As you have no doubt heard already, Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian UK has gotten hold of a FISA court order at the request of the FBI that requires Verizon to turn over transactional information on ALL the phone calls within its systems to the NSA.
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 court order appears to explain the numerous cryptic public warnings by two US senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, about the scope of the Obama administration’s surveillance activities.For roughly two years, the two Democrats have been stridently advising the public that the US government is relying on “secret legal interpretations” to claim surveillance powers so broad that the American public would be “stunned” to learn of the kind of domestic spying being conducted.
Because those activities are classified, the senators, both members of the Senate intelligence committee, have been prevented from specifying which domestic surveillance programs they find so alarming. But the information they have been able to disclose in their public warnings perfectly tracks both the specific law cited by the April 25 court order as well as the vast scope of record-gathering it authorized.
For everybody. And if you think it’s only Verizon customers and not everybody else, you’re fooling yourself because this is just the only order that the Guardian got hold of. For those of you who have forgotten the PATRIOT Act, these FISA court orders only require nominal judicial oversight (a single judge rubber stamps them), and are so secret that the person or company being ordered to turn over the information isn’t allowed to tell anyone (certainly not the folks being spied upon) that they’ve been served and have complied with the order.
This particular order runs for three months from April 25 through July. The media (who seem way less outraged about this than they are about the big AP reporters phone record kerfuffle) seems to be speculating that this is somehow related to the Boston Bombers (who were dead or captured a week before this order took effect). Bullshit. I have no doubt this is a standard three-month renewal, and that Obama’s NSA has been doing this all along.
And these orders aren’t limited to phone records – or even telecom companies. I’m sure they’re collecting Internet records, Google searches, library records – probably everything purchased online or even offline with a credit card.
In the good old Dubya days, they at least needed to specify a target of their investigations, but apparently the Obama gang has it’s own “secret interpretation” of its powers under this act.
I don’t know the extent to which the NSA can process such huge volumes of data, but they have a virtually unlimited budget, all the best toys, and there are constant advancements to processing power and data mining capabilities. Whatever they can’t do today, you can be damn sure they’ll be able to do down the road.
My guess is they’re aiming to know what your position is on the planet at all times, who you’re talking to, what you’re doing on the Internet, what your buying, reading…thinking.
I find this shit to be very scary, a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment, and probably unstoppable (unless you plan on going off the grid).
Imagine what they could do if we didn’t have such a “good” President.
In other news, my union resoundingly ratified our new contract (77% in favor), which is retroactive to 2011. It features such goodies as three years of retroactive pay freezes, 2 furlough days that we aren’t getting paid for but at least get to take the days off, 7 additional furlough days that we can’t take off, but which we will get back – slowly – beginning in 2016, and a 6% increase in health insurance co-pays. On the bright side, we’re getting a $500 raise this year, and 2% raises in 2014 and 2015 (which means by 2016, I’ll still be behind where I was before they jacked up the payroll tax rates again).
At least I have the comfort of knowing that my government is watching out for me.
:billcat: I have always questioned the constitutionality of FISA anyway. This sweeping order makes a mockery of our Fourth Amendment. :billcat:
PJ, I remember one post in which you said you refrained from opening a site (can’t remember which one) because you thought it would trigger some notice from the government. I must admit I have the same fear. That’s probably a pretty common feeling.
Remembering the McCarthy era’s pursuit of my parents, I have always assumed I am tracked in some way. Remember all the FBI files that people FOILed and found that they were indeed being watched. The difference, now, is that it isn’t only Lefties in the crosshairs.
Of course technology has made gathering staggeringly massive amounts of info on staggering numbers of people possible. I wonder if all the info is so great that it makes it more difficult for it to actually be useful. It seems that many people, like the Boston bombers, weren’t tracked very well in spite of a specific warning from Russia.
What is the purpose of all this data collection? For whom are they looking? Are they doing it because they can or is there something specific. It seems stupid, legally indefensible and quite disturbing to me…and not at all patriotic.
I definitely self-censor my Google searches. I think I mentioned that I was tempted to do a search for “pressure cooker bombs” after the Boston thing, because I’d never heard of it, but that it would probably get me a visit from the FBI.
I always wanted to get a copy of the Anarchist’s Cookbook, too (for the recipe on how to prepare psychedelic tea from Morning Glory seeds type stuff; never wanted to make any bombs or anything – especially since I’d be more likely to blow myself up than anything else). But I figure that gets you on a list, too.
I heard someone talking about this recently.
The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)
BY JAMES BAMFORD03.15.127:24 PM
and I thought we were special here in SF…
NSA Spying | Electronic Frontier Foundation