NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls

[Nuclear Unicorn]

By Leslie Cauley, USA TODAY

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm

[blkmusclmachine]

1. Miss him yet?

Did he leave?!?!

[markiv]

2. imagine what facebook is selling about you, behind your back

you understood that privacy agreement, didnt you

only 5000 words long

[Autumn]

3. I sure would like to be given a chance to miss the SOB

and his fucking sorry policies. But they are here to stay and somehow they have become perfectly acceptable. Pretty fucking sad.

[librechik]

4. Bush started this. Why is Obama taking all the blame?

more get Obama games from the repubs, who arre perfectly fine with having their phone calls monitored. They all voted For it.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

6. UNless I misunderstood the campaign, Obama was elected to not be Bush.

[librechik]

7. yes--but executive orders can't do everything. He is blocked in the House

and filibustered in the Senate. Think Guantanamo. Ordered it closed, House refused to let him do it. Now they want to pass a law against closing it. If he bypassed Congress and power grabbed something, he would be as bad as Bush. But he isn't.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

9. This is a wiretap, not a law.

This is the executive branch operating on its own authority. To claim otherwise is to grossly misrepresent the facts.

[librechik]

10. Patriot Act made it law.

to be ignorant of that is unbelievable!

[Nuclear Unicorn]

13. Please show where the PA requires the President to make this tap.

Congress cannot make the president file or execute warrants.

[librechik]

14. not requires. Allows.

and look it up u yourself.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

16. So, you approve of the blanket information-collecting exclusively on American citizens

even though there is no probable cause of a crime because the Bush-era PA allows it.

[librechik]

18. Of course not. It's alarming. But no president ever gives back an executive power

that some previous president obtained. Obama won't either.
Nor should he. We want OUR president to have every tool the other guy had, even obnoxious ones.

[Savannahmann]

19. Even obnoxious ones that abuse the rights of the population?

So when we elect a guy not to be the guy before, we get the guy before anyway? So what you're saying is we should stop supporting any change, and just sit back and leave the fucking republicans in charge since we won't do anything goddamn different? Fuck that.

And you can guess where I wish the DNC trolls who tell us to chill out and get back in line would go.

[librechik]

21. lol--nice try

I never said any of that, but you have trounced a straw man. Most folks would call you the troll, newbie.

[JimDandy]

43. Not a wiretap. Logs and metadata only.

No lines were tapped.

[markiv]

5. Verizon gave them a log of EVERY SINGLE CALL!!!!

UNBELIEVABLE!

For more than a month, Verizon Wireless has regularly provided the National Security Agency with logs of every phone call that Verizon Wireless customers make in the United States, according to a new report by British publication The Guardian.



http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865581236/The-Guardian-Verizon-has-been-giving-all-of-the-companys-US-phone-records-to-NSA.html

[librechik]

8. a month? This has been going on FOR YEARS!!!

they are focusing on this last month to distract from the fact that Bush NSA started this way back in 2003 or so. And to add on to the confusion about all the "Obama Scandals"

We should be angry, but not so much at Obama, but at the NSA, whicvh remains from president to president, doing their spy stuff. Plus, their policy makers are on record FLATLY DENYing that there is a probable cause aspect to amendment 4, and calling the poor reporter who recited the actual text of the amendment, that he was a liar, and the NSA knew better!

[Agschmid]

11. I feel like this is in the contract Verizon customers sign...

Oye.

[librechik]

12. and besides, they only got the phone number called. Not the calls themselves.

this is just bookkeeping to Verizon.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

15. Immaterial. Warrants require probable cause of a crime.

[librechik]

17. when you say " LOGS OF EVERY CALL!!!!l" the implication is that they taped & logged the call

i.e., the words in the conversation.

but no, the feds get only a list of numbers called, and they can't act on any of them unless those numbers turn up in terrorist investigations.

this is a fear tactic that the Repubs are putting forth and the Dems shouldn't stoke the fires.

[Savannahmann]

20. NUTS.

The NSA is intercepting all domestic calls.

Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.

We elected Obama not to be Bush, and not to continue the abuses of the Bush Admin. Defending this crap when we protested it under Bush is total hypocrisy. When did we stop caring about civil rights? Where did my Democratic Party go?

[librechik]

23. oh, THAT

Verizon is only a tiny part of that. Total Information Awareness is not a program they will acknowledge, so it's not possible to debate it with accuracy. Sure they're doing that.

And Obama took a look at the Abu Ghraib pictures, and the previously unseen photos of the Kennedy assassination, the one that shows The President what actually happened to the last president that dared to defy the "THAT" which collects all our phone calls and emails without warrant in toto. and decided he wanted to live past 8 years in office. There was a coup. Perhaps you didn't notice. But we can't elect presidents to not be Bush. Presidents do what the National Security Establishment tells them to do behind the scenes and they take the flak for it. They don't get out of line, and they don't act independently.

I'm sorry you have the illusion that Presidents can save us from the NSE. They can only implement the decisions that are made as compassionately as possible, if they have a mind to. Obama does. He's trying. Bush didn't. But we didn't elect Obama to kick out the NSE and take over the presidency. That's just a fantasy we all are having, because we live in their world, not the real world. Make no mistake, we are behind the Iron Curtain. It's just invisible to us.

[Savannahmann]

24. Then it doesn't matter who we elect?

Since by your argument the President is a mere figurehead.

[librechik]

27. I know. I didn't believe it either until about february 2009.

and I've had too much confirmation of it since then.

[markiv]

39. donkey brand is good, elephant brand is bad

if donkey brand goes through your phone records, it's good

if elephant brand does it, it's bad

cant you understand this?

[Nuclear Unicorn]

22. You excuse this based on nothing more than loathing of the GOP?

Where do you draw the line?

* the feds get only a list of books read

* the feds get only a list of websites visited

* the feds get only a list of political rallies frequented

* the feds get only a list of members enrolled

* the feds get only a list of abortions provided

[librechik]

25. ok, ---here's a truth

the feds get everything they want. It's a lie to think we can do anything about it. We do not have representative government. We do not have anything like a democracy. All that crap you just listed is already happening, and will continue to happen because they have nukes and secret prisons and they don't care a fuck about laws. And this is going to continue to happen because
we have no representative government.

There was a coup. Maybe it happened in 69, amybe 63, maybe 80--but it happened. And we've all been living a lie in this countyry ever since.

And if you can think of anything to do about that intolerable truth besides throw tantrums about people whose actions you will never control--go do that. And tell me about it. I've been wracking my brains for the answer since I was a little sprout like you. I'd love to hear about something that would work and not lead to bloodshed. Got anything?

[Nuclear Unicorn]

26. "Lay back and try to relax" is not acceptable.

[librechik]

29. I look to those way too many folks in prison for how to live

because American Consumer Society is in a sense a giant prison with pretty decorations and cable tv. Everything else is about the same, sadly.

It's not the same other places. do some traveling to foreign lqands and you will see.

In prison, you have to make your own real life by great force and determination, and choices are few and predeterimined by other earlier choices. There is a lot of restriction and obstruction and ridicule. But if you can avoid groupthink and know who you are, it's not so bad. Gandhi did it.

I'm too busy living to think about it too much--bad dreams.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

32. I know that was supposed to be noble and inspiring but

it sounds like capitulation.

[librechik]

44. even if you and I break out of the Brave New World of 360 degree 24/7 psyops propaganda

that we are soaking in, we won't be able to break everybody out. And it has to all be done together (see the Matrix movies) otherwise you and I are just crackpots.

If you figure out how to do it I'm on board.

I've only got as far as seeing the matrix for what it is.

I'm not capitulating. I'm existential.

[wandy]

37. As it was in the beginning, is now and allways will be.........

Government 'surveillance' predates Obama. It predates Bush. For cripes sake it predates Nixon.
Do you think every constructional protection was followed, every T dotted and every I crossed when they got Capone for tax evasion.
Do you think Joseph McCarthy played by the rules?
It is the "nosy neighbor" deficiency of human nature in government hands.
Unfortunately todays technology makes it far too easy.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

38. Are you a subject or a citizen?

[wandy]

41. I did not say this was a good thing........

I did say that this is an age old problem. I did say that our high tech world makes it worse.
I'll go on to say this is not something we can fix right now. Today!
Let us say that Obama did wish to put an end to it right now. Today!
Ya, that will go over real well in the House. Hell the Teapublicans would be rolling in the isles.
Not a chance.
Even if this was started by Bush, all the better. Let's talk about it NOW after all it's one more thing that proves that Obama is an evil dictator!
Not a chance.
Let's stir up the base (they won't remember when they thought it was a good thing). Let's get the other side turning against their own!
Karl Rove must be awash with glee.

Just a question.
Do you think that Romney/Ryan would have stopped this before now?
Do you think Jeb Bush and Scott Walker will stop it?

Oh, and here we are, on a public forum going on about people monitoring us.
Hell at least I don't use facebook.

[Floyd_Gondolli]

28. Here's a fun theory

This started the minute they had the technological ability to do it. Could have been under Reagan, or Bush the Elder. At any rate, it seems ludicrous to believe all of this started under Bush the Unready, or maybe I'm just being too cynical?

[Nuclear Unicorn]

30. We are not obligated to play the role of dutiful subjects.

"Because I can" is the cry of monarchists, not the representatives of a free people.

[Floyd_Gondolli]

33. And who said we were?

My point was this practice has probably been ongoing since the NSA had the technological ability to do it, whether that was 5 years ago, or 25 years ago. To suggest otherwise is hopelessly naive. In other words, there's a lot of stuff the govt. doesn't tell us about. Why exactly that is a surprise to anyone is beyond me.

Oh, and making that point is not an endorsement of said practice by the way.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

34. "Oh, and making that point is not an endorsement of said practice by the way."

Understood.

[warrprayer]

31. recced

he never left

[ProSense]

35. For the Republican opportunists, Bush actually spied on people.

For the Republican opportunists, Bush actually spied on people.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022959557

[Nuclear Unicorn]

36. So why is the current DOJ spying on millions of Americans

in a solely domestic operation with no probable cause?

[librechik]

45. They have been doing that since the Patriot Act. At least. This current kerfuffle

is more of the same Republican agenda to defeat Obama in the next election by attaching every thing that might be a scandal to his administration. And by Obama I mean whoever we "pick" as out candidate in 2016. (between two banal choices, no doubt.)

[forestpath]

40. Bush and Obama, two peas in a surveillance loving pod.

[Rex]

42. Of course they do, the BFEE made sure that TIA

was in place and online a year after 9/11. We have no privacy anymore, just the use of the Information Age against us.

Miss Me Yet? HE is the CAUSE of all THIS...funny what people post.