Are they recording our conversations too?

[boston bean]

I watched John McCain with Candy Crowley today, and he seemed to say they were. They could go back and listen after the fact if it is warranted.

And Edward Snowden said they were making recordings as well.

I asked this question earlier, but are they going back through these records to mine for reporters data in their leak investigations? They are always saying it is a matter of national security, so it wouldn't suprise me. That thought has chilled me to the bone.

[RobertEarl]

1. Yes

They just need more money to build more data banks to hold all the conversations.

I'd say they record every call. What they need the records from Verizon for is to match the recordings to the callers.

[Rex]

2. Yes

http://huachuca-www.army.mil/

[randome]

3. The data collection efforts supposedly target non-Americans.

If you don't want to believe that, then what would it take for you to feel comfortable that this is the case?

[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font]
[hr]

[boston bean]

4. not record innocent persons phone calls.

[napoleon_in_rags]

27. I heard something about "two hops".

Which means once a person is identified, the focus can be applied to their associates, and their associates associates. How many facebook friends do you have? Assuming the average is 100, than one foreign person could lead to 100 *100 (10,000) people being focused on. Using the "six degrees of separation" law, (7,000,000,000 ^ (1/6) ) ~ 43.7 we each know = 1913 people focused on per foreigner, if this "two hops" thing is actually true.

[MineralMan]

5. They could be. They have the capability.

Are they? I don't know. If they are, I'm not worried about mine. That's for sure.

[boston bean]

6. and you wouldn't be worried they were to use information they mined and recorded to quell the press?

[MineralMan]

8. I'm only speaking personally, Ms. Bean.

I'm not speaking about anything else. The capability exists. Is it being used? I do not know.

You may have noticed that the press doesn't seem to be very quelled right now. However, there is the Fox News case, where phone taps were used in some cases. So, if I were an investigative journalist, I'd be concerned. I'm not. I'm just a private citizen. I'm extremely uninteresting when it comes to such things.

[boston bean]

9. Thanks for the clarification and actually responding to the point of the post when

asked for clarification, Mr. Man!

[closeupready]

7. Through your cell phones, I'm pretty sure.

In other words, if you are having a conversation anywhere modern technological devices are present, it's likely that the government can eavesdrop, using some aspect of the device as a bug.

That's merely my opinion, and probably sounds paranoid delusional, but whatver.

[Liberal In Texas]

10. James Bamford has been telling us about this since 2002

in "Body of Secrets." Then again in 2009 in "The Shadow Factory." And in numerous posts on the internet. And we first learned about he NSA's existence in 1983 in "The Puzzle Palace," a book the NSA tried to keep from being published.

From 2011:

Around the country, in tall, windowless telecom company buildings known as switches, NSA technicians quietly began installing beam-splitters to redirect duplicate copies of all phone calls and email messages to secret rooms behind electronic cipher locks.There, NSA software and hardware designed for “deep packet inspection” filtered through the billions of email messages looking for key names, words, phrases and addresses. The equipment also monitored phone conversations and even what pages people view on the Web — the porn sites they visit, the books they buy on Amazon, the social networks they interact with and the text messages they send and receive. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/62999.html

From 2012:

...and for the first time since Watergate and the other scandals of the Nixon administration—the NSA has turned its surveillance apparatus on the US and its citizens. It has established listening posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the country or overseas. It has created a supercomputer of almost unimaginable speed to look for patterns and unscramble codes. Finally, the agency has begun building a place to store all the trillions of words and thoughts and whispers captured in its electronic net. And, of course, it’s all being done in secret. To those on the inside, the old adage that NSA stands for Never Say Anything applies more than ever. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/nsa-whistleblower/

Pretty much I've assumed for years NSA has recorded every phone conversation, every email post, every DU post or reply I've made or done for years.
Hello NSA

[In_The_Wind]

11. Yes

[suffragette]

38. Hmmm,

"All that you touch
All that you see
All that you taste
All you feel..."

[In_The_Wind]

39. Everything

[kenny blankenship]

12. Yes, Virginia

the Verizon records seizure thingy is just the quasi iegal (but stlll unConstitutional) tip of the iceberg.

If you want to bring a criminal case against someone using electronic surveillance as your teaser for having had probable cause, the evidence can't have originated in a program that is superduperhyper classified, a patently unConsitutional program, that's never been seen naked or fingered by a Judge, a program as yet still as illegal as terrorism itself, a program totally unacknowledged by officials elected or not, and waaaaay the fuck beyond any kind of evil surveillance shit the Soviets did to their own people. Evidence obtained in such a manner -and the whole subsequent chain of evidence- would be inadmissible in court thus losing the government's case against a defendant they will absolutely refuse to let go. And also, admitting to the existence of the program, even indirectly, would open a can of political shit the likes of which haven't been seen since Watergate, but which should make Watergate look like a tempest in a teapot.

You need something obtained under warrant, or otherwise clean like the ol' anonymous tip, to begin the chain of evidence that supposedly gave you probable cause to investigate the defendant, to obtain further warrants for targeted searches, and so at last get the conclusive inculpating dirt on them.

I don't think for a second that NSA actually NEEDS those records to be handed over to know who is calling whom, when, from where and for how long. They have methods that aren't legal and don't depend on telecom recordkeeping. I also believe they are in possession of the content of the conversations, though they might never run your conversation through a scan program.

The formal handing over of records from the phone companies is likely just pro forma, so that federal authorities can construct -or fabricate if you prefer- a "clean" chain of evidence to build their case against someone, when the actionable intelligence is almost certainly coming from their more thorough and illegal surveillance programs that can't be talked about and can't be used as evidence in a court.

[roamer65]

13. Of course they are...have been for a long time.

Much of it came out of the Cold War years and has continued to this day. Not only is it our enemies they monitor, but friendly governments and their people as well.

If you want an interesting story look into the former PM of Australia, Gough Whitlam. Gough learned these people play "for keeps".

[Demo_Chris]

14. Yes. Thanks to Clinton they record every conversation in which key words are spoken.

The list is secret of course, and undoubtedly expanding at an unimaginable pace.

[Vincardog]

15. Yea they have for a long time. Google Total Information Awareness or TIA

[jazzimov]

17. Which was defunded in 2003. nt

[MNBrewer]

22. That's what we were told.

How much classified stuff is "black box" in the appropriations bill?

[Vincardog]

36. If they are not recording everything why do they keep building GoogleByte storage centers?

[jazzimov]

16. Depends on which "they" you are talking about.

If you are making a digital call, then that conversation is on the provider's server. The government only has access to that conversation if they request that info from the provider. During the Bush Admin, the FBI was using NSL's to get that info directly without a court-order. That is what so many of us were outraged against (please Google wireless wiretapping). We managed enough furor that the Bush Admin finally had to acquiesce and now that info is only available if court-ordered with Congressional oversight.

The leaked FISC order only requested meta-data, which did not include the conversation, and only from international calls to and from the US.

To actually get the conversation involving at least one US citizen, the FBI would have to get another court order to get that conversation(s) from the provider. In which case they would have to show "probable cause".

[mzteris]

18. OMG OMG OMG

They can read everything we're saying here! O.M.G.

[magellan]

19. Slight difference between voluntarily logging on to a public discussion forum

...and calling your wife/mistress/sick old mother/fill in the blank with the expectancy that that conversation is private, i.e. not being recorded for possible government use.

[mzteris]

20. Since civilization began

you think the leaders don't keep the pulse of the people? Always have, always will. With or without technology.

I don't have anything to hide. YMMV.

[magellan]

23. So you're attempting to justify it by saying it's always gone on?

We should STFU and give up our civil liberties for an unquantifiable (and I'd even venture, false) sense of security?

You may be okay with that. I wasn't under Bush** and I'm not now. And it's got nothing to do with having anything to hide, but who is to judge what's acceptable conversation and what isn't.

[mzteris]

24. running around like

your hair's on fire and OMG this is HAPPENING RIGHT F"ING NOW! Isn't doing anyone anywhere any good whatsoever.

You want change, work for it. Run for office. GOTV.

You act like it's some big surprise. You act like it is completely and totally what it is NOT. You are overblowing and distorting what IS happening and you probably have absolutely NO idea of what is ACTUALLY happening; which, if you did, would probably really freak you out.

You can't protect without knowledge. You want a completely unfettered life? How does anarchy sound? There is a system of checks and balances in place. If you don't trust any branch of any our government at any time for any reason, then I don't understand why even want to be here.

Some days it rains. Some days it doesn't. Sometimes rain is good and sometimes it's bad. It all depends, doesn't it?

[magellan]

25. I act like it's some big surprise?

I'm overblowing and distorting what IS happening, blah blah blah? And you derive all this from my one little post?

You ought to look to yourself for the source of overblown distortion...or just acknowledge that telepathy ain't your thing.

As for trusting government, we were never meant to -- no matter whether the party we belong to is in power or not.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

28. Some of us have a constitution to protect. Kindly stand out of the way.

[mzteris]

35. I'll be sure to

Stand out of the line of fire.

[zeeland]

40. I use to be friends with

A hardcore repuke until the bush years made our 20 year friendship
intolerable. Anyhow, we would argue over national ID'a and chipping
humans, she would say the exact same thing you just posted.

I feel like I've entered an alternate reality.

[mzteris]

41. Funny, a lot of what I'm reading on here

sounds a lot like republicans, teabaggers, and libertarians.

YMMV.

[cherokeeprogressive]

21. Yyyyyyyyep.

[leveymg]

26. That is correct. The "metadata" argument is misleading, and here is why:

NSA collects and stores the voice and content part of emails, as well as the metadata (pin registers, locations, times on call, etc.). All that gets dumped into vast server farms like the one most recently constructed in Utah. It appears that analysts have free access to phone call metadata without requesting a warrant.

The system runs all this data -- including content, I believe -- through software that profiles suspected characteristics and key identifiers. If the profiling software "red flags" someone, a warrant is obtained and all the related content of everyone who that caller ever had contact with is made available to investigators.

In other words, the NSA is profiling everyone who uses a phone or email as potential terrorists. See, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/07/1214479/-Is-Universal-Profiling-of-phone-users-in-America-the-next-revelation

That's worse than mere warrantless wiretapping.

[woo me with science]

30. +100000

It's a police state. That's what it is.

[magellan]

31. Remember "trigger words"?

We had many conversations about those back in the day, and about peppering emails and phone calls with words like "bomb", "jihad", etc, just to foul up their collection system. There was even a long list of such "trigger" words shared here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=105&topic_id=5141924&mesg_id=5142290

Obviously in order to use such a list they need to run it against the contents of emails and phone calls. The "metadata" is only useful once you've got a target you're interested in. I believe they're still trawling everyone's phone calls and emails for suspicious words, they've just gone and made it "legal", the way Bush** made torture "legal".

[On the Road]

29. How Can the Administration Request Copies of Recorded Calls from the Telephone Companies

when the phone companies don't record calls going over their network?

[leveymg]

33. Actually they do - since 1995 telcos have been required to install "CALEA-compliant equipment"

Just google that phrase. The difference is that now NSA has the receiving switch turned on all the time, not just after individual warrants are issued, as used to be the case. The FISA Court issues "dragnet" warrants for all calls now.

[Generic Other]

32. According to the whistle blower they routinely listened to

and traded hot phone sex, so I doubt it was transcripts of heavy breathing.

<snip>
Faulk says he and others in his section of the NSA facility at Fort Gordon routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted, alerting office mates to certain time codes of "cuts" that were available on each operator's computer.

"Hey, check this out," Faulk says he would be told, "there's good phone sex or there's some pillow talk, pull up this call, it's really funny, go check it out.

<snip>

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5987804&page=1#.UbUBVpxadaA

They traded our calls with each other around the watercooler like we were Kim Kardashian sex tapes.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

34. Both recording our conversation & influencing our actions. I can now see they are doing a good job.

[geek tragedy]

37. our privacy is merely as safe as big telecoms choose to make it nt