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!