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NSA To End Bulk Phone Surveillance By Sunday (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The White House announced today that the NSA will be shutting down the program responsible for the bulk collection of phone records by the end of tomorrow. The program will be immediately replace with a new, scaled back version as enumerated by the USA Freedom Act. "Under the Freedom Act, the NSA and law enforcement agencies can no longer collect telephone calling records in bulk in an effort to sniff out suspicious activity. Such records, known as "metadata," reveal which numbers Americans are calling and what time they place those calls, but not the content of the conversations. Instead analysts must now get a court order to ask telecommunications companies ... to enable monitoring of call records of specific people or groups for up to six months."
I don't believe them
Instead of collecting the metadata themselves, they are getting (I think they're even paying) the phone companies to do it. Problems solved.....
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Thanks Obama!
So what kind of a 'court order' are we talking about here? An honest to God subpoena issued by a real court and a real judge and all the Constitutional protections provided by such? Or a secret FISC (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) finding issued by a bunch of kangaroos with a rubber stamp?
Which is going back to how it used it used to be. The phone company had records of who called who for billing purposes. The government could subpoena that information, with a court order.
Recently, when the government had all the information, that actually skipped the subpoena part - they already HAD the data, so they didn't need a court order to get it.
Now the thing is to watch that they don't get 10,000 subpoenas per day, each covering a million people, from a secret court.
During the whole Snowden event, it was astonishing that at every single step, the NSA was caught lying to the American public.
NSA: "We're not collecting anything about Americans."
Snowden: Bullshit, and here's proof.
NSA: "Well, we're only going after terrorists."
Snowden: Bullshit, and here's proof.
NSA: "Well, we're just collecting metadata."
Snowden: Bullshit, and here's proof.
etc. On and on it went. Those folks are sociopaths!
There is ZERO credibility left. Absolutely none. In fact, that's probably not strong enough: they have actual negative credibility. Not just is any random thing they say as likely to be a lie as not, it's much more likely to be a lie than not.
not cell or smart nor landline, but bulk.
First and foremost, I doubt the NSA had anything to do with this 'hopeful' news release.
It appears like someone is more interested in placing a demand on the NSA to stop by this Sunday if you asked me.
How's that working for ya?
Now the thing is to watch that they don't get 10,000 subpoenas per day, each covering a million people, from a secret court.
Wasn't the previous idea that they had ONE subpoena, and it included everybody?
When looking for a needle in a haystack, you don't add more hay. This is good news (if even remotely true). I hope the governments of Australia and especially the UK take note. They are obsessed with adding as much hay as they can get away with.
Glad to know they'll stop doing that illegal thing they got caught doing. I trust they're not going to continue to violate our privacy in secret until they get caught again, like last time.
PS Snowden did the Paris attacks.
A presidential review committee concluded the surveillance regime did not lead to a single clear counter terrorism breakthrough that could be directly attributed to the program.
Use your noggin' when you listen to candidates for office.
If there were some examples of threats neutralized by this level of privacy invasion, wouldn't the proponents of the police state have trotted them out?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
For those of you who think that voting Democratic is the lesser of two evils, note that the bill had strong bipartisan support in both the house and senate:
Yea 303: 179(R) 124(D)
[The USA Freedom Act] would make only incremental improvements, and at least one provision-the material-support provision-would represent a significant step backwards," ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer said in a statement.
Next up: the Trans Pacific Partnership. Let's all get together and vote for the party that does the least amount of damage to the American People! Yeah! That'll fix it!!!
One reasonable way to get good government to vote against all incumbents. Whether it's a red or blue congress critter, they'll fall in line once they realize that they only get 1 term if they screw over the people.
Another reasonable solution is to vote for non-insiders. Not Hillary, or Jeb or Chris or Marco.
This year the choices seem to be between "experience" and "change". Which of those would be the best for Americans?
Only it's not the same as back then, as companies now get paid for handing over the records.
"We officially need to track the phone calls of human beings. The group of people of planet Earth. For a time period from now until we tell you to stop."
Let's see:
Paris: all attackers known in advance. Warnings provided to French government. Not using encrypted communications.
Boston: Specific warnings provided to US authorities. Probably not using encrypted communications (the NSA and others would have made this claim, so by default, we can assume the opposite)
9/11. Most, if not all attackers already known to FBI/CIA. Again, we can assume that no encrypted communications were involved.
In other words, the bulk surveillance has no value in preventing terrorist attacks. If so, what is it for? Blackmailing politicians? Blackmailing the wealthy and powerful?
The NSA/FBI/CIA: price for failure: more resources. More power. More everything. One could almost imagine that there is a strong incentive in letting a small number of terror attacks take place.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
It won't end by Sunday.
I ain't sayin' how I know.
Prove it. Prove to me that bulk surveillance ends Sunday.
If you trust this, you're a fool.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Shouldn't you be posting about how "all countries' security services do this", and "if you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide, so the surveillance does not affect you"? Do your surveys show that people no longer lap up that BS any more?
We found a cheaper, more efficient way to keep you in line, citizen.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I hate to be the practical one, but...
Every country in the world spies on its civilian population extensively and lies about it.
If you don't like it, your only practical option is to start your own country. Which will then also be spied on by every other country in the world.
So good luck with that.
They did use the metadata in the hunt for the Boston Bombers, if you remember. The FBI basically admitted it while edging around talking directly about the classified database of phone calls and when they were made.
Also, the primary incentive-based reason people at our intelligence agencies don't deliberately allow significant attacks (at least on US soil) in that they would get lined up against the wall and shot if anyone found out. It may still happen occasionally, but if it does... their colleagues probably find out and kill them. Or at least send them into early retirement. It usually wouldn't help PR or the country to admit it had happened.
Most people in intelligence wouldn't do it anyway because of morality, but the people who would still have strong incentives not to do it.
From what I understand there still isn't an actual court process involved (subpoena), they can access the information whenever they want the only difference is it is stored in phone company databases instead of their own. I don't know if there are any third party observers which have been able to point out any real changes brought about by the USA "Freedom" Act. The only possible advantage is that they can't lie quite as effectively about accessing the records because those requests are processed by a third party. However I doubt that that will provide any meaningful oversight as they'll still throw out the "national security" excuse if anyone tries to challenge the legality of it all.
Corrected headline ...
Yeah, right... Absolutely no credibility morons!!! Oh, and politicians have no credibility either. You all have proven over and over again that you cannot be trusted.
Mmwaha...MWAHAHA....MWAHAHAH (filter don't use so any caps because Slashdot is a whiny little SWJ's bitch of a site so I can't continue laughing ironically at how "sunday" will never happen")
Those of us who work in telco have been aware of this coming for a while now. We've already hired people to deal with the increase in warrants. I'd say that this is a step in the right direction.
what new policies are in place to insure such an egregious violation of constitutional rights never happens again? What people were fired? And what assurance do the people have that this type of data-mining isn't just passed off to another agency?
Let's be clear here: not that much would have changed without certain revelations. It isn't enough to be caught with your hand in the cookie jar to simply say you won't do it again. I want a clear informed law that states some ass will be ground into dust if anyone tries this bullshit.
Anything short of that is just playing possum until it happens again.
Flying pigs, blue moons, etc.
In notice just how few replies there are to this. I wonder if most people feel like me, which is that the NSA have so often deceived and misled that communication with them is impossible. They say stuff, we don't - can't - believe a word. There is no communication. We of course still pay for the whole thing, since tax is mandatory and impossible not to pay, and if you were to manage it, you'd be in the slammer for years. This isn't freedom.
Ah, those kooky Congresscritters and their whimsical / ironic names for laws and such.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The NSA, CIA, FBI and other government agencies currently enjoy the same credibility that state and city law enforcement do: absolutely none.
At every level, law enforcement has proven that they are immune from consequences and that the law does not apply to them. There exists no oversight and no checks on law enforcement's power (including the NSA, CIA and FBI). Warrants at this point are a technicality: has anyone even heard of a case where a judge or a court denied a warrant when requested by law enforcement?
The standard operating procedure for all of these groups seems to be:
1. Determine if they are guilty via gut feeling
2. If they are guilty, use every trick in the book to establish guilt (illegal wiretapping, stingray devices, rubber-stamped search warrants, parallel reconstruction, coercion, etc)
3. Call everyone who disagrees with such overreach a criminal, a terrorist and a lowlife
The important clause is 'or groups'. So they just need one court order per telco every 6 months. It should reduce the the workload of the FISA court dramatically.
All it needs is any kind of attack that might be intepreted as a terrorist attack, including something set up by any of the agencies, even if it's not real, and "people will be demanding" the surveilance back. It's just a matter of media game.
That cyber security data exchange bill just passed. The isps have all the same data and a lot more for sale. So yeh this particular program ends, but the basic 'collect all bulk data/fail to stop terrorists/demand more data' nonsense continues.
Take a look at what your smartphone is sending. You can't even refuse Google your location trail in the latest version.
This may well be true and the NSA might be ending spying on it's own populus, but you can bet your bottom dollar that they have just subcontracted the work out to a foreign company (that the NSA probably own or setup) to do the work for them from outside the borders. Just like they are doing with the internet metadata.
The people we most need to fear are the ones making laws to suit them selves, that let them fund sceret projects for everything from nuclear war to hacking the phone calls of a 7-11 manager because he has a beard and prays to the east.
Of course they will .... :D ROTFL...
"USA Freedom Act" - the name alone is enough to make you concerned.
They may as well just come out and say "we're about to fuck you over, please look over there for a moment..."
Requiem for the American Dream
You,of course, deliberately understood wrong. In the bulk collection system, the NSA collected the data, but would not do any analysis without a court order, and once ordered, they would do the analysis and give the analysis to whichever domestic agency got the order. Now, our dear leader has given us much more privacy in a system where every domestic LEA can get all of. The metadata trivially, with minimal court oversight, and they can go shopping to either get the least oversight or to minimize the footprints of the scope of their operations. This is, of course, deliberate , to give them much more collection and less oversight.
Seriously though, what are they renaming or rebranding it as?
Because the odds of them no longer violating our privacy are 0 / .
So. Is it a new "program" that's exactly what they're doing but has a different acronym?
Are their people simply going private to even further suck away our taxes and claim "proprietary data" against any attempt to find out what abuses they've added to their mountain?
What is it?
We'll know it's true, because they've never broken the law, violated the Constitution, or been insubordinate before, right?
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
What Black Jesus has to say about this right Lloyd?
No one will ever be held accountable for this treason. Can some big shot lawyer sue these treasonous bastards out of existence?
court order = rubber stamp
Mr. James Clapper, best known for lying to the congress.
" Instead analysts must now get a court order to ask telecommunications companies"
LOLOLOLOL