If you thought a police state couldn't exist in America, you were wrong. If you thought a democracy was a good thing, you were wrong. If you thought you could trust your government, you can't. Not this one.
The National Security Agency is collecting telephone records for millions of Americans without informing the individuals involved, it was revealed late on Wednesday night.
A copy of a secret order to obtain phone records for all Verizon customers was obtained, showing that the NSA was monitoring all incoming and outgoing calls made on that network.(1)
Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) order, the Guardian reported, Verizon Business Services must provide the NSA “on an ongoing daily basis” with information from calls between the U.S. and overseas – but also with calls entirely inside the United States. Calls made entirely overseas were not affected. It was unclear whether phones in other Verizon divisions -- its regular cell phone operations, for instance -- were similarly targeted.(2)
The contents of the call are not recorded and it is also not known whether Verizon is the only cell-phone carrier complying with the massive spying project. The court order concerns all calls to, from, and within the United States.
With this so-called “metadata,” the government knows “the identity of every person with whom an individual communicates electronically, how long they spoke, and their location at the time of the communication,” explains the Guardian.
The Senate’s tech-savviest member, Ron Wyden (CrunchGov Grade: A), has been discretely warning citizens of these kinds of secretive government projects. “There is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows,” wrote Wyden and Senator Mark Udall to embattled Attorney Eric Holder.
The order apparently draws from a 2001 Bush-era provision in the Patriot Act (50 USC section 1861). The revelation dovetails similar exposes on massive government spying projects, including one project to combine federal datasets and look for patterns on anything which could be related to terrorism.(3)
Judge Roger Vinson’s order relies on Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. That part of the law, also known as the “business records provision,” permits FBI agents to seek a court order for “any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items)” it deems relevant to an investigation.(2)
Some government secrecy is necessary for national security purposes. But it’s justified based on our trust that the information will be used with care. With every passing scandal, the justification for these types of programs becomes more and more questionable.(3)
It was approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on April 25 and it denoted that it would only hold water until July 19, so just shy of three months.
This news comes just as the Obama administration is in the process of explaining itself for secretly subpeoenaing the phone records of journalists at the Associated Press and Fox News without notifying either organization.
That case was tied to a national security leak, and caused uproar from which the Department of Justice is still reeling.(1)
The secret nature of the order means that Verizon was forbidden to disclose the nature of the order and the existence of the order itself.
As such, there is no way of knowing whether similar orders have been put upon other telephone carriers, making the web of possible victims unlimited.
An expert in electronic freedom practices says that it was unlikely that Verizon would be the only subject of such an order and that the other major carriers probably had similar orders against them.
'That's not the society we've built in the United States,' said Kurt Opsahl, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is suing the NSA over surveillance inside the country.
'It's not the society we set forth in the Constitution, and it's not the society we should have.'(1)
Democratic Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall warned that the government was abusing their privileges when it came to spying.
The two men, who sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee, cryptically warned that there would be backlash should any of the federal tricks be revealed.
'When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they are going to be stunned and they are going to be angry,' they wrote in a joint letter to Attorney General Eric Holder in 2012.
'As we see it, there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows.'(1)
Former US Vice President Al Gore tweeted "In digital era, privacy must be a priority. Is it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous? ow.ly/lKS13"
— Al Gore (@algore) June 6, 2013
However, it is not believed by some that he is actually offended at the invasion of privacy that has been committed by the Obama administration, just that he's getting lonely not being in the public spotlight for such a long time.
(1) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2336659/NSA-collecting-phone-records-MILLIONS-Verizon-customers-daily-secret-order-issued-April-lasts-July.html
(2) http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/us-govt-secretly-collecting-data-millions-verizon-users-013542225.html
(3) http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/05/report-nsa-secretly-collecting-phone-records-of-all-verizon-calls/
UPDATE: Here is a news broadcast taken from rt.com courtesy of thecomingcrisis.blogspot.com on the Obama Administration/Verizon record stealing scandal:
The National Security Agency is collecting telephone records for millions of Americans without informing the individuals involved, it was revealed late on Wednesday night.
A copy of a secret order to obtain phone records for all Verizon customers was obtained, showing that the NSA was monitoring all incoming and outgoing calls made on that network.(1)
Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) order, the Guardian reported, Verizon Business Services must provide the NSA “on an ongoing daily basis” with information from calls between the U.S. and overseas – but also with calls entirely inside the United States. Calls made entirely overseas were not affected. It was unclear whether phones in other Verizon divisions -- its regular cell phone operations, for instance -- were similarly targeted.(2)
The contents of the call are not recorded and it is also not known whether Verizon is the only cell-phone carrier complying with the massive spying project. The court order concerns all calls to, from, and within the United States.
With this so-called “metadata,” the government knows “the identity of every person with whom an individual communicates electronically, how long they spoke, and their location at the time of the communication,” explains the Guardian.
The Senate’s tech-savviest member, Ron Wyden (CrunchGov Grade: A), has been discretely warning citizens of these kinds of secretive government projects. “There is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows,” wrote Wyden and Senator Mark Udall to embattled Attorney Eric Holder.
The order apparently draws from a 2001 Bush-era provision in the Patriot Act (50 USC section 1861). The revelation dovetails similar exposes on massive government spying projects, including one project to combine federal datasets and look for patterns on anything which could be related to terrorism.(3)
Judge Roger Vinson’s order relies on Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. That part of the law, also known as the “business records provision,” permits FBI agents to seek a court order for “any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items)” it deems relevant to an investigation.(2)
Some government secrecy is necessary for national security purposes. But it’s justified based on our trust that the information will be used with care. With every passing scandal, the justification for these types of programs becomes more and more questionable.(3)
It was approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on April 25 and it denoted that it would only hold water until July 19, so just shy of three months.
This news comes just as the Obama administration is in the process of explaining itself for secretly subpeoenaing the phone records of journalists at the Associated Press and Fox News without notifying either organization.
That case was tied to a national security leak, and caused uproar from which the Department of Justice is still reeling.(1)
The secret nature of the order means that Verizon was forbidden to disclose the nature of the order and the existence of the order itself.
As such, there is no way of knowing whether similar orders have been put upon other telephone carriers, making the web of possible victims unlimited.
An expert in electronic freedom practices says that it was unlikely that Verizon would be the only subject of such an order and that the other major carriers probably had similar orders against them.
'That's not the society we've built in the United States,' said Kurt Opsahl, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is suing the NSA over surveillance inside the country.
'It's not the society we set forth in the Constitution, and it's not the society we should have.'(1)
Democratic Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall warned that the government was abusing their privileges when it came to spying.
The two men, who sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee, cryptically warned that there would be backlash should any of the federal tricks be revealed.
'When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they are going to be stunned and they are going to be angry,' they wrote in a joint letter to Attorney General Eric Holder in 2012.
'As we see it, there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows.'(1)
Former US Vice President Al Gore tweeted "In digital era, privacy must be a priority. Is it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous? ow.ly/lKS13"
— Al Gore (@algore) June 6, 2013
However, it is not believed by some that he is actually offended at the invasion of privacy that has been committed by the Obama administration, just that he's getting lonely not being in the public spotlight for such a long time.
(1) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2336659/NSA-collecting-phone-records-MILLIONS-Verizon-customers-daily-secret-order-issued-April-lasts-July.html
(2) http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/us-govt-secretly-collecting-data-millions-verizon-users-013542225.html
(3) http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/05/report-nsa-secretly-collecting-phone-records-of-all-verizon-calls/
UPDATE: Here is a news broadcast taken from rt.com courtesy of thecomingcrisis.blogspot.com on the Obama Administration/Verizon record stealing scandal:
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