The government has sought to “reassure” us that it is only tracking “metadata” such as the time and place of the calls, and not the actual content of the calls.
But technology experts say that “metadata” can be more revealing than the content of your actual phone calls.
For example, the ACLU notes:
A Massachusetts Institute of Technology study a few years back found that reviewing people’s social networking contacts alone was sufficient to determine their sexual orientation. Consider, metadata from email communications was sufficient to identify the mistress of then-CIA Director David Petraeus and then drive him out of office.
The “who,” “when” and “how frequently” of communications are often more revealing than what is said or written. Calls between a reporter and a government whistleblower, for example, may reveal a relationship that can be incriminating all on its own.
Repeated calls to Alcoholics Anonymous, hotlines for gay teens, abortion clinics or a gambling bookie may tell you all you need to know about a person’s problems. If a politician were revealed to have repeatedly called a phone sex hotline after 2:00 a.m., no one would need to know what was said on the call before drawing conclusions. In addition sophisticated data-mining technologies have compounded the privacy implications by allowing the government to analyze terabytes of metadata and reveal far more details about a person’s life than ever before.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation points out:
What [government officials] are trying to say is that disclosure of metadata—the details about phone calls, without the actual voice—isn’t a big deal, not something for Americans to get upset about if the government knows. Let’s take a closer look at what they are saying:
- They know you rang a phone sex service at 2:24 am and spoke for 18 minutes. But they don’t know what you talked about.
- They know you called the suicide prevention hotline from the Golden Gate Bridge. But the topic of the call remains a secret.
- They know you spoke with an HIV testing service, then your doctor, then your health insurance company in the same hour. But they don’t know what was discussed.
- They know you received a call from the local NRA office while it was having a campaign against gun legislation, and then called your senators and congressional representatives immediately after. But the content of those calls remains safe from government intrusion.
- They know you called a gynecologist, spoke for a half hour, and then called the local Planned Parenthood’s number later that day. But nobody knows what you spoke about.
Sorry, your phone records—oops, “so-called metadata”—can reveal a lot more about the content of your calls than the government is implying. Metadata provides enough context to know some of the most intimate details of your lives. And the government has given no assurances that this data will never be correlated with other easily obtained data.
New York Magazine explains:
“When you take all those records of who’s communicating with who, you can build social networks and communities for everyone in the world,” mathematician and NSA whistle-blower William Binney — “one of the best analysts in history,” who left the agency in 2001 amid privacy concerns — told Daily Intelligencer. “And when you marry it up with the content,” which he is convinced the NSA is collecting as well, “you have leverage against everybody in the country.”
“You are unique in the world,” Binney explained, based on the identifying attributes of the machines you use. “If I want to know who’s in the tea party, I can put together the metadata and see who’s communicating with who. I can construct the network of the tea party. If I want to pass that data to the IRS, then I can do that. That’s the danger here.”
At The New Yorker, Jane Mayer quoted mathematician and engineer Susan Landau’s hypothetical: “For example, she said, in the world of business, a pattern of phone calls from key executives can reveal impending corporate takeovers. Personal phone calls can also reveal sensitive medical information: ‘You can see a call to a gynecologist, and then a call to an oncologist, and then a call to close family members.’”
“There’s a lot you can infer,” Binney continued. “If you’re calling a physician and he’s a heart specialist, you can infer someone is having heart problems. It’s all in the databases.” The data, he said, is “all compiled by code. The software does it all from the beginning — they have dossiers of everyone in the country. That’s done automatically. When you want to investigate or target somebody, a human becomes involved.”
“The public doesn’t understand,” Landau told Mayer. “It’s much more intrusive than content.”
The Guardian reports:
The information collected on the AP [in the recent scandal regarding the government spying on reporters] was telephony metadata: precisely what the court order against Verizon shows is being collected by the NSA on millions of Americans every day.
***
Discussing the use of GPS data collected from mobile phones, an appellate court noted that even location information on its own could reveal a person’s secrets: “A person who knows all of another’s travels can deduce whether he is a weekly churchgoer, a heavy drinker, a regular at the gym, an unfaithful husband, an outpatient receiving medical treatment, an associate of particular individuals or political groups,” it read, “and not just one such fact about a person, but all such facts.”
Indeed, the government’s spying on our metadata arguably violates our right to freedom of expression, guaranteed by numerous laws and charters including the U.S. Constitution, the European Convention on Human Rights, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and international law, including articles 20 and 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and Conventions 87 and 98 of the International Labor Organization.
Remember, a U.S. federal judge found that the statute allowing indefinite detention of Americans without due process has a “chilling effect” on free speech. Top reporters have said that they are less likely to interview controversial people, for fear of being accused of “supporting” terrorists.
Given the insanely broad list of actions and beliefs which may get one labeled as a “potential terrorist” by local, state or federal law enforcement, the free association of Americans is being chilled. For example, people may be less willing to call their niece calling to end the Fed, their Occupy-attending aunt, their Tea Party-promoting cousin, their anti-war teacher, or their anti-fracking uncle.
Spying on Americans’ metadata rolls back everything our freedom of association … and virtually everything the Founding Fathers fought for.
Indeed, computer experts have used an analogy to explain how powerful metadata is: the English monarchy could have stopped the Founding Fathers in their tracks if they only possessed “metadata” regarding which colonist talked to whom.
Postscript: The government is – in fact – gathering content, as well as metadata.
And mass surveillance doesn’t work to keep us safe. It does, however, set up a technological framework allowing for “turnkey tyranny”.
William Binney knows as much about spying as anyone alive.
Binney – a 32-year National Security Agency veteran – is the former head of the NSA’s global digital data gathering program, and a very highly-regarded cryptographer.
Binney told Daily Caller yesterday that the spying “dragnet” being carried out by the government is useless:
Daily Caller: There’s been some talk about the authorities having a recording of a phone call Tamerlan Tsarnaev had with his wife. That would be something before the bombing?
Binney: Before the bombing, yes. [This information comes from former FBI counterrorism agent Tim Clemente.]
Daily Caller: Then how would they have that audio?
Binney: Because the NSA recorded it.
Daily Caller: But apparently the Russians tipped off the FBI, which then did a cursory interview and cleared him. So how were they recording him?
Binney: Because the Russians gave a warning for him as a target. Once you’re on a list, they start recording everything. That’s what I’m saying.
Daily Caller: So why didn’t they prevent the bombing?
Binney: Once you’ve recorded something, that doesn’t mean they have it transcribed. It depends on what they transcribe and what they do with the transcription.
Daily Caller: So it seems logical to ask: Why do we need all of this new data collection when they’re not following up obvious leads, such as an intelligence agency calling and saying you need to be aware of this particular terrorist?
Binney: It’s sensible to ask, but that’s exactly what they’re doing. They’re making themselves dysfunctional by collecting all of this data. They’ve got so much collection capability but they can’t do everything.
***
Daily Caller: So what are they doing with all of this information? If they can’t stop the Boston marathon bombing, what are they doing with it?
Binney: Well again, they’re putting an extra burden on all of their analysts. It’s not something that’s going to help them; it’s something that’s burdensome. There are ways to do the analysis properly, but they don’t really want the solution because if they got it, they wouldn’t be able to keep demanding the money to solve it. I call it their business statement, “Keep the problems going so the money keeps flowing.” It’s all about contracts and money.
Daily Caller: But isn’t data collection getting easier and processing speeds getting faster and data collection cheaper? Isn’t the falling price one of the reasons they can collect data at this massive level?
Binney: Yes, but that’s not the issue. The issue is, can you figure out what’s important in it? And figure out the intentions and capabilities of the people you’re monitoring? And they are in no way prepared to do that, because that takes analysis. That’s what the big data initiative was all about out of the White House last year. It was to try to get algorithms and figure out what’s important and tell the people what’s important so that they can find things. The probability of them finding what’s really there is low.
Similarly, Fortune notes that the NSA’s “big data” strategy is ineffective:
The evidence for big data is scant at best. To date, large fields of data have generated meaningful insights at times, but not on the scale many have promised. This disappointment has been documented in the Wall Street Journal, Information Week, and SmartData Collective.
***
According to my firm’s research, local farmers in India with tiny fields frequently outperform — in productivity and sustainability — a predictive global model developed by one of the world’s leading agrochemical companies. Why? Because they develop unique planting, fertilizing, or harvesting practices linked to the uniqueness of their soil, their weather pattern, or the rare utilization of some compost. There is more to learn from a local Indian outlier than from building a giant multivariate yield prediction model of all farms in the world. The same is true for terrorism. Don’t look for a needle in a giant haystack. Find one needle in a small clump of hay and see whether similar clumps of hay also contain needles.
You need local knowledge to glean insights from any data. I once ran a data-mining project with Wal-Mart (WMT) where we tried to figure out sales patterns in New England. One of the questions was, “Why are our gun sales lower in Massachusetts than in other states, even accounting for the liberal bias of the state?” The answer: There were city ordinances prohibiting the sale of guns in many towns. I still remember the disappointed look of my client when he realized the answer had come from a few phone calls to store managers rather than from a multivariate regression model.
So, please, Mr. President, stop building your giant database in the sky and quit hoping that algorithm experts will generate a terrorist prevention strategy from that data. Instead, rely on your people in the field to detect suspicious local patterns of behavior, communication, or spending, then aggregate data for the folks involved and let your data hounds loose on these focused samples. You and I will both sleep better. And I won’t have to worry about who is lurking in the shadows of my business or bedroom.
Likewise, Nassim Taleb writes:
Big data may mean more information, but it also means more false information.
***
Because of excess data as compared to real signals, someone looking at history from the vantage point of a library will necessarily find many more spurious relationships than one who sees matters in the making; he will be duped by more epiphenomena. Even experiments can be marred with bias, especially when researchers hide failed attempts or formulate a hypothesis after the results — thus fitting the hypothesis to the experiment (though the bias is smaller there).
This is the tragedy of big data: The more variables, the more correlations that can show significance. Falsity also grows faster than information; it is nonlinear (convex) with respect to data (this convexity in fact resembles that of a financial option payoff). Noise is antifragile. Source: N.N. Taleb
If big data leads to more false correlations, then mass surveillance may lead to more false accusations of terrorism.
Professor Jonathan Turley – one of the nation’s top constitutional and military law experts – noted after the Boston bombing:
For civil libertarians, all terrorist attacks come in two equally predictable parts.
First, there is the terrorist attack itself — a sad reality of our modern life. Second, comes the inevitable explosion of politicians calling for new security measures and surveillance. We brace ourselves for this secondary blow, which generally comes before we even fully know what occurred in an attack or how it was allowed to occur.
Politicians need to be seen as actively protecting public safety and the easiest way is to add surveillance, reduce privacy and expand the security state. What they are not willing to discuss is the impossibility of detecting and deterring all attacks. The suggestion is that more security measures translate to more public safety. The fact is that even the most repressive nations with the most abusive security services, places such as China and Iran, have not been able to stop terrorist acts.
While police were still combing through the wreckage from the Boston Marathon, politicians ran to cameras to pledge more security measures and surveillance. Indeed, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel demanded more cameras in response to the Boston attack. Chicago already is one of the most surveilled cities in the United States. Emanuel’s solution: add some more. It is a perfectly Pavlovian response of politicians eager to appear as champions of public safety.
We need to resist the calls for a greater security state and put this attack into perspective. These two brothers built homemade bombs with over-the-counter pressure cookers. They placed the devices in one of the most surveilled areas of Boston with an abundance of police and cameras [Proof here]. There is only so much that a free nation can do to avoid such an attack. Two men walked in a crowd and put two bags down on the ground shortly before detonation.
No one is seriously questioning the value of having increased surveillance and police at major events. That was already the case with the Boston Marathon. However, privacy is dying in the United States by a thousand papercuts from countless new laws and surveillance systems. Before we plunge ahead in creating a fishbowl society of surveillance, we might want to ask whether such new measures or devices will actually make us safer or just make us appear safer.
Not only did mass surveillance fail to stop the Boston bombing, it also failed to stop 9/11:
Widespread spying on Americans began before 9/11 (confirmed here and here. And see this [and this.])
And U.S. and allied intelligence heard the 9/11 hijackers plans from their own mouths:
- An FBI informant hosted and rented a room to two hijackers in 2000. Specifically, investigators for the Congressional Joint Inquiry discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and even rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location, and that a high-level FBI official stated these blocking maneuvers were undertaken under orders from the White House. As the New York Times notes:
Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who is a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused the White House on Tuesday of covering up evidence ….The accusation stems from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s refusal to allow investigators for a Congressional inquiry and the independent Sept. 11 commission to interview an informant, Abdussattar Shaikh, who had been the landlord in San Diego of two Sept. 11 hijackers.
- The National Security Agency and the FBI were each independently listening in on the phone calls between the supposed mastermind of the attacks and the lead hijacker. Indeed, the FBI built its own antenna in Madagascar specifically to listen in on the mastermind’s phone calls
- According to various sources, on the day before 9/11, the mastermind told the lead hijacker “tomorrow is zero hour” and gave final approval for the attacks. The NSA intercepted the message that day and the FBI was likely also monitoring the mastermind’s phone calls
- According to the Sunday Herald, two days before 9/11, Bin Laden called his stepmother and told her “In two days, you’re going to hear big news and you’re not going to hear from me for a while.” U.S. officials later told CNN that “in recent years they’ve been able to monitor some of bin Laden’s telephone communications with his [step]mother. Bin Laden at the time was using a satellite telephone, and the signals were intercepted and sometimes recorded.” Indeed, before 9/11, to impress important visitors, NSA analysts would occasionally play audio tapes of bin Laden talking to his stepmother.
- And according to CBS News, at 9:53 a.m on 9/11, just 15 minutes after the hijacked plane had hit the Pentagon, “the National Security Agency, which monitors communications worldwide, intercepted a phone call from one of Osama bin Laden’s operatives in Afghanistan to a phone number in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia”, and secretary of Defense Rumsfeld learned about the intercepted phone call in real-time (if the NSA monitored and transcribed phone calls in real-time on 9/11, that implies that it did so in the months leading up to 9/11 as well)
But even with all of that spying, the government didn’t stop the hijackers … even though 9/11 was entirely foreseeable.
If you have a hard time believing that the government would push a program on the basis of national security which impinges on our freedoms and yet is ineffective in keeping us safe, please review the following statements by top national security experts saying that the following government programs do nothing at all to make us safer:
They are using this system to bring down child pornography rings.
Notice the rise in international busts?
Pictures, videos, and phone conversations.
Please.......like using a cruise missile to hit a flea......
Nice excuse....probee
I don't know why the down votes, I was just pointing out a fact:
http://www.government.nl/news/2012/11/28/new-measure-to-combat-child-por...
http://www.cooperazioneallosviluppo.esteri.it/pdgcs/italiano/speciali/Co...
(check the section on tools)
We lose more lives to automobile accidents every year than we have lost in the entire "War on Terror". Does it occur to anyone besides me that we are not thinking straight.
The massive amounts of money that we are expending to look like we are tough on terror is breaking this country and it is not and will not succeed.
so what you are saying is we need black boxes in automobiles and the ability to track the movement of all vehicles?
i believe thats on the table already
not to mention easy pass....bitchez
You’re
More Likely to Die from Brain-Eating Parasites, Alcoholism, Obesity,
Medical Errors, Risky Sexual Behavior or Just About Anything OTHER THAN
Terrorism
makes you wonder what point of it all is. For more news on economic and social tyranny http://tinyurl.com/n8hmfya
so how are you going to sell the public on these national security programs if there is no threat to national security? this is why we pay the Taliban to fight. (Karzai) you need to study the principle of scientific management as it has been applied in the workplace for a hundred years. the short version is this, if one worker out of ten is more productive, management will study that worker, and figure out a way to first train new workers, and second to automate the process. while the NSA is currently buried in data that cannot be analyzed the process is being studied, not so much the targets, but the analysts and their methods of determining which data is relevant. first there will be a competition among companies to analyze data, and then algorithms which emulate their personal skills will be written. the process moves a lot faster now than in Fords assembly line days. thirdly there has to be continued demand for the service, at the corporate profit level, much as rapid transit could never replace the automobile, and alternative fuels could never replace gasoline. it was contrary to the business model of automobile companies. eventually the government bought general motors to maintain this business model, and our government will bomb and terrorize, but not too often, to keep our faith in buying security protection (from them) so its seems likely the boston bombers were given aid by at least one of our intelligence, or law enforcement agencies. (just as they gave guns to the mexican drug cartels.. only they got caught.) this is the way business, and scientific management function.
Like how folks were paid in the Grapes of Wrath?
there were farm price subsidies in the 30's which prevented a lot of farmers from selling their produce. mechanized farming was still a ways off, and in order to put the farm on an assembly line, that land had to be transferred from individuals to corporations. the process is still going on, wall street is driving first time home buyers out of the market, and homes in the inner city will be razed to create a new wave of gentrification. home owners will go the way of the individual farmer. there is now a third generation of those okie immigrants living in california, part of the middle class. there was some welfare in those days, (FDR sent photographers out to document the povery and suffering so he could sell the New Deal) the Joads stayed in the state run campground for a while.
steinbeck wanted to tell both stories, how a tractor was no different than a tank, when it drove people off their land. the process of scientific management is supposed to remain invisible to the guy at the bottom who is being studied. not terribly enlightened, the process has its critics.
Good summation!
very good....good on you to bring in steinbeck.
one word : timshel (thou mayest)
"the key take away is how ineffective it all is to stop anything organic, this is the salient point that should lead people to the realization that it is Synthetic security state theater designed to dog train us into submission."
The gathering of signal intelligence such as the hijacker and mastermind calls before 9-11 by NSA was effective. What wasn't effective was doing something with the information to prevent the attack. The who, what, where, when, and how were all known to the powers that be but the inaction to do anything about it obviously came from top decision makers including those in the Whitehouse. Why? I say follow the money as it always leads to the truth. Who benefited monetarily from 9-11?
@ Freedom Isn't Cheap,
Follow the money? Sure, no problem. Watch this.
9/11 Conspiracy Solved: Names, Connections, & Details Exposed! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_fp5kaVYhk"The who, what, where, when, and how were all known to the powers that be but the inaction to do anything about it obviously came from top decision makers including those in the Whitehouse. Why?"
What was known using the intel assets already in place prior to 9/11 was not that detailed, but it was adequate to have prevented the attack. The failure to stop it was due to incompetence of upper level management (ex., ignoring field agent warnings of US flight school training of Saudi novice pilots who were interested in learning to fly commercial jets but not take-offs and landings!) and inter-agency turf battles (ex., the NSA not allowing the passing of info to the FBI that the known bad guys were in the US even though FBI agents worked within the NSA as liasons!).
With massive government agencies, don't assume conspiracy, assume bureaucracy and incompetence.
What seems a conspiracy one day many times becomes reality the next. I appreciate your insights to my discussion. I saw plenty of Bureaucracy during my time in the military just as I saw many power struggles within the upper eschlon to maintain their little piece of turf and power.
I don't doubt for a minute these same power struggles exist in the various branches of government between CIA, NSA, FBI, Whitehouse, congress, ect. even prior to 9-11.
If it is true Israel and their Mossad were aware what was about to occur and actually attended that fateful day to capture it on film then it leads me to believe the proper officials within our government were just as aware and allowed it to happen for their own nefarious gain.
The Government did not Let it Happen, the Government had Made it Happen.
The Government was the Orchestrator and the Conductor and the Instrument Players of the 9-11 attacks.
Who benefited monetarily from the American revolution?
I would wager some fucker named ..............Rothchild......
A fair number of people benefited from the revolution. I'm not going to do any real grunt work; hey you can do that yourself. Look and see whose taxes went down or should I say whose taxes were not replaced.
Well to answer my own question on who benefited from 9-11 it is the Defense Industry including intelligence gathering companies such as Booz who made a billion dollars profit last year alone as a subcontractor to NSA. You look at the growth chart on Booz alone after 9-11 and they just exploded with profits from their lucrative relationship with NSA. Then you look at who Booz is owned by-hint-large hedge fund-and then look at who their board of directors are. All the well known big money names on this board and playing the game to win. No matter the cost!!!
Inside Job.
Ian Brzezinski, top level in Booz Allen Hamilton, brother of Mika Brzezinski, and son of Zbig Brzezinski.
Corporate, Media, Government, all connected.
"When you have a Dictatorship TRUTH becomes treasonous!" Ron Paul
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gDPeNkV0OGM#!
"metadata from email communications was sufficient to identify the mistress of then-CIA Director David Petraeus and then drive him out of office."
It makes sense now. NSA data was used for firing CIA director. Now it is retribution time.
"Code of Retaliation." that could be. could be "Agency hat tip" from his successor as well to one of the...i know i'll get in trouble for this...best CIA directors in history...besides obviously being a great Patriot and a great 'Merican! "Welcome to Washington DC" folks. George here paints an interesting picture it is sorely lacking in anything "actionable." Leaving aside the fact that "everyone does it" let's first look at that all important word...COST. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS scan down to part where it says "this would cost 1 trillion in 1961...but is now being done by AMD for 75 cents today." oh, and get a copy of the book Shadow Factory while you're at it. There's also an interesting tidbit on "distributed computing" in case none of you think i have any clue what i'm talking about on that wiki entry. but this is MERE statistical analysis. We haven't yet plumbed the Genius of Larry Ellison in his "truly beautiful in simplicity approach" to "the Data Problem." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_set you see..."software (or code) must be written in order to 'mine' the data." but since Larry Ellison understood we would be dealing with MASSIVE amounts of data "you will need an unlimited amount of creative people to perform such a task." in other words...it cannot be "done" by machine...though machines are quite good at it. i could start writing a 1000 page tome on why in fact this is so...although that wiki entry is quite good...suffice to say "data exists in nature" and therefore "must be observed to be seen." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anscombe%27s_quartet in other words "watch out for outliers" because even though they appear as "just another data point" that "point" might be...you know..."the entire country of Greece" for example. Anywho here's data mining as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_mining interesting that the entry goes to great lengths to use the term "process of discovery" and what in fact data mining in...in other words "something uniquely human" (though not unique TO humans! you could very much use...well, anything with a brain actually...to engage in this process...in theory. a very INTERESTING theory as well. the best example of course is a dog. as in "I believe in Dog" so to speak. "they don't know where they're going...they'll just get you there." a horse has very similar abilities as well. in other words...these creatures have INTELLIGENCE. I recommend "treating them right" which of course most humans do not do.) Anywho here's my shout out to Oracle Communications: http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/communications/industry-a... here's an industry very interesting in the technology: http://www.oracle.com/us/industries/airline-data-model-1453220.html hmmm. "why would the travel industry be interested in data mining" you ask. you'll have to find out that one for yourself. "and of course Oracle is a defense contractor." get in the game folks! everyone else is just standing around! "i can know what you're going to do before you do it" now. that's WITHOUT cheating. wait 'till I start talking "proprietary systems"!!!
Vote right here folks. If you believe that your privacy is important to you vote ^. If not vote it down. We'll run our own darned poll right here, right now.
Nice Idea. Tyler should post polls.
Nice to see that someone finally gets this.
I am guessing a good way to show politicians the "benefits" of PRISM and to vote for ever increasing security like the Patriot Act, is to show a few key politicians how it works by using it on them for example.
The Spies are probably already using it for blackmail against the Politicians.
I agree; the goal is to keep the Empire in power by systematically eliminating those who are against it. Gather enough data on an individual and patterns will emerge. When they take out resistence, even a 60% sucess rate is acceptable to the regime. In the long run, they stack the deck in their favor.
It's 19-freakin'-84 all over again!
Nice work Washington. The masses are so dumbed down that they buy the words of the politicians without even understanding the words coming from said politician's mouth. This is very helpful, but the masses might not have a long enough attention span to read past the first two or three lines.
I think the NSA contractors are able to sell the publics secret data via so called legal sources back to commercial enterprises. legitimized Coporate spying on a National scale
I think the NSA contractors are able to sell the publics secret data via so called legal sources back to commercial enterprises. legitimized Coporate spying on a National scale
...now, would you like that check in euro's, dollars or gold?
"information exchanges." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Information_Exchange or the "AMIX" for short. "this was done for fun" of course..."as a way to reduce 'friction' and 'inefficiencies.'" incredible that the Government even allows it. Anyhow...sure, the point in creating these "nodes" is to make BILLIONS. "hard to thing to do" though...as "you have to deal with the Government." that would be the FEDERAL Government. "that's where this kid comes in." He was a SUBCONTRACTOR...that means little oversight and LOT'S of access. simply put "he who has the informational advantage wins" (which is why these things are financed on a World War II like scale...and have been for DECADES...both public AND private) but "now we're there." It feels like '1984' but really it's more like "you and me are now achieving Total Information Awareness.' underwhelmed..or worse? you should feel that way. your "virtual you" is FAR for powerful than "the real you" (who you think you are.) all that is needed is the stimuli...and "here's your future laid out in black and white": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set "far out shit" ain't it! "and we've only just begun" and "the clarity that it provides does improve." in some cases...quite dramatically. want to explain the housing bubble, the tech bubble prior to that, and the current wilding going on? it all starts with this.
What the author misses is the fact that ALL PHONE CALLS ARE RECORDED.
The "digital only" is pure BS, as all phone calls are converted to digital format.
That is why the JD made a big fucking deal about "not wiretapping" which was pure shit, but technically correct.
They marched over (they don't call!) to the NSA, gave them the time, date and duration of Rosen's phone calls, and the NSA gave them the conversations.
"...all phone calls are converted to digital format..."
Irrelevant.
"We don't listen to everyone" are just legal weasel-words. Of course they don't - they would need ten million employees. Recording all content real-time just gives them the ability to listen to particular conversations later on. Having Israeli contractors listening through US taps to US citizens for potential troublemakers, then alerting the NSA means the NSA itself is not spying on you or monitoring your conversations. That's the exact same trick the DEA and AT&T used in 1997 to game the system and still snort about doing everything legally - we promise.
Big deal. Anything an alphabet-agency says publicly is designed to pacify knuckle-draggers and provide the official ample legal weasel-room later on. The intertubes loves debating about the possibilities, but it's far easier to just assume they're lying and either lining someone else's pockets with your money or trying to justify sending your kids to die in their war.
It works. It always works. It's not going to be different next time.
Computer conversion of voice to text in real time, with automatic search for keywords, and flag notices for further immediate investigation. In all the main languages of the world.
Massively parallel processing at the highest speeds possible.
The wiretapping of all Americans phone calls, text messages, faxes, Internet communications, ect. is illegal without a search warrant under the 1968 Wiretap Act.
Any Government Agency who conducts such wiretapping without a valid court ordered wiretap is guilty of commiting a felony.
https://ssd.eff.org/wire/govt/wiretapping-protections
The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) is a United States federal statute that prohibits a third party from intercepting or disclosing communications without authorization. The Act, which was originally passed as an amendment to the Wiretap Act of 1968, applies to both government employees and private citizens. It protects communications in storage as well as in transit.
The ECPA was amended by the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) in 1994, by the USA PATRIOT Act in 2001 and by the USA PATRIOT Act reauthorization acts in 2006.
Patriot Act
The Patriot Act (the full name is the USA Patriot Act, or "Uniting and Strengthening America Act by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001") was enacted by the U.S. Congress on October 26, 2001, at the request of President George Bush in response to the terrorist acts of September 11. It gives controversial new powers to the Justice Department in terms of domestic and international surveillance of American citizens and others within its jurisdiction. According to its sponsors, the Act was needed to address a situation that had not existed before - the presence of terrorists within national borders - and the need to apprehend and prosecute them, hopefully before rather than after they acted. Opponents of the Act, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union, say that the Act has undone previous checks on civil liberty abuses of the past and unnecessarily endangers privacy and discourages free speech.
Among the Act's provisions, flowing out of the government's ability to legally tap telephone lines in certain cases, is the ability to intercept Internet messages through its Carnivore program. Theoretically, the government has the ability to intercept all messages that are "relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation," a lower standard than the previous one in which a crime had to have been committed. The Act allows the guidelines to apply to all surveillance cases, not just those of suspected terrorists.
Some opponents allege that the Act was on the drawing boards prior to September 11. Many parties agree that the Act was rushed through Congress with a minimum of study and discussion. In addition to the surveillance provisions, the Act includes sections related to money-laundering and immigration and also contains a section that condemns discrimination against Muslims and Arab-Americans.
Related glossary terms: consumer privacy (customer privacy), compliance, privacy This was last updated in April 2010 Posted by: Margaret Rouse"Uniting and Strengthening America" This is hilarious - milions of adults not scandalized by such a manipulative, stupid term.
This applies to powers given to the JD, not the NSA.
Exactly so what gives NSA their power to do this? I read somewhere recently NSA wasn't even approved by congress to exist. Is just throwing the word "National Security" out legal basis for them to violate Federal Laws and our Constitution? What law enforcement agency do they operate under that gives them powers of arrest?
Haven't you heard?
The NSA is above the law for any prosecution for anything.
http://blog.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2013/02/supreme-court-places-nation...
Spot on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hou0lU8WMgo
Be assured that under some definition of terms, their denials are not absolute lies. They are not, however, anything close to what an honest man would call "Truth".
How can that not be illegal? If a politician sees a way to get an advantage you know the sob is going to do it - you can bet your life on it
If you write the laws or declare yourself immune from them, then you have little chance of breaking them (Congress, Military). If you can overrule existing laws and stuff the Justice Department with your cronies, then you have little chance of being investigated or convicted (President and federal minions).
You rarely run into a freak politician with some hazy sense of morality. This is what happens to them:
They were recording calls back when Carter was president. He could have had the NSA go data snorkling on then-candidate Reagan's lines, but didn't. Instead, the NSA gave the Reagan camp info on Carter's retarded brother Billy making oil deals with the Libyans. Reagan jumped on the opportunity to trash Carter with the 'scandal' and won the next election. He rewarded the NSA very generously while he was in office. The CIA became the smaller has-been intel agency at that point and has been royally pissed off ever since.
Boris is remember Billy Carter! Billy is not retard, just is to being permanently inebriated.
And recall the fun the Clinton's had with a few hundred FBI files, wait til Hitlery has this at her beck and call. She got a taste for "pushing the button" as sec of state.