Just what is going on with all of the surveillance in this nation. Do we really

[RKP5637]

have thousands plotting in this country ... is the only way, to consider millions of citizens to be potential enemies of the state.

If someone were up to something, would they really broadcast it all over phones, etc. Are they playing with huge and expensive hi-tech toys, because they can. Is Obama all about CYA. Just WTF is going on ... are we becoming a police state or are we ... much of this is becoming in my youth what repressive totalitarian states did, not supposedly the US. ... how times are changing fast ...

Do they really fear something akin to OWS that much ... Are we really that out of touch with how dangerous a future the US has because of supposed adversaries churning in dark corners of the phone system / internet.

Some of this is really getting to be major WTF.

Are massive social-interconnects being mapped to plot who talks with whom, as well as all internet activity into massive databases. Is the goal to track every minute detail of everyone's life.

I fear my prior sentence is what it's all about. Massive mapping of every minute detail of everyone into massive databases. How the regimes of my youth would have loved this.

[lob1]

1. E.T., don't call home.

[Smarmie Doofus]

2. Whatever they are consciously thinking, you KNOW that any info or data they collect...

... will eventually change hands... i.e. be SOLD ... because everything now is a commodity: schools, prisons, military.

And anything that is not *currently* a marketable commodity will BECOME a commodity in time.

We are $$$$ick and getting $$$$icker by the day.

Certainly with every election cycle.

[jeff47]

3. IMO, it's about keeping the records.

The various entities they are getting the records from don't keep them forever. Just how long depends on the company - some phone companies delete them after 3 months, others 3 years.

So IMO they're storing the information so that they can use it later if something comes up - let's say there's another 9/11-scale attack. The records would help tie co-conspirators together quickly, once you had a target to start from.

I can't picture any way where combing through this data before an attack could possibly lead to a useful result - they don't have the content of the conversations from which you could tease out a plot. Assuming that was even possible without an insurmountable pile of false positives.

[RKP5637]

4. That, makes a lot of sense to me! n/t

[marions ghost]

5. Don't kid yourself

---------you're awfully trusting after the Reign of the Bushites.

[jeff47]

6. I'm not trusting. I'm looking at what's possible.

Let's assume perfect speech-to-text. Even though it doesn't exist.

Now you've got terabytes per day of conversations. How can you possibly find the "bad guys" in those terabytes without so many false positives as to make the exercise useless?

Let's go with a trivial example: They search for people using the word "bomb". Let's say the records have 3 people using the word "bomb" when discussing the plans for an attack. There's also going to be 6 metric shitloads of people who use the word "bomb", but are not plotting an attack.

Running down all those false hits takes time. And since there's tons and tons of false hits, it's going to take a lot of time to run those down and be very, very unlikely to stumble across the 3 actual "bad guys".

And that's assuming the bad guys are dumb enough to actually use the word "bomb". Most likely, they'd use a random code word. The government is not going to know to search for "teapot" to find the bad guys planing to use a bomb.

And the folks in the government know this.

On the other hand, once you have a "bad guy" to start with, it only takes a couple seconds to find the people he was in frequent contact with. But Verizon's data retention policy would deny you that data beyond 3 months.

[marions ghost]

8. We have no guarantees of anything

Verizon has no cred. Microsoft has no cred. Google has no cred. Facebook has no cred. The govt has no cred. They all lie. We know they lie. We've seen them lie.

We have no assurances of how they use anything. The system is not transparent. Secret courts. Secret policies.
There are sophisticated data gathering techniques out there. Your argument is too simplistic.

Anyway that's not really the point. The point is that they HAVE the information and we can't trust them in general, or really know how they use it. So all speculation about what they do or don't do with it is junk.

[jeff47]

9. No, it's not junk.

There's reality to deal with. It's not possible to go faster than the speed of light. It's not possible for a human to lift 2 tons. It's not possible for a computer to be a true artificial intelligence (for now).

And it's not possible to go through that data without so many false positives that you make the effort useless. And the powers that be know this.

ETA: And the DNI basically said as much: They keep the metadata, and go through it if they have a target
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014502576

[marions ghost]

10. Your miss the point

they HAVE the data. We don't really know what they do with it.

Your speculation is junk. My speculation is also junk. But based on their secrecy and lack of ethics, we have no reason to trust them. You defend the data mining as unusable (and therefore not invasive). I see no reason to conclude that. I think they are learning how to use it very well.

Any scientist will tell you--'we don't have enough data"--to make a judgment about the extent of this. And that's the way the corporatocracy likes it.

I repeat--They have the data, gathered without our consent. That IS the problem. Never mind what you or I think they can do with it.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. TIA, it's what this is about

And OWS is part of it.

[RKP5637]

11. 'You will comply, resistance is futile.' That is where we are headed with TIA and

militarization of the local police. Reminds me of my youth ... and the regimes of that period of history. It is like a silently growing cancer, now more exposed. I often ask myself what have we become, where are we headed. All have lost credibility with me including TPTB.