NSA Collected Data on Millions of Americans Just to Investigate 248 People

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/nsa-collected-data-millions-americans-just-investigate-248-people



The National Security Agency was interested in the phone data of fewer than 250 people believed to be in the United States in 2013, despite collecting the phone records of nearly every American.

As acknowledged in the NSA's first-ever disclosure of statistics about how it uses its broad surveillance authorities, released Friday, the NSA performed queries of its massive phone records troves for 248 "known or presumed US persons" in 2013.

During that year, it submitted 178 applications for the data to the Fisa court during that period, which, as first revealed by the Guardian thanks to leaks from Edward Snowden, permitted the ongoing, daily collection of practically all US phone records.

The number of "selectors" NSA queried from that data trove, a term referring to an account and not necessarily an individual user, was 423 in 2013, an increase from the "less than 300 times" it searched through the data trove in 2012, according to former deputy NSA director John Inglis.

[SamKnause]

1. Thank you Edward Snowden.

A secret court is no court at all.

Has anyone questioned whether secret courts are unconstitutional ???

[woo me with science]

2. Well, I'm sure they had other reasons...

Thank you, Edward Snowden, for turning over the rock for us.

[PADemD]

3. How much money did the NSA spend (waste) to collect this data?

Is their annual budget public?

[xchrom]

4. i always have that same question -- how much? nt

[mrdmk]

5. Good luck attaining that tidy bit of info, we can find the total budget of the NSA

The break-down will be a more difficult to figure out. There was a Ted Talk that had some of black bag budget, yet it was thin on facts.

What gets me is the military mindset of a few problems out there, we will just get everyone. Why do I impression we have a bunch of lazy thinkers in charge of matters concerning this country?

[Android3.14]

6. I'm sure the NSA is providing accurate data...not

This crew is untrustworthy. I'd bet money that the number of people they tracked is actually much higher.
Take the 250 value, for example. Let's suppose it is true. The number of secondary, tertiary, up to four degrees of separation from the source person raises the number of people upon which they spied into the 100s of thousands, if not millions.

This is less than the tip of an iceberg.

[stuartsdesk1]

7. Google Already Knows More About Us Than the NSA Ever Will

Google already knows more about us than the NSA ever will.

The real question is, how do they (Google, NSA) USE this information?

It's all well and good to complain that NSA collects records of nearly all phone
calls made to or from the USA or within the USA in order to examine the content
of less than 250 such calls, BUT what have they done with this information?

Very little, except in the case of 250 suspicious individuals or organizations.

Sorry to defend the NSA but I would say they have been very selective and discreet.

Google knows almost everything about "us" (identifying "us" as an IP address)
and they USE that information 100s of millions of times daily, to intrude upon our lives. Our likes,
dislikes, interests, purchases and website visits are collected, analyzed, used by Google to sell
advertising and are sold to others who use this information for goodness knows what.

Let's focus on the real danger - possible misuse of personal information. Has anyone reported
political, religious, ethnic or other harassment by NSA? Has NSA sold our phone contact information to anyone else?
Does NSA pester us with "personalized" advertising?

On the other side, does NSA perform a useful service for us? Do they attempt (maybe succeed) in avoiding
terrorist violence? Other damaging actions?

Does Google protect us from terrorist violence? Do they report suspicious purchases to the NSA, FBI
or local law enforcement?

How about a little balance here?

[randome]

8. So, according to this article...

...the NSA should only have collected the records of those it was interested in before running a search on those it was interested in.

Does no one understand how data searches work?
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