Posted on 05/12/2006 2:54:36 AM PDT by SUSSA
May 12, 2006 -- WASHINGTON - President Bush yesterday denied that government spooks are "mining or trolling through the personal lives" of Americans, amid an uproar over revelations that the National Security Agency maintains massive databases of Americans' telephone calls.
(snip)
The allegations first surfaced in a little-noticed class-action lawsuit. It was filed against AT&T in San Francisco in January by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy group.
The complaint provides stunning detail about secret rooms in the company's nerve centers where mysterious equipment has been installed by NSA to tap into fiber-optic "nodes."
The lawsuit charges that AT&T gave the NSA direct access to its database code named "Hawkeye" - as well as a search engine called Daytona - that contains "call-detail records." These records detail every phone call that passes through its system - who made the call, to where, how long they spoke and the names of each subscriber.
At its headquarters in Fort Meade, Md., the NSA is using sophisticated software known as data mining or link analysis to sift through the massive amounts of data to detect patterns of suspicious activity to identify possible terror networks. If, for example, Osama bin Laden or any other well-known terrorist were to place a phone call from Pakistan to a phone number in Brooklyn, calls to and from the number in Brooklyn would be tracked - and numbers that connect to the Brooklyn number would also be traced, a military intelligence official told The Post.
niles.lathem@nypost.com
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
When the NSA hires 1 million people to actually shift through each phone call 1 by 1, I'll get riled... As it is, computer programs that shift through data, looking for connections to terrorists don't worry me.
The only reason the government would want people to look at every single record is to be nosy. But using machines to filter, sieve, and analyze the same data is merely efficient use of resources. And machines don't get sidetracked, don't care if the call from your cell phone was to a mistress and not your wife, and it doesn't sound as if the information being tracked, gathered, and analyzed is particularly violating, and is certainly not violating if it is only a machine shifting through it and dismissing it unless it meets some kind of "profile" that gets if flagged.
AHHH....Yes.....The good old Main Stream Media.....where everything old is new again!!!!
not even close.
What is wrong with connecting the dots?
If Bush didn't do this and we were attacked again, Bush would be accused of not putting forth the effort to connect the dots and find out about future attackes.
NO! totally different.
Okay, then what is the difference?
This is such a non-story.
Posted by Admin Moderator to mtbopfuyn
On News/Activism 05/10/2006 7:20:47 PM EDT · 6 of 10
Stop trying to make every thread an illegal immigration thread.
oh i was doing something, echelon does alot more than just get a phone #...
Hell yea it's more invasive!
I'm joshing you! I should've put an /sarcasm on there.
...during the Clinton administration.
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