
NSA collected 500M U.S. call records in 2017, a sharp rise: official report - Jerry2
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-surveillance/spy-agency-nsa-collected-500-million-u-s-call-records-in-2017-a-sharp-rise-official-report-idUSKBN1I52FR
======
anoncoward778
Automatically collecting everyone's cell phone data, has software
automatically installed in Smart TV's everywhere, monitors your online
footprint (emails, social media[of course]). All those warning from Snowden
all those secret software reveals from wikileaks an untold amount of funding
from congress with virtually no oversight. And yet tons of bad things keep
happening to regular citizens in the US. What exactly does the NSA do? Whom
are they protecting? Cause it sure is not the average citizen. Just a random
venting from a pissed of copper-top battery.

~~~
jMyles
> Whom are they protecting? Cause it sure is not the average citizen.

But was there ever any indication to the contrary? How did we as Americans
convert to the myth that our government, let alone our "intelligence"
agencies, have any inclination to protect us or advance our interests? That
has never been their practice ever.

Our government spent the better part of a century not only allowing 3.5
million of us to live in slavery, but actively facilitating and promoting it.
Even after it finally put an end to this practice de jurie, it immediately
allowed us to be enslaved as "prisoners", and today 2 million of us are in
that situation.

I don't mean to bring up such generic anarchism here, but I think it's sharply
relevant when considering questions like, "why do the CIA and NSA behave the
way they do?" They were created and charged to do it. It's their job. We can
debate about how best to end that job, but I really don't think it's
reasonable to suggest that they ever had some high-minded democratic purpose.

~~~
fulafel
I think this is attributing too much agency to "government". Voters wanted
slavery, and so public officials supported it. Voters wanted wars and a
surveillance state after 9/11\. Etc. (Same goes for the good things that the
public sector does, of course)

Yes there is inertia and self-perpetuation, like in any organisations, but not
overwhelmingly much.

~~~
coldtea
> _I think this is attributing too much agency to "government". Voters wanted
> slavery, and so public officials supported it._

The voters vote what they're told to -- and they're told to by those in power
who can pay for campaigns, have their pals in party positions, etc.

Plus, the voters get all kinds of stuff that benefit the powerful that they
never explicitly asked or voted for, and that were never on any platform. Even
whole wars can be promoted onto them...

[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/posters-sold-world-
wa...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/posters-sold-world-war-i-
american-public-180952179/)

Besides, there were tons of dirt poor whites picking cotton in the South. And
they had no slaves, the were closer to slaves themselves...

It's more poor vs rich, than white vs black. Even if poor whites were also
racist, those plantations weren't owned by poor white folk either...

~~~
fulafel
Taking this view lets the voters off the hook too easily. Citizens often
genuinely want things that are bad for a bunch of other people. Look at the
immigration/refugee related polling for example. Or climate change inaction.

Sure the public opinion is affected by PR efforts, but people still possess
facilities for critical thinking, and everyone knows to be critical about
political claims rather than take them at face value.

~~~
stickdogg
The truth is that not "everyone" knows to be critical about political
nonsense. Plus, most people I encounter in this state of PA have no idea what
the term "critical thinking" implies; let alone deliberately practice it. PA
is in the dark ages compared to Seattle. It's extremely sad to see.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Hate to break it to you but critical thinking is just as lacking in
progressive urban areas. Seattle, Boston, Denver, NYC, (let alone the valley)
are chock full of idiots who do not think about how public policy impacts
anyone but themselves. You just don't judge as critically when it's your
people.

------
jlgaddis
500M in all of 2017? Oh, come on!

We found out that Verizon -- _just_ Verizon -- was handing over "phone records
of millions of Verizon customers daily" in June 2013.

500M might be an _official_ number that they're willing to release but
(without any way to prove it, obviously) I'm certain that the _REAL_ number is
much, much higher.

For an organization who has vowed to "collect it all", it just doesn't seem
likely that the NSA voluntarily went from "an estimated billions of records
collected per day" to just 500M per year.

Or perhaps it's just 500M according to their own made up definition of
"collect"?

~~~
reaperducer
Maybe it's 500M uniques?

~~~
randcraw
500M calls. The number of unique phones is less.

The real question is what fraction of these calls had both parties inside the
US. That's a different category than when one party is external/foreign —
that's domestic espionage, which is a violation of law unless pre-authorized
by the FISA court. THAT's the number I'd most like to know.

------
sterlind
The NSA plays the "Kevin Bacon" game, where selectors target an individual,
their friends, friends of friends (2 degrees of separation out, iirc.)

I suspect they're performing a full-take of the call contents as well, just
not through the PINWALE/MARINA ingestion system. It's likely commingled with
bulk traffic snarfed up by beam splitters at the telcos' NOCs, and separated
on-demand from the TEMPORA buffer.

At this point, I'm jaded enough to domestic mass-surveillance, I just want my
money's worth. Russia successfully implanted DarkEnergy on domestic SCADA,
nation-wide. Do we have that capability abroad? Prioritize foreign
retailiatory offense, please!

(hi @NSA if this shows up in XKS!)

~~~
lern_too_spel
> I suspect they're performing a full-take of the call contents as well, just
> not through the PINWALE/MARINA ingestion system.

What is the basis for this suspicion? If it were true, that's what people
would have reported on from Snowden's millions of leaked documents instead of
simply metadata (call data records).

~~~
Clubber
Here's a decent review. The sad that as time passes, the more normal this will
seem to everybody.

[https://www.propublica.org/article/nsa-data-collection-
faq](https://www.propublica.org/article/nsa-data-collection-faq)

~~~
lern_too_spel
This is both old (they no longer get all metadata, just the 500 million
requested as described in today's article) and contradicts GGP's claim.

~~~
Clubber
I guess we'll just have to wait for another whistleblower to confirm they are
lying about it again. At least it isn't "wittingly."

~~~
lern_too_spel
Except they never lied about that according to Snowden's documents. They never
recorded all domestic phone calls.

~~~
Clubber
[https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4521220/james-clapper-
witting...](https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4521220/james-clapper-wittingly)

~~~
lern_too_spel
1\. James Clapper is not in the NSA.

2\. The NSA never recorded all domestic phone calls, and there is no evidence
that they ever did, so neither Clapper nor the NSA lied about that.

~~~
keketi
> 1\. James Clapper is not in the NSA.

It's true that James Clapper was not employed by the NSA at the time the
question was asked. Are you suggesting that therefore he does not know the
answer? If he does not know the answer then why did he answer the question?

> 2\. The NSA never recorded all domestic phone calls, and there is no
> evidence that they ever did, so neither Clapper nor the NSA lied about that.

The question posed in the linked video clip is "Does the NSA collect any type
of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions of Americans?".

~~~
lern_too_spel
> Are you suggesting that therefore he does not know the answer?

No, I'm asserting that any statements by Clapper can't show the NSA lying
about anything any more than statements by Trump can show the NSA lying about
anything because neither is part of the NSA.

> The question posed in the linked video clip is "Does the NSA collect any
> type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions of Americans?".

And the video is irrelevant to the discussion both due to the point above and
due to the discussion being about recording content of conversations, as I
said in GGP.

~~~
lesss365
Clapper was Director of National Intelligence, head of all American
intelligence agencies. He may not have been in the NSA, but he definitely had
the responsibility of oversight.

~~~
lern_too_spel
So does Trump, who lies more often and more egregiously. That doesn't change
the fact that the NSA did not lie about its data collection practices.

------
DINKDINK
Clapper committed perjury and walked away a free man:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=796gZxR9vVk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=796gZxR9vVk)

~~~
omeid2
Tangentially related:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry)

------
gdsdfe
If it's collecting this much stuff why not be useful and stop all these
annoying phone scammers!

~~~
stonepresto
I don't think they have the authority to stop a private company's service
(verizon, etc.). Also, they don't monitor the calls themselves, so it would be
impossible to tell if it was a scammer until someone reported it, and
blacklisting one-by-one will never be effective since they can just change the
number.

~~~
e12e
Yeah, I'm sure it's impossible to guess who's a scammed based on meta-data...
/s

------
OedipusRex
"In a statement, Timothy Barrett, a spokesman at the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence, which released the annual report, said the government
“has not altered the manner in which it uses its authority to obtain call
detail records.” "

This is the issue, this is all legal.

------
mkempe
Does "collected" mean that these calls have been _searched_ for criminal or
terrorist activity? I recall that Clapper --or someone like him-- was using
that distinction in order to claim that the NSA wasn't "collecting" the phone
calls of US citizens.

edit: ah yes, it was Clapper; to Congress, in 2013. [1]

[1] [https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-11-17/lawmakers-
re...](https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-11-17/lawmakers-resume-calls-
for-james-clapper-perjury-charges)

~~~
lern_too_spel
No, it means this is the number of records they got from the telecoms.

~~~
mkempe
Actually, it means these records have been _returned as part of queries._

We know the NSA collects closer to trillions of domestic records (from phone
calls to text messages and emails) and brazenly lies about it to Congress.

~~~
lern_too_spel
> We know the NSA collects closer to trillions of domestic records (from phone
> calls to text messages and emails) and brazenly lies about it to Congress.

We know all of that to be false, according to Snowden's documents.

------
moomin
In the hunt for terrorist needles in the Internet haystack, the NSA is
furiously piling on more hay.

------
giardini
Is there a chance, nay, is there not certainty, that some individual or group
of persons in the NSA could or does, by selectively monitoring, personally
gain tremendous wealth or influence? E.g., if I were an NSA employee and used
my access to follow the phone calls of, say, the officers of Goldman-Sachs?
What information, of financial value, could I possibly gain? What
possibilities for gain await a a rogue organized group of such employees?

~~~
willstrafach
If you tried that, you would get a screen informing you that searching US
Persons is forbidden. As it sounds intentional in your scenario, you would
then be fired and be subject to further action.

~~~
giardini
willstrafach says: _" if you tried that, you would get a screen informing you
that searching US Persons is forbidden. As it sounds intentional in your
scenario, you would then be fired and be subject to further action."_

Nonsense!

Firstly if the bad guys had the assistance of a systems administrator, they
could modify privilege levels to suit their needs. No warnings would be issued
and no forbidden access would be noted or logged.

But more importantly, you speak as if there were only one way to "selectively
monitor" or that, to monitor, one must use the programmed pathways into a
system! But any decent system has realtime monitoring software, database
patching tools and editors, realtime modification tools and in-house ad-hoc
reporting software that is neither logged nor monitored. Furthermore, all
systems have backups and backups can be stolen or copied. The backed up data
can be restored and examined on systems other than the one from which it was
collected.

Snowden accessed "secure" data w/o timely detection. IIRC he also claimed
that, had he the desire, he could have listened in on White House phone
conversations w/o detection.

This is all w/o the addition of rogue software/hardware or outside help. Were
that available, the possible range of techniques would be much greater. You
lack imagination.

------
sgroppino
What is that as a percentage of the total number of calls?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
With 300M people in the US? Of them, at least 250M have phones, so... two
calls per person per year? (Double it if both ends of the conversation are in
the US.) I'm going to guess that the average is more like four calls per day
than four calls per year, so... maybe 0.3% of calls?

That's _far_ too many. And yet, it's still a very long way from blanket
surveillance.

~~~
jancsika
> That's far too many.

Quick clarification of what's being discussed here--

What AnimalMuppet has estimated is that someone or some group in the Dept. of
Defense has made a request to analyze call metadata, the sum total of which
may come to 0.3% of all calls. In other words, that 0.3% reflects the data
that has been parsed into a form intelligible for someone or some group
working at (or perhaps even sub-contracted by) the DoD.

The amount of call metadata that is _available_ to the NSA for such requests
(available either through one of their monstrously large data centers like the
one in Utah, or available through one of their many programs that automate
access to private companies' metadata) is almost certainly quite close to
100%.

You can read about how common usage terms are redefined in misleading ways by
the NSA et al here:

[https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/wordgames#collect](https://www.eff.org/nsa-
spying/wordgames#collect)

~~~
lern_too_spel
> The amount of call metadata that is available to the NSA for such requests
> (available either through one of their monstrously large data centers like
> the one in Utah, or available through one of their many programs that
> automate access to private companies' metadata) is almost certainly quite
> close to 100%.

This is false. Before Obama, they requested and received all call metadata.
After Obama, they no longer receive that data. This article is about the
number of call records sent to the NSA from the telecoms.

------
Steeeve
500M sounds like a lot. It's a gigantic number.

But where call records are concerned it's not actually that big. I could pick
out 100 mid-sized businesses and double that number readily. And that's not
even thinking about text messages.

500M text messages. That's like 1 high school.

------
tptacek
What's the denominator of that fraction?

~~~
tptacek
The first search result on Google --- surely not accurate --- suggests the
numerator is ~2 trillion.

~~~
anf
What's a call record? Like a single phone call or an SMS? Pinging the tower
doesn't count, does it?

~~~
ship_it
Why not? It's perfect way to signal.

~~~
anf
nvm, the article mentions it. cell phones check in with the tower while they
are on, which is a way to track where someone has taken their cell phone.
afaik, there's very limited privacy protections around this in the US because
they are considered the business records of the cell company.

------
cheschire
Imagine what one could do with access to every phone conversation in terms of
training a neural network. A properly trained network could easily identify
code words among a network of certain individuals and then use the frequency
of usage to identify potential windows of opportunity even if they didn't
specify time windows over the phone.

And do all of this without actually saving a single thing so it wouldn't be
considered "collecting".

~~~
kilotaras
Unless you have a big training corpus of terrorist conversations anything more
than flagging "unnatural" phrases seems very far-fetched. And considering
ratio of targets to civilians even that would be flooded with false positives.

------
wpdev_63
If you would like to make a difference and stop the unconstitutional mass
surveillance of US citizens(and even non-citizens). Please visit
fightforthefuture.org and become informed.

Vote for privacy advocates and stop using/buying services and products that
facilitate illegal surveillance. To stay up to date, visit eff.org.
DISCLAIMER: I am in no affiliated with these organizations nor with their
members.

------
cal5k
One hypocrisy that I always find galling: while Americans (and really any of
us living in the Western world) find bulk collection of metadata to be
abhorrent, nobody raises an eyebrow at the expanding scope of KYC/AML
legislation.

I can't imagine anything more revealing as to the nature of a person than how
they spend their money.

------
knowThySelfx
Only 500M? With the Management Engine type spy chips installed in virtually
all modern processors which runs our computers and phones, its all very easy.
500M is hogwash.

~~~
occamrazor
AFAIK there is no evidence, in the Snowden docs or elsewhere, pointing to a
wide-scale use of ME by NSA for bulk data collection.

~~~
knowThySelfx
Of course Occamsrazor, not yet. It isn't gonna come by easily either. Time
will tell, if it is or not.

------
neurobot
This is not surprise for me.. in my country "government" got private line in
telco for their uses, my senior told me when i was working in telco..

------
farseer
I would be very interested to know the tech they use to transcribe different
languages and dialects into text for search and retrieval later on.

------
minusSeven
I guess we ultimately lost the battle because normal people don't give a shit
about this anymore....

I am not sure what precedent this sets for the future.

~~~
amrx101
Kids in schools need to read 1984.

------
cbanek
If only they could use that data to find out who these telemarketing scammers
who constantly offer to sell me health insurance are.

------
anonu
Doesn't half a billion seem small?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I don't know; that's about 3 calls per person per year in the US. I don't
think I make any more voice calls than that. Times is a-changin'.

~~~
ernon
WhatsApp says they do 100M voice calls a day. Times is a-changin', but people
still be a-talkin'.

[https://blog.whatsapp.com/10000625/WhatsApp-
Calling-100-mill...](https://blog.whatsapp.com/10000625/WhatsApp-
Calling-100-million-conversations-every-day)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Is NSA collecting WhatsApp calls? I thought the NSA collected regular POTS
calls.

------
DaggerDagger
Hey just a reminder the state is here to control you and protect property
nothing more nothing less.

------
elbek89
I was expecting the number will a lot more than this, given over 300M people
in the US and whole year long

------
toufique
Just the metadata... _wink wink_

------
elbek89
Sounds like a lot less than what I would expect normally

------
rossdavidh
Wait, people still make phone calls?

~~~
rossdavidh
Kidding, I'm kidding.

------
empath75
and 490 million of those were robo-calls selling mexican time shares.

------
zerostar07
They 'll have a lot less to collect this year with GDRP. Or maybe not

~~~
JCSato
How does GDPR relate to NSA surveillance. . .?

~~~
Romanulus
It doesn't.

~~~
Taniwha
well it probably does if companies that acquiesce to NSA monitoring do
business in Europe

------
imhelpingu
This report is, of course, a distraction from their ability to archive
historical reality to a resolution 1 mm and 1 ms.

~~~
icebraining
What are the other kinds of realities?

------
olfactory
I think the bottom line is that the American people do not really mind the NSA
doing this. I suspect this is because most people do not realize just how
powerful and privacy-invading metadata surveillance is, or how the dataset
does not need to be added to indefinitely to have tremendous value to law
enforcement (for appropriate and inappropriate uses) once it exists at
sufficient scale.

~~~
citilife
I think the people that do realize, short of armed rebellion, can do very
little. If the people who control 60% of the nations wealth want to do this,
all the complaining in the world isn't going to do anything.

~~~
samstave
The nation needs a “tax sit-in” - everyone ridicules this, but wtf do people
think the boston tea party was about.

If you want governments to listen without armed rebellion, the only thing one
can do is refuse taxes.

They know that this is the inly othe tool you have - and thats why taxes are
woven into the fabric of the economy such that its automatically taken without
you having any control over them.

Its also why you can never truly own land. Dont pay taxes on land, and they
will take it.

You can only pay for the privilege to rent land. Forever.

~~~
chatmasta
The problem is w2 employees (i.e. most of the workforce) get their taxes taken
out of their paychecks automatically. It would be nearly impossible to
withhold those taxes from the government.

Interestingly, the more independent contractors in a population, the easier it
would be to stage a tax sit-in.

~~~
eric_h
> The problem is w2 employees (i.e. most of the workforce) get their taxes
> taken out of their paychecks automatically

That's not a requirement, though. You can opt to have no taxes withheld and
just pay what you owe in April. Of course, if you then don't pay your taxes,
the IRS will find you.

------
pasbesoin
No equal representation before the law, for the "ordinary person".

Private enterprise wants to use all this data to "maximize their returns"
through "discretionary pricing" and even "discretionary offers" (you never
even hear of the product, if you are not the targeted demographic).

In other words, discrimination.

As far as countering said discrimination? In the U.S., we couldn't even "fix"
health care. One of the single most important "products" to "consumers".

So yeah, all the rest of the arguments from "the powers that be", for all this
data collection and "targeting", mean exactly crap to me.

I just look at what they're doing. And I don't see ANY benefit for me, Joe
Ordinary. Nor for Joe "Down On His Luck". Be born into the "wrong
circumstances", or make one mis-step, experience one misfortune. And a "data-
driven", "AI-enhanced" marketplace -- and perhaps "algorithmic" "law"
enforcement -- will lock you into a positive feedback loop of downward
pressure.

The invisible hand of zero sum gain.

And now we can add to all this systems like China's. Speak up, speak out about
this, and your "social" score goes down. No higher education for your. No
travel.

So yeah, 500M call records. This feels like its going in exactly the right
direction. Not.

With all their data collection, why don't they pop the SWIFT records and some
other collection likely pertinent to current suspected abuses of power and
corruption pertaining to our leadership. You'd think such things would be
critical to the safety of our democracy.

Democra-what? Yeah.

