We’re talking about hanging people over phone calls… Just seemed a bit extreme to hang people over it.

I thought you were Pro-Life?

Comment by unbelievable —

I am. Hanging a few crooked left wing lawyers would save millions of lives and billions of dollars. The death penalty is a good thing and those two positions are not in the least incompatable.

I thought you were Pro-Life?

Date: Sat, 13 May 2006 18:45:20 -0400 (EDT)
From: ecenter@verizon.com
Subject: RE:Verizon.com Consumer email response

Dear F. Rice,

Thank you for contacting the Verizon eCenter. My name is Valerie, and I will be handling your request today.

This message is in response to your email dated May 12, 2006. You inquired about the NSA news article. I will be happy to assist you.

We appreciate that the USA Today article and other reports about the possibility that the NSA is able to analyze local call data records is causing concern. Please be assured that Verizon places the highest value on protecting the privacy of our customers.

Anything to do with the NSA is of course highly classified, so we can not comment on whether or not the news article causing concern is even accurate. But we can say that, to the extent that we cooperate with government authorities, we are confident that we are complying with all applicable statutes. We appreciate the continuing opportunity to provide you with service.

Thank you for using Verizon. We appreciate your business.

Sincerely,
Valerie
Verizon eCenter

Did they just lie to me?

this guy is just another bush hack… he has a ph.d. in military history, but, has never set foot in a law school.

odd, that cnn and wp would trot this prick around as if he knew what he was talking about. it is simply amazing!!!

It would depend on how the FCC (I believe the wire story TP linked to said they were the ‘deciders’ to borrow from Bush) interprets and assesses those penalties. I would imagine they would cap it at 1.25mil as they are Bush appointees mostly.

Of course, we can sue the government or individuals (Hayden comes to mind…scary that he’s going to get confirmed) but it’s doubtful that would progress to trial simply because of the ‘national security implications’ – something they’d bring up.

The whole thing is unfair, but in the end it is *PEOPLE* that should be held *RESPONSIBLE*. That goes all the way up to Bush, despite his ‘CEO’ style (he’d be leading a withering, lossmaking firm if he was in the private sector and if it was listed he’d have been sacked).

Financial penalties are nice, but that’s not the real issue except to pressure Telcos. The real issue is getting some accountability.

Oh, *Judd* I’ve been busy but perhaps you should look at the annual reports for the companies or call their investor relations departments. Their classified contracts are generally publically announced to shareholders albeit only the value of the contract (this is actually what got Qwest’s CEO in trouble with regard to insider trading – hmm around the time he was refusing to cooperate with the govt….) – because of the contract being awarded.

Look for the amounts pre-01 and post-01. You can extrapolate (you would need to take into account mergers) how much of an increase they have been given. (and how much Qwest has lost). Part of the gain will be attributable to the program in question, probably on the order of 20-30 percent – the rest would be allowing the govt to tap into their networks at the central stations.

On another note, you CANNOT form CONCLUSIONS about telephone records without OTHER DATABASES. Relational statistics REQUIRES something to compare that to or the results would be meaningless (look at SAS or SPSS’s software for example which is used for datamining and they both have classified contracts). You MUST have things like BUYING HABITS, TRAVEL HABITS, etc to make ’sense’ of this stuff.

It’s likely the NSA is buying more than just telephone records – it’s likely they’re buying credit reports, etc to be able to perform relationships. Otherwise the program would be senseless.

If people realized that their telephone records were being compared to their transaction records I think there would be more of an outcry.

WRONGO DAVID. I have a source who is a Special Agent for ATT&T, they have thousands of them, whom I contacted. I asked him if the NSA was also seeking the data on the called party. His answer was yes. They have been busy as hell checking out every number called on your phone bill, and all other phone bills they have gathered.

So, the NSA has your phone bill which merely shows the date and time and telephone number, plus the duration of the call, and nothing more. But they are mining the information all numbers called also. This gives them the name and address of that person.

This is pretty heavy stuff folks.