Slashdot Mirror
What the Surveillance State Does With Your Private Data
Lasrick writes "Conor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic writes up a new report (and infographic) from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School. 'What the Government Does With Americans' Data' is the best single attempt I've seen to explain all of the ways that surveillance professionals are collecting, storing, and disseminating private data on U.S. citizens. The report's text and helpful flow-chart illustrations run to roughly 50 pages. Unless you're already one of America's foremost experts on these subjects, it is virtually impossible to read this synthesis without coming away better informed.."
5 years: How long the National Security Agency keeps “metadata” about all Americans’ domestic and international phone calls without suspicion of wrongdoing
5 years: How long the National Counterterrorism Center can keep and search databases of non-terrorism information about Americans
5 to 20 years: Retention periods for databases that store at least some information from border searches of Americans’ laptops, phones, hard drives, and more
6 years: Time period, beginning with the start of surveillance, that the NSA can keep Americans’ incidentally gathered communications
20 to 30 years: Amount of time the FBI keeps information collected via assessments and National Security Letters, even when it is irrelevant to a current investigation
30 years: Time period that Suspicious Activity Reports with no nexus to terrorism are kept by the FBI
1 Billion and growing: Records in the FBI’s Investigative Data Warehouse
1,000,000 sq. ft.: Size of National Security Agency’s data center (opening in 2014)
41 billion: Communications records stored by NSA’s XKEYSCORE system every 30 days
I can't believe that nobody gets this yet. Sure, the data can be used for blackmail, intimidation, or extortion. But that's merely a bonus to them, the icing on the cake. It's not the reason they wanted a surveillance state in the first place.
The real value of the data isn't the data itself -- it's how much it justifies in government spending. We are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars per year. It doesn't matter where the money goes, or what comes of it. What matters is that it passes through their hands, giving them the opportunity to leverage that cash flow for personal gain.
The real story here is even more despicable than blackmail, intimidation, and extortion. The real story is greed, and the power of coercive authority being used to satisfy that greed. They are after money, period.
As demonstrated over and over again throughout history, power is merely a stepping stone to riches.