

Director Of National Intelligence Tries To Downplay PRISM Paranoia - unstoppableted
http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/08/director-of-national-intelligence-tries-to-downplay-prism-paranoia-says-the-system-doesnt-mine-data/

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mattdeboard
How might you _unintentionally_ target someone for surveillance? Their careful
wording -- "we don't intentionally target US citizens" \-- necessarily means
they believe it's possible to "accidentally" catch a US citizen in their
surveillance dragnet.

Taking them completely at their word, that this is a good faith operation,
under what circumstances might an unintentional targeting occur? What would it
look like? What does it say about the data they've collected and the analysis
they're performing against it? What would the reconciliation process look like
for a US citizen who was unintentionally surveilled without a warrant? Would
the government still bring charges? Or are the secret courts allowed to issue
_ex post facto_ authorizations? If they're not allowed to issue such
authorizations, how would we know if they did so illegally?

I don't normally buy into these big hype stories but there is just so much
here that is very wrong. The phrase "secret court" just sounds totalitarian.

~~~
fiatmoney
Easy - you search for second-order links. Anyone who's ever made a phone call
to someone who's made a phone call to a foreigner or a foreign country.

Whoops, that's everyone! We'll just keep this information forever in case we
need it.

It's completely disingenuous.

~~~
mattdeboard
So, would a second-order link be the launching pad for a legal surveillance of
a US citizen?

If Joe in NYC called Pavel, a Chechen activist who the NSACIAFBIODNI is
monitoring, is that sufficient basis for obtaining a warrant for monitoring
all of Joe's communications?

This is the sort of information we need.

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fiatmoney
Note that he doesn't deny that they did in fact collect literally every piece
of phone metadata generated by Verizon (and presumably every other phone
company).

Every single phone call you have made for quite some time exists as a record
in an NSA database.

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eightyone
We should all trust James Clapper after this, you guys.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRhjgynfhag](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRhjgynfhag)

