NSA Secretly Collecting Phone Records Of All U.S. Verizon Calls

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Originally Posted by Xiahou

Senators skip classified briefing on NSA snooping to catch flights home

We can always count on our elected officials to keep their priorities straight, huh?

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None pointed out that they are the priority 1 target perhaps?

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Originally Posted by Greyblades

That's a good question because despite thier protests I highly doubt they do. A survelance state can keep track of you with cameras and email snooping, but to have someone watching all of it is physically impossible.

How something like this would work would be to have everything recorded and stored until the government has a reason to take an interest in a person. Then the person's data is pulled up and examined by people. However, with this method, most people's data will remain unwatched as most people will not attract government interest, and it's easy to accept the data being recorded with the understanding that if you dont do anything bad the data wont be viewed and used against you.

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Technology is capable of a lot more than that. The computers can filter the data, sort the data, search for keywords, patterns and so on. Usually this doesn't just involve technology but also e.g. psychological research and results from research regarding human behavior. Companies already collect customer data because they can run powerful analyses on it. Basically the system will tell them who to have a closer look at and who not. If they want to expand on it, I suggest searching for small-time criminals and having the central system automatically distribute the info about crime and person to the local police departments based on where the suspect lives. That might require it becoming a bit more open but now that it's out there and noone cares, it's a logical next step to make America safer. And then include more cameras, you really need more camera feeds for the system. And open letters and packages sent via normal mail, currently that's a huge black box in criminal investigation, think of how many criminals get away with sending a letter instead of an e-mail!

People do realize that your voice is a finger print. That commerical systems can use your voice as a biometric key, that during a call the stress levels of a person can be measured and that a call can be diverted to a senior rep or tagged for QA.

Most of the top voice recording firms are Israeli.

Not only can your voice be fingerprinted. But voice to text allows tagging of keywords and phrases too.

That's just what a typical commerical contact centre can do.

"your call may be recorded for training and quality improvent"

Banks have already started replacing PIN with voice identification.

So not only will the like of NSA be able to figure out which numbers get called. If they have access to the recordings they would be able to get a transcript that can be sorted by machines, checked for stress levels in the voice and figure out who the people on either end are.

Do you think that is new?

In 1993 Pablo Escobar was identified from a 17 second phone call and a team was dispatched to liquidate him, which they did. This was at a time when NSA was only allowed to do such things outside the US.

I am sure they have progressed far beyond what is commercially available today.

Remember a week or so ago an NBC news team was talking about being able to track you in your home using WIFI

No, it's not new. What has increased is the speed and accuracy to do it.

For instance you can speak a four digit code over a phone. The commercial systems will ID you from the voice metrics with that phrase. So if an off the shelf system can do that for your banking, imagine what else they can do.

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Originally Posted by Greyblades

That's a good question because despite thier protests I highly doubt they do. A survelance state can keep track of you with cameras and email snooping, but to have someone watching all of it is physically impossible.

How something like this would work would be to have everything recorded and stored until the government has a reason to take an interest in a person. Then the person's data is pulled up and examined by people. However, with this method, most people's data will remain unwatched as most people will not attract government interest, and it's easy to accept the data being recorded with the understanding that if you dont do anything bad the data wont be viewed and used against you.

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Ultimately, what is the difference if the people behave the same under either one?

I fear I fail to see how that is relevant to how people are able to rationalize accepting constant survelance.

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Originally Posted by Greyblades

I fear I fail to see how that is relevant to how people are able to rationalize accepting constant survelance.

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Their rationalization is less of convincing themselves that there is no threat in the first place and more convincing themselves that this isn't the dystopia they should be afraid of.

But if either case renders them unto the same condition, their rationalizations are all moot to begin with.

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Their rationalization is less of convincing themselves that there is no threat in the first place and more convincing themselves that this isn't the dystopia they should be afraid of.

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Privacy is overrated. Srsly.

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Originally Posted by Montmorency

Privacy is overrated. Srsly.

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And I am not being super cereal right now?

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Originally Posted by Montmorency

Privacy is overrated. Srsly.

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Peoples perception of what privacy is in their mind and reality are divorced. People think they have privacy in scenarios and situations they clearly do not have any and that is without any NSA or anti-privacy involvement.

For example, a female neighbour topless sunbathing in the back-garden might think she has privacy, but all the neighbours don't even have to actively look through their back window to end up catching a glimpse of what she has to offer. Whilst some people like myself have manners and respect their right to privacy, I had someone who had come around once and saw, they kept gawking out the window at the said female and I had to actively remove them away from the window and scold them. Then there were the protests of "I am not doing anything wrong, I am only at your window, not my fault she has her knockers out! She deserves to have them looked at".

Whilst it was very inconsiderate of said person, they had a point, the neighbour did not have the privacy they thought they had.

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Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube

Coming from a brit, that's quite a statement. Even with the NSA doing their thing, and even assuming they're doing far more things, you're still more likely to be watched in London I'm sure.

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It was less a statement of disagreement but an inability to understand what he was saying.

The NSA Guidelines for intelligence gathering have been leaked. Basically, it's completely up to their discretion....

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On July 28, 2009, 189 days after Barack Obama became president, Attorney General Eric Holder (himself only six months into office) presented the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) with a list of ways in which the NSA and FBI would try and assure that the data it collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act came only from non-Americans. The delineation, released today by The Guardian, includes several ways in which collection of data from Americans is both likely — and allowed.

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Here's a fun bit:

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Retain and make use of "inadvertently acquired" domestic communications if they contain usable intelligence, information on criminal activity, threat of harm to people or property, are encrypted, or are believed to contain any information relevant to cybersecurity;

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As the article points out, encrypting your data is on the same level of criminal activity.

Also, that excerpt seems awfully Orwellian. If it's inadvertently collected, they obviously still troll thru it to determine if it meets their criteria. So they collect and read your data to determine if they're able to collect and read your data??? And encrypted data is fair game? Most people's Facebook traffic uses SSL- meaning it's encrypted. Virtually all online shopping and banking is encrypted- so they get to keep that too. Thanks Eric Holder.

If you didn't have anything to hide you wouldn't need to encrypt your data! :inquisitive:

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Originally Posted by HopAlongBunny

If you didn't have anything to hide you wouldn't need to encrypt your data! :inquisitive:

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I take it you are making a joke.

The logic of, if you have nothing to hide, it is ok is. dumb. Do you think it is ok to spy on everyone to decide if they are doing anything wrong?

They can track everything you do on your computer in real time. With smart meters and smart appliances they can track what you eat, when you sleep. With grocery cards and debit cards they can track your brand preferences. They can see into your home using your own WIFI. They can track you with your cell phone. I would assume they can use the electronics in your car in the same way. They have complete access to your banking records and most everything else you do in life.

In other words they can track you until you do something wrong, or what may become wrong in the future.

How long before you start getting traffic fines in the mail for exceeding the speed limit or not coming to a complete stop at an intersection? Where is privacy? Where are 4th Amendment Rights? Forget the 5th, they have the data.

And they do this with secret laws and secret courts!

So tell me all about the Land of Liberty…

Well the car will drive itself, the people will have their bread and their games, who cares about privacy.

I am now fully behind this data gathering exercise. As long as it is reciprical and we see all the day for every elected official and judge. They shouldn't mind as they are in public office and they should have nothing to hide.

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Originally Posted by Tiaexz

Peoples perception of what privacy is in their mind and reality are divorced. People think they have privacy in scenarios and situations they clearly do not have any and that is without any NSA or anti-privacy involvement.

For example, a female neighbour topless sunbathing in the back-garden might think she has privacy, but all the neighbours don't even have to actively look through their back window to end up catching a glimpse of what she has to offer. Whilst some people like myself have manners and respect their right to privacy, I had someone who had come around once and saw, they kept gawking out the window at the said female and I had to actively remove them away from the window and scold them. Then there were the protests of "I am not doing anything wrong, I am only at your window, not my fault she has her knockers out! She deserves to have them looked at".

Whilst it was very inconsiderate of said person, they had a point, the neighbour did not have the privacy they thought they had.

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Should've offered her some ice cream.

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Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube

It's the kind of logic you see thrown out of the court in every other Law & Order episode. Shows you how far the reality is from the ideal.

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In Navy CIS and the new Hawaii Five-O the ideal is to hack into top secret government files and every camera around town to do 360° surveillance for glorious America and noone ever even raises any questions about privacy, they only joke about it being technically illegal. What to make of that? Oh wait, that's just the reality side I guess. ~D

I find it ironic that "encrypting" your data; which most ppl would agree is a good thing to do; opens you to deeper scrutiny from the security arm.
I love the lose<=>lose situation you get painted into.

Further to Husar's observation; it makes sense when establishing new norms to habituate the subject(s) to the new behaviour through prime-time tele :)

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Originally Posted by HopAlongBunny

I find it ironic that "encrypting" your data; which most ppl would agree is a good thing to do; opens you to deeper scrutiny from the security arm.
I love the lose<=>lose situation you get painted into.

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If you encrypt it well enough they will either fail to decrypt it at all or it will use insane amount of processing power to decrypt. As such if more people were to start using encryption, it would be almost impossible to monitor. However, it is also in the hands of software developers to encrypt chat systems and so on. I could start using the most secure messenger tomorrow and have zero friends participate because they wouldn't know how to install and configure it or simply dislike the smileys. WhatsApp was completely unsecured for a long time but everyone used it anyway. Goes back to what I said in the other thread about the internet really being new territory for humanity.

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Originally Posted by HopAlongBunny

Further to Husar's observation; it makes sense when establishing new norms to habituate the subject(s) to the new behaviour through prime-time tele :)

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Yes, I noticed that while watching them. On one hand they have entertainment value, on the other the nonchalant use of complete surveillance is quite astounding at times. Also note how they all used to have iPhones and iPads and now they suddenly all use MS Surface tablets. I just hope Bond and his villains stay true to Sony.

It's not entirely new though, quite a few TV cops have broken the law and got away with it because they got the bad guy in the end. And let's not forget that most superheroes are vigilantes who often represent judge, jury and executive in one person, something that goes fundamentally against some of the most basic principles of a modern democracy. Not to forget mister Jack "torture" Bauer and his very busy days...

Everyone should encrypt with only file info that reads "sent by US citizen".

Yes, just click "Encrypt" before you click "Send", it's easy.
I do it before every sentence I send in Skype calls.

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Originally Posted by Husar

If you encrypt it well enough they will either fail to decrypt it at all or it will use insane amount of processing power to decrypt. As such if more people were to start using encryption, it would be almost impossible to monitor. However, it is also in the hands of software developers to encrypt chat systems and so on. I could start using the most secure messenger tomorrow and have zero friends participate because they wouldn't know how to install and configure it or simply dislike the smileys. WhatsApp was completely unsecured for a long time but everyone used it anyway. Goes back to what I said in the other thread about the internet really being new territory for humanity.

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I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that many proprietary encryption standards have backdoors builtin- keys to which are probably in the NSA's hands.

Government is the enemy and ours is full of traitors. Hold these people in contempt. Snowden, Manning, and Assange are heroes and the canaries in the Coal mine. Individuals have a moral obligation to demolish secret government everywhere that they find it.

If your company has a secret? Expose it. Your school, police department, post office? Expose them and let it be known. Massive organizations are constricting around our necks and we don't have much longer to resist them.

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Originally Posted by ICantSpellDawg

Government is the enemy and ours is full of traitors. Hold these people in contempt. Snowden, Manning, and Assange are heroes and the canaries in the Coal mine. Individuals have a moral obligation to demolish secret government everywhere that they find it.

If your company has a secret? Expose it. Your school, police department, post office? Expose them and let it be known. Massive organizations are constricting around our necks and we don't have much longer to resist them.

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So what are the secrets of where you work Dawg?

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Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name

So what are the secrets of where you work Dawg?

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We have none. We don't work for our customers and don't actually appreciate their business or loyalty as we obviously have no loyalty to them. Try a mutual company, they technically work for their customers who are both the shareholders and customers at the same time, rather than cattle to be milked and then slaughtered. liability is ranged approx 10 points, so that when people make an offer you can ask for 10 more percentage points. The harder you might argue and more irritating you are the more you will get, just don't get discouraged when you hear "no", just keep calling back. When you have a car accident you are entitled to money for loss of use (in this state at least) even if you don't rent a car. File small claims suit any time anybody says "comparative negligence" or low balls your rental or repairs - in my state it costs 35 bucks to file suit without an attorney and you don't have to do anything - presto, the a-holes who hit you get slapped with a summons and the insurance company has to hire an attorney for a couple thousand - hey, maybe they should have just paid you that extra $500 bucks. Some companies pay nuisance money for injuries even if it is unlikely that you would collect just to go away - we are not one of them. Switch auto insurance every 5 years but don't move your homeowners - in our state at least

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Originally Posted by ICantSpellDawg

We have none. We don't work for our customers and don't actually appreciate their business or loyalty as we obviously have no loyalty to them, liability is ranged 10 points, so that when people make an offer you can ask for 10 more percentage points. The harder you might argue and more irritating you are the more you will get, just don't get discouraged when you hear "no", just keep calling back. When you have a car accident you are entitled to money for loss of use (in this state at least) even if you don't rent a car. File small claims suit any time anybody says "comparative negligence" or low balls your rental or repairs - in my state it costs 35 bucks to file suit without an attorney and you don't have to do anything - presto, the a-holes who hit you get slapped with a summons. Some companies pay nuisance money for injuries even if it is unlikely that you would collect just to go away - we are not one of them. Switch auto insurance every 5 years but don't move your homeowners - in our state at least

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I knew not ignoring you would yield results. May I ask which state this is, for future reference should I move to the USA?

Please, if anyone else has any tips from another industry, let 'em rip

Et tu, uk, et tu http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/ju...unications-nsa

Nice, Frags. So when the NSA insists it doesn't watch US citizens it's likely true since they have the GCHQ doing it for them.

Good to know our decline into American level governance is ahead of schedule. First the conversion of the last credible left wing party into tory-lite, then the surging popularity of the ultra X5 right wing party, now the fear of constant surveillance is proved true. All we need now is our very own fox news and our devolution is complete. Just give us our new passports and call us the 51st state

UK is ready dominated by NEWS corp. it just has localized Branding.

Obama’s speech to put aside our fears of NSA spying was anything but reassuring.

For any not paying close attention, he revealed that besides ignoring the Constitution that Congress knows about it and secret courts with judges oversee it, after the fact.

It is not one political party, it is not one branch of the government, but all three, and the only people who didn’t know was the public at large.

To make it worse, all these private companies giving up information have high priced lawyers and none of them filed a case on behalf of their clients, even though the requirements clearly violate the bill of rights.

And yet, few people seem very upset about it. Do you really think they are keeping you safer this way? That the data the collect will never be misused? Do you think any of your rights matter to these people?

Get a clue! If they are not stopped now, then they never will be.

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/06...ing-really-is/

It is not a matter of it being just one country either. Now everyone seems to think it is ok or they just share data while others gather it from their citizens.

Do you think it is good that the US or others share data on you so your country doesn’t need to?

Is this not an international governmental conspiracy to spy the populous? But such things don’t exist, right?

And what parts of that are you ok with?

I was not happy when Bush did it and I am not good with it now. Are you?

Too many people just react to what they get from the media. If TV news give it a soft soap then the sheep don’t see any point in being upset.

It is either that or they don’t report on how upset people are.

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Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube

That was my point, I was agreeing with you. Everyone acts as though this is some new scandal, when it is really a continuation of something his predecessor did. Not only that, but a vast expansion. It ought to be sparking a thorough discussion in the mainstream about how neither party can be taken for their word, and how the system as a whole is clearly broken. Investigative journalism should be having a field day. Everyone should be really upset, and both parties should be imploding.

But nope. People are just gonna be chill about this. Wherever the line that denoted losing your democratic values was, we passed it long ago. Bummer. :shrug:

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I'm not chill about this. I'm going to do my best to neutralize Pete King at the ballot box. I will do whatever I can to hurt his support in Conservative communities until he is deposed for a flaming progressive if necessary. If you fail to uphold or actively work to undermine the Constitution, you are a traitor. Pete King is a traitor.

If this poll is accurate, then it's the first good news in a long time (on this subject).

Big Shift On Civil Liberties vs. Counter-Terrorism

In a massive shift in attitudes, voters say 45 - 40 percent the government's anti-terrorism efforts go too far restricting civil liberties, a reversal from a January 14, 2010, survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University when voters said 63 - 25 percent that such activities didn't go far enough to adequately protect the country. [...]

There is a gender gap on counter-terrorism efforts as men say 54 - 34 percent they have gone too far and women say 47 - 36 percent they have not gone far enough. There is little difference among Democrats and Republicans who are about evenly divided. Independent voters say 49 - 36 percent that counter-terrorism measures have gone too far.

Some of the largest growth in those concerned about the threat to civil liberties is among men and Republicans, groups historically more likely to be supportive of governmental anti- terrorism efforts. [...]

"The change in public attitudes has been extraordinary, almost across the board and obviously not just related to the revelation of the phone-scanning program, given all that has transpired since 2010," said Brown. "Yet it would be naive to see these numbers as anything but evidence of a rethinking by the public about the tradeoffs between security and freedom."

While voters support the phone-scanning program 51 - 45 percent and say 54 - 40 percent that it "is necessary to keep Americans safe," they also say 53 - 44 percent that the program "is too much intrusion into Americans' personal privacy."

"Americans' views on anti-terrorism efforts are complicated," said Brown. "They see the threat from terrorism as real and worth defending against, but they have a sense that their privacy is being invaded and they are not happy about it at all."

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Originally Posted by Lemur

While voters support the phone-scanning program 51 - 45 percent and say 54 - 40 percent that it "is necessary to keep Americans safe," they also say 53 - 44 percent that the program "is too much intrusion into Americans' personal privacy.

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So, we think it's too intrusive but want it anyway. Alrighty then.

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Originally Posted by rvg

So, we think it's too intrusive but want it anyway. Alrighty then.

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Nobody ever accused the American voter of being consistent, logical, or principled.

I'm just glad to see public opinion shifting in aggregate toward a more balanced position.

I researched several polls on the subject. The reason for much of the contradictory opinions are the poll questions them selves.

There was a piece on NBC news web page earlier this week or late last week comparing two polls. One was a CNN poll, the other I don’t recall but they attributed to the way the questions were phrased also.

I would Google it for you but I know you can find it and don’t have to go through all the German language threads to find it.