NSA Collecting Phone Records of MILLIONS of Verizon Customers Daily

[BridgeTroll]

I wish to have a discussion of this topic without the acrimony and name calling that often times accompany these topics.  I certainly respect your opinions Mark...

I think I remember making the same request 7 years ago, BT.  And, I do have to say that since your own responses were marked with a generous dose of very conscientous civility, let me please openly recognize that and return the same treatment to you.

Ok, putting that past aside, I do think the problem here is in not recognizing that the only legitimate authority who can make these decisions are the American People themselves.  This is not a matter for secret negotiation, nor is it a matter for restricted deliberations.  It strikes at the very root of the notions of individual liberties, and the much maligned Constitutional Pnembra of Privacy.

But if you would like to have a serious discussion about this issue, then may I offer another point, equally grave, to consider?

Much of the very same information that has been collected is already available for sale to private and commercial concerns.

Is the real crime here that the Feds simply refused to pay full commercial rates for the information, and decided to do so with the enormously less expensive medium of a court order and subpoena?

This is one of the arguments that surfaced during the Bush Administration as well, incidentally, and I have to say that it rather took the wind out of my sales on the specifics of the NSA.

I do think that there is a profound difference in the nature of the intended use of the information being collected, but isnt it also true that as long as this information is also available for a price that the government will still be able to legally acquire the same information, except with greater costs and a little delay?

Is it possible that it is time to solidify and correct the basic Constitutional issue of merely having a pnumbra of privacy, and amend the document to create the enumerated Right to Privacy, and make this kind of information gathering a Consitutional Felony, regardless of the purpose?

Thank you for your response Stephen... as tempting as it is to reply to you I will not.  You have already today called me a "right wing Jackass"... which apparently puts me in the same group as Diane Feinstein and Barack Obama.  I would be happy to engage you in discussions about Jacksonvilles downtown woes and strengths... or light rail vs streetcars in our city.  You, me, and national politics do not get along very well...

[marksjax]

At the risk of coming off tea-partyish (I am a registered Independent with some Libertarianism mixed in there I suppose):
The who are 'we' upset with is me speaking for myself. I would hope there are more than me and that would be the we part.

Anyway, it's about being upset or mad or expressing outrage and frustration of
the whole: (paraphrasing what is and has been going on for decades)

'We (meaning the Feds) didn't tell/show the public about that (enter example) as it would have upset them, or they wouldn't understand (we're idiots is that what they are implying?) or we didn't need to know based on the vague 'it is a matter of national security', etc.

When Congress is getting lied to who can you really trust? They are passing laws with bad info? "Garbage in/garbage out"

The 'Machine' (war/industrial and now evidently information technology complex) is running the show and we are the schmuck's paying the bill.   

This _hit is probably much worse than what we plebeians are allowed to see/hear about. So when one guy goes 'rogue' and shines a light on their dirty deeds it is a brief glimpse behind the curtain (a la The Wizard of Oz).

That both Pelosi and Boehner are defending this so vehemently is indicative that they are all aware and are ok with it.

I like the ACLU's comment (and to be honest, on many of their causes I tend to disagree):

'Beyond Orwellian"

Scary times these...

[marksjax]

And the PR campaign from our 'leaders' has officially begun:

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/lindsey-graham-thought-censoring-mail-necessary-suggest-182932835.html?.nx=count%3D5%26sortBy%3DhighestRated%26isNext%3Dtrue%26offset%3D5%26pageNumber%3D1

[KenFSU]

A confidential briefing held yesterday on possiblyl illegal NSA surveillance was skipped by over HALF of all US Senators.

Disgraceful.

http://mobile.theverge.com/2013/6/15/4433504/senators-skipped-confidential-briefing-on-nsa-surveillance

[KenFSU]

Well, so much for the "domestic surveillance was a response to 9/11" excuse:

Bush-Cheney began illegal NSA spying before 9/11, says telcom CEO

Contradicting a statement by ex-vice president Dick Cheney on Sunday that warrantless domestic surveillance might have prevented 9/11, 2007 court records indicate that the Bush-Cheney administration began such surveillance at least 7 months prior to 9/11.

The Bush administration bypassed the law requiring such actions to be authorized by FISA court warrants, the body set up in the Seventies to oversee Executive Branch spying powers after abuses by Richard Nixon. Former QWest CEO John Nacchios said that at a meeting with the NSA on February 27, 2001, he and other QWest officials declined to participate. AT&T, Verizon and Bellsouth all agreed to shunt customer communications records to an NSA database.

In 2007 the Denver Post reported:"Nacchio suggested that the NSA sought phone, Internet and other customer records from Qwest in early 2001. When he refused to hand over the information, the agency retaliated by not granting lucrative contracts to the Denver-based company, he claimed."

Other sources corroborate the former CEO's allegations, which were made in the course of his legal defense against insider trading charges. Both Slate.com and National Journal have published reports in which sources are quoted which support the former CEO's claims.

Speaking on "FOX News Sunday" this weekend in defense of the Obama administration's NSA PRISM program, which has caused a national uproar over the sweeping intrusion by the government into American citizens' emails, live chats, and other electronic communications, Cheney said:

"Now, as everybody has been associated with the program said if we had this before 9/11, when there were two terrorists in San Diego, two hijackers, able to use that program, that capability against the target, we might have been able to prevent 9/11,"

However, the presence of such powers in the hands of the present administration did not succeed in preventing the Boston Marathon attacks, even though the suspects were already well-known to the FBI, and one allegedly told law enforcement, while in the hospital, that they were able to "download plans for pressure cooker bombs from the Internet.

In the same interview on "Fox news Sunday" Cheney called NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden a "traitor."

In 2004, an AT&T technician filed a class action lawsuit against AT&T for engaging in an illegal domestic-surveillance program at the behest of the government. The Bush administration accessed major routers owned by telecommunications companies, in cities such as San Francisco, to divert traffic onto NSA mirror sites in order to capture vast volumes of data.

The Bush-Cheney administration fought fiercely to pass legislation which granted telecommunications companies immunity from prosecution for violating Americans' Fourth Amendment rights under the Constitution. The legislation was passed in 2008. UK Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald argued that the unprecedented "retroactive" immunity would also give the Bush administration immunity as well, by preventing lawsuits from moving forward into the discovery phase, where wrongdoing was likely to be uncovered.

Nevertheless, political accountability activists continue to press for action against the Bush, and now the Obama, administrations for violations of the Constitution and settled law. On April 19th of this year a California attorney, Inder Comar, filed two lawsuits in the Northern District of California against George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz for planning and waging a "war of aggression" against Iraq, in violation of laws set down at the Nuremberg Trials in 1946. A radio interview of Comar can be heard on peace activist Cindy Sheehan's radio show HERE.

Read more: http://digitaljournal.com/article/352455#ixzz2Z8XpWvnC

[BridgeTroll]

Dont want to leave the US Post Office out of the fun...

http://reason.com/blog/2013/07/03/us-post-office-taking-pictures-of-all-ou

U.S. Post Office Taking Pictures of All Our Mail for Database

Brian Doherty|Jul. 3, 2013 1:51 pm

More for that warm feeling of total security, as reported in the New York Times, about:

the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States — about 160 billion pieces last year. It is not known how long the government saves the images....

The Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program was created after the anthrax attacks in late 2001 that killed five people, including two postal workers. Highly secret, it seeped into public view last month when the F.B.I. cited it in its investigation of ricin-laced letters sent to President Obama and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. It enables the Postal Service to retroactively track mail correspondence at the request of law enforcement. No one disputes that it is sweeping.

"In the past, mail covers were used when you had a reason to suspect someone of a crime," said Mark D. Rasch, the former director of the Justice Department's computer crime unit, who worked on several fraud cases using mail covers. "Now it seems to be 'Let's record everyone's mail so in the future we might go back and see who you were communicating with.' Essentially you've added mail covers on millions of Americans."

Law enforcement crows about how important the program has been to find a ricin-mailer, a prostitution ring, and drug smugglers (the latter two the kinds of crime for which surveillance is so often needed, as it often lacks victims).

Don't worry, they need a warrant to open the mail. (Unless they don't):

Law enforcement officials need warrants to open the mail, although President George W. Bush asserted in a signing statement in 2007 that the federal government had the authority to open mail without warrants in emergencies or foreign intelligence cases.

[BridgeTroll]

Seems very similar to what I understood NSA to be doing.  Collecting the Meta data and storing it in case a need arises.  They are not opening the mail... or reading the contents.

I wish I could talk to you more about it... but as I dislike being labled a racist or right wing jackass I will let this be my only comment to you about this particular issue. 

[Lunican]

Seems very similar to what I understood NSA to be doing.  Collecting the Meta data and storing it in case a need arises.  They are not opening the mail... or reading the contents.

But now we know that they aren't just collecting meta data.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data

[KenFSU]

Dont want to leave the US Post Office out of the fun...

http://reason.com/blog/2013/07/03/us-post-office-taking-pictures-of-all-ou

U.S. Post Office Taking Pictures of All Our Mail for Database

Brian Doherty|Jul. 3, 2013 1:51 pm

More for that warm feeling of total security, as reported in the New York Times, about:

the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States — about 160 billion pieces last year. It is not known how long the government saves the images....

The Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program was created after the anthrax attacks in late 2001 that killed five people, including two postal workers. Highly secret, it seeped into public view last month when the F.B.I. cited it in its investigation of ricin-laced letters sent to President Obama and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. It enables the Postal Service to retroactively track mail correspondence at the request of law enforcement. No one disputes that it is sweeping.

"In the past, mail covers were used when you had a reason to suspect someone of a crime," said Mark D. Rasch, the former director of the Justice Department's computer crime unit, who worked on several fraud cases using mail covers. "Now it seems to be 'Let's record everyone's mail so in the future we might go back and see who you were communicating with.' Essentially you've added mail covers on millions of Americans."

Law enforcement crows about how important the program has been to find a ricin-mailer, a prostitution ring, and drug smugglers (the latter two the kinds of crime for which surveillance is so often needed, as it often lacks victims).

Don't worry, they need a warrant to open the mail. (Unless they don't):

Law enforcement officials need warrants to open the mail, although President George W. Bush asserted in a signing statement in 2007 that the federal government had the authority to open mail without warrants in emergencies or foreign intelligence cases.

Our bridges and roads continue to crumble, but at least Big Brother knows that I remembered to pay my JEA bill this month.

[BridgeTroll]

Seems very similar to what I understood NSA to be doing.  Collecting the Meta data and storing it in case a need arises.  They are not opening the mail... or reading the contents.

But now we know that they aren't just collecting meta data.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data

This appears to be correct Lunican.  The more I learn the more I distrust the government.  Waaay back... when these types of "monitoring" operations began... It was understood by me to be a collection of meta data that could be recalled and the contents looked at when the FISA court granted a search warrent for specific crimes or investigations of crimes.  As long as there was oversight and a system of check and balance I am OK with the collection...

BUT...

More and more "evidence" is appearing to show that they are looking at more than meta data... without oversight and/or checks and balances.  If this is proven to be the case I will be as angry as as some others regarding these practices.  Statements by mr snowden to not constitute proof for me...

[JayBird]

Though I'm not surprised, I feel the government has been watching us since the 50's, I would question the credibility of the article stating 7 months before 9/11.  That would put it at before 2/11 only a little more than 20 days after they took office. Not saying it isn't true, just question it.

[spuwho]

Per Broadband Reports.com:

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/US-Appeals-Court-Declares-NSA-Phone-Record-Collection-Illegal-133683

U.S. Appeals Court Declares NSA Phone Record Collection Illegal

A federal appeals court in New York today ruled that the NSA's once-secret bulk phone records collection program is illegal. According to the ruling, the bulk collection of US citizen metadata well exceeds what Congress has technically allowed under the Patriot Act. That's something even the author of the Patriot Act himself has been arguing for several years.

The ruling comes as the fight has ramped up over whether or not to renew Section 215 of the act, which expires in June and the NSA broadly interprets as legal justification of their massive domestic spying practices.

"We hold that the text of § 215 cannot bear the weight the government asks us to assign to it, and that it does not authorize the telephone metadata program," stated the three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan.

"We do so comfortably in the full understanding that if Congress chooses to authorize such a far‐reaching and unprecedented program, it has every opportunity to do so, and to do so unambiguously. Until such time as it does so, however, we decline to deviate from widely accepted interpretations of well‐established legal standards."

A lower court judge had previously thrown out the case, which was filed by the ACLU. The appeals court declared the lower court had erred in declaring that the NSA's behavior was legal. This ruling reinstates that case and sends it back to the lower court, declaring that the NSA's interpretation of the law relies on "bits and shards of inapplicable statutes, inconclusive legislative history, and inferences from silence."

[Dog Walker]

Thank you, Mr. Assange!