
Warrantless "emergency" surveillance by DOJ up 400% - sorbus
http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2011/08/warrantless-emergency-surveillance-of.html
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trotsky
_As such, Congress currently has no idea how many warrantless requests are
made to ISPs each year. How can it hope to make sane policy in this area, when
it has no useful data?_

The Intelligence select committee knows pretty well what's going on. That's
why Mark Udall and Ron Wyden were screaming bloody murder last month before
the patriot act extension vote [1]. Because they know, and it's bad.

It seems much of the uproar is about the business records portion and how it
is being applied to broad requests to telcos for call detail records without
suspicion of terrorism. Often that will be all of the target's call detail
records, and then the call detail records of everyone he calls, and very
possibly even the CDR's of everyone those people called. You don't have to
make that many of those requests before you essentially have the entire
country's phone records in one great big database.

[1] <https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/us/27patriot.html>

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billybob
... And the lords of the surveillance state said in unison, "Long live the
emergency!"

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lliiffee
Wow-- this is an increase from 17 in 2008 to 91 in 2009. I would have guessed
that both were several orders of magnitude higher.

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dreamdu5t
This is the problem. The numbers aren't accurate!

You have no idea how many they're issueing, and they'll keep it that way.

Also a single request can contain information for multiple individuals. One
request could represent data on 1000 people.

The entire process is fudged. There is no accountability.

Domestic wiretapping is being used on all America citizens 24/7.

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chrishenn
The government has way over stepped it's bounds in response to the terrorist
threat. I realized it first when I read a New Yorker article on the NSA[0].

 _In the past few years, the N.S.A. has built enormous electronic-storage
facilities in Texas and Utah. Binney says that an N.S.A. e-mail database can
be searched with “dictionary selection,” in the manner of Google. After 9/11,
he says, “General Hayden reassured everyone that the N.S.A. didn’t put out
dragnets, and that was true. It had no need—it was getting every fish in the
sea.”_

...

 _Even in an age in which computerized feats are commonplace, the N.S.A.’s
capabilities are breathtaking. The agency reportedly has the capacity to
intercept and download, every six hours, electronic communications equivalent
to the contents of the Library of Congress. Three times the size of the
C.I.A., and with a third of the U.S.’s entire intelligence budget, the N.S.A.
has a five-thousand-acre campus at Fort Meade protected by iris scanners and
facial-recognition devices. The electric bill there is said to surpass seventy
million dollars a year._

[0]
[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all)

~~~
VladRussian
when would they announce their co-location (and/or AWS cloud type) services?
It can be a nice additional revenue stream (colo/cloud revenue is 5-10x
electricity, ie. hundreds of millions per year in this case) that would ease
US federal budget problems.

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ck2
Here's the thing though - if people aren't going to revolt when the TSA
literally gropes their genitals, there is little else they are going to
protest, certainly not something far less tangible.

In fact, it's the opposite - we have common people who react by defending the
TSA doing this to millions for the single idiot they might catch someday. Now
it has spread to bus stations, trains and even roadblocks - and still, no-one
protests.

So this will never be defeated, even if the headlines of every newspaper and
news program tomorrow was " _government saving every email that everyone has
ever sent or received_ ".

As long as they can go shopping at the mall or go fishing on the weekends,
they have the illusion they are "free" and don't mind all the war and
unreasonable intrusions into their privacy.

