From the Mork's Report to Ork Department:
NSA snooping on US phones? Say it ain't so! Anyone who was actually surprised by this should be analyzed by scientists because they are obviously a recently-arrived extraterrestrial. Fear the government that fears you.
One day I'll be able to reflect back from my cell in a political prison and say: see, I told you so.
One day I'll be able to reflect back from my cell in a political prison and say: see, I told you so.
posted by curmudgeon at 07:11
4 Comments:
I find it interesting that CNN gets hot under the collar about this relatively minor quasi-violation of the Fourth Amendment (all it's really doing is giving the NSA a list of origination and destination numbers, not content), but they're quiet as a house mouse about Fast and Furious, which was an obvious attempt to undermine the Second Amendment via federal bullying of private citizens and direct violation of firearm sales laws.
Watch the shells, watch 'em close! Which one is the nut under?
Actually, they also get content. If the destination or origin numbers are interesting to them, they'll analyze the content.
Well, if they get content without a warrant -- and I had not heard that yet -- then it would be a clear violation of several laws, both constitutional and criminal.
However, before we get too wound up about this, remember that it's simply an extension of what the FBI already does on a regular basis. For years they've been walking into businesses, ushering everyone out the door, and locking down the records so they could comb through the details for wrong-doing.
While I understand the impulsive reaction, you have to evaluate it by degrees. Do I have a problem with the Feds looking through millions of phone call transaction records to find a pattern on a "person of interest"? No, not really. The fact that those records originated with a private company is irrelevant to the discussion. See above.
Do I have a problem with the Feds listening to recorded conversations without a warrant for a wire-tap? Absolutely. But I see no evidence of that in this particular little teapot tempest.
There's something else to consider here: information volume. You're an IT guy. Okay, a former one. You have an inkling of how much storage capacity we're talking about to record the conversations of every Verizon customer for even one day, let alone a year -- or ten years. You could fill millions of square feet of warehouse space with nothing but server farms and still not even scratch the surface of the storage requirements for that much data. There's no percentage in it for Verizon -- in fact, it's a losing proposition. Could the government do it? Probably. Are they? Unlikely.
I'm as big a proponent of protecting the Bill of Rights as anyone. But we have to pick our battles, and I see far more egregious violations of privacy and constitutional rights from this Administration. The Patriot Act was a necessary evil; Obama isn't even necessary.
We might have to disagree on this one. Patriot Act was not necessary. But we haven't lived in a free country for many years now. Yes, I know lots about it. That sort of storage is very possible, and quite likely. Storage is cheap. One commercial company turned a missile silo into a commercial data disaster shelter, with plenty of storage to last a lifetime. I have experience with network sniffing, and I know people who do this sort of stuff for a living, too. Data mining is easy, even a monkey could do it, because it is automatic and run by software. Fire and forget, and see what pops out. Failed to stop the event in Boston, because the NSA wasn't looking for foreign enemies, but internal, American ones. Enemies of the State. I am also connecting dots here. By themselves, any one of the 'scandals' in the news are no big deal. But part of my education was to look for patterns and make connections. I am making one here. I hope I am wrong, but fear I am not.
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