NSA found to be collecting details on all phone calls in the United States

[swansont]

Note:

 

I pleased you're concerned about privacy. So, then, I ask, since "Google" and "Bing" are routinely found among the list shown above, can you prevent these from practicing data-mining here ?--which is very much part of what you are concerned about here. If not, why is that?

 

Speaking in an open forum affords you no expectation of privacy, so I'm not sure what the relevance is to the subject.

 

That will come as news to many Americans - I would like to see that argued in public.

 

If you use your cell phone in public, without a door to close as in Katz v US, it's hard to argue for an expectation of privacy. Also, there have been recent rulings that location data do not require a warrant, though these conflict with other circuit court rulings. If you wish for your location to be private, don't carry a cell or turn it off, until this is hashed out.

[Phi for All]

I doubt that communism will take over in the States.

But a dictatorship doesn't have to be Left wing. A state controlled by the super rich would be just as oppressive and, I think, far more likely given where you are starting from.

 

I can see I phrased that badly. What I meant was that while our pols bravely stand against the inroads of Socialism and Communism in favor of American Democracy®, the public perception is that we'll never succumb to anti-Democratic rule. It's the perfect way to give us a false confidence and ignore all the things that are eroding our Democracy. Whichever group with a sympathetic charismaniac that decides the time is ripe will find us already whipped, fearful of reprisals and listening to whatever hope is being scripted from our corporate owned news broadcasts.

[krash661]

there are two different kinds of worlds here.

public eye and behind the scenes.

[proximity1]

Speaking in an open forum affords you no expectation of privacy, so I'm not sure what the relevance is to the subject.

 

 

If you use your cell phone in public, without a door to close as in Katz v US, it's hard to argue for an expectation of privacy. Also, there have been recent rulings that location data do not require a warrant, though these conflict with other circuit court rulings. If you wish for your location to be private, don't carry a cell or turn it off, until this is hashed out.

 

The relevancy as I see it is this: though now effectively "dead-letters" in the law, our former civil liberties--in this case, the rights we used to have to privacy--concerned what the government(s) could or could not legally do in searches and seizures; here, I've mentioned two (though there are others, too) private corporate entities which are using the technology they have to data-mine this site (among others).

 

Just as was stated in the reply, Cap'n Refsmmat "certainly could [i.e. prevent these from practicing data-mining here ], if I so desired, by using robots.txt." Thus, my legal rights to privacy aren't the issue--though general collection of data without the knowledge or permission* of those from whom that data is being collected is the topic of the thread--having any third party collect and store, for whatever purpose, the, yes, public posts here, is what I'm concerned about.

 

If, say, some individual wants to make a personal project of going around and laboriously collecting one or more individual's chat forum posts, that, to me, is something qualitatively different from the mass all-inclusive vacuum-cleaner sweeps that Google and Bing conduct. If you don't or can't see the difference in the two, then I don't know to explain that to you.

 

The up-shot is, as the above reply indicates, the means to prevent general everyday collection of the information--with poster's names included (and many people post a many varied sites under a single user-login name)--by Google, Bing and others exists, but it isn't being applied and this is by the choice of Cap'n Refsmmat.

 

* ETA: I guess your questions have helped me put in better perspective what I didn't first see was entailed in my query. It concerns the aspect of "without the users' knowledge or permission".

 

Indeed, I can't claim that Bing and Google secretly collect "data" here; and one could (and probably would,) argue that by participating, I'm tacitly giving my consent. So, we're faced with the all-purpose Techno-evangelists' reply, on the world-wide webs, "Don't like _____ ? You can always leave" (participating at that site).

 

That is the "freedom" which remains to us in the wonderland New Digital Age, as hyped by Eric Schmidt, Jared Cohen and their likes.

 

"Lovely." And, remember, this is 'The House that Science Built'.

 

Edited June 7, 2013 by proximity1

[waitforufo]

As technology changes you don't expect your rights to remain the same do you? That answer seems to be no when it comes to the second amendment. Why should it be yes for other rights?

[krash661]

individuals have a blind spot in their mind.

[ewmon]

What else do they think they can collect?

 

Telephone numbers, time of day, who does most of the talking, organizational structure (see below), approximate cell phone location and road/highway being traveled (from cell phone tower(s) used to relay calls).

 

By organizational structure, I mean something like — Person A calls Persons B, C, D and E. Person B then immediately calls, F, G, and H; Person C calls I, J, K and L; Person D calls M and N; Person F calls ... . These people could be part of a terrorist cell, or Little League, or a Scrabble Club, etc.

 

I don't think cell conversations are protected under a reasonable expectation of privacy

 

No reasonable expectation of privacy AFAIK. When cell phones were analog and FM, my roommate and I easily intercepted cell phone calls with an old analog TV set that could receive UHF into the high ranges (~channel 83 etc).

[EdEarl]

But a dictatorship doesn't have to be Left wing. A state controlled by the super rich would be just as oppressive and, I think, far more likely given where you are starting from.

Does this mean you think that corporations do not have politicians in their pockets, and that the people have control over most of the laws that are passed.

[krash661]

No reasonable expectation of privacy AFAIK. When cell phones were analog and FM, my roommate and I easily intercepted cell phone calls with an old analog TV set that could receive UHF into the high ranges (~channel 83 etc).

86 was a popular one for me.

86.2 to be exact

Does this mean you think that corporations do not have politicians in their pockets, and that the people have control over most of the laws that are passed.

exactly.

there are two different kinds of worlds here.

 

public eye and behind the scenes.

Edited June 7, 2013 by krash661

[StringJunky]

But that begs the question of why one has an expectation of privacy with a paper communication but not an electronic one (wrt the government). "Because it's easy" is not a very satisfying answer, IMO.

All electronic mail can be scanned (and stored) but paper mail can only realistically be sampled in a limited way for content....it's too labour-intensive to physically open and read all paper. mail. Statistically, your odds of getting a "dodgy" letter through are much better i think.

[ewmon]

86.2 to be exact

What is 86.2?

[swansont]

All electronic mail can be scanned (and stored) but paper mail can only realistically be sampled in a limited way for content....it's too labour-intensive to physically open and read all paper. mail. Statistically, your odds of getting a "dodgy" letter through are much better i think.

 

That's my point. The only difference seems to be the ease of doing so, not some inherent difference in privacy.

 

————

 

Ran across this, which is IMO interesting

http://davidsimon.com/we-are-shocked-shocked/

 

Upshot: collecting numbers for data mining is nothing new. The only difference is the scope of the project.

 

My take: As long as this parallels the Baltimore police case it describes, I agree. The danger is if the data mining is used for other purposes (i.e. other than identifying terrorists), and it's not clear what safeguards are in place to keep that from happening.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

My take: As long as this parallels the Baltimore police case it describes, I agree. The danger is if the data mining is used for other purposes (i.e. other than identifying terrorists), and it's not clear what safeguards are in place to keep that from happening.

It's not clear to me that safeguards mean anything if violations are top-secret and unlikely to ever be discovered.

 

David Simon also bases his argument on the premises that (a) terrorism is big and scary and we should undertake these massive projects to stop it, and (b) this kind of surveillance is an effective method to stop it. I disagree with (a) -- deer have killed more Americans than terrorists -- and (b) certainly can't be established while the results are secret.

[proximity1]

Further to the comments on expectations of privacy--

 

1) it's been objected, above, that no one has any right to expect privacy concerning publicly posted opinions in internet discussion fora, for example. This overlooks the fact that Google and, we have to assume, other internet search-engines, turn over, en bloc, vast swaths of unfiltered data indicating millions of people's every movement on-line, without any regard for openly expressed opinions on any given topic. That, of course, is what "data-mining" is; and, I think that people should, indeed, have every valid expectation of privacy when it comes to their uses of the internet, the sites they "visit", the "clicks of the computer", etc. To say otherwise is to say that, in the days of predominantly print news, the government should have been legally able to coerce any publisher to turn over its subscriber-lists, using them as a raw-data source on which to base suppositions about which individuals find which kinds of press interesting. Today, of course, such an analogy is crude beyond all measure when one considers the degree and scope of intrusion possible in a digitally-networked world. Today, the surveillance makes susceptible to scrutiny not just all the general sites visited but every singe page-view, time, duration and other related movement.

 

2) an encroachment on privacy--- and, thus, tantamount to an admission of a valid expectation of privacy, since, "no expectation, no invasion" --- has already been admitted by our dumb-ass "Constitutional-Lawyer-in-Chief" :

 

from the NYT article, "Administration Says Mining of Data is Crucial to Fight Terror"

 

... "he (President Obama) defended the National Security Agency’s stockpiling of telephone call logs of Americans and gaining access to foreigners’ e-mail and other data from Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and other companies. He argued that “modest encroachments on privacy” — including keeping records of phone numbers called and the length of calls that can be used to track terrorists, though not listening in to calls — were “worth us doing” to protect the country.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/us/mining-of-data-is-called-crucial-to-fight-terror.html?hp

 

(emphasis added)

 

3) Why wouldn't any actual "terrorist" operatives turn primarily to means of communications least likely traced and watched? And, if that happens to be old-fashioned letter-mail (OFLM), then why wouldn't the government consider this vector as too important to leave out of its surveillance activities? The sensible conclusion to draw is that OFLM is scrutinized-- whenever and wherever the authorities are suspicious of any otherwise revealed patterns, whether valid or entirely mistaken by their prior analyses.

Edited June 8, 2013 by proximity1

[overtone]

 

If you use your cell phone in public, without a door to close as in Katz v US, it's hard to argue for an expectation of privacy

And if you don't, it isn't.

 

I think most Americans expect at least some of their phone calls to be private, and regard that expectaion as reasonable. That is why W&Co kept their program secret, and were threatened by its exposure and the legal issues immediately confronting them.

 

The fact that this stuff has been so laboriously and carefull hidden, denied and concealed and covered up, mere knowledge of its existence treated as a leak and of its scope as a betrayal of the cause, tells us what we need to know about the motives and understandings of its perpetrators.

 

 

Telephone numbers, time of day, who does most of the talking,
organizational structure (see below), approximate cell phone location
and road/highway being traveled (from cell phone tower(s) used to relay
calls).

And keyword ore even semantic searches performed, content categorized and described, all the above used as a basis or trigger for more detailed intrusion.

[swansont]

It's not clear to me that safeguards mean anything if violations are top-secret and unlikely to ever be discovered.

 

Right. Oversight has to have transparency in order to have accountability.

 

David Simon also bases his argument on the premises that (a) terrorism is big and scary and we should undertake these massive projects to stop it, and (b) this kind of surveillance is an effective method to stop it. I disagree with (a) -- deer have killed more Americans than terrorists -- and (b) certainly can't be established while the results are secret.

 

Terrorism is scary to many, especially to politicians, who are afraid of having something happen on their watch.

 

2) an encroachment on privacy--- and, thus, tantamount to an admission of a valid expectation of privacy, since, "no expectation, no invasion" --- has already been admitted by our dumb-ass "Constitutional-Lawyer-in-Chief" :

 

It's been pointed out that the program started under our dumb-ass former redneck-in-chief. Let's give credit where it's due.

 

 

3) Why wouldn't any actual "terrorist" operatives turn primarily to means of communications least likely traced and watched? And, if that happens to be old-fashioned letter-mail (OFLM), then why wouldn't the government consider this vector as too important to leave out of its surveillance activities? The sensible conclusion to draw is that OFLM is scrutinized-- whenever and wherever the authorities are suspicious of any otherwise revealed patterns, whether valid or entirely mistaken by their prior analyses.

 

That's presumably why this program was classified. But you can do the same thing with mail: read the recipient's and sender's address off of the package. Do we know they aren't doing this already? And asking FedEx and UPS for all of their data as well?

 

edit: I meant to say "you can legally do the same thing with mail"

[StringJunky]

That's my point. The only difference seems to be the ease of doing so, not some inherent difference in privacy.

 

Right, OK.

[proximity1]

> 41: "It's been pointed out that the program started under our dumb-ass former redneck-in-chief. Let's give credit where it's due."

 

Let's not miss the point.

 

"Credit where credit is due"?

 

I'm criticizing there Obama's failure on its demerits*. Is that allowed? Or are we required here to take your view of things?

 

 

* --none of which diminishes Bush's responsibility for what he did or failed to do. All the same, Bush doesn't get or deserve (dis)"credit" for Obama's persistence in Bush's malfeasance.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

 

That's presumably why this program was classified. But you can do the same thing with mail: read the recipient's and sender's address off of the package. Do we know they aren't doing this already? And asking FedEx and UPS for all of their data as well?

According to the Daily Mail, they are doing this:

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2337973/Ricin-mailing-suspect-caught-Big-Brothers-eye-mail--track-too.html

[iNow]

I'm criticizing there Obama's failure on its demerits*. Is that allowed? Or are we required here to take your view of things?

All swansont did was remind readers that the programs started under Bush, not under Obama. It may be detrimental to your preferred narrative, but at no point was anyone being "required to take someone else's view of things." Pointing out facts is not silencing dissent as you are here now trying to imply.

 

Further, it might be helpful to recall that these programs have all been fully debated and approved by the Congress itself... More than once. This is another fact that perhaps hurts your preferred narrative, but does not prevent you from sharing it. You're fully allowed to be as myopic and ignorant as you'd like, so let's be clear on that.

[proximity1]

All swansont did was remind readers that the programs started under Bush, not under Obama. It may be detrimental to your preferred narrative, but at no point was anyone being "required to take someone else's view of things." Pointing out facts is not silencing dissent as you are here now trying to imply.

 

Further, it might be helpful to recall that these programs have all been fully debated and approved by the Congress itself... More than once. This is another fact that perhaps hurts your preferred narrative, but does not prevent you from sharing it. You're fully allowed to be as myopic and ignorant as you'd like, so let's be clear on that.

 

Interesting. When I "pointed out a fact" I got, in return, from Swansont, a comment which was more than a "reminder... that the programs started under Bush, not under Obama." If it had been only that, I would not have objected.

 

Beyond pointing out a fact, Swansont's post says, literally, "Let's give credit where credit is due." That's several things at once: in tone, it's rebuking me for my focus on Obama, implying that having not mentioned Bush's prior roles is a fault--though nothing about my post has anything necessarily to do with any lesser degree of fault on the part of former President Bush, for whom I have no more sympathy than I have for Obama; it's also a call for something; a call on "us" to "give credit where credit is due,"--and at the same time, directly suggests that the focus of my comment is improper, needs correction, and that the proper, correct view is to refocus upon Bush, because his role preceeded that of Obama. Thus, my statement of fact, critical of Obama, to be sure, is presented as misplaced and so is a comment which impugns my view as failing to do what constitutes, in Swansont's opinion, rather than in objective fact, "giving proper credit." That is doing more than simply "reminding" readers of the history of the issue; had he wanted to do only that, he could have left things at ""It's been pointed out that the program started under our dumb-ass former redneck-in-chief," with which, the "redneck" term apart, I quite agree: Bush, as president was a disgrace and not for a moment did I ever favor his election (that is, if and when he was "elected").

 

Here, you take up where Swansont left off and lecture me with a hostile remark of your own--one that insinuates that I am prisoner or slave to "[my] preferred narrative" in the service of which I must take facts selectively and in a biased, unfairly partisan manner. You don't state what my "narrative" is, but your comment indicates you're confident that you know what it is, and suggests also that you don't like it.

 

RE: ..."Further, it might be helpful to recall that these programs have all been fully debated and approved by the Congress itself... More than once. This is another fact that perhaps hurts your preferred narrative"...

 

Indeed? I wonder what "fully debated and approved by the Congress itself" means there. As I understand it, secret, classified intelligence programs, to the extent that they are debated at all in Congress, are the exclusive purview of the various select intelligence committees (ICs) in the House and the Senate. Outside these committees, members of Congress are not aware of the matters discussed and debated there. The intelligence committees, AFAIA, report in a summary fashiod, their recommendations to parent committees or to the leadership of the House or Senate --some of whom are themeselves members on the intelligence committees or sub-committees. At that point, I believe, whatever a non-IC congress member decides in voting on a measure depends on what the IC committees and leadership permit him or her to know either via report or in reply to written interrogatories--should they be answered. If I'm correct there, I don't see how this in any way hurts that shameful thing, my "preferred narrative."

 

Swansont writes, "But you can do the same thing (i.e. intercept communications in the course of surveillance operations) with mail: read the recipient's and sender's address off of the package. Do we know they aren't doing this already? And asking FedEx and UPS for all of their data as well?"

 

That's not only quite correct, I wrote as much myself, in the very post to which Swansont is replying,

 

@ 39: "The sensible conclusion to draw is that OFLM is scrutinized-- whenever and wherever the authorities are suspicious of any otherwise revealed patterns, whether valid or entirely mistaken by their prior analyses."

 

 

RE : "You're fully allowed to be as myopic and ignorant as you'd like, so let's be clear on that."

 

I think that's quite clear, yes. You're calling me or my views myopic and ignorant. Isn't that a gratutitous insult, indicating your patent hostility or have I missed something?

[swansont]

 

Interesting. When I "pointed out a fact" I got, in return, from Swansont, a comment which was more than a "reminder... that the programs started under Bush, not under Obama." If it had been only that, I would not have objected.

 

Beyond pointing out a fact, Swansont's post says, literally, "Let's give credit where credit is due." That's several things at once: in tone, it's rebuking me for my focus on Obama, implying that having not mentioned Bush's prior roles is a fault--though nothing about my post has anything necessarily to do with any lesser degree of fault on the part of former President Bush, for whom I have no more sympathy than I have for Obama; it's also a call for something; a call on "us" to "give credit where credit is due,"--and at the same time, directly suggests that the focus of my comment is improper, needs correction, and that the proper, correct view is to refocus upon Bush, because his role preceeded that of Obama. Thus, my statement of fact, critical of Obama, to be sure, is presented as misplaced and so is a comment which impugns my view as failing to do what constitutes, in Swansont's opinion, rather than in objective fact, "giving proper credit." That is doing more than simply "reminding" readers of the history of the issue; had he wanted to do only that, he could have left things at ""It's been pointed out that the program started under our dumb-ass former redneck-in-chief," with which, the "redneck" term apart, I quite agree: Bush, as president was a disgrace and not for a moment did I ever favor his election (that is, if and when he was "elected").

If you're going to throw a pejorative "dumb-ass" into a description, it's hard to defend that you were simply pointing out a fact. But if you were, then how come when I respond in a similar tone, all of the sudden it's a huge problem?

 

You doth protest too much, methinks.

 

> 41: "It's been pointed out that the program started under our dumb-ass former redneck-in-chief. Let's give credit where it's due."

 

Let's not miss the point.

 

"Credit where credit is due"?

 

I'm criticizing there Obama's failure on its demerits*. Is that allowed?

 

What failure and what demerits, exactly?

 

Or are we required here to take your view of things?

 

I wasn't aware that being aware that Bush started up the NSA (and PRISM) program was my view. I thought they were facts.

 

 

* --none of which diminishes Bush's responsibility for what he did or failed to do. All the same, Bush doesn't get or deserve (dis)"credit" for Obama's persistence in Bush's malfeasance.

 

Nobody has established malfeasance, AFAIK. What has been shown is the extent of apparently legal information gathering, the nature of which has been legal for quite some time.

[iNow]

have I missed something?

Yeah, let's just go with that.

[CaptainPanic]

First my 2 cents, before I respond to some of your posts:

I am offended that the USA is listening in on its own citizens, as well as people across the world (no doubt including those of their allies). Since I am a chemical engineer, I probably use a whole bunch of words that make some alarms go off. Given the magnitude of the spying, I bet there is not much needed to get some extra attention from a US-based spy computer. (Hello, NSA, greetings from Holland).

But also, the US economy is on its knees, and yet your government chooses to spend billions on surveillance of ordinary citizens, preventing absolutely nothing. Where's the logic in that? I mean, I can understand some of the laws in the US that support large corporations. In the end, someone gets rich. But this stuff is the same as burning your money. It is as stupid as using giant high tech bombs against a mountain in Afghanistan.

Also, it's not as if we did not suspect this years ago. Even SFN has adapted its rules according to the new world where we expect governments to spy on us (example). Terrorists won't be so stupid to just send an email, asking for some TNT. What do they expect to catch?

 

These aren't wiretaps. They aren't listening in on conversations, they are collecting phone numbers, call lengths, and other data. Not that this is acceptable, but let's make sure we're discussion the correct scenario.

 

Citation needed.
Are you sure they don't just record and store all phone conversations in some audio format? Are you sure that phone conversations aren't run through a database that checks for suspect words and phrases, which would mean they are essentially listening in?

I agree that there is not a human listening in on all we do. But computers have been technically capable of doing this for years.

 

The surveillance is not secret because you know all your internet/telephone communications are being routinely sieved for target material and stored...one should act in the light of this. If one really wants privacy, post a letter made from trees not electrons.

 

Nonsense. If you really want privacy you just pull the plug on those NSA datacenters. The problem is that many people have been scaremongered into believing that there is indeed a threat that they need to be protected against, at all cost, otherwise the Jihad Communists are coming with Anthrax Nuclear bombs, developed by sleeper cells that have been dormant since the sixties.

 

With the exception of the Bush election in 2000, all other presidential elections in the last decade seem legit. And even the Bush election was probably legit too (there was some controversy). So, you all actually voted for this. If you want privacy, use your vote differently.

[swansont]

First my 2 cents, before I respond to some of your posts:

 

I am offended that the USA is listening in on its own citizens

 

This is not evidence that they are.

 

Citation needed.

 

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/06/verizon-telephone-data-court-order

 

That was included in the link in the OP. Page 2 describes what telephony data includes. The phrase "does not include the substantive content of any conversation" is a quote from the court order.

 

Are you sure they don't just record and store all phone conversations in some audio format? Are you sure that phone conversations aren't run through a database that checks for suspect words and phrases, which would mean they are essentially listening in?

 

No, I am not. But this court order is not evidence that this is happening. As I said before, if Verizon is taping my calls I have a huge problem with it, because that's massively illegal. Also if the government is doing it without probable cause.