Slashdot Mirror
Feds Operated Yet Another Secret Metadata Database Until 2013
A story at Ars Technica describes yet another Federal database of logged call details maintained by the Federal government which has now come to light, this one maintained by the Department of Justice rather than the NSA, and explains how it came to be discovered: [A] three-page partially-redacted affidavit from a top Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) official, which was filed Thursday, explained that the database was authorized under a particular federal drug trafficking statute. The law allows the government to use "administrative subpoenas" to obtain business records and other "tangible things." The affidavit does not specify which countries records were included, but specifically does mention Iran. ... This database program appears to be wholly separate from the National Security Agency’s metadata program revealed by Edward Snowden, but it targets similar materials and is collected by a different agency. The Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources, reported Friday that this newly-revealed program began in the 1990s and was shut down in August 2013. From elsewhere in the article:
"It’s now clear that multiple government agencies have tracked the calls that Americans make to their parents and relatives, friends, and business associates overseas, all without any suspicion of wrongdoing," [said ACLU lawyer Patrick Toomey]. "The DEA program shows yet again how strained and untenable legal theories have been used to secretly justify the surveillance of millions of innocent Americans using laws that were never written for that purpose."
It's the Department of Racial Justice, after all.
Line the officials up and shoot them.
Anything you say can and will be used against you, regardless of to whom, when, or why you said it.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Between this, the stupidity and apathy of the general public, and ridiculous taxes on the self employed, I'm looking to get out of here ASAP. Are there any good places left in the world?
Is that Mars mission still looking for people?
The temperature in the pot goes up gradually, so the frog
doesn't notice the water is too hot until it is too late.
And now all those in the UK, the US, Australia, and various other
countries are boiled frogs.
And the water is very hot indeed.
It's all about control, you stupid senseless gullible sheep. You will be controlled or you will be
dealt with so harshly by your superiors that you will wish you had submitted. Talk all the shit
you like on you web forums, but at the end of the day you have all been subjugated,
and you are no more free than an animal in a zoo. In fact you are less free because
you have to PAY those who hold you prisoner for the privilege of being a captive.
Right about now, many Americans are probably beginning to understand why alcohol
consumption in Russia is so high.
=>
At this rate we'll need a metadata database metadatabase.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Hang on while we all switch to encryption you can have a back door to. Once again you've proven yourself trustworthy!
Is big gov most eager to turn into our worst enemy or their own? It's hard to tell.
I think most of us would agree this has gotten out of hand. This federal government is completly ignoring the Constitution, and getting more brazen about it each day. As the Court ruled in Marbury vs Madison, "any law repugnant to the Constitution is null and void". Null and void, empty of any validity - because these actions are not within the powers delegated to the government by people, they are without force of law, but are rather unlawful acts by the people commuting them.
Suppose 100 of us or so wanted to start taking action and enlisting others to take action, in an organized way. We would need to start by defining our objective precisely. We'd need a measurable goal, worded such that we could know when that goal had been achieved. It would need to be specific enough that we could all agree to pursue that goal and we'd know we were acting with unity. Unlike the Occupy movement and others, we could stand together with a clear message and a clear goal, knowing where exactly we wished to go would guide our path. Can anyone state in clear, concise and precise language exactly what we'd seek to achieve?
Who has answers? Obviously we do need better ways to catch and confine criminals and we also need better ways to tune these people up and make them normal members of society. Punishment simply does not work. On the other hand we have a government with a very long history of wrong doing when we give them any legal powers at all. The FBI has a perverse history. The CIA has gone nuts at times and the NSA seems to have no bounderies. And on top of that local cops are often operating outside the law with the backing of local governments. And it is not that local cops are just after people of minority races. There is some poorly defined Ozzie and Harriet factor that causes cops to want to control anyone that is unlike Ozzie and Harriet in their life style. As a matter of fact a cop's entire world is controlling other peoples' behaviours. It gets to the point where cops can't turn it off. they go off duty and still think they exist to set the behaviour of everyone around them. It is the order part of law and order that is the issue. The cops look for usual and common behaviours whereas different cultures have entirely different modes of behaviour. There was a ghetto near where I worked and it was quite common to see black kids out on their tiny bicycles at three or four AM. I live in a hot climate and the kids simply could not play outdoors during the day. Many of their homes also had no air conditioning or had problems with enough money to pay electric bills. The effect was that almost year round the kids were on their bikes and doing whatever they could to not be bored silly. Some were very dangerous while others were simply poor kids playing. Obviously it is illegal to have kids roaming about in the wee hours when they are as young as eight years and very much at risk in ghetto areas. How can cops deal with this sort of thing?
Most places are better to live than the USA. Self employed people seem to do well a lot of places. Even with higher taxes. It seems, it matters more what you can buy with the money you take home. In the end, places with better laws tend to have more opportunity, you can actually have the 'American Dream' much easier outside of America today.
So while you were calling Australia to your mom, the DEA was putting you in the 'drug dealer' database, because calling abroad is something that a drug dealer might do.
Because at some point they stopped investigating drug crimes, and instead switched to spying on random people for random reasons and asking the question 'is this random person I picked a drug criminal? [yes/maybe]"
And the answer is [yes/maybe] and never 'no', they keep the data always. Without suspicion of any crime, they keep it anyway. So they never say 'no, this person is not someone I am investigating for a crime and thus not someone I can legally spy on', instead, they get put in the 'maybe' pile.
Drug dealers travel abroad, spy on everyone who travels abroad.
Drug dealers have lots of money, spy on everyone who has money.
Drug dealers want privacy, spy on people who buy home CCTV cameras.
If select {travels_abroad, lots_of_money, cctv, calls_mom .... 50 other random choices} then drug dealer.
This is not investigating drug crimes, this is defining arbitrarily chosen traits are equivalent to crime in order to justify mass surveillance.
You might actually want to be careful about characterizing European privacy law: while some of the traditional tax shelters may still be almost as quiet about banking details as Nevada is about incorporation, but broader protections of privacy can be rather patchy(It's generally not a good sign if a given country has people appealing to ECHR Article 8 for lack of more robust national laws).
The trouble with the US is not so much that our privacy laws are lousy (with respect to the government, with respect to private third parties Europe is merely toothless, while we practically take it as a point of national pride to ensure that the data brokers can do business unhindered by stifling regulation); but that we are really, really good at violating them; and have built up an impressive infrastructure for doing so.
Given the amount of cooperation from our various overseas friends revealed by the NSA leaks, I'd be a trifle nervous about assuming that a given European jurisdiction is necessarily more likely to be obeying its own laws, let alone providing a higher level of protection. (And I'm guessing that the past week or two are...unlikely...to be particularly helpful in encouraging privacy improvements.)
As a resident of the EU, I'd like to recommend Australia.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Considering that you guys seem to spend about 75% of your time in internecine sparring with the Birchers and the Eagle Forum... Nah, thanks but no thanks.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I dunno, mon... Why do idiots mod down Interesting/Insightful comments?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Not a person. Missing beagle, and it's been found.
In Australia we're busy trying to adopt the worst ideas of the USA as quickly as we can. Luckily the people doing it are children that got in politics at University and never managed to grow up since so it's taking a while, but the people fully in their power are in deep shit (eg. Manus Island).
Jesus, I actually know what both of those organizations are...
"Luckily the people doing it are children that got in politics at University and never managed to grow up"
Well that's just what happened here. Where did we get it from?
I see a problem. The Constitution does not forbid snooping the communications of the country's enemies.
When they steamed open letters from Americans to the Nazis containing troop movement info, we were glad they did that.
When they caught a Soviet spy using his American girlfriend, we were glad they did that.
When they foil a terrorist plot before they get a chance to kill people, we are glad of that too.
We overreacted to 9/11 is all, predictable maybe; but it's never too late to fix things:
1) I need the NSA to be secret again. I want them to know every single thing that ever happens, and we don't have a clue what they do and don't know. None of it matters, because it all stays in that basement. They don't share with other agencies, just like it used to be. Whatever they know is untouchable by politicians, courts, anyone; except in the most dire need.
2) I need to trust the court that decides when that dire need has arisen.
We need to split the NSA into offensive and defensive sections, and hand off the offensive block to the CIA. It won't stop the spying but at least we won't get cracked by North Korea hackers. Baby steps, take this a bit at a time.
Then we should really eliminate democracy. The people are too dumb to give power to. Unfortunately I do not know what the solution is if we eliminate democratic process.
A lottery for representatives would be the ideal. Even a hereditary monarchy (with a constitution and veto, perhaps in the form of a guillotine) would beat what we have now.
The problem isn't so much that people are too dumb as that our system selects for corrupt, greedy, and power hungry sociopaths. The only way to become a "representative" is to want to be one. But anyone who wants that job should be denied it on that basis alone. The people may vote sub-optimally, but every single choice available to them is a bad choice. Our system is designed to distill out anyone who is remotely suitable for public office.
Replacing the system that self-selects the most horrible people with one that operates on complete chance would be an improvement.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
How much money could the government save if they just worked together through all the bureaucratic bullshit.
+1
Yo, dawg, I heard you like your metadata, so we put metadata into your metadata, so you can metadatabase while you metadatabase.
We are considering another layer of it now.
You can't handle the truth.
It will make the cease about as much as you calling them names will. However, calling them names will also have the effect of you splitting momentum between more than one group because of fallacies you hold largely only in your mind. This ensures your defeat at any change if effecting change you agree with. But go ahead and demonize the people on your side. It's works so well so far hasn't it. I mean you have gotten everything you wanted and government listens to the people right?
If you let them have access in the case of "dire" need, you'll find lots of dire needs just coincidentally popping up. That would be almost exactly the same as now. I agree with your general premise, if it was possible. I just don't see it being so.
Better would be to have it all locked in that basement, and have all the people allowed in the basement closely watched by other agencies without access, and all their non-basement activities to be published and transparent; and the activities of the watcher-watchers, too.
>. They don't share with other agencies, just like it used to be. Whatever they know is untouchable by politicians, courts, anyone;
Definitely this is a good start. That's how it was before 9/11 and that was good. The NSA was only concerned about national security issues, and since they weren't allowed to send information to the FBI the data was only* used for national security. Yes, that made it harder to protect against something like 9/11, but it _helped_ protect privacy and freedom, so it was worth it.
* I'm sure they illegally shared information once or twice, but that's better than the FBI having wholesale access to citizens' data as we have now.
That's a method you're suggesting to get to some goal, a means to some end. You'd like to replace Democrats and Republicans with Communists and Green party candidates in order to __________. Fill in the blank.