NSA wants database of every phone call made in the US

James S

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Good, then when 5pm rolls around on my mothers birthday and I still haven't remember to phone her they can call me up and remind me :D

Seriously though, I'm not against giving them whatever they need to stop terrorists, what I'm against is giving it to them with no strings attached and no audit trail.

If they need the database then thats fine, keep the info, but I want very strict and enforceable rules about when and about whom they can look things up. If you want to trace someone, then you better be prepared to go before a judge and get permission to do it.

The idea that they can just flip through this and every other database at will is whats frightening. They are better about rules for privacy data in europe than we are here in the US. We need laws like they have that state that our personal data belong to US and using it for anything else requires our permission for commercial use, or a legal paper trail in the case of the police.
 

bwaites

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Come on guys, if they want it, they already have it.

What do you think all those mega sized dishes are for, watching American Idol re-runs?

They've been able to watch/listen to pretty much everything for a long time. The problem comes in actually analyizing the data. You need lots of people to do that, and they don't have anywhere near enough!

Bill
 
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Zigzago

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What if someone that I've talked to has talked to a "suspicious" person? Am I now on some watch list too?

Where is this going to end?
 

Sub_Umbra

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...The idea that they can just flip through this and every other database at will is whats frightening. They are better about rules for privacy data in europe than we are here in the US. We need laws like they have that state that our personal data belong to US and using it for anything else requires our permission for commercial use, or a legal paper trail in the case of the police.
Right. The laws are at the very heart of this issue. In the States, personal data belongs to whoever collects it and the owner may do pretty much whatever he wishes with it. Contrary to popular belief Americans don't care about their privacy in large enough numbers to do anything about it. Their activism ends after bi***ing about it. I wish that just half of the people who make so much noise about phones being tapped would quit yelling into their cell phones in public places so I wouldn't have to listen in on their conversations...
 

HarryN

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Zigzago said:
What if someone that I've talked to has talked to a "suspicious" person? Am I now on some watch list too?

Where is this going to end?

Yes you are, and guess what - since you are part of CPF, if anyone on CPF becomes a suspect, we all are. I think this is referred to as the "second degree of association" or something like that.
 

bwaites

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Generally, it's a good idea to stay out of the political side of this argument.

I find it funny that the people who complain the loudest often use cell phones. The air is free, and if you can figure out how to listen, it's all out there.

To complain, and then use cell phones seems ludicrous. That goes for using the internet as well!

Bill
 

bjn70

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If they want to listen to my phone calls, they'll just get bored to death. Surely they have something more productive to do with their time.
 

LowBat

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I really don't care if the government can obtain my phone records as its worthless information. What really pisses me off about our government is the poor border security and almost nonexistent interior enforcement.
 

tygger

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from what i read in the article isn't it still a violation of the 4th amendment to get this info without a court approval? something like $130,000 a day per infraction?
anyway, even if the information is useless or one doesn't care about their information, calling habits, etc, being accessed freely isn't there something to be said about the idea of privacy in and of itself, even though many say they don't care about who knows what?
for example, i know i don't carry anything illegal in my pants pockets, but does that mean it would be okay for the gov. to require that everyone's pant pockets be "see through" so that the contents can be easily identified? my point is, just because i'm not hiding anything doesn't mean i don't deserve the right, and it is a right, to basic privacy. in my opinion, the founding fathers of the constitution and bill of rights are rolling over in their graves right now.
 

LowBat

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The 4th amendment is a right far more enjoyed by criminals then those that don't break the law. I hate being a victim of crime much more then I dislike having someone checking to see I'm not committing them.

When the store cleck asks to see my ID when using a credit card, I thank them for asking.
 

Sub_Umbra

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tygger said:
from what i read in the article isn't it still a violation of the 4th amendment to get this info without a court approval? something like $130,000 a day per infraction?
I don't think so. The airwaves have always belonged to the public in the US and anyone may listen to and even record anything that is heard on any of them with the exception of the cellular freqs. Regarding cellular, doddering legislators were duped into banning listening instead of forcing the tellcomms to encrypt, which is what they should have done. As it is with cell phones we have the worst of both worlds -- that portion of the rf spectrum has been taken from those who could always have access to it AND there is absolutely no security in cell phones. It also set a precedent for making any other part of the rf spectrum off limits to the public at any time and for any reason in the future.

Your landline phone conversations have even less security than your cell phone calls because they are not even protected by the toothless threat of prosecution for eavesdroping or recording them. Since the 60s the tellcomms have been using microwave relays for a huge number of phone calls originating from landlines which puts the conversation out as radio transmissions where any govt agency or citizen may eavesdrop or even record them with impunity without any kind of warrant or notice. Once it goes out as a microwave transmission, it's mot much different than listening to a conversation on CB. Do you know for certain that you have ever made a call from a landline that did not make at least one microwave hop before it reached it's destination? I don't. As with many other radio interceptions, laws often forbid revealing the contents of these conversations, but that is small comfort.

In James Bamford's decades old classic, The Puzzle Palace : Inside America's Most Secret Intelligence Organization, he gives a great description of the NSA's use of microwave antennas in which he notes that 48% of all microwave antennas in the States were owned by the NSA, IIRC. Bamford later wrote Deep Black which is another great read on this topic, in spite of his politics.
 
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ledlurker

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Sub_Umbra said:
I don't think so. The airwaves have always belonged to the public in the US and anyone may listen to and even record anything that is heard on any of them with the exception of the cellular freqs. Regarding cellular, doddering legislators were duped into banning listening instead of forcing the tellcomms to encrypt, which is what they should have done. As it is with cell phones we have the worst of both worlds -- that portion of the rf spectrum has been taken from those who could always have access to it AND there is absolutely no security in cell phones. It also set a precedent for making any other part of the rf spectrum off limits to the public at any time and for any reason in the future.

Your landline phone conversations have even less security than your cell phone calls because they are not even protected by the toothless threat of prosecution for eavesdroping or recording them. Since the 60s the tellcomms have been using microwave relays for a huge number of phone calls originating from landlines which puts the conversation out as radio transmissions where any govt agency or citizen may eavesdrop or even record them with impunity without any kind of warrant or notice. Once it goes out as a microwave transmission, it's mot much different than listening to a conversation on CB. Do you know for certain that you have ever made a call from a landline that did not make at least one microwave hop before it reached it's destination? I don't. As with many other radio interceptions, laws often forbid revealing the contents of these conversations, but that is small comfort.

In James Bamford's decades old classic, The Puzzle Palace : Inside America's Most Secret Intelligence Organization, he gives a great description of the NSA's use of microwave antennas in which he notes that 48% of all microwave antennas in the States were owned by the NSA, IIRC. Bamford later wrote Deep Black which is another great read on this topic, in spite of his politics.


I can purchase over the counter equipment to listen in on all types of transmitted info. Why to you think the military encrypts everything? When high ranking officials in security organizations admit in print that they never use email or cell phones and only use secure lines in their own home and advise their kids on how to use a cell phone then that is when you have to take notice.
 

Zigzago

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tygger said:
i don't carry anything illegal in my pants pockets, but does that mean it would be okay for the gov. to require that everyone's pant pockets be "see through" so that the contents can be easily identified?

They won't stop at clear pockets.

"Sir, why are you resisting a routine body cavity search? Are you trying to hide something?"
 

PhotonWrangler

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Fortunately many of those old microwave links are going dark and being replaced by fiber. I personally know of some that have been decommissioned in this area in favor of fiber.
 

tygger

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Sub Umbra,
very interesting. i was always under the assumption (like in the movies) that calling from a land line was very secure. but what you said in you post is pretty disturbing about there being no encryption or security whatsoever for cell phone conversations. i mean, in an age where the majority of people use their cell phones for just about everything, shouldn't this change somehow?
 

IlluminatingBikr

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I'm shocked more people aren't totally upset about this issue. I, quite frankly, think this is ridiculous. I'm appauled. Whatever happened to our 4th amendment rights? Are we sure the 4th amendment even exists?

So maybe technically they can get away with this, I don't know that for sure, but that's not the point. The point is that the federal government is getting away with collecting personal information on it's own law-abiding, private citizens.

If I'm not breaking the law, or there isn't a reasonable suspicion that I am, there is no reason whatsoever for the federal government to be collecting personal information about me, such as who I'm calling, who's calling me, where I am, what websites I view, etc, etc. Where does this end?

As the saying goes, "all that evil needs to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

So maybe you aren't breaking the law, and you "have nothing to hide." As long as you have nothing to hide, are you willing to do a strip search at every public location? C'mon, you're not hiding any weapons, so you might as well comply. Right?

I honestly do not think that violating law-abiding citizens' rights (or what used to be considered rights) is the way to "protect" us. Quite frankly, I'd much rather live with freedom, liberty, and privacy, even if it means that I'm more likely to die a bit earlier.

It deeply bothers me that our civil liberties are being erroded so severely. And for what? Has it really made a difference? We'd like to think that giving up our civil liberties has had some purpose, perhaps saved some lives, but how do we know that?
 
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