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NSA Collected 500 Million US Call Records In 2017, Says Report (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. National Security Agency collected more than 500 million phone call records of Americans last year, more than triple gathered in 2016, a U.S. intelligence agency report released on Friday said. The sharp increase to 534 million call records from 151 million occurred during the second full year of a new surveillance system established at the spy agency after U.S. lawmakers passed a law in 2015 that sought to limit its ability to collect such records in bulk. The reason for the spike was not immediately clear. The metadata records collected by the NSA include the numbers and time of a call, but not its content.
Its fairly easy to create a set of connections and circles based on meta-data. One person is picked off for something, now there is an excuse to investigate everyone that person ever knew.
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"It's all in the timing" -- David Ives
How many of these are the Robo-dial calls?
Maybe the NSA could do something useful and use this data to hunt-down those responsible for the ROBO-dial epidemic?
I'm pretty sure most of the additional 380 million phone records collected were Trump calling his various attorneys.
You are welcome on my lawn.
There is no way the metadata could ever possibly ever be used to figure out what you're calling about...
Nope. There's no harm here. It's not spying on anyone, and there's nothing to see here. Please watch the other hand move for a while...
497 million of them were calls between Stormy Daniels and Putin's spies.
At least that's what the voices in my head told me to say.
The U.S. government's secret "security" agencies and the U.S. military, which is also mostly secret, are a main cause of insecurity. Employees there get promotions if there is trouble. The United States is the largest operator of military bases abroad.
They must be able to track all of the robo calls. Maybe they can do us all a favor and find the robo dialer assholes and rendition them.
The reason for the spike is that 19/20 of the calls to my phone are spam. You'd think the NSA could use this info to track down and terminate the spammers with extreme prejudice.
It's kind of sad. This "metadata" is used to build networks of people talking to each other to chase terrorists.
Yet knowing this is also one of the big tools for a dictator. Now the government knows who every politician talks to, and their donors. That is the kind of info the government is specifically not allowed for reasons behind the 4th Amendment.
A G. Gordon Liddy type might be tempted to mercilessly harass members of the network. So, too, modern social network lemmings, when leaked this info.
This should not be. It's ludicrous to think this can't be accessed without a warrant.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
"New law limits data collection by the NSA"
"NSA collects more data than ever, increasing by 354%"
Seems legit!
Well no actually, seems like Business As Usual at the NSA.
Um, 500 million is...nothing? You're saying they collected an average of what, about 1.5 calls per American in all of 2017?
Who gives a shit?
-Styopa
USA spy on you.
Why aren't any of the providers offering encrypted calls and SMS ?
Yup, and I have a nice bridge for sale here...
...until the next Snowden comes along and tells us they're lying again.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Treat every interaction as if someone is watching, listening or recording at all times.
This goes for everything you buy, write, speak, read, watch or listen to regardless of the medium.
Ignore the fact that you think you're doing nothing wrong because what you think, doesn't matter.
Today you may not be doing anything wrong, tomorrow the rules may change.
because that's stored in a separate system.
The US government thinks that building a bigger haystack will result in the finding of more needles. In the process they completely ignore humint for sigint.
In Solviet America your government hates you.
I seem to recall the Trump Comrades complaining about the "deep state".
Trump just tripled it.
Epic tony Montana final scene, brick of coke, wall of monitors, say hello to my little friend, paranoia.
Head of NSA. The guy cleared to see EVERYTHING.
Does this rise to the level of tyranny that all the 2nd amendment proponents say they need their guns to protect themselves from?
Look, as long as the only people who can stop the robo-dialers aren't doing it, we're just gonna all assume they're the ones actually doing it.
You think they have massive data centres the size of small towns just to collect meta-data that would fit in a home PC? Hint, they're collecting more, massively more.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
everyone involved in this should be executed for treason, regardless of party
NSA data centre brings 300 million daily security scares to its Utah home â The Register
How many Terabytes down $1.5 billion buy?
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
They're using the word wrong. Metadata isn't data. It's the description of the data. The database column names are metadata, the widths of the fields, if defined, are metadata, the relationships between separate tables are metadata. The routing data needed to connect parties for a conversation are data. Just because some datum of information isn't the conversation itself doesn't magically make it not part of the data.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Gawdam Murica's fucked up!
Otherwise you might have to be concerned about your government's gross violation of human rights around the globe.
Which 2 calls of mine did they sniff? The two times I called you? And then I bet they sniffed the two times you called me back. One call in full, and half the other. Or maybe 75% of each call. You know, just the parts with the heavy breathing.
This is pretty misleading. It relies on a perverse meaning of the word "collect." Anyone reading Slashdot should probably be aware that the NSA stores virtually all calls, both metadata and content (and lots of web traffic, too) in the giant Utah data center. Their definition of "collect" is more like "access." If the information is not accessed by a query, in the parlance of the NSA, it has not been collected. The rationale is that actually accessing the data requires a court authorization of some sort (in theory, anyway). But the act of storing the data is, itself, is not a 4th amendment violation. Obviously this rationale is bullshit, but that is the operative thinking.
By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
... collect meta-data that would fit in a home PC?...
Lol. That's cute.
Gun nuts just want the guns. And the religion. And their opioids.
The whole "freedom" mantra of the gun lovers is a pleasant lie they tell themselves and their children. Daddy is going to protect you from the Commies with his guns!! Those Commies are Godless, doncha know!
they already _had_ the content. They just got someone else to index it for them.