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White House Defends Its Wiretapping Of Millions Of US Citizens
Blink and you have likely missed Obama's latest Watergate moment, this time following the disclosure that the White House has instructed the NSA to collect millions of daily phone records from Verizon (and likely all other carriers). What is surprising to us is that this is even news. We reported on just this in March of 2012 with “We Are This Far From A Turnkey Totalitarian State" - Big Brother Goes Live September 2013" and then again in April 2012 "NSA Whistleblower Speaks Live: "The Government Is Lying To You" using an NSA whistleblower as a source. Still, no matter the distribution platform, it is a welcome development for the majority of the population to know that the same Stazi tactics so loathed for decades in the fringes of the "evil empire" are now a daily occurrence under the "most transparent administration in history." This is especially true in the aftermath of the recent media scandals involving the soon to be former Attorney General.
So what was the latest largely regurgitated news? Overnight te Guardian's Glenn Greenwald reports that the "NSA is collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily" following a "top secret court order requiring Verizon to hand over all call data shows scale of domestic surveillance under Obama."
Some more from the Guardian:
The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.
The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.
The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.
The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19.
Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered.
The disclosure is likely to reignite longstanding debates in the US over the proper extent of the government's domestic spying powers.
No it won't. Because those who care, have known about this for a long, long time. Everyone else... well, they have their soaring 401(k)s to comfort them, sprinkled in with a little class warfare to keep things "fair", and of course Dancing with the Stars.
Finally, the White House was quick to explain why living in a crypto-fascist, totalitarian state is the New Normal: it's for your own good, you see.
The Obama administration on Thursday acknowledged that it is collecting a massive amount of telephone records from at least one carrier, reopening the debate over privacy even as it defended the practice as necessary to protect Americans against attack.
The admission comes after the Guardian newspaper published a secret court order related to the records of millions of Verizon Communications customers on its website on Wednesday.
A senior administration official said the court order pertains only to data such as a telephone number or the length of a call, and not the subscribers' identities or the content of the telephone calls.
Such information is "a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States," the official said, speaking on the condition of not being named.
"It allows counter terrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States," the official added.
The revelation raises fresh concerns about President Barack Obama's handling of privacy and free speech issues. His administration is already under fire for searching Associated Press journalists' calling records and the emails of a Fox television reporter as part of its inquiries into leaked government information.
It was not immediately clear whether the practice extends to other carriers.
It does. But what is most stunning in all of this is that the benevolent rulers who are here to "help us" have not made selling of any security illegal and punishable by death. Yet.
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Should be good for the disposable phone companies....they should sell many more now...
The giant data-suck in Utah was a cover story on Discover Magazine a while back (just like all those fancy government-funded infrastructure boondoggles--and the Glomar Explorer vacuuming up manganese nodules that accidently look like sunken Russian nuclear submarines--for years decorated the covers of Popular Science and the like; we won't even mention the statist twaddle that Scientific American has devolved to). People have been writing about this stuff for years. Every telecom. Every everything. And this on the heels of Echelon, Carnivore, and the like.
When you run out of Russkies to spy on, all those would-be unemployed spooks have to be paid to do something. Turning them into electronic proctologists of American citizens is as good a use as anything. Can't have them curing cancer or creating improved materials or--heaven forbid--leaving them the hell alone to support themselves with goods and services private citizens actually *want*...
If you read the top comment on this article you can see how effective the propaganda machine has been/continues to be. The fact that there are people like this out there, scares me as much as the fact some 'judge' could allow this to happen.
http://www.zdnet.com/verizon-records-vacuumed-up-by-nsa-under-top-secret-patriot-act-order-7000016441/?s_cid=e539&ttag=e539
Agreed...+1
Here's what I got when I showed someone: "Boy, I think the far right has you brainwashed."
"If you read the top comment on this article you can see how effective the propaganda machine has been/continues to be."
Although a single word comment like that is awfully vague and I suspect he didn't mean to label the article as bullshit, but the act of spying as the BS, the majority of people even if they believe these things are happening don't care because they have "nothing to hide." That's an incredibly ignorant and shortsighted, but typical position taken. They have no idea why the Bill of Rights was created in the first place and for some stupid reason think that their government could never go rogue.
What a fuking job, the person stuck watching me sure has a boring terrible job.
Not if you have a pair of hooters that match the ones in you avatar pic.
The camera is on now honey, do you mind jumping up and down or at the very least jiggling those beauties.
I'm surprised at the outrage. I thought it was common knowledge that call detail records were wide open to this kind of intercept. I guess I know a little more about the subject because I was in the industry.
If you're outraged by this story try adding these angles :
Call detail records are considered to be phone company property. Their machines construct the records from the actual calls placed, again, on their machines. This is why the phone companies are ordered to produce the records and not the individual.
Phone companies sell call detail records all the time. An airline wants to know how many calls per region go to their automated system vs how many go to their call center. Average, longest, shortest, duration calls, etc. They can pull those records for a price.
Call detail records are held for 18 months (last I heard) and. .gov gets copied. I'm sure they keep theirs longer.
Now, the really scary stuff. Right after 911 .gov started demanding network space in switching facilities. They have walled-off areas in nearly every main switching facility at this point. I was never at a level where I knew for sure, but it was widely believed that they were building databases of actual call content, really, truly, wiretapping, not just looking at numbers called or call duration.
And, I'm sure the same has been done for ISP.
don't answer the phone man
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDbSzWGVqfE
I had Verizon Fios two years ago. Very good service. I miss it
Verizon has good service. It's just too bad they are being taken over by the Gov't, like most everything else.
And let's not forget the eugencist's son, Bill Gates, who opened pandora's box by working with the government and putting the secret back door into everyone's PC. No wonder why he's a billionaire. Satan wins again.
AAPL is now receiving the same shakedown MSFT got in the 90s.
Look, if you aren't doing anything nefarious- things like taking/making calls from/to Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, North Korea, White Supremacy, The Tea Party, or the Republican Party- you got no reason to care that Obama has a record of it.
They have to know if you called a Republican or a Tea Party group so they can send the IRS to audit you.
They have to know if you called a Republican or a Tea Party group so they know where to send the drones. Or where to capture you for your infinite, no trial NDAA prison sentence.
Let them capture, parse, index and store this word: guillotine.
Like the secret police of East Germany and the KGB of the Soviet Union.
Next step is to knock on peoples doors and whisk them off to an attitude adjustment camp.
It's disturbing what has happened to the US.
Knocking is no fun. You should see the look on people's faces when your ski masked crew kick in the door and start beating and trashing. Its so fucking awesome, it used to be illegal!
This is great!
i dumped my cell phone in 2008. Wire tap THIS Obumbly you unwashed cunt!
"...help track known or suspected terrorist..." Well then if that's the case why the need to blanketly request millions of customers as opposed to the known and suspecteds? "we don't know the identity..." Well if you have the damned phone numbers the identities are pretty fucking easy to narrow down.
Fucking tools!
The chilling question you have to ask is where does this end? Next, we are going to have the IRS, as demanded by Obummercare, digging into your every personal thought, habit and belief. That is coming for sure. They are likely monitoring all phones, emails and messaging systems. Bank accounts, and other financial accounts might be included also. There is no question in my mind, unless you are totally off the grid and live in a cave, you are now being serfed (forced into bondage) by the Communists in Washington DC.
What you are all overlooking is the fact that the phone carriers were already collecting and selling this information for decades. All this is, is the official demand from the guns to not pay for it; and have it delivered, gift wrapped, so their mentally crippled zombie minions can use it. Your sigint was already on the market.
“He thought of the telescreen with its never-sleeping ear. They could spy upon you night and day, but if you kept your head you could still outwit them. With all their cleverness they had never mastered the secret of finding out what another human being was thinking. . . . They could not alter your feelings; for that matter you could not alter them yourself, even if you wanted to. They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable.” GO 1984
Time to push for ALL telephone calls to be FREE. As they are not secure and have an audience, and are often routed over Cisco Internet Switches it is clear they are simply public chatter rather than person-to-person.
It is time that Obama coughed up Emails too and that his telephone calls can be subpoenaed. It seems weird that the US has a First Citizen who is really an Absolute Monarch.
In Europe we know our calls are listened to - that is why the NSA gave us Menwith Hill.....and very pretty it is too
http://www.fas.org/irp/facility/menwith.htm
Nazi in the White House.
Use skype.
Nazi in the wh since 1913
Skype was never that secure - since MS bought it, it's been proven that MS records / uses algos on the contents.
Combine this info with the donor's names and numbers collected from IRS tea party audits and other pubic records and you have the affiliations of all enemies of obama ... none of which will ever be used to target them, of course.
Impeach the Obummer
For a crook to keep all his records under wraps and look into everyone else's is the height of criminal mindedness.
Think i will use pigeons for delivering mail and train them to shit on the Bummer after that.
Time for the 4-I program: Impeach, Indict, Incriminate, Incarcerate.
Throw Holder into Gen Pop and watch what happens -- YEE-HAWWWWW ...
Impeach Obama and the Gimme Dat syndicate will have every city in Amerika burning like 1968 or 1992. Then it's checkmate for the NSS state.
Boston was the Beta test, people will accept anything today in the name of safety. The founding principles are DOA.
Use it against them. Have cryptic conversations that lead them around in circles. Could be very entertaining.
Gives new meaning to Verizon's slogan, "Can you hear me now..."
Looks like Verizon is the carrier of choice for TEA Party tax exempt groups.
Al Qaeda is playing these D.C. bozo's perfectly....they do an act of terror and then let the bureaucrats and politicos really create a situation tht will eventually get the general population so pissed off the entire country revolts.
Obviously they totally understand how the Beltway folks think and they alo have a pretty good grasp of how the rest of the people think.
Too bad I have not heard one person in our government draw this seemingly obvious conclusion to what is really transpiring.
look, you guys have to leave these democrats alone. these are the smartest "people" ever to ride to school on those little yellow buses. and besides being sooper serial about stuff, and listening to crap you non helmeted people say , hey theres a bush!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! holy cow i just realized something , i got a bush in my yard!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Another violation of the Bill of Rights that's getting ZERO media attention for some reason:
June 4, 2013
A Junk (Supreme Court) Decision on Warrantless DNA Collection
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/junk-decision-warrantless-dna-coll...
This totally opens the door for DNA to be collected during ANY kind of arrest. I can easily imagine a day when people arrested for civil disobedience during protests will be sampled.
What did you people expect when you voted this man into power? What, tell me because he excatly what everyone was saying he was, what are you angry about?
"What did you people expect when you voted this man into power?"
Please lose the phony partisan crap if that was your point. They're all bought and paid for or, at least, any you are allowed to vote for are after they've successfully slithered their way through the vetting process.
Exactly. "W" was a big a fucking chimp head as is the current simian resident of the White House. Hell, seen them both together? With those ears they couldve had the same sheboon for a mother.
Is anyone a Verizon customer? I'd like to call you to tell you what asshats Obaboon and Michimp are.
Don't bother pointing out that I am a racist. Anything that pisses off a libtard is what I am proud to claim to be.
Apparently the Ruskies in Boston never phoned home.
Vote>: US Gubmint greater threat to well-being
Vote>: Islamist terror greater threat to well-being
Big Brother has been going on since at least J.Edgar Hoover. I can not believe anyone is surprised by any surveillance you can mention not being used on US Citizens. This and the IRS targeting is the norm and not the exception. All the finger pointing and fake rage is just noise to me now. You clowns keep voting these same two parties into power and they keep taking more. Maybe when the FEMA camps open you'll figure it out.
A mass boycott of telecomm is in order. Stop paying for phone/internet. Adopt alternatives outside their influence.
Too far integrated for that. Besides, how does trying to bankrupt a phone company stop the government from doing anything?
Short answer: These are the lunatics behind this (and of course your parents):
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Members_of_the_Council_on_Fore...
a2z
If you really want to know the facts about what is actually happening regarding government eavesdropping on both the American people and members of the media I give you proof below. The rest of you are in the same boat because this is global although the reasons and objectives may vary slightly.
"On May 30, Hagmann, who has since made a sworn affidavit, had a third-party listening in—and apparently recording—a telephone conversation he was having with a media colleague when he was started to see on his telephone caller ID screen: “UT NSA DATA REC CTR”.
You can do what you want with the information obviously but you will never again be able to claim ignorance.
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/print-friendly/55717
I thought Al Quida was dead and retreating? I thought the "T" word was not even to be uttered by anyone in the WH?
Could it be they are hypocrits?.....shocking
Is it possible that there are more Evil cunts on this planet than decent ones?
My expiry date is long overdue and that question was retorical.
You folks with kids and kin, It's about 123. Some idea of your task.
Good luck.
Overload the system. Get on an unlimited plan or use a landline. Call everyone you know and random folks you don't know. Talk about the weather. Talk about the latest fashions. Talk about rebuilding engines. Talk about girls. Talk about boys. If everyone does their part the system will break. That's right folks, I advocate "using your phone to it's maximum potential". lol
The whole Predictive Policing concept which gives license to surveillance and all other kinds of monitering ASSUMES that everyone is a potential criminal; a suspect.
In this kind of environment there is no freedom. Furthermore, it is an environment of NO trust and paranoia.
It is a terrible place to live.
Just search for the best public schools around a certain Fort in Southern Maryland and now near their Utah facility. You'll find a few schools rated between 8 and 10 in a sea of schools stuck in ratings of 3-5. Every district above 7 is where the civil servants live.
( I mention this strictly as a means to ensure your child can get a good education BTW).
I DO LOVE AMUURRRIKA.
IT'S PRETTY SAFE HERE. BIG BRO IS WATCHING AND LISTENING EVERYWHERE.
AND IT'S ALL FOR OUR SAFETY. PEACE OF MIND.
Seriously--where the hell have you people BEEN? They've been listening to US and our little machinations since the NSA WAS FOUNDED. This did NOT START YESTERDAY,or with (ooh, scary),Obama, or Bush, or Clinton, or JOHNSON, for God's sake! Sack up , ya punks. if you think they CAN'T dispatch someone DIRECTLY TO YOUR DOOR on less than an hours 'notice, ANYTIME they fucking feel like it, with or without a warrant, YOU ARE DELUSIONAL.
Amateurs.
Erm. Something doesn't add up:
"A senior administration official said the court order pertains only to data such as a telephone number or the length of a call, and not the subscribers' identities or the content of the telephone calls."
but then...
" "It allows counter terrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States," the official added."
Are the identities of the caller/person called being collected or not???