(h/t commentor Ash Can)
Nothing to see here, move along, citizens! Charlie Savage and Edward Wyatt, at the NYTimes:
U.S. Is Secretly Collecting Records of Verizon Calls
The Obama administration is secretly carrying out a domestic surveillance program under which it is collecting business communications records involving Americans under a hotly debated section of the Patriot Act, according to a highly classified court order disclosed on Wednesday night.The order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in April, directs a Verizon Communications subsidiary, Verizon Business Network Services, to turn over “on an ongoing daily basis” to the National Security Agency all call logs “between the United States and abroad” or “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.”
The order does not apply to the content of the communications.
Verizon Business Network Services is one of the nation’s largest telecommunications and Internet providers for corporations. It is not clear whether similar orders have gone to other parts of Verizon, like its residential or cellphone services, or to other telecommunications carriers. The order prohibits its recipient from discussing its existence, and representatives of both Verizon and AT&T declined to comment Wednesday evening…
The collection of call logs is set to expire in July unless the court extends it.
The collection of communications logs — or calling “metadata” — is believed to be a major component of the Bush administration’s program of surveillance that took place without court orders. The newly disclosed order raised the question of whether the government continued that type of information collection by bringing it under the Patriot Act…
For several years, two Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and Senator Mark Udall of Colorado, have been cryptically warning that the government was interpreting its surveillance powers under that section of the Patriot Act in a way that would be alarming to the public if it knew about it.
“We believe most Americans would be stunned to learn the details of how these secret court opinions have interpreted Section 215 of the Patriot Act,” they wrote last year in a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.
They added: “As we see it, there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows. This is a problem, because it is impossible to have an informed public debate about what the law should say when the public doesn’t know what its government thinks the law says.” …
More detail at the link.
mike with a mic
Does anybody have a link to Major Kong’s diary’s over at KOS? Wanted to show a friend something.
? Martin
Hmm. We actually know pretty well what they are collecting. It’s calling number at each end, calling time, calling duration, and approximate caller location at each end. It includes IMSI and IMEI information. It doesn’t include the content of the call. The warrant was issued due to the Boston bombings.
There’s no name, address, billing info, or anything else. They need an individual warrant to get that information.
Basically they’re doing a massive node analysis and if they see nodes that connected with the bombers, they’d then issue an individual warrant for the phone records of the persons that connected with the bombers. I’m not quite sure what the outrage is over this. Google has been doing much worse than this for a decade now. Facebook and Twitter are trying to do the same.
Ted & Hellen
It is racist to question this Verizon thing.
gussie
If you’re not guilty, you’ve got nothing to hide. And honestly, they’ve just got our DNA sequence and metadata of every call we’ve made or received. What could possibly go wrong?
(Actually, the most alarming thing is that two senators imagine that the American public will be ‘stunned’ by this. It’s not friggin’ Game of Thrones.)
The prophet Nostradumbass
@mike with a mic: Try Here.
eclecticbrotha
Greenwald is trolling you. Again.
Amir Khalid
@Ted & Hellen:
I give this comment a grade of D – . You’re not even trying, T&H.
gussie
@? Martin: Ten bucks says someone’s already writing the screenplay where the NSA agent plugs in her husband’s phone number to see which nodes are connected, expecting evidence of an affair–and because what the hell, everyone in the office is doing it–and instead uncovers a conspiracy …
The prophet Nostradumbass
@gussie: THE NET 2: THIS TIME IT’S PERSONAL
ETA: If you want to watch something trippy featuring people with all-powerful cellphone technology, there’s this anime series called “Eden of the East”. I’m not a huge anime fan, but I liked that.
gussie
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Very nice! I just _knew_ that ‘HER HUSBAND’S LOG’ wasn’t a million-dollar title …
The prophet Nostradumbass
@gussie: Heh, yeah, there’s a couple of problems with that title :-)
David Koch
Meh.
Even the liberal Russ Feingold supported this.
mclaren
In other related news, “Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media — Military’s ‘sock puppet’ software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda,” The Guardian, 17 March 2011. I’m pretty sure that the online identities Omnes Omnibus and eemom and mnemosyne on this forum are actually army privates getting paid to publicly defend and applaud the various ways America currently shits on the constitution, from extrajudicial assassinations to drone murders of innocent children to the complicity of Democrats in destroying the constitution with atrocities like the USA Patriot Act, the original version of which was authored by our current vice president, Joe Biden.
John Kirkiakou, former CIA official sentenced to three years in federal prison for the crime of revealing American torture, writes a letter from prison detailing some of the fun he’s been having. Turns out they put him in the same cell with an imam and told the imam that Kiriakou was an assassin sent to kill the guy. Nice touch: try to get the political prisoners to kill each other, then execute the one left alive “because he was out of control and dangerous.” Reminiscent of the gladiator games the prison guards held between prisoners at the Corcoran state prison at California. When the gladiator match got out of control, the guards executed the survivor.
Oh, and it’s highly likely that burnspbesq is also a sock puppet for some low-level army pfc paid to ridicule these NSA eavesdropping reports.
Eemom, burns, omnes omnibus, mnemosyne: they’re just not paying you enough. You guys need to do a better job. Study the methods of the KGB. Those guys did a seamless job. When they set up a political dissident, the setup was airtight. When they censored information, the information really and truly stayed censored.
Yatsuno
@The prophet Nostradumbass: I have not seen that yet. I have no excuse, it’s on Netflix.
@mclaren: That is serious comic gold right there.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Yatsuno: I’m hurt. The person who gave me my name, “Nostradumbass”, chose to leave me off their current list of Juche adherents.
JWR
Please, everyone: can we please just ignore T&H? Thx.
mclaren
John Robb at Global Guerillas has an article about how mobile cyberweapons and/or synthetic bioweapons could eventually live off the land for years as the technology develops.
The ultimate mobile cyberweapon would combine a cheap tiny portable DNA analyzer with a DNA synthesizer and generate deadly retroviruses in response to detected mutations among the target population that make it immune to bioengineered diseases. Of course, when we deploy those kinds of things, it’s game over for the human species.
Coming soon from DARPA to an urban warfare theater of combat near you…
Yatsuno
@The prophet Nostradumbass: You’ve been demoted dude. Time to join the rest of us proles in the ranks of the unwashed.
Carolinus
2011 Patriot Act Extension Roll Call,
House: http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/112/house/1/376
Senate: http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=112&session=1&vote=00084
A WaPo reporter:
https://twitter.com/thegarance/status/342489081273536512
Obviously the Patriot Act needs to be repealed, but in the coming storm of feigned outrage from various congress-critters I seriously doubt we’ll see the R’s joining the D’s who voted against the 2011 extension.
Yatsuno
@Carolinus: Silly lib. Do you want teh terrists to win? Wolverines dude. Wol. Ver. Ines.
jc
Why just Verizon? Have similar orders gone to other telecommunications carriers”? I already assume that AT&T is handing over everything and that they’re basically an arm of the government at this point. The U.S. public’s privacy is quickly vanishing, or our demographic profiles are the bottom line to the highest bidder. Good thing we can trust our government to never abuse their power.
Joseph Nobles
@jc: Of course they have, quarterly, to all of them ever since the Patriot Act was passed. Thanks, Obama.
Cacti
@Carolinus:
Less than half of the Senate D’s voted nay. Sailed through with a veto-proof majority.
? Martin
@jc:
It might have gone to others, but given that the timing of this appears to coincide with the Boston bombing, it might have been specific to some details in that case. If they knew the bombers were using Verizon, they wouldn’t need to go any further.
But how has your privacy been violated?
Carolinus
@Cacti:
It was set to sunset so a filibuster or either house not passing the extension would have done it. Now it would take affirmative action to repeal it, so a tougher slog.
jamick6000
We were warned by Russian intelligence that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was radicalized at a mosque famous for cranking out Chechen jihadists, long before the boston bombing.
So instead of acting on the concrete intel we have before an attack, lets have the NSA collect who everyone in the country is calling, for how long and where they are when they’re talking after the attack happens.
makes sense. as always, great counterterrorism strategy.
jamick6000
thank god most terrorists are teenage idiots because the people we have in charge of trying to stop them are adult idiots
sparky
OMG, you guys! The call is coming from inside the house!
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@jamick6000:
And how do “we” know that we’re not being played by Russian intelligence before the bombings?
jamick6000
i guess they’re not really idiots though, they get a ton of money in exchange for doing almost nothing useful
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@mclaren:
I’m pretty sure that some army private somewhere is puppeting this mclaren character in order to discredit those he listed.
See how that works?
jamick6000
anybody remember a certain president, when he was a senator, who voted to give immunity to the telecoms who helped in warrantless wiretapping? nobody does, i’m sure. just checking in
Xenos
@mclaren: Shit. I am feeling left out now. My authoritarian apologetics are not up to snuff, it seems.
mai naem
I was listening to an interview with Buzz Aldrin where he talked about punching a guy out when he was promoting his book because the guy was harassing him about the moon landing being a fake. Here’s the a youtbe clip:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wptn5RE2I-k
Pity Obama couldn’t do this to the birthers.
And then there’s this clip from the AliG show with Buzz:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BheL-a5Aeis
Fucking hilarious.
A
Baud
@Xenos:
I know. Here I am giving this stuff away for free!
Svensker
@Carolinus:
Thanks for those links.
If any of my Repub FB folks so much as say a word about Obama’s “tyranny”….
What did they think would happen when they got the Patriot Act?
Svensker
@jamick6000:
I do remember. Obama has never been good on that stuff. He’s no civil libertarian.
lojasmo
@JWR:
It’s like a car wreck.
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren: Weird. When I was in the army, I was well above the rank of private. Also, I don’t like this move by the administration. But, please, do proceed.
lojasmo
@jamick6000:
Know what else he voted for? An amendment that would have stripped the wiretap provision for the bill.
Fucking national security…how does it work?
Suffern ACE is a Basset Hound
@? Martin: at what point does someone tell the NSA to knock it off? Huge node analysis to catch two guys who are already caught? Once they were identified why grab every phone record everywhere?
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus: @Suffern ACE is a Basset Hound:
There seem to be two inconsistent stories out there. One, that it was in response to the Boston bombing. And two, that it was a routine renewal of info collection that has been going on for some time.
evodevo
If I remember correctly, Qwest was the only telecommunications provider that refused to participate in the original data mining. All the others were more than happy to acquiesce. AT&T and the others had been preparing to do so EVEN BEFORE 9/11.
1984, here we go.
cvstoner
Jeez, who could have known that providing the national security agencies near-blanket authority to pretty much do whatever they want would result in a wildly abused system of surveillance?
Cassidy
@mclaren: That’s some grade A batshit. You must be an amazing first date.
LAC
@Ted & Hellen: it is stupid to hang around playgrounds with candy, so stop.
LAC
@mclaren: of couse, your jizz is all over this
Cassidy
Honestly this isn’t any different than the data mining our various intelligence agencies do abroad. We have guys pulling 12 hour shifts in fortified, concrete buildings doing nothing but listening to cell phone traffic. Yes, Mclaren, some of them are Privates.
I guess I don’t see why we are any different? Are we better than someone from another country and therefore more entitled to the illusion of privacy?
cvstoner
@Suffern ACE is a Basset Hound: I guess the real question is who has the authority anymore to tell them to stop. Seems to me they are pretty much running out of control.
Baud
@Cassidy:
That’s not what happened here. They got call data (phone numbers, length of call, etc.), not call contents.
Cassidy
@Baud: So even less than the eavesdropping we do abroad.
Baud
@Cassidy:
I guess. I do think we should expect more privacy protections domestically than abroad. But this particular situation wasn’t wiretapping, and it was done pursuant to a court order, so not warrantless.
I don’t mind a debate on FISA, but our political culture will not get past attacking Obama to get to that point.
Cmm
I hope this is “merely” in response to the bombing but would not be surprised at all if this is just one in an unbroken chain of similar subpoenas going back to the uproar in 2006 when they retroactively legalized Bush admin doing it without subpoena and said, now seriously, guys, you have to go to FISA for this from now on.
It was authoritarian anti-American crap when a Republican admin was doing it, and it is the same thing when a Democratic admin is doing it. And I say this as someone in law enforcement who has used cellphone data to close many a case. Of course we aren’t special like the Feds, we have to subpoena specific information and have a good reason for doing it…
Thomas F
Watching BJ commenters twist themselves into knots justifying the latest revelation that the Obama Administration is consolidating & expanding the National Security State — something they all claimed to hate during the Bush Admin — is my new favorite activity.
Setting the timer on the predictably idiotic posts by Zandar and Imani Gandy that everyone is being hysterical and that this is just SOP. Nothing to see here!
Cassidy
@Baud: On one hand I agree with you. I don’t think our “state” should be activelyrunning roughshod over privacy protections. OTOH, privacy is an illusion and the things people are upset about are things we’ve been doing to foriegn citizens since we figured out you could put a glass to a door.
JWR
@lojasmo:
Sometimes engaging it and/or them can be fun, but for the most part it’s just a tiresome distraction. Speaking of tiresome, I was just reading MoJo, and one of the trolls from my days at FDL, (2006 or so), was being a bother over there. Ah, the life of an internet troll. How depressing it must be.
scott
@Cassidy: Yes, we are. The Founders thought so, and I agree.
scott
Major shout-out and props to this Savage guy. He really seems to be an old-school reporter, ie, actually investigates what our government is up to and tells us about it.
Emma
@Thomas F: Your new favorite activity is to troll this site and make snide comments? Sheesh. What a life you must have. May I suggest the public library? The world at your fingertips!
Keith
They’re just trying to find the whereabouts of Kevin Bacon.
danielx
NSA: We must know everything about you all the time. Everything, all the time. If you have dreams, we want them too.
Us: Why?
NSA: For your own good. Trust us. Of course we wouldn’t let this information be used for anything except protecting you from terrorism. And protecting the nation from menacing Quakers. And…
God help the whistleblower who let this out.
Anya
@Amir Khalid: I give it an F for lack of originality; an F for effort and F for lack of decency.
Anya
@Thomas F: I wonder why you picked on those two FPers, particularly since ABL hasn’t been posting lately, except, two recent posts about reproductive rights? Inquiring minds want to know!!
Joey Maloney
@evodevo: Yes, and if I recall correctly, it was shortly after that refusal that the CEO, in what was the most amazing coincidence in the history of the universe, found himself in Federal court charged with several serious felonies. Damnedest thing.
Cassidy
@scott: So that’s one vote for American Exceptionalism What’s your next trick? Manifest destiny and some blankets?
Anya
I actually fund this news unsettling. It looks like the Obama administration operates out if an irrational fear that they will face another 9/11. This craziness is what drives their national security overreach.
Thlayli
Whatever else the Glennbots want to scream about this, they can’t say the Administration is “out of control”. This action was approved by the FISA court. If you think the rules should be changed, fine. But don’t say that J. Edgar Obama isn’t following the rules.
sherparick
1. I think one can and should assume there are FISA similar orders for Telecom, ATT, Comcast, et al. They just have not been leaked.
2. I guess no one was paying attention in 2008, and again last December, when the FISA amendments were enacted and extended. That is the point of these laws.
Joshua Fast posted these points below. I had posted a similar article. In this sense Greenwald is right, there is little difference between Obama and President Bush’s second term (when Bush became disenchanted with Cheney and Rumsfeld and started actually being President for a while.) Of course, as with “No More Mr. Nice Blog,” I don’t support Democrats for the most part out of love, but because they are the “lesser of two weevils.” http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2013/06/i-give-up-no-im-not-really-giving-up.html#links
1. Congress voted to legalize expansive surveillance powers in 2001 (The USA PATRIOT ACT), 2008 (retroactive immunity for warantless NSA wiretaps in the FISA Amendments Act), and in 2012 (renewing the FISA Amendments Act).
2. Congress declined to force administration transparency/honesty on secret interpretations of the law in 2001 (USA PATRIOT ACT), 2008 (NSA immunity), 2011 (the Wyden amendment to the NDAA, which would have required interpretations not be secret) & 2012 (the similar Markley amendment to the NDAA). Those last two actually got voted down, which means Congress voted to enable secret government legal interpretation.
3. All of the opprobrium you should feel at the government’s ridiculously broad surveillance powers needs to be directed at CONGRESS, which keeps approving them while voting they stay secret.
4. The NSA, despite the broad nature of its warrant request, did nothing illegal, and the supposed illegality of the FISC procedure has not been demonstrated.
5. The information the NSA is collecting is metadata, not content (like a wiretap), and not account names. Uncovering personally identifiable information would require separate warrants to do so. This was a pattern analysis, not really mass surveillance as we traditionally understand it. Anyone who calls this a “wiretap” is probably stupid or didn’t read the order.
6. Judging by the order (and not the media coverage about the order), it seems to have an end date of July 19, sucking up data for the three months before. That would make its effective start date April 19, which is the day Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was arrested in Boston. Not saying there’s a link, but the timing might turn out not to be coincidental.
7. No one will respond to this by voting out their representatives or Senators during the next election because, despite the temporary outcry, Americans (including the Congressmen and Senators who tried to add amendments) don’t care about this very much.
8. None of you will stop voluntarily giving Verizon (or AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, etc.) your personal information out of the fear that they might be legally compelled to hand it over to an intelligence agency through a legal process. Because, at the end of the day, you really don’t care about this very much either. At least, you don’t care enough to go out of your way to change it.
9. Tomorrow is going to be a very ugly day in the media and I’m really grateful I have meetings for most of it.
Svensker
@Joey Maloney:
I remember that, too.
This was my conversation with Verizon when news of the listening first happened under GDub:
Me: “How do you justify handing over my records to the government without my consent?”
Verison rep, outraged: “Verizon would never do that! It is illegal and against our policies.”
Me: “Things have changed, better go ask your boss.”
[I get put on hold. A few minutes go by]
Verizon rep, returning: “We are not authorized to discuss this.”
Me: “So you’re telling me you ARE giving my records to the government after all?”
Verizon rep: “I am not authorized to discuss this. Thank you for your call.” [hangs up]
NickT
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/
sherparick
@Thomas F: Except for being a very concrete example of what a FISA order under the 2008 amendments can do, this is like Captain Reynaud being “shocked, shocked,” that gambling is taking place in “Rick’s Cafe Amercain.” I guess no one was paying attention in 2008, and again last December, when the FISA amendments were enacted and extended. The authority of FISA judges to issue such a broad warrant is the point of these laws.
Greenwald and Ives Smith at Naked Capitalism picked up that President, then Senator, Obama voted for these laws. I think criticism is fair. What I don’t think is correct is the Greenwald/Ralph Nader line is that there is no difference between Obama and what McCain or Romney would have done. In this vale of tears, one does have to choose the “lesser of two weevils.” (I stole that line from a movie.). See also:
thttp://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2013/06/i-give-up-no-im-not-really-giving-up.html#links
By the way, my own Constitutional Law theorizing is that these FISA warrants are far closer in spirit and resemble the “General Warrants” that were the tool of Royal Government prior to 1776 and which Madison, George Mason, and Elbridge Gerry were thinking about when they drafted the 4th Amendment, and are therefore in my opinion unconstitutional despite what FISA says. Definitely more questionable in my mind than swabbing for DNA after a lawful arrest.
Omnes Omnibus
@sherparick: I do think these FISA warrants are Constitutionally suspect. I alsothink the Court got the DNA issue wrong. I would hesitate to bring the FISA warrant issue before the current Court since I think it would uphold the warrants. If a more 4th Amendment friendly Court exists in the future….
weaselone
@Thomas F:
Pray tell, how is this an expansion of the National Security State from what it was under the Bush Presidency when even more broad ranging data was collected without judicial and legislative oversight? Also, I was unaware that the Patriot act which provides the umbrella under which these phone records were obtained was initially passed during the Obama administration. The easiest way to thwart many of these abuses would be to have Congress kill the Patriot Act. I suspect Obama would sign the legislation.
catclub
Does anyone else wonder if this is a profit center for Verizon?
I bet they say: “We will do this, but it costs us money to produce all those records.
Please pay us a fair amount, which we make up by pulling it out of our ass ( and we also will
not accidentally tell about it, hint, hint, nudge, nudge)”
Emma
Has anyone thought about the fact that the government is developing these techniques –data mining, and so forth — as a response to the growth of the linked world? It used to be that the CIA could monitor possible spies by tailing them to drops or whatever — physical means of surveillance. Now all that business can be done electronically, and the government is scrambling to figure out how it will defend against that.
I don’t like it. It makes me squirm. But I will put money on this one. If EVER EVER EVER there’s another major attack, and some scientist out there, or some enterprising reporter shows that the government would have known that “so and so” was a suspect because he used to call Riyadh every two days to talk to someone who was identified as the brother of a terrorist, and that after each phone “so-and-so” did something else, I can guaran-double-damn-tee that a lot of people who are now screaming about civil liberties will be screaming about the incompetent government.
catclub
@weaselone: ” I suspect Obama would sign the legislation.”
I fear he would not.
Davis X. Machina
Democrats fundamentally invented the peacetime national security state, mostly under Truman.
The first Democratic president to propose a national health care system is also the forefather of FISA.
This is the latest episode in a long and equivocal story, going into its eighth decade….
Ruckus
Why does anyone in this(or any other actually) country think they live with any more privacy than what they get by closing their curtains?
LAC
@Thomas F: Says the man whose next favorite activity is finding a room in greenwald’s colon to rent. So your paranoic misunderstanding of the situation is what should be the dominant theme here at BJ? Fascinating…
Forum Transmitted Disease
@mclaren: My concern is not that you are paranoid, but you may well not be paranoid enough.
In that event, the word for this site would be “honeypot”.
handsmile
@Davis X. Machina:
A very fine link, thanks! (and from 2010 as well!) Garry Wills and Rick Perlstein are a formidable duo.
I am struck by how quiet this blog is this morning. I have to think that, like Anya above (#66), more than a few find these revelations to be “unsettling,” regardless of which branch of the US government more deservedly merits our “opprobrium” (sherparick/joshua foust #68).
Steve M.(No More Mister Nice Blog) has well captured my own sentiments on this matter.
Redshirt
New rules for the future: Expect that not only will all your calls be recorded, but all your internet activities and soon enough all your activities outside and perhaps even one day inside.
Total surveillance society. It’s inevitable.
Omnes Omnibus
@handsmile: OTOH people might be busy. It happens.
karen
About two weeks before 9/11, I saw a 60 minutes segment where the NSA had been listening to “chatter” that warned about terrorist activity and how no one was taking the warnings seriously. Do you think that maybe if it had been taken seriously, 9/11 might have been prevented?
Right now the whole thing has become a heads you win, tails I lose situation. It’s a lack of privacy issue and may not be Constitutional if challenged. But if another 9/11 happens and it could have been prevented by NSA monitoring? How would people react then?
When will we reach a point where people realize that you can’t have it both ways? Either security is threatened or privacy is threatened. This is probably as close to a compromise as possible.
Burnspbesq
@mclaren:
That’s really weak. Step up your game, or go home.
LAC
@handsmile: Or maybe we are awaiting all the facts. You know, the things that fall under Greenwald’s “updates” after he realizes that his narrative of events is wrong. He was famous for that at Salon.
Sorry, I am not going to start rendering my garments and howling yet. If we were concerned truly about these issues, Bush would have never had a second term and we would be focusing our anger like a laser beam on Congress regarding the Patriot Act.
But the facts are not bearing out that this is some indiscriminate wire tapping jack booted thug antics by the government and so that is why this thread is not devolving into firedogdumbassery or DKos paranoia.
Burnspbesq
Credit where credit is due: don’t know whether it’s because the Guardian finally gave him an editor or because he actually understands the difference between journalism and punditry, but so far Greemwald’s work on this story has been surprisingly restrained and professional.
I think the over/under on when he loses his shit/reverts to mean is tomorrow.
Patrick
So people have a problem with this, but they didn’t have a problem with the Iraq war or keeping Gitmo open.
Just astonishing!
handsmile
@Omnes Omnibus
Certainly so. It just seemed notable, with such combustible material.
Burnspbesq
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
I’m feeling very discredited. Oh, the pain.
Joel (Macho Man Randy Savage)
Can we fucking kill the Patriot Act already?
kindness
NPR this morning trolled it’s audience into acting like this is only an Obama Administration thing. I swear to god which ever Murdoch clone they put in charge over at NPR has a secret plan to make all liberals hate NPR so that it will eventually die and blow away. Their plan is working the bastards.
@Burnspbesq:
Glenn is pissed because he thought Obama would be different from bush43. Obama is different but not with this issue.
Davis X. Machina
@Joel (Macho Man Randy Savage): 60 votes in the Senate kill, or 5 justices kill?
Burnspbesq
@sherparick:
Ironic that this news comes out so soon after the Supreme Court decision in Clapper.
Bob In Portland
Anyone remember that 2008 FISA debate? It’s sort of like giving a kid a gun. Eventually they pull the trigger. The NSA doesn’t point the gun at itself though.
someguy
I wouldn’t worry about this thing much. They were probably just trying to track down a dangerous web of people who complain about taking off their shoes at airports, and having their demonstrations pushed away from political convention centers.
Cassidy
Also makes you wonder how much of this is devoted to tracking domestic terrorist.
Elie
I dunno — does everyone here expect that the government would never do any surveillance of any kind on phone call records? Do you think that we are so absolutely safe and without cause for suspicision about anything? Are there any examples of when you would find surveillance of phone records acceptable or is all surveillance just BAD? Do you think leaks to the media about such surveillance are an unmitigated good thing or that it could be used by political operatives with un benign motives?
No one wants a police/government surveillance state. But are we going to say that no surveillance is warranted at any time for anything? I don’t think we can say that.
As for NPR — they are completely right winged anymore. Can’t stand to listen to it without cringing.
Mnemosyne
@mclaren:
Man, I wish. I’d have a much better pension in store than the one the Giant Evil Corporation claims they’re going to give me. Plus it would be pretty awesome to be in my early 20s again.
Joel (Macho Man Randy Savage)
@Davis X. Machina: Either/or, but the Senate is an easier row to hoe.
A Humble Lurker
One wonders if this kind of thing has been going on for decades (if not centuries) and the only difference now is we’re aware of it.
Obviously I don’t mean we had computers in the 1800s but I wonder if the government was doing something equivalent and that this really isn’t that big of a change. You know, spying on people, looking into records, sifting through garbage, that sort of thing. (Hello, Red Scare.)
Not defending it. Just don’t think it’s surprising, and I don’t think it’s new; just the technology and reach of it is new. And as far as spying on us goes, recording the length of calls with warrants is actually kind of a relief to me compared to what all else I might worry about.
Doesn’t mean it couldn’t BECOME that way, but I guess what I’m saying is it’s always good to keep ‘what may come’ and ‘what is come’ straight in your mind.
Jay C
@Anya:
“Irrational”?? No way. Look at the shitstorm Congressional Republicans kicked up over the attack on the consulate in Benghazi. Or the (fairly artificial, IMO) flap Administration critics are trying to gin up over the Russian “warnings” about Tamerlan Tsarnaev. There are large numbers of said critics who are just salivating at the chance to “bring down” the Obama Admin., and a major terrorist attack (and, as the Boston marathon bombing shows, it doesn’t have to be on a 9/11 scale) would be just the ticket for them.
“National Security” policy in this country sucks: and no one has clean hands on this: not the Bush Admin, not the Obama Admin, not Congress, not the courts: no one. It’s all well and good to piously decry the erosion of “privacy” rights, but unless and until the public can get over its seemingly near-permanent freakout over 9/11/01, and/or politicians find there is no audience for “ZOMG!! TERROR!! TERROR!!” as a cheap political wedge issue, (and, of course, if the threat of actual terrorism fades away) we’re going to have to live with something of a Surveillance State. At least in this country, controls on the Government’s potential abuses of its powers is theoretically possible. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.
mawado
Please God, in your infinite wisdom, by your divine grace, tell me that Scalia is a Verizon customer.
Cacti
@Jay C:
At this point, I’d say it’s less post 9/11 paranoia than good old American apathy that will keep laws like the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments in place.
How many people will drop their cell phone service over this, or call their Congressman? Maybe a handful. The rest, if they hear about this story at all, will shrug their shoulders and go on watching Honey boo boo or Dancing With the Stars.
JR in WV
@JWR:
Who?
You’re welcome…
JR in WV
@sherparick:
Correct me if I recall incorrectly. But I thought the new DNA swabbing policy applies to anyone stopped by the police, or questioned, or met. Not just people arrested.
I don’t think a novel judicial finding would be needed to DNA swab legitimate arrests. But someone pulled over for speeding or a tail light violation, that’s offensive, and assumes we are all criminals.
Un-American in the extreme. And now I’m guilty for life of disrespecting the LEO community. Goodbye all!
phil
It’s like the government hasn’t heard of throwaway phones.
burnspbesq
@JR in WV:
Consider yourself corrected. The issue in the case was whether it was OK to take DNA samples from people under arrest.
JWR
@JR in WV: Thanks. (See post #3, above, from T&H with a snide remark about the post on the First Lady’s heckler.)
Omnes Omnibus
@burnspbesq: I say it’s spinach and I say to hell with it. That is, I strongly disagree with the majority opinion.
Mnemosyne
I’m trying to figure out if two different stories are being conflated here, because it sounds like the “data mining” in this case is being done specifically in the investigation of the Tsarnaev case. Are police investigating a crime supposed to be restricted to checking phone records of solely landlines in this world where even my mom has gone cellphone-only?
If there is a separate situation here where it’s every Verizon customer’s phone records being handed over wholesale, then I’ll point out that the government is going to run into the same problem I was talking about the other day when it came to collecting everyone’s DNA: computers are only useful for data analysis up to a certain point. After that, you need actual people to review the data and figure out what’s actually been collected and whether anything is actually useful. It makes agencies feel good to shoot a firehose of data at the computer, but the old computer maxim of “garbage in, garbage out” still applies.
ETA: Shorter me — this kind of wholesale data mining isn’t just unconstitutional, it’s useless.
Burnspbesq
@Omnes Omnibus:
I don’t like the result, but I’m not sure the case was wrongly decided given the state of the case law, and the outcome certainly wasn’t a surprise given the trend of the Roberts Court’s prior decisions on standing issues.
Ted & Hellen
@Emma:
Utter bullshit.
All of the information necessary to stop the alleged 9/11 hijackers was out there, known to many different bureaucrats and operatives in various agencies, who for reasons of incompetence, stupidity, arrogance, and simply not giving a fuck, including the Retarded Bush Boy, refused to put together the pieces and stop what was coming. Please tell me how many of them were fired and/or punished/prosecuted. I’ll wait.
The government doesn’t need more fucking information. It needs to use what they already have with some semblance of competence.
different-church-lady
OMG! THE GOVERNMENT IS GOING TO KNOW I ORDERED A PIZZA!
Emma
One thing has nothing to do with another. Read better.
different-church-lady
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Holy crap… you mean they’re running a false false-flag operation?
Omnes Omnibus
@different-church-lady: Don’t believe a thing that guy says. He is a lance-corporal in the Chinese army.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
My favorite part is that I’m apparently part of a secret disinformation campaign, but an actual CIA employee going on national television to lie about the effectiveness of torture is an innocent whistleblower caught up in events beyond his control.
Mclaren is the kind of person who would watch a duck walking across the street and say, “Well, obviously that’s a raccoon in disguise — wake up, sheeple!”
ETA: Actually, that’s not true — mclaren would never bother with a cliche as hoary as “wake up, sheeple!” She would still be convinced that the duck couldn’t possibly be a duck, though.
John M. Burt
Mister President, you cut that shit out right now, you hear me, Sir?
I’m starting to lose my patience.
Bob h
Our vast, post 9/11 national security apparatus has got to have something to do. What else are they supposed t o do?