What does six-months of cell phone meta-data look like? It looks like this...

I would presume then that the actual conversations would be tracked in another programme, easily linked to the Data shown here. Cordless phone station's mikes and cell phone mikes can be activated remotely.

Very interesting when you see it visualized like that. I'm curious what your viewpoint on it (OP) as a marketing professional. All this kind of stuff to me is just dollar signs, as you can tailor very specific campaigns to certain people. In the wrong hands, you have a major privacy concern so I have mixed feelings on it.

Curious what yours is.

-B

They know if you are sleeping.
They know when you're awake.
They know if you've been bad or good
So you better be good for goodness sake.

You better not cry
You better not pout
No whistle blowing
And they're showing ya why


Gives a whole new meaning to being on the naughty list.

I use Telekom too as my provider here in Germany, I would really love to get my data...

Holy Moly. imagine if they could instantly call up one of those visualizations for anyone! The potentials for abuse are huge.

Could you imagine them doing that for a suspected drug dealer? If you catch someone with drugs in their pocket, you could analyze tracks and tangents of tracks and pretty much get an understanding of the whole organization and all involved.

Or any organization. 'Dissident' groups, political rivals, celebrities.... blackmail material could be (has been) amassed, and now may be used, sold, or disseminated by whomever controls the data.

Has anyone heard a public call for our government to destroy our existing metadata? Or for that matter, a popular petition for this to stop?

I watched Al Jazeera tonight and saw video of the people in the streets there. Massive amounts of people this was, demanding change. I do not think this sort of active unity will ever exist in America, where it may be needed most. Lots of resons for this I imagine, but that is a different subject and I have rambled/digressed sufficiently.

I am very, very pleased that the Orwellian antics of the NSA are coming to the light of global Awareness. "They" can only maintain power through our Unawareness.

Fantastic OP.

With apps that can see through Walls, Google-Earth and Google-Maps being amalgamated, our Search History never being deleted, Webcams being set up all over the place, its very easy to see what all this is leading to down the road. Nothing less than total and global surveillance.

Originally posted by Moshpet
Actually, I'm more inclined to worry about a corporation abusing that information than our Government.
Unless you are among the 1% who are crazy enough to commit violence against the Government, odds are you don't even ping their radar. (Much less the 5% of you (over all) who might express a public opinion on the governments actions.)

A corporation only has limited information about you, and it doesn't have the power to arrest you and detain you indefinitely for your political opinion.

I get what you're saying about Monsanto, and I'm right there with you, but they still do not gather the kind of information on you that your government does.

As for freedom of information, you just try getting your entire record from government and see how that works out for you. It's believed that the NSA has been gathering up data on millions of people, and they are not obliged under any freedom of information request to even acknowledge your existence.

The fact is, that building in Utah is intended for something big, that is not needed for data on "terrorists", or even on foreign nations. A facility with that kind of computing power is capable of gathering every piece of data (from video, images, texts, email and calls, to existing records on every person including purchase history, Google searches and more) relating to every Human on this planet ten times over.

So what exactly is the purpose of this gigantic building and its massive storage capability?

Originally posted by Skyfloating
I am very, very pleased that the Orwellian antics of the NSA are coming to the light of global Awareness. "They" can only maintain power through our Unawareness.

Fantastic OP.

And so am I. These last few years I'm sick of beating off the scoffers. Now all it needs is a FOIA request to hear a selection of conversations from calls taken from cell/mobiles, cordless phone stations, or indeed conversations taken from a cord phone & station or mobile where it is in situ and where no call is taking place, IOW they can eavesdrop the room where the phone is, and listen to what people are saying in that room, that IS NOT fantasy it's real, and it's not even new,


news.cnet.com...

It's digital so voice etc, in a data stream is translated into ones and zeros that sequence is then converted back into a frequency by the phone. All that needs to be stored is the 1's and 0's not the actual voice recording itself, just the sequence and they have to work in a certain frequency band range to be device compliant... you know that FCC non interference deal? So they can easily be reconstructed back out from that one zero digital sequence at a later date if the phones operating hertz is known.

reply to post by SkepticOverlord


This is really informative. It sucks this is going on.

Originally posted by ecapsretuo
Holy Moly. imagine if they could instantly call up one of those visualizations for anyone! The potentials for abuse are huge.

Could you imagine them doing that for a suspected drug dealer? If you catch someone with drugs in their pocket, you could analyze tracks and tangents of tracks and pretty much get an understanding of the whole organization and all involved.

Or any organization. 'Dissident' groups, political rivals, celebrities.... blackmail material could be (has been) amassed, and now may be used, sold, or disseminated by whomever controls the data.

Going back to your drug dealer, yep, they should be able to do this with all the information that they have and yet they apparently don't or else we'd be facing news stories of massive drug busts hitting the news on a daily basis. Considering the presented justification and classified nature of it, busting drug rings was not on the table as it would likely provide knowledge or access to police department staff about the level of surveillance, which would be considered highly sensitive. They didn't want people to know. Additionally, drug organizations aren't that stupid and engage in practices that basically minimize the level of phone tracking that can be done. While the drug dealer on a corner may be using a burner phone acquired by cash, the methodology that the upper hierarchy uses after being contacted by the drug dealer for a "stock" order would be surveillance evasive by nature. The operation of their organization would depend on it.

Dissident groups, political rivals, celebrities, and blackmail--those are far more likely uses. In fact, one of the things that were re-examined in the media was an interview with Shia LaBeouf from a few years ago where he alleged that a FBI agent played the embarrassing content of a private phone conversation that he had had with another individual. Pre-Snowden, the audience laughed at the claim. Everybody knows that celebrities are crazy, right? Crazy or not, they are individuals in positions of power with the public. They have a tremendous audience as do politicians.

With dissident groups, I recall reports of law enforcement agencies using twitter to track movements and locations of protesters in Occupy. That information, through tweets, was publicly available so not quite the same. I know that there has been a lot of disclosures obtained through FOIA requests pertaining to the FBI's surveillance of Occupy Protests across the nation that have hinted at a very heavy surveillance.

One more thing...if the justification for this level of surveillance was to prevent terrorism within the US, then the elephant standing in the room would be the Tsarnaev brothers. The FBI has admitted that Russia warned them about the brothers years ago and that the FBI questioned them and deemed them to not be a threat However, all this surveillance that they had at their disposal in addition to a tip from another country did nothing to stop the Boston Marathon Bombing. That's a really big elephant.

Originally posted by sylent6
Thanks for posting this. Question is, can anyone access their own data using this?

Ooooo - great question! I would love to verify the accuracy of this technology on myself. For sure.

Originally posted by Moshpet


I don't fear our Government, I can pretty much guess which way the coin will flop as by who is doing the coin flipping.
But the Corporations do not allow us to even remotely see what they are doing, much less what strings they are pulling.
There is no FOIA with a corporation.

1. You should fear any and all government. The only thing more powerful than a government is God. If you believe in him. And most big government advocates don't. They think government should be God. If that doesn't scare the hell out of you, I don't know what would.

2. As far as your fear of corporations, the government can also be seen as a corporation. Though I prefer to think of it as organized crime in disguise.

3. What makes you think you're going to get the truth with the FOIA? Because they say so? Oh, well. I guess I know why you're so scared of corporations. You'd probably buy a used car from a man named Swindle.

Indeed there are many problems with corporations, businesses and money. Unfortunately, the only thing most bad people want more than a lot of money is a lot of power. And an all powerful government is exactly the right place to go when you're a real bad guy looking for a lot of power.

Originally posted by aLLeKs
I use Telekom too as my provider here in Germany, I would really love to get my data...

Your country must have a Data Protection Act. That gives you the right to request a copy of all information that the company has about you.

I had to do this with my bank in the UK in order to get a PPI refund. Requested a copy of all ban statements going back 12 years (around 200 pages). Every ATM transaction, every shop I visited, every town I travelled through, every gas station I bought snacks from, all the spare parts I bought for my laptop, all logged and stored for future analysis.

Originally posted by votan

Originally posted by SkepticOverlord
reply to post by intrptr

 

Meta data does not hold any content of messages, emails, tweets, etc. Only the details about the actual action:
1 - call time
2 - number called
3 - location when call made
4 - location when call finished
5 - call length
6 - cell tower(s) used
7 - carrier codes
8 - phone ID (specifies brand, model, OS, etc.)

have you ever heard the story about how to cook a frog?? this is just one step closer.

Except the story about a frog sitting there while the heat gets turned up gradually is just that, a story.

It will jump out every time.

very interesting.

This is a brilliant example of good "data visualisation", I think. Now if only anybody could get their hands on their own data and have it visualized this way, like a web site that lets you do this.

I don't use my mobile phone as much as other people. But I would definitely be interested in seeing what data my local Telco stores on me...

I remember a few years ago the rants about RFID chipping all of us. Since we are all moving towards smart phones, that issue has become obsolete.

Am the only one here seeing the irony in this?

FFS on the left of my screen is "follow us on FB" and on the right "follow us on twitter".

And yes, i'm 100% sure that everyone who visits that ATS FB page will get his information sent directly to NSA.

I just think its kinda ironic thats all...

But OP was very enlightening. Thanks.