Officials Say NSA Probed Fewer Than 300 Numbers - Broke Plots In 20 Nations 419
cold fjord writes "Yet more details about the controversy engulfing the NSA. From CNET: 'Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, explained how the program worked without violating individuals' civil rights. "We take the business records by a court order, and it's just phone numbers — no names, no addresses — put it in a lock box," Rogers told CBS News' "Face The Nation." "And if they get a foreign terrorist overseas that's dialing in to the United Sates, they take that phone number... they plug it into this big pile, if you will, of just phone numbers — it's like a phonebook without any names and any addresses with it — to see if there's a connection, a foreign terrorist connection to the United States." "When a number comes out of that lock box, it's just a phone number — no names, no addresses," he said. "If they think that's relevant to their counterterrorism investigation, they give that to the FBI. Then upon the FBI has to go out and meet all the legal standards to even get whose phone number that is."' From the AP: ' ... programs run by the National Security Agency thwarted potential terrorist plots in the U.S. and more than 20 other countries — and that gathered data is destroyed every five years. Last year, fewer than 300 phone numbers were checked against the database of millions of U.S. phone records ... the intelligence officials said in arguing that the programs are far less sweeping than their detractors allege.... both NSA programs are reviewed every 90 days by the secret court authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Under the program, the records, showing things like time and length of call, can only be examined for suspected connections to terrorism, they said. The ... program helped the NSA stop a 2009 al-Qaida plot to blow up New York City subways.'"
I'm sure it's effective (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not the problem. Just tell people what you're doing. Make sure that it's legal and ethical. Don't be shy of what you're doing. Then we might accept it.
Re:I'm sure it's effective (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup, the reason this is interesting is the secret courts and total lack of transparency.
There is no reason the court can't be open. If you need to hide the number/person you are getting a warrant against the same procedures used to hide the identities of children from the press can be used. Just use John Doe Number X or 555-555-55XX for the number. Making it secret sure looks like they are hiding something illicit.
Re:I'm sure it's effective (Score:5, Interesting)
Because sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Why would them hiding even more stuff make anyone trust them more?
Re:I'm sure it's effective (Score:5, Insightful)
There are two schools of thought. Both are valid but it requires a balancing act between the two.
A) Who watches the watchers. If an organization is too secret and has too much power / autonomy then it's a dangerous thing: both to our safety and our liberties.
B) You need to actually be secret and discreet if you want to spy successfully. Face it, there will always be spies and espionage: every country out there does it to some degree. People in surveillance + intelligence + espionage can't "do your job" if you're too far into the sunlight.
USA Politician: Oh, here's a list of personnel and here are the strategies we're using.
Foreign Politician: OK, good to know... we'll work on messing with these people and/or bribing them, and our counter-Intel guys will try to avoid your strategies.
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I never disagreed with either of those.
You can hold a reasonable court without disclosing that stuff.
John Doe #1 has communicated with John Doe #2 and John Doe #3, all are suspected terrorists. We would like a warrant to monitor John Doe #1 as we already have on the other two. Here is some evidence of the other two discussing a plot to pollute our precious bodily fluids.
No sensitive data would be leaked, but it could still be audited and subject to normal perjury rules. No judge would sign warrants that fai
Re:I'm sure it's effective (Score:5, Insightful)
...how exactly does that not give the would-be terrorists the exact information they need to know in order to abandon their plot, go into hiding, and start a different plot a week later?
Does it matter? It stopped the plot; just lather, rinse, and repeat, and POOF! No more terrorism, with the additional bonus of not spending crazy amounts of treasure spying on millions of innocent people.
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Stopping the plot is good. The focus should be on stopping crimes instead of prosecuting as many criminals as possible.
It seems anti terrorism law enforcement doesn't get this. They go after complicated schemes to entrap people, encouraging someone they think is on the edge to become more radicalized, sell them weapons, then say "a ha!" and arrest them in a sting. No real terrorist was caught but it counts as a win in their scoreboard. Worse, when the general public asks "have these procedures ever caug
Re:I'm sure it's effective (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think there are just two problems with this. There are multiple problems with this.
It sounds like they are pulling ALL call data and warehousing it to mine via some secret warrant. The problem is that data now exists and is accessible to the government WITHOUT a warrant of someone decides to go "rogue". It's a lot more difficult to mine that data without a warrant if it were still in the hands of the original vendors.
The uses may be noble now and there may have been horrible things prevented with this system. That doesn't mean that it won't be abused by some future government. One of the things our Constitution provides for is a way to "survive" poor or malicious leaders until the next round of elections.
Re:I'm sure it's effective (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's put it this way. Say we get a total theocrat in office at some point in the future. Are you comfortable with that administration having easy access to all of the information that the NSA has already hoovered?
Re:I'm sure it's effective (Score:5, Interesting)
This. This is exactly how I almost turned my ultra-conservative, war-hawk, get-the-terrorists-at-any-price to stop defending the program. I just simply said, "what if the democrats had a full-blown, no-secret, Muslim run for president on the idea of diversity and part of their platform is that they would implement Sharia?"
"Well, no raghead would ever get elected."
"His Muslim friends will make cheap oil available and they will run on taxing the rich so that more people get handouts from the government. I mean, democrats already got 47%; how much harder would an additional 4% be with that?"
"Well, we'd rise up against the flagrant violations of the Constitution."
"And now, the administration calls you terrorists and starts monitoring who you call because someone else called you under the same guilt by association theory. And that is what they admit they do, they'd probably bug your phone too."
(dead silence, sound of rusty gears starting to turn again in his head) "Yeah.... They've gone too far. We've got to stop OBAMA. "
(I sigh because I got so close.)
An interesting note to that conversation is how much of that just went unchallenged because Fox News has convinced him that it is actually possible.
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im not a libertarian, but i do get tired of these ignorant /.'ers trying to tell libertarians what they believe.
Re:I'm sure it's effective (Score:4, Interesting)
Just looking at a historical baseline of the spanish inquisition and catholicism.
Your're right- non religious people do bad things too. They usually need to be a sociopath to do evil things.
But religious people can do monstrous things while still being normal people. All you have to do is cross the line to "not being human" according to their religion.
Religion and nationalism allow otherwise normal people to behave like sociopaths. So they are both a bit frightening.
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Being Roman Catholic, there's no such thing as "not being human" in my religious worldview. Thanks for playing, though.
Re:I'm sure it's effective (Score:5, Insightful)
But religious people can do monstrous things while still being normal people.
I'm not AT ALL defending the bad acts done in the name of religion, but your statement is not unique to religion. You even seem to acknowledge this by adding "nationalism" later in your post... which is obviously huge (e.g., WWII).
But besides religion and nationalism you could include racism and various other forms of bigotry, various cult-like ideological movements that are neither religious nor nationalist, etc.
The key feature has nothing to do with religion per se. What allows "normal people" to do monstrous things is groupthink. If you belong to a group that says it's okay to torture or kill or enslave people, you're more likely to think it's okay. It's as simple as that. Whether the group is religious is beside the point -- you just have to have a strong association with the group and think it's in the right.
Re:I'm sure it's effective (Score:5, Informative)
Your're right- non religious people do bad things too. They usually need to be a sociopath to do evil things.
You may want to read up on various psychological experiments that how "normal people" can easily end up doing evil things -- even if they are just put in a situation of authority [wikipedia.org] or simply told that a scientific experiment requires them to torture other people [wikipedia.org].
Re:I'm sure it's effective (Score:4, Insightful)
You only have to spy if you are trying to maintain an empire. Otherwise, just prefer trade over war. It's no secret that it's impossible to maintain a democracy or individual freedoms under a state of perpetual war. It's also no secret that war is self-reinforcing (both because of the lasting hate it creates, but also because it feeds an increasingly fatter military-industrial complex, that then has the resources to control the government and politicians). It's also clear that the terrorist threat is minor: more people die per year on average of slipping in the bath tube. In the land of the brave, people would respond to terrorism by going on with their lives without changing anything and showing no fear.
American hegemony is not being maintained in name of the interests of its citizens, but of its elite. American citizens are being reduced to slavery while living under the illusion that they are getting the better deal. I know Americans don't want to hear this, but there are a number of countries all over the world where people enjoy more personal freedom than the USA. The USA has the highest percentage of its population in prison of _all_ countries in the world, including totalitarian regiems like China. Americans have 10x more expensive healthcare than the rest of the western world, 1/3 of the holidays and there isn't proper separation of religion and state (e.g. you are not allowed to show tits on TV in the 21st century !!!???!) You are not allowed to board a plane without going through a humiliating ritual where strangers get to see you naked, sift through your personal effects and ask personal and intrusive questions. And so on and so on...
Re:I'm sure it's effective (Score:4, Insightful)
You only have to spy if you are trying to maintain an empire
Not really
Even non-empire countries will have clandestine groups. The only difference is size and scope. This isn't just a USA/Russia/UK/* Korea thing. Though I imagine those mentioned countries have larger spy and clandestine groups than most other countries.
Even if it's just counter-intel to the various other countries that might want to spy on you.
And then there's the military angle. Even if you're a quiet country not involved in any wars... chances are you have at least a small military presence within your OWN borders. In which case, said surveillance agency helps let you know "Oh by the way, your neighbors are practicing maneuvers near the border."
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Because sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Why would them hiding even more stuff make anyone trust them more?
Sunlight is the best disinfectant for politics. But keep in mind that the overuse of disinfectants and antibiotics is breeding superbugs that are now immune to all medicines. That is the future of medicine. Hopefully we don't extend those ill considered practices to national security and the fight against terrorism as well.
The very mission of intelligence agencies means a lot of what they do has to be done in the dark in order to be effective. Excessive direct sunlight makes them ineffective. Example:
Re:I'm sure it's effective (Score:5, Insightful)
They ARE hiding something illicit. Hoovering up call details without a warrant is entirely unconstitutional. Warrants without even the hint of probable cause are unconstitutional, but that is a very unpopular opinion nowadays.
And our rights are not ratified by polls. They are described in our Constitution as being granted by our Creator (feel free to define that as you wish), and RECOGNIZED by our Constitution - not granted by it. Our government, in all branches, is charged with protecting and defending them.
Sadly, government can only diminish liberty.
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It's not even a plausible lie. It doesn't take billions of dollars and years of work to grep the phone book for a short list of numbers.
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Making it secret sure looks like they are hiding something illicit.
Making it secret means they can lie about "only 300 numbers".
I'd believe "only 300 numbers" a lot more readily if the various Internet services that have come forth all seem to report requests numbering in the thousands.
Re:I'm sure it's effective (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not the problem. Just tell people what you're doing. Make sure that it's legal and ethical. Don't be shy of what you're doing. Then we might accept it.
Well, to be fair, telling people what you're doing makes doing it pretty useless when "what you're doing" is covert surveillance.
"You can't handle the truth!" (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, to be fair, telling people what you're doing makes doing it pretty useless when "what you're doing" is covert surveillance.
Hardly. You and I are both well aware that our police regularly do covert surveillance of suspected criminals. The fact that they do so is public knowledge and we are fine with that. While it is sometimes necessary to temporarily hide the tactical details of a specific surveillance, it is not necessary to hide the existence of the program to do so or to hide the findings of such surveillance indefinitely. Furthermore the authorization for such surveillance is overseen by reasonably transparent judicial review, it typically limited in scope and time frame and the results of the surveillance are revealed to the public in due course.
The NSA on the other hand has a system where they have a secret program, with secret directives, overseen by a secret court, whose findings are kept secret. Though many suspected the NSA was conducting surveillance of some sort, the very existence of this program was kept secret from the public. At no point in this system does the public have any means by which to be notified of abuses of this system. The entire progress is treated as a secret and hidden effectively forever from public scrutiny. No reasonable person has a problem with the idea of our government looking for bad guys but the methods used matter greatly and not all methods are acceptable. This is EXACTLY like the end of the movie "A Few Good Men" where the government is screaming at us that we can't handle the truth and that they do not have to explain themselves to us. Cheesy as that sounds, it is a perfect analogy to what is going on here.
Re:I'm sure it's effective (Score:5, Insightful)
Transparency isn't the only problem. Freedom and privacy are simply more important than security. If freedom or privacy must be sacrificed (and that's a dubious claim), I don't want whatever you offer.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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YOU say that, but the majority of the US, who these officials represent, serve, and are employed by, disagree with you.
It doesn't matter what they think. The Constitution is designed to protect the individual from the idiocy of the masses. If they have a problem with that, then they are more than welcome to amend the Constitution. But they'll need a 2/3's majority which they simply don't have, so they try to find ways to wiggle around those protections.
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YOU say that, but the majority of the US, who these officials represent, serve, and are employed by, disagree with you.
We don't have a direct democracy, but a representative republic. Furthermore, the government is supposed to be bound by the constitution, and as such, it does not matter how many people want the government to violate it.
Well, it doesn't work out that way in practice. You're right that the public at large will have to stop being cowardly morons before anything will actually change.
it's easy to be blind to the reality of the situation.
I am not blind; I am well aware that many people are cowards.
Re:I'm sure it's effective (Score:5, Interesting)
That poll is flawed.
If you ask Americans if they're okay with the government tapping the phones of Americans for national security, 56% say yes, but if you ask them if they're okay with the government tapping the phones of ORDINARY Americans for national security, that number flips to 58% opposing it.
The way it was worded and due to the weird ways people make assumptions about the authority of the people asking polls, most people assume that the feds were only tapping the phones of bad guys.
The wording of the question matters (Score:3)
YOU say that, but the majority of the US, who these officials represent, serve, and are employed by, disagree with you. You can't really expect the government to stop doing these things when so many people support it.
Cute. Of course people respond wildly differently depending on exactly what question is being asked. "Do you support killing terrorists?" will get a much higher positive response than "Do you support violating your civil rights so that we can kill terrorists more easily?" I can find surveys with just slightly different phrasing of the questions that will have much different results. Don't get too excited by one survey with misleading results. Some people support using torture too but that doesn't make
Re:I'm sure it's effective (Score:5, Insightful)
YOU say that, but the majority of the US, who these officials represent, serve, and are employed by, disagree with you. You can't really expect the government to stop doing these things when so many people support it.
See: http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/10/majority-views-nsa-phone-tracking-as-acceptable-anti-terror-tactic/ [people-press.org]
The internet can be like an echo chamber, especially in places like Slashdot where a lot of like-minded people come together. With all the outrage that you see, it's easy to be blind to the reality of the situation.
You need to work on changing the minds of the public, then maybe you'll see changes in the government.
How was that poll conducted, as in what question was actually asked?
There's a huge difference between:
"Do you think the NSA should secretly monitor phones to catch terrorists?"
To which most people would say "Yes, monitor their (the terrorist's) phones."
And:
"Do you think the NSA should secretly monitor everyone's phone and permanently store the data in case it's needed to catch terrorists?"
To which most people would say "Hell no, get a warrant!"
As far as the claims and promises being made as reported in TFS/TFA, too late. Too many officials have obviously lied over and over. NSA, FBI, Benghazi, IRS, F&F, etc. There is no trust, nor any logical reason for trust, given their track record on honesty and truthfulness. If they said "water is wet" I'd have to see the results of multiple scientific studies by multiple independent and prestigious international sources. And I'd still have doubts given who we're talking about.
Strat
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It's easy to be apathetic when you never or rarely fly.
People are much less prone to stick up for others. If you make it clear that they are going to be impacted then the level of interest is going to increase dramatically.
"free speech zones" just sound like tinfoil ramblings to most people.
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If you take them at their word, no freedom or privacy is being lost. Just remember the phone company already has these records and if it's legal they're trying to monetize the data already. The issue is that such a system has enormous potential for abuse. I'm actually more interested in how they control use o
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Just remember the phone company already has these records and if it's legal they're trying to monetize the data already.
That isnt relevant to the legality of it.
If a cop wants access to your papers, "just remember that you already have these records"... but the 4th amendment blocks the government from gaining access to them without a warrant.
I suppose a company might voluntarily disclose their records, but I think that creates all sorts of other issues.
Re:I'm sure it's effective (Score:5, Insightful)
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300 numbers? More like 300 million numbers. The government isn't efficient enough to stop 20 plots by checking only 300 numbers.
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The government isn't efficient enough to stop 20 plots by checking only 300 numbers.
These are the same 300 undercover people using NSA-issued phones in all 20 cases. You don't think they stopped any actual terrorist plots??
If they had, they'd be advertising it like there is no tomorrow. Just like if TSA ever catches or stops an actual terrorist accidentally, I assume it will be in the news for months.
Re:I'm sure it's effective (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't be shy of what you're doing.
Isn't that what they tell us? "If you're doing nothing wrong, then you should have nothing to hide"?
And then they decide that they should probably hide this massive surveillance program? :P
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Important people are talking now, citizen. Get back in line.
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That's not the problem. Just tell people what you're doing. Make sure that it's legal and ethical. Don't be shy of what you're doing. Then we might accept it.
No. Some people will never accept it because a massive database is being made which can easily be used for other purposes like identifying Joe Schmoes who are likely politically against the administration du jour and using that info to harass them with IRS et al. The existence of a database like this is uneccessary as the Feds can subpoena duces tecum for the specific data needed for investigations already. The only purpose for a universal database like this is for trend-tracking or other misuse. If its
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Or, to use an argument that NSA proponents have used, "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to worry about [by being more open about the program]."
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Everything the government says it's true? Am I right? I mean look at all the weapons of mass destruction we found in Iraq. Sure, only 300 phones were tapped.
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Who should be speaking about this is not rogers, but somebody from the NSA.
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They likely only entered in 300 numbers, but after the computer checked everyone they called, and everyone they called, and everyone they called, they just ended up with 70% of America anyways, with the rest being of absolutely no interest.
Hello Kevin Bacon again and again.
Re:I'm sure it's effective (Score:4, Insightful)
what they're doing is storing everything. Whether they probed it or not isn't the question. They are storing it.
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Lord knows that argument wouldn't fly against MPAA's lawyer-deamons, why should it fly for the NSA against the public?
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I'm not sure it's effective. And if it is, I doubt it's effective enough to warrant the amount of money thrown at it or the misuse that will inevitably occur.
I'm also not sure why we should believe anything they say.
I'd rather take my chances with the terrorists over opaque security organizations who can spy on me whenever they wish.
I'm far more likely to get shot or run over by a fellow citizen anyway.
Turn your spying ability on the bankers and then we'll talk.....
Finding out whose phone number it is (Score:4, Insightful)
Then upon the FBI has to go out and meet all the legal standards to even get whose phone number that is.
Unless they figure out that they can just run a check against the phone book. The scary thing is, this guy may be as stupid as he sounds.
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The question remains: how many domestic telephone conversations underwent some form of traffic analysis by NSA systems?
The question remains: how many domestic telephone conversations underwent some form of traffic analysis by Booz Allen Hamilton systems?
That's more my concern. What is preventing them from using all that data for some other dubious business purposes . . . ?
Snowden outed himself. He has no financial gain. But what others are still lurking around inside Booz Allen Hamilton . . . ?
I guess Booz Allen Hamilton is busy shredding documents and disks right now.
Proof or STFU (Score:5, Insightful)
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If they did they'd be tipping off terrorists on how they caught on to them, so the terrorists would revise their communication methods. As they reportedly are doing now, in response to Snowden's revelations.
There's no right answer here. Personally I'd prefer more Congressional oversight, but then you have to trust those guys to be effective overseers on our behalf.
Re:Proof or STFU (Score:5, Interesting)
The vast majority of Verizon's (and any US carrier's) calls are from one US number to another US number. They could just have requested all phone calls from/to a short list of foreign numbers. Or at most they would have asked for all calls to/from a list of foreign countries. That's still a lot of calls but hundreds of times less than the full call database. Then, once they had identified a US number that seems associated with foreign terrorists, they could examine all calls to/from that number and tap the line.
The court order says every call. Why would a judge give them that level of access if all they wanted was calls to/from a handful of numbers? Bottom line, the story the Congressman is telling is completely at odds with what we now know about the extent of the information the NSA requested and received.
Re:Proof or STFU (Score:4, Interesting)
How dumb do they think we are? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why would they need the names? There are lots of programs like 411 that can do a reverse look up on phone numbers.
Re:How dumb do they think we are? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because that does not work on cell phones, or did not last I looked. It surely does not work on prepaid phones. You could get those names by watching who they call and when.
Obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
If only the NSA had pulled 2 more phone numbers, adding the Tsarnaev brothers to their list of terrorists.
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And what would they have caught?
"Sup?"
"Hey bro, let's go shoot some hoops and talk about that stuff I wanted to talk to you about earlier."
"Yeah, see you there"
In this case, what would you find out? Not much. Phone tracking works for some stuff, but not so much for other stuff. All they would have gotten from that conversation was that they were brothers and stuff would be talked about. They didn't need a phone log to figure that out. Of course, the "stuff" they would be talking about in person would h
Re:Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Even the Russians knew these guys were trouble. [latinospost.com] But the NSA/FBI/CIA/DHS did not. No reason why the FBI could not have added their names/phone numbers to a list of potentials and kept an eye on them. Instead, they are strip-searching grandma, reading 15-year-old girls' text messages, and obtaining phone records from the AP and James Rosen (and his parents).
My Eloquent Reply (Score:2)
Bull-fucking-shit.
Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
First, the "we broke 20 plots" is bullshit. They have have used these tools in 20 investigations, so what? And what about the other 280 they admit to? And anyway, how many people's data was involved in each of these investigations? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?
In any case, we still come back to the basic problem: The police could certainly stop a few more crimes, if they were allowed unfettered access to people's homes. See someone suspicious? Walk in and search the house, no warrant required. The point is: This price is not worth paying.
Why? For many reasons, but here are the ones that leap immediately to mind:
(1) People need to feel they have personal privacy.
(2) Government bureaucrats are humans: some good, some bad, most just muddling along. Put this kind of power in their hands, and it will be abused. Whether for political ends, to get back at the ex after a nasty divorce, or whatever. Because they work for the government, they will not be punished. See the recent IRS scandals for a perfect example of this.
It is important to limit government power, because this is the only sure way to prevent abuses. You can't abuse power you don't have. If this makes police work a little more difficult, that is a price well worth paying. Convince a judge and get a warrant before spying on someone - this just isn't that hard.
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Remember the S&P downgrading the US' debt rating? In short order the government loudly and proudly announced an IRS investigation into them. Do we forget this quickly?
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
First, the "we broke 20 plots" is bullshit. They have have used these tools in 20 investigations, so what? And what about the other 280 they admit to? And anyway, how many people's data was involved in each of these investigations? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?
Also, don't forget the government tendency to declare victory. I'm reminded of how it designates "all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants". How many of these plots would have even gone anywhere? They might've broken into someone's home who ordered some waffle mix overseas, declared him a "terrorist", shipped him off to Guantanamo Bay, then chalked up another point for the Good Guys(tm).
I tend to be a pessimist about things that happen in secret.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
I really wish that you would show up the next time someone inn the US dies from what would have been preventable through analysis of the call records. That way you could say "sucks to be you" the the family. It's the part right after that that I'd enjoy...
I really wish you would show up the next time someone in the US dies from something that could have been prevented had we installed cameras in everyone's homes. That way you could say "sucks to be you" the the family. It's the part right after that that I'd enjoy...
Hey, look how exploitable that 'logic' is! I can use it to justify any policy as long as it saves at least one person!
I have a question. What was the point of your response? What a grieving family feels is completely irrelevant to whether or not the person you replied to is correct. I could punch you in the face for saying "1 + 1 = 2," but that wouldn't mean you'd be wrong. I have no idea what the point of your response was at all; it seems completely illogical to me.
And you know what? We're supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave. Giving away our privacy and freedoms so we can feel safe hardly makes us look like a nation full of brave, free warriors.
I don't see the database of who called whom as a red line deserving of the rhetoric you're dishing out.
Then you don't understand the issue, and do not see the value in information.
Start from the facts (Score:3)
It's been established the US government does not want to disclose domestic surveillance programs. They said so in front of cameras, "national security, blah blah".
Now I need to evaluate the claims of a government official regarding domestic surveillance programs... hmmm. Not very comforting.
and the database is secure (Score:4, Interesting)
He seems to want to focus on the 300 "numbers only" they checked and not the big database of "phone records" that exists. But I'm sure the "database of millions of U.S. phone records" he refers to is at least as secure as the existence of the program itself. It's not doubt more secure but that doesn't mean it's safe. And many attackers would love to just get a handful of records (congressmen, judges, candidates, ceos, opposition party leaders).
Plus I've already heard quotes from politicians and other government officials that the database needs to be more widely shared. FBI and DHS need access now. I imagine the IRS could find a few things and "improve" tax collection if it was shared with them. We better not get used to being ok with the NSA having access to "numbers only". The nature of government is to expand and make "better" use of data, not to ignore a valuable resource because of privacy concerns. And also to protect those in power, so any 3rd party leader making progress better have a squeaky clean record. One place the 2 parties can agree is on attacking any opposition to their power.
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Starting with any organization with "patriot" or "freedom" in its name, they would discover the network of anyone calling anyone, and hit everyone with an audit.
When you hear a politician say "just"... (Score:2)
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When you hear a politician say "just" in his formal speech, he's lying. Mostly... as in, they mostly just lie through their teeth.
Oh, no, no, no. They lie out their asses too.
Thats what *they* do with it *now* (Score:4, Insightful)
Once the word is out this database exists, other uses will be found for it, either by the NSA or by other organizations. History has proven that once data exists, people will use it any way they want to.
They can be almost as effective if they only start monitoring those phone numbers that are correlated to "terrorism" because they get dialed by a foreign terrorist. They'd miss "historical data" but I doubt the effectiveness of that will weigh up to the giant loss of privacy people suffer because their "metadata" gets stored.
Nobody has even proven the effectiveness of this sort of measures against terrorism, it costs billions and the elected government is spying on the people that elected them in the first place. If you, as a politician, don't trust the people that voted for you, your democracy as a country is in serious trouble.
Re: (Score:3)
History has proven that once data exists, people will use it any way they want to.
I think you've hit the biggest danger right there. The police have databases to look up the names and addresses for license plates. Abuse of that system is chronic. Everyone seems to know a friend who can look up license plates.
Access to this phone record database will develop the same way. First one government organization will really need access, then another, and so on . . .
. . . and fairly soon a lot of folks will be able to get a list of who their ex-wives, business partners, etc. are talking wit
uh huh (Score:2)
When a number comes out of that lock box, it's just a phone number — no names, no addresses," he said. "If they think that's relevant to their counterterrorism investigation, they give that to the FBI. Then upon the FBI has to go out and meet all the legal standards to even get whose phone number that is.
Because doing a reverse phone lookup isn't possible until they have a court order right?
http://www.whitepages.com/reverse_phone [whitepages.com]
What a joke.
I gave up a while back.. (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
For around 3 years I posted regularly that this was coming, I warned everyone I could about this. I explained why it was important. I was called tinfoil hat, I was humiliated, I was belittled and I was told I was a moron.
You were called those names because it's such a bad scenario it's like saying "The President sacrifices babies which survived abortion procedures on an altar under his desk in the Oval Office". You need proof before people will believe something this bad. Now we're getting proof, but unfortunately, you've inoculated some people such that they now need more proof than they originally would have because they still emotionally equate "belief in government tracking of all phone data" with tinfoil-hatism, even
The "just a number" can be de-anonymized easily (Score:5, Interesting)
Nice how they left out that little fact. In many cases a simple Google search will already be enough. Where that fails, use the customer database of the phone service provider. I expect lifting the anonymity from a number will take significantly less than a minute, possibly less than a second.
This is classical lying by omission. It builds of the lack of understanding of the common person. De-anonymizing metadata is an easy and cheaply solvable and well understood problem.
To recap (Score:5, Insightful)
They didn't do it.
i feel safer already (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Out of the myriad issues with this topic, this is the one that bothers me the most. First, if we are aware of it then it is not secret any more. Just the idea of "secret" and "court" send warning bells up. Why do we need secret courts? What else do they do? Are they even constitutional (6th I believe) since the accused may not ever get to face the accuser.
In the fight over terrorism we, The People, have systematically dismantled the very foundations that this country was founded on. We cry out "Justic
Of course they did (Score:3, Funny)
Bet they cured cancer and helped a little old lady across the street too.
Interesting word, "probe." (Score:4, Interesting)
They claim to have a list of millions of phone numbers, against which they only checked 300 numbers last year.
I want to know what criteria they used to generate that list of millions of phone numbers.
More precisely, I want to know what criteria they used to build the training data sets to train the classifiers that filtered through all our communications metadata (and probably our communications content data as well) in order to generate that list.
What are they looking for? How do they say that a phone call goes into the training set or stays out? That's what I want to know; not the details of Snowden's sex life or whatever the media are pushing now.
That's all real nice (Score:4, Insightful)
But it still doesn't make it legal.
Re: (Score:3)
The Constitution is remarkably easy to read and understand - it's illegal. Period. I don't even think anybody's even trying to say it's legal - just that we can't do anything to stop them.
Secrets keeping secrets (Score:5, Insightful)
We take the business records by a court order, and it's just phone numbers — no names, no addresses — put it in a lock box,
And who controls the key to this so called lock box? What accountable party keeps them from unauthorized use? The FISA court isn't accountable. Neither is the administration or congress since they do not publish their findings. By what method does the public find out about abuses of this system?
Last year, fewer than 300 phone numbers were checked against the database of millions of U.S. phone records .
Big deal. Nobody calls these days anyway. What about the rest of the phone meta-data? Emails? Text messages? Facebook? Twitter?
both NSA programs are reviewed every 90 days by the secret court authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
So we have a secret program with secret directives reviewed by a secret court whose findings are secret. Gee, why am I not reassured? [/sarcasm]
Re:Twitter (Score:2)
We should leave twitter off such a list - it's explicitly public anyway. Anyone on earth could create a database of tweets.
cold fjord returns... (Score:4, Informative)
...to gush loving, glowing praise over unchecked, jackbooted authority like a Twihard over (Edward/Jacob) once again.
You can't trust anything the NSA says at all. They have everything to gain by lying their asses off and nothing to lose. Assume they're intercepting and recording anything (which personally, I'm pretty sure they're doing) and don't assume that there are any limitations to their access to that info. If you buy any of the backpedaling that's been coming out in the last few days, much of it submitted to Slashdot by cold fjord...well I have a bridge you might be interested in.
Even if this article describes the access interface of some analyst at some agency...all the info is still there, your privacy was still violated.
Missing the point... (Score:5, Interesting)
The point is not what the NSA has done with the information. The point is what they could do. Having "legally" (I use the term advisedly) obtained all this information on every American, they could now use it for any nefarious purpose. Having done so in secret, they hardly seem trustworthy.
I'm old enough to remember the days when we posted garbage at the end of messages for the "NSA line eater." Time to do that again.
Re: (Score:2)
The Zazi Lie (Score:5, Informative)
The ... program helped the NSA stop a 2009 al-Qaida plot to blow up New York City subways.
That is at best an extreme exaggeration of the value of the cell phone records. I'm sure his data was in the database, and was probably accessed after he was discovered, but his plot was discovered as a result of monitoring that was (or easily would have been) warranted.
Wikipedia: Operation Pathway [wikipedia.org]:
On November 9 2009 The Telegraph reported that the operation produced the tip that lead American security officials to place Najibullah Zazi under investigation. British security officials were reported to have intercepted an email from a Pakistani planner to Najibullah Zazi containing instructions on how to conduct his attack.
The Telegraph: British Spies / Zazi [telegraph.co.uk]:
The alleged plot was unmasked after an email address that was being monitored as part of the abortive Operation Pathway was suddenly reactivated.
Operation Pathway was investigating an alleged UK terrorist cell but went awry after the then Met Police counter-terrorism head Bob Quick was pictured walking into Downing Street displaying top secret documents.
Eleven Pakistani suspects were arrested immediately after the gaffe but later released without charge.
However, security staff continued to monitor the email address which eventually yielded results.
Their point is? (Score:2)
Officially they probed less than 300. In this one program. Which is all pointless if an agent can listen in on a conversation without a warrant and no alarm bells go off.
But all the conversations are recorded and stored (Score:3)
Not that I believe them, but (Score:3)
If what they say here is true, why the world weren't they more honest about what they were doing all along and in the first place? In Europe, government access to phone records is codified in law in such a way that protects the privacy of everybody who isn't a suspect in an investigation, and does so in broad daylight. There may be violations, but the persons whose privacy is invaded also have recourse there. They have no such recourse against the NSA that continues to argue, even as it releases details of this program, that it is "secret" and thus would compromise national security to reveal the details.
One more example of where honesty and truth-telling would be preferable to obfuscation and lies.
Deliberately misleading (Score:3)
BS. LIes and more lies (Score:4, Informative)
No, what happened was (from Buzzfed)
Another case cited by that wonderduo Feinstein and Rodgers is of Headley. who cased the Mumbai hotel. Rather that quote why the NSA program had little if anything to do with his arrest (note he was previously a prized drug enforment for the DEA), just read this [propublica.org].
I would say the same thing. (Score:4, Insightful)
Were I in the same situation, I'd say the same thing, true or not. It might not justify the program, but it might make people feel better about it.
If they want people to buy it, though, they'll need to proffer some proof. Not just some documentation, but something concrete that would be irrefutable. The NSA has the problem that they are coming from a position of weakness. They're in the business of being secretive, they've been caught in a position where they appear to have betrayed the nation's trust, and they'll need something extraordinary to restore that trust.
They should just lay all their cards on the table - declassify all of it. The ne'er-do-wells are already tipped off and working around it, so there's little more to lose if they'd been on the up-and-up. Clearly, if they weren't doing anything wrong, then there's nothing to hide.
Yeah, I don't think so (Score:5, Insightful)
If the phone spying program is so inconsequential, then what does the NSA plan to do with the $5.1B data data center they're building in Provo, UT? 300 numbers a year could be checked by one guy in one cubicle, and he'd still have lots of time to spend hanging around the water cooler.
On the other hand... the truth (Score:3)
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/16/snowden-whistleblower-nsa-officials-roundtable/2428809/ [usatoday.com]
When a National Security Agency contractor revealed top-secret details this month on the government's collection of Americans' phone and Internet records, one select group of intelligence veterans breathed a sigh of relief.
Thomas Drake, William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe belong to a select fraternity: the NSA officials who paved the way.
For years, the three whistle-blowers had told anyone who would listen that the NSA collects huge swaths of communications data from U.S. citizens. They had spent decades in the top ranks of the agency, designing and managing the very data-collection systems they say have been turned against Americans. ...
Jesselyn Radack: Not only did they go through multiple and all the proper internal channels and they failed, but more than that, it was turned against them. ... The inspector general was the one who gave their names to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution under the Espionage Act. And they were all targets of a federal criminal investigation, and Tom ended up being prosecuted â" and it was for blowing the whistle. ...
Divorce (Score:3)
And this, dear Frightened Compliant Snowflakes, are but a few reasons why this system is dangerous and deadly to democracy; NOBODY IS WATCHING THEM.
Writ of Assistance (Score:3)
From Wikipedia:
General writs of assistance [wikipedia.org] played an important role in the increasing tensions that led to the American Revolution and the creation of the United States of America. In 1760, Great Britain began to enforce some of the provisions of the Navigation Acts by granting customs officers these writs. In New England, smuggling had become common. However, officers could not search a person's property without giving a reason. Colonists protested that the writs violated their rights as British subjects. The colonists had several problems with these writs. They were permanent and even transferable: the holder of a writ could assign it to another. Any place could be searched at the whim of the holder, and searchers were not responsible for any damage they caused. This put anyone who had such a writ above the law.
Does this not bear a resemblance to what is going on today?
Let us re-visit the 4th amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly, I can't see in value in a system the way they described it.
They have a record of all people calling.
They get a phone call that says A called B and A is linked to terror.
They plugin A into their record and get back B.
They give B to the FBI.
Why not just skip the middle and give B to the FBI.
Re:Very suspicious explanation. (Score:4, Interesting)
After multiple instances of lying or 'lying the least they could', they have given us zero reason to believe yet another explanation of the system. My belief is that this is a system used by the 'powers that be' to keep promoting the political and financial dominance of the powers that be. Whereas, the 'powers that be' is defined as those people with enough financial and political influence that set the agenda and policies of the entire world.
The reason I believe this is because reports show that Germany was one of the countries that was spied on the most. If this was a system used only to 'combat terrorism', it would make zero sense to spy on the country that has repeatedly been shown to be an ally in the 'War on Terrorism'. But, if this was a system used for financial and political gain, it would make sense to keep the most records on the countries with the largest amount of financial competition.
All power structures must answer to the law. In order to prevent the continued movement of the US towards fascism, it is our duty (the peoples') to continually be skeptical of those in power. We need to question this, shine a light on this, get it audited - and even shut it down - if this is a system that violates the US Constitution.