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Government Communications Privacy United States

NSA Recommends Dropping Phone-Surveillance Program (thedailybeast.com) 105

Posted by BeauHD from the dropped-call dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: The National Security Agency has recommended that the White House abandon a surveillance program that collects information about U.S. phone calls and text messages (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source), saying the logistical and legal burdens of keeping it outweigh its intelligence benefits, according to people familiar with the matter. The recommendation against seeking the renewal of the once-secret spying program amounts to an about-face by the agency, which had long argued in public and to congressional overseers that the program was vital to the task of finding and disrupting terrorism plots against the U.S.

The latest view is rooted in a growing belief among senior intelligence officials that the spying program provides limited value to national security and has become a logistical headache. Frustrations about legal-compliance issues forced the NSA to halt use of the program earlier this year, the people said. Its legal authority will expire in December unless Congress reauthorizes it. It is up to the White House, not the NSA, to decide whether to push for legislation to renew the phone-records program. The White House hasn't yet reached a policy decision about the surveillance program, according to the people familiar with the matter.
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NSA Recommends Dropping Phone-Surveillance Program More

NSA Recommends Dropping Phone-Surveillance Program

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  • Because they use social media now.. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Phone calls and txt messages are for old people.

    • They want to abandon this because: 1-They found something better. 2-"Abandon" it then restart it when nobody is looking. 3-Say you stopped it, but really just rename it and hide it better.

  • I'm no member (Score:5, Insightful)

    by flippy ( 62353 ) on Thursday April 25, 2019 @08:06AM (#58488630) Homepage
    of the tinfoil hat brigade, but this reeks of one of two things: 1) it never worked well, or 2) they now have something better.

    • Re:I'm no member (Score:5, Interesting)

      by BlackOverflow ( 5394496 ) on Thursday April 25, 2019 @08:07AM (#58488632)
      Everyone is willingly posting everything on social media, so why pay for expensive surveillance if they can get it all for free?

      • I don't think the NSA is looking for underage drinking, recreational drugs, stupid stunts, or nude selfies.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Shaitan ( 22585 )

          Of course they are. Did you even watch Snowden? This is exactly the type of information they looked at to find blackmail material for the CIA.

      • That's certainly where I post all my disinformation.
    • There was never any secret group of boogie man terrorists texting and calling each other in sleeper cells around the U.S. It's been an NSA fantasy since 9/11 based on nothing.

      • There was never any secret group of boogie man terrorists texting and calling each other in sleeper cells around the U.S.

        Dude, what a relief. It's a good thing we have people like you around who are so tied in to global terrorism networks that they can make absolute statements like that. Why didn't the NSA just ask you years ago?

        • What global terrorism networks are these? Oh, more fantasies.

          • What global terrorism networks are these? Oh, more fantasies.

            Wow, speaking of fantasies: either you desperately squeeze your eyes shut to the harsh reality of the world to try to maintain a puppies and unicorns worldview, or you're just trolling. In either case, carry on.

      • I don't believe in:
        - Easter Bunny
        - Tooth Fairy
        - Terrorists

    • Obviously (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TheMeuge ( 645043 ) on Thursday April 25, 2019 @08:25AM (#58488736)

      They don't need to do it themselves. The media companies do it for them. No warrants, oversight, regulation required.

    • ...or... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Comboman ( 895500 ) on Thursday April 25, 2019 @08:29AM (#58488766)
      3) Since Snowden revealed the existence of the phone spying program, the likelihood of catching anything juicy dropped to near zero. The only way to make a no-longer-secret program secret again is to convince people that you're stopping it, and then quietly start it up again.

      • And this cements Snowden's pardon. Either way, the NSA is admitting Snowden was right. If it's a ploy to keep going in secret, it's at least acknowledgement of the not entirely legal status.

      • I prefer 4) The security apparatus plans to step up their campaigns of parallel construction, making false charges, etc. and it would be convenient if the government stopped admitting that they had a phone-listening program so that they could more trivially stop responding to FOIA requests regarding it so that it becomes more difficult to prove where the evidence actually came from.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • "the likelihood of catching anything juicy dropped to near zero"

        This from a nation who has people regularly cheat/steal/lie/admit to murder on reality shows in from of cameras because they forgot or didn't care. Even if people think they are being monitored, many will still make bad decisions.

    • Scam likely (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      No, they collected 1+ billion "scam likely" calls.
      Found a terrorist, checked all who called him, and who else they called and came up with 250 million person terrorist cell in the US run by "scam likely"

      That's what really happened.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Everything interesting moved to end-to-end encrypted platforms. The ROI on listening to phone calls isn't there any more, they want the money for their crypto-cracking supercomputers and backdooring efforts.

    • We'd been catching the really stupid ones with no work whatsoever. Now they're not using phones, and we don't see why we should work any harder than we have to to catch the dumb. Quick, make a press release saying our surveillance doesn't work or that we're stopping. You know, something like what we did when we claimed we coudn't get in to an apple phone. Lots of morons bought that one!
    • I've always insisted that the process is too difficult to manage, regardless of available computing power. It's just too much data to hoover up and expect to have any kind of non-niche usefulness.

  • Full citizen analysis...complete! (Score:3, Funny)

    by ggil ( 5931026 ) on Thursday April 25, 2019 @08:10AM (#58488652)

    "We've successfully compiled everything we need to know, Captain!"

    "Confirmed. Let's jettison the program. Commence DNA neuro-hacking program immediately."

    "Already started, sir. We'll be steering them by the nodes in a few months."

  • Imagine if all of those pesky whistle-blowers, protesters, and lawyers hadn't made such a fuss...

  • And nothing is being done about it. When people try to sue the government, they have to prove they were harmed instead of having to be proved that they government broke the law, the same standard that gets applied to us citizens.

    The government has already secured enough power and control that at the near flip of a switch we could be living in a totally different reality without much legal effort. We already have secret laws, secret courts, and secret police... literally all the requirements of a Police St

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shaitan ( 22585 )

      And the final piece, the removal of executive authority. The President can 'obstruct' his own subordinate executive employees now.

      The only democratically elected official in the executive is the President. That is the only point of intervention "we the people" have. Congress has no authority save purse strings but these agencies have alternative black market funding including running drugs, guns, ransome/malware, and seizures. The CIA often doesn't even show up when congress asks. If the President can't leg

    • My brother, totalitarianism is not a risk for the future - it is the reality of the present.

      Geedub Boosh said "they hate us for our freedoms". Well, we sure fixed that!

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Translasion: We'd like to drop the visible program because we managed to develop equivalent surveillance capabilities that are easier to hide.

    Don't misinterpret this post. I strongly support our intelligence services. They operate at the edge of legitimacy and create privacy and human rights problems, but they're absolutely necessary for a country to operate in the real world where everyone isn't on BFF status.

    It's just that this announcement barely counts as news. And the idea that this administr

  • Terrorists can't hide!
    We'll tap all Americans!
    Oh, to much data.

  • More spook talk. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by doubledown00 ( 2767069 ) on Thursday April 25, 2019 @10:34AM (#58489390)
    So we're to believe that a government agency notorious for trying to secretly and illegally vacuum up as much data as they can, who once exposed fought like hell to legalize said programs, is now going to willingly give up the capability. What Federal agency do you know of that has willingly given up power or capabilities once they were acquired? I can't think of one.

    Assuming the NSA would not allow their data gathering capabilities to backslide, the question becomes "How is this information being obtained going forward?"

    • Well, there is another possibility... the possibility they've suddenly become liable for something even they didn't want to get their hands dirty with, and now they're trying to sweep it under the carpet in a panic.

      • That's certainly a possibility.

        We must remember that, although there is some really unconstitutional stuff going on now, not everyone is USIC is an unamerican totalitarian. If fact I would hazard a bet that the solid majority of spooks do not want to spy on US citizens.

        I've had some social conversations with vaguely spooky people here in the city. The impression I get is that there is much internal conflict within the agencies. The Cold War era people (who signed up back in the day to fight the Soviets) and

        • That's certainly a possibility.

          We must remember that, although there is some really unconstitutional stuff going on now, not everyone is USIC is an unamerican totalitarian. If fact I would hazard a bet that the solid majority of spooks do not want to spy on US citizens.

          I've had some social conversations with vaguely spooky people here in the city. The impression I get is that there is much internal conflict within the agencies. The Cold War era people (who signed up back in the day to fight the Soviets) and the ex-mil types don't want domestic spying. The police state faction has power today, but they are by no means the majority within their agencies.

          They may not "want" to spy on Americans, but when push comes to shove they do it. Sorry, that makes them just as culpable.
          But as they drink themselves into oblivion in an effort to reconcile their shame, may they take solace in the knowledge that there were probably some Nazis that didn't fully agree with their organizational goals either.

      • Well, there is another possibility... the possibility they've suddenly become liable for something even they didn't want to get their hands dirty with, and now they're trying to sweep it under the carpet in a panic.

        If recent history has shown anything, it's that "legality" is irrelevant. If indeed the NSA did find its self "suddenly liable" for something, it's a short stroll to the capitol building where a bi-partisan group of sellouts eagerly await the opportunity to make it all nice and legal again.

  • I've heard since the early 90s the FBI and/or NSA has been listening in on internet/phone conversations in at least a very superficial way.

    I mean I'm not sure how much is true and/or paranoid ramblings but I think they will be for quite some time yet. Now though companies like Facebook and Google know more about you than the government in some ways.

    Does all this bother me? Yes, but I'm a bit more pragmatic. At the end of the day I think you've got two choices, go full on Hermit/Amish, or admit you're powe

  • My guess is this means they finally realized that in illegally trying to capture information for my father about me doing illegal things, all they have ended up capturing is is a huge trove of information about him doing illegal things and tricking them into helping him. So now they just want the whole thing to go away because otherwise they all go to jail. All of them. And some get extradited to Russia to face the death penalty there for possibly completely unrelated shit.

    Oh, you thought this had someth

  • Increasing the internet is making life easier but at the same time it is increasing threat to our personal information and data. OPGW can also be used to completely steal the data of a country. Check this out. https://electricalbaba.com/wha... [electricalbaba.com]

  • NSA: "We are dropping the phone screening program."

    Doesn't drop the program at all.

    Us: "Hey it's been a few months did you guys drop that phone screening project everyone hated?"

    NSA: "Yes."

    Us: "k thx bai"

  • Even if true, how would we be confident they actually did stop?

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