I see that USA Nanny has been happily spying on her own citizens without their knowledge.
The Guardian reports that 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.
I am somewhat concerned that the mainstream media have expressed shock and surprise over this. The issue of surveillance by the state has been in the public domain for some time now; eg in April 2012 I warned you about project Stellar Wind (due to go live in September 2013):
"Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013.
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.”....I did warn you!
Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”
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Forgive me if I've mentioned this before but..
ReplyDeleteIn the early days of the internet, nothing was illegal. The whole concept was invented by DARPA with the express purpose of getting data from A to B regardless of failed communication points along the way: “launch nuke 14” could be transmitted and the data packets would figure out how to get to the target silo. The same TCP/IP protocol could be used to send text messages. In fact all the funky graphics & games we play online today are fundamentally text protocols under the hood. They are called RFC's (Request For Comments).
Roll on mass take-up of the internet & nanny across the world's governments are belatedly realising there's something out there which nanny knows jack about. Solution, knee jerk reaction, make some laws.
The irony is this. There were no laws. Nanny could have done what she wants & still could do, had she not made the laws in the first place. The laws are in place however, and if we have have to abide by them, then nanny can damn well do so, too.
I'm not even bothered about nanny wanting to intercept our online communications. What I do take exception to though, are these constant attempts to push through the snoopers charter. GCHQ can snoop too their heart's content on my traffic to keep the country safe but the moment they want to arrest someone they should ask a judge for a warrant and only be allowed to produce the post-warrant material in court.
You say "Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target". But let us not forget that, if you are what radicals describe as "an infidel", you are most definitely a target. The search algorithms for these 'snooper' systems are set up such that they will ignore your everyday, hum-drum calls and e-mails to your wife, lover etc etc. Unless you use terms likely to single you out as a terrorist, your privacy will not be impuned.
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