Report: Verizon providing all call records to U.S. under court order

There is an allusion of choice. They play us like the fools we are. It's the good cop bad cop routine in spades. One party does the dirty work while the other plays to the people who are voicing their concern. Then they rinse and repeat with the next admin. All the Obama supporters will have the same hangover the Bush supporters did when his term ends - or should I say, if it ends?

Yep. Does anyone here think the next president is going to change anything that Bush and Obama have set into motion, ie: Patriot act? Nope. This show will go on and on. New dear leader will be installed in a few years and the band will play on. The next people to campaign and run for presidency will come under the guise that they are for the people too, and that they care about our privacy and our rights. It's all a sham.

reply to post by SubTruth


My grandparents used to say that the world may change but people don't. But I don't think that is true. People have changed a great deal and the world with them. I want my child to have the innocence that I had when growing up. I can't raise her in a bubble but I do want her to have a slice of the life I had as a kid which did not involve computers, internet and a great deal of TV. Too much of this dumbs children down.

Originally posted by KingErik
To get the "content" of the call, according to CNN news, they need to supply a warrant.

This is the part that bothers me.
Didn't we all believe 48 hours ago that they needed a warrant to get ANY information from a private company? Now we find that actually they don't, they just put in a standing order to gather all data for a specific period.

However you look at this, there is no reasonable answer to them gathering all that data. If it's just metadata then it's useless beyond historical mining (for instance to gather evidence for specific cases), and you would need much more than just this minor information to be able to achieve anything.

Again, if it's to gather information on a previous event, why not just gather the records for specific targets? If it's to gather intel on suspected terrorists or groups, why not gather the data from specific groups of people? However you slice this it does not justify gathering all the data for millions of people. There is absolutely no logical reason that I can see for why so much data on innocent citizens would ever be needed.

Originally posted by marg6043
reply to post by Helig

 

That is one of the things that bothers me the most, that for years we have been telling here what is been going on with Washington and the repercussions of past policies on future governments regardless of party affiliation.

But that's the difference between accusation and fact, now there is the actual evidence we need to prove the conspiracy.

I've been saying this a lot on here recently, but it seems a lot of members don't know what the word "evidence" means. A theory needs to be based in something.

We all kinda thought this was all happening before, but did anyone here ever actually present any evidence that this was actually happening? If someone did I didn't see it. And a YouTube video of someone agreeing with an opinion is not proof either.

The reason people are now sitting up and taking more notice is because there is tangible evidence, this is something many members of ATS never seem to be interested in seeking before believing anything.

Originally posted by Taissa
I can't raise her in a bubble but I do want her to have a slice of the life I had as a kid which did not involve computers, internet and a great deal of TV. Too much of this dumbs children down.

But then you're also risking putting her at a disadvantage when it comes to technology too. Do you want her to get to adulthood and not know how to use the latest technology because you kept her protected from it all as a child?

I think there just has to be common sense. The world is not what it was, but you can raise your children to have a respect for life away from technology and material things while giving her the skills to use it.

I wouldn't hold my child back in a way that might affect them in the future (I know adults who can barely use Facebook, and as such their career prospects are extremely limited) but I would work hard to build a balance between active lifestyle and tech.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

Originally posted by MysterX
reply to post by Arbitrageur

 

Hopefully, some bright spark will sense a business oportunity going begging and setup a rival *secure and private* system for people who still believe they ought to be able to enjoy their right to privacy.

Let's say someone does that.

The NSA is going to want those records even more, so they will get a court order to get them. If you're the owner of the company, what do you do when you get the court order?

You'd either have to give up your records or face the court's wrath, unless your system was set up so you just didn't have any records to turn over, but I'm not sure if that's even possible.

You're right, they would.

But, you can't be compelled to hand over something you haven't got.

I think it could be possible to engineer a service where there is only a standing charge for usage, say a monthly fee, where tough encryption is employed on live calls and internet services, and no records or details of those calls and use are taken and stored.

You wouldn't need call records, stored connections and the like if you were only being billed on a per month standing charge basis.

The only records needed would be your billing details.

If they build it, the customers will come.

I've had a feeling this was happening for quite some time. Especially after 9/11.

How do you think we've managed to capture and foil the plots of so many "terrorists"? I mean just last year, how many times did we hear "Federal Agents arrested 3-4 men believed to be plotting....". Or how about when someone is attempting to buy a contract killer or someother nefarious business and it just so happens....they hire a Federal Agent.

They've been monitoring our communication devices for a while now...

I didn't really so much have a feeling it was happening. I knew it was happening and I knew where the Patriot Act was leading. The whole concept of the Patriot Act was a intrusion into American lives. It's funny to me how the media keeps putting all the blame on Obama, when this was started by Bush and supported by him and Cheney fully. This was their baby and what they were planning to do with the Patriot Act from the get go. Obama is just another politician in the grand scheme of the political game, and yes it is a game. Obama has definitely stepped up the Patriot Act but the groundwork was already in place. I have been on ATS for a couple of years and I can honestly say members here have been trying to make others aware of the exact thing we are talking about right now.

Originally posted by DZAG Wright
I've had a feeling this was happening for quite some time. Especially after 9/11.

How do you think we've managed to capture and foil the plots of so many "terrorists"? I mean just last year, how many times did we hear "Federal Agents arrested 3-4 men believed to be plotting....". Or how about when someone is attempting to buy a contract killer or someother nefarious business and it just so happens....they hire a Federal Agent.

They've been monitoring our communication devices for a while now...

There never was any real plots.

All the plots were started by the FBI under cover operations.

That's how you test the system.

If you've ever written a "Machine Learning" program, you'd understand. You need "training data".

In order to build the software system that can detect plots of terror, you need actual plots of terror to gather data from, and you need access to the universe of data, to train your software to recognize those plots.

The only way to build this sophisticated software, is to know in advance about the plots. The FBI engineers the terror plots, and the NSA tries to find them in the universe of data from all sources available to it. Since they know the terror plots before hand, they can train the software on what to look for, what kind of signatures show up in the immense volume of data that would "flag" an ongoing terror plot.

They must plot and train, to build the software. There's no other way to do machine learning Artificial Intelligence coding.

Not a single real terror plot has ever been reported. They never caught anybody that the FBI didn't already have contact with.

Originally posted by KingErik
In order to build the software system that can detect plots of terror, you need actual plots of terror to gather data from, and you need access to the universe of data, to train your software to recognize those plots.

To do any sort of meaningful training, you need a rather significant number of cases aka statistics. Sorry but your suggestion that there is an adequate number of terror plots manufactured by some agencies on purpose, in order to train a piece of software, is really beyond laughable (i.e. it's sad).

Originally posted by marg6043
reply to post by Helig

 

That is one of the things that bothers me the most, that for years we have been telling here what is been going on with Washington and the repercussions of past policies on future governments regardless of party affiliation.

But only within ATS circles we get the credit we deserve outside this place people are still as gullible and foggy as usual.

So sad it makes me cry, because I still find people that have not clue what is going on in this nation this days.

Good to see you are still around, Marg! I fully agree with you and the US starting to look like awfully much like the Soviet Union, where privacy was an unknown thing. Meanwhile here in Europe anger is widespread, but as always the EU lacks the power to act assertively against this ill behavior.

Obama calling this a hype is beyond ridiculous; it shows how serious he takes this issue. Yet, with all these draconian measures and the help from Russia, they couldn't even prevent the Boston bombings.

If this is true, the govt is stepping over a line they shouldn't have. The people will not put up with this much longer. At least that is my hope.

more traitors for the noose in my opinion. if u work for verizon and u know this is happening yet say nothing then your noose is waiting

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
I'm not sure if this is good or bad? The NSA is becoming such a super hoover of data and information, world wide, I believe they will eventually hit the brick wall of failure brought by their own success. There is a point where having *SO* much information equates to having nothing much at all for the sheer mess and chaotic jumble it all makes for them. Oh I pity the poor NSA gomers who get assigned to this duty. I don't know who you'd have to piss off or be on the bad side of, but it would surely be punishment details all the way for trying to make any sense from that literal OCEAN of 99% junk.

If they want to become a classic victim of their own arrogant success? Perhaps it's better than seeing them be more selective and actually amass a useful database instead of the Encyclopedia Everythingica.

edit on 5-6-2013 by Wrabbit2000 because: (no reason given)

It's a known problem in database systems, known as Precision, Recall and Fallout
en.wikipedia.org...

The general idea is that if you have one telephone number that is "hot", then all other telephone numbers that call or are called by that number are also potentially "hot". If they make frequent calls over a long period of time then that other number would be likely to be an accomplice. But you'd have to filter out calls to dentists, doctors, car insurance, accountants, takeaways and pizza shops, unless you suspected they were a cover for some devious operation. But if the other phone number is also "hot" or has contacted other suspects, then that is a solid link. The purpose of all those computers is to filter out all the fuzz and just give the solid data.