dagblog - Comments for "Blogger, With Focus on Surveillance, Is at Center of a Debate"

They're making sure 51% of

PeraclesPlease — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 11:58:35 +0000

In reply to It is my understanding that

They're making sure 51% of the records are foreign so they can say "most of the calls were foreign"

They're also receiving millions of bank & credit card records and other sources of data to match up with the records.

Of course they have all the Google & Apple records of what you bought, and IP records where you went on the internet, including any search words you looked for.

And regular home, utilities, vacation and any unusual >$500 expenses, especially if donations say to Muslim churches or organizations or one of those hippie anarchist eco organizations.

Plus anyting tied to your businesses, as they're not people so don't deserve privacy.

Scrunch it all together, use some super-super-powered big data crunching machine with analytics & pattern recognitions, and you start to get some pretty ugly drill down on each and every one of us.

And by the way, if they do want to then record your calls, all they have to do is ask the FISA court - only about 0.001% of requests have been denied since they started revamping FISA rules post-9/11. These are *not* the "usual phone 'wiretapping' procedure". And with speech-to-text, they don't need a physical person monitoring - it's all turned into indexed/searchable text with reasonable accuracy to track say 10,000-50,000 important keywords in the most significant target languages. Pop up something slightly "suspicious", they can quickly pull full call info & related data & get a rubber stamped backdated court order.

But glad everyone is so down with tracking records. Will you be so sanguine when they lock your grandkid up for some egregious act of citizen protest or personal choice? Or maybe use the info to get the grandkid to start secretly reporting on his/her friend to keep out of jail?

Most judicial cases don't go to court - they get plea-bargained or the "law enforcement"/intelligence/FBI agent uses it to bargain for something else they want.

Think of how well responsible use of tasers and drones have gone, and now look at a practice that has much less review and much less public observation.

It is my understanding that

NCD — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 02:48:04 +0000

In reply to Interesting the different

It is my understanding that the (millions?) of phone call records were looked at seeking identities of US persons receiving calls from overseas 'suspects'.

No conversations were recorded or listened to by agents unless approved by a court in the usual phone 'wiretapping' procedure.

The idea that the NSA is listening in on 100++ million actual phone calls a day is perhaps the biggest joke.

Interesting the different

A Guy Called LULU — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 01:06:20 +0000

In reply to Rand Paul's concerns....does

Interesting the different reactions people have. I showed this to someone else and they thought it was a pretty clever joke about current events. They didn't think it was really about Rand Paul at all.

Rand Paul's concerns....does

NCD — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 15:36:31 +0000

In reply to (No subject)

Rand Paul's concerns....does anyone remember what they were last week? 5 minutes ago? Who is crazy enough to care?

One day its filibuster the drones the next day its using drones for summary execution of petty thieves on US soil, Rand Paul 4/2013:

"If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and $50 in cash, I don't care if a drone kills him or a policeman kills him. But it's different if they want to come fly over your hot tub or your yard just because they want to do surveillance on everyone and they want to watch your activities."

I presume Rand Paul has a hot tub, or frequents them, but doesn't rob liquor stores. Tells you something about him, no? Like who exactly is he out to protect?

(No subject)

A Guy Called LULU — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 14:41:51 +0000

In reply to ?The N.S.A. is kind of the

?The N.S.A. is kind of the

A Guy Called LULU — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 14:34:09 +0000

In reply to Blogger, With Focus on Surveillance, Is at Center of a Debate

“The N.S.A. is kind of the crown jewel in government secrecy. I expect them to react even more extremely,” Mr. Greenwald said in a telephone interview. He said that he had been advised by lawyer friends that “he should be worried,” but he had decided that “what I am doing is exactly what the Constitution is about and I am not worried about it.”