U.S. Is Secretly Collecting Records of Verizon Calls

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/us/us-secretly-collecting-logs-of-business-calls.html?smid=fb-nytimes&WT.z_sma=US_UIS_20130606

by zt • 13 years ago

496 108 13 years ago

nytimes.com

samstave• 13 years ago

The U.S. is openly storing any packet that traverses any wire it can field signal from.

Quantum Tapping:

The loophole is that they are not 'tapping' any communication until the moment when they actually observe/listen to it.

rdtsc• 13 years ago

Yes presumably even with voice they can still store it. Only when a human examines (sees the data on their screen, listens to the audio) then only it is considered that a "search" has occurred.

So let's assume that there are these scumbags and all they want to do is spy on everyone and there is this pesky Constitution still getting in their way, what is the strategy to eliminate the "annoyance"?

The strategy is two-pronged:

1) Don't have statutes of limitation on data gathered in a search warrant. So say you commit what someone thinks is a crime at 99 years of age, they get a search warrant for your data and now legally they have access to all your data since the day you were born.

2) Store _everything_. Presumably this is what the new NSA complex is Utah is for.

Sure enough you'd become inconvenient at some point. Let's say you spend a night too many with the Occupy crowd or your kid installs LOIC and now a search warrant is executed. The emails you sent 10 years ago now appear and well, who knows you might have written back then, but pretty sure it can be made to stick.

Now of course you would be offered a deal. Maybe collaborate or just get scared enough of them to never step outside and never touch a computer again, well they win in that case as well.

Good luck to everyone.

einhverfr2• 13 years ago

You can't "store everything" for the simple reason that feeding all the traffic back to Utah would be prohibitive. The thing is, though, this is not any real comfort because it doesn't matter.

The reason we have the 4th Amendment is to keep general warrants like this from being issued, and to help retard the "show me the man and I will find you the crime" (to quote a member of the Stalin regime) from taking root here, or at least to make it more difficult.

The problem is, for the worst abuses to occur they don't have to store everything. They just get general warrants like this, inspect packets, filter "interesting subsets" out and send those back to Utah. So I think the actual strategy is two pronged, in a different direction, and both worse and more economical:

1. Vague laws that people can be easily prosecuted for[1] particularly when it comes to terrorism. Bonus points for allowing military enforcement of domestic law.[2]

2. Get general warrants that let them target whoever they want without recourse, which is what is going on here. Better yet, let's get retroactive immunity for any accomplices and make sure it is all really above the law.

The end result is the same, of course. The difference is that the above strategy takes a lot less time, resources, money, people, and hardware to pull off.

[1] See Harvey Silverglate (civil liberties atty, veteran of the EFF, ACLU, and FIRE), "Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent"

[2] This is a trend, particularly when it comes to defining terrorism but has been going on since at least Clinton. Note that Clinton asked Congress unsuccessfully for a terrorism exception to Posse Comitatus. See Kopel, David (former Colorado Assistant Attorney General). "No More Wacos"

TheCondor• 13 years ago

Yes and that more people don't pay attention is shocking. Just ask yourselves this,the NSA isn't supposed to spy on Americans, why on earth is the Utah data center in Utah? It's nearly the farthest physical location from the supposed targets...

noselasd• 13 years ago

That said - the matter here is the call logs, not the content - there's nothing to listen to. The easiest thing for them to do is hand over the logs used for billing, though they may have the same information from network performance monitor systems as well.

Not that it makes it ok, but Verizon isn't handing over the actual conversation in this case.

joelrunyon• 13 years ago

What happened to this being the most transparent administration "committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness"[1]?

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOp...

derefr2• 13 years ago

I would presume that "openness" refers to actions initiated by the administration itself. Already-established, long-running initiatives of autonomous sub-departments, even if they do fall under the purview of the executive, probably aren't included, since the administration isn't actually making any choices in how these programs are run, just letting them continue to run as they always have.

mtowle3• 13 years ago

You would presume that now, yes. Nobody who was presuming that when he said it, however, made much of an effort to speak up.

Sort of like how "everybody knows" it was Congress's fault campaign promises X, Y, and Z didn't pass, yet at the time, nobody stopped to ask how much these promises can mean if the position he's campaigning for isn't capable of fulfilling them in the first place. "I presume by 'guarantee' he meant he'd try his best, since obviously the POTUS can't even introduce laws anyway. And as a former Constitutional law prof., I'm sure Obama knows that." Oh, super. Thanks.

einhverfr2• 13 years ago

Unfortunately, the administration itself doesn't even score that well there. Remember sunlight before signing?

I suppose one could read it narrowly enough to include virtually nothing but then what?

brown9-23• 13 years ago

Is the NSA truly autonomous? I believe the director reports to the Director of National Intelligence, who is a Presidential appointee.

biff• 13 years ago

Well, they HAVE managed to create an unprecedented level of openness and transparency.

Perhaps in a different direction than we were assuming, but still...

Ihmahr• 13 years ago

Thats funny for two seconds untill you realise its a nightmare.

beedogs• 13 years ago

they're openly flouting privacy laws and our constitutional rights -- that's sort of the same thing.

bmelton• 13 years ago

President Obama transparently extended the Patriot Act.

uvdiv2• 13 years ago

Previous discussion (5 hours old, still active):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5829442

butner• 13 years ago

No checks and balances here... at least any that aren't classified and are transparent to the public. A Tyranny, as Thomas Jefferson might refer to it.

uvdiv2• 13 years ago

Checks and balances are functioning perfectly. Congress voted for Patriot Act §215, President Bush signed it into law, President Obama and his congress reauthorized it, and the courts did not overturn it. The law has sat on the books, very publicly, for more than a decade, and has offered myriad opportunities for citizens to debate and challenge (an example: [1]). The broader issue of NSA dragnets is probably one of the top 20 political issues in the US, making regular headlines since 2005 (if you include foreign dragnets, 1995 [2] or earlier).

Checks and balances aren't broken. This is democracy in action.

[1] http://www.aclu.org/free-speech-national-security-technology...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Controversy

nullc• 13 years ago

Which section of the §215 authorizes this activity?

mtgx• 13 years ago

There's no real oversight, and they are using "secret Courts" and "secret interpretations" even of these obscure and very vague laws.

darkarmani3• 13 years ago

It doesn't sound like "balance" when all three branches are on the same side of the seesaw.

declan2• 13 years ago

If the checks and balances were functioning, we wouldn't have senators warning in 2011 of the Obama administration's "secret interpretation" of the Patriot Act: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20067005-281.html

Unfortunately the senators were on the Intelligence committee and viewed themselves as unable to disclose what they learned in secret briefings. Now we know at least part of what they were talking about.

brown9-23• 13 years ago

"viewed themselves as unable to disclose what they learned in secret briefings"

That is because it is illegal to disclose classified intelligence, even for a Senator.

The reason why these Senators could only warn about things, instead of passing legislation to change the law, is because the majority of Congress supports this type of legislation.

The checks and balances are still there - the problem is that the body that passes the law agrees with this type of power.

pekk9• 13 years ago

Why do we keep pretending that Thomas Jefferson wanted us to use military force to destroy the Constitution and overthrow democratically elected officials as soon as we were unhappy with politics?

josh2600• 13 years ago

*Edit: nevermind.

salimmadjd• 13 years ago

AFAIK, Amdocs processes most of the carriers billing, aka metadata. Many of Amdocs systems are based in Israel. So, does NSA need court ruling to get metadata from an Israeli company? Seems like it might be another convenient way to go around the constitution.

shmerl• 13 years ago

Well, it's not a surprise, but at least now there is a solid evidence. What can the public do about it though?

alan_cx• 13 years ago

Loads. But the real question is, what will the public do about it?

I suspect nothing what so ever. They are scared witless by terrorists and if you guys are like the UK, paedophiles. Oh, and of course, it wont happen to them, although, as we see, it already is.

volume• 13 years ago

do they use Netezza or Greenplum for this sort of thing?

Cieplak• 13 years ago

If you don't like this, call your representatives in congress, and tell two friends about it.

qwertzlcoatl• 13 years ago

The War on Terror is taking more and more victims. Chasing this phantom is getting dangerously close to an Orwellian Paradise.

As Terry Jones said, "How do you wage war on an abstract noun, it's like deciding to bomb murder".

josefresco• 13 years ago

I would argue that terrorism is less abstract than murder. Also, the US "war on terror" is about terror that specifically relates or effects the US making it an even more specific classification.

betterunix5• 13 years ago

It is not specific enough to end. Typically, wars end in either victory or defeat, but in the "war on terror" there is not even a clear definition of either.

king_jester• 13 years ago

Murder is far more concrete than the war on terror, because definitions of terrorist or what counts as a threat to national security is extremely nebulous and data about such determinations are hidden from most people, whereas murder is typically defined in laws that are generally accessible to the public and is strictly related to certain kinds of killings of human beings by other human beings.

pekk9• 13 years ago

So what policy do you want regarding terrorism? If you want everyone to ignore it, then you will have to persuade the rest of the US to ignore it.

Vivtek3• 13 years ago

Oh, who could possibly have predicted this?

Why is everybody so surprised? I literally do not understand this.

betterunix5• 13 years ago

For some reason, everyone is convinced that this is the sort of thing Republicans do. The very suggestion that the Obama administration is, in fact, on the right wing of the political spectrum is shocking to many of his supporters.

pekk9• 13 years ago

For some reason, you missed that this IS something Republicans do. It started in 2005, well before Obama took office.

cema• 13 years ago

Cannot speak for everybody, but I, for one, while not surprised, still need to know the facts -- the difference between what can happen and what has actually happened is important.

flyinRyan6• 13 years ago

What I don't understand is sentiment like yours. We shouldn't bring this up because "everyone knows already"? No, we should be shouting this from the roof tops and do everything we can to make people mad enough about it to act. What is your solution? Sit back and look smug while the world falls apart around us?

Vivtek3• 13 years ago

Some of us have been shouting for the rooftops until hoarse for the last decade and more. Suddenly everybody's reacting (and I don't mean everybody here - I mean the New York Bloody Times) like this is the very first time this has ever come up.

pekk9• 13 years ago

mad enough to act how, precisely?

grecy• 13 years ago

Are you suggesting that everyone should just ignore it and continue with their lives... ?

Just because I'm not surprised, doesn't mean I shouldn't be outraged.

stfu• 13 years ago

I, for one, am already looking forward in what ways the Obama administration is going to hunt down the leaker of this document. Because - how should a government function without having a basic level of secrecy? Oh irony...

On the other hand the leak probably came even from the administration itself. After they pretty much got away with intimidating political opponents and spying on unfavorable reporters, why not unload a few other skeletons from the closet.

Worst case scenario Jon Stewart is making a 5 minute skit out of it and with twinkle in his eye moving back to bashing some more convenient subjects.

forgotAgain• 13 years ago

You're not being paranoid if they're really out to get you.

JonSkeptic• 13 years ago

>The order was marked “TOP SECRET//SI//NOFORN,” referring to communications-related intelligence information that may not be released to noncitizens. That would make it among the most closely held secrets in the federal government, and its disclosure comes amid a furor over the Obama administration’s aggressive tactics in its investigations of leaks.

The author not only wrote the article about this, but also put in the classification of the document source. Salt in the wound. I can't help but feel that such a detail may have been included as a response to recent events regarding members of the news media and their treatment at the hands of the government. It very much seems that the honey moon is over.

brown9-23• 13 years ago

That would make it among the most closely held secrets in the federal government seems to be an overstatement when you consider that millions of documents are marked TOP SECRET each year.

Nelson69• 13 years ago

The clear and obvious question here is if it's "just metadata" and isn't really spying, then why is it secret at all? In fact, why don't we broadcast to the terrorists that we do this and wish them luck attacking us without the aid of electronic communication.

The secrecy only makes it look like something illegal. (And there is no doubt in my mind that it is against the spirit of American law, if not the letter)

pekk9• 13 years ago

What honeymoon? The media has eaten up every possible shadow of a scandal, including the birth certificate nonsense. That's business.

AYBABTME• 13 years ago

What do people expect? It's either that or open war mongering. This administration doesn't want to be seen as a militaristic one, but the world doesn't stop being what it is because voters get tired of wars. So something has to give. More drones, expanded secret ops, more information gathering.

I don't like the idea of being spied on, not at all. But from a security perspective, I understand the need for better information. I'm kind of playing Devil-advocates, but it's naive to expect your government to provide you safety, lifestyle, freedom, without having to play behind the scene - or openly fight oversea - when the rest of the World lives a completely different story.

e402• 13 years ago

when the rest of the World lives a completely different story

What does this mean?

mpyne• 13 years ago

I remember reading about how Lebanon's cellular phone providers are deeply in bed with Hezbollah, as just one example. Likewise with the Taliban working in concert with AQ before 9/11.

My gut reaction is that I don't like this, but it's hard to argue that the U.S. is fighting an even bout with those who would enter the country and use its civil liberties to aid their terrorism planning.

Of course we expect that, the question is where to draw the line in areas where civil liberty directly conflicts with security.

cantos• 13 years ago

It's either collecting call metadata on US citizens or open war mongering? I was going to say that you're giving a false choice but then I realized there doesn't really seem to be a connection between the choices you're giving.

pekk9• 13 years ago

"Everybody decides not to care about terrorism" happens not to be on the menu. Unless you have an idea how to make everyone not care about terrorism.

mindcrime4• 13 years ago

But from a security perspective, I understand the need for better information. I'm kind of playing Devil-advocates, but it's naive to expect your government to provide you safety, lifestyle, freedom, without having to play behind the scene - or openly fight oversea - when the rest of the World lives a completely different story.

OK, for starters, let's assume that "national defense" is a proper and just role for government, and even be charitable and allow that "some" secrecy is necessary. Now, how does any of that argue for allowing the government to record call record for everybody in the US? What is wrong with having them identify an individual, or small group of individuals, that are suspected of $WHATEVER, and then go get a warrant, and then ask for the data? I mean, by casting a net so wide, it's obvious they're collecting a TON of data on people that aren't involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever... why should we be OK with that?

And that aside, to the extent that this is about the "War on Terror", ask yourself this: How many people in the US have ever been killed as a result of a terrorist attack? Over all time the number is on the order of a few thousand. Now every single one of those was tragic, yes, and I certainly don't want to diminish the importance of every single life... but when you look at the big picture, cancer, AIDS, car crashes, accidental slips and falls in the bathroom, accidental drownings in ones own swimming pool and even "being beaten to death by a cop" outrank "death by terrorism" in terms of scale. And is anybody seriously suggesting we should allow the State nearly unlimited power in the name of fighting accidental slips and falls, or drownings, or any of those things? No? Then why should we do it for terrorism?

And finally, shouldn't we consider that people like Ron Paul have a point, that a lot of the hatred for the US is probably "blowback" as a result of our aggressive, meddlesome foreign policy? Maybe one of the best ways to ensure security for our nation is to have a strong military - at home - and trade freely with everyone. After all, it seems to be far less common for strong trading partners to attack each other. Free trade, and less meddling in the affairs of other sovereign nations, would - IMO - be more effective at protecting us, than allowing the fracking NSA to grab call logs indiscriminately.

irishcoffee• 13 years ago

> How many people in the US have ever been killed as a result of a terrorist attack? Over all time the number is on the order of a few thousand.

Maybe because they're doing a much more effective job than we realize. Also I don't think you accounted for Pearl Harbor.

> And finally, shouldn't we consider that people like Ron Paul have a point, that a lot of the hatred for the US...

I think this is common misconception. I do not think the vast majority of the world hates the US. I'd be curious to see facts about this.

betterunix5• 13 years ago

"from a security perspective, I understand the need for better information"

Quality versus quantity. This is about wholesale surveillance -- gathering as much information as possible on as many people as possible. That does not mean the information is better or even useful.

comrade_ogilvy5• 13 years ago

I bet it is very useful. If you have one or two suspicious persons who happen to be a member of a particular lodge, church, mosque, etc. you can probably usefully winnow down the list of associates to further investigate without a large and intrusive effort investigating the entire group.

People easily imagine the worst case scenarios, but the okay case scenario is surely more typical, e.g. when a man travels to eastern Pakistan to allegedly visit relatives for several months, the FBI can look at the 9 people he spends time with rather than creating dossiers on the 112 people who so happen to attend the same mosque.

(Whether and how the Constitution cares about the "good case", "okay case", "worst case" is a different question.)

darkarmani3• 13 years ago

> What do people expect? It's either that or open war mongering.

Or we could just stop with using fearmongering as a way to expand homeland security's budget. These agencies are doing whatever they can to expand their budgets. That is the game those players play. You aren't successful unless you expand your budget. And you can't expand your budget unless you make convincing fictions about all of the fear out there in the world.

> But from a security perspective, I understand the need for better information...but it's naive to expect your government to provide you safety, lifestyle, freedom, without having to play behind the scene

How do you call this safety or freedom? Our own gov't is more likely to harm us than terrorists. How many people do you think die from terrorists in the US a year versus innocent people being prosecuted (or molested by the TSA)?

The false positive rate is way, way, way higher than than the number of terrorists in the US.

flyinRyan6• 13 years ago

I completely disagree with this sentiment. I say ignore terrorism completely. Don't intercept calls, get rid of all post/911 airport security. We can't stop terrorism and we won't ever stop it.

A better question is: is it worth bothering? The biggest yield terrorism has ever had in the US was 911 where around 3k people died. So if you look at the last 30 years of terror we're talking around 100 people a year. A problem that costs the lives of 100 people a year isn't really worth considering so long as things like cancer and heart disease are out there. Instead of wasting all these billions on war and anti-terrorism, invest it in cancer research. Now that could have some kind of impact.

And, yes, if my loved ones were hurt by terrorists I would be devastated. Just the same as if I lost them to heart disease, cancer, a car accident, etc. But I'm not willing to give up anything (not security, not time at the airport, nothing at all) to stop something that is so statistically minuscule as to not be worth thinking about.

comrade_ogilvy5• 13 years ago

That is a reasonable policy choice, which is worth considering.

It so happens that law enforcement officials and national security officials and politicians do not think that the voters will accept 3 to 6 Boston bombings per year, without their careers being destroyed. Do they misunderstand the public mood?

Aloha3• 13 years ago

I've never considered call detail records to be particularly private. That's all this is.

Thrymr• 13 years ago

This is a big difference from established law enforcement practice in that regard. Normally a prosecutor needs to issue a subpoena to the phone company to get your individual records, regarding a specific investigation. In this case, the government gets every record from all Verizon customers for the period in question. No, you would not expect that privacy would protect your records if you are specifically under investigation. But you might (certainly before the PATRIOT Act, if not before this revelation, unless you were a conspiracy nut) expect that government agencies don't have free reign to browse your records for no predefined purpose whatsoever. The potential for abuse is too huge and obvious.

We seem to be well past all that now.

Aloha3• 13 years ago

Maybe its because I work in the telecom industry, I'm used to CDR's being all over the place, easy to get, export as text even, and not particularly private. It's always seemed to me that what you say on the call is far more important than who you are calling.

darkarmani3• 13 years ago

So, post them on your blog then.

PavlovsCat• 13 years ago

And I care about what you consider private why, exactly? For any old thing you can find someone, or even a barrel full of people, who considers it to be true. The arguments matter. You provided none, and that's that.

sixothree• 13 years ago

So post yours right here. I would like to see them.

Aloha3• 13 years ago

For what period of time?

jordan_clark• 13 years ago

Even taking it a step further - If monitoring my phone calls about my kid being sick and puking in the back seat of my car keeps me safe from assholes, be my guest. Listen away.

flyinRyan6• 13 years ago

Maybe you're willing to give up your privacy to get protection from imaginary villains (what are the odds of you personally getting hurt or killed by a terrorist?), but I'm not.

pekk9• 13 years ago

If you read any news story about this from any newspaper, you will see that the issue is records of who called whom for how long, not full transcripts of all your calls.

However terrible and indefensible that is, let's start by addressing reality instead of imagination

jpdoctor• 13 years ago

> highly classified court order

Boy does that sound like a concept which needs to die. Justice does not tend to occur behind closed doors.

mindcrime4• 13 years ago

Indeed. There is, as far as I can tell, no reason for this order to be secret at all, since it's so indiscriminate. I can understand (grudgingly) the argument for sealing the court order during an active investigation, since you don't necessarily want to tip off the suspect that you're "onto them". But if you're saying "give me everybody's data" then it won't be tipping anybody off.

And weighed against the idea that our government, which we created, to serve us needs to be almost 100% transparent in order to be accountable to us, I just can't see any reason for this being kept secret.

If We The People are to police our government, we need to know what it's doing. And when it does something wrong, we need to smite it mightily.

DanBC• 13 years ago

In theory the secret stuff is given oversight by politicians. You elect the politicians, so that's the weak link to oversight by the people.

I'm not sure how it works in the US, but I'm aware that GCHQ / CESG / etc have pretty rigorous scrutiny.

I'm not disagreeing with you, btw. Far too much stuff is classified as top secret or secret when it just doesn't need to be.

kfcm2• 13 years ago

What a bunch of whiners.

It's not as if you don't hand much--if not all--of the same information over to marketing departments, app makers and ad companies when using a smart phone.

edwardunknown• 13 years ago

No kidding, do they think Verizon doesn't keep track of your phone calls? What the NSA did isn't illegal and it certainly isn't new.

phdp• 13 years ago

Marketing departments won't come crashing through my door dressed in a police uniform.

kfcm2• 13 years ago

You've never heard of RIAA, MPAA, et al?

What happens when marketing departments realize they can use the data freely given to them to target people to blackmail and extort, rather than just flash ads at and try to sell to?

"For a monthly recurring fee of just $XX, conveniently and discreetly billed to your credit card, you can prevent this information from being sent to [spouse||significant other||law enforcement||employer]."

Or company will be founded--if not already--to buy bulk data and develop reports and profiles on individuals and groups, with law enforcement and the intelligence community as the primary customers? Sign up and buy a report/profile for $25-50.

taproot2• 13 years ago

I love how people in this thread are modding you down for this. None of this is news to me, you and many like us. Yet here we are, top 10 stories on HN, more comments than I have ever seen all about some new NSA leak. Apparently people on HN are far less informed about the world we live in than I previously thought. Go figure.

bas• 13 years ago

Is this actually "news" (i.e. new information)? Ever since the secret room business in 2006 (about events in 2003 or earlier), the handwriting was on the wall.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/04/att_assisting_...

taproot2• 13 years ago

No but be careful. People round here dont seek to be informed of such.

kunai• 13 years ago

Since everything is out anyway, and since everyone else has iterated on this point several times now, all I have to say, is:

FUCK YOU, BIPARTISAN, CORRUPT, DICKISH, TYRANNICAL, WORTHLESS PIECE OF SHIT.

FUCK YOU, GOVERNMENT.

U.S. Is Secretly Collecting Records of Verizon Calls

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