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William Binney: NSA Records and Stores 80% of All US Audio Calls
stephendavion sends a report at The Guardian about remarks from whistleblower William Binney, who left the NSA after its move toward overreaching surveillance following the September 11th attacks. Binney says, "At least 80% of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the U.S. The NSA lies about what it stores." He added, "The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control, but I’m a little optimistic with some recent Supreme Court decisions, such as law enforcement mostly now needing a warrant before searching a smartphone." One of Binney's biggest concerns about government-led surveillance is its lack of oversight: "The FISA court has only the government’s point of view. There are no other views for the judges to consider. There have been at least 15-20 trillion constitutional violations for U.S. domestic audiences and you can double that globally."
Seeing as this would be petabytes of data every month, it should be easy enough to find out if the NSA is purchasing enough storage to accomplish something like this. Where's the proof of that?
SHOCKED!
I saw Mr. Binney speak at the HOPE conference in 2012. I remember a conversation with my parents where I relayed what I learned from him to them, and they thought I was buying into some conspiracy. When Snowden broke into the news, they asked me how I had known so far ahead of time.
I'm surprised there hasn't been more discussion about Binney's whistle-blowing in the wake of the Snowden revelations. He has been sounding the alarm for many years now.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Right after 9/11, in the heat to Get Those Guys and their network, the NSA went into vast recoding depositories to track back conversations, actual recorded calls. They admitted it and it kind of blew by in the moment.
Am I the only one who remembers this?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
We should elect a Constitutional scholar to be President so he can change this for us.
Step 1. Collect all audio
Step 2. Convert speech to text
Step 3. ???
Step 4. Profit
The IT guy and geek in me gets all excited thinking about all of the cool technology that they are leveraging.
The civil libertarian in me shudders knowing how easily they are able to contextualize and analyze the communications with the intent of subverting public discourse.
The cynical part of me is starting to believe that the average American really does not care because they are so conditioned that they have zero desire to enjoy any sort of true freedom. As long as they have access to shopping malls, housing and alcohol / caffeine / prescription drugs, they will be content.
If the NSA can track people's movements, track who comes into contact with them, or just flat out records their phone calls, how many of our local/state/federal politicians, policy makers, law enforcement members, bureaucrats, bankers, CEOs, etc., could be blackmailed based on such information?
Next question. Who controls the NSA?
People expected a Constitutional scholar to follow and protect the Constitution. Instead, what we ended up with was someone who was very well wise to how to work out all the loopholes. Yes, I know you were joking, and I enjoyed it, I'm just pointing out the rather sad state of affairs.
Realistically, I'm not sure things would be much better if we had a different president. Even Ron Paul, who would assuredly do his damnedest to actually set things right, would be one man against an army of criminal, power-hungry scum. Still, I'd rather take a man that tries over a man that supports this evil.
Incidentally, didn't Obama announce some changes he was going to make to fix the NSA? Have any of those been implemented?
Unlike some other countries, the US has no experience what it is like to live under Fascism. The NSA is intent on changing that.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
So what if the NSA stores your data? Who cares if it's "Constitutional"? The Constitution is just a piece of paper and doesn't mean a damned fucking thing because even if some uppity people over at the ACLU or EFF make a case out if it, it will be discarded under the veil of "National Security" Face it, the USA is a Police State. AND YOU WONT DO A FUCKING THING ABOUT IT BECAUSE YOU ARE A WEAK POWERLESS WAGE SLAVE WHO VALUES YOUR SUV, JOB AND GADGETS OVER "LIBERTY" and look to someone else to fix the things you don't like. So I don't see why anyone should care -- because no one cares and nothing will be done. Perhaps these articles get posted because people like bitching about how powerless and helpless they choose to be in their pathetic existence as peons of the wealthy elite whose interests the NSA serves.
Not from this disclosure specifically, but ever since 2001, I've learned one important thing: we've underestimated what has actually been done. Remember those stories years ago about secret data centre taps that were tied into major fibre/international cable telecommunications hubs in places like San Francisco? Imagine what *could* be done with that! Imagine if that is one example of what is tapped at every ingress/egress communications point in a country. That was way back in 2006. No, no, that's paranoia. And there are legal protections that would prevent it.
All implemented. Everything. The sky's the limit. Billions and billions of dollars to do it? Here's the cash. Even the legal protections have been circumvented by using ridiculous legal tricks such as collecting everything. As long as nobody looks at it or no citizens are specifically "targetted", that is somehow fine and not mass surveillance? It's not a "search"? It's like going into every house in the country and passively photographing and recording everything there, but as long as nobody looks at that vast database unless there's some token cause, it's not a "search". It's like some kind of bizarro quantum mechanical legal theory where unless it is observed, the collected data exists in a legal limbo that doesn't make it a search until actively searched.
No, it is mass surveillance. And no matter how much you trust the people doing it, the results of that search are just sitting there waiting to be abused.
Anybody who claims this is all about terrorism is either lying, ignorant, or both. Control = Power, and if you can't take control, you get people to give it to you by scaring them with visions of explosions and death.
It's really only a matter or time before some President or intelligence chief realizes that he has every email and phone call sent or received, and website visited, of every one of his political opponents--all right at his fingertips. And even if he doesn't have the balls to use it openly, it would be easy enough to use it in secret.
It may have already happened.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
Try attacking it the other way.
If they AREN'T recording everything then why such big data centers? Metadata on every US call for the year would fit on a few dozen HDs max probably much less.
Raw data takes very little space with no media components involved. We ran 10 years worth of billing info on one 14MB drive platter in the 80-90's.
Why would Obama try to fix the NSA when it's doing exactly what he tells it to do? Obama can "fix" the NSA just by appointing a new director, with new orders.
Incidentally, didn't Obama announce some changes he was going to make to fix the NSA?
This is the guy who disingenuously said "Nobody is listening to your telephone calls", knowing the monitoring is done by speech recognition and only a tiny fraction needs to be listened to by humans, and who appointed Clapper to establish an NSA review board, knowing he had already lied to Congress to protect the NSA.