When people think of a police state, they usually think of heavily armed, uniformed police kicking in doors and dragging out family members in the dark of the night. A police state doesn’t require police kicking down your door… at least not in the beginning, particularly when one is evolving from some other form of government, say for instance a constitutional republic. I’m not sure any police state ever came about as a result of some politician saying “When I get elected I’m going to use various elements of the government to take away your civil liberties, oppress my opponents and crush any opposition.” Typically dictators come to power promising to restore order amidst chaos or empowering the people against a tyrannical or corrupt regime. Putin was seen as bringing order to a crumbling Russia while Castro led a revolt against the corrupt Batista and Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew a hated monarch.
But this is the United States and by definition it could never become a police state.
But just for argument’s sake, let’s imagine someone had designs on becoming a dictator and wanted to turn the US into a police state, what kinds of things might be helpful? Obviously no dictator worth his salt wants to have opponents running around shining a light on his actions or stirring up the population against him or his policies. If only there was a way to keep opponents quiet. One way might be to choke off their funding by keeping them from raising much money and by intimidating their supporters. Check and check!
Of course, what good is being dictator if you can’t listen in to what subversive things people are saying about you… or anything else? Not much. As such it would be great to have a program where the government could listen in on every single phone conversation going on in the entire country… Not just when citizens are talking to known terrorists overseas, but simply when they are talking, period.. Check! But young people barely talk on the phone anymore… all they do is text, so you’d want to make sure you can see what’s going on there too. Check!
Unfortunately for you, every conversation in the country doesn’t occur on a phone as sometimes people still actually talk face to face. You might consider placing listening devices everywhere so you could listen in on those conversations too. Not likely however given the logistical nightmare it would be. If only there were a way to use their phones as listening devices, even when they’re turned off. Check! And maybe you could use the phone’s GPS data to track where everyone was at any point in time… and who they were with. Check!
As popular as talking on the phone is, people still spend a lot of time on computers at home. You’d probably want to have a program that allows you to monitor virtually everything anyone does online. Check!
Of course there is more to life than just what people say to one another.
It might also be helpful if you could make it so that a big portion of the population were dependent upon a check from the government (i.e. you), that way you could use that dependency as a tool with which to keep people in line and to whip up populist sentiment against anyone who was seeking to oppose your policies. Check!
As healthcare is pretty important to people, it might be very powerful tool to have if you could figure out a way to put the government in charge of everyone’s healthcare. Need that gall bladder operation or that cholesterol medicine? Let’s see what you’ve been up to first… Check.
Finally, as every good dictator knows, it’s important to disarm your enemies and potential enemies. Here you’d have to be very creative. A national background check before someone could buy a weapon would be a place to start. This would be particularly helpful if the agency operating such a system was allowed to define who it thought might be too dangerous to own a gun. A national registration where gun owner’s names and addresses were listed would be nice, and it would tell you exactly where to go to collect the guns whenever you’re ready. Not quite yet, but working on it.
But of course this is all hypothetical. As President Obama said: “If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress, and don’t trust federal judges, to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here.”
I think we have some problems here… Even if this unprecedented level of power were exercised by someone as honest and virtuous – not to be confused with perfect – as George Washington, a man who turned down absolute power twice in one lifetime, it would be a problem. Barack Obama is certainly no George Washington and in his hands all of this is a giant problem. This power in the hands as one as arrogant, perfidious and incompetent as Barack Obama is the equivalent of setting fire to the Constitution itself.
As a nation of laws and imperfect men operating in a world where millions of people seek new ways to harm us daily, there are certain things that government must do, many of which may seem unseemly in the light of day. Most Americans understand that. The America Barack Obama is creating is something all together different. If a government listens to conversations of its citizens in some limited, controlled circumstances, most Americans would accept that. If however that power is virtually unlimited, and more onerously, it is combined with a government that simultaneously seeks to control virtually every aspect of a citizen’s life, from what they can say and who they can support, to what healthcare they can get to their ability to exercise their 2nd Amendment rights to the economic opportunities available to them, then the Constitution becomes little more than a piece of framed artwork.
All that being said, we owe Barack Obama a great deal of gratitude for all of this. Before him Americans were seemingly happy to continue moving down the one way path of allowing government to take control of more and more of their lives as they deluded themselves into believing that only men of great character would control the levers of power. By demonstrating with crystal clarity exactly how fragile our liberty is in the wrong hands, perhaps Americans will come to, push back and begin reining government back into the box our Founding Fathers drew for it so that no one of any stripe can turn it into a police state. Barack Obama may well end up transforming America after all. Hopefully it won’t be in quite the way he intended.
See author page
@ilovebeeswarzone, both sides ultimately want to destroy Israel… whether Iran/Hezbollah, or AQ Islamist affiliates.
Incorrect for the US to pick any side. Let them all kill each other, and we’ll sort it out with who’s left standing. One of the rare moments when tiresome and I agree.
@MataHarley: #105,
And therein lies the real problem. And it’s a big one.
It is understandable that since most people are just not familiar with databases, security, and the power of algorithms to process any data stream new or old, fresh or stored, they have difficulty deciding what is right or wrong or to what degree, etc.
On the other hand, the people have been provided clear evidence that government bureaucrats can be used and are used for political purposes to influence election outcomes. The assumption of trust has been immutably desecrated, so there is little likelihood that “strict and defined punishment” will be pertinent to the discussion. We see what occurs when corruption hits the AG’s office, . . . nothing.
I agree that clearly defined rules and guidelines could be set-out specifically clarifying who/what/how/why/ and should be. Unfortunately, if Holder is the best you can do when time comes for ‘implementation’ of rules and guidelines, they are worthless – even judges cannot be relied on, it appears. This does not speak well for the future potential for abuse. Abuse seems here to stay.
@ilovebeeswarzone: The Institute For Cultural Diplomacy that has monitored genocides worldwide since 1961 says “The Syrian Govt has committed sustained acts of Genocide apon it’s citizens.”
I agree with Mata, Ret05 and BHO up until PROOF of Genocide and UNILATERAL use of poisonous gas. Then and only then is the line of humanity crossed and an international response appropriate.
Semper Fi
Sorry rich. Count me out on that one. There will never been any proof of “unilateral” war crimes since both sides have engaged in that… chemicals or not. Ergo, there’s no way you can support either side of the Syrian conflict. It’s a lose lose situation. Let Syria and their neighboring nations, who choose to get involved and have vested interest, do their own thing.
@ilovebeeswarzone: #111,
It is unclear how many ‘groups’ are fighting Assad, nevertheless, it is evident that there are more than ONE. That’s problem number TWO.
Problem number ONE is the fact that there is no leader in the W.H., particularly on foreign affairs, who can be trusted, or who understands anything of what is going on in the M.E. or who even cares. How can such dearth of direction lead to anything positive? It can’t. Someone, even possibly Assad, will take power over Syria, and fighting will continue for years.
It makes no sense for anyone to think that the U.S. can step into the breach – there is no breach, and when you have an Admin which just proved its lack of ability with Libya, it’s best to remain on the sidelines.
@MataHarley:
No one has ever had a greater love affair going with themselves as you do, Mata. Although you do love to write pointless dissertations.
@Richard Wheeler:
Can we then assume you were totally supportive of our invasion of Iraq? Believe me, the slaughter of civilians in Syria will never match the actions of Saddam. Never.
So who would you back in Syria? There are NO good guys in that civil war. Assad is being backed by Iran and the rebels are AQ and AQ spin offs. Right now it is a win, win for the U.S. Radical Islamists killing other radical Islamists in Syria. What happens when they quit killing each other, and armed by the U.S., decide to turn their attentions to us?
I would refer you to Egypt, who Obama just cut a check for $1.3 BILLION to. Never mind that Egypt is rapidly turning into another Iran, killing Christian Copts as fast as they can, and stating, publically, that the U.S. is their enemy along with Israel. And Obama is shoveling them money as fast as he can. Not to mention that certified idiot, James Clapper, claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood was a “secular” organization, or that the American press, lap dogs of Obama, claimed during the Egyptian uprisings that the Muslim Brotherhood had no part to play. The Egyptian bet is not going to pay off for the U.S.
So you tell me; are we better off with the Muslim Brotherhood’s Morsi, or were we better off with Mubarak? Honesty requires you to admit we were better off with Mubarak. Is Libya better, U.S. wise, now that it was under Gadhafi?
The entire Middle East is about to be ablaze and you want to support the bad guys who are fighting the bad guys in Syria because they are killing each other?
@retire05: I’m glad Mubarek.Gaddaffi; and Saddam are gone.I’ii be glad when Assad is gone. His body count of dead civilians may not match Saddam yet,but he’s sure as hell working on it. BTW I didn’t and don’t support American boots on the ground in any of these conflicts. Iraq only conflict with American casualties.
BTW I don’t believe Egypt or Libya will turn on the U.S Too much to lose. Assad can’t hold on indefinitely-he’s in the same position as the 3 aforementioned scumbags–sleeping with his eyes open.
Semper Fi
Richard Wheeler
we canno bring the dead back to life ,
what should have been done,
has not been done at the beginning, because no big power believe
that group INSTITUTE FOR CULTURAL DIPLOMACY,
WHY? maybe they did not go deeper in the source of where the chimicals where taken,
don’t forget that other countries have some reserve of it.
the same talking point has been said and heard in HERE TO SUPPORT OBAMA WISH TO PUT DOWN GADAFI.
I suppose that GROUP did not have the means to expand their results with precision and research lacked of deeper digging
you don’t go and accuse a COUNTRY trying to fight their rebellion. without minute proofs,
anyone can do it and blame the one his leader decided to accuse and expose it,
you can get any chimicals anywhere in those COUNTRIES, they don’t have and follow regulations
they are not AMERICANS and IT”S not our business,
as long as they keep their quarrel to themselves,
only ISRAEL is our BUSINESS TO PROTECT if in danger,
I have bought the BOOK OPERATION DARK HEART ,
the first edition when it came out 2010,
and just took it out now because of our talking point,
LT.COL. ANTHONY SHAFFER did a good job in explaining
his goal to win the WAR in AFGHANISTAN,
he sure went to the max to do his dangerous job,
he was not granted that demand on his operation DARK HEART
and was very badly treated, he is a HERO,
can you believe the shit in the WHITE HOUSE they throw at him?
and IT CAME TO ME THAT
THEY DO NOT WANT TO WIN THE WAR
HE had work so hard to create the RECIPE to WIN IT, once and for all,
I suppose it’s because OBAMA don’t want to offend the enemy
As has already be covered, personal information such as your name or address is not needed, because that information is easily discovered from the telephone numbers found in the metadata. Everyone’s heard of tracing phone calls. The purpose of that very old technology is to resolve the number that called, so that they can identify it’s location and tie it in with a suspect. All any law enforcement needs is the telephone numbers involved to get a very good idea of who is talking with whom. With just the phone numbers in metadata of providers, you can identify a large portion of person’s social network and who they do business with. It is a simple matter to discover the names and addresses of all involved. If for some reason the investigator was unable to tie the number to a name, MIT has shown that in 95% of the time it only takes four GPS metadata location records to identify the individual.
What’s more, is the can use the temporal and physical coordinate information to create a typical behavior pattern of where they live work and play. Simple physical location coordinates reveal a wealth of information about the person and what is going on in their lives. The investigator can learn where their children goes to school, what doctor’s office they visit, the stores the frequent, who they visited, their life becomes a more open book courtesy of GPS. A detective can logically determine an enormous amount about the individual just from their tacking information and contacts. As the person moved between cell towers and their conversation was handed off, the GPS data recorded allows triangulation. with the temporal and GPS data the person’s movements can be plotted for as long back as records are available.
Now lets discuss “pinging.” Pinging of cell phones is automatic whether a cell phone is on or off and is necessary for them to work. Active pinging allows real-time tracking of the cell phone, It has enabled law enforcement to locate kidnap victims, rescue lost individuals and enables one to locate “the bad guys”. (The Boston bombers were traced by the pinging of their car-jack victim’s cell phone. ) The only way to stop cell phone pinging is to disconnect the battery. Pinging reports back via metadata. How is real-time tracking of an individual not very personal?
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously put to rest any discussion of whether or not law enforcement needs to get a warrant to stick a GPS tracking device on your car. All nine court justices agreed that placing a GPS tracking device on someone’s vehicle without a warrant constitutes an unlawful search, per the Fourth Amendment. Justice Scalia delivered the court’s opinion. With active pinging we remove the car and a l;aw enforcement supplied tracking device from the equation. Obtaining GPS tracking information on all of a company’s customers surely is also a violation of their Forth Amendment rights.
I could drone on and no with similar logical deductions, but it I expect it wouldn’t be prudent to air such “dirty laundry.”
Metadata provides precise information to identify “who” and “where.” Your claim that it isn’t providing personal information is ridiculously nitpicking and somewhat disingenuous because it’s all there to discover with a few short keystrokes. The investigator knows vast amounts of personal information about the individual with just the phone numbers, GPS coordinates. time and duration of your metadata.
I honestly wasn’t aware just how metadata information was collected, stored and utilized by law enforcement, until three years ago when I took a class on computer forensics, under the tutelage of a forensic investigator from the cyber-crimes division of our metropolitan police department. (I have a voracious appetite for the intricate details of how technology works. I’m one of those techno-geeks that people love to have as a friend when their computer gets infected or they can’t figure out why their stuff doesn’t work.) So, “Yes,” I understand quite well what was contained on the links I provided, and a great deal more besides. Nor did I in any of my posts did I claim that metadata included content.
With the unmanageable size of government, the possibility of abuse is high, and with the recent scandals it is very clear that we can not count on faceless individuals not to abuse these systems. Performing a database search of the metadata of a TEA Party group telephone records (or other that of any other organization,) can provide you with their entire network of contacts who’s records you can also investigate. Knowing the purpose of said organizations allows for the record searcher to assume that those contacts are of like mind and associated with the group. Nor can this happen only at the federal level.
You’re bloviating Mata and tossing out strawmen. No one made any such claim; of a vast national security conspiracy of government workers. On the other hand, as the IRS scandal has shown, it doesn’t take a large number of bureaucrats to abuse a database system. You are clearly happy to have your rights abridged for a false sense of security. Others of us are not.
Oh no?:
Tech Law Journal
http://www.techlawjournal.com/topstories/2013/20130606.asp
FISC Orders Verizon to Produce Call Data for Everyone Every Day
I never said that they were collecting more data from Verizon than the order specifies. Once the metadata is acquired, an investigator can use thus database and other tools at their disposal to gather massive amounts of information.
Who said that “probable cause” between a judge and investigators should be made public?
More reading:
Locating Mobile Phones through Pinging and Triangulation
Ditto… paragraphs one thru four…. all that activity requires a specific warrant because the feds will be on the quest to identify and associate an individual to the metadata. Ergo, it leaves the metadata definition, and moves into personal identification. Assuming that national security is the goal, they won’t be doing that unless the metadata pattern shows potential associations with terrorism.
Speaking of “bloviating” and not answering the initial questions (I see you’ve enrolled in tiresome’s “charm” classes… LOL)
Ditto, you didn’t answer the question. Or perhaps I didn’t make it clear enough for you. My comment that you need to tell me “how you know this” relates to this statement of yours:
How do you know there is no “probable cause” since you do not know what the NSA provided to the FISC/Vinson’s court when they requested the court order for Verizon? You, yourself, admit that “probable cause” between and judge and investigations isn’t public. And by your cryptic “straw man” retort, I’m guessing you don’t believe it should be up for public review. But who knows…
The fact is, and potentially outside this order (we don’t know) there is Verizon data that is *required* to be provided via a government agreement for FCC approval their sale of a part of Verizon Wireless to Vodophone, as I linked so many comments ago in #24. Also, INRE the court order for the specific request – of which you are clueless to the “probable cause” presented to Vinson – it is for a specified time period only, and has to be reviewed, and renewed, every 90 days. The dates are plainly noted in the order, and it is not open ended.
As per my statement, which you decided to label “bloviating” (an ironic and amusing moment in itself, BTW), the reason I have to state my position so damned often is because of absolutely asinine comments, exampled by the one you made:
A simple and comprehensive read of any of my positions reveals that I am *not* “…clearly happy to have [my] rights abridged for a false sense of security.” Talk about strawmen and bloviating. I might even add prevarication to that. Maybe you need to step away from your emotions. I believe the base problem is that, via SCOTUS precedents and law, I’m more aware what “rights” are covered under the 4th Amendment than you are. What you *want* to be protected has been ruled on as not protected. Whether you disagree with it or not is your personal opinion. That and a dime won’t get you a cup of coffee these days. With our structure of branches of power, unless Congress changes either the Constitution or creates laws to the contrary, the SCOTUS has interpreted current law. Who knows what future lawsuits and legislation will bring. Jewel will be one to watch for the future.
Oddly enough, and directly related to the abuse percentage, you’ve still never offered a solution in the midst of all your complaining. I’ve asked twice… I’ll try a third time. Is what you want is that our intelligence branches – both domestic and foreign – are prohibited form any metadata collection? And yet you’re fine that’s done by private providers for the purpose of selling it to third parties for advertising?
Assuming that you’d like the government attempting to collection intel with one hand tied behind their back, how would you feel about terror cells being broken up before any events? They have been, you know… how that happened, we don’t know. But can one assume, with any confidence in the New Info Age, it was done without having the power of metadata patterns at their disposal?
Oddly enough, it was three days ago in my flippant comment to James Raider in #40, that Snowjob’s only redemption was if he was a double/dual agent.
Forty eight hours later, Fox News is reporting that Gordon Chang is actually suggesting that may be the case… only it’s not a double agent benefiting the US.. but China.
Video and transcript of Chang, 24 hours after I made that tongue in cheek comment, can be seen/read here.
UPDATE: The link above to Chang moved. Try the video here at FOX News Radio, END UPDATE
Legal Insurrection has news that Snowden, in his brief private contractor tenure, brought in thumb drives that are normally prohibited, as well as attempted to access data above his clearance level.
James Raider
the new decisions have already commence,
I think we are heading for a WORLD WAR 3,
with another not ended WAR in AFGHANISTAN,
where the military get shot in the back because of OBAMA ROE to train the AFGHANS,
dam.
MataHarley
yes I went back to see what you meant,
yes you where assuming right on the dot.
funny how it goes, I notice some other that someone will say something
before it happen, and more than once,I explain that to me by thinking that
CONSERVATIVES can figure a now situation and project to the later tail of the same situation,coming from DECISIONS OF OBAMA, and all is for himself not for benefiting THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA,
BUT HE DOES A LOT OF SENDING MONEY BY BILLIONS TO BENEFIT THE MUSLIM COUNTRIES,
HE DOES ZERO FOR AMERICANS except give them a pain in the neck,
@MataHarley:
My postings have been firmly worded, but they have not been written as a result of emotion. I don’t know on what basis you continue to make such an assumption, nor do I really care. Clearly you and I can keep butting heads on this forever with neither of us budging. The NSA can not possibly have probable cause to suspect all of Verizon’s (or all any other service provider’s,) customers for possible terrorist activity. Such a consideration is ludicrous at best and sounds more like some kind of paranoia. I have no doubt whatsoever that when the class action lawsuit reaches the Federal courts , these blanket FISC court orders will be found unconstitutional. I have no problem with law enforcement using probable cause against a suspect to obtain a proper search warrant for those specific individual’s records. I am firmly opposed to blanket warrants to search the records of all of a provider’s customers.
So, how do we reconcile the strong positions between those living in fear of sleeper-cell terrorists, and civil libertarians who are more concerned with intrusive government? I offer the following:
The solution may be to utilize the same type of protocols that provider companies use regarding child pornography. Require the providers to use automated analysis to pre-screen the metadata/data to separate out records containing data that matches up with unique information specific to terrorism. These individual’s records can then be further examined by the provider to determine if there is/or appears to be a pattern identifying specific individuals who trigger terrorist profile flags, or if it appears to be accidental/false-positives. If the second stage of screening indicates possible terrorist connection, (overseas calls to known terrorist numbers, email messages with email or IP addresses identified with terrorist groups, a pattern of visiting terrorist websites, etc.) at that point the authorities are contacted. Then, at this third level, law enforcement examines the evidence, and may screen metadata records to determine if there is probable cause to either place the individual on a watch list or, to for them to immediately go to a federal court to obtain a search warrant.
The House committee on National Security can meet in closed-door session with the relevant agencies to set the initial metadata search terms, and in it’s oversight powers, can periodically review metadata “words” added to the searches, and all added metadata “words” must be reported to the committee. This should preclude “unions” “tea party” “naacp” “patriots” etc from being inserted.
Similar such procedures are followed when metadata indicates that an individual “might” have visited child pornography websites, in order to determine whether it was accidental or deliberate behavior. It is necessary to have reasonable amount of evidence supporting “probable cause” that an individual is involved in criminal activity, before going before a judge to acquire a search warrant. Only the current FISC court and totalitarian governments think it proper to get a search warrant first, and then search the records of all US Citizens to see if you can find “probable cause” of terrorist activity.
The above multi-level process, should satisfy most civil libertarian’s Forth Amendment concerns, and insure that only reasonable suspect activity meets the thresholds of higher level investigation.
THEY started with THE TSA for all now that NSA for all
it is insulting for the ROOTED AMERICANS,
it’s like they are IN FRONT OF A PROCECUTOR IN COURT,
HE HAS THE POWER TO DECISION over all the people and
the task to categorize each one into boxes he decide they ought to belong,
and who are those making the DECISIONS, are they PERFECT MINDS?
are they consuming DRUGS? , are they SANE or programmed to hate the CONSERVATIVES,
and so many question they should be answering before that META DATA has been file into that chosen box,
beside who are they to get that much power? do all thousands deserve that power?
it was said the GOVERNMENT HAS MANY PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN IN CRIMES
they are not screen for jobs like that and paid by the PEOPLE while SOCIETY reject them
and accept to be lead by those , it should be the opposit,
the FELONS should be given a job in the multiple COMPANIES but the GOVERNMENT
not hiring them to govern or work inside the many agency. because the place is all paid by the PEOPLE,
and thoses last SCANDALS HAVE GIVEN US THE PEOPLE THE PROOF of failure on all front, from the TOP DOWN,
I remember the TRAGIC COMEDY of VETTING the CANDIDATES on the CONSERVATIVES sides,
WHILE THE DEMOCRATES have no VETTING , hell they don’t even have a BIRTH CERTIFICATE
to show they are AMERICAN,
and look how the PEOPLE HAVE BEEN fooled and been taken down humiliated by morons coming from abroad chosen by the tingle in the leg MEDIA people who didn’t know f..k all on the new leader,
those carry a super guilt for having sold him to THE IGNORANTS and the GOOD WILL PEOPLE,
THEY ARE THE ONE TO BE PROBE BY THE NSA, not the TEA PARTY PURE AMERICANS
which are being profile as criminals
they are the best of this NATIONS and should have a big place in the GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS,
because they are the most sane and pure patriots to protect AMERICA they love,
and are fighting to keep it from being stolen and sold the UN WORLD ORGANIZATION.
Ditto, my comment about “stepping away from your emotion” was contained within a single paragraph that was directly addressing your accusation that I am “……clearly happy to have [my] rights abridged for a false sense of security.” Let me repeat that paragraph in full context. I said:
Your accusation against me was the product of your emotions, and I pointed that out. It did not in any way suggest that all of your points about technology were coming from emotions. But it’s indicative of those very emotions that you took that out of context, and assume I was speaking of all of your dissertations in a blanket fashion. That is not, and has never been the case. When you decide to personally make false comments about me because we disagree, you are working from an emotional foundation. Again, I request you step away from those.
As to your solution. I commend you for offering one. I don’t think most would agree. You are, in fact, attempting to put the federal responsibility of national security into the hands of private industry… who has neither the tools nor the authority to do so.
i.e. you suggest that each Internet or phone servicer do the analytical parsing of their data sets to detect ties to terrorism, and for them to whittle down the false narratives…. and done so in tiers. With your idea, every website owner – i.e. Curt, Hot Air, FB, Twitter, cell companies etal – are responsible for analyzing their participants metadata and deciding if they are a terrorist threat, and only reporting it to national or local law enforcement if they feel there is a terrorist pattern globally.
Let’s leave aside that patriots and concerned humans would generally report a specific threat. That’s not what you’re suggesting. You’re advocating for the private electronics world to take on the job of protecting the US – a task Constitutionally appointed to the central government.
There’s quite a few unworkable immediacies that come to mind here…
1: There are an endless amount of services and websites out there. More are added daily. They can only sift thru their own data set, which leaves an incomplete picture across all electronic communications platforms. Terrorist do not use only one particular service, and without being able to analyze data across all platforms – and with interoperability/compatibility with the different protocols – linkage is troublesome and far below a needed threshold.
Metadata encompasses a wide range of types and structures. You mentioned “keywords”, or metatags, which would be an elementary and insufficient perusal of any data set. The reason the government has classified programs for analytics is because there is no standard for the structure, storage, retrieval or administration of any particular company’s metadata. The only standards that exist are definitions. You might want to say the government has been working for decades to perfect an analytical translator for various types of metadata, and a hierarchy for function.
2: What starting point do these private companies have? When NSA, CIA or local law enforcement make requests from these companies, they have classified information about a suspected source (i.e. cell number obtained by confiscation of that phone by capture or prior intel, etc).
Under your theory, putting the private electronics communication world in charge of US security, should the NSA provide that classified data to, for example, Curt so he can compare it to his FA metadata? Should it be sent out en masse to all websites and electronic communications industries, so that everyone can see who the suspected bad guys are to compare?
That pretty much defeats the purpose of intel, don’t you think?
3: Why would any private company want to accept the responsibility of doing the work of the NSA, the CIA or local law enforcement? It’s not part of their business profiles. And what happens when they fail? Since at least one of the Boston bombers had a FB page, shall the nation hold FB responsible for not detecting a terrorist attack instead of the intel community? Should FB have reported him for exercising his first amendment rights of lambasting America for what he perceived as a war on Islam that he resented? A specific threat, yes… but you want a private company turning you over to the feds because of hate speech? (Remember that FB could only see their data set on the Boston bomber, and wouldn’t be able to compare it to a phone call database, a Twitter account, etc… unable to tie it all together)
4: You consider anyone searching thru your metadata as a violation of your 4th Amendment rights. But you say that “right” (which isn’t according to US law) is okay when an unqualified private industry does it, but not when the government does?
You might counter that, when you decided to do business with that company, you signed an agreement. Well, yes you did. You gave them the right to disseminate your metadata for profit. And as 3rd party holders of that information, they are also subject to federal requests and warrants to turn that data over. Which brings me to this statement of yours (but not yours alone…)
Leaving aside the agreement that Verizon Wireless signed with the government for data as a condition of a partial sale.. something you are determined to ignore…. there’s two issues in the above that must be addressed.
1: Yes, there can be ample reason for probable cause for the feds to request metadata – which is not personal information – from a cell service provider. They can have a cell number, classified, from a suspected terrorist, and they need to know the pattern of who he’s talking to. How do you do that if you don’t look at the complete (not half or any portion) metadata to see where a pattern lies, as it relates to the number they possess?
2: This *”ALL”* Americans stuff is really over the top hyperbole. Fact is, the companies who have been the subjects of these warrants themselves say that the federal requests only affected a tiny fraction of 1% of their clientele.
Those most peeved about Snowden’s snowjob – about how he *thought* a system worked, and a media who ran the story without verifying technical details – are these providers themselves. They have wary customers now, and that affects business. They are desperate to be able to calm their clientele down with some pertinent facts.
They are presented with a lot of warrants, and they sometimes comply, and sometimes challenge it. At no time is it *“ALL”* Americans or even *“ALL”* their clientele. And, as you can see above, it’s not just the federal government, but local law enforcement looking for domestic criminals as well.
In the long run, I can’t possibly see your solution as wise, nor successful. In fact, by disseminating most of the feds classified intel and analytical tools for private industry to be in the least bit effective, all attempts to thwart terrorism and uncover cells would be impossible. If you show your poker hand, you can’t possibly win the pot.
I still think Aqua has the only feasible solution… that federal, int’l and local law enforcement not be hamstrung in data mining, that all requests for personal information needs to have a warrant, and that any abuse of that is a defined and specific penalty. The first two are in place. The third needs to be implemented by Congress.