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NSA Collected 500 Million US Call Records In 2017, Says Report (reuters.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the great-gatherings dept.

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.

37 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. Metadata is data by Arzaboa · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    --
    "It's all in the timing" -- David Ives

    1. Re:Metadata is data by mcl630 · · Score: 1

      It's not the same thing. You don't have to use Google, Facebook, etc at all, but you're stuck with your government. The government can imprison or execute you based upon what they think they've found surveilling you, Google and Facebook cannot.

    2. Re:Metadata is data by Kjella · · Score: 1

      You know it is data because it has the word data in it! For instance, a dataset contains data. The big clue is that it has the word data in it. For fuck's sake, why can't Congress figure this out?

      Yup, the same way metaphysics got physics in it...

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    3. Re:Metadata is data by gtall · · Score: 1

      Well, execution in the U.S. is from treason went out of fashion long ago. So stop being melodramatic. And Google and Facebook can sell your information to companies that will hound you for years, constantly yapping for attention. And if they sell it to insurance companies, your rates can go up for no reason you can see.

    4. Re:Metadata is data by mcl630 · · Score: 1

      Well, execution in the U.S. is from treason went out of fashion long ago. So stop being melodramatic. And Google and Facebook can sell your information to companies that will hound you for years, constantly yapping for attention.

      Then don't use Google or Facebook. You're stuck with your government, short of emmigrating, in which case you're stuck with another government. I may have been melodramatic, but the fact is your government can punish you in various ways, corporations cannot.

      And if they sell it to insurance companies, your rates can go up for no reason you can see.

      Do you have an example where someone's insurance rate was raised due to Google or Facebook selling the insurance company information that you didn't publicly post?

  2. Robodial by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:Robodial by Aighearach · · Score: 2

      They don't have to hunt them down, they knew that answer in realtime.

      You probably just don't understand who the NSA is, what their job is, or who has access to their information.

      (The answers are "the military," "military electronic surveillance," and "the military.)

      Unfortunately, most of the people blathering on the internet mistook them for being law enforcement, or somehow connected to the civilian gubermint. But no. They know who the robo-dialers are, and if the military decides to conduct air strikes to solve the problem, then somebody would finally use that knowledge. Otherwise, no, it just sits in a database.

    2. Re:Robodial by bmimatt · · Score: 1

      Speaking of robocalls... This shit is getting out of hand. I am and have been for a long time on the do-not-call list, yet I am getting several robocalls a day. Every day. Today I picked one up and while I was in the first second of that call, another one came in on call waiting. Anyone know how to stop these, short of only picking up calls from my existing contacts (I run a business, so I do get legit calls from unknown numbers)?

  3. Don't Thread On Me by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Funny

    The reason for the spike was not immediately clear.

    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.
    1. Re:Don't Thread On Me by jpaine619 · · Score: 1

      I'm not really a Trump supporter, nor am I really anti-Trump.. But this was hilarious.

      Kudos on the humor. It actually made me chuckle. Thanks!

    2. Re:Don't Thread On Me by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Or more likely, one of his secretaries calling to find an attorney willing to represent him after the last dozen quit.

      It might even just be all his past attorneys making calls to their liability insurance agents to verify their account status.

    3. Re:Don't Thread On Me by gtall · · Score: 1

      Or it could be his attorneys phoning each other, "Did you hear what that jackass said today?"

  4. then find the robo callers... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    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.

    1. Re:then find the robo callers... by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Render. When you're engaged in rendition, the verb is render.

  5. 95% spam by Dances+With+Sharks · · Score: 2

    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.

    1. Re:95% spam by RogueWarrior65 · · Score: 1

      Wish I had mod points. Why someone downgraded this is beyond me because it's a huge problem.

      *brrring* "Hello?"
      "Our records indicate that you haven't activated your 2018 online business listing..." (I get this call every damn day)
      Uh, yeah, your records are correct. Kudos for having good records. *click*

      The worst part is that I can't even block this one because it comes from a "private" called ID.

    2. Re:95% spam by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      That should actually make it even easier to block!

      My phone wouldn't have even rung.

      They're most likely one of the people who you had blocked, and they realized you allow anonymous calls, and so they flagged in the database as having those settings. Expect other scammers to know that about you in the future before they even call the first time!

    3. Re:95% spam by VanessaE · · Score: 1

      Or those ones about "your" credit account or car warranty (neither of which I have, natch).

      Or...the latest one, which kinda creeped me out: "Please stop whatever you're doing and listen to this imp--" *click*

      Kinda makes me long for the days when I could slam the receiver down on the switch-hook to terminate the call, as if to say "take THAT!", which you just don't get by tapping "end call".

  6. Cat by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

    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.
  7. I thought we were supposed to be afraid of them? by argStyopa · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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
  8. No encryption yet ? by rojash · · Score: 1

    Why aren't any of the providers offering encrypted calls and SMS ?

  9. ...but not its content.... by Bearhouse · · Score: 1

    Yup, and I have a nice bridge for sale here...

  10. Riiiiight. by laughingcoyote · · Score: 2

    The metadata records collected by the NSA include the numbers and time of a call, but not its content.

    ...until the next Snowden comes along and tells us they're lying again.

    --
    To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
  11. In this day and age by nehumanuscrede · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  12. "not its content" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    because that's stored in a separate system.

  13. In Solviet America by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    In Solviet America your government hates you.

  14. who runs it ? by speedlaw · · Score: 1

    Head of NSA. The guy cleared to see EVERYTHING.

  15. Just asking... by mark_reh · · Score: 1

    Does this rise to the level of tyranny that all the 2nd amendment proponents say they need their guns to protect themselves from?

    1. Re:Just asking... by mark_reh · · Score: 1

      How do you know what they're doing with that data? Maybe they're creating a list of all your "crimes" committed via the internet (porn surfing, trolling, downloading copyrighted stuff) and everyone you communicate with by phone, and preparing warrants on millions of people, and one night, when you're sleeping comfortably, they'll kick in your door, scare your children, and take you away to a re-education camp with all the other degenerates they scoop up in the same operation.

      It seems odd that people who are so paranoid about their second amendment rights will fight any attempt to regulate firearms at all because, well, it starts you on the slippery slope to the government taking away your guns, and yet when the feds are scooping up data on millions of people for unknown purposes is just Okey-dokey.

      I'll bet if they were preparing a database of the guns people own you'd be pretty upset about it. How do you know they aren't doing that?

    2. Re:Just asking... by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      4 hops from interesting people.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    3. Re:Just asking... by mamba-mamba · · Score: 2

      The existence of the database is a danger to everyone in America. Despite what this report says, it is obvious that the Utah Data Center is actually recording essentially all internet traffic, including tweets, comments, slashdot posts, full voice recordings of all calls placed by all people, call metadata, emails, etc. When they say that data was "collected" what they mean is that they got a warrant and then accessed the data. But the data is already sitting there in Utah.

      The very existence of that database is a crime and an affront and an obvious violation of the 4th amendment.

      --
      By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
  16. The call is coming from inside the house!! by Narcocide · · Score: 1

    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.

  17. Re:I thought we were supposed to be afraid of them by MrL0G1C · · Score: 1

    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.
  18. Re:I thought we were supposed to be afraid of them by MrL0G1C · · Score: 1

    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.
  19. Metadata isn't data by zippthorne · · Score: 1

    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?!
  20. NSA studies reveal... by CyberRacer · · Score: 1

    Gawdam Murica's fucked up!

  21. Depends on your defenition of collect by mamba-mamba · · Score: 2

    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.