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No Upper Bound On Phone Record Collection, Says NSA
PCWorld reports that "[A] U.S. surveillance court has given the National Security Agency no limit on the number of U.S. telephone records it collects in the name of fighting terrorism, the NSA director said Thursday. The NSA intends to collect all U.S. telephone records and put them in a searchable 'lock box' in the interest of national security, General Keith Alexander, the NSA's director, told U.S. senators."
But don't worry; it's just metadata, until it isn't. (Your row in the NSA database may already be getting cozy in its nice new home in Utah.)
Shinny side out or in?
No, they don't intend to do this at all, they already do collect all of it.
But don't worry; it's just metadata
Metadata Equals Surveillance
Turns out the tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorists were pretty much spot on.
I'm more worried about what's in the columns.... Metadata my ass.
Der Tod ist der einzige Weg hier raus!
I've never seen a civil war up close before.
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
Think about it. The director of the NSA says "run a query on X number" and show me everything we know. The staff runs the metadata query and shows the list. You know the next command from the director will be, "play those calls."
Anyone dumb enough to believe the NSA isn't recording the entire call is either A) a moron, B) living under a boulder 5 miles in a cave or C) most trusting person in this galaxy.
How long before the next incoming majority party decides to use the NSA data to clean house? Just to make sure that their government is free of ties to terrorism, foreign governments, and corruption, of course... and to ensure that everyone is loyal and pure of ideology.
Don't worry they can only fit a few hundred terabytes in the little box they drew on the blueprint marked "Datacenter" that they let everyone see to prove they weren't storing a whole lot of data there. Don't mind the dozens of all black blueprint pages marked sub-basement [redacted] through sub-basement [redacted] I'm sure none of their data center capacity would ever be classified. They've been nothing but fully transparent these last few years, after all!
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
The frequency and amplitude of the phone conversation, sampled at 1-millisecond intervals.
Just metadata.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
I don't think they need a new word. Just use a perfectly good old word. How about "tyrant"?
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
He wants all information about everybody he can get his hands on. That's basically his job.
That's why it's the President's job is to say "That's illegal. Don't do it. If you do it, I will have you fired, arrested for wiretapping, and charged for your crimes. I will do that to the next NSA Director who breaks the law. And the next. For as many as it takes, until I get an NSA Director who understands that the law supercedes what they want.", and follow through on what he said.
President Obama has failed to do this. So did President Bush. That's because they don't want to do their job, they'd rather (for whatever reason) have an NSA breaking the law.
I am officially gone from
For those who don't know, Senators Wyden (D-OR), Udall (D-CO), Paul (R-KY) and Blumenthal (D-CT) say they will introduce a bill today to rein in the NSA.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Very few of American's are terrorists. Any claim otherwise is paranoia. That is not national security. It is national paranoia.
Also, it is illegal. These people are the military. The military should have no oversight of the civilian public.
The NSA is part of the DoD under the Pentagon. That makes them a military entity even if most of those working there are civilians. We have lots of civilians working in all areas of the military. They all are bound by military law and military code of conduct.
These unconstitutional actions need to end.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Get used to it.
No, and that sounds like a terrible idea.
Da derp dee derp da teedly derpee derpee dum. Rated PG-13.
i don't trust what the nsa says, does anyone?
they do everything in secret
they've been shown to have reneged on every assurance they've given so far
the nsa is a dagger pointed at the heart of our bill of rights, and operates with impunity of any oversight or control
the entire program needs to be wound down and focused on actual surveillance of actual terrorist targets, not this vacuum cleaner for everything
do we still have the backbone to press our representatives to ensure this is done?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"He who sacrifices freedom for security..." – B.J.F.
"The tree of liberty must..." – T.J.
"In the councils of government, we must..." – D.D.E.
On a more positive note, at least the gears of legislation seem to be responding.
Wasn't it always the dirty commies that spied on their own people and didn't care if they liked it or not?
Why does the NSA hate democracy?
Who wants this crap to continue "in the name of fighting terrorism"? The alternative seems to be we lose 3000 people every dozen years or so. Big deal. I say we write off our losses every once in a while and stop shitting ourselves.
Have gnu, will travel.
I am not sure why you would think it might be . . . .
www.wavefront-av.com
Andrew Napolitano explains very clearly why the FISA "court" is an unconstitutional institution, and not a court of law at all.
Even if the FISA court was a legal forum, no court in this country has the authority to override the 4th amendment.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
the bad guys won.
That's who was playing!
I know some people in the NSA, and knowing their characters (but not having talked to them lately), I'm pretty sure they don't want the domestic spying to continue either.
First let me say: I work for a phone company. I'm a DBA, I've had my hands on just about everything, so I know what's possible and what's not. Also, no, I do not know of any access the NSA has to our records. Clearly they could have API access but I'm pretty sure I'd have heard about it. If they are in our systems it's likely without our knowledge.
Second: I hate the NSA and everything they are doing. I do not doubt they are already collecting everything they possibly can.
But...
We don't collect "All phone records" All this meta-data everyone is talking about is useless to us. Why would we keep a record of you calling your brother? If it's a toll free call we could give a fuck less and it's NOT recorded. You have to remember that the majority of phone switches in the US today were built in the 60's and 70's. The largest drives they have are incredibly old 20mb hard drives the size of a phone book. (ironic huh?) To allow us to store more data, these drives are dumped via netowork every night to standard Oracle databases. If the NSA is hacking us, this is likely where they get their info. As all the daily data rolls off we can collect more. But the truth of it is, we only collect data for billing purposes. So if your call doesn't generate a charge it doesn't get logged. The switch does not have the disk space to store it. We CAN log all your calls, if requested. CALEA requests come in for that sort of thing, but the number of lines that can be going on in one switch at a time is very limited. The data stacks up fast and we have engineers checking regularly to make sure there aren't too many running at once. I think the most I ever saw, in a city of 50k+ was 3...
Then you have the toll calls. Now your phone company logs those but where the call actually goes? No... They know you dialed X number, were on the phone for Xmin and they charge you. Where the call actually went they have no idea. If you have a number in Istanbul that automatically forwards to some other number? Your phone company has no clue. Your phone company looks up the number from a public list, figures out which exchange it belongs to, then passes the call along the cheapest route to that destination. Each subsequent exchange only knows where the call is headed and the preceding exchange. They do not know who made the call, they may get caller id info but that stuff is ridiculously easy to fake. Your call jumps from exchange A to B to C to D to E... all exchange C knows is that the call is headed to E and it came from B... so they can bill B... B bills A and so on. The only exchange the NSA could get any real data from is A, the one the call originated from.
Long story short, this data is pretty much useless for terrorists. If you're making ANY attempt to disguise where you're calling they're pretty much out of luck. Disposable cellphones from wallmart pretty much make this entire effort pointless.
Now the real question is: What is the NSA really using this data for?
VT-220and lynx you insensitive clod!!
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
So we are back to the "third party doctrine" legal cover. You dial out to the phone company and your rights are gone as you entered the "phone number". :)
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/01/supreme-court-holds-warrantless-gps-tracking-unconstitutional/ has some emerging insights on long term US legal thought surround ongoing metadata use.
The public, press and political leaders and gov spy staff now have a clear understanding of what "metadata" is in 2013.
http://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-continues-to-press-intelligence-officials-on-needed-domestic-surveillance-reforms
They also understand that its domestic vs the old line about only from a foreign country to the USA.
Recall the great quotes form 2006 and reflect where the privacy debate is thanks to Snowden and many others
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
A bit? It is a direct lie by omission and false image. Of course it is a database, and of course there is nothing sealed or locked about it. It will be used to data-mine, create guilt-by-association, etc. Every totalitarian government needs one of those, how else would it identify enemies of the state? And of course, if you are against this surveillance, you automatically are a freedom-Terrorist and should go a way for life without the due process scum like you do not deserve!
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.