Verizon Customer?

[johnnya24]

Amendment IV to the United States Constitution

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Fuck that eh?

For a country that preaches the core principle of individual freedom, you sure know how to subvert it

The Obama fraud continues.

Front Page of The Guardian (actually might not work as you will be directed to a different version of their website)

Obama administration defends NSA collection of Verizon phone records

The White House has sought to justify its surveillance of millions of Americans' phone records as anger grows over revelations that a secret court order gives the National Security Agency blanket authority to collect call data from a major phone carrier.

Politicians and civil liberties campaigners described the disclosures, revealed by the Guardian on Wednesday, as the most sweeping intrusion into private data they had ever seen by the US government.

But the Obama administration, while declining to comment on the specific order, said the practice was "a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States".

The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19.

[johnnya24]

Might want to link to the actual story....

Seriously? It's like headline news over here?

[johnnya24]

They only have evidence of the Verizon order ... stands to reason the other providers will have received similar orders.

So the NSA are being ordered / allowed to gather every citizens phone, location, contacts and presumably browsing records and keeping that on record to use against you as and when they see fit. Welcome to 1984.

Watch out for those terrorists ... they will come and get you if you don't eat all your greens!

[TranaGreg]

glad you brought this up johnny, it's news here in Canada too.

I can see the potential merit in legislating a telco to retain records to support future investigations of specific cases, as supported by appropriate warrants - at the very least it's worthy of debate - but to legislate them to provide all records on a daily basis seems like a pretty clear violation of that constitutional amendment ...

it's amazing how far the pendulum has swung away from ensuring personal freedoms ... it will be interesting to see what events might cause that pendulum to slow down, though that might not be for quite some time.

[Roto Rooter]

Crickets from the Obama fanboys...

[Fresno Bob]

Crickets from the Obama fanboys...

Bush started it!

[Roto Rooter]

[dslaw]

Crickets from the Obama fanboys...

I wasn't a fan when Bush started doing things and not a fan now that Obama is pushing it further. I guess if they announce an arrest on a big planned attack because they got these records it may make it a little better. But Nazi Germany was a pretty safe place to live (as long you weren't one of the people they picked on) and I wouldn't want to have lived there either. At least I can complain about Obama even if I did vote for him. I hope they don't start monitoring RJ.

I think we had an IRS thread so I won't get started on that but this administration seems to be taking gov't places that it shouldn't go. All that being said, I still think Obama in office was better than the alternative, especially in the last election.

[B-Fly]

This is certainly not an area about which I'm thrilled with the Obama Administration, although as I've said here before on national security/intelligence/transparency matters, I do fear what types of threats caused the president to veer so significantly from what I still believe he truly hoped to be able to do differently when he was campaigning for office.

[GTAXI]

Real good article about the Bush/Obama White House.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/welcome-to-the-bush-obama-white-house-they-re-spying-on-us-20130606

[TranaGreg]

This is certainly not an area about which I'm thrilled with the Obama Administration, although as I've said here before on national security/intelligence/transparency matters, I do fear what types of threats caused the president to veer so significantly from what I still believe he truly hoped to be able to do differently when he was campaigning for office.

I'd suggest that this is probably a pretty representative position.

I'm curious if there are any lines that can't be crossed though ... and I don't mean you personally; what would be so egregious from a personal freedoms perspective that the US general populace couldn't stomach it.

It seems from an outsiders perspective that if it's ok for NSA to actively monitor who calls who, pretty much anything goes at this point.

[johnnya24]

The Guardian do love their live blogs

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/holder-phone-records-surveillance-live

[johnnya24]

This is heartening ... must be a pretty serious 7 year old national security threat. They presumably collect all your data from every conceivable source, without your knowledge, and every member of the US Senate knows about it.

The chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, Dianne Feinstein, said on Thursday she believed a court order compelling Verizon to hand over call data relating to millions of Americans had been in place since 2006.
[...]
Feinstein said she believed the order had been in place for some time. She said: "As far as I know, this is the exact three-month renewal of what has been the case for the past seven years. This renewal is carried out by the [foreign intelligence surveillance] court under the business records section of the Patriot Act. Therefore, it is lawful. It has been briefed to Congress."
[...]
"This has been going on for seven years," [Senate intelligence committee ranking Republican Saxby] Chambliss said. "Every member of the United States Senate has been advised of this. To my knowledge there has not been any citizen who has registered a complaint. It has proved meritorious because we have collected significant information on bad guys, but only on bad guys, over the years."

[Controller Jacobs]

I'd suggest that this is probably a pretty representative position.

I'm curious if there are any lines that can't be crossed though ... and I don't mean you personally; what would be so egregious from a personal freedoms perspective that the US general populace couldn't stomach it.

It seems from an outsiders perspective that if it's ok for NSA to actively monitor who calls who, pretty much anything goes at this point.

This crosses it for me, I'm ready to waste my next vote on Libertarian or Green, unless the Dems run one of the two Senators who have been raising the alarms on this (Mark Udall and Ron Wyden).

Keep in mind this is on the heels of aggressive attempts to control leaks to the media. And it's highly doubtful it stops at telephone records, I think it's reasonable at this point to assume this includes related demands on all Internet providers.

[TranaGreg]

I love the line "To my knowledge there has not been any citizen who has registered a complaint."

Maybe he should have said, "To my knowledge there has not been any citizen who has registered a complaint, or even hinted at it in any private conversations".