The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.
The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.
The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.
The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19.
Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered.
The disclosure is likely to reignite longstanding debates in the US over the proper extent of the government's domestic spying powers.
Under the Bush administration, officials in security agencies had disclosed to reporters the large-scale collection of call records data by the NSA, but this is the first time significant and top-secret documents have revealed the continuation of the practice on a massive scale under President Obama.
The unlimited nature of the records being handed over to the NSA is extremely unusual. Fisa court orders typically direct the production of records pertaining to a specific named target who is suspected of being an agent of a terrorist group or foreign state, or a finite set of individually named targets.
The Guardian approached the National Security Agency, the White House and the Department of Justice for comment in advance of publication on Wednesday. All declined. The agencies were also offered the opportunity to raise specific security concerns regarding the publication of the court order.
The court order expressly bars Verizon from disclosing to the public either the existence of the FBI's request for its customers' records, or the court order itself.
"We decline comment," said Ed McFadden, a Washington-based Verizon spokesman.
The order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson, compels Verizon to produce to the NSA electronic copies of "all call detail records or 'telephony metadata' created by Verizon for communications between the United States and abroad" or "wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls".
The order directs Verizon to "continue production on an ongoing daily basis thereafter for the duration of this order". It specifies that the records to be produced include "session identifying information", such as "originating and terminating number", the duration of each call, telephone calling card numbers, trunk identifiers, International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) number, and "comprehensive communication routing information".
The information is classed as "metadata", or transactional information, rather than communications, and so does not require individual warrants to access. The document also specifies that such "metadata" is not limited to the aforementioned items. A 2005 court ruling judged that cell site location data – the nearest cell tower a phone was connected to – was also transactional data, and so could potentially fall under the scope of the order.
While the order itself does not include either the contents of messages or the personal information of the subscriber of any particular cell number, its collection would allow the NSA to build easily a comprehensive picture of who any individual contacted, how and when, and possibly from where, retrospectively.
It is not known whether Verizon is the only cell-phone provider to be targeted with such an order, although previous reporting has suggested the NSA has collected cell records from all major mobile networks. It is also unclear from the leaked document whether the three-month order was a one-off, or the latest in a series of similar orders.
The court order appears to explain the numerous cryptic public warnings by two US senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, about the scope of the Obama administration's surveillance activities.
For roughly two years, the two Democrats have been stridently advising the public that the US government is relying on "secret legal interpretations" to claim surveillance powers so broad that the American public would be "stunned" to learn of the kind of domestic spying being conducted.
Because those activities are classified, the senators, both members of the Senate intelligence committee, have been prevented from specifying which domestic surveillance programs they find so alarming. But the information they have been able to disclose in their public warnings perfectly tracks both the specific law cited by the April 25 court order as well as the vast scope of record-gathering it authorized.
Julian Sanchez, a surveillance expert with the Cato Institute, explained: "We've certainly seen the government increasingly strain the bounds of 'relevance' to collect large numbers of records at once — everyone at one or two degrees of separation from a target — but vacuuming all metadata up indiscriminately would be an extraordinary repudiation of any pretence of constraint or particularized suspicion." The April order requested by the FBI and NSA does precisely that.
The law on which the order explicitly relies is the so-called "business records" provision of the Patriot Act, 50 USC section 1861. That is the provision which Wyden and Udall have repeatedly cited when warning the public of what they believe is the Obama administration's extreme interpretation of the law to engage in excessive domestic surveillance.
In a letter to attorney general Eric Holder last year, they argued that "there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows."
"We believe," they wrote, "that most Americans would be stunned to learn the details of how these secret court opinions have interpreted" the "business records" provision of the Patriot Act.
Privacy advocates have long warned that allowing the government to collect and store unlimited "metadata" is a highly invasive form of surveillance of citizens' communications activities. Those records enable the government to know the identity of every person with whom an individual communicates electronically, how long they spoke, and their location at the time of the communication.
Such metadata is what the US government has long attempted to obtain in order to discover an individual's network of associations and communication patterns. The request for the bulk collection of all Verizon domestic telephone records indicates that the agency is continuing some version of the data-mining program begun by the Bush administration in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attack.
The NSA, as part of a program secretly authorized by President Bush on 4 October 2001, implemented a bulk collection program of domestic telephone, internet and email records. A furore erupted in 2006 when USA Today reported that the NSA had "been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth" and was "using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity." Until now, there has been no indication that the Obama administration implemented a similar program.
These recent events reflect how profoundly the NSA's mission has transformed from an agency exclusively devoted to foreign intelligence gathering, into one that focuses increasingly on domestic communications.
A 30-year employee of the NSA, William Binney, resigned from the agency shortly after 9/11 in protest at the agency's focus on domestic activities.
In the mid-1970s, Congress, for the first time, investigated the surveillance activities of the US government. Back then, the mandate of the NSA was that it would never direct its surveillance apparatus domestically.
At the conclusion of that investigation, Frank Church, the Democratic senator from Idaho who chaired the investigative committee, warned: "The NSA's capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter."
For the lulz:
Quote from Barack Obama »
Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.
Tell ya what bothers me even more than the collections: the "no comments." Yes, no comment --- no accountability.
I can't shake the irony that when I look at Communist China, I see a country where freedom is expanding, only to look back home and see it rotting away.
Wǒ hàipà wǒ de guójiā
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What gets me is where is the outrage is over this?
It's insanity.
The outrage isn't there because a Democrat is in the White House and not a Republican. People still seem to buy into the false reality that Democrats and Republicans are extremely different from each other and that they can't possibly share any similarities. In reality, both parties are one in of the same.
What gets me is where is the outrage is over this?
It's insanity.
To be fair it was just broken last night. I'd say give it a day or two, and we'll be seeing more congressional hearings fired up. I do find it amusing and depressing at the same time that Obama's second term is quickly turning into the biggest mess I've seen in my politically aware life.
Quote from "Dechs Kaison" »
I would be outraged, but I'm too busy trying to figure out which country to move to and how I'm going to do that.
Quote from "Quirkiness101" »
I can't shake the irony that when I look at Communist China, I see a country where freedom is expanding, only to look back home and see it rotting away.
South Korea seems to be doing quite well, too. And I'd be able to find a job there easily. I just need to convince my wife that it's worth doing.
And they have the best internet service (on average) in the world. Of course they are also in easy range of NK's rockets, and rely on the US for military protection, but you can't have everything
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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., likewise pushed back on early criticism. "Everyone should just calm down and understand this isn't anything that is brand new. It's been going on for some seven years. And we've tried often to try to make it better, and we'll continue to do that," he told reporters.
Oh, so you've been doing it behind our backs without us knowing for 7 years? That makes me feel better. Seriously, do these people listen to themselves?
The outrage isn't there because a Democrat is in the White House and not a Republican. People still seem to buy into the false reality that Democrats and Republicans are extremely different from each other and that they can't possibly share any similarities. In reality, both parties are one in of the same.
What does a democrat in office have to do with public reaction? I agree that both parties are really the same (corporate parties) and mainly differ on unimportant issues, but I don't think the public would be going any more or less nuts about this if a republican were in office.
I personally think there isn't a ton of outrage about this because, for the most part, American's are lazy and apathetic and as long as they have their cable tv, starbucks and fast food they really don't care about much else. It's rather sad, back in the 60's people would actually gather and hold real protests when things were f'ed up. Now people just post on facebook and send tweets saying "grrr, I'm mad!" and then go right back to the same crap they were doing before.
The thing I really don't get about this (and really any super invasive surveillance type stuff on a massive scale) is, why do they care? They being the government. Why do they give a flying **** about what the average american is talking about? Why do they care about some dude who's wife wants him to pick up a gallon of milk on the way home from work, or that some teenager is bragging to his friends that he got laid last night, or what random people think about last night's episode of dancing with the stars? How is that crap important to anyone ever?!
And as if that is bad enough, another leak came out as well today, this time talking about a program called PRISM. It basically does the same thing as the Verizon data mining, but goes a step further and actually READS what is said:
The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time.
The highly classified program, code-named PRISM, has not been disclosed publicly before. Its establishment in 2007 and six years of exponential growth took place beneath the surface of a roiling debate over the boundaries of surveillance and privacy. Even late last year, when critics of the foreign intelligence statute argued for changes, the only members of Congress who knew about PRISM were bound by oaths of office to hold their tongues.
An internal presentation on the Silicon Valley operation, intended for senior analysts in the NSA’s Signals Intelligence Directorate, described the new tool as the most prolific contributor to the President’s Daily Brief, which cited PRISM data in 1,477 articles last year. According to the briefing slides, obtained by The Washington Post, “NSA reporting increasingly relies on PRISM” as its leading source of raw material, accounting for nearly 1 in 7 intelligence reports.
That is a remarkable figure in an agency that measures annual intake in the trillions of communications. It is all the more striking because the NSA, whose lawful mission is foreign intelligence, is reaching deep inside the machinery of American companies that host hundreds of millions of American-held accounts on American soil.
The technology companies, which participate knowingly in PRISM operations, include most of the dominant global players of Silicon Valley. They are listed on a roster that bears their logos in order of entry into the program: “Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.” PalTalk, although much smaller, has hosted significant traffic during the Arab Spring and in the ongoing Syrian civil war.
Dropbox , the cloud storage and synchronization service, is described as “coming soon.”
Government officials declined to comment for this article.
If the mods feel the need to separate this, go ahead, but I feel this is completely relevant to this discussion.
The thing I really don't get about this (and really any super invasive surveillance type stuff on a massive scale) is, why do they care? They being the government. Why do they give a flying **** about what the average american is talking about? Why do they care about some dude who's wife wants him to pick up a gallon of milk on the way home from work, or that some teenager is bragging to his friends that he got laid last night, or what random people think about last night's episode of dancing with the stars? How is that crap important to anyone ever?!
They don't. All that information gets minimized away. They're likely pulling data from this based on selectors linked to targeted entities (and since this is the NSA, those entities aren't US Persons).
I'm not saying all this is hunky-dory, but let's be clear on what they're actually doing at least. They're not collecting actual call content, and they're not retaining or disseminating information about US Persons.
They don't. All that information gets minimized away. They're likely pulling data from this based on selectors linked to targeted entities (and since this is the NSA, those entities aren't US Persons).
I'm not saying all this is hunky-dory, but let's be clear on what they're actually doing at least. They're not collecting actual call content, and they're not retaining or disseminating information about US Persons.
it reeks of a power grab in a post-9/11, post-Boston USA because instead of having solidarity, we **** ourselves collectively and throw our freedoms down the toilet, sagely nodding that THIS time will be different and we'll have all the protections we could ever want if we just give up a little bit more liberty.
Take your monoblack deck, then set aside 14 swamps. Add 4 Creeping Tar Pits, 4 Darkslick Shores, 4 Drowned Catacombs, and 2 Jwar isle Refuge and add 4 Jace, the Mindsculptors. Your monoblack deck is instantly better. Better yet, drop those refuges, throw in some islands and some mana leaks, and lo and behold, you're now playing a real deck. Congratulations. Welcome to the world of competitive M:TG.
it reeks of a power grab in a post-9/11, post-Boston USA because instead of having solidarity, we **** ourselves collectively and throw our freedoms down the toilet, sagely nodding that THIS time will be different and we'll have all the protections we could ever want if we just give up a little bit more liberty.
because, y'know. gotta protect that freedom.
Well, I'm not sure it has anything to do with the Boston attack. According to Sen. Chambliss' statement, this is just a renewal of a warrant that's been active for the past seven years.
Well, I'm not sure it has anything to do with the Boston attack. According to Sen. Chambliss' statement, this is just a renewal of a warrant that's been active for the past seven years.
that's true, however the Boston attack could have been used as an argument for renewal.
Take your monoblack deck, then set aside 14 swamps. Add 4 Creeping Tar Pits, 4 Darkslick Shores, 4 Drowned Catacombs, and 2 Jwar isle Refuge and add 4 Jace, the Mindsculptors. Your monoblack deck is instantly better. Better yet, drop those refuges, throw in some islands and some mana leaks, and lo and behold, you're now playing a real deck. Congratulations. Welcome to the world of competitive M:TG.
But what we need to do is we need to balance that priority with the need to protect the civil liberties and constitutional rights of the American people. And that is the subject of a worthy debate -- that there are people who have a genuine interest in protecting the United States and protecting constitutional liberties -- constitutional rights and civil liberties that may disagree about how to strike this balance. We welcome that debate.
He didn't deny the possibility that the government will go after the people involved in these various leaks.
My thing is, don't spoon feed me any nonsense about "welcoming a debate" (a phrase he used more than three times in his presser today) when the entire program was classified and you did your damndest to keep it that way... I'm beyond done with Obama.
Of course it's classified - if the bad guys know where you're listening, they won't talk there. There are things to be upset about here, but I'm not sure the fact that it's classified is one of them.
Of course it's classified - if the bad guys know where you're listening, they won't talk there. There are things to be upset about here, but I'm not sure the fact that it's classified is one of them.
What I'm asking is this: what kind of "debate" are they "welcoming" when no one outside of the inner circles of government even knows that the programs exist - not even the general details of the programs? And when the Obama administration is trying to arrest anyone who leaks even the generalities of the programs? How is that welcoming a debate?
These are serious 4th amendment violations that we're talking about here.
What is our level of oversight on this government now, when they can violate the constitution, shield it from public view, and then even when it's leaked they refuse to answer to us? What kind of oversight do we have? None.
Of course it's classified - if the bad guys know where you're listening, they won't talk there. There are things to be upset about here, but I'm not sure the fact that it's classified is one of them.
And if the bad guys don't talk, carrying out a massive attack becomes much easier, amirite?
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Except you ignored how he said "they won't talk there."
If they know what channels are monitored, they can avoid them. There will always be ways to communicate.
"Can't stop the signal."
Fair enough, though it doesn't appear that there are THAT many channels that the US isn't covering to begin with.
As an aside, I've been contemplating how people are very quick to talk about how freedoms are worth dying for...but are willing to compromise them in the name of security? Am I the only one who sees a disconnect here?
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For the lulz:
Tell ya what bothers me even more than the collections: the "no comments." Yes, no comment --- no accountability.
I can't shake the irony that when I look at Communist China, I see a country where freedom is expanding, only to look back home and see it rotting away.
Wǒ hàipà wǒ de guójiā
It's insanity.
I would be outraged, but I'm too busy trying to figure out which country to move to and how I'm going to do that.
Pristaxcontrombmodruu!
The outrage isn't there because a Democrat is in the White House and not a Republican. People still seem to buy into the false reality that Democrats and Republicans are extremely different from each other and that they can't possibly share any similarities. In reality, both parties are one in of the same.
To be fair it was just broken last night. I'd say give it a day or two, and we'll be seeing more congressional hearings fired up. I do find it amusing and depressing at the same time that Obama's second term is quickly turning into the biggest mess I've seen in my politically aware life.
I personally say, just follow the trend lines.
South Korea seems to be doing quite well, too. And I'd be able to find a job there easily. I just need to convince my wife that it's worth doing.
Pristaxcontrombmodruu!
And they have the best internet service (on average) in the world. Of course they are also in easy range of NK's rockets, and rely on the US for military protection, but you can't have everything
Oh, so you've been doing it behind our backs without us knowing for 7 years? That makes me feel better. Seriously, do these people listen to themselves?
What does a democrat in office have to do with public reaction? I agree that both parties are really the same (corporate parties) and mainly differ on unimportant issues, but I don't think the public would be going any more or less nuts about this if a republican were in office.
I personally think there isn't a ton of outrage about this because, for the most part, American's are lazy and apathetic and as long as they have their cable tv, starbucks and fast food they really don't care about much else. It's rather sad, back in the 60's people would actually gather and hold real protests when things were f'ed up. Now people just post on facebook and send tweets saying "grrr, I'm mad!" and then go right back to the same crap they were doing before.
In all honesty, the scariest bit for me is not the searching itself but the bipartisan support its recieving on the hill. THAT worries me.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html
If the mods feel the need to separate this, go ahead, but I feel this is completely relevant to this discussion.
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They don't. All that information gets minimized away. They're likely pulling data from this based on selectors linked to targeted entities (and since this is the NSA, those entities aren't US Persons).
I'm not saying all this is hunky-dory, but let's be clear on what they're actually doing at least. They're not collecting actual call content, and they're not retaining or disseminating information about US Persons.
it reeks of a power grab in a post-9/11, post-Boston USA because instead of having solidarity, we **** ourselves collectively and throw our freedoms down the toilet, sagely nodding that THIS time will be different and we'll have all the protections we could ever want if we just give up a little bit more liberty.
because, y'know. gotta protect that freedom.
Well, I'm not sure it has anything to do with the Boston attack. According to Sen. Chambliss' statement, this is just a renewal of a warrant that's been active for the past seven years.
that's true, however the Boston attack could have been used as an argument for renewal.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/06/press-gaggle-deputy-principal-press-secretary-josh-earnest-and-secretary
He didn't deny the possibility that the government will go after the people involved in these various leaks.
My thing is, don't spoon feed me any nonsense about "welcoming a debate" (a phrase he used more than three times in his presser today) when the entire program was classified and you did your damndest to keep it that way... I'm beyond done with Obama.
What I'm asking is this: what kind of "debate" are they "welcoming" when no one outside of the inner circles of government even knows that the programs exist - not even the general details of the programs? And when the Obama administration is trying to arrest anyone who leaks even the generalities of the programs? How is that welcoming a debate?
These are serious 4th amendment violations that we're talking about here.
What is our level of oversight on this government now, when they can violate the constitution, shield it from public view, and then even when it's leaked they refuse to answer to us? What kind of oversight do we have? None.
And if the bad guys don't talk, carrying out a massive attack becomes much easier, amirite?
Except you ignored how he said "they won't talk there."
If they know what channels are monitored, they can avoid them. There will always be ways to communicate.
"Can't stop the signal."
Pristaxcontrombmodruu!
Fair enough, though it doesn't appear that there are THAT many channels that the US isn't covering to begin with.
As an aside, I've been contemplating how people are very quick to talk about how freedoms are worth dying for...but are willing to compromise them in the name of security? Am I the only one who sees a disconnect here?