U.S. Is Secretly Collecting Records of Verizon Calls | Hacker News Reader

U.S. Is Secretly Collecting Records of Verizon Calls

nytimes.com

496 pointszt108 comments

What happened to this being the most transparent administration "committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness"[1]?

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOp...

I would presume that "openness" refers to actions initiated by the administration itself. Already-established, long-running initiatives of autonomous sub-departments, even if they do fall under the purview of the executive, probably aren't included, since the administration isn't actually making any choices in how these programs are run, just letting them continue to run as they always have.

You would presume that now, yes. Nobody who was presuming that when he said it, however, made much of an effort to speak up.

Sort of like how "everybody knows" it was Congress's fault campaign promises X, Y, and Z didn't pass, yet at the time, nobody stopped to ask how much these promises can mean if the position he's campaigning for isn't capable of fulfilling them in the first place. "I presume by 'guarantee' he meant he'd try his best, since obviously the POTUS can't even introduce laws anyway. And as a former Constitutional law prof., I'm sure Obama knows that." Oh, super. Thanks.

Well, yes, that's basically the converse of the Principle of Charity (let's call it here the Principle of Political Doublespeak): in est, when a politician makes a promise, what they're actually promising is to temper all the decisions which they themselves are presented with or hold sway over through that promise. For example, a promise to make the sky blue is really a promise on what color to paint the exteriors of all outgoing NASA satellite missions.

The only reason this is allowed is that everyone involved in the promise--the speaker and the lobbyists and the corporate executives and the military generals and the foreign policy analysts, and congress and the senate, too[1]--all share an understanding that all promises requiring certain attitudes from other parties the executive must work with--at least within a non-dictatorship--are empty, so no one is actually confused as to whether they will be fulfilled (they won't.) Thus, the stances behind them become a means of signalling, showing that one stands for the views of one's base even if one can do practically nothing "within the system" to advance the proposed agenda.

[1] Note that "the voters" aren't part of this list. This is one of the effects of truly representative democracy: there is no incentive for political language to be informative to anyone who doesn't have a say in "how the sausage is made."

"Nobody who was presuming that when he said it"

That problem lies with the voters, and the candidates are not going to change their behavior until the voters own up to their responsibilities.

Voters prefer to be told these little white lies about great intentions, rather than be bothered to apply basic knowledge of our federal gov't that should have been gained in junior high school. Voters whine and complain that it is the politicians fault, but voters' own behavior reward that which they claim to dislike.

I don't disagree, but at the same time, by the nature of the system, people aren't capable of behaving in a way that rewards what they like. "Vote-signals," if you will, are as noisy as human communication is capable of being.

That's trivially false; human communication can be literally 100% noise with nothing conveyed. This isn't that case.

In public policy circles, it is understood that the reason that controversies even exist is always because the issue involves trade offs between competing important values. (Those issues that do not involve difficult tradeoffs are sooner or later resolved, and then forgotten because the solution is acceptable as the status quo.)

IMHO people are trying to hard too get what they "like", too often looking for a simple magic bullet, when they should be in a conversation with their elected officials about what tradeoffs are reasonable in light of our values. We should elect people who ask us to be uncomfortable at times, but for well-thought out reasons.

Our politicians are acting highly rationally, in the context of the incentives the voters offer. "Voting the bums out" is not going to change anything, until the voters opt to build a better kind of electorate. The first step is diagnosing the actual problem, rather simply believing that the problem is always Team Them.

Public policy circles can (and will) think whatever they find soothing. The rest of us continue to roll our eyes inwardly, just as one does when listening to Tolkein fans debate whether the Eagles should've merely flown the Fellowship to Mt. Doom. (I say this not as a beltway outsider but as a man who grew up 7 miles from Langley, went to the Pentagon for TYKTW Day, and who lives and works in the area to this day.)

I get what you're saying. Politics is a choice between the unpalatable and the disastrous. Duh. Of course the Eagles should just fly them there.

What Tolkein geeks and policy wonks alike force themselves to ignore in order to have these mine vs. yours logicality debates to begin with is that the premise of their debate is a fantasy world. "If we want blank, we should vote blank" tacitly assumes that voting blank and persuading others to vote blank can sway the outcome of an election. Any thinking individual can see immediately that this is untrue.

Unfortunately, the administration itself doesn't even score that well there. Remember sunlight before signing?

I suppose one could read it narrowly enough to include virtually nothing but then what?

Is the NSA truly autonomous? I believe the director reports to the Director of National Intelligence, who is a Presidential appointee.

Well, they HAVE managed to create an unprecedented level of openness and transparency.

Perhaps in a different direction than we were assuming, but still...

Thats funny for two seconds untill you realise its a nightmare.

they're openly flouting privacy laws and our constitutional rights -- that's sort of the same thing.

President Obama transparently extended the Patriot Act.

I, for one, am already looking forward in what ways the Obama administration is going to hunt down the leaker of this document. Because - how should a government function without having a basic level of secrecy? Oh irony...

On the other hand the leak probably came even from the administration itself. After they pretty much got away with intimidating political opponents and spying on unfavorable reporters, why not unload a few other skeletons from the closet.

Worst case scenario Jon Stewart is making a 5 minute skit out of it and with twinkle in his eye moving back to bashing some more convenient subjects.

The U.S. is openly storing any packet that traverses any wire it can field signal from.

Quantum Tapping:

The loophole is that they are not 'tapping' any communication until the moment when they actually observe/listen to it.

Yes presumably even with voice they can still store it. Only when a human examines (sees the data on their screen, listens to the audio) then only it is considered that a "search" has occurred.

So let's assume that there are these scumbags and all they want to do is spy on everyone and there is this pesky Constitution still getting in their way, what is the strategy to eliminate the "annoyance"?

The strategy is two-pronged:

1) Don't have statutes of limitation on data gathered in a search warrant. So say you commit what someone thinks is a crime at 99 years of age, they get a search warrant for your data and now legally they have access to all your data since the day you were born.

2) Store _everything_. Presumably this is what the new NSA complex is Utah is for.

Sure enough you'd become inconvenient at some point. Let's say you spend a night too many with the Occupy crowd or your kid installs LOIC and now a search warrant is executed. The emails you sent 10 years ago now appear and well, who knows you might have written back then, but pretty sure it can be made to stick.

Now of course you would be offered a deal. Maybe collaborate or just get scared enough of them to never step outside and never touch a computer again, well they win in that case as well.

Good luck to everyone.

You can't "store everything" for the simple reason that feeding all the traffic back to Utah would be prohibitive. The thing is, though, this is not any real comfort because it doesn't matter.

The reason we have the 4th Amendment is to keep general warrants like this from being issued, and to help retard the "show me the man and I will find you the crime" (to quote a member of the Stalin regime) from taking root here, or at least to make it more difficult.

The problem is, for the worst abuses to occur they don't have to store everything. They just get general warrants like this, inspect packets, filter "interesting subsets" out and send those back to Utah. So I think the actual strategy is two pronged, in a different direction, and both worse and more economical:

1. Vague laws that people can be easily prosecuted for[1] particularly when it comes to terrorism. Bonus points for allowing military enforcement of domestic law.[2]

2. Get general warrants that let them target whoever they want without recourse, which is what is going on here. Better yet, let's get retroactive immunity for any accomplices and make sure it is all really above the law.

The end result is the same, of course. The difference is that the above strategy takes a lot less time, resources, money, people, and hardware to pull off.

[1] See Harvey Silverglate (civil liberties atty, veteran of the EFF, ACLU, and FIRE), "Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent"

[2] This is a trend, particularly when it comes to defining terrorism but has been going on since at least Clinton. Note that Clinton asked Congress unsuccessfully for a terrorism exception to Posse Comitatus. See Kopel, David (former Colorado Assistant Attorney General). "No More Wacos"

> "show me the man and I will find you the crime" (to quote a member of the Stalin regime)

The sentiment precedes Stalin. In the 1600s, Cardinal Richelieu is said to have warned, "Show me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men and I will find something to have him hanged."

Yes and that more people don't pay attention is shocking. Just ask yourselves this,the NSA isn't supposed to spy on Americans, why on earth is the Utah data center in Utah? It's nearly the farthest physical location from the supposed targets...

That said - the matter here is the call logs, not the content - there's nothing to listen to. The easiest thing for them to do is hand over the logs used for billing, though they may have the same information from network performance monitor systems as well.

Not that it makes it ok, but Verizon isn't handing over the actual conversation in this case.

> highly classified court order

Boy does that sound like a concept which needs to die. Justice does not tend to occur behind closed doors.

Indeed. There is, as far as I can tell, no reason for this order to be secret at all, since it's so indiscriminate. I can understand (grudgingly) the argument for sealing the court order during an active investigation, since you don't necessarily want to tip off the suspect that you're "onto them". But if you're saying "give me everybody's data" then it won't be tipping anybody off.

And weighed against the idea that our government, which we created, to serve us needs to be almost 100% transparent in order to be accountable to us, I just can't see any reason for this being kept secret.

If We The People are to police our government, we need to know what it's doing. And when it does something wrong, we need to smite it mightily.

In theory the secret stuff is given oversight by politicians. You elect the politicians, so that's the weak link to oversight by the people.

I'm not sure how it works in the US, but I'm aware that GCHQ / CESG / etc have pretty rigorous scrutiny.

I'm not disagreeing with you, btw. Far too much stuff is classified as top secret or secret when it just doesn't need to be.

In theory the secret stuff is given oversight by politicians. You elect the politicians, so that's the weak link to oversight by the people.

In theory, yes. I, for one, don't consider that an acceptable form of oversight / accountability. We need to be able to see inside the box, and know damn near everything that's going on, end to end. There is, IMO, very little which truly needs to be classified: Launch codes for the nuclear missiles, things of that nature. Most of the rest, not so much.

>The order was marked “TOP SECRET//SI//NOFORN,” referring to communications-related intelligence information that may not be released to noncitizens. That would make it among the most closely held secrets in the federal government, and its disclosure comes amid a furor over the Obama administration’s aggressive tactics in its investigations of leaks.

The author not only wrote the article about this, but also put in the classification of the document source. Salt in the wound. I can't help but feel that such a detail may have been included as a response to recent events regarding members of the news media and their treatment at the hands of the government. It very much seems that the honey moon is over.

That would make it among the most closely held secrets in the federal government seems to be an overstatement when you consider that millions of documents are marked TOP SECRET each year.

The clear and obvious question here is if it's "just metadata" and isn't really spying, then why is it secret at all? In fact, why don't we broadcast to the terrorists that we do this and wish them luck attacking us without the aid of electronic communication.

The secrecy only makes it look like something illegal. (And there is no doubt in my mind that it is against the spirit of American law, if not the letter)

What honeymoon? The media has eaten up every possible shadow of a scandal, including the birth certificate nonsense. That's business.

What do people expect? It's either that or open war mongering. This administration doesn't want to be seen as a militaristic one, but the world doesn't stop being what it is because voters get tired of wars. So something has to give. More drones, expanded secret ops, more information gathering.

I don't like the idea of being spied on, not at all. But from a security perspective, I understand the need for better information. I'm kind of playing Devil-advocates, but it's naive to expect your government to provide you safety, lifestyle, freedom, without having to play behind the scene - or openly fight oversea - when the rest of the World lives a completely different story.

when the rest of the World lives a completely different story

What does this mean?

I remember reading about how Lebanon's cellular phone providers are deeply in bed with Hezbollah, as just one example. Likewise with the Taliban working in concert with AQ before 9/11.

My gut reaction is that I don't like this, but it's hard to argue that the U.S. is fighting an even bout with those who would enter the country and use its civil liberties to aid their terrorism planning.

Of course we expect that, the question is where to draw the line in areas where civil liberty directly conflicts with security.

>I remember reading about how Lebanon's cellular phone providers are deeply in bed with Hezbollah, as just one example. Likewise with the Taliban working in concert with AQ before 9/11.

Some tribal people, in a god-forsaken land, with a technical sophistication somewhere between cavemen and world war II, were "working in concert with AQ"?

Yeah, surely the US needs surveillance for all its citizens to counter that.

>My gut reaction is that I don't like this, but it's hard to argue that the U.S. is fighting an even bout with those who would enter the country and use its civil liberties to aid their terrorism planning.

What planning? After decades of external US intervention, invasions, wars, support for dictatorships (from the Shah to Pinochet) and weirdos (remember how Saddam and Laden were "allies" in the 80s?), there have been like 2 or 3 attacks on US soil, 9/11 included. Suburban kids with machine guns kill more people in their schools each year than most of those.

In 2001, 3000 people died from terrorism. In 2010, 600,000 people died from heart disease, 575,000 from cancer, 120,000 from accidents, 50,000 from the flu and 38,000 from suicide.

If 3000 people died each year from terrorism, would it be worth not giving up the freedoms we have? That would still be a very small number compared to the flu, which no one I know has a fear of getting because they think they'll die.

My point is, that where we draw the line is in the wrong place because of our irrational reaction to terrorism and its actual risk of death.

It's either collecting call metadata on US citizens or open war mongering? I was going to say that you're giving a false choice but then I realized there doesn't really seem to be a connection between the choices you're giving.

"Everybody decides not to care about terrorism" happens not to be on the menu. Unless you have an idea how to make everyone not care about terrorism.

But from a security perspective, I understand the need for better information. I'm kind of playing Devil-advocates, but it's naive to expect your government to provide you safety, lifestyle, freedom, without having to play behind the scene - or openly fight oversea - when the rest of the World lives a completely different story.

OK, for starters, let's assume that "national defense" is a proper and just role for government, and even be charitable and allow that "some" secrecy is necessary. Now, how does any of that argue for allowing the government to record call record for everybody in the US? What is wrong with having them identify an individual, or small group of individuals, that are suspected of $WHATEVER, and then go get a warrant, and then ask for the data? I mean, by casting a net so wide, it's obvious they're collecting a TON of data on people that aren't involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever... why should we be OK with that?

And that aside, to the extent that this is about the "War on Terror", ask yourself this: How many people in the US have ever been killed as a result of a terrorist attack? Over all time the number is on the order of a few thousand. Now every single one of those was tragic, yes, and I certainly don't want to diminish the importance of every single life... but when you look at the big picture, cancer, AIDS, car crashes, accidental slips and falls in the bathroom, accidental drownings in ones own swimming pool and even "being beaten to death by a cop" outrank "death by terrorism" in terms of scale. And is anybody seriously suggesting we should allow the State nearly unlimited power in the name of fighting accidental slips and falls, or drownings, or any of those things? No? Then why should we do it for terrorism?

And finally, shouldn't we consider that people like Ron Paul have a point, that a lot of the hatred for the US is probably "blowback" as a result of our aggressive, meddlesome foreign policy? Maybe one of the best ways to ensure security for our nation is to have a strong military - at home - and trade freely with everyone. After all, it seems to be far less common for strong trading partners to attack each other. Free trade, and less meddling in the affairs of other sovereign nations, would - IMO - be more effective at protecting us, than allowing the fracking NSA to grab call logs indiscriminately.

> How many people in the US have ever been killed as a result of a terrorist attack? Over all time the number is on the order of a few thousand.

Maybe because they're doing a much more effective job than we realize. Also I don't think you accounted for Pearl Harbor.

> And finally, shouldn't we consider that people like Ron Paul have a point, that a lot of the hatred for the US...

I think this is common misconception. I do not think the vast majority of the world hates the US. I'd be curious to see facts about this.

Maybe because they're doing a much more effective job than we realize.

Maybe. Unfortunately there's no real way to say. I mean, if I offer you a "tiger proof rock" and say that it protects against tiger attacks, will you accept as evidence, the fact that I've never been attacked by a tiger?

Also I don't think you accounted for Pearl Harbor.

No, I didn't. I don't think most people put that under "terrorist attack", as it was an overt action by an organized nation-state as part of an active military strategy. The Japanese weren't just trying to "sow terror", it was a tactical objective to weaken the US Navy so they wouldn't be able to impede Japanese objectives in the Pacific during WWII.

I do not think the vast majority of the world hates the US. I'd be curious to see facts about this.

I don't think the argument is that the majority of the world hates us (although it might be fair to say that a majority aren't terribly fond of us), but rather that - of the groups which are actively engaging in terrorist attacks directed out way - those groups are motivated by our foreign policy. I admit this view is not without controversy.

> No, I didn't. I don't think most people put that under "terrorist attack", as it was an overt action by an organized nation-state as part of an active military strategy.

Also, Hawaii at the time was not even a state.

The US actually hasn't fought a war on it's own soil since 1812.

(It HAS had numerous terrorist attacks on foreign soil, however - the Beirut barracks bombings in 1983 would be but one example. In fact, 9/11 was not really an isolated incident, but the next progression in a number of terrorist attacks against the US. It just happened to be the biggest one and the first one on US soil (not counting the failed 1993 WTC bombing)).

"from a security perspective, I understand the need for better information"

Quality versus quantity. This is about wholesale surveillance -- gathering as much information as possible on as many people as possible. That does not mean the information is better or even useful.

I bet it is very useful. If you have one or two suspicious persons who happen to be a member of a particular lodge, church, mosque, etc. you can probably usefully winnow down the list of associates to further investigate without a large and intrusive effort investigating the entire group.

People easily imagine the worst case scenarios, but the okay case scenario is surely more typical, e.g. when a man travels to eastern Pakistan to allegedly visit relatives for several months, the FBI can look at the 9 people he spends time with rather than creating dossiers on the 112 people who so happen to attend the same mosque.

(Whether and how the Constitution cares about the "good case", "okay case", "worst case" is a different question.)

The problem is that the scale messages makes even seemingly small false positive rates a big problem. Suppose you had a false positives only 0.01% of the time -- a ludicrously generous estimate. When you are looking at hundreds of millions or even billions of messages per day, that is far too much noise for the system to be useful.

Maybe the FBI/NSA is so good that they never see false positives. I doubt it, though, given how many non-terrorists have been harassed at airports, had their peaceful protest groups infiltrated by undercover agents, etc.

> What do people expect? It's either that or open war mongering.

Or we could just stop with using fearmongering as a way to expand homeland security's budget. These agencies are doing whatever they can to expand their budgets. That is the game those players play. You aren't successful unless you expand your budget. And you can't expand your budget unless you make convincing fictions about all of the fear out there in the world.

> But from a security perspective, I understand the need for better information...but it's naive to expect your government to provide you safety, lifestyle, freedom, without having to play behind the scene

How do you call this safety or freedom? Our own gov't is more likely to harm us than terrorists. How many people do you think die from terrorists in the US a year versus innocent people being prosecuted (or molested by the TSA)?

The false positive rate is way, way, way higher than than the number of terrorists in the US.

I completely disagree with this sentiment. I say ignore terrorism completely. Don't intercept calls, get rid of all post/911 airport security. We can't stop terrorism and we won't ever stop it.

A better question is: is it worth bothering? The biggest yield terrorism has ever had in the US was 911 where around 3k people died. So if you look at the last 30 years of terror we're talking around 100 people a year. A problem that costs the lives of 100 people a year isn't really worth considering so long as things like cancer and heart disease are out there. Instead of wasting all these billions on war and anti-terrorism, invest it in cancer research. Now that could have some kind of impact.

And, yes, if my loved ones were hurt by terrorists I would be devastated. Just the same as if I lost them to heart disease, cancer, a car accident, etc. But I'm not willing to give up anything (not security, not time at the airport, nothing at all) to stop something that is so statistically minuscule as to not be worth thinking about.

That is a reasonable policy choice, which is worth considering.

It so happens that law enforcement officials and national security officials and politicians do not think that the voters will accept 3 to 6 Boston bombings per year, without their careers being destroyed. Do they misunderstand the public mood?

>It so happens that law enforcement officials and national security officials and politicians do not think that the voters will accept 3 to 6 Boston bombings per year, without their careers being destroyed.

Take away the security apparatus and many of their jobs are gone whether there is an attack or not.

The presidency is one of those jobs.

off topic. I came across this post from you https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3170221

Would you still be interested in that service?

tom at blendah.com

For some. But most of the loudest voices are higher up the food chain, and do not directly benefit from the security apparatus. Most of those on the payroll as part of the apparatus must maintain some semblance of calm competence, thus they cannot participate directly into feeding the hysteria.

Implying mercenary intent absolves the voters of any responsibility.

Public mood is largely a product of what the media forms it to be. Look at how Boston was covered. How many days did they blather on and on about 3 deaths? If it had been three Boston people dying in a car crash it wouldn't even had made local news.

Of course some say the media is just showing people what they want to see but that is naive. The two are intertwined. Further, if no news agencies were allowed to report on terrorist attacks (as they are not supposed to report on self immolation) then the public wouldn't care because most people wouldn't even know about it.

The War on Terror is taking more and more victims. Chasing this phantom is getting dangerously close to an Orwellian Paradise.

As Terry Jones said, "How do you wage war on an abstract noun, it's like deciding to bomb murder".

I would argue that terrorism is less abstract than murder. Also, the US "war on terror" is about terror that specifically relates or effects the US making it an even more specific classification.

It is not specific enough to end. Typically, wars end in either victory or defeat, but in the "war on terror" there is not even a clear definition of either.

Murder is far more concrete than the war on terror, because definitions of terrorist or what counts as a threat to national security is extremely nebulous and data about such determinations are hidden from most people, whereas murder is typically defined in laws that are generally accessible to the public and is strictly related to certain kinds of killings of human beings by other human beings.

So what policy do you want regarding terrorism? If you want everyone to ignore it, then you will have to persuade the rest of the US to ignore it.

Previous discussion (5 hours old, still active):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5829442

No checks and balances here... at least any that aren't classified and are transparent to the public. A Tyranny, as Thomas Jefferson might refer to it.

Checks and balances are functioning perfectly. Congress voted for Patriot Act §215, President Bush signed it into law, President Obama and his congress reauthorized it, and the courts did not overturn it. The law has sat on the books, very publicly, for more than a decade, and has offered myriad opportunities for citizens to debate and challenge (an example: [1]). The broader issue of NSA dragnets is probably one of the top 20 political issues in the US, making regular headlines since 2005 (if you include foreign dragnets, 1995 [2] or earlier).

Checks and balances aren't broken. This is democracy in action.

[1] http://www.aclu.org/free-speech-national-security-technology...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Controversy

Which section of the §215 authorizes this activity?

ACLU explains §215: http://www.aclu.org/free-speech-national-security-technology...

(note: "§" means "section")

There's no real oversight, and they are using "secret Courts" and "secret interpretations" even of these obscure and very vague laws.

It isn't really particularly obscure or vague. The Patriot Act authorizes exactly this (and many other things), explicitly and openly.

It doesn't sound like "balance" when all three branches are on the same side of the seesaw.

"checks and balances" does not mean "the Supreme Court is in a state of perpetual partisan war with the executive," for example.

If the checks and balances were functioning, we wouldn't have senators warning in 2011 of the Obama administration's "secret interpretation" of the Patriot Act: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20067005-281.html

Unfortunately the senators were on the Intelligence committee and viewed themselves as unable to disclose what they learned in secret briefings. Now we know at least part of what they were talking about.

"viewed themselves as unable to disclose what they learned in secret briefings"

That is because it is illegal to disclose classified intelligence, even for a Senator.

The reason why these Senators could only warn about things, instead of passing legislation to change the law, is because the majority of Congress supports this type of legislation.

The checks and balances are still there - the problem is that the body that passes the law agrees with this type of power.

> the problem is that the body that passes the law agrees with this type of power

You can see that in the initial comments on this leak: among the first official comments were both parties' ranking members on the Senate Intelligence Committee — Dianne Feinstein (D) and Saxby Chambliss (R) — defending the program. It's not a surprise to them or something they want to change.

This is untrue. It is not "illegal" for a senator to disclose classified material. The Constitution's speech and debate clause trumps federal criminal law, meaning he or she could disclose the material on the floor of the Senate or in committee. (Doing so may not be wise, of course, but it would be legal.)

The Supreme Court has ruled on this (Gravel v. United States, 408 U.S. 606) after Senator Mike Gravel read a copy of the classified Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record.

Why do we keep pretending that Thomas Jefferson wanted us to use military force to destroy the Constitution and overthrow democratically elected officials as soon as we were unhappy with politics?

AFAIK, Amdocs processes most of the carriers billing, aka metadata. Many of Amdocs systems are based in Israel. So, does NSA need court ruling to get metadata from an Israeli company? Seems like it might be another convenient way to go around the constitution.

Oh, who could possibly have predicted this?

Why is everybody so surprised? I literally do not understand this.

For some reason, everyone is convinced that this is the sort of thing Republicans do. The very suggestion that the Obama administration is, in fact, on the right wing of the political spectrum is shocking to many of his supporters.

For some reason, you missed that this IS something Republicans do. It started in 2005, well before Obama took office.

I suppose my wording is a bit ambiguous. It is not that Republicans don't do this, but rather than they are not unique in doing this.

Cannot speak for everybody, but I, for one, while not surprised, still need to know the facts -- the difference between what can happen and what has actually happened is important.

What I don't understand is sentiment like yours. We shouldn't bring this up because "everyone knows already"? No, we should be shouting this from the roof tops and do everything we can to make people mad enough about it to act. What is your solution? Sit back and look smug while the world falls apart around us?

Some of us have been shouting for the rooftops until hoarse for the last decade and more. Suddenly everybody's reacting (and I don't mean everybody here - I mean the New York Bloody Times) like this is the very first time this has ever come up.

Good. Our only hope is that one of this "just discovered today!" waves is big enough to affect actual change. Your initial statement only serves as a "shut up and move along". How do you imagine that helps anything?

It may be cool to say "I knew this already" but I'd rather be less cool and have something done about this.

I'd say rather that you took it as a "shut up and move along". Others didn't. So it may have been a less than perfectly effective expression of my intent, but that's as far as I'll go.

mad enough to act how, precisely?

If enough people want something they will find a way to make it happen, one way or another.

There are many possible ways to affect change. For example, since all the existing politicians are so awful, the best choice might be to simply become politicians ourselves. If enough people did that at the same time we would have a chance.

Obviously things like peaceful demonstrations are a waste of time, but there are active and effective things you can do that are completely legal.

Are you suggesting that everyone should just ignore it and continue with their lives... ?

Just because I'm not surprised, doesn't mean I shouldn't be outraged.

Well, it's not a surprise, but at least now there is a solid evidence. What can the public do about it though?

Loads. But the real question is, what will the public do about it?

I suspect nothing what so ever. They are scared witless by terrorists and if you guys are like the UK, paedophiles. Oh, and of course, it wont happen to them, although, as we see, it already is.

If you don't like this, call your representatives in congress, and tell two friends about it.

Is this actually "news" (i.e. new information)? Ever since the secret room business in 2006 (about events in 2003 or earlier), the handwriting was on the wall.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/04/att_assisting_...

No but be careful. People round here dont seek to be informed of such.

You're not being paranoid if they're really out to get you.

I've never considered call detail records to be particularly private. That's all this is.

This is a big difference from established law enforcement practice in that regard. Normally a prosecutor needs to issue a subpoena to the phone company to get your individual records, regarding a specific investigation. In this case, the government gets every record from all Verizon customers for the period in question. No, you would not expect that privacy would protect your records if you are specifically under investigation. But you might (certainly before the PATRIOT Act, if not before this revelation, unless you were a conspiracy nut) expect that government agencies don't have free reign to browse your records for no predefined purpose whatsoever. The potential for abuse is too huge and obvious.

We seem to be well past all that now.

Maybe its because I work in the telecom industry, I'm used to CDR's being all over the place, easy to get, export as text even, and not particularly private. It's always seemed to me that what you say on the call is far more important than who you are calling.

So, post them on your blog then.

And I care about what you consider private why, exactly? For any old thing you can find someone, or even a barrel full of people, who considers it to be true. The arguments matter. You provided none, and that's that.

So post yours right here. I would like to see them.

For what period of time?

Since everything is out anyway, and since everyone else has iterated on this point several times now, all I have to say, is:

FUCK YOU, BIPARTISAN, CORRUPT, DICKISH, TYRANNICAL, WORTHLESS PIECE OF SHIT.

FUCK YOU, GOVERNMENT.

*Edit: nevermind.

do they use Netezza or Greenplum for this sort of thing?

Even taking it a step further - If monitoring my phone calls about my kid being sick and puking in the back seat of my car keeps me safe from assholes, be my guest. Listen away.

Maybe you're willing to give up your privacy to get protection from imaginary villains (what are the odds of you personally getting hurt or killed by a terrorist?), but I'm not.

If you read any news story about this from any newspaper, you will see that the issue is records of who called whom for how long, not full transcripts of all your calls.

However terrible and indefensible that is, let's start by addressing reality instead of imagination

What a bunch of whiners.

It's not as if you don't hand much--if not all--of the same information over to marketing departments, app makers and ad companies when using a smart phone.

No kidding, do they think Verizon doesn't keep track of your phone calls? What the NSA did isn't illegal and it certainly isn't new.

Marketing departments won't come crashing through my door dressed in a police uniform.

You've never heard of RIAA, MPAA, et al?

What happens when marketing departments realize they can use the data freely given to them to target people to blackmail and extort, rather than just flash ads at and try to sell to?

"For a monthly recurring fee of just $XX, conveniently and discreetly billed to your credit card, you can prevent this information from being sent to [spouse||significant other||law enforcement||employer]."

Or company will be founded--if not already--to buy bulk data and develop reports and profiles on individuals and groups, with law enforcement and the intelligence community as the primary customers? Sign up and buy a report/profile for $25-50.

I love how people in this thread are modding you down for this. None of this is news to me, you and many like us. Yet here we are, top 10 stories on HN, more comments than I have ever seen all about some new NSA leak. Apparently people on HN are far less informed about the world we live in than I previously thought. Go figure.

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