "clearances"-- cannot select their government based on real, verifiable information. They have no means to judge the effectiveness, or lack of effectiveness of their political candidates. Instead, they must have faith that their government is either incompetent, or competent.
Do you believe that your government is doing its best to protect you? Surely its effectiveness would be diminished if carefully guarded secrets like this got out, and were use by enemies of the nation and of the state?
Do you believe that the government is doing its best to cynically exploit the security apparatus for its own political benefit? Surely this is but the tip of the iceberg. Were it not for classification, the entire enterprise would be exposed as a cesspool of corruption and criminality.
But in the absence of good solid, reliable data, both of these viewpoints can be freely adopted by any voter who chooses to have an opinion on the matter. Instead of a mass of peoples carefully using their judgements to select the good leaders over the bad, the entire electorate, kept in ignorance, has been reduced to flipping coins.
Government, it seems, is to important to be left to the governed.
they are probably bored stiff because you aren't actually that interesting. Move on with your life.
How about I turn that around on you then? Why bother watching me if I am so dull? Why spend my tax dollars on it? Why is my phone company spending money to do this (in effect me paying for it with an upcharge on my bill at some point). In the off chance they might catch someone? Shouldnt these warrants be very narrow on what data to ask for and which data to get?
It is almost the same mentality as DRM and games. You are going to steal my game so I am going to make your computer suck so I can make sure you do not steal it. Yet the real people who want to get away with this sort of thing do it anyway.
I would like to ask that before anybody goes off on a pseudo-rage rant about this.... Take just a second and read about what must be done in order to use FISA data in a criminal prosecution of a US citizen.
Not that this whole situation is trivial... It's just not really as bad as some FUD mongers are making it out to be.
Ok FUD is dead. It's been so overused that it has no meaning - meaning, FUD is used as an implicit ad hominem now. OK?
Also,
Take just a second and read about what must be done in order to use FISA data in a criminal prosecution of a US citizen
Like what?!?
We have seen over the last few years the SCOTUS back up the cops just about every time. Ask me when they didn't, and I'd be hard pressed to find an example. For cases of where they OKay'd what the cops did just requires hitting the Slashdot "older" articles button at the bottom there.
We need to get into out heads that we need - MUST- question authority EVERY time and hold their feet to the fire.
Ask them WHY are you doing what you are doing and JUSTIFY IT.
Blanket statements of "War on Drugs" or War on Terrorism" or "THink of the Children" CANNOT and MUST NOT be an excuse.
Speaking as someone who voted for Obama - I am PISSED!
And to head off the "YOu should have voted for Romney" guys - Fuck you! It would be more of the same times 911. I was HOPING that the BLACK dude would stick to the MAN but he IS the MAN.
But secret? No, I don't think so. Surveillance on this scale should be the subject of public debate.
Otherwise they don't have consent of the governed.
The current administration needs to be found guilty of treason for their Authoritarian attempt to subvert the rule of law of our constituition an our government and replace it with their own set of laws where there is no series of checks and balances with only rubber stamped approvals and unlawful renditions. They should be impeached and then held accountable and the prior administrations dating back to the begining of the war on terror should be held accountable as well. I am making a distinction here that the current administration is not the Government but are themselves acting as "Enemies of the State" for this unlawful subversion of our rights and therefore can be found to be committing treason. It is only the current acting arm of the executive branch of our government that needs to be found impeached. Our government is made up of 3 primary parts and one implied part the Executive, The Judicial, the Legislative, and the implied "We The People". It is time that "We The People" rein in our representatives and insist on the impeachement of the entire currently active executive arm and that we repeal all bills passed and currently active under the current and past administrations since the war on terror started and put them up to a simple pass/fail renewal vote.
I'm a progressive. Not in the rebranded liberal sense, but in the T. Roosevelt, get your government and big business out of my business or I'll kick your ass sense. I don't oppose Obama because I'm a reflexive Tea Party guy who ridiculously, famously, calls him a muslim and radical Christian, socialist and fascist, at the same time.
But the US government is beyond out of control. Elections don't matter. Courts don't matter. The press is as much the problem, as the problem itself. Every peaceful avenue for reform and redress has been shut off or co-opted. Meanwhile, the thieving classes, meaning the 1%, are doubling down on their behavior thinking that no one in the 99% will ever hold them to account.
That means the clock is ticking for an American Spring. We are not hapless, disarmed Libyans. We are heavily armed Americans who have been raised from birth to believe we have a God-given right to be free. Those in the army are our brothers, sisters, and cousins. They are us. So if the 1% truly believe that they'll simply follow orders and drop napalm on the neighborhoods where their friends and family live, then they are due for an extremely rude awakening.
Go ahead, 1%'ers, move all your wealth to the British Virgin Islands and secrete yourselves there. Much good it will do you. Justice is coming, it's coming very soon, and you have a giant target painted on your ass.
YMMV
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
What if it IS a critical tool? Huh? What if it's a fact about the world that this is a critical tool and is being used in the way it should to be used?
Is that possibility so counter to known reality that it should just be rejected out of hand the way you-all are doing ?
Because most readers here are acting on the premise that it's a true fact about the world that it is NOT a critical tool.
How did you acquire that certain knowledge about a set of facts in the world that you have no special knowledge of- the information contained in the President's PDBs?
I don't think it's unrealistic to the world as I understand it. Even if today, it is strictly not necessary because , say, we are overestimating the capabilities terrorists, what about tomorrow?
Nano-technology and artificial biology and genetic manipulation and high tech fabbing will come down to something close to the personal level sooner or later.
Civil secular society doesn't WANT to use those things to cause mass casualties to civilians and destablize the modern world, but sooner or later the steady increase of destructive power and the steady decrease in the number of people and resources it takes to wield that destructive power will intersect at an unfortunate point and it will be wielded by Christian or Islamic religionists who place no value on the affairs of men but only live to fight an unseen war taking place on some cosmic plane.
Then what?
Be truly rational and entertain the notion in your mind as a hypothesis that there is now or will be shortly something about the world that makes this measure necessary to countering acts of mass terrorism. . Now. What SHOULD we do?
We should have a national, open thorough, skeptical, informed and honest discussion across a wide range of topics around the security / privacy / liberty triad work out , aloud publicly and together what tradeoffs we're willing to endure and what ones we're not. What level of destruction and death and societal disruption we're collectively willing to endure and when - and if - that level ever becomes unacceptable.
We need to talk about this consciously and on a national scale. We need to talk as a nation and be explicit and be formal and capture as well as we can what we'll do and not do BEFORE anything happens.
Because what we have now is a strictly reactionary populace and to a degree government, who decides what the privacy liberty / security triad is going to look like right after and in response to terrorist events.
The result is anything but solidarity and unity. The Government hides its actions from the People. The People don't trust their Government and impugn ulterior - nearly insane - motives and this is as true on the left as it is on the right.
We are failing this national imperative. We are failing to plan and harden civil society for an inevitable war. We are at once protected, coddled and violated by our national security apparatus because it - and we - think we can't handle the truth.
I would love to think America would lead here, but America rarely leads. It's what Churchill said America will always do the right thing after every other possibility has been exhausted.
I think it has to be the EU that leads here. They are much more rational , less fanatically religious and absolutist in their world view , and inclined more towards collective action than the US.
Someone somewhere has to start talking about this and someone in government needs to give that discussion the imprimatur of officialdom and lift it up. We have to do this because the alternative is structural, institutionalized extremism, borne in reaction to random events, fueled by reactionary impulses and finally codified into law.
That is when civil society stats to break down, not because of a bomb or disease or anything else but because we permitted ourselves to continue exist in a fantasy land of 18th century perspectives and values until that fantasy was exploded and we had no idea how to carry on.
So in actuality, they aren't "watching" at all.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
"Because we have no fucking intent to ever change our corporate-foreign-military policy of fucking with everyone in their own backyards."
I am just wondering why we cannot strive for a truly transparent government. It's all too often that our privacy is eroded, while the privacy of our governments is increased. It should be the government who, if they didn't have anything to hide, shouldn't be worried about being transparent. Thus why they aren't transparent, and about as clear as mud. The dirt at the bottom is probably unconscionable. Fuck the government, they don't represent me.
Certainly it's all Bush's fault. After all, President Obama has come through on his pledge to preside over the most transparent government in U.S. history, close Gitmo, and most relevant to this, end warrantless wiretaps (http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9845595-7.html). Oh wait...
One of the most frustrating aspects of humanity is our seeming inability to draw useful conclusions from an incredibly long history of government, particularly centralized government, doing incredibly evil things to citizenry. Government works best when government is local, and anything larger only encourages man to use it as a vehicle to prey upon other men.
You got to wonder, if they had quietly refused, what would have happened to them?
Who is "them"? Verizon is a corporate entity in Deleware
Who'd go to jail?
They are a corporate entity.
We have seen many times here on Slashdot big Corp stonewalling the Government when it suits them.
My guess? The CEO was given on offer he couldn't refuse - something that will make HIM richer - somehow.
When it comes to corporate governance and government, alway assume malice.
Incompetence will sort itself, malice needs to be crushed in the bud.
Of course they're bored stiff. That's not the point. My boring life is my own. I'm no man's slave; no man's property. Yet with so much surveillance over people, control becomes possible. We become an increasingly servile state as we become a police and surveillance state. Not because we're necessarily doing anything wrong, but precisely because we are watched. The whole world becomes Foucault's panopticon.
The problem with being bored is that bored people are likely to find entertainment using the resources at hand.
Yet despite this dragnet approach to surveillance, they didn't stop the Boston Bombers. Or that elementary school massacre. Or the nutbar who shot up a theatre. Or...
Congratulations to the United States.
Using nothing more than the pretext of "preventing another 9/11", your government has turned into a full-on Fascist Police State, complete with rah-rah patriotism, a vague and unstoppable enemy that can never be defeated (meaning there is never going to be an end to the surveillance requirements), and blatant support of corporatism over the rights or needs of the citizenry. Classic, textbook definition Fascism.
"Land of the Free" my ass.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Yet with so much surveillance over people, control becomes possible.
How so? Seriously. You still have a choice of what you do or don't do. The only imposition on that choice is your feelings about what a hypothetical other might think when observing you. That isn't "slavery". That is vanity.
Thank goodness; I'm feeling safer already.
As long as this data is used to prosecute every telemarketer in the world who invariably must call a known terrorist sooner or later, it's a good thing. We'll know when it's effective as soon as those annoying carpet cleaning phonebots stop calling...
in fact, isn't that a way to provide plausible deniability? If every terrorist maintains an autodialer that's calling everyone, when they use their line to call their terrorist buds, they can just claim they were trying to sell,them something or other...
Don't blame me, I voted for Kotos's third party counterpart, Greg.
Once Obama is President I'm sure he'll put a stop to it!
So they're watching everything, but they can't tell that a guy has 3 young women locked up in his house in Cleveland for 10 years? If they actually know so much, how come they didn't know that? The answer, of course, is they may be collecting and recording everything, but nobody's looking at it.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
So if I don't have anything to hide, I shouldn't have anything to fear? That never made any other residents of any other police states any safer.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I have all but stopped posting online and know without doubt that I am potentially being monitored at every opportunity, every transaction, every stoplight, fly over cameras.. ad nauseam. This is not new or news.
What should be gained from this "story" is not the shoveling of data to the government. what you should ask yourself when you hear a blatant and obvious illegal and unconstitutional usurpation of rights is... why am I hearing this.
Think about that for a bit and then realize what this "story" is about.
For those who cant or wont make the logical leaps.. let me spell it out.
This information is not some news scoop. If you dont think the US govt and mass media outlets can and do make information (and people for that matter) disappear then I envy your bliss.
No, when you see these headlines, what you are seeing is a focused and intentional psychological exercise to let you know how it will be, not some lucky journalist who got the next big story. Look at it for what it is.. not what it is intended to do.
Just tell people that they have to protect themselves! Who wants to live 100% under constant surveillance? If you do, then you deserve tyranny.
Their goals are in direct opposition to the maintenance of rights/privileges held by US citizens.
The only way to balance it out is to have an element in government with as much power as them who's job it is to maintain those rights. Basically you need the ACLU with enough juice to not be afraid of the president.
Or a president with enough nuts to do the job himself. Or a public who would vote him out if he didn't.
It all comes back to us being misinformed douchebags with no concept of what is important in government.
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
It would be naive to suggest that voting (R) rather than (D) would get you anything different.
In this regard, yes absolutely. That's why I said what I did.
I'm registered independent because I don't like propping up numbers for either party, but I can see your point about wanting to influence primaries.
What a shame that there is such hate on Slashdot to independents now that my post is buried. Can't take too much truth I suppose, the more the hope the deeper the betrayal.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
At last we will know who receives bribes in Washington and who really are behind the terrorist scare... oh, wait, you mean that is not for that?
On one hand... Spying on your own people is bad... facisim nazis etc... bad stuff.
On the OTHER hand however... Holy hell... Have you LOOKED out here on the net much? Theres alot of crazy (religious) disturbing (bronies) outright fucked up (lots) people out here...
And i have no problem with the goverment spying on us if it means SOMEONE is keeping an eye on some of these total batshit wackjob crazies out here...
The problem is i havent seen any GOOD results from all this spying. So it sure seems like we're pissing money away and not getting anything in return for funding all these 'intelligence' groups.
Senator Feinstein also admitted that this is a court order renewed every 90 days....and has been for 7 years now.
Side note...this Senator is the same who introduced legislation to remove a large segment of weaponry from the population recently.
Here is an idle proposal the likes of 4chan users or anonymous wanna bes might find interesting: flood communications with fake terrorist threats, shady drug exchange, pseudo pedo bear meetings and such. Write botnets or some "legit" application that would render it's user highly suspicious and claim the whole thing is a joke. As they say, good individuals have nothing to hide and won't mind a little surveillance ... and what's not to like in a little role play once in a while. If the current surveillance techniques cannot distinguish real treats from fake ones, if it gives up way too many false leads, perhaps they'll be abandoned their practices and focus on what really matters (health, education and such)
You must be quite selfish to not care if they violate other people's rights. That's what I get out of your comment. Even if they're not watching me specifically, the violation of anyone's rights is a big concern.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results
If you have a problem with this blatant invasion of our privacy and continue to vote for the same two parties that have always been in power then you have no right to complain. BOTH Democrats and Republicans are responsible for the destruction of our rights over the past two decades and it's time we remove them from office.
And if you talk yourself into "voting for the lesser evil" then you need to think hard if there's really much of any difference between Republicans and Democrats.
This has been going on at least since 2005 and its more than just phone call records - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
"Room 641A is located in the SBC Communications building at 611 Folsom Street, San Francisco, three floors of which were occupied by AT&T before SBC purchased AT&T.[1] The room was referred to in internal AT&T documents as the SG3 [Study Group 3] Secure Room. It is fed by fiber optic lines from beam splitters installed in fiber optic trunks carrying Internet backbone traffic[3] and, as analyzed by J. Scott Marcus, a former CTO for GTE and a former adviser to the FCC, has access to all Internet traffic that passes through the building, and therefore "the capability to enable surveillance and analysis of internet content on a massive scale, including both overseas and purely domestic traffic. Former director of the NSA’s World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group, William Binney, has estimated that 10 to 20 such facilities have been installed throughout the United States.[2]"
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, sue.
I guess there is good reason to build this in Utah. Once they start collecting the content and not just the databases...all that data must go somewhere.
Post the following on your web site:
"This site has never been servednwith a national security letter"
Let them try and force you to keep that on your site
Keeping a warrant secret is sometimes necessary so you don't tip off the bad guy that you are on to him.
But in this case, there is no specific bad guy.
It seems like the judge should be more assertive in asking the NSA to justify why this order needs to be secret.
If this data gathering is a good trade off should be a matter of public debate.
(It does seem like it is on the 'this can't happen' side of what was promised with the Patriot act.)
Public debate was prevented by the gag order on the warrant.
What makes this important is that this data is a powerful dragnet.
It is certainly useful for catching bad guys.
Unfortunately, human nature and history suggest that this broad and powerful tool might also get used for less noble goals.
NSA's ability to have this tool for the bad guys should depend on a careful oversite system.
If we got this far without public debate, then clearly, the oversite system is broke.
Always keep in mind whistle-blowers. You like whistle-blowers don't you?
Obama says terrorists. Senators always say terrorists. It's always f**ing JUST TERRORISTS!
Obama has hunted down and charged more whistle-blowers than any president in history. These phone records will surely help.
Terrorists. F U.
What will be real funny is when the FBI serves an enemy combatant warrant to the US Representatives who said they welcome the BushObama Terror State.
On the other hand sending Bush, Obama and the rest of the Fed to prison would be wonderful service the the citizens of the USA.
Maybe the NSA is really after the TSA employees ! Imagine Janet Napolitano getting served an arrest warrant by FBI and DC District Attorney and State+Fed Troops on a Sunday morning.
Will people dump Verizon ?
Will the FBI serve warrants on the NSA ?
Hardy har har
98% of you people, including slashdotters, will vote either for a republican or a democrat. So, like, screw you. If you want this to stop, YOU have to make it stop.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Most Americans are fat and lazy. They allow people to stick their hands down their pants at the airport, and still allow it today.
They just love getting their privacy rights stripped down bare, just like at the airport.
No one protects privacy. There are no multi-million dollar organizations protecting your privacy rights right now.
Americans will protect their guns, but their privacy will be sold to the highest bidder.
Without wishing to give too much offence, I think that the only thing you can now use the constitution for is either as a hygeine product that goes down the toilet, or pouring lemon juice on it to see if there's a map to freedom on the back.
Well, singling out the democrats wouldn't win any points with me either.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Just stop using electronic communication and especially wireless.
The GP was indicating an implicit inferrence that these things would be illegal in a hypothetical future. I cannot say as I don't believe that criminality will be broadened in the coming years, evidenced by the expansion of laws in the previous years. A future where it's illegal to have contact with anyone who is considered a criminal or enemy of the state does not seem that far fetched, and with total surveillance, it makes it easier.
The government does not believe this. The government wants you to believe this.
Read the subject title. Memorize it. Meditate upon it. Realize that even if people are watching you, they are probably bored stiff because you aren't actually that interesting. Move on with your life.
What if you decide that you wan to try to change the political or economic status quo? Might you become more interesting then?
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
Thomas Jefferson
You mean my Protection from Tiger's Stone doesn't work as advertised?
Yet with so much surveillance over people, control becomes possible.
How so? Seriously. You still have a choice of what you do or don't do. The only imposition on that choice is your feelings about what a hypothetical other might think when observing you. That isn't "slavery". That is vanity.
Use your imagination. Do you really not see how knowing a lot about a person gives you control over them? What if they have a mistress and you know about it? What if they hold fringe political views and you know about it? What if they are gay and live in a very conservative town, and you know about it? What if they are in the NSA and are preparing to blow the whistle on illegal activities, and you know about it?
They really don't teach critical thinking is school anymore, do they?
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
.. but not what you might think. his record was for busting up political cronyism before he was hired as US Attorney General.. there is another way to look at this, and that is that the phone records of business customers might be *more* damaging to the corporate RIGHT, even though it is offensive to the civil liberties of individuals.. There are things going on about oil and arms, insider trading, and moving money across borders, that are BIG.. so more than one angle here
While we have seen the paperwork that essentially tells Verizon to disclose the information, it would be foolish to think that Verizon is going to be the only Telco receiving such directions from the government. The ONLY way the other telcos won't have similar paperwork will be if they are WILLINGLY providing the information already. My guess is the NSL are the trump card the government uses when the folks they ask don't want to play ball.
Just a guess though.
There's an increasing tendency all over the world for such shenanigans(I'm living in Europe). Problem is, if this kinda shit passes and can be done in broad daylight (meaning it becomes common practice), other fuckhead politicians from various countries will have both the incentive and the reason to implement this. And they'll do it screaming 'LOOK, AMERICANS DID IT WE SHOULD TOO' .
"Bored stiff" + "entertainment using the resources at hand". Heh.
I've known this was going on since the late '90s with ECHELON. And even before that, the government was already involved with large scale warrantless information gathering with COINTELPRO. It's not that I'm paranoid, I just looked at the evidence and accepted reality. Perhaps it's just more "normal" for most people to be in denial about this kind of thing?
The list includes Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple, with Dropbox coming soon.
Because the NSA is legally above-the-board authorized to listen to conversations in which at least one party is a foreigner this has been taken place for the longest time.
You see the way it works it that they collect metadata which, if it leads them to believe that one of the parties is not American allows them to legally listen in in the conversation.
We can all act shocked like this didn't happen before, and make political hay, or we can start telling our politicians to dial down the post 9/11 paranoia. As best as I can tell joe sixpack and jane soccermom are not there yet. After the Boston attack I'm pretty sure middle America approves of the request. Sad but true.
In case you have not noticed there is NO LAW, except for YOU READING THIS.
I can't keep track of the criminality that is going on any more because it is OUT OF CONTROL.
Furthermore, nobody CARES!
It will all end VERY BADLY for everyone reading this of course, because that is what history says when we go into these ever repeating episodes of time when societies become extremely unjust and EVIL and ...
DIE.
So let the NSA spend your money on its folly, there isn't going to be anything left to tyrannize when this runs its full course.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
I for one *don't* welcome our new security overlords.
Now mostly at Usenet:comp.misc & SoylentNews.org (it's made of people!)
They have upset your society, America. They have taken away your freedom and your privacy. They have turned your government against you.
You just lost the war on terror, and the game.
If am disallowed lawful firearm possession, disallowed privacy in communications, disallowed Social Security old age and SSDI benefits and disallowed exemption from summary execution via UAV, what benefit is there to US citizenship? If lawful presence in the jurisdiction has been reduced to a franchise granted by Congress upon which it may lay and collect excises, fees and imposts, perhaps illegal immigrants know that and that is why they remain in the shadows.
If illegal immigration can be seen as a TAX issue and not merely an IMMIGRATION issue, maybe the IRS can do its job. Oh, wait...illegal immigrants are a PROTECTED CLASS!
--
Another fine opinion by the Fucking Psychopath®.
Maybe. I think your statement was taken to be a bit more partisan than you might have intended (as though (D) were really the problem given (R) was not mentioned; or maybe it was the "suckers" bit). This is why I highlighted the bit about "Libertarian or Green". Few rabidly partisan trolls would treat (D) as the problem and suggest Green as a solution. "Still, man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."
Republicans practice surveillance. Democrats practice surveillance and dole out goodies. The third choice is bloodshed. Human nature is such that any other choice is impossible. Prove otherwise.
You are all hot and bothered because you now know that your idol is no different than GW Bush.
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Another fine opinion from the Fucking Psychopath®.
Now imagine you decide to run for a congressional seat, or even the president's seat. Suddenly they can go 10 years back in your life and find out everyone you've contacted, what you posted or via what medium, and of who you said it about. Suddenly all those crude jokes about women rights and ignorant teen years angst can very well cause a scandal costing you a chance at changing the country. Blackmail is a harsh mistress and can very easily doom a political career; just ask Clinton or Sanford
The Tea Potty people are fearful to the core, and there is a hierarchy of fears. Xenophobia is a more primal fear than fear of government, notwithstanding the conundrum presented by (*gasp*) black people in office, so it's higher on the totem pole of fear.
Don't forget, those good Christians know that their ancestors were doing battle with Muslims a millenium ago. They may not know why, but they know that the crusades were fought in the name of Christianity, and they're all about clinging to the old ways, ahem... tradition.
Besides, no one ever expects... (wait for it!) The Spanish Inquisition!
That was supposed to be a bad guy: he got impeached. These days he would have a really hard time as a president finding any activity he could be impeached for.
The apparatus of East Germany never went away. It just changed country.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Didn't Russell Tice talk about the NSA massively deploying remote neutral monitoring and electronic brain link? That means every bit of electromagnetic energy produced by humans minds are being read and interpretted. Using EBL, which as far as I can tell, police and state agencies have everywhere, allows them to see and hear through walls, see what you see, hear, think, feel, remember, and why - every signal in your brain can and is being decoded, and compiled by police and government intelligence agencies. Combine it with Internet and phone records, but all they really need to do is monitor your brain waves. The Internet and phone shit is extra. I personally believe that at this point, everyone is being monitored, and every square inch of US surface is at least tracked. This is no joke, and this is where the real spy network is, this other shit is practically nothing. ps, I know it exists, I'm a victim of it's use, as the CIA/US DOJ/state of Oregon used it to set me up 5 years ago during a major investigation at the state hospital. it's also a weapon used to simuate psychosis, automate rape, and more. the computer in this system is very complete, a BCI which has AI that interprets everything automatically, knowing all human behaviors and why, why and what every neural impulse in your body and brain are, and everything in your body can all be manipulated from afar using microwaves and remote nerve stimulation. they can link together, do covert communication, or rape, simulate psychosis, and more. they tried to murder me in 2008 with it, and since I've been in the CIAs control everywhere I went, cause they literally follow me on the streets, "like you spy for the Statesman Journal, DeAnn Major spys for the CIA." "you're being set up to look psychotic". I had caught OSH staff on camera/audio talking about the scandal, the states lack of liability insurance, they discussed the technology that was in use from outside of the building. they were all linked up and spying on me. as far as I can tell, the reason why staff had such easy access to the technology at OSH was the US DOJ investigation into the hospitals violation of patients rights in 2006-2010, but then the case that was hidden was my abuse by staffers, including a women named Bonita Tucker, who sexually abused me, lied about it, state covered it up, and then she aided two patients escapes, smuggled in large amounts of marajuana, morphine, and amphetamine, and more, and she had lots of staff accomplises. The state covered most of this shit up to build the new hospital in 2010/2011, and they left me to die after using this weapon to try to blow my body up in my cell when I contacted the media about the Bonita Tucker situation and the spying/abuse. They literrally bullied and assaulted me on purpose, and trying to bury me in lies just to frame me to look mentally ill, all caught on camera, leading to this assault..
Check out my site about the fiasco: http://www.oregonstatehospital.net/
Check out nsa.pdf on the homepage. and I believe Russell Tice talked about RMN, Remote Brain Stimulation, and EBL before. Good links (Mind Justice.org, Washington Post article Mind Games, etc) for info on the technology in story.html. This is the core of their spy and citizen control strategy.
How is this different from companies tracking our surf/mail behaviour?
And I heard on the local radio that Obama is going to talk to China about their spying how will that conversation go?
9/11 aftermath wasn't the war and flag covered coffins coming back home, it is things like this that have been happening since.
Osama achieved, in one blow, to put U.S. highly in debt and tearing appart its own constitution.
I was all for Obama, but he is doing a hell of a job on making G.W. Bush seems a cool guy.
captcha: nonlocal
Is how few have thought this through even now. Attacks on the west from AQ are stopped regularly. EXactly HOW do u think we find them?
the question u should be asking is why did Boston occur? The reason is that these operated independently of AQ. What this shows is that NSA isNOT spying on all Americans, but are spying on these with one to two degrees of connections to AQ.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I think some of this PRISM story is smoke and mirrors, like a magician's trick where the hand flourishes to reveal it is empty while the other hand swaps the coins.
What is being alleged that the spooks 'magically somehow' (Google denies it) have back door access into these companies' internal networks, the servers and clouds where the data resides ... such as a level of access granted to the most senior of administrators, or a 'root virus'. It is a lot to swallow.
This is no Hollywood one-workstation Windows rootkit hack, These systems are unique, tightly integrated and watched over by thousands of potential whistleblowers. And the amount of data movement for surveillance alleged here is immense. In other words, it is an unlikely scenario.
I think someone cooked up this PRISM thing as an straw man to divert attention away from the real truth --- that what NSA actually has is full-slurp access to the digital transport networks behind these providers. As I've said elsewhere, they have no need to access your mailbox if they already saw the mail as it was arriving.
Make a grandiose claim that the providers are directly colluding with the government, let them each come clean (with a flourish of the empty hand) because there really is no 'backdoor' per se and knock that straw man down. Nothing to see, move along.
Meanwhile the full-slurp of the transport network continues, and by agreement or outright intimidation, the providers could each pass a little pocket flash drive with their SSL web, SPOP and SIMAP cert private keys to the spooks, so they can see right into the encryption streams.
The providers are fully protected from liability (there's no backdoor) and everyone is happy. Except those who value their privacy of course.
Nevertheless, it's impeachment and recall time, and it is time for EVERYONE to give every bloviation containing the words 'National Security' the only proper response it deserves --- an extended middle finger and concerted action.
It is time to DEFUND the domestic surveillance arms of NSA and the FBI and the DHS. Pretty much completely. Let the front-line cubicle spooks find honest jobs like growing corn or fixing potholes, something that matters.
And send those Israeli private contractors home.
I surely hope everyone is up to it. It's the last chance we'll get.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
So please spare us the whining and shock. If this is a surprise to you, you're part of the problem. If you gleefully expose every aspect of your private life on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter (and Slashdot), then you have nobody to blame but yourselves if your privacy is "violated." This is the way the world works today and that's not going to change.
If you want 1970s-class "privacy," then close your Facebook, Amazon, eBay, PayPal, & Twitter accounts, encrypt all your online communications (although that probably won't make much difference), and never say anything online that might someday be used against you in any context by any entity. Or even better, just stay off the Internet and the cellular networks completely. Otherwise, just shut up and continue to enjoy the conveniences you've already agreed to surrender in exchange for Fourth Amendment protection.
As Larry Ellison is reputed to have said in the late 90s, "Privacy? That ship sailed long ago."
Do you trust the government to just use this information to protect us from scary terrorists?
The FBI wiretapped and recorded Martin Luther King's phone calls, and amassed a bunch of evidence around his extramarital affairs. Then they sent him a letter telling him to stop his civil rights activism, and even commit suicide, or they would publish all the material. I'm not making this up. Check wikipedia's sources on the subject.
--- wad
Some party hack decreed that the people had lost the government's confidence and could only regain it with redoubled effort. If that is the case, would it not be be simpler, If the government simply dissolved the people And elected another? -Bertolt Brecht, "The Solution"
No government empowers you.
They fear you might think/act out of the box.
Casteism
In fact congress's "crowning achievement" is a healthcare bill that is an insurance company's wet dream.
FTFY. Obama didn't want what we got from congress. The ACA, as finally configured, came from the usual cronies of the corporations. Even so, availability of medical care to millions more people is an important step forward for a sane society. It just isn't as big a step as the single-payer arrangement Obama was trying for would have been. Perhaps we can go forward from here, though.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Very serious question: Where is this codified into law that affects officeholders, or even just rules?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Yeah, it's a late post, but this one burns me. Metadata is data about the data, phone numbers are data. For instance, if I say that phone numbers are ten numeric digits comprised of a three-digit area code with a seven digit phone number, I'm talking about the metadata. If I say phone number 555-1212 called phone number 666-2323 and talked for fifteen minutes, I'm talking about data. Calling it "metadata" in this context is just trying to cloud the issue.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====