Newsweek confirms massive data mining effort triggered warrantless wiretapping showdown.
Newsweek confirms massive data mining effort triggered warrantless wiretapping showdown.
Newsweek reported over the weekend that “two knowledgeable sources” confirmed that the 2004 clash between the White House and the Justice Department over the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program was triggered by the NSA’s “vast and indiscriminate collection of communications data“:
These sources…describe a system in which the National Security Agency, with cooperation from some of the country’s largest telecommunications companies, was able to vacuum up the records of calls and e-mails of tens of millions of average Americans between September 2001 and March 2004. [...]
The NSA’s powerful computers became vast storehouses of “metadata.” They collected the telephone numbers of callers and recipients in the United States, and the time and duration of the calls. They also collected and stored the subject lines of e-mails, the times they were sent, and the addresses of both senders and recipients. … All this metadata was then sifted by the NSA, using complex algorithms to detect patterns and links that might indicate terrorist activity.
The Justice Department concluded, over White House objections, that the data mining operation constituted “electronic surveillance” and as such was in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Ultimately, the disagreement led to the now infamous confrontation at Attorney General John Ashcroft’s hospital bedside.
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Outrageous as this revelation is, part of me is happy to know that some drone at NSA probably got to read my private emails expressing my opinions about what an incredible d*ckhead Chimpy McFlightsuit is.
December 15th, 2008 at 11:18 amWe are ALL on the ‘terrorist watch list’ for chimpy bashing.
Hey, NSA;
UP YOURS!
December 15th, 2008 at 11:35 amWe have nobody to blame but ourselves. What a country of pussies we are.
December 15th, 2008 at 11:41 amSo now we know what we knew we knew, to paraphrase Rummy. What we also know is the Gang of Eight knew what we knew, and kowtowed to the Administration, once again failing in their duty to uphold the Constitution and defend the United States against “all enemies….”
December 15th, 2008 at 11:43 amWouldn’t it be great if all this got investigated and prosecuted? In a better world, perhaps.
December 15th, 2008 at 11:54 amImagine where we could be in the standing of the world if we spent the money of these paranoid agencies on education.
December 15th, 2008 at 12:12 pmHas anyone ever ran a cost-benefit on what has been spent and what has actually come out of this paranoia?
Big government getting bigger, that’s all.
No product to offer in return, just fear.
Get James Bamford’s perspective on this–he knows the NSA better than anyone (in the public arena). NSA has been doing this for decades, they just get to do it more and with more data to sift through.
As is ‘Six Degrees’ shows,anyone can be connected with anyone else in six steps, given sufficient information. All it takes is someone with an agenda to ‘make sense’ of those connections and act upon them, no matter how coincidental they might be.
December 15th, 2008 at 12:13 pmThe National Survelliance Assosciation.
The claim is senseless: “They collected the telephone numbers of callers and recipients in the United States, and the time and duration of the calls. They also collected and stored the subject lines of e-mails, the times they were sent, and the addresses of both senders and recipients. … All this metadata was then sifted by the NSA, using complex algorithms to detect patterns and links that might indicate terrorist activity”
According to this claim, they took a small amount of information. However, just having the little info they claim here is far from sufficient to establish any kind of patterns of any kind of illegal information. Times of phone calls only? JUST the subject lines of e-mails? Big fat BULLSH!T!!! That is not relevant data for anyhting. They listened in and have recordings of phone calls (and then the program sifts the recordings for a variety of recognizable keywords), they also have the complete e-mails that they scooped up, and in the same manner, the program looks for key words, and flags anything that contains those words or phrases.
NSA: enemies of freedom, deniers of Americans rights.
December 15th, 2008 at 12:13 pmComplex algorithm:
Find Democrat. Jail that person.
December 15th, 2008 at 12:17 pmWe the people of the United States, in order… uh gee. I guess it doesn’t matter much. It seems like there are very few of us left that actually care about the U.S. Constitution. Criminals are allowed to shred the rights and freedoms of the people without any repercussions. The supposed watchdogs ignore their sworn duty to uphold and protect those rights. Is it time to dust off another document that has been mothballed by those in power? The whole document is relevant, especially this:
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government
December 15th, 2008 at 1:13 pmHas everyone in the comments already forgotten that the NSA couldn’t have done this if their lapdogs at AT&T et al. hadn’t driven up the truck and unloaded all the data without so much as asking to see some sort of warrant?
December 15th, 2008 at 1:48 pmAnd that the Congress has now officially made it illegal to hold them accountable?
Have we got a great Constitution, or what?
Getting this publicized is way overdue. Every email, blog, phone call, chat, text message and any other digital communication has been recorded for quite some time. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve been copying files from computers by bots that are not detectable (it’s all National security, remember?). Also would bet Google algorithms or something very similar are being used to search for key words, etc. Why doesn’t anyone remember Big Brother? He was just a bit ahead of the right year.
December 15th, 2008 at 1:51 pmmyroro says: Have we got a great Constitution, or what?
It is not the Constitution, it is the lack of integrity of those that swore to uphold and protect it – and those that voted for those scum.
December 15th, 2008 at 1:51 pmWaltB. Yes, Eric Blair was ahead of his time. I would imagine even he would be shocked at what has been/is happening.
December 15th, 2008 at 1:54 pmThe same issue of Newsweek has a great piece on the whistleblower in this case.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/174601/output/print
Guess how the Bush administration reacted?
December 15th, 2008 at 2:13 pmFunny, it turns out that all the terrorists were in the White HOuse…
December 15th, 2008 at 2:40 pmIt is worse then you can imagine. Just a few months ago it came out that they collected so much information, so much useless information that they have no way to listen to it all.
If they listened for years could not possibly connect any dots. And they have learned nothing of value after breaking the law. And if that is not bad enough, the idiots listening have been swapping tapes and getting off on the personal stuff they hear.
And on top of all of that, they are building a facility in Texas to house all the billions of information they have because they have run out of room. I cannot help wondering just why they keep so much? If indeed they claim to dispose of all that irrelevant stuff, why hold onto it? How difficult is it to hear nothing and then burn the tape? Will that warehouse of private information be as well guarded as the government computers that are broken into or lost information that comes out so frequently?
For unscrupulous persons this information is a goldmine of opportunity for business and personal blackmail. Hey, we have had 8 years of lessons in paranoia. And the unthinkable has now become the norm under a Republican administration.
Go ahead and tell me it cannot happen.
December 15th, 2008 at 2:57 pmThis is really chilling.
December 15th, 2008 at 4:06 pmGee. That means that they have all of that email, back and forth, between me and Dobson over at Focus on the Family. ;-)
December 15th, 2008 at 7:05 pmWait for the floodgate to open regarding the doings at NSA after 1/20/2009.
December 15th, 2008 at 8:20 pmDavidHart Says:
Gee. That means that they have all of that email, back and forth, between me and Dobson over at Focus on the Family. ;-)
You can make up for it by sending him a nice email Christmas card. All will be forgiven, that’s the Christian way, of cause.
December 15th, 2008 at 8:23 pm