NSA Tracking Cellphone Locations Worldwide

tramp writes "The National Security Agency is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world, according to top-secret documents and interviews with U.S. intelligence officials, enabling the agency to track the movements of individuals — and map their relationships — in ways that would have been previously unimaginable. Of course it is 'only metadata' and absolutely not invading privacy if you ask our 'beloved' NSA." Pretty soon, the argument about whether you have in any given facet of your life a "reasonable expectation of privacy" may take on a whole new meaning. Also at Slash BI.

Comments

Reasonable expectations

[SecurityGuy]

Pretty soon, the argument about whether you have in any given facet of your life a "reasonable expectation of privacy" may take on a whole new meaning.

No, it absolutely will not. People need to get through their heads that just because your rights are violated, that doesn't mean expecting them not to be becomes unreasonable. If someone breaks into your house every day, it doesn't become "reasonable" for them to do so, or unreasonable for you to expect people to stay out of your house.

The logic espoused by the quoted idea is the same as saying if police were to start strip searching everyone without cause, it would be reasonable simply because it always happens.

Stop that.

Re:Reasonable expectations

[Chris Mattern]

its only the faux news crowd that has been spoon-fed the bullshit that snowden is a traitor or bad guy.

Wow, I never knew Nancy Pelosi was one of "the faux news crowd".

"I think on three scores -- that is leaking the Patriot Act section 215, FISA 702, and the president's classified cyber operations's directive -- on the strength of leaking that, yes, that would be a prosecutable offense," Pelosi told reporters at her Capitol Hill news briefing. "I think that he should be prosecuted."

You can't assign this to conservatives. You can find plenty of conservatives that think Snowden is a hero--and plenty of liberals who say Snowden's a criminal and think the NSA should be give free rein to "protect" us.

Re:Reasonable expectations

[PeeAitchPee]

Bullshit. The leftist "big gov't is always right" crowd wants to nail him just as much. How dare he have the audacity to paint the result of the granting of unchecked Federal power in a negative light to the serfs?

This is NOT a left- or right-wing issue. Both parties gleefully hate your freedoms and civil liberties and take turns shitting on the Constitution while playing people against one another with wedge issues like abortion, gay rights, and illegal immigration. And people like you who put the blame on one side but not the other are part of the problem.

That's EXACTLY how it works.

[Anonymous Coward]

Precedent is a bigger component of the law than logic is.

Don't mistake the way you'd like things to work from the way they actually work.

Re:Love this quote

[SJHillman]

Possible meanings of that quote:
1 - We're collecting it unintentionally
2 - We're collecting it without authority
3 - We're not doing it in bulk, each one is individually collected
4 - We're not doing it in the US, only everywhere else
5 - We're collecting information, just not location information
6 - We're using subcontractors that are not part of the "intelligence community"
7 - We're considering the entity doing it something other than an "element"
8 - We're collecting it from devices other than cellphones
9 - We're collecting location information about people, not about cellphones
10 - I am the very model of a modern major-general.

Re:Metadata

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

(Warrantless) Metadata: That info with which the King of England would have rounded up the Founding Fathers, and thus they would have considered it part of search and sezure protections.

This "it's just metadata" is a fraud.