OT - NSA Building Giant Database of U.S. Phone Calls
 

Link: NSA Building Giant Database of U.S. Phone Calls

Full Text:
NSA Building Giant Database of U.S. Phone Calls

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government is secretly collecting records of ordinary Americans' phone calls in an effort to build a database of every call made within the country, it was reported Thursday.

AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth telephone companies began turning over records of tens of millions of their customers' phone calls to the National Security Agency program shortly after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, said USA Today, citing anonymous sources it said had direct knowledge of the arrangement.

The program does not involve listening to or taping the calls. Instead it documents who talks to whom in personal and business calls, whether local or long distance, by tracking which numbers are called, the newspaper said.

The NSA and the Office of National Intelligence Director did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

NSA is the same spy agency that conducts the controversial domestic eavesdropping program that has been acknowledged by President Bush. The president said last year that he authorized the NSA to listen, without warrants, to international phone calls involving Americans suspected of terrorist links.

The report came as the former NSA director, Gen. Michael Hayden -- Bush's choice to take over leadership of the CIA -- had been scheduled to visit lawmakers on Capitol Hill Thursday. However, the meetings with Republican Sens. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska were postponed at the request of the White House, said congressional aides in the two Senate offices.

The White House offered no reason for the postponement to the lawmakers.

Hayden already faced criticism because of the NSA's secret domestic eavesdropping program. As head of the NSA from March 1999 to April 2005, Hayden also would have overseen the call-tracking program.

The NSA wants the database of domestic call records to look for any patterns that might suggest terrorist activity, USA Today said.

Don Weber, a senior spokesman for the NSA, told the paper that the agency operates within the law, but would not comment further on its operations.

One big telecommunications company, Qwest, has refused to turn over records to the program, the newspaper said, because of privacy and legal concerns.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the NSA refused to grant its lawyers the necessary security clearance.

Inquiry into domestic spying killed
The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, sent a fax to Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-New York, on Wednesday saying they were closing their inquiry because without clearance their lawyers cannot examine Justice lawyers' role in the program. (Full story)

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the terrorist surveillance program "has been subject to extensive oversight both in the executive branch and in Congress from the time of its inception."

Roehrkasse noted the OPR's mission is not to investigate possible wrongdoing in other agencies, but to determine if Justice Department lawyers violated any ethical rules. He declined to comment when asked if the end of the inquiry meant the agency believed its lawyers had handled the wiretapping matter ethically.

It seems like Bush read 1984 while he was growing up, and is now using it as a step by step guide.

Nevermind, other thread got deleted.

and even more shockingly the inquiry into the Domestic spying program is killed too. Im flabbergasted. I shouldnt be but I am.

Missed this, sorry.

Goddamn. For a party that for decades swore to get government out of your life, the Bush Administration seems to blow that to fucking smithereens.

They've discovered the magic words to ram through any thing they want. It's either "For the children" or "To fight terrorists".

First it was the ability to listen to overseas calls if the otherhalf is suspected of being linked with the GWOT (global war on terror). That's close to the line, but at least it has solid backing.

Why the fuck should they claim the right to have an instant database of every call ever made.. Oh yes.. because it "might lead to patterns that will help us fight terror".

Bullshit.

And now they want to put the guy who created this civil liberty-nightmare in charge of the CIA? Fuck that!

yup, took me so long to type up my first rant at work, someone else beat me to the punch.

And as for the domestic warrantless spying thing..

"You don't need to know, you trust the government, right? After all, only terrorists would have a problem with the program designed to catch terrorists."

Welcome to the world of the RPG, PARANOIA, folls

This got lost at the bottom of the article. They can't investigate an agency, because that agency won't give them clearance to check to see if the activities were within the scope of the law.

Based on this, evidently there is nothing that can be done to rein-in or put any checks on what the NSA can do. Anytime the Justice Department gets too close, all they have to do is not issue or withdraw clearance.

Not that I am disagreeing, but do you think there are other specific motives in mind?

better for targeted advertising campaigns?

It would be interesting to see someone try and defend this...

And the American People will greet this news with a collective shrug, at most.

This is why in a two party system one party should never control both sides of the scale (Executive and Congress)

And don't forget the president saying it doesn't matter what congress passes, he can choose to ignore them if he feels he has to, to defeat terrorism.

If this thing is led to stand for even a decade, it will become the greatest supply of political dirty tricks ever for a party in power.

"It says here your office has received calls from a Black panther hate group.."

Or, "your office has a call from a professional dominatrix.. care to elaborate?"

It's the story of the dog on a chain. Take one link out a day, and the dog doesn't notice the gradual shrinking of his area of movement. Once it gets down to the last link, it's too late.

Defend it?

Hell, I'm amused as all get out that there are people so naive about the world we live in that they try to attack it.

I'm in favor of it, should have been done a long time ago.

Since when does the No Such Agency, CIA, or any other TLA really report to ANYONE?

I'm sure we'll see something along the lines of:

It's just data mining, not taping of calls so there is no Constitutional issue (this is actually a decent argument under existing case law if the mining is all automated - of course, there is good reason for this area of case law to change).

The Commander-in-Chief has the power to fight enemies foreign and domestic. This is less of violation of liberty than actions by past presidents during other wars (which isn't true).

The Unitary Executive theory allows the President to do all this without congressional approval.

If you aren't doing anything wrong you don't have anything to fear.

9/11 changed everything. We can't go back to a pre 9/11 world.

Yay for Big Brother!

This wouldn't scare me too much. There is already so much marketing information out there, I don't think we'd even notice if targeted advertising got better...in fact, we might even consider that a good thing.

Yeah, but when shit like this comes out, maybe we'd have a chance to impeach the son-of-a-bitch.

Too bad this wasn't around in McCarthy's days. He would have enjoyed this.

BTW, good to see that Qwest told em No Fucking way when the NSA asked for this information.

Between this and the DoJ asking Google et al to do their donk work in attempting to restrict the internet, it's just mindboggling

{shrug}

You're worrying about what might happen too much, while failing to worry adquately about what has, does, and is happening.

Problem is, as has been stated above and in countless other threads, the Unwashed Masses Don't Care. They've been slowly taking away our privacy, freedom, rights, free yaks, etc piece by piece, all in the name of terrorism/children/convicts/whatever.

My guess is we're probably 50 or so years away from a good old fashioned blood-spilling revolution. It's coming, just a matter of when.

"They that can give up essential libery to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" -- Benjamin Franklin

And the defense has already begun from predictable sources: http://michellemalkin.com/archives/005177.htm

I forgot the other critical part of defending the program: attacking the leakers and blaming them for hurting national security.

Please explain to me how monitoring my phone calls will stop terrorism.

Please explain to me how shredding the very principles this country was founded upon (do we have ANY section of the Bill of Rights that has not been usurped at this point) makes me better.

Please explain why I'm no longer supposed to question or hold accountable an elected official.

Please point me to a freedom/privacy restriction passed in the name of anti-whatever that has NOT been abused.

None of this is new. Communism, the War On Drugs, it never ends, they just pick a new thing to make us fear.

regardless of the explanation(s) they truly only play well to the base(s) anyways. The fence-riders, when the wave gets going about this, will not react well towards the admin and right. It touches on some sensititivities about privacy that cross over from Poltical junkies (like me) to the mainstream. I guess I disagree with CW about the reaction of the masses.

fear is your only god

CW, I'm going to work from the premise that you're a reasonably bright guy. That, at the very worst, would be my impression of you from your posting history here.

Nobody should have to explain the purpose of this program to you, nor how it works. And you damn well know that.

So either you're feigning ignorance because it suits your purpose or you're not nearly as smart as I would have given you credit for.

Data mining would be my first reaction. Just because you have the data doesn't mean anything is done with it on an individual level and I'm not sure it's really a bad idea to have a computer simulation run through a series of calls for an "average" American.

But I'm looking really, really hard at how this is a link from a chain. The sheer numbers and staggering amount of data will make it difficult for them to track anyone specific. What they have is a huge storage of data, nothing more, nothing less.

As far as tracking individuals, the NSA has already proven it will do this no matter what anyone thinks so I'm not sure this is a big change for the American public.

It is sickening to think that little by little our civil liberties are being stripped away under the so called banner of "national security." The right to privacy should be paramount in a free society. Unfortunately, we are heading towards something right out of 1984. :(

Even some of the Right agree with me regarding the shocking breach of Privacy:

http://www.theamericanmind.com/mt-te...es/018381.html

Still Not Happy with NSA Revelations

With a little bit of sleep my head is slightly clearer considering the NSA having a record of billions of phone calls made since Sep. 11. I'm not anymore relieved. A database containing all that information without a court order is unacceptable. It's ripe for abuse. One thousand secret FBI files fell into the hands of cronies during President Clinton's term. A record of every phone call made would offer too much temptation for some overzealous or unethical flack.

James Joyner sees the program's harm as "infinitesimal while the potential gain in security is huge." True, since the Sep. 11 showed our intellegence agencies had a poor time dealing with the abundance of information at hand. Many items of interest will hide forever in that giant database. However, the idea the NSA has a record of all my phone calls is creepy.

There has to be a better, constitutional way to keep an eye out for terrorist bad guys while not subjecting everyone who picks up a telephone to surveillence. Unfortunately I don't have any alternatives. Supporters of the program will pounce on that. There are already those who show no concern for the program. Michelle Malkin has declared, the "NSA [is] doing its job!"

One other thought came to me. It hasn't gotten big yet, but encryption could become the big word now. Use VoIP so you can encrypt your phone conversations, encrypt your e-mail, encrypt your web browsing. NSA supercomputers might have ways to break it would take time and effort--unless your 24's Chloe who can crack any code in 20 minutes. Expect to see software companies tout the secrecy elements in their products.

"The NSA Knows Who You

You actually raise the one thing that does bother me about the program.
It appears to have the possibility of creating a larger haystack than is optimal for needle hunting.

Off the top of my head, my first guess would be that it's actually easier to have the data & then mine it for specific items than it is to try to isolate the data in advance. Hand in hand with that is that having the data on file might provide a more thorough ability to backtrack for specifics when a need arises.

Fucking big government dumbasses. Its quite sad when the Republicans are trying to compete with the liberal Democrats as to who can create the biggest government apparatus.

From the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities in 1975:



The motives are the same as they ever were...

Am I the only one who doesn't really care if the government keeps a database of who I call?

For starters - if I'm a suspect for any sort of crime, any law enforcement agency can subpoena my phone records anyway - so the net effect here as far as "privacy invasion" goes is zero.

I don't use my phone to commit crimes, and I don't call anyone that I wouldn't want anyone to know about, so I don't really see what the problem is here.

Of course, I also wonder how effective this will be. Most criminals with half a brain will be using pre-paid wireless phones at this point, which are much more difficult to track.

I really don't see the problem here. Hell, the government can post the transcripts of all of my personal calls on the front page of the NY Times for all I care. If the NSA can nip even one terrorist action in the bud by monitoring phone calls then by-all-means let them.

Correct. The only thing I can find useful about his data would be a computer simulation that would run off a list of an "average" American and look for outliers.

Tracking down all of the outliers would take a ridiculous amount of time and effort and come up with very little in the way of results IMHO. Honestly, I just don't see a lot of relevance for much of the data here, for much of anything. The only thing I can see is finding a baseline type of median or average and looking for trends.

I see very, very little use for this in a micro situation. If you are already on teh governments watch list, they know your calls and they are probably listening to them. This list can really only be useful in a macro capacity, thus the individual rights issues are tough to support here.

So with all of that, I guess what I'm saying is two things:

1) The government may find some useful things with the data, but I'm not sure it was worth the bad PR to collect it.

2) I don't see how this is a link in a chain and how another civil liberty has been eroded. I don't see how 99.999% of the people in this country will ever be impacted by this in the slightest. I don't see the "evil" here.

Hrm....wasn't the President supposed to "uphold and protect the Constitution of the United States of America"??

The fact that there was any bad PR to deal with in the first place should raise some questions of national security itself AFAIC.

2) I don't see the "evil" here.[/quote]

The evil appears to be that we're actually doing something that at least might help catch some criminals. Apparently we're supposed to sit around & let thinking good thoughts do the work.

To take this out further, you don't use your home to commit crimes, but would you want them to put a video camera in your living room to see who comes over to your house? Based on "attendance patterns", it could be helpful in the war on terror to see what is the average number of people and length of visit.

I don't buy the argument that just because you don't do anything wrong, it's not a problem. Seemingly innocuous behavior can and has been twisted to be used against people for a long, long time.

A subpeona is a bit different than a warrentless search.

Seems, just from the surface here, that "at the front door" would be a better analogy. ("In the living room" would be more akin to listening to the calls as opposed to simply tracking the calls made/rcvd).

With that difference in mind ...

Want? Probably not, from an aesthetic standpoint.
See the value in it? Yep.
Mind? Not one damned bit.

Or more likely applause.

Sigh.

Cuz gosh darn it, we shouldn't want to know what our government is doing, right?

The evil appears to be that we're actually doing something that at least might help catch some criminals. Apparently we're supposed to sit around & let thinking good thoughts do the work.[/quote]

Agree there. The administration is a disaster at the moment. I'm not sure anyone in their right mind could defend it. the in fighting, the leaks, the one hand not knowing or agreeing with what the other is doing. . . the thing is in shambles and heading further downward if that's possible.

"Want to know" and "need to know" are sometimes two different things.

And, if revealing the information damages national security capabilities, then yes I believe somebody should be looking at some serious federal prison time at the very least.

Whistleblower laws, probably.

That's real sweet that some people don't care if they are spied on or if their phone calls are recorded. I do, and the Constitution protects me from that. Well, it should when the POTUS and NSA aren't shitting all over it.

Well, we can't have that. Governments should be able to do anything with impunity and if they want to keep the people in the dark, then by God, that's their right! Oh, and W. Mark Fields was a traitor!

see the problem with the idea of you can have my phone records cuz I dont commit a crime works until the interpretation of a law or ideal changes. See it might be fine for you today but what if someday they decide that calling X should be a crime and eventhough the constituency is in an uproar no one in the government does anything about it because the Congress has shirked their responsibility to be a check and the Pres. is under the impression that he has a mandate. I guess, what Im saying is what if someday they decide that Jews seem to be a hotbed of terrorist activity so they start looking closely at my calls and one day I say, "I hate our President" and at that time, maybe a year from now, the Admin and its supporters have cowtowed to that statement being a precursor to terrorism. Off I go to Gitmo. It is a slippery slope but from where we started a while ago, years ago, we ARE moving down it.

Is it true that its really so staggering? Assuming that the average American makes 50 outgoing phone calls per month. Also assume that table holds source phone number, desitnation phone number, date/time of call (accurate to the minute) and duration of the call in seconds. In that case you're looking at each row containing 14 bytes of data (4 bytes for 10 digit phone numbers, 2 bytes for duration, and 4 bytes for date/time). So you end up with the following:

270,000,000 Americans * 50 calls/American/month * 14 bytes/call = 189 GB/month of data or 6.3 GB of raw data captured every day.

That seems like a lot of data to the layman, but my firewall logs generate 1 GB of data per day for a single subnet and I can pretty easily keep a month of data online and fully searchable and generate useful reports on the data in reasonable time (measured in hours) on database server that's over five years old.... assuming you have the budget, staffing, and motive of a group like the NSA and I can't see how that amount of data is anywhere near staggering.

Here's an interesting article showing what Republicans were saying about this kind of stuff when it was going on in the Clinton administration. The problem is that no one is ever opposed to this when their guy is doing it. It's only when the other side is in power that people get concerned about civil rights.

Don't worry... I'm sure the American Criminal Liberties Union will be suing all over the place on this one.

I'm not sure these situations are close enough to use for a comparison.

Setting aside any constitutional arguments of turning over evidence against yourself, this is the argument I would expect from people who will support one agenda without blinking.

So let's say the government does have a list of your personal calls -- not transcripts, because these are just lists of calls. Last month, you tried to call a store to see how late they are open. You transpose a number and call the wrong number. The number you called is an idividual linked to terrorist. You are called in for questioning and held on suspcion of terrorism. You protest that it was a wrong number, but you can't prove that. The call was short, but it was certainly long enough to get a across a coded message.

Is it far fetched? Might seem that way, but there have been plenty of people held in times of war in this country, including today, on weaker evidence. A stroll through a history book will show you that.

On the plus side, I was under the impression that the NSA was already doing all of this tracking and more, so I'm not really any farther behind. :)

Stop taking your privacy and freedom for granted. It used to be for what your party stood before it got sidetracked by the neocons...

Lucky for me that I don't hold allegiance to any political party, and vote instead based on individual candidates.

Speaking of which, I hate this shite.

You say that as if it is a bad thing. More power to them.

The real problem is that every time we've had something like this in the past it has ended up being subverted and used for political purposes. See the Church Committee stuff I posted earlier. Guilt and innocence aren't important, it's political affiliation that will determine whether or not you'll be victimized by this program.

As far as I'm concerned, my privacy and personal freedom isn't compromised by this.

If they start telling me that phone calls to my office or to my parents in Tennessee is a crime, then I'll worry about it. But right now, my phone calls are just a handful amongst billions. The only thing this database is good for is if someone wants to be able to do a quick and easy query against a specific phone number. I could see it being very helpful for law enforcement, and it will have zero effect on me.

I'll take those odds if the program foils even one terrorist plot before it happens. I love the 'what if' scenarios that people come-up with to counter a problem that doesn't exist.

As Americans we should expect certain civil liberties, but we must also protect ourselves from those that would do us harm. Can you really look a family who lost a loved one to terrorism in the eye and say that your phone records are more important than their son/daughter/father/mother/etc?

No, but our rapidly eroding right to live our life without the government controlling/watching every move we make IS more important.

It's like Madlibs:

Can you really look a family who lost a loved one to terrorism in the eye and say that your _____________ are/is more important than their son/daughter/father/mother/etc?

______________ can equal any liberty or intrusion

private mail
day spent in jail
right to attend a mosque
access to books
right to vote
being fired by your employer because the government database flags you
weekly home searches by the police
freedom from constant video surveillance

The list is virtually infinite. And each intrusion can be justified on its own terms with that simple rhetorical question.

This game is fun.

That's part of the problem. It seems that to stifle debate, people pull out "It's part of the war on terror" card.

No one is saying phone records are more precious than a life. That's a strawman intended to also stifle debate and ridicule those who are against this practice.

Freedom to do what exactly Subby?

Seriously, what are you afraid you're going to lose the ability to do?

Bingo. And it's the tactic that the GOP has used to death for 4 years to an unbelievable degree of success. I'm glad to see the tide is turning.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/10/wa...erland&emc=rss

Freedom also includes freedom "from" something. An athiest/Jew/Buddist in a public school isn't forced to do or not do anything when the teacher decides to lead the class in prayer to Jesus Christ, but our laws protect us "from" being subjeced to religion in the public schools. No one is claiming they don't think they will be able to make a phone call, rather we should be able to do so without being spied upon unwarranted.

not the strongest analogy, I know...

The government's track record for "compartmentalizing" data they collect and not allowing it to be used for other than the originally intended purpose is extremely poor. For example, did you expect that the data collected from the "No Child Left Behind" act would be used by the Pentagon to find potential military recruits?

No one is against being protected from harm. That goes for both external threats as well as internal threats. This current program of collecting all phone calls reeks of "out of the frying pan" (detecting and preventing terrorist attacks) and "into the fire" (other government agencies culling this data without explanation or oversight).

Did you really just equate those two possibilities?

And if so, was it intentional?

Lets say that I am a jounalist trying to get a story. If all of my calls are being stored in a database this could seriously affect my ability to report. Not just talking about government leaks but corperate connections, people with connections to illegal activity, whatever. Maybe on the surface this looks harmless but it is far from that.

Link: Bush: We're Not Trolling Your Personal Life

Full Text:
Bush: We're Not Trolling Your Personal Life

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush said Thursday the government is "not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans" with a reported program to create a massive database of U.S. phone calls.

"Our efforts are focused on links to al Qaeda and their known affiliates," Bush said. "The privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities."

Bush was responding to a USA Today report Thursday that three telecommunication firms provided the National Security Agency with domestic telephone call records from millions of Americans beginning shortly after the attacks on September 11, 2001. (Transcript of Bush's statements)

Bush did not specifically mention the newspaper's report.

In response to the USA Today article, NSA spokesman Don Weber issued a statement saying, "Given the nature of the work we do, it would be irresponsible to comment on actual or alleged operational issues; therefore, we have no information to provide.

"However, it is important to note that NSA takes its legal responsibilities seriously and operates within the law."
Lawmakers concerned

Members of Congress expressed concern Thursday about the report.

"It's our government, government of every single American -- Republican, Democrat or independent," said Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. "...Those entrusted with great power have a duty to answer to Americans what they are doing."

In the House, Majority Leader Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, said, "I'm concerned about what I read with regard to the NSA database of phone calls. ... I'm not sure why it's necessary to us to keep and have that kind of information."

Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, said he would call on representatives from the companies named in the USA Today story, AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, to testify.
Conservatives defend program

However, during a morning session, Republican members of the committee defended the legality and necessity of such a database.

The USA Today report said the program did not involve the NSA "listening to or recording conversations," a point that Sen. Jeff Sessions touched on.

"No recordings and no conversations were intercepted here, so there was no wiretapping here," Sessions said.

"The president after 9/11 told the American people he was going to use the powers given to him to protect this country. ... It's not a warrantless wiretapping of the American people."

Republican Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona also faulted the revelation of the program as harmful to national security.

"This is nuts," said Kyle. "We are in a war and we've go to collect intelligence on the enemy and you can't tell the enemy in advance how you are going to do it. And discussing all of this in public leads to that."

But Leahy, a vocal critic of the wiretapping program, praised the USA Today report, saying "it's a sorry state" that the committee will have to call on the telecom companies for the information.

"We have to do that because our own government won't answer questions," Leahy said. "Neither this committee nor any committee in the House or in the Senate has gotten adequate answers. ...

"The press is doing our work for us and we should be ashamed."
Hayden visits canceled

The report comes at an awkward time for CIA director nominee Gen. Michael Hayden, whom President Bush named this week to replace Porter Goss as head of the spy agency. Hayden, whose confirmation hearings begin next Thursday, headed the NSA from March 1999 to April 2005.

Boehner said he thought that Hayden will "have a lot more explaining to do."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California -- who supports Hayden's nomination -- said the information will "present a growing impediment" to his confirmation, a development she said she regretted.

Facing Senate confirmation hearings before the Senate Intelligence Committee on May 18, Hayden's meeting today with Sens. Rick Santorum, R-Pennsylvania, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, were canceled.

The report comes months after the Bush administration came under criticism on Capitol Hill for ordering an NSA surveillance program, that allowed communication to be monitored between people in the United States and terrorism suspects overseas without a court order.

Hayden headed the NSA when the wiretapping program was launched in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks.

President Bush has argued that the resolution authorizing military action after the 9/11 attacks, along with his authority as commander-in-chief of the military, give him the power to initiate the program without a court order, as a 1978 law requires.

Good point. Would have changed the "who is the leak to xyz story" investigations.

Lemme see here ... something for national security vs inconvienience for a reporter.

Gee, I wonder how the scales on that comparison will balance?

When too many times this administration seems to believe that anything criticizing the government is against 'national security', the scales should balance for the reporter. Freedom of speech is the last bulwark of a free society and all attempts to diminish it should be fought tooth and nail against the big government folk.

Does this DB really help national security? Seems if they identify a number as being related to terrorist activity they can pretty easily get the same information that would be in the DB through legit channels that no one would complain about.

How about this one Jon. Which would you rather our government is doing? Compiling phone information on everyone or scanning every single shipment that comes through our ports. I sure know which one I would choose yet they don't seem to be focused in on simple, effective, ideas that have already been proposed. They seem intent on stupid things like this that are relatively worthless AND are an inconvienience for a reporter.

They aren't mining through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans? That is exactly what they are doing. And, if they are actually going to use this data to try to catch terrorists, then that is exactly what they need to do. They need to mine the data to find regular paterns so they can find the anomolies. Without the regular paterns this is useless.

You have a very good ability to take a point and twist it to make it sound absurd. This inconvenience for a reporter could well amount to an informant being unwilling to talk about corruption or scandal becase he knows his anonymity can't be protected. This sort of thing could weaken national security as well.

I'm not near as sensitive to this as others I guess. By the way, when Republicans were making claims about liberals collecting data about everyday citizens in huge databases, I rolled my eyes as well. If I look at this as simply a governement agency collecting data to use in the protection of our Nation, I don't have a problem with it. If the NSA records every call in the US, I don't have a problem, so long as they are using the information to protect the people of the United States.

That said I'm making a couple of assumptions. The data won't be used for other purposes, including domestic law enforcement. Same goes with the "wiretapping" program. If I understand it correctly the FISA court ruled that anything gathered using the techniques employed wouldn't be admissable in a court of law. So, from that perspective, why would a warrant be required in the first place?

Without even arguing the merits of the case, I did find it hilarious to see this as the huge front-page story today in the USA Today. I mean, the EFF sued AT&T over this back in January hxxp://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/ and the government filed a State Secrets motion 2 weeks ago hxxp://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/USA_statement_of_interest.pdf

AT&T's Daytona database and its uses (Hawkeye - the program in question here) is even on the web @ http://www.research.att.com/~daytona/ According to that last link,
Hawkeye, the database of record for all of AT&T's call detail, consisting of over 312 terabytes of information and 1.88 trillion records.

Here http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/faq.php#16 is probably a much better FAQ on the actual program than anything out of mainstream news reports.

Overall, maybe it's just that I know people who have worked for the government in areas near this, but this is really that surprising? I can't wait until USA Today, CNN and everyone else up in arms about FISA court violations find out about the NSA's Echelon program.

This is a dramatic underestimation. 6.3 Gb is probably a factor of the actual number, but it can't be anywhere close. These numbers would presumably include business calls as well. Not to mention that I made 5 calls from my home this morning before I came to work, and at least five before I went to bed last night. We're WAY talking about the average number of calls for home use being way over 50/month.

I'm curious why you would assume that given that past evidence has consistently shown the opposite?

Shit, it's behind the subscriber archive wall now, but law enforcement has been data-mining this for a looooooong time already. AT&T's database at least also predates 9/11 - it's been collecting and storing data pretty much since the 50's at least from what little I've heard.

Honestly Brian, you did that for me. For you to even hint that your hypothetical was somehow a concern worth not undertaking this program over was, frankly, absurd all by itself.

I think we have a misunderstanding.

Is the data so staggering it can't be tracked? Hell no. Creating a database that can do it is not all that complex.

But once you have data, you have to do something with it. You can number crunch data. (ie: length of calls, distance of calls, time of day calls happen in) or any variety of that fairly easily.

Now, digging down deeper than that in a large database? It's a thankless, time consuming mess. Even if they get the information that say Tim at 555-555-5555 has called these numbers at these times, they then have to find out who the hell Tim is, who the hell he was calling, if it varied from the norm. . . It never ends.

Getting macro data on the habits of the "average" American will be a snap. Digging down to individuals and being able to use things for "evil" purposes is a ridiculously tough thing to do.

LOL, nice play.

Yeah, espeically with the recent proliferation of cell phones. AT&T's database alone is "over 312 terabytes of information and 1.88 trillion records." And I don't think they even deal with cell phones. When people are talking about the NSA eavesdropping, it seems like they have this mental picture of thousands of employees listening to every conversation. I then think about walking around campus and the thousands of different inane conversations people are having and laugh. Just imagine a government employee sitting there and listening to some college-age girl talk about what this cute boy said to her and what the professor said and oh my god totally and whats going on tonight and multiply by several thousand.

The reality is far different, with flagging and stuff, but I've always assumed that every phone call could be eavesdropped on - if I mention something on the phone like "you see the vice president is in trouble for shooting somebody" my dad will half-jokingly say "well, this call's been flagged."

Guess who is the leading employer of mathematicians in the country? http://www.nsa.gov/careers/careers_3.cfm

For a bonus question, guess what building contains the largest accumulation of computer power in any one building on Earth? Congrats if you figured out the answer - "one Cray Triton supercomputer at the facility can handle 64 billion instructions per second, and there are many of them at the NSA."


Overall, yeah, I know what you're getting at and I'm trying to find some article somewhere that discussed how the NSA was handling this and the algorithms and crazy stuff they were doing and implementing. EDIT - I can't find it now, but if you're interested in the topic there is some fascinating stuff on the cryptanalysis out there.

I don't have a problem with law enforcement collecting the data directly from the vendors with a search warrant, which is what I believe you are talking about. I just don't want my local PD to decide that they want a list of all numbers frequently calling or being called by those temporary cell phones in some sort of attempt at a drug probe. I don't want this particular data available for mining by just any portion of the governement.

What evidence do you have that ANY of the so-called wire-tapping evidence has made it to law enforcement officials. This kind of thing is spurred on by shows like Law and Order showing detectives dropping into libraries with search warrants, citing the patriot act, to gather evidence regarding a fraud or murder investigation. It just isn't happening, but that doesn't stop people from citing it as fact.

I never said it was worth not undertaking this program over. Just pointing out that it was valid enough to not dismiss so completely.

Have a look at my post on the Chuch Report, or better yet, go read it yourself. They found that programs for domestic surveillance, be they FBI, DoD, CIA, or NSA, going back four decades through numerous presidential adiminstrations, had all been twisted to political ends, used for political espionage, interference, and intimidation. Not by a few bad apples, but consistently and repeatedly.

I have no information on precisely how this program is being used. It's classified. I don't have security clearance. Nobody knows except the NSA and possibly some of the high level administration officials. We're all in the dark on this. But my point is, why do you assume it isn't being used to other ends when every other similar program has been?

Democracy is founded on the idea that unchecked power cannot be trusted. Accumulated political power is made acceptable through transparency and accountability. If you believe in the basic tenets of democracy, why would you assume that secret and unaccountable powers would not be abused? Particularly when we have so much evidence that in similar situations in the past that is exactly what has happened? It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me...

Ok, lets say a competitor of yours gets your call info via a contact at the NSA or which ever agencies end up with access to the data, and starts to target your customers for account takeovers. You find out, get pissed off, and want to know how they got this data. "Sorry your business is ruined, Mr. JIMGA, but that is classified information in the War on Terror. We can't divulge how that information was leaked."

something for national security vs. one guy's business

I wonder how that balances on the scales.

Dola,

In no way was I equating them as being equally bad. You might have read that into it, but it was more of an argument against "the ends justify the means" when there is more than one possible "end".

Well for one thing. There are now laws on the books that prevent the use of FBI information for political ends. The period you describe was why we have laws like the one establishing the FISA court. Also what the data is being used for ISN'T above review by congress. Members of Congress have been briefed regularly about what this data is being used for. FISA isn't so much being circumvented, as much as it essentially is being found lacking. If a FISA judge says that calls recorded in the manner being discussed, even with a FISA warrant, won't be admissable in a court of law, then why bother with FISA? The NSA isn't trying to enforce the law, it is trying to identify threats to the United States and gather intelligence to that end. The NSA is doing its job, and nothing they are gathering can be used to prosecute a US citizen for a crime.

Here's the part I love.

The NSA told Qwest that other government agencies, including the FBI, CIA and DEA, also might have access to the database, the sources said. As a matter of practice, the NSA regularly shares its information — known as "product" in intelligence circles — with other intelligence groups. Even so, Qwest's lawyers were troubled by the expansiveness of the NSA request, the sources said.

The NSA, which needed Qwest's participation to completely cover the country, pushed back hard.

Trying to put pressure on Qwest, NSA representatives pointedly told Qwest that it was the lone holdout among the big telecommunications companies. It also tried appealing to Qwest's patriotic side: In one meeting, an NSA representative suggested that Qwest's refusal to contribute to the database could compromise national security, one person recalled.

In addition, the agency suggested that Qwest's foot-dragging might affect its ability to get future classified work with the government. Like other big telecommunications companies, Qwest already had classified contracts and hoped to get more.

Unable to get comfortable with what NSA was proposing, Qwest's lawyers asked NSA to take its proposal to the FISA court. According to the sources, the agency refused.

The NSA's explanation did little to satisfy Qwest's lawyers. "They told (Qwest) they didn't want to do that because FISA might not agree with them," one person recalled. For similar reasons, this person said, NSA rejected Qwest's suggestion of getting a letter of authorization from the U.S. attorney general's office. A second person confirmed this version of events.

FISA won't rubber stamp us and might say no.., so we won't ask em. Besides, all the other cool kids are doing it, so should you.

and they wouldn't even go to the AG (who's a Bush yes-man) to get a letter to say it was ok!

Way way out of bounds

That will get roundly ignored, like the other laws they encourage others to break.


That the NSA ignores, because they won't rubberstamp whatever they want to do.

[quot=Glengoyne] Also what the data is being used for ISN'T above review by congress. Members of Congress have been briefed regularly about what this data is being used for. [/quote]

And if they complain, the door is slammed in their face with regards to clearnace.


See my post above, it's being shared with various other intelligence agencies.