NSA data mining of phone records

[milkweed]

Exactly the same percentage of the population, as the pilots of the planes which dropped two atomic bombs on Japan.

your analogy is false. The two pilots did not build the bombs, plan and execute the mission alone. There were thousands of people that put that effort together.

And your math is incorrect. The calculation is 0.00002 (using my method pop - % under 18 - % over 18)

The question is not whether information needs to be gathered, but on who is investigated, the range of investigation, who can look at the information, how long the information is kept. for what purposes the information can be mined, who will make sure regulations are obeyed.
Questions like that.

Right now the answer to who is Everyone. Regardless of the constitution and probable cause. Without probable cause the government should not be keeping lists/data on everyone who uses verizon or google or libraries (remember that from a few years ago).

If you were in the business of crime prevention, would your resources be best directed at investigating Everyone who lived in your city?

Late last week, the president defended the programs and said Americans must understand that there are “some tradeoffs” between privacy concerns and keeping Americans safe.

Paranoia is a mental illness.
Mass hysteria refers to collective delusions of threats to society that spread rapidly through rumors and fear.

The reality is Most people are not and will not become terrorists or killers.

The list of 93 persons over 4 years does not give us information on how they became suspects, but I have little doubt the majority were discovered via personal contacts rather than a billion dollar (or 10 billion) indiscriminate top secret electronic snooping array.

The answers to those questions are not to be provided by Government smiling indulgently and patting you on the head.
Uncontrolled Government always devolves more power to itself,and eventually leads to tyranny.

More and more often the answers are provided by people willing to risk criminal prosecution to inform the masses whats going on behind the curtain.

From my first post - last link:

During the time that he was stuck in Hawaii, he stayed in a hotel room at the Pearl Harbor naval base — a facility that houses submarines, cruisers and destroyers — despite being considered a national security risk, based on his placement on the no-fly list.

Hicks was stranded in Hawaii for six days before the ban suddenly lifted last Thursday after he contacted politicians in Mississippi and Hawaii for assistance.

Hicks thought he might have landed on the list for controversial views he’s expressed about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — he has criticized the 9/11 Commission’s conclusions about the attacks.

Not all of us have the ear of our politicans.

 

[GeoffP]

What people generally don't realize is that while terrorism in and of itself is bad enough, the worse fact is the proportion of people that terrorists implicitly represent. Small committed minorities may be able to force 'democratic' (and there's an ironic usage) outcomes that support their extremist views. A few bombs going off, while horrible, is peanuts compared to institutionalized fascism, religious or otherwise. At risk of someone bitching about the invocation of Godwin: Hitler. Hitler Hitler Hitler Hitler, Hitler Hitler Hitler Hitler. It's true: most people will not become terrorists. However, civil rights and equality decline with increasing numbers of their supporters. This is the real significance of the proportionalist line of inquiry.

 

[Tiassa]

Domestic Espionage and the United States: The Politics of Pretending Surprise

An Obvious Point

As the GOP seeks to gin up any number of scandals in order to attack the White House, Steve Benen gets a gold star for making the obvious point. The TRMS producer and blogger quotes a New York Times article about how the NSA "is facing renewed scrutiny over the extent of its domsetic surveillance programs", and then offers some brief perspective:

These were the first two paragraphs of an article published in the New York Times on June 17, 2009 -- almost exactly four years ago this week.

To be sure, this story has since faded from the political world's memory, and I only stumbled upon it because I was doing some background Googling on the NSA earlier today. But reading the above excerpt, one might be tempted to think it was published at some point over the last few days.

Which suggests something important: these NSA controversies keep popping up. There's certainly a great deal of interest about revelations that surfaced last week, and for good reason, but the fact that the questions and concerns about expansive surveillance overreach keep happening should tell us something important about the nature of the underlying issue -- and the prospect of potential abuses.

I realize there are sincere disagreements among credible observers about the propriety and efficacy of these NSA programs. But if we're looking at a policy landscape in which, every few years, the nation pauses and asks, "Wait, we're doing what? NSA surveillance is going how far?" then maybe it's time for Congress to pause and take a closer look at where lawmakers have drawn the lines.​

We can all be disgusted at the notion of the government's domestic espionage, but I have long lived with the presumption that someone is spying on me; the flip side is that if they really want to make an issue of things, they'll have to admit where they got their information. This was, of course, a comfort when a nervous twelve year-old has somehow come to believe that the government can watch his self-gratification from space.

But in more realistic terms, I'm uncertain where the news is in these latest NSA revelations. So far, my response has been, Wow, the dumbf@cks really tried. Such a system, is, after all—and to borrow a buzzword—unsustainable.

That is to say, I get why we're supposed to be outraged, but I'm uncertain why we're supposed to be surprised.
____________________

Notes:

Benen, Steve. "If NSA controversies are a recurring issue...". The Maddow Blog. June 10, 2013. MaddowBlog.MSNBC.com. June 10, 2013. http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/06/10/18885910-if-nsa-controversies-are-a-recurring-issue

 

[Buddha12]

While America goes further and farther into deeper debt. We are looking at the wrong thing here. As stated this type of activity has been going on for decades .

 

[joepistole]

While America goes further and farther into deeper debt. We are looking at the wrong thing here. As stated this type of activity has been going on for decades .

The nation faces a number of critical issues, the national debt is just a symptom of much deeper problems (e.g. a corrupt political system and media).

 

[milkweed]

It's true: most people will not become terrorists. However, civil rights and equality decline with increasing numbers of their supporters. This is the real significance of the proportionalist line of inquiry.

of their supporters?

By 'their' you mean terrorists or those who support treating every citizen as a potential national security threat?

What kind of an interview was it?

An irregular one. There was no lawyer present. It was not recorded. By the time Todashev was shot, he had apparently been interrogated by three agents for five hours. And then? Who knows?

At first he drew the knife while being interviewed. Then he acquired it during a break from the interview. Then it ceased to be a knife and became a sword, then a pipe, then a metal pole, then a broomstick, then a table, then a chair. In one account all the agents were in the room at the time of the attack; in another, all but one had mysteriously departed, leaving the remaining officer to face his assailant alone.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/03/ibragim-todashev-drones-policy-obama

and a flashback to a previous quote from OWS protester:

After the first police sweep of the park, Franzen told The Huffington Post that the FBI began interviewing his fellow Occupy Atlanta activists about whether Franzen might have a cache of weapons for a future violent revolution. He said the feds interviewed three different activists at their homes about his activities and beliefs.

Lots of countries we look down upon as 'free' persons are headed by people who think the citizens are out to get them.

Interesting story on terrorism. We were in much more danger in 1974 and since then terrorist attacks have dropped off sharply.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...t-facts-about-terrorism-in-the-united-states/

 

[ElectricFetus]

Whats your real name?
Whats your current address?
What is your home phone number?
How much money did you make last year?

Are you a machine? if so are you distributing this information to other machines who will use the information only for data mining and thus none of those details will ever reach human eyes unless my info causes hits for "terrorist"? If Yes to all that I see no problem with telling you, in fact I probably already have told machines all this many times before, nothing I can do about it now.

 

[iceaura]

While America goes further and farther into deeper debt. We are looking at the wrong thing here. As stated this type of activity has been going on for decades .

About one decade and change, to be more precise.

And for a hint as to why we are looking at the wrong things, I quote one of the principals in its current establishment: "Deficits don't matter".

Elections have consequences.

 

[Buddha12]

About one decade and change, to be more precise.

Well lets look at the governments role with investigations starting when the FBI was started then the CIA then other agencies also were made up as time went by. Do you realize that all of these agencies were involved with homeland spying on Americans to investigate things from un-American activities like the Communist party and the spies who were amongst Americans before WW2 then as WW2 went along who were trying to pass along information to Germany where ships were located, where arms were being sent and when D-Day was going to happen as just a few things that were being investigated.

There have been wire taps and mail tampering that these agencies have used all along and now they are just using more modern things, like the internet, to keep an eye on people. I'll agree it seems to be a bad thing to be doing but it has been done, as I said, over 70 years or more . If you cannot understand this then I can't change your mind but if you would do some of your own research about what I've said you should see what I'm saying is correct.

 

[iceaura]

That's a one-Party observation also.
It might have been, at the moment Obama entered office. No longer.

It has been a one-Party observation since the Reagan tenure Party combination purge of R moderates and acquisition of D whackjobs. The pretension that we some kind of evenly distributed, cause free, universal blame, everybody does it problem here is rightwing authoritarian cant.

But much of the damage is done - much of the good guy efforts are of necessity devoted to recovery and rehab. It's a lot harder to uproot a security State than it is to avoid growing one - and that isn't easy.

I'm shocked that you still postulate 'good guys' and 'bad guys' in this issue. I'm sorry, but it doesn't wash. Obama is within his powers to avoid those powers - and does not. Case closed.

From what bizarre corner of irrelevancy did the name "Obama" come from, there? I am postulating good guys, because that's the ordinary term for people trying to improve things. Bad guys would be those trying to make things worse. In this issue, Obama seems to be neither.

 

[Tiassa]

True, but ....

About one decade and change, to be more precise.

Well, yeah, but that's since the domestic espionage infrastructure modernized. I mean, the FBI kept a file on Sir Mix-A-Lot, for heaven's sake. But that's the thing, maybe the quantity is unprecedented, but at the same time this is a society that doesn't trust its elected officials to know how to piss. On some level, they're looking for ghosts in television snow.

Albert Einstein's face lived on the hallway wall in my childhood home.

I once saw the face of God—that would be Mark Twain on this occasion—in the painted-over plaster on the wall of a men's room in a restaurant in Salem, Oregon.

So it's like I said, I get why I'm supposed to be outraged, but it's hard for me to care. Everyone was fine with it when they were looking for Communists and homosexuals, but you know, whatever. They're just pissed off because they're thrown in the pool with all the other people the law was intended for.

This is stupid, and it's kind of hard to take the farce seriously. I guess the best thing to come from it so far is that Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) is introducing legislation to repeal AUMF. And, hell, if that's all we get this time, fargin' pass the law and send it to Obama's desk.

 

[Balerion]

So because you've been paranoid about the government your whole life, we shouldn't care when those fears are realized? I don't get it. I mean, yeah, you say you get why we should be outraged, but it seems like lip service compared to the apathy prevalent in the rest of the post.

Are you so blasé because it's the GOP getting up in arms about it? I would hate to think of you as partisan, Tiassa...

 

[iceaura]

Well lets look at the governments role with investigations starting when the FBI was started then the CIA then other agencies also were made up as time went by. Do you realize that all of these agencies were involved with homeland spying on Americans

They weren't tapping the entire phone system. They were getting warrants - too easily, bogus grounds, but still a paper trail. And it was very difficult for an individual agent to go rogue, start stalking their ex with agency resources or stealing identities, without personal risk. Now it's a button push, and no record.

So because you've been paranoid about the government your whole life, we shouldn't care when those fears are realized?

Well, those fears were realized more than ten years ago, and you didn't care. People were hopping up and down screaming at you guys about what W&Co were up to with this warrantless wiretapping stuff, and getting yawns and denials and snarky comments about paranoia. So what is the big deal now? Ten years late and ten trillion dollars later it finally dawns on you what a couple of the provisions of the Patriot Act are about, not even the worst ones, and we are expected to join you in some kind of belated frenzy?

Look, I'm with you, but a little burnt out, is all. Come up with something useful, like an impeachment of Cheney for defying Congressional subpeona and profiting from TWAT, so we can get him under oath, and we'll see.

 

[Tiassa]

Or Maybe I'm Just Stoned

Are you so blasé because it's the GOP getting up in arms about it? I would hate to think of you as partisan, Tiassa...

Indeed.

But in reality the solution to the whole problem is as easy as Benen suggests, and Schiff is undertaking.

I'm blasé because people keep getting pissed off about this sort of thing but nothing ever gets done about it. We all knew, back when Congress hot-glued together the Patriot Act, that it would eventually come to this. And the Authorization for Use of Military Force was what it was; people complained back then—the idea of perpetual warfare was bonkers.

And we've come this far, and yes, I'm glad society is going to have this discussion, but I think at this point pretending surprise is useless, and outrage, whether genuine or feigned for the cameras, unproductive. If we're to get worked up about it, let us do something about it.

So, yeah. Cheers to Schiff. Perhaps it begins with the forthcoming AUMF Sunset bill.

And if that bill dies, well, it goes back to voters in 2014. We'll see how this goes. For now, though, I'm not certain all the bluster and hoohah from the political league, especially those who helped craft and maintain these laws, helps anything.

I don't know; this is just one of those surreal episodes in American politics.

 

[Captain Kremmen]

WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY,
CHANGE IS MORE OF THE SAME.
THE BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.

 

[Aqueous Id]

They weren't tapping the entire phone system..

Technically that's probably correct since wiretapping has a specific meaning in the unclassified world.

But the in the military world I would date the US capability to no later than the mid-70s, culminating in voice recognition that is needed to reasonably manage the vast amount of information voice messages contain, plus the huge storage and retrieval systems needed to contain it. The one that comes to mind is the system leaked to the Russians, as described by witnesses at the trial of the spies, retold in The Falcon and the Snowman. The Government's witness described it as "a giant vacuum cleaner in the sky, sucking up Russian telephone signals" (from microwave relay towers) then transmitting the data to US ground facilities in Australia where hundreds of operators were busily translating tapes--tapes generated from a massive electronic system that de-interleaved the signals, reconstructed the voice data, and then (using voice recognition) triggered on key phrases in Russian and routed the reconstructed calls to a large recording system.

Another benchmark for US domestic interception of telephone conversations was the retrofitting of the public network in SS7-based switching centers at about the same time. But the surveillance technology dates back much earlier.

 

[milkweed]

Are you a machine? if so are you distributing this information to other machines who will use the information only for data mining and thus none of those details will ever reach human eyes unless my info causes hits for "terrorist"? If Yes to all that I see no problem with telling you, in fact I probably already have told machines all this many times before, nothing I can do about it now.

It is people behind those machines.

http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/16/1688.asp

The above talks about a lack of due process, innocent until proven guilty.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/20...es-everyone/1qoAoFfgp31UnXZT2CsFSK/story.html

ACLU attorney Fritz Mulhauser warned last summer that, within a few years, police will be able to use license scan records to determine whether a particular vehicle “has been spotted at a specific church, union hall, bar, political party headquarters, abortion clinic, strip club, or any number of other locations a driver might wish to keep private.”

As far as you choosing to tell someone your information that is irrelevant to the issue of the government taking your personal data without permission nor probable cause.

And with the secrecy of these "were just trying to catch terrorists", I have no doubt the data police are harvesting is being transferred to NSA/FBI documenting peoples travels. And it is still None of the governments business what I do via email/phone/travel. It is a violation of the right to be secure in our persons papers effects without probable cause.

And none of this alerted those who are "just trying to catch terrorists" to the somali issue (as an example).

 

[GeoffP]

It has been a one-Party observation since the Reagan tenure Party combination purge of R moderates and acquisition of D whackjobs. The pretension that we some kind of evenly distributed, cause free, universal blame, everybody does it problem here is rightwing authoritarian cant.

Grammar aside, this does not illustrate in what way the Democrats do not engage in precisely the same kind of vicious politicking and partisanship that the Republicans do. I see no difference - especially given the events of the last few weeks - because there is no difference.

From what bizarre corner of irrelevancy did the name "Obama" come from, there?

Oh, didn't you know? He was elected president of the United States a few years back. It's conventional to refer to his run by his name; the 'Obama administration', the 'Bush administration', etc.

I am postulating good guys, because that's the ordinary term for people trying to improve things. Bad guys would be those trying to make things worse. In this issue, Obama seems to be neither.

Well, I'm pleased that you go so far as this concession.

 

[Aqueous Id]

A surveillance program the soviets could have only dreamed of. Feel safer yet?

Yes, the closest thing we have in the US to concentration camps are prisons. Other than that, what's the connection? The only tangible threat to US public safety has been the violence perpetrated by maniacs. There is no other connection with Soviet oppression and genocide, except for the usual paranoia and hype. Since we can assume that the US intelligence community always has, and always will, collect domestic intel to wage war and prevent attacks, who would ever doubt their exploitation of every bit of information they might find useful in that regard?

 

[Aqueous Id]

(accidental repost)