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

Originally posted by MysterX
I can almost hear the empty echos of verizon telephones exchanges all over the USA..as millions of their former customers, the people who put money in their pockets and food on their tables, leaving Verizon far behind them.

Leave them for the competition, and if the competition betrays your right to privacy and trust, leave them too.

All the major services do this. Someone mentioned some names of small services I'm not familiar with, but I suspect they use the networks of the major services, so you're not escaping by using the small services, I don't think.

You have a choice of mobile carriers, but all of them comply with the court orders to violate privacy.

One choice you have is to elect new officials and get them to change NSA policy or something like that, if you can find officials to elect who are willing to do that. Or you could try to do without any phone service at all but that's impractical.

Originally posted by MysterX
You DO have a choice, and you don't have to put up with this crap...unless you like living in a goldfish bowl of course.

But you wouldn't know anything about this if it were not for the whistleblower leaking this document. You need to have some kind of security in place to protect those who would leak information that is genuinely in the public interest.

As long as you have Bradley Manning on charges and the people not supporting him the way they should, you will not be encouraging anyone to do the right thing and risk their own lives for the people.

If the American people do not start actively supporting people like Manning and calling for their release, there will be plenty of instances like this that you will never know about.

This also makes me wonder just how many other companies have the same instructions. Do we really think this is just Verizon? Why would it be just them? How does that help in the monitoring of people who don't use their services?

I have a feeling that this is just the tip of the iceberg, and there is likely to be a lot more of this coming to light in the coming days and weeks. I think it's likely that this was just an initial leak showing that the intelligence and security services are preparing for complete and utter monitoring of all citizens, gathering data from all sources to feed their databases.

It'll be interesting to see how the people respond to this. Will the people fight back in any way? Will people all leave Verizon? Will people start putting pressure on their elected? Will that big shiny new data farm be rendered obsolete within a couple of years?

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.

Sorry to rain your sarcastic parade, but I've been working on Big Data for many years, various aspects of it. As one example, physicists record data in their experiments which is by nature 99.9999999% junk, and still manage to get that remaining fraction for detailed analysis and discovery. The database technology in itself has picked up significantly, with multiple noSQL platforms and map-reduce taken to new scale. It really does wonders. In the context of this thread, these wonders may not be so great.

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.

But yeah, if all the big boys and girls are on their knees to the Government, it will be tricky switching to another provider.

Encryption is probably the only other alternative, apart from ditching comms altogether.

I got a great laugh this morning when I told a co-worker this who has been a long standing "it will never happen to us, only terrorist". His response, if you have nothing to hide, why worry.

People in this country are so blinded by something it frustrates the hell outta me. The have gone too far. Nothing less then a full repeal of the patriot act, the ndaa and every member of congress, the house, and the white house will begin 9slowly) to set things straight.

reply to post by Rocker2013


I agree.

Whistleblowers should be protected.

Anyone who does the right thing to bring attention on criminal or activities not in the best interests of the people should be given a bloody medal IMO.

Obama got the Nobel Peace prize while fighting US initiated wars on two fronts...a guy that did the right thing to highlight criminal activity and hopefully encourage the US to behave as it should do is locked up in solitary, looking at life in prison.

Nobel org should strip Obama of his 'prize' and give it to Manning instead.

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.

reply to post by Rocker2013

Oh come on!

Bush laid the groundwork, to be sure.

But we have been told how terrible his works were..... Now Obama is worse.

Time for Obama to accept the responsibility for what is happening under his watch.

I mean, he certainly could have turned things around... instead of going full steam ahead in the same direction, Right?

Originally posted by butcherguy
reply to post by Rocker2013

 

Oh come on!

Bush laid the groundwork, to be sure.

But we have been told how terrible his works were..... Now Obama is worse.

Time for Obama to accept the responsibility for what is happening under his watch.

I mean, he certainly could have turned things around... instead of going full steam ahead in the same direction, Right?

Oh I agree absolutely! I am no supporter of Obama. I was sucked into his message of Change and actually had hope that things would get better after he took over from Bush. I said many times in the past that Obama has done more to disillusion the youth than any president before him.

There was so much hype and belief in him, and after the catastrophe of Bush people needed someone to reverse the damage. Obama let millions of people down.

What annoys me is to see people STILL picking a side, like they're at a football game cheering on their team, as though their side is blameless. The entire system is rotten, and the cheer leading for either is only leading to more BS being ignored and allowed to happen.

My response to that person was a response to their shortsighted bias, not a defence of Obama.

It doesn't matter who is president, nor which side possesses more influence in government, they are all puppets for something bigger. I haven't yet decided what that thing is, but I'm of the opinion that there was a silent coup at some point in American history, and that a conglomerate of Banking, Corporate and Military heads actually controls the US government - they just put a face on it to give the people the impression that they are in control.

This is more than just a privacy issue, this is political, corporate and industrial espionage all rolled into one and on a scale never seen before and the entire world should be up in arms.

We all know that the US Government is controlled by banks & big business and that just about every senior political figure in the US is a puppet or in someway closely alligned to a bank and/or big business backer. So this has implications far beyond a simple invasion of privacy. For example, while George Bush Jnr was POTUS and rolling out these new Government powers, his father was in the background drumming up more business and assisting in strategic aquisitions for the family cash cow known as The Carlise Group. Many of the Carlise Groups major competitors in various markets around the world manage their entire sales force, customer databases and general business information through global cloud computing giants such as salesforce.com which is closely alligned with Verizon.

How easy it would be to make the right business decisions and investments all day every day because you had access to all the inside information long before anyone else. How easy success would be if you knew what your competitors were doing, discovering, inventing, buying, selling before anyone outside their boardroom knew. It would take the risk out of any investment in the sharemarket. This is a small example but I'm sure you understand the seriousness of what I'm saying.

So, who the hell has access to this information and who is monitoring them? The public and the media are supposed to keep the Government in check but that is now impossible because the Government now exists almost entirely in the shadows, hidden behind the veil of secrecy. Probity is critical to democracy but it clearly no longer exists in Government, and I doubt it ever could again given how far we've let it slip. The only conclusion one can draw from this is that the Government is blatantly abusing its powers and that corruption is now completely out of control.

This has far reaching implications way beyond the borders of the US. Corporate/Industrial espionage on a small scale can have massive ramifications for a business and the effect can flow on to all the businesses it deals with and that rely on it. The loss of jobs, the effect on the local economy, loss of peoples retirment savings and investments etc etc. However, what the US Government is doing could bring the entire system down.

No sane person could view this as national security, this is theft and violation on a global scale.

reply to post by Rocker2013

What annoys me is to see people STILL picking a side, like they're at a football game cheering on their team, as though their side is blameless. The entire system is rotten, and the cheer leading for either is only leading to more BS being ignored and allowed to happen.

Amen to that!

People needs to wake up and smell the roses or let say the stench of what a dictatorship and tyrannic government do.

They hide under corrupted laws that they enact to erode citizens rights in order to pursue their tyrannic government over the people

And still the unbeliever gloat that US is a free country and no rights have been take over.

We are not free and has not been for a long time as long as corruption get to pass laws and erode rights.

Secret courts is unconstiutional, gathering of information behind the backs of citizens is nothing but tyranny

And yes is laws that give them the rights, laws that are as unconstitutional as what they are doing to millions of regular citizens.,

Let be clear this are regular citizens like you and me, why is the governmetn after us, if is to gather information of those that are against the corruption that is have taken over this nation, this no about terrorism

You can never trust a governemtn that can enact laws to side step constutional rights in order to pursue corruption.

Plain and simple.

We have not rights any longer.

Welcome to secret courts without a jury of your peers and a speedy and fast trial.

Originally posted by Rocker2013

Originally posted by butcherguy
reply to post by Rocker2013

 

Oh come on!

Bush laid the groundwork, to be sure.

But we have been told how terrible his works were..... Now Obama is worse.

Time for Obama to accept the responsibility for what is happening under his watch.

I mean, he certainly could have turned things around... instead of going full steam ahead in the same direction, Right?

Oh I agree absolutely! I am no supporter of Obama. I was sucked into his message of Change and actually had hope that things would get better after he took over from Bush. I said many times in the past that Obama has done more to disillusion the youth than any president before him.

There was so much hype and belief in him, and after the catastrophe of Bush people needed someone to reverse the damage. Obama let millions of people down.

What annoys me is to see people STILL picking a side, like they're at a football game cheering on their team, as though their side is blameless. The entire system is rotten, and the cheer leading for either is only leading to more BS being ignored and allowed to happen.

My response to that person was a response to their shortsighted bias, not a defence of Obama.

It doesn't matter who is president, nor which side possesses more influence in government, they are all puppets for something bigger. I haven't yet decided what that thing is, but I'm of the opinion that there was a silent coup at some point in American history, and that a conglomerate of Banking, Corporate and Military heads actually controls the US government - they just put a face on it to give the people the impression that they are in control.

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?

reply to post by Seagle


Bingo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!guess who runs America, those are the ones that wants us regular citizens information, we are in dangerous waters and I can not believe people still try to excuse what this corporate run government dictatorship is doing to us and our nation, this elite groups pay for laws to be passed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.

I think we are missing the real point of this. Why was the order only from Late April to July? Are they looking for something happening during this time frame that we haven't been made aware of? I was ALWAYS under the impression that the NSA was ALWAYS collecting all forms of communications for analysis. If that is the case and they are always looking at communications, why would they need a separate order for Verizon? The conspiracy theorist in me would say that they have "some" sort of intel about an event happening during the time frame of the order, perhaps even tracking it down to people who use the verizon network.

Need to look deeper as to the why, not just what they are doing.

Originally posted by pavil
I think we are missing the real point of this. Why was the order only from Late April to July? Are they looking for something happening during this time frame that we haven't been made aware of? I was ALWAYS under the impression that the NSA was ALWAYS collecting all forms of communications for analysis. If that is the case and they are always looking at communications, why would they need a separate order for Verizon? The conspiracy theorist in me would say that they have "some" sort of intel about an event happening during the time frame of the order, perhaps even tracking it down to people who use the verizon network.

Need to look deeper as to the why, not just what they are doing.

If they know something is going down in a certain time frame that they need to investigate, but they don't have particular suspects, why just Verizon? If they know what carrier the information is on, they must have more specific info in regard to a suspect, no?

reply to post by JacKatMtn


What should alarm us is NOT the fact that they are tracing calls.

What SHOULD alarm us is the fact the NSA is not interested in the calls content or the name of the caller.
Doesn't this seem contrary to a legitmate intelligence operation?

If you were trying to gather intelligence information to stop supposed "Terrorism" (for which the Patriot Act was made) then you would most certainly WANT the name of the caller and the content of the call. And yet, what we have here is precisely the opposite.

So the burning question is - why do they want this metadata, and what are they doing with it?

Also - this is headline news on CNN, Fox, NBC, AP, ACLU, EFF and every other major news organization. Somehow I don't think this is going to just die down any time soon. People are pissed. I've already had 4 people talk to me about it this morning, and I've only been at work for 30 minutes.

reply to post by JacKatMtn

I thought this was happening years ago, so no surprise. But the vast majority of Americans will approve of this, and the majority of the rest won't give it a thought, as the populace has already been set up to be used to total government spying on their private lives. As Donovan used to sing, "It's the season of the snitch".

reply to post by JacKatMtn


Of Course its real, they have been doing it since telecommunications started. At first it was about secrecy and spy stuff, now its about discrediting any potential whistle blowers that may try to expose the corruption of the government. that's their only defense, to lie and discredit with the personal info they have collected.

They have been breaking and destroying the Constitution for the last 60 years. It's damn real!

reply to post by Bilk22


It's no coincidence the way the government is setup with Dem and Rep. They all work together secretly while telling you one side if for and the other side is against an issue. They set it up this way so that half the nation is Rep and half Dem so why. Very simple so we argue and fight each other and not the government. We can't get past fighting each other so we'll never come after them.

They create the issues so they have a problem to solve...if there weren't any issues we wouldn't need them! This is the irony in government, it provides the illusion of freedom. Just cuz you can vote doesn't mean that your vote counts, which it doesn't. Popular vote means dick!

It doesn't matter who is president Dem or Rep. they are not calling the shots so blaming Bush and Obama is pointless and tiring.

We will never change anything, never overthrow them, ever! People won't give up material items they believe they can't live without for a short time to get real change. It would take a generation of sacrifice so our children and grandchildren could have freedom.