Posted on 05/15/2006 8:33:11 AM PDT by jmc1969
WHOM dammit!
Data mining. That's not (currently) illegal.
A buddy of mine worked for a cell phone company. He told me that he could sit at his desk and pull up anyone's cell phone records and see the numbers they called, what towers were handling the call, and how long they talked. Those companies could sell that data if they choose to do so.
I asked him if they also recorded the conversation. He said they did not -- as far as he knew -- but he said it wouldn't be difficult. It's not difficult to do, just too expensive to store. Of course, storage media is getting cheaper and cheaper.
If the government emplyeees are using the phone on their desk, they don't even need a court order to look at the phone records of government employees, the data would be in a goverment owned PBX in all likelihood. You could see the called party and calling party on every call going in or out of the switch. The data to identify external parties can be purchased from dozens of sources on-line and in many cases can be found for free.
Direct marketers don't have powers of arrest, last I checked. That is the key difference.
Most of us call friends and relatives and businesses we deal with. Ordinary people who work at the tel companies have that access every day!!
-PJ
However, there are still limits on how that power may be executed. Those barriers have not yet been torn down. And remember BJ used Echelon against his political enemies. The current administration has an equal number, if not more, of enemies and I have yet to see ANYTHING suggesting any of this information has been used in that matter.
It appears we're sliding back up that slippery slope.
That's the real problem - msm is afraid their treasonous activities will be documented.
Another poster with interesting posting history. These supposed NSA "abuses" are bringing you guys out of the wood work.
I don't. The names are immaterial in looking for patterns. Credit Card companies routinely separate the names and PII from the credit and demographic data, crunch the numbers, and then only append the names back to those records they wish to market according to the scores generated (they have to make an offer of credit once they join name data and financial data, so that in a way is a similar scenario to mining call patterns and then getting names once you get a "hit").
As long as you can eventually link back, you can research the calling data and get cause from just the data. And my problem is, there is nothing remotely resembling probable cause in the entire Verizon database - instead, the government is looking at the data to determine probable cause, if they are data mining. If they are not data mining, then an expedited subpeona process would get them any specifica calling data they might need.
[Under Bush Administration guidelines, it is not considered illegal for the government to keep track of numbers dialed by phone customers.]
My employers tracked my phone calls. They didn't record them, but they made sure that I was making the calls I said I was. If I was calling my wife, they would have known about it.
You were using their phones on their time and their dime.
When I am at home, I expect Verizon to adhere to their privacy policy and the feds to get a subpeona if they want my phone records.
Yes, and when they started passing seat belt laws, they said no one would ever be pulled over just for a seat belt infraction.
Now, it's gotten so bad that the Maryland State Police have night-vision googles to see if people going by at night don't have their seat belt on.
Since I know what I could do with this data (I work with marketing databases for a living), maybe I am more concerned than the average bear as to the government having it. Especially when they ain't all that great at data mining in the first place - what if a glitch makes them think that YOU are linked to al Qaeda?
And that is assuming that they are using the data in a limited and controlled manner.
Another thought to annotate. If these leakers are using their cell phones while working in a government faclity, I wonder what the legality of intercepting the cell signals would be for the employer/goverment?
I was just complaining about the grammar. I'm fine with the program. People want the Gummint to be able to connect the dots but don't want them to get any dots to collect!
But couldn't they sell the data to those who DO have the power of arrest? (Besides, I'd rather be arrested than get another telephone solicitation, but I guess that's another issue.)
I dunno - by going through the data the government already has, like they did prior to 9-11, and figure out ways to better use that? The solution to being unable to process the data you already have is not to get petabytes of more data.
I am no opposed to the government obtaining data. But there needs to be some kind of cause involved. And the Verizon data fails that test.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.