The Feds are collecting all Verizon Phone Call Records

[B-Man]

A Blizzard of Snowdens

By Mark Steyn

June 10, 2013

 

John Yoo writes below about prosecuting NSA leaker Edward Snowden, and observes en passant:

If he is a spy — it is amazing that someone with such little education and background was given such extensive security clearance — he may well continue running abroad

.

 

John knows government from the inside as well as anyone, so I don’t know why it would be “amazing” at all. Over 4 million people hold US security clearances: That’s the equivalent of giving security clearances to the entire population of New Zealand. According to the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, a total of 642,831 people were approved for Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret clearances in FY 2010 alone (scroll down to page five).

 

You know the way the bureaucracy works, John: How seriously do you think those two-thirds-of-a-million people were looked at? The report seems to suggest a turnover of about 600,000 in a typical year, which means that the actual number of Americans with some kind of security clearance from the last half-decade alone could be closer to seven million.

 

Even more amazing are the words immediately preceding that:

The number of clearances approved could not be obtained for FY 2009 . . .

 

 

So the same government that presumes the right to know my phone calls, my emails and my MasterCard purchases doesn’t know how many security clearances it issued in a given year.

 

The rationale given by defenders of this system over the last few days — oh, relax; there are over 300 million of us; the government doesn’t have time to comb through all the stuff it’s got on you — would seem to apply here: When 4 million people have security clearances, and another 1,800 people are getting new security clearances every day, the government doesn’t even have time to comb through them before it lets them comb through you.

 

Over at Powerline, Scott Johnson writes of Mr Snowden:

Read the Guardian profile and the Post articles and you will see that Snowden professes no loyalty to the United States. He conceives of himself as a citizen of the world, or of the realm of Digitalia.

He does not sound like anyone to be trusted with an assessment on our behalf the costs and benefits of the course of action he has undertaken

.

 

Just so. One reason for the citizenry not to entrust its personal information to the government is that the big, bloated, blundering government is stupid enough to entrust it to Edward Snowden, as it was previously stupid enough to entrust it to Bradley Manning (the Wikileaks leaker). It’s only a matter of time before the halfwit leviathan entrusts it to a Major Hasan or a Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

[PastaJoe]

I'd love to see a brawl between Pasta Joe and Pizza Joe.

 

Let's call Pasta Joe.

 

HILLARY!!!

 

 

You rang? I don't have a brother, but if I did I would hope he would come up with a more original take-off like Mack-aroni, Riga-Tony, or Broccoli Rob. Feel free to trash the imposter.

[ExiledInIllinois]

 

 

 

You rang? I don't have a brother, but if I did I would hope he would come up with a more original take-off like Mack-aroni, Riga-Tony, or Broccoli Rob. Feel free to trash the imposter.

 

It is probably 3rd. They asked for a link. Must be the board boss/mother hen enforcing the TOS.

[3rdnlng]

 

 

It is probably 3rd. They asked for a link. Must be the board boss/mother hen enforcing the TOS.

 

He was right in asking you for a link and if you're going to quote something out of an article you should post a link. It allows you to put in context any short quotes from the article. It also prevents certain people here from passing off other people's work as their own.

[DC Tom]

 

The government doesn't know how many security clearances it grants in a year because, generally speaking, the individual agencies grant clearances for their own purposes, and don't even always have the same names for them (used to be worse - at least now a 'Top Secret' at DoD is roughly equivalent to one at State or Justice or DHS. Ten years ago it was much, much more irrational.)

 

The granting of clearances isn't centralized; "the government" doesn't grant them, so they'd be difficult to count. Investigations, they can accurately count, that's centralized. Clearances, not so much.

[B-Man]

Obama's power grab: The common thread running through his scandals is an abuse of power.

 

by Glenn Harlan Reynold

 

"How ironic is that? We wanted a president that listens to all Americans -- now we have one." That was Jay Leno's take on the Obama administration's expanding NSA spying scandal, which has gone beyond Verizon phone records to include Google, Facebook, Yahoo and just about all the other major tech companies except, apparently, for Twitter.

 

The NSA spying scandal goes deep, and the Obama administration's only upside is that the furor over its poking into Americans' private business on a wholesale basis will distract people from the furor over the use of the IRS and other federal agencies to target political enemies -- and even donors to Republican causes -- and the furor over the Benghazi screwup and subsequent lies (scapegoated filmmaker Nakoula is still in jail), the furor over the "Fast And Furious" gunrunning scandal that left literally scores of Mexicans dead, the scandal over the DOJ's poking into phone records of journalists (and their parents), HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius' shakedown of companies she regulates for "donations" to pay for ObamaCare implementation that Congress has refused to fund, the Pigford scandal where the Treasury Department's "Judgment Fund" appears to have been raided for political purposes -- well, it's getting to where you need a scorecard to keep up.

 

But, in fact, there's a common theme in all of these scandals: Abuse of power. And, what's more, that abuse-of-power theme is what makes the NSA snooping story bigger than it otherwise would be. It all comes down to trust.

 

The justification for giving the government a lot of snooping power hangs on two key arguments: That snooping will make us safer and that the snooping power won't be abused.

 

 

http://www.usatoday....column/2405991/

[Fan in San Diego]

http://bigstory.ap.o...phone-records-0

 

Do you feel safer?

 

Yes, I use ATT

[3rdnlng]

 

 

 

http://www.usatoday....column/2405991/

 

Abuse of power is not the only commom thread with all these scandals. In every one there has been an attempt at coverup.

[ExiledInIllinois]

 

 

Yes, I use ATT

 

LoL... Interesting. Has anybody asked why the gov't picked Verizon... Is it just Verizon? What is the cellphone market share make up between the carriers? Again, Verizon does give 15% off to federal employees... LoL

 

Even going way back... Ameritech and before... The rebate was there. Do they use "gov't towers?" If even such exist.

Edited June 12, 2013 by ExiledInIllinois

[3rdnlng]

 

 

LoL... Interesting. Has anybody asked why the gov't picked Verizon... Is it just Verizon? What is the cellphone market share make up between the carriers? Again, Verizon does give 15% off to federal employees... LoL

 

Even going way back... Ameritech and before... The rebate was there. Do they use "gov't towers?" If even such exist.

 

They did it to all the major carriers. Snowden was only involved with Verizon records. Sometimes......................

[DC Tom]

LoL... Interesting. Has anybody asked why the gov't picked Verizon... Is it just Verizon? What is the cellphone market share make up between the carriers? Again, Verizon does give 15% off to federal employees... LoL

 

Even going way back... Ameritech and before... The rebate was there. Do they use "gov't towers?" If even such exist.

 

Good Lord, you're an idiot.

[3rdnlng]

LoL... Interesting. Has anybody asked why the gov't picked Verizon... Is it just Verizon? What is the cellphone market share make up between the carriers? Again, Verizon does give 15% off to federal employees... LoL

 

Even going way back... Ameritech and before... The rebate was there. Do they use "gov't towers?" If even such exist.

 

My first response to this post didn't consider the emboldened part. Do you actually think that the government facilitated cell phone usage by building towers? I'm sorry EiI, but do you think government workers have any f'n clue on how things actually work?

[ExiledInIllinois]

 

 

Good Lord, you're an idiot.

 

:-)

[3rdnlng]

Let the fun begin.

 

 

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/atty-fla-robbery-case-seeks-nsa-phone-records

 

 

MIAMI (AP) — The lawyer for a man on trial in a South Florida armored car robbery is seeking cellphone records possibly produced by a recently revealed National Security Agency surveillance program, according to federal court documents.

 

Attorney Marshall Dore Louis said in the court papers that the Justice Department is required to turn over the phone records if they exist because they could be crucial to his client's defense. Louis represents defendant Terrance Brown in the Broward County bank robbery case, which involved the killing of an armored car messenger in October 2010.

 

Prosecutors say they are missing a month of Brown's records from two phones because his service provider at the time, MetroPCS, no longer has them. But Louis says the NSA most likely collected data on Brown's calls and that the defense is entitled to access because they may show Brown wasn't involved in a previous July robbery attempt.

 

"The government must be ordered to turn over the records for the two telephones that it attributes to Mr. Brown for the dates which are relevant to this case," Louis said in the motion.

 

 

[dayman]

Let the fun begin.

 

 

http://bigstory.ap.o...a-phone-records

 

 

MIAMI (AP) — The lawyer for a man on trial in a South Florida armored car robbery is seeking cellphone records possibly produced by a recently revealed National Security Agency surveillance program, according to federal court documents.

 

Attorney Marshall Dore Louis said in the court papers that the Justice Department is required to turn over the phone records if they exist because they could be crucial to his client's defense. Louis represents defendant Terrance Brown in the Broward County bank robbery case, which involved the killing of an armored car messenger in October 2010.

 

Prosecutors say they are missing a month of Brown's records from two phones because his service provider at the time, MetroPCS, no longer has them. But Louis says the NSA most likely collected data on Brown's calls and that the defense is entitled to access because they may show Brown wasn't involved in a previous July robbery attempt.

 

"The government must be ordered to turn over the records for the two telephones that it attributes to Mr. Brown for the dates which are relevant to this case," Louis said in the motion.

 

lol lobbing discovery demands at a program that doesn't officially exist and has no public regulations or code as to confidentiality.

[ICanSleepWhenI'mDead]

lol lobbing discovery demands at a program that doesn't officially exist and has no public regulations or code as to confidentiality.

The article linked above seems to indicate that the federal judge didn't laugh:

 

U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenbaum initially told the Justice Department to respond by the end of Wednesday but granted a request from prosecutors for an extra week. They must respond to whether disclosure of the data — if they exist — would harm national security. The judge also said she would review whether the NSA surveillance, authorized by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, was legally conducted.

 

It's not clear to me why the judge should care whether the surveillance was legally conducted - - the defendant seeking the records isn't responsible for the government's surveillance activities. Seems to me like if the gov't has potentially exculpatory evidence and can produce it with reasonable effort then it should be required to produce it, even if the gov't originally obtained it illegally.

 

And even if the defendant can't get the requested records, his attorney might have a shot at getting any incriminating phone records excluded from the trial if the gov't can't or won't produce potentially exculpatory phone records that it may admit having. I'll be interested to see how the government responds, and what happens next.

[dayman]

The article linked above seems to indicate that the federal judge didn't laugh:

 

Incoming Glomar-ish response

Edited June 13, 2013 by SameOldBills

[B-Man]

Obama’s Snooping Excludes Mosques, Missed Boston Bombers.

 

“Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI agents. No more surveillance or undercover string operations without high-level approval from a special oversight body at the Justice Department dubbed the Sensitive Operations Review Committee. . . . The FBI never canvassed Boston mosques until four days after the April 15 attacks, and it did not check out the radical Boston mosque where the Muslim bombers worshipped.”

 

 

Well............................the Tea Party was a priority............

 

 

 

.

[Nanker]

“Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI agents. No more surveillance or undercover string operations without high-level approval from a special oversight body at the Justice Department dubbed the Sensitive Operations Review Committee. . . . The FBI never canvassed Boston mosques until four days after the April 15 attacks, and it did not check out the radical Boston mosque where the Muslim bombers worshipped.”

 

Well............................the Tea Party was a priority............

 

.

 

Yes, there was that. But all the agents were involved in the hunt for justice by being busy scouring the Internet for an inflammatory video to blame the bombings on.

[Cinga]

Obama’s Snooping Excludes Mosques, Missed Boston Bombers.

 

“Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI agents. No more surveillance or undercover string operations without high-level approval from a special oversight body at the Justice Department dubbed the Sensitive Operations Review Committee. . . . The FBI never canvassed Boston mosques until four days after the April 15 attacks, and it did not check out the radical Boston mosque where the Muslim bombers worshipped.”

 

 

Well............................the Tea Party was a priority............

 

 

 

.

 

yup... another super secret committee to keep an eye on the American People, and ignore places and people that are "potential" problems....