Posted on 06/12/2013 10:50:08 AM PDT by george76
Monitoring hundreds of millions of phone records is an extraordinary invasion of privacy.
When Americans expressed outrage last week over the seizure and surveillance of Verizon's client data by the National Security Agency, President Obama responded: "In the abstract, you can complain about Big Brother . . . but when you actually look at the details, I think we've struck the right balance."
How many records did the NSA seize from Verizon? Hundreds of millions. We are now learning about more potential mass data collections by the government from other communications and online companies. These are the "details," and few Americans consider this approach "balanced," though many rightly consider it Orwellian.
These activities violate the Fourth Amendment, which says warrants must be specific—"particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." And what is the government doing with these records? The president assures us that the government is simply monitoring the origin and length of phone calls, not eavesdropping on their contents. Is this administration seriously asking us to trust the same government that admittedly targets political dissidents through the Internal Revenue Service and journalists through the Justice Department?
...
The administration has responded to the public uproar by simply claiming that it is allowed to have unlimited access to all Americans' private information. This response is a clear indication that the president views our Constitutional "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects" as null and void.
If this is the new normal in America, then Big Brother certainly is watching and it's not hyperbolic or extreme to say so. Nor is it unreasonable to fear which parts of the Constitution this government will next consider negotiable or negligible.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
But they aren’t watching the Illegals!
Rand’s just found a dandy horse to hitch his wagon to
But they aren’t watching the Illegals!
I wonder when Paul figured that one out?
But Michael Medved says it’s so much data that we’re safe because they can’t really do anything with it. :-D
Dark nights fade into day.
Remember 9/17 two hundred plus years ago ... Lightening Struck ...
I’ve worked in Data Mining. When I heard Michael’s explanation based on that concept my jaw dropped. Either he has absolutely NO clue just how much data a good mining program can sift or he is lying.
He may want to learn about a certain company called the Rawlings Group.
Hold your Head Up America! Keep on ... You’ll Win!
Two words: DATA ANALYTICS.
Look it up.
It is the hottest new buzzword in corporate America. It amounts to analyzing volumes of disparate data and creating associations between every bit and byte. We have a burgeoning system internally in my company, and it’s a hot commodity in the market now.
PRISM is actually a data analytics program that is used to create large-scale associations across very broad sets of data that can later be searched, indexed, and referenced.
Mark my words, they are taking every last bit of data, migrating it to the central repository in the new Utah data center, applying the PRISM application to the data repositories, and creating very thorough records on every American by dates, associations, ownerships, etc.
Soon enough, the Federal government is going to know where you ate, what you ate, how much you paid, if you’re a good tipper, with whom you associate, how much you paid for ammo on CheaperThanDirt, how much gas you use in a month, what you read, where you eat, what you eat, how much you and your house are worth... the implications are quite literally limitless.
Legislation needs to be created that if anyone uses this information illegally, the person(s) who disseminated the information, and the person(s) who use(d) the information, receive a minimum sentence of life in prison in a maximum security facility...and make it retroactive.
Well, Rand, the armies and police of the Legislative and Judicial branches will have to be mobilized to stop this Executive branch atrocity from going forward.
-—adapted from Andrew Jackson, 1833, who rightly recognized that the nation is at the mercy of the Executive branch. If they decide not to play as gentlemen, there is little that can be done to stop them. The current resident of the White House and his cronies are not gentlemen and -women.
This has almost nothing to do with fighting terrorism. If it was even remotely for that purpose, they would only be targeting all muslims. This is designed for political power. The data base of all data bases to find your friends (votes) and attack your enemies (anyone who organizes against you).
The new mantra::: When it comes to non-muslims doing terrorism in this country, I WILL TAKE THE RISK!!!!
You bring up what I call the “time travel” aspect of this.
Now that they have this data, in a very real way they can “go back in time” using data analytics and nail you. And even if you are innocent, but there is enough information to at least make a strong case against you.
And here is the rub: This time travel depends on FUTURE technology. A real world example would be the spate of exhoneration of incarcerated men due to new DNA testing techniques that were not in existence when they were found guilty.
It works both ways. And it WILL happen if they are allowed to keep this data. Regardless of what they can do right this minute, their ability to keep this data means that with future tech they will be able to analyze not only all this data but also make logical predictions of what you are up to.
It is virtual time travel used against you.
To get an accurate picture of this, imagine guys from ten years in the future have gone back in time to today and are easily mining and analyzing every “bit” of digital data your life is creating. They will then bring it back to their time and, well, I wouldn’t want to be “you” ten years from now.
This is beyond anything Orwell could have imagined. And you know it will be used in ways we can not imagine today.
They use data mining to determine a “responsible party” in a health care insurance payment much as a car insurance company tries to determine fault in an accident.
Their main tool is data mining and successful analysis of that data. As another poster brought up, it’s Data Analytics. And it WILL get better.
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