NSA has records of billions of U.S. phone calls

National Security Agency is collecting phone records of Americans, including calls made within the U.S.

The story "NSA has records of billions of U.S. phone calls" published May 11, 2006 at 5:13 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

Content from Reuters expires after 30 days.

[DoughboyNJ]

old news...

...let the whining begin
<<yawn>>

[rstinnett]

Maybe you do not

Value the rights and expectations of privacy that are granted to us through the Constitution, but some of us do.

But, it doesn't matter anyway, the Republicans and Bush are in such a tailspin now that there is no way to get out of it.

[DoughboyNJ]

old news...

...let the whining begin

<<yawn>>

[freemarket--2008]

Natzi Security Agency (n/t)

eom

[jeremyjones]

Overblown

FYI - The word is spelled NAZI, not NATZI. :-)

Personally, I don't think this DB is a big deal. Nothing but a bunch of phone numbers. And unless you are calling known terrorist, you don't have any reason to fear. Personally, I think you should let your money do the voting. I wouldn't do business with companies relinquishing records without a court order. Just my two cents.

[Zymurgist]

Complain to the phone company.

Demand a copy of whatever information they
provided, the terms under which it was provided,
to whom it was provided, a copy of the warrant
to which they were responding, and a written
statement that they will no longer disclose
information without prior written consent.

Providing the information as has been implied is
not only unethical, but also runs afoul of
several dozen federal laws, regulations, and the
statutes of several states. Heck, even the prior
head of the NSA points out it violates the NSA
charter to boot.

Assuming USA Today's article is accurate, the
phone companies better start making a lot of
concessions to their consumers, because if
people get ticked enough to take it to court,
they could be there for years, spend millions on
defending themselves, and if their defense
doesn't succeed, they're conceivably looking at
billions of dollars in fines alone.

My guess is that people won't bother bringing
suits because some people will accept it as
legal, others will accept it as ethical even if
technically illegal, and others just don't have
sufficient money to gain access to the legal
system.

The govt gettings its act together

9/11 couldnt be stopped because the government couldnt connect the dots. Now it looks like its trying to do just that.

And the people who were whining and complaining that Bush 'didnt do enough' to stop the attacks are now complaining that he's trying to hunt down terrorists before they can attack.

[andyengle]

So does the phone company...

My wireless service provider also has all my phone records. So what. This sounds like more of the drive-by media stiring up trouble, getting everyone's panties in a bunch.

[ThatScienceGuy]

Excellent balance of Technology and Privacy.

This is an outstanding program.

The use of this kind of datamining / correlational analysis gives me great hope, in that it really does appear that we are capable of using technology for greater good. Computerized correlation on massive amounts of data has been proven over and over again to provide stunningly accurate "pointers" to elements that are high risk targets in this and other scenarios.

The beauty of this kind of technology is that the sheer quantity of data is far too much for any person or agency to make any use of directly. The software simply spits out targets that appear to be risk, all other innocent people are simply ignored. Actual humans can then get the necessary warrants to take a closer look at the specific targets.

It's elegant... If you're engaged in criminal terrorism, you will be noticed. If you're not you are simply part of the anonymous background noise.

[Zymurgist]

Have you ever used this stuff?

I've used a number of the same tools these guys
are using on similar datasets... While they do
provide "targets", the false-negative error
rates are pretty low, but the false-positive
rates are astonishingly high. You simply don't
apply cross-correlation metrics on these things
-- the size and complexity of the task grows
geometrically. They apply a wide range of
heuristics and some topological filtering of the
data. The phone information alone won't get what
you need. It's not as if domestic telephone
calls are a principal mode of communication
between the true terrorists. If you relied on
just that data (that tells you more about what
the telephones are doing than people), it'd be
next to useless.

There's several possibilities: the story is
false (probably not, since it's already been
affirmed by several current and recent officials
and has not been officially denied), the phone
records for 10-million phone numbers is just one
tiny data-point in a large sea of information
they are accumulating on Americans; or Americans
are being targeted for another reason.

I'm guessing the second. There's already cases
on the record that show that they are monitoring
bank transactions, credit transactions, airplane
flights, retail purchases, employment, school
enrollment, medical records, and food purchases
-- though each incident of those are reported
appear to have been based on various specific
heuristics rather than review of warehoused
data. Still, most (all?) of the people caught up
in those are false-positives (getting your bank
accounts frozen, having your college schedule
dropped, getting turned down for certain jobs,
or being asked about your diet). I don't think
that anyone has even implied that any of these
things have helped nab a terrorist or
conspirator -- and you'd think that would be
news, something they could point to to say "it's
working, see!".

I suppose, at this point, it's safe to assume
that they have access to any and all information
in electronic form. US Mail at least is also a
sure bet. And now it's generally legal to search
and bug personal residences without a warrant,
so if you are a false-positive hit, you've got
that to look forward to too.