Gizmodo: The NSA Forced Verizon to Share Every US Customer's Phone Records

[TheGoodBits]

That was kind of a rude thing to say. And I'm not sure which part of my statement did not make any sense. I only made 2 suggestions that data collection is not useful for stopping the majority of attacks and that data collection is also used for economic gain. I'd gladly explain my reasoning if you wanted me to if there was no personal name calling involved.

It was a joke, hence the "but seriously" part. I would love to hear the reasoning, because I vehemently disagree with the conclusion.

[Mocountyskins]

alright I'll type something up tonight and I will site some sources with links from white house briefings and quotes from speakers on cspann. Keep in mind this is my personal theory and not a belief. So I am able to change my mind based on any counter points you may bring up. But I'm sure that I can dig up something that will surprise you. I am busy right now so check back later tonight.

[JMS]

It is the ultimate orwellian nightmare if actively used as a police mechanism against society, and the fact that it is already going far beyond the terrorist boogeyman propped up to originally justify it, should not be a surprise to anybody.  

 

I don't think it's meant as a police tool.    You just don't need a yottabyte of storage and the largest pool of super computers on the planet  much less the fiber optic backbone eclipsing the internet in order to listen in on some dude trying to look up fertilizer bomb on google.

 

(1) It's used to gather intelligence on countries.   What do there people care about?  How smart are they?  Where is their blind spot?  Who are the decision makers and the trend setters.....   What sources do they use to educate themselves?  How do they stay informed?  

 

(2) Then it is used to run what if scenarios..    What would happen if....   unemployment went up,   we increased or decreased our military footprint in a country/region.   We put a nuclear shield interceptor site there.  Food gets more expensive,  General / PM so and so got caught with a naked girl on his lap...

 

(3)  Finally it is used to measure the success of actions taken.    Did the dictator's popularity go down?   Do the people still like him... Who and how much?    What do they care about?  etc...

 

Think of it as the worlds largest and most powerful opinion polling and sales organization...   One which can orchestrate and tailor their pitch to whatever most touches your soul on a personal basis....but one focused on populations...

[Larry]

Snowden continues with the "uh yeah, no **** Sherlock" revelations. If I googled "how to make a bomb" I fully expect to have intelligence open a special file just for me.

Remember Jose Padilla? The US Citizen we made disappear for several years?

When his disappearance first came out, one of the White House talking points for why they made him disappear was "He ran a Google search on the words "radioactive bomb"".

[Mocountyskins]

So my theory is that the NSA uses data collection for economic gain, possible blackmail purposes and that the data collection is not actually effective in stopping possible attacks. That they are incompetent. Here is just some of my sources that I could find fairly quickly.

 

It's a power that can be easily abused.

Wall Street report: A few NSA officers have abused their powers to look up useless crap on people they want. (This shows that this information has the potential to be used as blackmail material if used irresponsibly)

http://noagendacd.com/wp-content/uploads/september/Love%20Int.mp3

 

Congress

Can invest in anything they want based on information that they know. If the NSA or someone who abused their powers had the ability to retrieve sensitive information on stock tips then surely they would do it. (I think most people could understand this)

0-1:30 http://noagendacd.com/wp-content/uploads/september/Raytheon%20Stock%20Tips.mp3

 

     

In all of these links you will hear quotes directly from the people themselves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW4dCnkk_dE     

 

General Alexander on NSA

 

5:50-8:40  Talks about us needing to protect companies and that is why the NSA exists. (Government has no business "protecting" and influencing the stock market)

 

9:25-9:46  Claims that one of the NSA jobs is to secure the infrastructure of the banks and Iphones.

(See above)

 

11:16-12:45 Talks about how there is so much oversight but it is really all bull crap. (Lies and 0 oversight)

 

13:10-14:00  Compares protecting the county to taking the bath as a little boy. (He is insane)

 

14:30-16:00  Fearmongering (Trying to scare people)

 

17:15-19:34   Says that leaking information causes damage and death and led to 9/11. But in reality it does not. (Says that we lost Bin laden because of some info leak which is bogus and basically that caused 9/11)

 

19:35-20:15  Wants to stop newspapers from "leaking info" and control the news. (am I the only one who finds the offensive?)

 

20:15-21:08  Says that leaks kill people and the NSA should be our hero. (Offensive)

 

Congressional meeting

23:20-25:20  Talks about how the effectiveness of the NSA is actually misjudged by the American public. And that they have lied about how many attacks they have stopped. 

 

General Alexander/World News report/Round table interview

35:00-40:00 Blackmail, insider trading, making a profit, Industrial espionage

 

26:00-27:00 Data collection is a big drag net for possible financial gain

[JMS]

So my theory is that the NSA uses data collection for economic gain, possible blackmail purposes and that the data collection is not actually effective in stopping possible attacks. That they are incompetent. Here is just some of my sources that I could find fairly quickly.

 

 If you are looking to blackmail someone all you need to do is bug there telephone/computer/ and read their email.

 

A yottabyte of data transport and storage is enough bandwidth and memory to store every telephone conversation on earth for 1000 years.   It's way overkill just to survale an individual even a prime minister....  even every prime minister on earth...   Likewise you don't need a super computer to just survale a handful of people..   The NSA currently has the largest collection of super computers on earth and they are standing up an entirely new super computer stable now.

 

In the 1970's the USA was caught destabalizing the government of Australia because we didn't like their socialist PM.   Durring the cold war we toppled governments unfriendly to us in South America and Africa.   Just within the last decade we tried to destabalize and replace Chavez in Venezuala.

 

The NSA's ability to collect all the digital data on a population allows them to use "big data" and model that population.   To best understand it and know how to influence it on a personal grass roots level.  

 

You are right that the opprotunity for abuse is huge.

[Mocountyskins]

 If you are looking to blackmail someone all you need to do is bug there telephone/computer/ and read their email.

 

A yottabyte of data transport and storage is enough bandwidth and memory to store every telephone conversation on earth for 1000 years.   It's way overkill just to survale an individual even a prime minister....  even every prime minister on earth...   

Idk if you listened to any of the clips that I presented in my previous post. If you didn't you should check a few of them out like the "leakers caused 9/11" They are interesting and fun to think about. That's what I like, being able to question everything for myself and thinking for myself instead of MSM garbage spew all the time, which is occasionally correct but at times way off.

 

I do not think that the department has people actively listening to peoples conversations. I view it more as the majority of conversations are recorded and stored in a big database. That way if someone who was interested in anything you had to say could just pull up some past conversations via skype, phone, txt, web browser history etc etc. I'm not saying everyone in the United states is having this happen but the possibility is there to use it that way for some people if wished.

 

I also really do think that it is used for economic gain. If you can record or pull up any messages from stock insiders, members of congress or the elites aka leaders of other countries because lets be honest they all know where the money is going. You could get a bigger picture of the global stock market. You could make billions of dollars by seeing where the money is flowing to and whats going to happen in the near future. It makes sense to me and it seems pretty simple and logical. I don't think it sounds crazy but I've been called crazy which is kind of depressing and hurtful. On a side note I think people have been conditioned to use the label "crazy" or "tinfoil hatty" when they do not understand something and think something is ridiculous. For example one time my friend had a broken phone and I asked him if he was going to sell it because there are websites that will pay you for a broken phone to get to the gold on the circuit board. I was then hit with wtf are you crazy can you hear yourself talk. I thought that was a well known fact. guess not.

[JMS]

Idk if you listened to any of the clips that I presented in my previous post. If you didn't you should check a few of them out like the "leakers caused 9/11" They are interesting and fun to think about. That's what I like, being able to question everything for myself and thinking for myself instead of MSM garbage spew all the time, which is occasionally correct but at times way off.

 

More power to you man.   Nobody knows what the NSA is up too..   We are all just guessing.    I'm just throwing out ideas like everybody else....  Play on.

[visionary]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/31/john-kerry-some-surveillance-gone-too-far

John Kerry admits: some US surveillance has gone too far

 

John Kerry, the US secretary of state, conceded on Thursday that some of the country's surveillance activities had gone too far, saying that certain practices had occurred "on autopilot" without the knowledge of senior officials in the Obama administration.

 

In the most stark comments yet by a senior administration official, Kerry promised that a previously announced review of surveillance practices would be thorough and that some activities would end altogether.

 

"The president and I have learned of some things that have been happening in many ways on an automatic pilot, because the technology is there and the ability is there," he told a conference in London via video link.

 

"In some cases, some of these actions have reached too far and we are going to try to make sure it doesn't happen in the future."

 

In recent days, the Obama administration has put some distance between it and the National Security Agency (NSA). Kerry's comments are a reflection in particular of a concern about the diplomatic fallout from the revelation that the US monitored the cellphone of the German chancellor, Angela Merkel.

 

[visionary]

http://news.yahoo.com/germany-france-spain-carry-mass-surveillance-snowden-files-131011110.html

Germany, France, Spain carry out mass surveillance: Snowden files

 

Spy agencies in Germany, France, Spain and Sweden are carrying out mass surveillance of online and phone traffic in collaboration with Britain, according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the Guardian newspaper reported Saturday.

 

Britain's GCHQ electronic eavesdropping centre -- which has a close relationship with the United States' National Security Agency (NSA) -- has taken a leading role in helping the other countries work around laws intended to limit spying, the British newspaper said.

 

The report is likely to prove embarrassing for governments including those of Germany and Spain, which had denounced earlier reports that the NSA was electronically spying on their citizens.

 

Saturday's report said the intelligence services of the European countries, in a "loose but growing" alliance, carried out surveillance through directly tapping fibre-optic cables and through secret relationships with communications companies.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/world/no-morsel-too-minuscule-for-all-consuming-nsa.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&smid=tw-nytimesworld&partner=rss&emc=rss&

No Morsel Too Minuscule for All-Consuming N.S.A.

 

When Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, sat down with President Obama at the White House in April to discuss Syrian chemical weapons, Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and climate change, it was a cordial, routine exchange. 

 

The National Security Agency nonetheless went to work in advance and intercepted Mr. Ban’s talking points for the meeting, a feat the agency later reported as an “operational highlight” in a weekly internal brag sheet. It is hard to imagine what edge this could have given Mr. Obama in a friendly chat, if he even saw the N.S.A.’s modest scoop. (The White House won’t say.)

 

But it was emblematic of an agency that for decades has operated on the principle that any eavesdropping that can be done on a foreign target of any conceivable interest — now or in the future — should be done. After all, American intelligence officials reasoned, who’s going to find out?

 

From thousands of classified documents, the National Security Agency emerges as an electronic omnivore of staggering capabilities, eavesdropping and hacking its way around the world to strip governments and other targets of their secrets, all the while enforcing the utmost secrecy about its own operations. It spies routinely on friends as well as foes, as has become obvious in recent weeks; the agency’s official mission list includes using its surveillance powers to achieve “diplomatic advantage” over such allies as France and Germany and “economic advantage” over Japan and Brazil, among other countries.

 

 

[Larry]

News flash: The NSA gobbles up everything it can get it's hands on, through any means they can devise. And, once they have it, does whatever it wants, with it.

This is it's mission.  It's the reason it exists. 

[Larry]

Foreign Affairs: Privacy Pretense - How Silicon Valley Helped the NSA

 

Last month, Silicon Valley purported to be shocked by revelations that the National Security Agency (NSA) has routinely accessed the servers of tech giants Google and Yahoo, which store data for hundreds of millions of users. In response, the companies pledged to step up privacy protections. 

 

There is only one problem: Such protections run counter to the business model and public policy agenda that tech companies have pursued for decades. For years, U.S. information technology (IT) firms have actively backed weak privacy rules that let them collect massive amounts of personal data. The strategy enabled the companies to work their way into every corner of consumers’ lives and gave them a competitive edge internationally. Those same policies, however, have come back to haunt IT firms. Lax rules created fertile ground for NSA snooping. In the wake of the surveillance scandals, as consumer confidence plummets, technology companies’ economic futures are threatened. 

 

Since the 1990s, companies from Google to Yahoo and Microsoft have done their best to ward off national privacy rules, calling instead for self-regulation. Early attempts to pass privacy laws, such as the Online Privacy Protection Act in 2000, died thanks to lobbying by the Direct Marketing Association and the Information Technology Association of America, which represent most of the country’s major information and communications technology firms. The firms have stood behind an older 1997 government framework, “Privacy and Self-Regulation in the Information Age,” which maintained that the best way to protect consumers was to let the technology market handle sensitive issues on its own. 

 

More recent efforts at reform have stalled as well. Bills have included the Do Not Track Me Online Act of 2011, brought by Congresswoman Jackie Speier (D–Calif.), a new Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights of 2011, brought by then Senator John Kerry (D–Mass.) and Senator John McCain (R–Ariz.), and the Do Not Track Online Act of 2011, brought by Senator Jay Rockefeller (D–W. Va.). Each has faced stiff opposition from the IT industry. Linda Woolley, vice president of the Direct Marketing Association, has even gone so far as to argue that such legislation would “kill the Internet.”

 

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Wow.  A really nice point, with some really juicy irony laid on top. 

[visionary]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/us/cia-collecting-data-on-international-money-transfers-officials-say.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1384486918-MCxX%20LquNDDHe1U2a4lQsw

C.I.A. Collecting Data on International Money Transfers, Officials Say

 

The Central Intelligence Agency is secretly collecting bulk records of international money transfers handled by companies like Western Union — including transactions into and out of the United States — under the same law that the National Security Agency uses for its huge database of Americans’ phone records, according to current and former government officials. 

 

The C.I.A. financial records program, which the officials said was authorized by provisions in the Patriot Act and overseen by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, offers evidence that the extent of government data collection programs is not fully known and that the national debate over privacy and security may be incomplete.

 

Some details of the C.I.A. program were not clear. But it was confirmed by several current and former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter is classified.

 

The data does not include purely domestic transfers or bank-to-bank transactions, several officials said. Another, while not acknowledging the program, suggested that the surveillance court had imposed rules withholding the identities of any Americans from the data the C.I.A. sees, requiring a tie to a terrorist organization before a search may be run, and mandating that the data be discarded after a certain number of years. The court has imposed several similar rules on the N.S.A. call logs program.

 

[visionary]

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/newly-declassified-surveillance-documents-released

Newly declassified surveillance documents released

 

The National Security Agency reported its own violations of surveillance rules to a U.S. intelligence court and promised additional safety measures to prevent similar missteps over and over again, according to more than 1,000 pages of newly declassified files about the federal government's controversial program of collecting every American's phone records during the past seven years.

 

According to court records from 2009, after repeated assurances the NSA would obey the court's rules, it acknowledged that it had collected material improperly. In one instance, the government said its violations were caused by "poor management, lack of involvement by compliance officials and lack of internal verification procedures, not by bad faith." In another case, the NSA said it improperly collected information due to a typographical error.

 

The intelligence court judge, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, said in the 2009 case that since the government had repeatedly offered so many assurances despite the problems continuing, "those responsible for conducting oversight at the NSA had failed to do so effectively." Bates called his conclusion "the most charitable interpretation possible."