While I was out
Looks like the .gov is compiling phone records on a colossal scale. Dude, this crap has to stop.
And it looks like things are going well at the Gun Blogs, so head over there for your gun blog fix.
17 Responses to “While I was out”
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May 12th, 2006 at 12:43 pm
They started compiling those records back in the late 1990s. (Who was President then?) They also don’t compile any specifics. They basically have lists of phone numbers, the phone numbers they called, and the time/date stamp.
Seems pretty harmless.
May 12th, 2006 at 3:39 pm
All numbers are needed — Please
See http://www.theothersideofkim.com/ The Database Cluebat
May 12th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
:sigh:
I deleted Scalzi today ’cause he went off on this, then went off on his commentors who – respectfully – disagreed with him.
I hope you don’t.
I like reading your site.
70%+ of the country has BDS (‘self included). I am hopeful that the smarter ones will take their meds and count to ten before they hit “publish” or “submit comment”. Really.
May 12th, 2006 at 5:07 pm
You used to need a warrant for that shit. Although I will have to admit it was much easier to get a warrant for a “pen register” (something that recorded every digit that was dialed by on a phone line) than it took to get a warrant to record both sides of every single call, but a warrant was still called for.
Essentially Bush & Co have gotten the equivalent of a pen register for almost every single phone in the USA, without a warrant. And some people are cool with that. WTF?
I’d really like to hit the other-side-of-Kim upside the head here with a clue-by-four. He’s armpit deep in supermarket data mining and claims no clue how the data could be misused.
On the supermarket barcode thingy, one of the most effective workarounds I know of is to go through the auto-till / u-scan-it thingy and start plugging in your co-workers’ home phone numbers. As a bonus, you get to see which ones are total tools.
May 12th, 2006 at 5:41 pm
It was reported by the NYT back in December. It is being recycled now to demonstrate that they can effect the appointment of the CIA director. The whole point of this is for the MSM to point out to the politicians that *they* control *us*, and thereby can effect public policy.
This isn’t new news. This is people allowing themselves to be manipulated for political positioning.
We lost in Vietnam because we allowed the Media to manipulate us and dictate policy to the government. Don’t let it happen again.
May 12th, 2006 at 7:17 pm
I might be wrong about that “pen register” warrant thingy, (I’m checking out Smith v. Maryland 1975) but I still maintain that there is a fundamental difference between slapping one pen register on one phone line where you might have a reasonable suspicion, and opening up wide and just sucking down everyone that the brownshirts over at Verizon & Co. are willing to hand over.
_Jon, if what you say is true, I’d sure like to spread the word. Got a linky? Regardless of whether or not it’s recycled, it’s still freaking wrong though.
May 12th, 2006 at 7:39 pm
They also don’t compile any specifics. They basically have lists of phone numbers, the phone numbers they called, and the time/date stamp.
and of course, you can’t get a name/address/etc. from a phone number..thats just impossible.
Seems pretty harmless.
lets have the feds register every single gun, with balistic finger-printing, and have each shot fired by any gun reported to the feds via a wireless device in every gun sold. That sounds pretty harmless to me.
May 12th, 2006 at 8:54 pm
Manish,
What’s gun registration with balistic finger-printing got to do with phone records? It’s like this. The phone company already tracks all your calls for umm.. oh I dunno.. billing purposes. You can even log into their website and see all your calls. They even write them down on pieces of paper and ship them to you using government couriers. They also use that information for marketing, et. al. They also keep records for a set period of time to comply with the CALEA act and provide details to law enforcement, should they need it to investigate fraud, missing persons, etc.
What strikes me as odd is the furor over this non-story. The sheer volume of data means the government can’t do much with it. It would take an army of people to monitor your phone calls.
What the can do is match the lists of numbers against those of known terrorists. In other words they throw all the data into a computer, which rings alarm bells whenever a known terrorist phone number is found. After some analysis, the feds decide whether or not to pursue monitoring of said conversations as part of fighting the war on terror.
Can they get your name and address from a phone number? You betcha. But so can I. So what’s the point?
May 12th, 2006 at 10:02 pm
Ravenwood..the fact that the phone company keeps track of this already is not the point..the point is that its not ANY OF THE GOVERNMENTS FUCKING BUSINESS who I call. Your local range keeps track of who comes by to shoot as well, and its equally none of the governments business to know when you’ve gone to the shooting range, unless they get a warrant for that information.
What the can do is match the lists of numbers against those of known terrorists. In other words they throw all the data into a computer, which rings alarm bells whenever a known terrorist phone number is found.
Give me a fucking break. Then go to court and GET A WARRANT for the phone records of just those terrorists. Why do they need records of everyone phone call in America to go after terrorists if they’ve got their phone numbers already.
May 12th, 2006 at 11:15 pm
They don’t need a warrant, because the 4th Amendment is not implicated here. You have no privacy right in your phone records.
May 13th, 2006 at 1:36 pm
SM, did you read Ravenwood’s first post? Clearly it matters not that:
“During the 1990’s under President Clinton, the National Security Agency monitored millions of private phone calls placed by U.S. citizens and citizens of other countries under a super secret program code-named Echelon.
. . . the NSA had been monitoring private domestic telephone conversations on a much larger scale throughout the 1990s – all of it done without a court order, let alone a catalyst like the 9/11 attacks.
In February 2000, for instance, CBS “60 Minutes” correspondent Steve Kroft introduced a report on the Clinton-era spy program by noting:
“If you made a phone call today or sent an e-mail to a friend, there’s a good chance what you said or wrote was captured and screened by the country’s largest intelligence agency. The top-secret Global Surveillance Network is called Echelon, and it’s run by the National Security Agency.”
NSA computers, said Kroft, “capture virtually every electronic conversation around the world.”
Echelon expert Mike Frost, who spent 20 years as a spy for the Canadian equivalent of the National Security Agency, told “60 Minutes” that the agency was monitoring “everything from data transfers to cell phones to portable phones to baby monitors to ATMs.””
See NewsMax.com, December 18, 2005.
None of that seems to matter, especially to the MSM. It’s so damn tiring listening to this continuous drone play on and on and on… That regardless of what it is – good, bad or indifferent – the spin is negatively blasted and aimed directly at the Bush Administration. I mean, come one, we all know how perfect our eight years was with the Clinton Administration. Um hmm. Yeah, right.
Oh yeah – Standard and Manish – I saw Peter Pan and Mary Poppins today – they asked me to tell you hello for them!
May 13th, 2006 at 4:24 pm
Ah, the perennial (and perennially non sequitur-ish) “Oooh! You must be a Clinton lover, then!” argument.
Gimme a frickin’ break already. It was wrong when that sleazebag did it, and it’s just as wrong now.
May 13th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
Ah, the perennial (and perennially non sequitur-ish) “Oooh! You must be a Clinton lover, then!” argument.
Is that the argument she’s making? damn! Well then, I didn’t have a blog back then, but I was plenty pissed about Echelon (heck, I still am) I also sent plenty of emails with keywoods like:
Rewson, SAFE, Waihopai, INFOSEC, ASPIC, MI6, Information Security, SAI, Information Warfare, IW, IS, Privacy, Information Terrorism, Terrorism Defensive Information, Defense Information Warfare, Offensive Information, Offensive Information Warfare, The Artful Dodger, NAIA, SAPM, ASU, ASTS, National Information Infrastructure, InfoSec, SAO, Reno, Compsec, JICS, Computer Terrorism, Firewalls, Secure Internet Connections, RSP, ISS, JDF, Ermes, Passwords, NAAP, DefCon V, RSO, Hackers, Encryption, ASWS, CUN, CISU, CUSI, M.A.R.E., MARE, UFO, IFO, Pacini, Angela, Espionage, USDOJ, NSA, CIA, S/Key, SSL, FBI, Secret Service, USSS, Defcon, Military, White House, Undercover, NCCS, Mayfly, PGP, SALDV, PEM, resta, RSA, Perl-RSA, MSNBC, bet, AOL, AOL TOS, CIS, CBOT, AIMSX, STARLAN, 3B2, BITNET, SAMU, COSMOS, DATTA, Furbys, E911, FCIC, HTCIA, IACIS, UT/RUS, JANET, ram, JICC, ReMOB, LEETAC, UTU, VNET, BRLO, SADCC, NSLEP,
Not that I think that’s really effective, as it’s proably easy to filter stuff like that out, but still, the fun just never ends, or something like that.
Beth, I’ve got daily concerns about the abuses and overreach of our great nation’s Fed-Goons and those concerns do not wain depending on whether there’s a R or a D in the white house.
BTW, this part:
NSA computers, said Kroft, “capture virtually every electronic conversation around the world.”
…
…agency was monitoring “everything from data transfers to cell phones to portable phones to baby monitors to ATMs.”
I know enough about radio waves and manpower and technology that the likelihood of the spooks managing to listen in to everyone’s unscrambled analog devices back in the eighties is zilch. Having myself listened to cell phones, portable phones, and other people’s baby monitors on my scanner, I know the manpower is not trivial. Plus waking up for the baby’s 3am feedings gets old pretty fast (but they do tend to have really sensitive microphones).
In other words, this guy was a fertilizer salesman.
(could someone explain the Peter Pan and Mary Poppins reference?)
May 13th, 2006 at 5:10 pm
Manish:
Me, too, if we were living in a parallel universe where no one wanted to ban or severely restrict gun ownership. We are in that parallel universe WRT phones.
May 14th, 2006 at 7:54 pm
X..The whole “we must oppose anything that our opponents support because it will make them stronger” deal is silly IMHO. Good policy stands on its own and bad policy should die a quick death. If all of those things were implemented, it would further strengthen the argument against gun control. i.e. “Why do we need gun control when the feds already know whenever a bullet is ever fired?” A number of pro-gun folks have used the fact that machine guns are already banned under NFA as an argument against the AWB.
May 14th, 2006 at 9:06 pm
Beth…
“They that will sacrifice essential liberty for a little temporary security will get neither liberty nor security”
-Peter Pan and Mary Poppins
May 14th, 2006 at 9:13 pm
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