N.S.A. Gathers Data on Social Connections of U.S. Citizens

WASHINGTON — Since 2010, the National Security Agency has been exploiting its huge collections of data to create sophisticated graphs of some Americans’ social connections that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information, according to newly disclosed documents and interviews with officials.

The spy agency began allowing the analysis of phone call and e-mail logs in November 2010 to examine Americans’ networks of associations for foreign intelligence purposes after N.S.A. officials lifted restrictions on the practice, according to documents provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor.

The policy shift was intended to help the agency “discover and track” connections between intelligence targets overseas and people in the United States, according to an N.S.A. memorandum from January 2011. The agency was authorized to conduct “large-scale graph analysis on very large sets of communications metadata without having to check foreignness” of every e-mail address, phone number or other identifier, the document said. Because of concerns about infringing on the privacy of American citizens, the computer analysis of such data had previously been permitted only for foreigners.

The agency can augment the communications data with material from public, commercial and other sources, including bank codes, insurance information, Facebook profiles, passenger manifests, voter registration rolls and GPS location information, as well as property records and unspecified tax data, according to the documents. They do not indicate any restrictions on the use of such “enrichment” data, and several former senior Obama administration officials said the agency drew on it for both Americans and foreigners.

www.nytimes.com...
www.usatoday.com...

And the rabbit hole deepens. More and more is coming out about the NSA issues nearly daily. It seems as if Orwell´s "1984" was not a prophecy but an inspiration for some people.

I understand that up to some point certain surveillance actions are important in order to prevent certain crimes, although this is crossing all possible lines in the privacy vs security debate... and what´s worse, we do not know how deep the rabbit hole goes, as more and more things that previously were speculations are becoming facts.

PS. Hopefully this is the right sub-forum for this thread. These newspieces are from today and did not find any posts on these yet.

reply to post by Cabin


If the government was a person they would probably be a paranoid a$$hole

reply to post by Cabin
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Since 1908 there has been another organization performing the same duties as the N.S.A .
That agency is called the F.B.I .

If it swims like a fish and smells like a fish and looks like a fish then it is most likely a fish.

The NSA sure does act, look and smell like the FBI so please enlighten as to why it is any different.

Thank you.

reply to post by dizziedame


There is some overlap between the NSA and FBI, however they are different. I use the football analogy when describing government agencies. The FBI is our defense against terrorist, both foreign and domestic; while the NSA and CIA take a more offensive role in countering the threat of terrorism (mostly foreign). That being said, any criminal investigation will involve the FBI. The NSA and CIA are mostly not involved in criminal prosecutions. Regardless, to successfully prosecute a criminal case, the FBI must rely on the code of criminal procedure, which is backed up by the constitution. Therefore all these conspiracy theories about NSA illegal wiretaps being used against the American people is complete rubbish. Those never have, nor never will be used in an open court.

reply to post by Cabin


Its pretty scary haha no dont be scared, never be scared. remember, you got millions of people who want to stay free

This ties in with the new gigantic data center they are opening in Utah. I said it before and I'll say it again that you don't need that much data storage to find terrorists- I believe they are going to use it to store everything we do and try to analyze each of us to see who will go along with anything and who might resist illegal power grabs.