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'It's Time To End the NSA's Metadata Collection Program' (wired.com)
Jake Laperruque, Senior Counsel at The Constitution Project, where he is working on issues of government surveillance, national security and defending privacy rights in the digital age, argues via Wired that it's time to end the National Security Agency's metadata collection program, known as CDR. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt: In 2015, Congress passed the USA Freedom Act to reform Section 215 and prohibit the nationwide bulk collection of communications metadata, like who we make calls to and receive them from, when, and the call duration. The provision was replaced with a significantly slimmed-down call detail record program, known as CDR. Rather than collecting information in bulk, CDR collects communications metadata of surveillance targets as well as those of individuals up to two degrees of separation (commonly called "two hops") from the surveillance target. But this newer system appears to be no more effective than its predecessor and is highly damaging to constitutional rights. Given this combination, it's time for Congress to pull the plug and end the authority for the CDR program.
It's unsurprising that just last week a bipartisan group in Congress introduced a bill to do so. Last month, the New York Times reported that a highly placed congressional staffer had stated that the CDR program has been out of operation for months, and several days later, NSA Director Paul Nakasone issued comments responding to questions about the Times story by saying the NSA was deliberating the future of the program. If accurate, this news is major but not shocking; this large-scale-collection program has been fraught with problems. Last year, the NSA announced that technical problems had caused it to collect information it wasn't legally authorized to, and that in response, the agency had voluntarily deleted all the call detail records it had previously acquired through the CDR program -- without even waiting for a court order or trying to save some of the data -- indicating that the system was unwieldy and the data being collected was not important to the agency.
It's unsurprising that just last week a bipartisan group in Congress introduced a bill to do so. Last month, the New York Times reported that a highly placed congressional staffer had stated that the CDR program has been out of operation for months, and several days later, NSA Director Paul Nakasone issued comments responding to questions about the Times story by saying the NSA was deliberating the future of the program. If accurate, this news is major but not shocking; this large-scale-collection program has been fraught with problems. Last year, the NSA announced that technical problems had caused it to collect information it wasn't legally authorized to, and that in response, the agency had voluntarily deleted all the call detail records it had previously acquired through the CDR program -- without even waiting for a court order or trying to save some of the data -- indicating that the system was unwieldy and the data being collected was not important to the agency.
Anyone else wondering why Nasa was collecting metadata?
Why do people even bother with this? What are you actually going to do about it if they don't stop and keep breaking the law? The government has been breaking the law for a long time regardless of party in power and nothing gets done about it either way. At best when a citizen is wronged they sue the government and the citizens pay for that lawsuit along with paying the payout the wronged citizen receives. Not only that most people do not even challenge the charges the government brings against people they charge? The court treats government employees as people that have no reason to lie. The only thing keeping "some" innocents out of jail is because every once in a while a Judge makes the state prove it's case when a citizen manages to overcome the onslaught of charges the DA is going to throw at them if they don't take a plea deal and goes to trial. The presence of a jury changes little, most jurors are pissed off they got stuck in jury duty, don't give a shit about their fellow citizens and many believe in passing a guilty verdict because the defendant is guilty of something so they might as well fuck them over whatever that may be.
Carlin said it best... you have no rights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"The government does not give a fuck about you, it is interested in its own power, keeping it, and expanding it where ever possible."
What does NSA data collection have to do with a "Deep State"? What did you think the NSA did exactly?
Anyone else wondering why Nasa was collecting metadata?
They need to build a model of call networks. This will help them better design the communications infrastructure for the moon and mars colonies. Long distance call latency will be a bit worse than earthly international calls so they need to plan accordingly.
No, that would be illegal. Better to make them listen to Celine Dion sing AC/DC.
We went over this when the Snowden revelations hit.
Most people don't care. AT ALL. They "have nothing to hide". They still use non-encrypted services, they still vote for all the same representatives that put these programs in place, the same two political parties, they still give every minute detail of their lives to voluntary surveillance programs like Facebook and Google. They happily run malware and spyware on their phones if it gives them something "for free".
The marches to "protest" this were tiny and then they went away without any change. Did tens of millions of people rise up and demand a change? No. Did they demand those who lied about these programs under oath be brought to account? No. Did they demand the programs be shut down? No.
Mass surveillance? Nobody cares. It's over. Those of us who didn't want to live under the Stasi? We lost. We're not going to win. We're outnumbered too severely by the phombies.
It's an unpleasant reality, but a reality all the same.
Every time this comes up, politicians and media minimize NSA surveillance as being all about "telephone metadata." PRISM was a hell of a lot more than that. When you hear "metedata," you're hearing a lie by omission.
The GCHQ and 5 eye nations will do.
For every law in the USA, another way to collect it is found.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance was for Foreign but 4 hops collected it all.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
get out the guillotines and execute anyone involved in collecting data or helping the NSA
"Collecting data"? You realize the data is basically your phone bill? This information exists and will persists until the day your phone/mobile company thinks you will no longer possibly dispute your bill.
Well that and the phone/mobile companies use this data for internal modeling of call networks for their own design purposes.
No, that would be illegal. Better to make them listen to Celine Dion sing AC/DC.
Why not Celine singing her own stuff? Is that being held back as a threat for a continued lack of cooperation?
Anyone who think that it was just metadata that the NSA was collecting is hopelessly naive. Intelligence agencies, which, by definition, are intended to run with limited oversight, are not capable of voluntarily self restricting their information collection. You build an apparatus that is capable of monitoring, it will fulfill its design intention. It's not a matter if if the information is being collected, it's only a matter of who is collecting it.
It doesn't matter what it is. The NSA has absolutely no business spying on me. But then I wouldn't expect a little millennial shit like you to understand the ramifications of giving up your privacy/security. So long as you have your Facebook/Twitter and your video games, you're willing to sacrifice all of your principles.
Work on your reading comprehension. I wrote about collecting the data not turning it over to the NSA. Pointing out it is *not* collected for the NSA's benefit. That the NSA is receiving corporate data collected for valid internal corporate reasons.
Once you get your reading comprehension up to speed we can work on your misperceptions regarding privacy, security, principles, etc.
Don't worry, they only collect two hops: Mars & Jupiter. That means everyone on Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are safe.
NSA probably now has access to the direct streams telecoms use to consolidate their billing and geolocatioon data, from taps on the underlying circuits. If it's encrypted then nudge nudge wink wink here's the key. So telecoms no longer need suffer the indignity and PR risk of transmitting the data.
NSA Warrantless Wiretapping is not just an invasion of privacy. They have actually claimed to Congress that they do NOT consider information intercepted and stored indefinitely... to be unlawful at all! Until or unless someone reads it. This subverts Freedom of Association too, since any future tyrant would have access to this cradle-to-grave data of our families and friends and (now! with super-cells!) movements.
To get up to speed quickly this whitepaper by Andrew Clement seems to cover all the bases. Look past the straw man 'Metadata Collection' within it for 'NSA splitter'. Or you might start as I did years ago with James Bamford's fascinating 1982 book Puzzle Palace. While most of it dwells on what is now history and goes on at length about NSA's Charter which explicitly forbid domestic intercepts, there was a single passage in this book that revealed something else. I will quote it because I believe Bamford intended it as a dire warning: "Another indication of NSA's "broadband sweeping of multi-circuited domestic telecommunications trunk lines," David L. Watters told the Senate Intelligence Committee [in 1978!] lies in the Agency's request for an amendment to the wiretap law that would permit NSA to engage in warrantless wiretapping "for the sole purpose of determining the capability of equipment" when such "test period shall be limited... to... ninety days." Continuing, he warned: "Let there be no misunderstanding here. There is only one category of wiretapping equipment or system which requires up to ninety days for test and adjustment, and that system is broadband electronic eavesdropping equipment, the vacuum-cleaner approach to intelligence gathering, the general search of microwave trunk lines. I make this assertion on the strength of actual experience in the electronic intelligence trade and on the strength of over twenty-five years' experience in the telecommunications profession. An ordinary, single-line wire tap requires only five minutes to adjust and test."
Sure this pre-Internet quote discusses microwave, which was the long-line 'broadband' of choice in those days... but NSA's intentions to dig in at places where American citizens speak with each other is clear. Since then, Thomas Drake, Bill Binney and Mark Klein have all come forward alleging domestic surveillance far exceeding 'telephone records'. Klein is of special note, for it is he who revealed the existence of secret Room 641A in the lawsuit Heptig vs AT&T that the Electronic Frontier Foundation took almost to the Supreme Court... who actually declined to hear the case on grounds that the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 protected AT&T from liability for involvement with any illegal activities. Sound normal? This was a law passed after the lawsuit was filed. In response to it, even. Oh.
That should make you a bit angry. We're not talking about telephone records here. We're talking about fiber splitting with drop-in access to the whole slurp. Which also contains voice these days. Any real despot who comes to power will discover that the United States is prepared to deliver real-time private communications and databases of activity for its citizens, cradle to grave, that had been collected with no 'probable cause' whatsoever.
Why the fuck would anyone want to build this thing
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Option A) Use products and services compromised by the NSA
Option B) Use competing products and services that are...also compromised by the NSA
Option C) Become a luddite and avoid electronics whenever possible
Occupy Wall Street was a mass protest. It was systematically crushed at the local, state and federal level.
#WillfullyObtuse
Wow! How generous.
Let's assume for a minute that the target has 300 friends, family and acquaintances (based on average Facebook profile friend count). And each of those people have 300 people in their Network, and each of those the same.
300x300x300 = 27,000,000.
That's 27,000,000 people being tracked tied a single target. That's a lot of fucking people
For purposes of national security the 4th amendment doesn't apply, the bar is 'reasonable suspicion' not 'probable cause'. No warrant is required.
Which is why I didn't mention it right off, though Snowden is quick to argue that point.
But mass storage of communications intercepts without individual reasonable suspicion, whether listened-to or not, may be arguable as a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Supreme Court should they decide to hear it. It IS a search even if the 'seeing/hearing' is deferred. Under the general theme of unenumerated rights, any action that places the entire population under surveillance indiscriminately cannot argue that any 'reasonable suspicion' justifies it, for it would invariably include all persons worthy and unworthy of suspicion. You'd have to argue that everyone passes the test for suspicion. At that point the pinball machine says TILT and the game is over.
I think the Freedom of Association angle is just as compelling however.
It is hardly a novel perception that compelled disclosure of affiliation with groups engaged in advocacy may constitute as effective a restraint on freedom of association as [affirmative governmental action in other cases.] This Court has recognized the vital relationship between freedom of association and privacy in one's associations. ~Guilt by expressive association: political profiling, surveillance and the privacy of groups, p.636
Mass storage of traffic or communications (and association through metadata not specifically requested by court) is a 'compelled disclosure' to the government. It may be difficult to achieve in practice, but is it too much of a stretch to extend 'houses, papers, and effects' to include verbal or typed communications with others over a network? Think of the archaic meaning and intent here for 'papers'. It has been upheld to include sealed letters in transit and the opening of mail without due process is clearly a 1st amendment violation. This post was a 'letter' from myself to Slashdot, and until it appears on the public page it is a 'paper'.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Says it all, if we have the courage to fight for it.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
We're living the the movie Enemy of the State (1998) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0...
Collecting, indexing, and cross indexing the data. My phone bill doesn't have that feature. If you want to know what's going on and not be a pleb maybe you should check out the NSA leaks yourself.
Work on your reading comprehension. I wrote about collecting the data not processing it. Pointing out it is *not* collected for the NSA's benefit. That the NSA is receiving corporate data collected for valid internal corporate reasons (ie phone bill). So wanting to punish people for collecting the data in the first place is a nonsensical idea.
I know what is going on. Long before it came to your attention that the NSA was doing this I was reading publicly disclosed information where the FBI was explaining how they used the same technique to determine membership in and the organization of organized crime families. This was in the 90s.
Like if you ban it, they won't continue doing it and just not tell you about it! That's hilarious!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
If we had functioning courts a court order would be required. Information about associations people have reveals a ton of personal information that is normally protected. The NSA had no legal right to the information without oversight.
Court orders for this are easily obtained. The FBI used similar collection and analysis in the 1990s when trying to determine the organization of and membership in an organized crime family. The court had no problem with analyzing some number of "hops" from a known suspect.
The NSA is normally prohibited from collecting data with the US but I believe "authorization" came into play when a call existed with a foreign "suspect", then some number of hops were allowed even if domestic. Call a family owned restaurant to make a reservation, if that restaurant had also received a call lets say from syria last year, then there might very well be "authorization" and "oversight". The court allowed exactly such a scenario in the FBI organized crime investigation, knowing many innocents would be part of the call network under analysis.
Bulk collection of all calls, that is a different story and that is all that is likely will be prohibited.
Since they have spent trillions of taxpayer dollars to build and expand its spying capabilities, do you as a taxpayer want to just throw away what you have paid for?