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All Verizon call details given to the NSA

Democracy Simulator

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Democracy Simulator
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The Guardian has obtained a copy of a court order by which Verizon is required to give an electronic copy of all 'call details' from phone calls originating in the domestic US, to the NSA.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/06/verizon-telephone-data-court-order

Is this legal? I thought that security agencies were supposed to present evidence of specific wrongdoing to a judge before data limited to relevant individuals could be requested - this blanket order for all Verizon call details goes way further than that. Are the FBI/NSA requesting this information from all the other carriers?

If it is legal, is it justifiable? The US is increasingly becoming a surveillance state - what legitimate reasons could the FBI/NSA have to justify recording everyone's call details? Is this blanket recording of data by government open to abuses? Is it an unwelcome and unnecessary infringement of privacy that infringes the Fourth Amendment?

The Guardian contacted the NSA, the White House, the DoJ and Verizon and all declined to comment:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order
 
Democracy Simulator said:
The Guardian has obtained a copy of a court order by which Verizon is required to give an electronic copy of all 'call details' from phone calls originating in the domestic US, to the NSA.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/06/verizon-telephone-data-court-order

Is this legal? I thought that security agencies were supposed to present evidence of specific wrongdoing to a judge before data limited to relevant individuals could be requested - this blanket order for all Verizon call details goes way further than that. Are the FBI/NSA requesting this information from all the other carriers?

If it is legal, is it justifiable? The US is increasingly becoming a surveillance state - what legitimate reasons could the FBI/NSA have to justify recording everyone's call details? Is this blanket recording of data by government open to abuses? Is it an unwelcome and unnecessary infringement of privacy that infringes the Fourth Amendment?

The Guardian contacted the NSA, the White House, the DoJ and Verizon and all declined to comment:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order
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I'm pretty sure "call details" simply means the source and destination numbers, the call start time, and the call duration. I doubt that Verizon has the spare storage capacity to record the contents of all calls by default. Even just a complete listing of all their call details, updated daily, would be a lot of data to handle.

The NSA is chartered to defend against external threats; probably the best way to use this info would be to discard all the calls where both the source and destination were in the US, and then sift through the remaining calls to see if any of the foreign numbers match up with numbers on other watch lists (or possibly to populate those watch lists). Based on this kind of analysis, the NSA could probably get a warrant to request that Verizon record specific calls and turn over the recordings.

The world is not a static place. As more and more of the important stuff moves online, and onto cellular networks, it's inevitable that the government will follow it there. It's foolish to think the Internet is some sort of magical place, where important, valuable, dangerous things can be done, without fear of government interest or interference. The Oklahoma Territory was a lawless frontier for a while, too. No doubt a lot of independently-minded folk were butthurt when the federal government started to get more involved there. But nobody today seems to think it's a problem.

My advice? Enjoy your digital frontier while it lasts, but remember: The more value you get out of it, the more valuable it becomes to the government.
 
Checkmite said:
I don't use Verizon so
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Somehow I suspect that doesn't make a difference. This is the only one we know about and it was classified Top Secret. There's probably a similar order for AT&T and other carriers.

As to DS's question, is it legal:

U.S. Is Secretly Collecting Records of Verizon Calls (NY Times)

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 prohibits its recipient from discussing its existence, and representatives of both Verizon and AT&T declined to comment Wednesday evening.
. . .
The order was marked “TOP SECRET//SI//NOFORN,” referring to communications-related intelligence information that may not be released to noncitizens. That would make it among the most closely held secrets in the federal government, and its disclosure comes amid a furor over the Obama administration’s aggressive tactics in its investigations of leaks.

The collection of call logs is set to expire in July unless the court extends it.
. . .
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.”
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So don't assume that it's only a Verizon thing.
 
theprestige said:
I'm pretty sure "call details" simply means the source and destination numbers, the call start time, and the call duration. I doubt that Verizon has the spare storage capacity to record the contents of all calls by default. Even just a complete listing of all their call details, updated daily, would be a lot of data to handle.
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It does not include the 'substantive content', although it does include a few other things that you didn't mention.

The world is not a static place. As more and more of the important stuff moves online, and onto cellular networks, it's inevitable that the government will follow it there.
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Not if we vote for a government that won't follow it there.

It's foolish to think the Internet is some sort of magical place, where important, valuable, dangerous things can be done, without fear of government interest or interference. The Oklahoma Territory was a lawless frontier for a while, too. No doubt a lot of independently-minded folk were butthurt when the federal government started to get more involved there. But nobody today seems to think it's a problem.

My advice? Enjoy your digital frontier while it lasts, but remember: The more value you get out of it, the more valuable it becomes to the government.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure how your 'lawless frontier' analogy stacks up with making phone calls and other private communication. Isn't it reasonable that if security agencies have no reason to regard me as a threat (i.e. having no evidence that I am a threat), that I should not expect that they track the calls I make and the emails that I send?
 
Massive NSA Surveillance of US Population Continues

From today's Guardian:

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.

snip

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.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order

Seems a pretty big abuse of civil liberties for the government to collect such huge quantities of data indiscriminately on millions of citizens - and for it to be conducted in secret. Thoughts?
 
andyandy said:
From today's Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order

Seems a pretty big abuse of civil liberties for the government to collect such huge quantities of data indiscriminately on millions of citizens - and for it to be conducted in secret. Thoughts?
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I've known they do this and also that they intercept and listen to a substantial portion of that traffic. And I've known that since the 1980s. It's not a secret that communications between the US and other countries are monitored by NSA.
 
BenBurch said:
I've known they do this and also that they intercept and listen to a substantial portion of that traffic. And I've known that since the 1980s. It's not a secret that communications between the US and other countries are monitored by NSA.
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I think this is on a far larger scale than anything in the 80s (not least because of the technological changes) - and involving millions (tens? hundreds?) of innocent American citizens. Surely that is at least noteworthy? If it's not a secret why:

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.
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that looks like policy conducted in secret to me.
 
Democracy Simulator said:
I'm not sure how your 'lawless frontier' analogy stacks up with making phone calls and other private communication. Isn't it reasonable that if security agencies have no reason to regard me as a threat (i.e. having no evidence that I am a threat), that I should not expect that they track the calls I make and the emails that I send?
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Are you calling or emailing known terrorist hotspots in places like Yemen, for example?

I seriously doubt the NSA gives a damn about your calls to aunt Edna, but if they see you've called a known (to them) area of terrorist activity, then they will probably want to look closer.

This sums it up pretty well:


theprestige said:
I'm pretty sure "call details" simply means the source and destination numbers, the call start time, and the call duration. I doubt that Verizon has the spare storage capacity to record the contents of all calls by default. Even just a complete listing of all their call details, updated daily, would be a lot of data to handle.

The NSA is chartered to defend against external threats; probably the best way to use this info would be to discard all the calls where both the source and destination were in the US, and then sift through the remaining calls to see if any of the foreign numbers match up with numbers on other watch lists (or possibly to populate those watch lists). Based on this kind of analysis, the NSA could probably get a warrant to request that Verizon record specific calls and turn over the recordings.
Click to expand...
 
andyandy said:
I think this is on a far larger scale than anything in the 80s (not least because of the technological changes) - and involving millions (tens? hundreds?) of innocent American citizens. Surely that is at least noteworthy? If it's not a secret why:



that looks like policy conducted in secret to me.
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These things should be secret. The more our enemies know about how we do it, the less effective it becomes.
 
I'm conflicted. As others have pointed out, there is a difference between data and useful data. The vast majority of information would fall under the former and would never be seen by human eyes, especially since even I never bother to read my phone bill in that level of detail.

On the other hand, I am a little concerned that I could misdial the number for Uncle O'Kark in Ireland and accidentally call Shamus McFadden "The Butcher of Swinden," who is still active in the "Real" IRA, and end up on a NSA potential terrorist list, which doesn't sound like fun. Okay, I'm not really concerned that this could happen to me, as that is an entirely imagined scenario. However, it potentially could happen to some other innocent sap.

Isn't there a better way to screen for terrorists? Would this have even had any impact on the bombings in Boston, for example? Have terrorists not watched The Wire to figure out that you need to buy a burner before discussing illegal activity? If it's not an efficient use of our resources, why are we doing it?

The good news is that I'm less conflicted after typing this out.
 
Generally, they are looking for patterns in data. One anomalous call won't show up. If, however, you called Shamus once a week, and then there was a flurry of calls before an IRA bomb blew up the UK Consulate in Pittsburgh, then they would quite rightly take notice of you.
 
Puppycow said:
Somehow I suspect that doesn't make a difference. This is the only one we know about and it was classified Top Secret. There's probably a similar order for AT&T and other carriers.

As to DS's question, is it legal:

U.S. Is Secretly Collecting Records of Verizon Calls (NY Times)



So don't assume that it's only a Verizon thing.
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It isn't "only a Verizon thing" either. Just as recently, Google is fighting the same fight as Verizon: The government has request (ordered, really) google to release information regarding gmail accounts without an sort of warrants.

I remember the whole library debacle as well....was that last year, or the year before?

Legal? Or illegal? I dunno, you tell me.
 
BenBurch said:
Generally, they are looking for patterns in data. One anomalous call won't show up. If, however, you called Shamus once a week, and then there was a flurry of calls before an IRA bomb blew up the UK Consulate in Pittsburgh, then they would quite rightly take notice of you.
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What you're stating is sensible, but I don't know it to be true. All I know is that they have access to my phone records. What if Uncle O'Kark takes a roommate? Also, why would they wait until after a bombing to investigate what they view as suspicious?

My concern is that people attempting to commit a terrorist act have readily available means to circumvent this entire process and are likely to already be doing so in order to avoid a potential wire tapping scenario. So, when does this become an issue of having to clear your name with the NSA by undergoing surveillance without your knowledge? "Are you now or have you ever been a member of a terrorist organization?"

Again, I don't see this ever being an issue for me. It simply appears that this could be a waste of resources and could complicate the lives of innocent civilians if not handled properly. Being that we're not certain how these phone records are being handled, I see that as a problem.
 
Does anyone think this actually keeps us safe?

I'm not imagining they listen when I call my mom and dad in CA, and they wouldn't hear anything interesting if they did.

Nobody wants the government snooping in their business. At the same time, we want them to catch the bad guys, preferably before they can attack.
 
I see this as a huge problem.

First, the secrecy is a problem. We elect these bozos. They need to tell us what they are doing insofar as it affects our personal privacy.

Second, it's an approach that is almost sure to raise havoc in the lives of innocent people. Suppose you sell something on Craigslist, and your buyer turns out to be someone the gov't suspects is a terrorist? You have multiple phone contacts with the guy, you trade emails with him, and you arrange to meet him. How far will the gov't intrude into your life before (and if) they conclude you are not a plausible suspect in any criminal activity? Might they interview your friends, co-workers, creditors, and others in such a way that casts suspicion on you? Might they make others aware of details of your private life which, while not criminal, are sure to cause problems once they are known?

The odds of that happening to anyone reading this thread are minuscule. But it is inevitable when filtering a database involving tens of millions of people.
 
BenBurch said:
I think it does.

We need to do traffic analysis and this is the best way to do it.
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I think it works like a bizarre sort of seven degrees Osama game.

The government might know two guys are terrorists. These two guys don't call each other. But it might be useful to establish links between the two.
 
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