Leaked Document Shows The NSA Is Harvesting Call Data On Millions Of Verizon Subscribers
from the Verizon:-home-to-nearly-100-million-terrorism-suspects! dept
What's always been suspected has now been proven true: the NSA is indiscriminately harvesting the phone records of millions of Americans. Various whistleblowers have pointed out that the NSA's hunger for data has driven it to collect anything and everything it can, without having to submit to limitations placed on other agencies. Domestic surveillance is a full-time job for the NSA, and this order obtained by the Guardian spells it all out in unredacted black and white.The order... requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.This order was granted by the secret FISA court, allowing the FBI to collect this data until July 19th, with another copy going to the NSA. This sort of thing isn't necessarily new or unusual (large scale data collection like this began during the Bush presidency, as Greenwald points out), but this particular request's scope is rather breathtaking.
The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing...
Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered.
The unlimited nature of the records being handed over to the NSA is extremely unusual. Fisa court orders typically direct the production of records pertaining to a specific named target who is suspected of being an agent of a terrorist group or foreign state, or a finite set of individually named targets.This order has no target. It just wants everything. Every Verizon subscriber is included in the NSA's data dragnet. And while there's a lack of individual specificity in the data Verizon is ordered to produce, there are several ways the information collected can be manipulated and abused.
The information is classed as "metadata", or transactional information, rather than communications, and so does not require individual warrants to access...A year ago, the NSA claimed it couldn't say how many Americans it had spied on illegally because doing so with violate the privacy of those it spied on. Now, we can make an estimate: 98.2 million Verizon customers as of Dec. 2012. And that's just Verizon. There's no reason to believe other carriers haven't received (and submitted to) similar orders and past events indicate the NSA has been spreading its net wide for several years. And, of course, thanks to a whistleblower literally showing up at the front door of the EFF, we know that AT&T has basically helped set up direct access for the NSA on its network in the past as well.
While the order itself does not include either the contents of messages or the personal information of the subscriber of any particular cell number, its collection would allow the NSA to build easily a comprehensive picture of who any individual contacted, how and when, and possibly from where, retrospectively...
Privacy advocates have long warned that allowing the government to collect and store unlimited "metadata" is a highly invasive form of surveillance of citizens' communications activities. Those records enable the government to know the identity of every person with whom an individual communicates electronically, how long they spoke, and their location at the time of the communication.
The NSA, as part of a program secretly authorized by President Bush on 4 October 2001, implemented a bulk collection program of domestic telephone, internet and email records. A furore erupted in 2006 when USA Today reported that the NSA had "been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth" and was "using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity."With this document exposed, the NSA can no longer pretend (if it's even bothering to at this point) its data collection efforts are targeted. It long ago turned away from its original mandate -- foreign surveillance only -- and now appears to be harvesting vast amounts of data on US citizens simply because no one's going to stop it.
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Filed Under: 4th amendment, fisa, fisc, nsaq, privacy, surveillance
Companies: verizon
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And the number of bad guys caught and punished via all this surveillance? Don't hold your breath waiting for an answer.
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Shocked, Gambling, Etc
Right?
... will someone shut those crickets up?
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Re: Shocked, Gambling, Etc
What did your US representative's office have to say?
Oh, you're waiting on someone else to call? Or maybe you're just not not an American citizen?
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Well....
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This make it much easier to disrupt protests.
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Demand Impeachment
Instruct him that the House needs to hold impeachment hearings over this. We may not be sure who has to go, yet. But someone needs kicking out of the government.
Demand that the House start impeachment hearings over this.
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Re: Demand Impeachment
You know what....yeah, I'm on board with this now. This seems to me to be an impeachable offense, either in the respect that Obama was aware of this and approved the data slurp, or didn't know about it and doesn't have control of his own house...
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Re: Demand Impeachment
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Re: Demand Impeachment
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Re: Re: Demand Impeachment
Cowards never tried, and quitters gave up along the way. But maybe some of you are Americans.
Call your representative. We got to keep this republic, if we can.
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Echelon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON
"One method of interception is to place equipment at locations where fiber optic communications are switched. For the Internet, much of the switching occurs at relatively few sites. There have been reports of one such intercept site, Room 641A, in the United States."
"Room 641A is located in the SBC Communications building at 611 Folsom Street, San Francisco, three floors of which were occupied by AT&T before SBC purchased AT&T.[1] The room was referred to in internal AT&T documents as the SG3 [Study Group 3] Secure Room. It is fed by fiber optic lines from beam splitters installed in fiber optic trunks carrying Internet backbone traffic[3] and, as analyzed by J. Scott Marcus, a former CTO for GTE and a former adviser to the FCC, has access to all Internet traffic that passes through the building, and therefore "the capability to enable surveillance and analysis of internet content on a massive scale, including both overseas and purely domestic traffic."[4] Former director of the NSA’s World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group, William Binney, has estimated that 10 to 20 such facilities have been installed throughout the nation"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
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Re: Echelon
I am not certain this is a function of Echelon though. This is a supplement to Echelon's functions. Cell phones are a lot harder to keep track of than hard lines.
Anyone who believes their communications aren't being monitored is incredibly naive. Why do you think they keep fighting for back doors to encryption systems, skype... You don't fight for that unless you feel you are missing out on a lot of information (that you once had unfettered access to).
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Three things
In my assessment, the latter is far more probable, and I am confident of three things:
1) Verizon is not the only telco to be asked to provide data. This is probably widespread.
2) The first leak is not the first request – this has been going on for a while. Several years of every-three-months-the-judge-renews-permission.
3) Whoever leaked this document is going to prison.
That said, the architecture of the resulting data must be fascinating. Hundreds of millions of links between people, with times and places.
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Re: Three things
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Unless they are banksters, then they are given bonuses
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Re: Re: Re: Three things
Those aren't criminals. They are capitalists and job creators.
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Re: Three things
This is hardly the first leak. It just one that's getting a major amount of media attention.
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Freedom DEPENDS on Security. YOUR Security from interference by rogue actors. And in this case your state is taking away your security and your freedom and has become the biggest rogue actor itself.
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Please explain
Hello Muhammad? Are we blowing shit up next week?
No, it's tomorrow night. Wait, you're not on the AT&T plan are you?
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Re: Please explain
It looks like millions of people calling their U.S. representative up and demanding impeachment of the NSA director.
The staffers are just trickling into the offices in D.C. at this time of the morning, but you can leave a voicemail.
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Re: Please explain
They usually say anti-american things like "security theatre", make mentions to corruption in Washington and make lots of references to the year 1984.
What? You actually think that the NSA is trying to protect you? Hah! Their job is to defend their bosses: corporations and their political lap dogs.
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Re: Re: Please explain
Spread the word elsewhere. Call your representative. We want the NSA director impeached.
( Shots fired on Lexington Green. British column marching towards Concord. This ain't no drill, boy. )
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Re: Re: Re: Please explain
You can't impeach him Einstein.
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I wonder if there's a list of protesters' phone numbers somewhere.
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It used to be called the white pages
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Yes, in theory a computer or bank thereof can sort down massive data sets to only the information the human user would find of interest.
In practice it's still something we're working on refining.
Which of course doesn't prevent "drilling down" and, once a name is connected to a phone number, start tracing all their contacts. And wash and repeat.
And then connecting the contact numbers to names. And then harassing those individuals to put indirect pressure on the target. Or perhaps making that data available to contractor companies. Or to an enterprising and very friendly individual with a computer and a lack of morals that's *not* in the pay of the NSA.
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A large American insurance company uses a HUGE database of policyholders, claims, physicians, and other data. Their fraud division routinely mines this data for connections that imply the possibility of fraud. On a simple level, it's "If a policyholder in the zip code 90210 has a claim for back injury as a result of auto accident and sees this doctor, investigate." In reality, it's far, far more complex.
With the metadata the NSA has been collecting, at a simple level, it could be "Trace the connections involving three international calls, within 24 hours, of this bank of numbers of "known terrorists."
So a Chechen-descended American citizen calls home, then calls his girlfriend, who calls her brother, who contacts a veterinarian, who is the same one I call for my cat's excessive hairball. The calls are each unrelated, but I am now "tagged" as being in the communication chain with the Boston Bomber.
When it works, we get stories like this one http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/22/us-usa-explosion-florida-idUSBRE94L0J820130522 (except for the suspect dies in custody part).
But "I have nothing to fear, so why should I care?" Well, through sheer coincidence, I'm now linked with the terrorists. And should another unlikely coincidence occur, I could well wake up to quasi-military police kicking down my door to ask some questions.
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http://www.peterbcollins.com/2013/04/18/blockbuster-part-1-on-the-nsa-4-with-whistleblo wer-bill-binney-and-journalist-tim-shorrock/
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*Wink*
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I have doubts about how accurate these algorithms might be, as well as there data storage capacity - but who knows. The whole organization is secret, and has probably changed quite a bit since Binney left.
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For example, many would be authors are likely to be researching guns, bomb making etc, from their home connection, so that they can try to write a reasonably accurate piece of fiction. Any would be terrorist, with half a brain, would carry out such research using public WIFI to connect. Guess which one the data surveillance identifies? Identifying the real suspect requires man power, and someone careless enough to the same hot spot frequently.
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Don't say 'black briar'. Just don't.
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Quick Question
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Ay yay yay
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Re: Ay yay yay
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Recycled News at Techdirt.
One day, years from now, this minion will wake up and gasp, "OMG! Google is collecting and collating data on ME!"
This is why to not let gov't and mega-corps become large, let alone merge. Not easy to get them back under control once have tasted power.
Take a loopy tour of Techdirt.com! You always end up same place!
http://techdirt.com/
Techdirt's official motto: This isn't surprising.
01:30:18[b-901-0]
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Re: Recycled News at Techdirt.
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Re: Recycled News at Techdirt.
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If you haven't spoken up ...
You can email your senators and congressman from their officially provided web sites. You can get there via:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
and
http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/
It only takes a couple of minutes to let your voice be heard.
Speak up.
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Re: If you haven't spoken up ...
Spoke to a staffer. Told her I was outraged that this call I was making to my representative was being monitored by the NSA. Said my immediate reaction was to call for the NSA director's impeachment.
No immediate response from Congressman's office. Staffer said they'll get back to me in writing.
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Re: If you haven't spoken up ...
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Re: If you haven't spoken up ...
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Remind me again
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And Obama has defended the gross invasion of privacy and complete disregard for the Constitution.
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Re:
"Each American president since the start of the Cold War (or, truthfully, since the start of World War II) has always only expanded, and never restricted the powers of the NSA and the rest of the national security state. Congress, which is supposed to be offering oversight, has not seriously acted to restrict intelligence gathering activities since that first FISA bill. Indeed, given multiple opportunities to amend the act, Congress, since 9/11, has only endorsed and legalized the actions of the NSA."
http://www.salon.com/2013/06/06/the_nsa_has_all_your_info/
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Land of the (redacted) and the home of the (redacted).
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Source: LA Times http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-obama-defends-verizon-data-collection-20130606,0,4449398. story
The real problem here is that they are getting everyone's information rather than the records from the calls targeting specific numbers or people known to be terrorists.
If you are simply collecting data to track people who talk to known terrorists, what is the other data being collected for?
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Re:
The Obama administration cannot defend NSA monitoring of calls between you and your US representative. That's just indefensible. Absolutely indefensible.
Now, what did your Congressman's office have to say?
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The thing that most terrifies politicians is losing power, therefore any political activism that threatens their power is terrorism. Threatening political activists are the terrorists that this data collection is meant to identify.
/Conspiracy theory?
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Way Back
Before it was the mafia (J Edgar)
Then it was the commies (McCarthy)
Then it was the Anti war protesters (Nixon)
Then it was the civil rights movement (LBJ)
Then it was the druggies (Nixon again)
Then it was....
Ever since we "defeated" the commies we needed a new enemy.
Now we have one...the Feds
In spite of all the outrage this will cause today, it will be business as usual tomorrow and no one will cancel their Verizon service.There's no place to go with your locked phone that you can't turn off and the expensive contract you signed.
Don't you just love all this modern technology and all the Geeks and nerds that made it possible?
They got ya by the balls and they know it!
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Re: Way Back
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Re: Way Back
You can always yank the battery or put the phone into one of those Faraday cage pouches.
This isn't a technology problem. This is a political problem. This sort of thing has been happening ever since politics were invented.
I think this is an important point, because if you blame technology for this then you're more likely to be blind to it when it happens in a low-tech way. Remember East Germany before the wall came down?
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Re: Re: Way Back
Oh. Look what we can do now, and nobody will even know.
If someone with the technical expertise to "do it" is willing, the politicians want it, it's just a matter how much and when can I get it.
You can say that it is a political problem (and I agree in part) but if the people with the skills refuse, then what.
Before all this technology was available to law enforcement how in the world did they ever catch the bad guys?
I guess the thing that bothers me the most in all this is the Feds motto of "Damn the constitution and full speed ahead"
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I fell like I'm on the train to crazy land...
Even the idea that some information needs to be kept secret to protect people and/or to catch criminals is quickly becoming secondary.
I'm not there yet, but I am close.
I've a feeling that we the citizens long ago lost a war we didn't even know we were fighting and only the invention of the Internet and the flow of information that it has allowed awoke us to this fact.
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Ingress players look like terrorists
When we decide to attack the other faction, we use violent phrases like "blow them up", "detonate", and "destroy". We're usually talking about and closinfpublic places and significant landmarks.
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Re: Ingress players look like terrorists
We're usually closing in on these places at the same time, some of us from hours away.
I have to think that our game play would significantly resemble terrorist activity from the nsa's perspective.
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Lets say they stop doing any surveillance that Mike and his lambs don't like and they miss an opportunity to stop a bombing. 1000's are killed but your metadata is safe. You ok with that? If you said yes to that than I hope that you are near the blast center.
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Re:
You don't have a vote. Neither does anyone else. Technically, we're not even supposed to know about this.
That's the larger issue here: government spying without oversight or accountability. I fail to understand how this doesn't scare you.
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When you put it together, it's even scarier
When the government collects all of this data, what's to stop some "low level employees" from targeting people from one political party? Normally it's whistleblowers. But what if everyone willing to whistleblow has been purged (or you can catch them because you know that they've just called a reporter?) And Verizon won't even notice at that point; they're already giving up data on EVERYONE, so they won't be able to tell what the government is doing with it or who is being targeted.
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Just for fun
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NSA
We need to vote in a whole new bunch...maybe they'll behave for a while anyway.
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