Warrantless domestic spying update: yet more violations
Glenn Greenwald provides a ton of information on the latest adventures of the NSA. Here’s a summary:
-the To and From numbers for a phone, plus the duration of each call, can normally be obtained via a “pen register”.
-under the FISA rules, the government is not allowed to get this without approval from the FISA court, even for one phone.
-amazingly, of all the restraints that the “Patriot” Act threw out, it didn’t toss that one.
-thanks to Verizon, BellSouth, and AT&T, this information — which required a court order to obtain for so much as ONE phone — has been provided to the government for millions.
If you’ve never listened before when I linked to something and said “read the whole thing”, you’d damn well better listen now.
As if it wasn’t bad enough with the initial warrantless wire-tapping program, this is like extra saurkraut on the bullshit-sandwich. These phone companies have pretty much stabbed us all in the back, aiding in such an obvious violation. Of course, they probably rationalized it to themselves by saying “well, the identifiers have been stripped, why the fuss?”. If you believe that, time to smell the coffee.
Names, addresses and other forms of personal identification are not part of the information, the report [about the domestic call database] said, but it noted that those details can be easily obtained by cross-checking the records against other databases. (emphasis mine)
Considering what kind of databases they already have, the only thing easier would’ve been if the phone companies had a list and simply pointed at names. If comic strip characters can do that, why not BellSouth?
“Wait! These measures actually catch people!” they’ll say. “Don’t you want terrorists to get caught?”. Too bad for them it’s hardly that easy.
…while the government clearly can parlay industry cooperation and technical firepower to grab lots of communications, there�s bound to be a limit. For example, tiny, free voice-over-Internet services likely don�t bother to maintain the kinds of call logs that Verizon, BellSouth and AT&T apparently handed over, said Jeff Pulver, an authority on the technology. Also, social network analysis would appear to be powerless against criminals and terrorists who rely on a multitude of cell phones, payphones, calling cards and Internet cafes.
And then there are more creative ways of getting off the grid. The Madrid train bombings case has revealed that the plotters communicated by sharing one e-mail account and saving messages to each other as drafts that didn�t traverse the Internet like regular mail messages would. (emphasis mine)
At root, you eventually reach a point where there are only two options: throw out the Constitution & give in to fear forever, or engage in a sober, calculated strategy of taking reasonable precautions & — to borrow and mangle a phrase from Fearless Leader — tracking them over there (via an overhauled and refocused intel apparatus) so we don’t need to track them here (and violate the rights of citizens in the process), combined with a gradual withdrawal from the flashpoints of this whole mess, and reforms at home to clear the way for making that whole region of the world irrelevant in the long run. Contrary to popular portrayal, we aren’t up against endless waves of Bin Laden clones, it just looks that way because we misread the numbers. There are a few serious global-jihad types, the rest are sympathizers and 6th men who were on the fence until we invaded Iraq.
On a lighter note: LOL@friggin USA Today scooping everyone on this. I remember back when I was on the debate team in high school my teammates used to refer to them as “The ‘tard Paper” because compared to all the other newspapers it seemed like USA Today was virtually all pictures & large type, as if it were made for people who couldn’t read.
***Updated 051106 @ 1:33PM EST***
More on those pen registers from Homeland Stupidity’s Mike Hampton, a former MCI employee:
Such a call detail record looks basically like this. (This is an example and does not necessarily correspond to an actual telephone call.)
From: 2023531555 To: 2024561414 Date: 05/11/2006 Time: 10:30:22 am Duration: 7 min
And there I have revealed the secret I learned in 2004 and which most people will miss while following the news on this developing story. The call detail records not only include long distance calls, they include local calls. When you order a pizza, the NSA finds out about it.
The telephone companies have had a long history of denying that they even keep local call detail records. When pressed, they would grudgingly admit the records existed, but required a subpoena or court order to obtain them � even if it was the customer asking for his own records! All the while, they provided these same records to the NSA without a subpoena or court order. (emphasis mine)
So I can’t find out information about my own damn communications without a court order, but the government can find out when I talked to my brother and for how long on a whim, simply because they call it “critical to national security”. If you can think about that one without getting mad, I want whatever you’re smokin’…
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