Author Topic: Obama NSA defends taking hundreds of millions Verizon phone records.  (Read 2761 times)

Dos Equis

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Re: Obama NSA defends taking hundreds of millions Verizon phone records.
« Reply #25 on: June 06, 2013, 01:14:12 PM »
So they are just seeing who texted and who call who?  How is that broad?  Just wondering why you think that.

Because they're asking for that data on every Verizon customer, including American citizens, regardless of whether the customer is suspected of being involved in terrorism, a crime, etc.

If it was limited to non-citizens, I'd have no problem. 

If it includes American citizens, I think there should be some kind of showing to a judge that the specific customers are suspected of some kind of criminal activity. 

OzmO

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Re: Obama NSA defends taking hundreds of millions Verizon phone records.
« Reply #26 on: June 06, 2013, 01:19:38 PM »
Because they're asking for that data on every Verizon customer, including American citizens, regardless of whether the customer is suspected of being involved in terrorism, a crime, etc.

If it was limited to non-citizens, I'd have no problem. 

If it includes American citizens, I think there should be some kind of showing to a judge that the specific customers are suspected of some kind of criminal activity. 

I agree with this.  I assume there is a judge involved when phone records are investigated, if so, why not here?

Dos Equis

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Re: Obama NSA defends taking hundreds of millions Verizon phone records.
« Reply #27 on: June 06, 2013, 01:22:08 PM »
I agree with this.  I assume there is a judge involved when phone records are investigated, if so, why not here?

I'm not sure if a court was involved?  Haven't read up on it.  Just relying on headlines and some talk radio at this point.  Will have to read substantive stuff about it later.

Roger Bacon

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Re: Obama NSA defends taking hundreds of millions Verizon phone records.
« Reply #28 on: June 06, 2013, 01:24:52 PM »
Ok, that's ideologically fine, but are you ok with that when another 9/11 happens because we don't have the power with in our laws to protect ourselves?

Yes, I'd rather live with the less than 1% chance that I'll be a victim of terrorism.

OzmO

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Re: Obama NSA defends taking hundreds of millions Verizon phone records.
« Reply #29 on: June 06, 2013, 01:38:36 PM »
Yes, I'd rather live with the less than 1% chance that I'll be a victim of terrorism.

its not just your death.  Its fear and the affect something like this has having to shut down air travel for a few days will have on the economy.  So, dying, which i agree is slim for you, wouldn't be for peeps like me who travel quite a lot.  However, hits on the economy will affect everyone.  Not to mention more and more attacks happening. 

This is ok with you?

GigantorX

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Re: Obama NSA defends taking hundreds of millions Verizon phone records.
« Reply #30 on: June 06, 2013, 01:43:45 PM »
I agree with this.  I assume there is a judge involved when phone records are investigated, if so, why not here?

Here is a good article (from The Salon.com, no less) that  details the depth of this type of stuff and the complete lack of checks/balances on the very govt. that operates it.

It isn't specifically about this, but it encapsulates it, nonetheless.

Long story short, "We the People..." have no recourse and no protections against this and our judicial system that was set up to prevent such things from happening is aiding and abetting this.

http://www.salon.com/2011/09/22/jacobs_3/

Soul Crusher

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Re: Obama NSA defends taking hundreds of millions Verizon phone records.
« Reply #31 on: June 06, 2013, 01:45:06 PM »
What the F are these 'Secret Courts" ?   total bs imho

Dos Equis

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Re: Obama NSA defends taking hundreds of millions Verizon phone records.
« Reply #32 on: June 06, 2013, 02:35:21 PM »
Apparently a judge/court was involved, but I still don't agree with this.  Neither does the guy who wrote the law. 

Author of Patriot Act says NSA phone records collection 'never the intent' of law
Published June 06, 2013
FoxNews.com

The author of the Patriot Act said Thursday that a secret program under which the Obama administration was collecting phone records from millions of Americans is "excessive" and beyond the scope of the law.

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., who wrote the 2001 law, was among a host of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who raised alarm over the practice.

The Guardian newspaper first reported the National Security Agency had been collecting records under a court order from millions of Verizon customers in the U.S. Defenders of the program tried to ease the furor by assuring the public this is "nothing new" -- and in fact has been going on for seven years. But the acknowledgement that the program is long running only fueled the outrage from civil liberties groups and lawmakers who described it as a blatant overreach.

"This is a big deal, a really big deal," Sensenbrenner told Fox News, adding that such a broad seizure was "never the intent" of the law. He floated the possibility of amending the Patriot Act before its 2015 expiration to stop this.

In a separate statement, he called the program "excessive and un-American."

The Republican lawmaker also fired off a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder -- who would not comment on the program when asked about it Thursday -- explaining why he thinks the records collection goes astray of the law. He noted that the key section of the law that allows the government to obtain business records requires the information to be relevant to an authorized investigation.

"How could the phone records of so many innocent Americans be relevant to an authorized investigation?" he asked in the letter.

He said the order "could not have been drafted more broadly," and said he does not think it's "consistent" with the law's requirements.

A handful of in-the-know lawmakers lined up to defend the program, while acknowledging the need to protect privacy.

Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., chairman of the House intelligence committee, said the effort is not "data mining," and has helped quash a terrorist attack on U.S. soil in the past few years. He would not elaborate.

The leaders of the Senate intelligence committee also defended the program, saying it is "nothing new." Republican Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss said it's been going on for seven years.

Chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said these orders are actually renewed every three months through the court. She said the records are there for investigators to access if there is suspicion of terrorist activity.

"The threat from terrorism remains very real and these lawful intelligence activities must continue, with the careful oversight of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government," Feinstein and Chambliss said in a joint statement.

Speaking later in the day, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said "everyone should just calm down."

Administration officials, while not directly acknowledging the order, defended their authority to collect records and stressed they're not listening in on conversations.

However, civil liberties groups and some lawmakers sounded the alarm over the collection effort.

"The National Security Agency's seizure and surveillance of virtually all of Verizon's phone customers is an astounding assault on the Constitution," Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said.

One civil liberties group called this the "broadest surveillance order to ever have been issued."

"It requires no level of suspicion and applies to all Verizon subscribers anywhere in the U.S.," the Center for Constitutional Rights said in a statement.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who has historically opposed the Patriot Act, said the effort "is not what democracy is about."

The report in the Guardian newspaper follows revelations that the Justice Department was seizing the phone records of journalists, including at Fox News, in the course of leak probes.

The order, a copy of which apparently was obtained by The Guardian, reportedly was granted by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on April 25 and is good until July 19.

It requires Verizon, one of the nation's largest telecommunications companies, on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the U.S. and between the U.S. and other countries.

The text of the order, as published by The Guardian, says that "the Custodian of Records shall produce to the National Security Agency (NSA) upon service of this Order, and continue production on an ongoing daily basis thereafter for the duration of this Order, unless otherwise ordered by the Court, an electronic copy of the" the records in question.

The newspaper claims the document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of U.S. citizens were being collected indiscriminately and in bulk, regardless of whether they were suspected of any wrongdoing.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/06/author-patriot-act-says-phone-records-collection-excessive/

Soul Crusher

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Re: Obama NSA defends taking hundreds of millions Verizon phone records.
« Reply #33 on: June 06, 2013, 03:56:00 PM »

The NSA Is Funneling Your Internet Life from Silicon Valley to Obama's Desk
 
Pete Souza/White House/Flickr (Obama)


 

Rebecca Greenfield  6:36 PM ET

 
If you thought the National Security Agency's collection of Verizon phone-call data was bad, wait until you hear about the seven-year-old, previously undisclosed classified government program that works with nine very major U.S. Internet companies to secretly scrape your online life and has become "the most prolific contributor" to President Obama's daily intelligence report and is "increasingly" important to the NSA. PRISM, as the classified Silicon Valley collective is code-named, collects information such as emails, documents, audio, video, and photographs from Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple, according to a shocking Washington Post scoop. "From inside a company's data stream the NSA is capable of pulling out anything it likes," write the Post's Barton Gellman and Laura Poitras. You can see a full list of everything that encompasses in slides provided to the Post by what appears to be a single leaker the day after the Guardian's Verizon scoop, but suffice it to say this is a much bigger buffet of privacy invasion than the meta-data of your cellphone calls, which at least doesn't include the content of an innocent American's conversation. But don't worry, the program — approved under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act but centering on American companies and their data — also includes a system, codenamed BLARNEY, that scrapes meta-data, too.



So much for Internet companies pushing back against unwarranted government surveillance. Just like the telecoms, in exchange for immunity from lawsuits, these nine Silicon Valley giants (perhaps with more on the way, though Twitter has held out and Apple waited for five years) have to accept a "directive" to open their servers to the FBI's Data Intercept Technology Unit. As this next enlightening slide from the Post shows, it hasn't taken too long for those companies to join the cause.



The revelation of the program does come with this important reminder from the Post team: "under current rules the agency does not try to collect it all." But that doesn't mean that innocent Americans aren't having their Internet lives — where most of us do a lot of our communicating — unwittingly scooped up by authorities. Gellman and Poitras explain:


Analysts who use the system from a Web portal at Fort Meade key in “selectors,” or search terms, that are designed to produce at least 51 percent confidence in a target’s “foreignness.” That is not a very stringent test. Training materials obtained by the Post instruct new analysts to submit accidentally collected U.S. content for a quarterly report, “but it’s nothing to worry about.”

Indeed, 51 percent confidence isn't very confident at all. Even when the system manages to work properly and find a person who reaches said "foreignness," because of the way the Internet works, that process still leaves a lot of people's innocent information collected by the NSA program run out of Fort Meade, as Gellman and Poitras explain: "To collect on a suspected spy or foreign terrorist means, at minimum, that everyone in the suspect’s inbox or outbox is swept in." In addition, analysts are taught to "chain through contact to 'hops' from their target," meaning that all the contacts — likely innocent Americans — are being spied on as well. If the program says it needs two hops, it's worth remembering that we're all 4.74 hops away. As the Post team adds, the whole PRISM process is literally as easy as "a few clicks":


There has been “continued exponential growth in tasking to Facebook and Skype,” according to the 41 PRISM slides. With a few clicks and an affirmation that the subject is believed to be engaged in terrorism, espionage or nuclear proliferation, an

analyst obtains full access to Facebook’s “extensive search and surveillance capabilities against the variety of online social networking services.”

This is all very shocking considering how much of our lives we spend online and how much of our personal data we entrust to these Internet companies. Though there were rumors that the search giant might have been up to something like this, Google is still alleging to the Post that it "cares deeply about the security of our users' data." But maybe it shouldn't be — we knew the scope of the NSA spying was bigger than the a few phone calls.

Stay tuned to The Atlantic Wire tonight for more details.
 
Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments or send an email to the author at rgreenfield@theatlantic.com. You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire. 



 
Topics:  Internet, NSA, PRISM, wiretapping

Roger Bacon

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Re: Obama NSA defends taking hundreds of millions Verizon phone records.
« Reply #34 on: June 09, 2013, 11:24:22 PM »


Author of Patriot Act says NSA phone records collection 'never the intent' of law


Well... Ignorant posters on getbig could see this kind of shit coming but the highly educated author of this bill couldn't?  ::)