ALL phone calls in the US are recorded and accessible to the government, claims former FBI agent

Throw away phones sales may be on the rise. I know I am going to get one.

same with canada sadly

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
Well now.. See if he gets his invite to the next agent's reunion party..

Seriously though...That statement ought to have Congress doing some digging, Ala the Church and Pike committees of the 70's. The only agency I know of with that capability is not permitted by charter to operate against United States citizens.

Bingo! And in this case, who wasn't a citizen? Yep.

All you need to get the info is for one foot to be dirty. If either person in the conversation is a foreign national, then it qualifies for being divulged from NSA to other law enforcement agencies. Grant you, NSA in days of yore also wouldn't divulge if said FORN had a green card or a pending citizenship application, but times have changed.

Originally posted by skepticconwatcher
reply to post by Korg Trinity

 

If true, once again, here they go being STUPID again. What would be the freaking purpose of recording all phone conversations ? They are obviously not stopping crimes from happening? And they aren't scaring us anymore leaking that they can do that kind of thing. Again, they are wasting everyone's time , invading everyones privacy for NOTHING.

While I wouldn't confirm nor deny that all conversations are recorded, consider - if it's never listened to, has it been recorded or captured at all? Your privacy hasn't been invaded if the only recording is in a system that won't divulge it to you without positively identifying the conversation to be valid FISA bait.

On the other hand, having done so, it would be nice to have some window of time wherein you could review what said FISA bait had been doing, after having identified them as a legitimate target for investigation.

Originally posted by skorpius
Throw away phones sales may be on the rise. I know I am going to get one.

A big enough sample of your voice, and if you are distinctive enough, I hear that the current system can pick you out of an area's telephone traffic.

So that wouldn't help, necessarily.

ETA: there is a funny story I heard, they were doing a demo of this with a well-known (now deceased) senator from Massachusetts. "If we wanted to pick out this man from DC traffic, all we have to do is give the system a voice analysis, we've done that already...and if he were making a call, we would immediately intercept it...like this (click)"

"Ah, ah, I ah would like a call girl to meet me at the hotel...you know the type"

"(click) moving on, the system can also..."

reply to post by Bedlam

Very true..and of course, the other part to that is that Echelon is a triad of systems. The United States has the largest share of it, as I understand it, with Great Britain and Australia taking the other 2 legs. We spy on Brits, they spy on 'yanks' and the Aussies can short stop to spy on either one. Makes it all nice and legal like within security of the same program.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
reply to post by Bedlam

 

Very true..and of course, the other part to that is that Echelon is a triad of systems. The United States has the largest share of it, as I understand it, with Great Britain and Australia taking the other 2 legs. We spy on Brits, they spy on 'yanks' and the Aussies can short stop to spy on either one. Makes it all nice and legal like within security of the same program.

Well, by UKUSA treaty, if one of us picks up on something the others might want to know, we can divulge it to them, and they can use the data in court, even if it's tantamount to wiretapping one of their own citizens.

Heck, sometimes all you need's for Bruce to post from Australia on a blog to 'internationalize' the thing, then you can index the contents without running afoul of picky USSIDs that protect the contents of strictly US net traffic.

The net's a wondrous thing.

Due to limitations the FBI is forced to delete conversations that did not become of interest after a time of storage, keeping only the conversations they feel the need to monitor. But as time goes and capacity increases days of conversations stored become months become years become decades.

Also there is a good probability such knowledge is being heavily exploited by well connected people for insider trading among other things.

Originally posted by Merinda
Due to limitations the FBI is forced to delete conversations that did not become of interest after a time of storage, keeping only the conversations they feel the need to monitor. But as time goes and capacity increases days of conversations stored become months become years become decades.

Also there is a good probability such knowledge is being heavily exploited by well connected people for insider trading among other things.

That's a very good point. I watched a program recently on the algorithms being used by data mining companies offering trading advice.

In one case they were able to accurately predict the rise of stocks price for JAVA (coffee) and made some trader a stupendous amount of money. This was all based upon looking at some data that was so horrendously complex including some data that had no realized bearing to this stock that it was impossible for a human to understand let alone make predictions from.

I wonder if such a volume of our personal data could be collected and interrogated by a similar algorithm if they could predict future crimes before they occur and prep for them???

Maybe they already have this and this is why there always seems to be a drill in operation around a major terrorist event??

Just a thought,

Korg.