Posted on 06/13/2013 6:53:26 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The National Security Agency (NSA) is obtaining a complete set of users' phone records from Verizon by means of a secret court order under the auspices of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), so reports the UK Guardian. We are assured by President Obama that no one is actually listening to the calls. This is being overseen by the FISA court, you see. That would be the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court overseeing a program to gather data about domestic phone calls. But the kind of data being collected by the government is just metadata, and so nothing to worry about. So says Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).
Simply put, metadata is data about data. Here's an experiment involving metadata that you can carry out with relative safety. Visit this website: Numberguru. Put your own 10 digit phone number in the box that says Phone Number and click Search. Most people will see where the phone is, most likely billing address, carrier, and if any negative comments have been recorded about the number. Geographical area, public comments related to the number, and carrier are all metadata. The name of the person who owns the number is data, not metadata. Is the actual phone number metadata? That would probably depend on how the FISA court defines metadata in the secret order to Verizon to turn the records over. The secret court order from the secret court is, unfortunately, secret. So who knows?
But let's say phone numbers are metadata, not data, and can be obtained under the same FISA court document. Back to NumberGuru, most people will see a prominent button that says Show Name. Clicking this leads to another website where, for a fee, you can find out who owns the number.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
So why then is everyone outraged by Snowden? He just released metadata too.
I meta data ona meetanitaliangirl.com ...
Great point!
Instead of using that website, just Google your 10 digit # and see what comes up.
...and as to “not listening to your calls”, cross link the metadata, the # called, the receiving #, the time, duration and location of the call with a program like ECHELON and...VOILA!!
That Google bit is for landlines. Don’t know about cell phones.
They are right about this in one respect; metadata is just raw, unorganized or semiorganized data points. It does not become useful or become information until it is put into a context that makes sense to someone.
The point of this mess is being missed by the hype over “secrets” being spilled. For anyone who has followed data gathering over the years, this is common knowledge. We have been collecting data for many years. The metadata describes the data (phone numbers, starting point and end points for calls or emails, etc) and has nominally been analyzed by computers to identify key words, phrases, phone numbers, names and other very specific info. Over the years only a small amount of data has been tagged by the various methods and sent on for further analysis or even human intervention. The rest eventually falls into the bit bucket. Nobody cared about your call to grandma or even listened in. This general information was not classified nor is it unknown to our adversaries. The pattern analysis and other complex AI algorithms are what has been and remains classified as well as the key words, phrases and specific people who might be targeted. Have we always been spying on China? Hell yes, and they spy on us. Everyone knows and accepts that.
Now, the real issue Snowden brings up here is what has possibly changed with this criminal administration with regard to WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE. Who is now being targeted, for what reasons, over what period of time and where is the correlated information going? In other words, are they now, against the laws, spying and gathering data on ordinary citizens with no terror or foreign spying ties. Are they using the obtained information for political purposes against their political enemies and is this information being funneled into der Fuehrer’s political destruction machine?
Is there a reason to collect and store all of this raw data on everyone in such a large facility in Utah (also already known)? That might also be suspicious but the knowledge of these things going on is not new to our enemies and does not jeopardize any “secrets” that they don’t already know. If those algorithms, methods, lists, and means of analysis are revealed then that IS a breach.
The press and others are blowing this out of proportion at this time and they need to step back, shut their mouths and resume normal breathing until they can sort out the specifics.
Let me give you another example.
They tell us “metadata is harmless” because they have to have a warrant to look at the content, etc, right?
So, suppose I’m an analyst with access to metadata. Suppose further that I’m not a particularly GOOD analyst, but I throw the data into Excel, run some pivot tables and before long, produce what appears to be an interesting correlation. I send my boss a report with a snippet of the data with a request to dig deeper. A warrant is issued based on this suspicion and you before you know it, they’re reading your mail.
Sure, I’m making all this up...couldn’t happen in OUR gov’t, with all it’s checks and balances and all...
I would contend the NSA is collecting data, not metadata. But that all depends on their definition metadata. Metadata to me describes data. An actual phone number or time/date stamp is data. It doesn’t matter that there isn’t a name associated with the phone number, since they can get the name from another source.
“Ja, vee have all kinds of information on the Jewish people, but vee vould never ever use it against zhem.
Vee promise.
Besides, if you have nozing to hide, vhat are you vorried about?
Your Good Friend,
S.S. Officer”
P.S. Vhat vere you doing just then?
The pbone companies have to know where my phone is to route a call to it. Do they keep the data of all the antennas I passed on my way to work, along with time and more detailed location information and did they sent that to the NSA too? Or do the cell phone providers just delete that quickly because they have no use to know I was at home at 8:00 this morning, drove by a bunch of antennas and got to work around 8:30 and it costs money to retain that much information.
“In other words, are they now, against the laws, spying and gathering data on ordinary citizens with no terror or foreign spying ties.”
Yes, that is exactly what they are doing, and that is why it is, as Joe Biden might say, a “big friggin’ deal”. We have a separation between domestic intelligence and foreign intelligence for a reason, but that divide has been eroded. We are supposed to have protections for the citizens against the foreign intelligence collection, while the domestic intelligence services are supposed to follow standard law enforcement procedures to protect our civil liberties. That isn’t happening; instead the foreign services are spying wholesale on the American public under the less stringent regulations they operate under, and the public has no recourse against it.
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