Report: Verizon providing all call records to U.S. under court order

reply to post by JacKatMtn

Riiight. I'm sure they're only looking at the number and length of call.... This country just gets worse and worse.

Inch by inch, step by step we are headed toward tyranny. Look, if they have the technology, and could listen(not by phone by advanced listening devices) to each and every household, you know damn well they would do it and hide under "In the interest of National Security"
That is why it is so important they have this "Terrorism boogeyman" to scare people into submission.

These are things that are now seeing "The Light of Day"

Can you imagine the things that will never see the "The Light of Day?"

Things hidden under "In the Interest of National Security"

These groups are not accountable, they act and do as they please.

Horrible.

For those who think this protects them, may I ask from what and how far does one go to be protected? It seems to me that one is much more likely to be in a car accident then hurt by terrorists. The list goes on with things that are far more dangerous.

Its time people finally wake up and stop electing these mindless servants of corruption

How deep will the grave be dug be for someone in a higher post falls in to it I wonder.

another privacy grab - hey - Verizon - stop or loose customers.

Related reuters article :

Obama administration defends phone record collection

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 did not specifically confirm the report, but noted the published 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.

I feel so much better let me wrap myself in the blanket of the Patriot Act

only the numbers not the identities?

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.

I guess any "hit" on a number dialed by a known or suspected terrorist will be flagged, and then they will have to go back to the secret court to subpoena identifying information so those folks get a knock on the door? Do they then become suspected, thereby increasing the web they are weaving?

Six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon, how many degrees of separation do we folks have from a suspected terrorist?

Originally posted by jibajaba
another privacy grab - hey - Verizon - stop or loose customers.

And how does a company just stop when they have been ordered by the federal government to supply it?

Verizon don't really have a choice in this, which is why it is a legal demand. The real problem here is that the government is demanding this information, not that Verizon is supplying it.

And if Verizon has this legal instruction, how many other companies have also had this instruction? How do you or I know that Google hasn't been forced to comply with the same request for data, or Facebook, or Yahoo, or Microsoft...?

All of those companies pretty much state that they will "only share information" with government and police when required by law. That gives the *impression* that it's only delivered in individual cases when a warrant is presented, but a general instruction like this with mass harvesting of user data also meets that requirement.

I find it very unlikely that Verizon would have an instruction to provide this information to the government, while Facebook, Microsoft and Google are just ignored. These are the three biggest players in internet communications, and we're supposed to just assume that the NSA and FBI overlooked them in favour of just collecting phone call metadata?

reply to post by JacKatMtn


This makes absolutely no sense to me.

The statement seems to be suggesting that this is intended to monitor for terrorist communications, with only phone numbers and length of calls, from one known source to another. So if a terrorist in Pakistan is calling people in the USA they can see it. But this still doesn't explain why they would then need the communications data for MILLIONS of people!

Have I had a stroke or something? None of this makes any sense at all, and the idiots preaching this from the offices of government seem confident that people are stupid enough not to question it!

If you have a suspect, you monitor that suspect, see who they are communicating with, then monitor them too, you don't monitor millions of people just to watch one.

The idea that gathering data on millions of people is supposed to somehow help the monitoring of a small collection of known terrorists is a complete fantasy and anyone who believes this obvious BS needs their head checking.

Originally posted by buddhasystem

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
I'm not sure if this is good or bad? The NSA is becoming such a super hoover of data and information, world wide, I believe they will eventually hit the brick wall of failure brought by their own success. There is a point where having *SO* much information equates to having nothing much at all for the sheer mess and chaotic jumble it all makes for them. Oh I pity the poor NSA gomers who get assigned to this duty. I don't know who you'd have to piss off or be on the bad side of, but it would surely be punishment details all the way for trying to make any sense from that literal OCEAN of 99% junk.

Sorry to rain your sarcastic parade, but I've been working on Big Data for many years, various aspects of it. As one example, physicists record data in their experiments which is by nature 99.9999999% junk, and still manage to get that remaining fraction for detailed analysis and discovery. The database technology in itself has picked up significantly, with multiple noSQL platforms and map-reduce taken to new scale. It really does wonders. In the context of this thread, these wonders may not be so great.

It's not sarcasm. It's a very literal statement of factual issues. After 9/11 the US Intelligence community partially blamed 'background noise' of too much information, too many threats on a daily and weekly basis and generally...too much crap to sort to have picked up on things like phone calls and other bits which, in hindsight, were as clear as crystal. Who knew to look at that ONE turd in a sea of crap though?

All this has done is turn an inland sea into the Pacific Ocean, one bit at a time. I'm absolutely not being sarcastic in the least to suggest they may well become victims of their own success in the gathering of everything, everywhere on everyone. They may well drown in their own oceans of data. I'll chuckle a bit if they do...and sure wouldn't be tempted to toss any lifelines.

reply to post by JacKatMtn


I have no doubt whatsoever that if they're collecting this information from Verizon, then they're also collecting it from Sprint, T-Mobile AT&T, and all the others. And if they're collecting all this phone data then you can bet they're also collecting internet data, and probably paranoid enough to collect your Cable TV data.

Every time I hear a story like this I'm flabbergasted that people still don't see the similarities between the US today and Nazi Germany. Hitler only wishes he could have done what our government is doing now.

Remember THIS Obama?



Ahh those were the days....

We totally live in a police/big brother state now. What can we do? Don't say vote Republican next time because this also went on with both Bushes and Reagan....it's getting worse and seems that whomever we vote in is incapable of doing anything about it.

I feel sorry for the poor stooge who has to listen to my boring phone conversations. What a miserable excuse for a job.

This is just official news, I suspect they've been monitoring every phone call since 9/11.

I think a movement should be started against this madness, think about it, get a whole bunch of people (thousands preferably), then all agree to phone a friend (same pre-arranged time ofc), and then all go on say a 2 minute rant on how you want to bomb things and destroy the government.

Wait to see, who out of the thousands gets picked up, surely they can't pick everyone up

May sound far-fetched but it would be interesting

Originally posted by zeeon
reply to post by JacKatMtn

 

What should alarm us is NOT the fact that they are tracing calls.

What SHOULD alarm us is the fact the NSA is not interested in the calls content or the name of the caller.
Doesn't this seem contrary to a legitmate intelligence operation?

If you were trying to gather intelligence information to stop supposed "Terrorism" (for which the Patriot Act was made) then you would most certainly WANT the name of the caller and the content of the call. And yet, what we have here is precisely the opposite.

So the burning question is - why do they want this metadata, and what are they doing with it?

Also - this is headline news on CNN, Fox, NBC, AP, ACLU, EFF and every other major news organization. Somehow I don't think this is going to just die down any time soon. People are pissed. I've already had 4 people talk to me about it this morning, and I've only been at work for 30 minutes.

Just a theory, but wouldn't it be easy to snap all up and then go back through it later on down the road to target political opponents? Businesses that disagree with you? Protesters?

Another beginning attribute of the 'The Revelation Wars'

-Are you ready?

Does anyone remember this thread from a month ago?

ALL phone calls in the US are recorded and accessible to the government, claims former FBI agent

From that OP:

Originally posted by Korg Trinity

Clemente discussed the issue in this exchange with host Erin Burnett, as recorded by the CNN transcript.

BURNETT: 'Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It's not a voice mail. It's just a conversation. There's no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?'

CLEMENTE: 'No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It's not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.'

BURNETT: 'So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.'

CLEMENTE: 'No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.'

Seems about right for our government. Collect as much data as possible just "in case" they need to go back to it. One analyst explained that if someone is identified as a target, they can take the mobile phone number and go back to the data to see who all that person communicated with. And if the thread linked above is true, then they can also pull up an archive of the conversations.

Did anybody notice that the leaked order is only for April 25 (when it was signed) - July 19? Yeah, that has my tinfoil hat tingling. Is this something that is ongoing that has to be renewed? Or is that timeframe important?

Originally posted by ohioriver
Just a theory, but wouldn't it be easy to snap all up and then go back through it later on down the road to target political opponents? Businesses that disagree with you? Protesters?

Exactly.
We've been having the same debate in the UK over the snooping laws planned here, gathering data on millions of people. It does nothing to prevent crime or terrorism, because these individuals are already under the radar. The snooping is intended to monitor innocent people communicating freely and legally.

If the monitoring is of the masses, it cannot possibly be claimed that it is to prevent a minority from acting criminally. That is a complete fantasy.

The monitoring laws they have planned in the UK (and planned all across Europe too, just under all kinds of different names) would allow the government to monitor political groups, protest organizers, media, generally people who might disagree with government. It has nothing to do with secretive people, and everything to do with people wanting to share information and protest the actions of their government.

It's no coincidence that all of this has come about since the protests and revolutions in other countries. The € is expected to collapse at some point, and the $ is in serious trouble too. Our governments now view their own people as a threat to their control, and this is why such measures are being implemented.

The excuse of a minority of real threats is being used to roll out mass monitoring of the wider public. There is absolutely no denying this. If the government wanted to catch and stop terrorists they would simply need to monitor known threats and extend their monitoring to those they communicate with, they would not need to collect the data of millions of customers of private businesses.

Even the Soviets didn't go this far. They built files on individuals and extended their monitoring out from those people and groups. The USA (and others) are now well beyond this. They too have files and databases on individuals and groups, but now they are using the legislation people allowed to be enacted to roll out mass monitoring of the general public.

People should be angry about this, it's not required to fight criminality, its only purpose is to gather comprehensive information on innocent people - for unknown ends.

Originally posted by SloAnPainful
reply to post by JacKatMtn

 

No that doesn't look good at all...

*sigh*

Of course it's my service provider...

-SAP-

unfortunately, this will most likely expand to ALL providers

sounds like they need some data to stuff into there new bluffdale databases

im guessing this is just the beginning. as from the sounds of things from a lot of different experts this is going to be the norm now in this digital age. they want to store EVERYTHING and have it accessible 24/7.

if people get "flagged" they can go back and create a timeline with so much information at the click of a button.

doing this, combined with stuff like ARGUS-US and bluffdale we really are heading into a scary Orwellian future.

Originally posted by buddhasystem
The database technology in itself has picked up significantly, with multiple noSQL platforms and map-reduce taken to new scale.

The size of the data will reach a new scale so I guess search capabilities need to advance significantly.

After Gigabyte and Terabyte there's petabytes, exabytes, zettabytes, and yottabytes.

What scale data size do scientists work with? Petabytes or exabytes?

NSA will soon have yottabytes, and people don't seem to even know what to call 1000 yottabytes so that must be a new scale, isn't it?

By the way the NSA claims their overcollection of data on Americans was unintentional but based on what the NSA whistleblower Binney said, it's hard to believe them:

Utah Data Center

in April 2009 officials at the United States Department of Justice acknowledged that the NSA had engaged in "overcollection" of domestic communications in excess of the FISA court's authority, but claimed that the acts were unintentional and had since been rectified.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

Originally posted by buddhasystem
The database technology in itself has picked up significantly, with multiple noSQL platforms and map-reduce taken to new scale.

The size of the data will reach a new scale so I guess search capabilities need to advance significantly.

After Gigabyte and Terabyte there's petabytes, exabytes, zettabytes, and yottabytes.

What scale data size do scientists work with? Petabytes or exabytes?

NSA will soon have yottabytes, and people don't seem to even know what to call 1000 yottabytes so that must be a new scale, isn't it?

By the way the NSA claims their overcollection of data on Americans was unintentional but based on what the NSA whistleblower Binney said, it's hard to believe them:

Utah Data Center

in April 2009 officials at the United States Department of Justice acknowledged that the NSA had engaged in "overcollection" of domestic communications in excess of the FISA court's authority, but claimed that the acts were unintentional and had since been rectified.

there is no way it is not intentional. its been in the works for decades. blanket and complete surveillance. with things like facebook and everyone on the planet almost having a phone, coupled with data collection of EVERYTHING and things like argus that i posted above its pretty much done and dusted.

the worst thing is the majority wont even know, or wont care and will most likely ASK for it (google glasses anyone?)

also heres a nice little vid about data.
like buddhasystem, i've also worked a fair bit on big data and with databases in a large scale. the technology has progressed in the consumer market to a state where working with BIG data isn't as hard as people would imagine to pinpoint the needle of data out of the haystack. you can only imagine what sort of tech the government agencies have acess to with people like DARPA working for them.