No Upper Bound On Phone Record Collection, Says NSA 238
PCWorld reports that "[A] U.S. surveillance court has given the National Security Agency no limit on the number of U.S. telephone records it collects in the name of fighting terrorism, the NSA director said Thursday. The NSA intends to collect all U.S. telephone records and put them in a searchable 'lock box' in the interest of national security, General Keith Alexander, the NSA's director, told U.S. senators."
But don't worry; it's just metadata, until it isn't. (Your row in the NSA database may already be getting cozy in its nice new home in Utah.)
Foil hats? (Score:5, Funny)
Shinny side out or in?
Re:Foil hats? (Score:5, Funny)
The shiny side should face what you're trying to protect.
If you don't want them reading your brain waves, the shiny side goes on the inside to prevent the brain waves from leaking out.
If you don't want them using mind control beams on you, the shiny side goes on the outside to keep the mind control beams out.
If you're worried about both, then you need to go double layer with a shiny side facing both in and out.
If you think the molemen might be involved, then you should put a layer in the bottoms of your shoes, and maybe in your underwear.
Re:Foil hats? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're worried about both, then you need to go double layer with a shiny side facing both in and out.
But should you put the shiny sides against each other or have one shiny side against your head and the other facing out?
Re:Foil hats? (Score:5, Funny)
You can't have the shiny sides facing each other, jeez. The mind control waves will become trapped between the two shiny faces and cause massive heat build up. This is basic tin foil hat theory guys, come on.
Re: (Score:2)
Next thing you know, he'll want a refresher course on how you are supposed to fold the edges.
Re:Foil hats? (Score:5, Insightful)
How the fuck is this funny? We have a direct quote from the director of the NSA and you make a joke alluding to conspiracy theorists like they're the crazy ones. The thing that is crazy here is that the dumb useless clueless fucktarded people like you would rather make light of something and continue to act like something is nothing than actually effect some positive change..
The US Constitution is the supreme law of the land.. You would probably make fun of that too.
Re: (Score:3)
How the fuck is this funny?
I'll second that. This is pretty serious shit and aside from the fact that the NSA and the US gov broke every damn law on the book there are other concerning issues to address here:
- how do we deal with government entities, now and in the future, who operate under secret laws not open to public knowledge?
- are we to disregard the constitution and it's amendments now if the we allow the NSA and related bodies to walk on this one?
- what are the laws we want regarding privatized corporations who conduct "busin
Like I need a reason (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It doesn't matter which side in or out if you've got Master Origami Skills.
Instead of a hat, Simply fold foil into a meta material for the desired frequency;
You'll know you've got it right when your teeth stop singing.
Intends to? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they don't intend to do this at all, they already do collect all of it.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
They describe it wrong however: It is to secure the nation against its citizens, least they develop some ideas of their own.
Re:Intends to? (Score:4, Interesting)
They already collect it, but it is not in the lock box yet. Currently they are in Israel and god knows where else. But don't worry, they are planning that there will be a lock box.
Ah, I see. Well, then, please allow me to translate what the NSA is really trying to say here.
Uh, we kinda had our previous "lock" box hacked, and all of the records were stolen. But don't worry about Congress getting pissed when we declassify that, it's just metadata. We're cool. We're simply going to make an announcement that we need another 30 billion dollars this year and every year to build a new "lock" box...that will be hacked from the inside next time, not the outside.
Far fetched? We're here talking about NSAs new perpetual data collector, probably titled something arrogant like Project Sheeple...going where no tax dollars have gone before, all in the name of Terrorism. We promise.
VoIP? (Score:2)
What about VoIP? Is that a workaround for now?
Re: (Score:3)
I am not sure why you would think it might be . . . .
Re: (Score:2)
depends what voip. if it's encrypted and proxied around then yeah, sure. or if you're just flooding your link to the other guy all the time then they can't at least tell that you were talking at a particular moment.
really, encryption and flooding the links are the only answers.
if you mean skype, just forget about it, it's not any more private than calling over a landline.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, very sneaky. . . It's not really lying as long as you can play a convoluted word-game to make what you're literally saying true.
Metadata Equals Surveillance (Score:5, Insightful)
But don't worry; it's just metadata
Metadata Equals Surveillance [schneier.com]
Re:Metadata Equals Surveillance (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Metadata Equals Surveillance (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps some enterprising jounalist, or the EFF could make some FOIA requests for phone records from the NSA, Whitehouse, etc.. Let the government say that the data is private!
They said their data is private.
Not anyone else's.
They'll put you or I in prison or kill us for obtaining their data.
Strat
Re: (Score:2)
They'll put you or I in prison or kill us for obtaining their data.
Yet if a few threaten to do the same to them, they use it as an excuse to completely wipe their ass with the US Constitution and get EVEN MORE funding for their illegal, unconstitutional, disgusting, fascist tactics. Did I mention immoral and creepy?
If this is what i
Re: (Score:3)
Re: Metadata Equals Surveillance (Score:3)
Tinfoil hats for all (Score:5, Insightful)
Turns out the tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorists were pretty much spot on.
Re:Tinfoil hats for all (Score:5, Informative)
Not only that but all that cold war stuff was a complete waste of time - we are the Soviet Union.
Re: (Score:2)
Well maybe, but at least we have better consumer goods that we by from communist China.
Re: (Score:2)
Not only that but all that cold war stuff was a complete waste of time - we are the Soviet Union.
If the US really is the USSR, then that is very unfortunate for you, comrade. Under the terms of Article 58-12 [cyberussr.com] of the Soviet penal code I now have no choice but to denounce you, comrade, for violations of Article 58-10 [cyberussr.com], and possibly Article 58-4 [cyberussr.com] of the Soviet penal code by engaging in libelous propaganda against the glorious achievements of the American revolution by comparing it to what is now a failed state. The normal punishment would be deprivation of liberty for not less than 6 months, but since the
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe the joke is on us.. We are constantly told how free we are.. But what happens to anyone in our society that actually tried to effect change? What happens to the honest journalists or the honest politicians? How's our incarceration rate?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
the bad guys won.
That's who was playing!
Re: (Score:2)
Row data? (Score:3)
I'm more worried about what's in the columns.... Metadata my ass.
Re:Row data? (Score:4)
This is gonna be awesome! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:This is gonna be awesome! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not a pretty idea. But even more frightening is what history tells us about the end-result of governments that believe in their own unlimited powers.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Never going to happen in the US.
The fluoride does a pretty good job, yes?
Re:This is gonna be awesome! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah. There's no precedent for that.
Re: (Score:2)
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
What's an intensive purpose?
Re: (Score:3)
OK, I'll bite. On one side:
3-letter agencies, military-industrial complex, prison-industrial complex (ties in with war on drugs), corporate cronies, Monsanto and friends, corrupt politicians. They're all making money from their current gigs. Privacy violation is just one dimension of their insanity.
On the other side: regular Americans losing a lot of money in a number of ways. Supporting massive government systems that harm the people is costly. A hyperinflation scenario would cause people to lose a l
Re: This is gonna be awesome! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If the only way out is a popular uprising, we're doomed. Most people simply don't want to do that; they can't even work up the courage to stop voting for the two major parties, and that takes virtually no effort at all.
Uhh, yeah right. We'll believe the NSA blindly (Score:3, Insightful)
Think about it. The director of the NSA says "run a query on X number" and show me everything we know. The staff runs the metadata query and shows the list. You know the next command from the director will be, "play those calls."
Anyone dumb enough to believe the NSA isn't recording the entire call is either A) a moron, B) living under a boulder 5 miles in a cave or C) most trusting person in this galaxy.
Stalin-type Purges (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Stalin-type Purges (Score:5, Informative)
"... Just to make sure that their government is free of ties to terrorism... "
Do you mean terrorism like the kind that involves killing [cnn.com] unknowing bystanders [huffingtonpost.com]? The U.S. doesn't do that. Oh wait... [cbsnews.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Recall the status, career move, standing, funding and technical role the NSA was seen to be in the 1990's?
Note the new standing, role, political access and color of law domestic ability over the past ~10 years?
A lot of other contractors, mil, gov have had to share/lost their political power due to the unexpected climb of the NSA.
What does a purge in the USA feel like? A massive flow of raw data to the prot
Re: (Score:2)
You have it wrong. As the NSA has dirt on everybody, they will be the ones controlling that government. The NSA may not yet have fully realized what they can do, but I am sure it is only a question of time.
Eh (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't worry they can only fit a few hundred terabytes in the little box they drew on the blueprint marked "Datacenter" that they let everyone see to prove they weren't storing a whole lot of data there. Don't mind the dozens of all black blueprint pages marked sub-basement [redacted] through sub-basement [redacted] I'm sure none of their data center capacity would ever be classified. They've been nothing but fully transparent these last few years, after all!
An example of the metadata... (Score:5, Funny)
The frequency and amplitude of the phone conversation, sampled at 1-millisecond intervals.
Just metadata.
NSA Directory Keith Alexander in a nutshell (Score:5, Interesting)
He wants all information about everybody he can get his hands on. That's basically his job.
That's why it's the President's job is to say "That's illegal. Don't do it. If you do it, I will have you fired, arrested for wiretapping, and charged for your crimes. I will do that to the next NSA Director who breaks the law. And the next. For as many as it takes, until I get an NSA Director who understands that the law supercedes what they want.", and follow through on what he said.
President Obama has failed to do this. So did President Bush. That's because they don't want to do their job, they'd rather (for whatever reason) have an NSA breaking the law.
Responsibilty lies with the politicians (Score:2)
Why do people don't get this more? The NSA/Military are (for the most part) carrying out the policies and directives set by their civilian over-seers.
Michael Hayden actually expressed this [charlierose.com] very clearly:
Re: (Score:2)
Of course it's obvious that the CIA didn't kill Kennedy - he's dead after all so it couldn't have been done by the same CIA so fucked up that had one branch selling guns to Castro and another trying to stop him. That doesn't stop them from trying to take credit for it though.
Re: (Score:2)
The explanation is easy: The NSA has dirt on Bush and Obama...
Re: (Score:2)
... and if we had voted out all the incumbents, you believe that the FISA legislation would have magically disappeared?
Re: (Score:2)
well it's true. NSA chiefs job isn't to break the law at home or abroad. He made that job description up himself. Sure, his job is to gather intelligence but surprisingly to many people nowadays that doesn't make it necessary to break the laws.
just like a sports brokers job isn't actually to fix games even if that would make him more money..
Re: (Score:2)
But not within the constitution. Yes, I know the Supreme Court made a ridiculous ruling, but we've seen that more than a few times. The ruling in the 'fire in a crowded theater' case that lots of people seem to love referring to, for instance, was used to arrest war protestors; the Supreme Court can, does, and has come to ridiculous conclusions.
Bill to rein in NSA (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Yea and when it fails to go anywhere, they can just say "oh well, we tried". Eventually the people might wake up and realize they haven't been in control for a very long time. Your vote means nothing and even if you replace one scumbag for another, they are all part of the same broken system. I'm guessing whoever runs the global network of federal banks is the real overlord.
They will eventually have to make a show that it's all shut down or controlled while just upping the secrecy level by creating an actua
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, that'll work.
After all, the NSA has done such a stellar job of following the laws enacted to date.
Wake up: The only way to stop the NSA is to de-fund them. And even then, there are probably "slush funds" from the FBI, CIA, and DEA that they could tap into.
Re: (Score:2)
They can always sell weapons to Hezbolla like North and Poindexter did - less than a year after Hezbolla blew up more than a hundred people at a US base including a lot of US Marines. I'm sure Israel won't mind, after all Iran is selling a lot of weapons to them already so the US making a bit of money on arms sales to Hezbolla instead would make them a bit happier wouldn't it :)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yea... no.
The Democrats may have willingly and knowingly continued the program, but it was started by republicans.
Re: (Score:2)
And his claims of Democrat super majority is bunkus. The Republicans controlled the House and could have stopped the bill had they wanted. But not one Republican senator voted against it and only 3 Republican reprensentatives exicitly voted Nay as well. Both parties hold responsibility.
Re: (Score:2)
The only part that was amazing was the ability to keep insights out of the press or intercept transcripts out of speeches
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This isn't an issue with either Republicans or Democrats specifically, so enough of that nonsense.
Re:Bill to rein in NSA (Score:5, Informative)
Hahaha what? You seem to be willfully ignoring that the Republicans controlled the House during passage 229 to 205. You also seem to be ignoring that the Patriot Act was authored and introduced by a Republican Representative. You also seem to be ignoring the fact that of the 66 nays in the House that 62 were Democrats. And that Republicans voted Yea at a 3:2 margin in the House. You also seem to ignore that not a single Republican voted Nay in the Senate. The Nay was that of Democrat Russ Feingold who also warned about the Section 215 powers. The only abstention in the Senate was also a Democrat.
So to act like the passage of the Patriot Act would have been any different with a Republican controlled Senate is ludicrous when nary a single Republican senator voted against it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And to add, the Senate was 48 D to 51 R which is not a "super majority" by any measure let alone a Democratoc super majority when both Houses were under Republican control. Nice attempt at revisionist history, though.
Re:Bill to rein in NSA (Score:5, Informative)
it was the Democrats with a supermajority in Congress that VOTED IT IN IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Maybe in some alternate reality. In the real world the 107th Congress was at the time of the passage of the Patriot Act
House: 219 R / 211 D / 2 I with Republican Denny Hastert as Speaker
Senate: 50 R / 50 D with Republican Strom Thurman as President Pro tempore and Dick Cheney as tie breaker
How exactly would that be a Democrat super majority?
National Paranoia, not National Security (Score:4, Insightful)
Very few of American's are terrorists. Any claim otherwise is paranoia. That is not national security. It is national paranoia.
Also, it is illegal. These people are the military. The military should have no oversight of the civilian public.
The NSA is part of the DoD under the Pentagon. That makes them a military entity even if most of those working there are civilians. We have lots of civilians working in all areas of the military. They all are bound by military law and military code of conduct.
These unconstitutional actions need to end.
Re: (Score:2)
Quite a few Americans are terrorists. They are called Tea Party members or NSA employees.
Re: (Score:3)
I hate to be in a position where I'm defending them, but what laws did you have in mind? Mind you, I'm not suggesting they're not breaking laws (clearly they are, such as the US Constitution, as you said), but I am suggesting that they aren't subject to a lot of the laws that the armed forces are subject to, which is what it seemed like you were implying.
For instance, the Posse Comitatus Act that limits Presidential power is specific in referring to the armed forces, rather than the military or the DoD as a
Stupid Republicans (Score:2, Flamebait)
So Ted Cruz just fauxilibustered for like 24 hours trying to convince us that Obamacare is Nazism on steroids. If he had any sense of strategy he would have been pointing at the NSA and saying that they are going to slurp up every bit of medical data that Obamacare creates, that the NSA is going to have your most intimate medical details on file at their fingertips.
Even if you don't tell anyone that you've got herpes the NSA will know it. They will know when you are pregnant, when you miscarry, when you
Re: (Score:2)
Even if you don't tell anyone that you've got herpes the NSA will know it. They will know when you are pregnant, when you miscarry, when you decide to have an abortion because your fetus tests positive for down syndrome. They will know the results of any DNA parentage tests even when you don't tell your own family.
... so be good for goodness' sake!
why should we care about these assurances? (Score:3)
i don't trust what the nsa says, does anyone?
they do everything in secret
they've been shown to have reneged on every assurance they've given so far
the nsa is a dagger pointed at the heart of our bill of rights, and operates with impunity of any oversight or control
the entire program needs to be wound down and focused on actual surveillance of actual terrorist targets, not this vacuum cleaner for everything
do we still have the backbone to press our representatives to ensure this is done?
Weren't we warned? (Score:4, Insightful)
"He who sacrifices freedom for security..." – B.J.F.
"The tree of liberty must..." – T.J.
"In the councils of government, we must..." – D.D.E.
On a more positive note, at least the gears of legislation seem to be responding.
NSA=commie (Score:5, Funny)
Wasn't it always the dirty commies that spied on their own people and didn't care if they liked it or not?
Why does the NSA hate democracy?
Re: (Score:2)
I literally don't know anyone who wants them to continue their domestic spying.
Re: (Score:3)
Show of hands (Score:5, Insightful)
Who wants this crap to continue "in the name of fighting terrorism"? The alternative seems to be we lose 3000 people every dozen years or so. Big deal. I say we write off our losses every once in a while and stop shitting ourselves.
(Your row in the NSA database (Score:2)
I wonder how much information the NSA has on Little Bobby Tables... Can they really sanitize their inputs, when it's all dirty?
I am still waiting for ... (Score:2)
What's that you say, phone records are private? HYPOCRITE!
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
All your base are belong to us (Score:2)
That is: All your base are belong to U.S.
Not entirely true (Score:5, Insightful)
First let me say: I work for a phone company. I'm a DBA, I've had my hands on just about everything, so I know what's possible and what's not. Also, no, I do not know of any access the NSA has to our records. Clearly they could have API access but I'm pretty sure I'd have heard about it. If they are in our systems it's likely without our knowledge.
Second: I hate the NSA and everything they are doing. I do not doubt they are already collecting everything they possibly can.
But...
We don't collect "All phone records" All this meta-data everyone is talking about is useless to us. Why would we keep a record of you calling your brother? If it's a toll free call we could give a fuck less and it's NOT recorded. You have to remember that the majority of phone switches in the US today were built in the 60's and 70's. The largest drives they have are incredibly old 20mb hard drives the size of a phone book. (ironic huh?) To allow us to store more data, these drives are dumped via netowork every night to standard Oracle databases. If the NSA is hacking us, this is likely where they get their info. As all the daily data rolls off we can collect more. But the truth of it is, we only collect data for billing purposes. So if your call doesn't generate a charge it doesn't get logged. The switch does not have the disk space to store it. We CAN log all your calls, if requested. CALEA requests come in for that sort of thing, but the number of lines that can be going on in one switch at a time is very limited. The data stacks up fast and we have engineers checking regularly to make sure there aren't too many running at once. I think the most I ever saw, in a city of 50k+ was 3...
Then you have the toll calls. Now your phone company logs those but where the call actually goes? No... They know you dialed X number, were on the phone for Xmin and they charge you. Where the call actually went they have no idea. If you have a number in Istanbul that automatically forwards to some other number? Your phone company has no clue. Your phone company looks up the number from a public list, figures out which exchange it belongs to, then passes the call along the cheapest route to that destination. Each subsequent exchange only knows where the call is headed and the preceding exchange. They do not know who made the call, they may get caller id info but that stuff is ridiculously easy to fake. Your call jumps from exchange A to B to C to D to E... all exchange C knows is that the call is headed to E and it came from B... so they can bill B... B bills A and so on. The only exchange the NSA could get any real data from is A, the one the call originated from.
Long story short, this data is pretty much useless for terrorists. If you're making ANY attempt to disguise where you're calling they're pretty much out of luck. Disposable cellphones from wallmart pretty much make this entire effort pointless.
Now the real question is: What is the NSA really using this data for?
Re: (Score:3)
The NSA and GCHQ have global reach. That was the bright idea behind digital exchanges, packets, layers and international law enforcement treaties had some real good tracking options.
The hardware and its encryption as a global export standard
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Another naive new hire..."but I'm pretty sure I'd have heard about it." About like the last time you were about to laid off, "and you had heard about it" directly from the CEO?. Mr. 1157495.
Here's an FYI for you newbie. Technology is controlled by hardware. Without hardware your DBA skills are useless. It has always been that way and will always be. In other words hardware does not have to communicate with the software side to tell you what it is doing. It can skip layers on a whim if that is what it
Honest question (Score:2)
But we do know that the NSA *does* monitor phone traffic.
For example, telecom interception at att:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A [wikipedia.org]
How do you reconcile what you said with this information. Is room 641 a lie?
Re:New word for Webster's (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's not a valid word, you are trying for 'traitor.'
At least in the US, that charge would not apply here.
I could see a few billion counts of civil rights violation however.
Re: (Score:2)
No. I said what I meant. Treason is the act of betraying ones country. If you can't figure out that betraying every U.S. citizen is the same as betraying the country I can't really help you understand the word. .. and if you mean it quite literally isn't a valid word, you might want to look more closely at the quotes I put around it.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not a valid word. You are attempting to form the agent noun from treason, and the most common and regular way to do that is with the ending "-er" as in beat+er=beater or roast+er=roaster. But it is incorrect in this case, the noun is irregular, and the correct agent form is traitor "one who commits treason."
Also, the founding fathers saw fit to define treason very very narrowly and to do so in the Constitution itself, which is why the charge would not fit in the US, though it might be possible were thi
Re:get over it (Score:5, Insightful)
Get used to it.
No, and that sounds like a terrible idea.
Re: (Score:2)
Get used to it.
No, and that sounds like a terrible idea.
Well, that's debatable. It's fucking expensive, however. I'm not aware of any citizens who want it funded. Country doesn't want to pay for something, it should be gotten rid of... Even the Feds know they don't want to play the Taxation without Representation game. Better job hiding it next time, fascists.
Re: (Score:2)
Other countries can do what they want - until law reform catches up or trails fail or the press finds out...
Going against your own laws will make good trusted staff become whistleblowers long term.
Re: (Score:3)
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/01/supreme-court-holds-warrantless-gps-tracking-unconstitutional/ [arstechnica.com] has some emerging insights on long term US legal thought surround ongoing metadata use.
The public, press and political leaders and gov spy staff now have a clear understanding of what "metadata" is in 2013.
http://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-rele [senate.gov]
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I think the Supreme Court was wrong. Under that logic, the government can do and spy on anyone it wants as long as it gets corporate thugs to agree to give them the data, and is that really where we want to be?
Re: (Score:2)
For example in Germany, it is forbidden by the constitution that secret agencies give data to law enforcement. May be the only country where that is the case, but after the experiences with the GeStaPo this was thought to be a good idea.
Re: (Score:2)
'100 or so technicians" "Intelligence analysts will log in remotely from NSA facilities in and outside the U.S."
Re: PC World link? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
A bit? It is a direct lie by omission and false image. Of course it is a database, and of course there is nothing sealed or locked about it. It will be used to data-mine, create guilt-by-association, etc. Every totalitarian government needs one of those, how else would it identify enemies of the state? And of course, if you are against this surveillance, you automatically are a freedom-Terrorist and should go a way for life without the due process scum like you do not deserve!