New documents show how the NSA infers relationships based on mobile location data

wapo ^ | 12/10/13 | Ashkan Soltani and Barton Gellman

[Nachum]

Everyone who carries a cellphone generates a trail of electronic breadcrumbs that records everywhere they go. Those breadcrumbs reveal a wealth of information about who we are, where we live, who our friends are and much more. And as we reported last week, the National Security Agency is collecting location information in bulk — 5 billion records per day worldwide — and using sophisticated algorithms to assist with U.S. intelligence-gathering operations.

How do they do it? And what can they learn from location data? The latest documents show the extent of the location-tracking program we first reported last week. Read on to learn more about what the documents show.

What’s the big deal? Information about where people go and when seems pretty innocuous.

The NSA doesn’t just have the technical capabilities to collect location-based data in bulk. A 24-page NSA white paper shows that the agency has a powerful suite of algorithms, or data sorting tools, that allow it to learn a great deal about how people live their lives.

Those tools allow the agency to perform analytics on a global scale, examining data collected about potentially everyone’s movements in order to flag new surveillance targets.

For example, one NSA program, code-named Fast Follower, was developed to allow the NSA to identify who might have been assigned to tail American case officers at stations overseas. By correlating an officer’s cellphone signals to those of foreign nationals in the same city, the NSA is able to figure out whether anyone is moving in tandem with the U.S. officer.

[Nachum]

My electronic breadcrumbs are fairly old and stale.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

Bastards

[Paine in the Neck]

This is only one of many types of so-called 'metadata' that NSA collects. What is metadata and how can it be used against you? They use it to build social networks that can identify you better than your DNA.

The NSA has been creating maps of American citizens' social networks

Why do they want to do that? What could social networks be used for in the hands of government? Consider:

Using Metadata to Find Paul Revere

How will such capabilities be used now? How They Hunt

Is it already too late?

[edpc]

Due to the nature of my work, I spend a lot of time in medical facilities. They either think I'm a doctor or a person with Munchausen Syndrome.

[pluvmantelo]

I’m wondering if going back to using a pager would be of any use to avoid the tracking.

[Tilted Irish Kilt]

pluvmantelo:" I’m wondering if going back to using a pager would be of any use to avoid the tracking."

Even a pager, using any power , is looking for a signal
The only way to incapacitate any signal looking device is : to remove the battery !
Remember when the Press would fly on Air Force One .. the first thing upon entering was surrender of all cell phones, and battery removed .
With the battery still in the device , it still searches for a signal, even when turned off .

[Zuben Elgenubi]

How about a list of all the terrorist found by the NSA with all this surveillence? What? What you say? None? None, are you kidding me?

[Albion Wilde]

My electronic breadcrumbs: the drugstore, the Dollar store, several grocery stores, the drycleaners, Sam’s Club, the car mechanic, the post office, McDonald’s, WalMart, Lowe’s, church, home again. Knock yersefs out, gubmit snoops.

[phormer phrog phlyer]

They will keep collecting until you break some unknown law. This is just setting up for the future when we will all be criminals.

[phormer phrog phlyer]

This is link analysis on steroids.

[The Antiyuppie]

None of this is rocket science; what DOES get tricky is doing it near real-time and with extrapolation. Throwing hardware alone at problems like these isn’t enough. Been there, done that, and I threw out my sweaty and food-stained T-shirt.

[The Antiyuppie]

“How about a list of all the terrorist found by the NSA with all this surveillence?”

They are probably not quite stupid enough to leave crumbs.

[pluvmantelo]

I was wondering if there was any extra difficulty acquiring the signal history of a pager as opposed to a cell phone. Most likely the spooks have long been archiving pager info, though.

[VerySadAmerican]

I’d bet the phone doesn’t even have to be turned on.

[AllAmericanGirl44]

bkmk

[upchuck]

The only way to incapacitate any signal looking device is : to remove the battery !

After researching this a little and watching some YouTube videos I discovered that removing the battery will most likely NOT get the job done. Because the GPS circuitry inside the phone is powered by another battery that you can't get to.

However, you can make your phone invisible by putting it in a mylar potato chip bag. The bag forms a "Faraday Cage" which prevents receiving and sending radio signals.

[Star Traveler]

How did they do that with iPhones?

[null and void]

So, if they actually wanted to, they could identify everyone who went from polling place to polling place to polling place to vote multiple times, couldn’t they?

[crickets]

[Tilted Irish Kilt]

upchuck:" .. you can make your phone invisible by putting it in a mylar potato chip bag.
The bag forms a "Faraday Cage" which prevents receiving and sending radio signals."

"Let the chips fall where they may ..."
It might also depend on the mill thickness of the mylar bag
I know that many electronic parts are shipped in mylar
Maybe a good time to 'recycle' some of those bags, and see if Apple or Google continues to send you updated location temps and time ?

[upchuck]

I had read about this so some friends and I tested it.

We took a cell phone, put it on vibrate and called it. The phone, naturally, vibrated. Then we put the phone in a mylar bag that once held chocolate chip cookies. Called the phone again. No reaction from the phone in the bag. We tried this with three other phones and always got the same result.