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Recent Pages by WinstonDodson (Heywood Jabloeme):
NSA Loophole Allows Warrantless Search for US Citizens' Emails and Phone Calls

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28 comments

1 Charles Johnson  Fri, Jul 19, 2013 3:10:43pm
First, I think that we can put a steak in the heart of the LGF meme that the NSA didn’t collect Metadata on much / most / all phone calls in the US. So chalk a big one up for Snowden / Greenwald.

Did you read the article you’re posting? Here’s what it says:

When the NSA collects content, analysts must follow procedures to ensure that its targets aren’t U.S citizens, and any information from or concerning Americans must be dispensed with unless it meets certain exceptions. Litt said the government must look at “available data” to assess whether the target is valid — but he didn’t address exactly what that data include, or how extensive the exceptions are. Two documents published by the Guardian and Washington Post last month detail those procedures — but civil liberties advocates have raised a host of concerns about the practices described there.

The way you described this article is just wrong. It says nothing about collecting “all” metadata.

2 darthstar  Fri, Jul 19, 2013 3:38:47pm

I like my steak so rare you can see it move when you put a stake into it.

3 Absalom, Absalom, Obdicut  Fri, Jul 19, 2013 3:40:16pm
First, I think that we can put a steak in the heart of the LGF meme that the NSA didn’t collect Metadata on much / most / all phone calls in the US. So chalk a big one up for Snowden / Greenwald.

This wasn’t a meme. Metadata was collected. Metadata isn’t meaningnful without analysis. To do analysis they have to jump through hoops.

Put down the strawman.

4 AlexRogan  Fri, Jul 19, 2013 3:41:26pm

re: #1 Charles Johnson

Did you read the article you’re posting? Here’s what it says:

The way you described this article is just wrong. It says nothing about collecting “all” metadata.

Now, now, you’re just being a mean old man for insisting that all of the facts matter, not just the ones that can be cherrypicked, twisted, or taken out of context by anyone with an agenda (like Mr. WinstonDodson/HeywoodJabloeme).

///

5 Varek Raith  Fri, Jul 19, 2013 3:41:31pm

I’d like mine well done please!

Also, metadata is a collection of a shit ton of data. Without any kind of analysis it is just a big pile of data.

6 Charles Johnson  Fri, Jul 19, 2013 3:49:32pm

Basically the article really doesn’t contain any new information, just the same stuff we already knew: that metadata collection is limited to non-US citizens with some exceptions.

And Robert Litt is arguing in favor of the metadata collection program, he isn’t criticizing it. He wants more openness, and so do I. But he certainly didn’t confirm any of the Greensnow cultists’ contentions, not one bit.

7 abolitionist  Fri, Jul 19, 2013 4:33:48pm

re: #6 Charles Johnson

Basically the article really doesn’t any new information, just the same stuff we already knew: that metadata collection is limited to non-US citizens with some exceptions.[snip]

From The NSA Is Collecting Phone Records in Bulk, part of the formerly secret order to Verizon:
“IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that, the Custodian of Records shall produce to the National Security Agency (NSA) upon service of this Order, and continue production on an ongoing daily basis thereafter for the duration of this Order, unless otherwise ordered by the Court, an electronic copy of the following tangible things: all call detail records or “telephony metadata” created by Verizon for communications (i) between the United States and abroad; or (ii) wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls. This Order does not require Verizon to produce telephony metadata for communications wholly originating and terminating in foreign countries. [snip; close-quote]

Please note the part I’ve bolded.

8 EPR-radar  Fri, Jul 19, 2013 4:38:17pm

re: #7 abolitionist

As I understand it, the recent leaks relate to two different activities:

1) PRISM activities, which relate to content, and which are targeted mainly to non-US individuals.

2) Metadata gathering, which is across the board, but which requires further authorization to investigate in detail.

So I agree that is is fair to assume all metadata is being gathered.

9 Charles Johnson  Fri, Jul 19, 2013 5:13:51pm

re: #7 abolitionist

That’s why I said some exceptions. The order to Verizon Business after the Boston bombings is one of those exceptions, and again it’s not new information.

And it’s still not “all” metadata.

10 Charles Johnson  Fri, Jul 19, 2013 5:16:30pm

Again, the important quote from the article is unequivocal:

…any information from or concerning Americans must be dispensed with unless it meets certain exceptions.

11 EPR-radar  Fri, Jul 19, 2013 5:17:12pm

re: #9 Charles Johnson

That’s why I said some exceptions. The order to Verizon Business after the Boston bombings is one of those exceptions. It’s still not “all” metadata.

Is there any evidence that suggests that the Verizon Business court order was an unusual order?

My impression is that all the telcos are getting these orders as a matter of routine practice, and have been getting them for years, which would result in collection of basically all metadata.

12 abolitionist  Fri, Jul 19, 2013 5:29:43pm

re: #9 Charles Johnson

That’s why I said some exceptions. The order to Verizon Business after the Boston bombings is one of those exceptions, and again it’s not new information.

And it’s still not “all” metadata.

I’m failing to understand your position that all call detail records or “telephony metadata” created by Verizon for communications is anything less than “all” metadata in the context of records of phone calls, for which the US is either origin or destination.

13 Heywood Jabloeme  Fri, Jul 19, 2013 5:42:57pm

The original story by Greenwald included a Warrant for Metadata for all calls made of Verizin Networks for 90 days. It was obvious that is was from a rolling series of similar Warrants that covered years and no other Phone Co has denied that they have recieved the same warrants.

LGF is one of the FEW places where this isn’t accepted and this testimony proves it. Including Democratic members of Congress.

Also, the dismissal of this as “only Metadta” has been dispossed of many times my many experts as I have made a few posts here on LGF to show. I would post links here but that seems to set a few “thought leaders” off.

14 Heywood Jabloeme  Fri, Jul 19, 2013 5:53:53pm

From the Op Ed pages of the NYT

“Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contract employee and whistle-blower, has provided evidence that the government has phone record metadata on all Verizon customers, and probably on every American, going back seven years. This metadata is extremely revealing; investigators mining it might be able to infer whether we have an illness or an addiction, what our religious affiliations and political activities are, and so on.”

Link

15 Heywood Jabloeme  Fri, Jul 19, 2013 5:57:26pm
But in 2006, before he was elected president, Obama railed against the Bush administration when details about its domestic surveillance program emerged. “Americans fought a revolution in part over the right to be free from unreasonable searches—to ensure that our government couldn’t come knocking in the middle of the night for no reason,” he said. “We need to find a way forward to make sure that we can stop terrorists while protecting the privacy, and liberty, of innocent Americans.”

Obama may be haunted by those words in the days ahead as he assesses the sweeping surveillance of millions of Verizon customers—and grapples with its authorization on his watch.

Link

16 Charles Johnson  Fri, Jul 19, 2013 5:59:23pm

re: #12 abolitionist

Verizon Business does not handle all telephone communications in the US.

17 Charles Johnson  Fri, Jul 19, 2013 6:02:18pm

re: #13 Heywood Jabloeme

“No other phone company has denied…” so therefore it’s OK to just assume that every phone company routinely provides the NSA with all metadata?

Nope. Doesn’t work that way. Show some evidence for your extraordinary claims, or expect them to be disbelieved.

18 Heywood Jabloeme  Fri, Jul 19, 2013 6:06:55pm

Verizon providing all call records to U.S. under court order

By Eugene Robinson, Published: June 18 at 4:08 pm

The National Security Agency appears to be collecting the telephone records of tens of millions of American customers of Verizon, one of the nation’s largest phone companies, under a top-secret court order issued in April.

The order appears to require a Verizon subsidiary to provide the NSA with daily information on all telephone calls by its customers within the United States and from foreign locations into the United States.

The order, which was signed by a judge from the secret court that oversees domestic surveillance, was first reported on the Web site of the Guardian newspaper. The Web site reproduced a copy of the order, which two former U.S. officials told The Washington Post appears to be authentic.

An expert in this aspect of the law said Wednesday night that the order appears to be a routine renewal of a similar order first issued by the same court in 2006. The expert, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues, said that the order is reissued routinely every 90 days and that it is not related to any particular investigation by the FBI or any other agency.

The expert referred to such orders as “rubber stamps” sought by the telephone companies to protect themselves after the disclosure in 2005 that widespread warrantless wiretaps could leave them liable for damages.

To my knowldge, there has NEVER been a govt denial of this reporting. The last I heard Robinson speak of this was somewhere around the end of June and he still spoke as if this were fact.

Link

19 EPR-radar  Fri, Jul 19, 2013 6:07:39pm

re: #17 Charles Johnson

“No other phone company has denied…” so therefore it’s OK to just assume that every phone company routinely provides the NSA with all metadata?

Nope. Doesn’t work that way. Show some evidence for your extraordinary claims, or expect them to be disbelieved.

For the specific point of collection of all metadata, I do not think it is unreasonable to assume the Verizon Business court order is similar to court orders that have gone out to the other telcos for all their metadata.

After all, there has been nothing to indicate why Verizon Business should be singled out as the only telco subject to such an order.

I’m certainly not going to go as far with this as Greenwald et al., but I think US collection of basically all metadata is much more likely than not.

20 Heywood Jabloeme  Fri, Jul 19, 2013 6:14:41pm

I seem to remember that their is testimony that the FISA Court has issued about 300 of these Warrants. Since they are for 90 days that means that 4 / year will cover all tghe traffic from one Telco. If they covered every year since 2006 that is about 25 or so for one Telco that entire time. Then that means that 300 would cover about 14 or so Telco networks for the entire period since 2006.

I don’t know how the networks are setup but it would seem that collecting all the phone Metadata for the 14 or so biggest Teclo’s has to be at least described as “much” and with a little knowledge an expert could posssibly claim “most”.

21 EPR-radar  Fri, Jul 19, 2013 6:18:26pm

re: #20 Heywood Jabloeme

I seem to remember that their is testimony that the FISA Court has issued about 300 of these Warrants. Since they are for 90 days that means that 4 / year will cover all tghe traffic from one Telco. If they covered every year since 2006 that is about 25 or so for one Telco that entire time. Then that means that 300 would cover about 14 or so Telco networks for the entire period since 2006.

I don’t know how the networks are setup but it would seem that collecting all the phone Metadata for the 14 or so biggest Teclo’s has to be at least described as “much” and with a little knowledge an expert could posssibly claim “most”.

In my mind, the total pointlessness of only getting metadata from one telco has always been conclusive. Of course the metadata is gathered from all the major telcos because that is the whole point of an exercise like this. If someone specific of interest comes up, you want an all-inclusive data set for data mining.

An answer like “well, we couldn’t get anything on bin Laden Jr. because he didn’t use Verizon Business” would clearly be totally unacceptable.

22 Charles Johnson  Fri, Jul 19, 2013 6:23:23pm

re: #21 EPR-radar

Or they may have had a specific reason for targeting Verizon Business.

23 Charles Johnson  Fri, Jul 19, 2013 6:24:11pm

Whole lotta jumping to conclusions goin’ on in here.

24 EPR-radar  Fri, Jul 19, 2013 6:30:55pm

re: #22 Charles Johnson

Or they may have had a specific reason for targeting Verizon Business.

To simplify, there are two possibilities:

1) Only Verizon Business was subject to a court order for all metadata

2) The major telcos are subject to such orders, and the Verizon order happened to be the one that was leaked.

The public evidence on hand does not suffice to clearly distinguish between these two possibilities. So anybody opining on the relative likelihood of 1 vs. 2 is engaging in some level of speculation/jumping to conclusions.

25 Heywood Jabloeme  Fri, Jul 19, 2013 6:44:01pm

re: #23 Charles Johnson

Whole lotta jumping to conclusions goin’ on in here.

I agree but here is the pattern.

Before the leaks, the Govt, including Obama, Lit and Clapper all denied they were doing anything. Leak, Clapper has to admit he lied and Obama changed his story and Lit was testifying the day Democratic members of the Senate pointed out that the leaks showed the the NSA was lying on thier website.

Since, no govt rep has denied anything in the leaks are not true. They basically describe the programs in a way so that they seem much more benign than the docs themselves seem to suggest and leave it up to you to make the assumption than they are less aggregious than they appear.

So we have one BIG data point - the US Govt LIED about the program, leaks then they admitted that they were lying now lawyer talk. This may sound like a conspiracy theory but the trend isn’t in the “its less than it seems” direction.

Then, even if it is less, the revalations about the structure and functioning of the FISA Court is staggering. And Obama, all the while, depending upon that court for for legitimacy for his actions as Chief Executive and using arguements in the normal court system like declaring State Secrets and denying that claimants lack First Amendment Rights to stop the cases.

I understand that he has responsibilties as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive to use such tools but he is trying to have it both ways - telling us that they are needed, that they keep us safe while trying not to have the trade-offs required to out civil rights not be his responsibility.

26 Heywood Jabloeme  Fri, Jul 19, 2013 6:44:52pm

re: #24 EPR-radar

To simplify, there are two possibilities:

1) Only Verizon Business was subject to a court order for all metadata

2) The major telcos are subject to such orders, and the Verizon order happened to be the one that was leaked.

The public evidence on hand does not suffice to clearly distinguish between these two possibilities. So anybody opining on the relative likelihood of 1 vs. 2 is engaging in some level of speculation/jumping to conclusions.

Except all the actions by the Govt.

27 Heywood Jabloeme  Fri, Jul 19, 2013 6:50:18pm

re: #24 EPR-radar

To simplify, there are two possibilities:

1) Only Verizon Business was subject to a court order for all metadata

2) The major telcos are subject to such orders, and the Verizon order happened to be the one that was leaked.

The public evidence on hand does not suffice to clearly distinguish between these two possibilities. So anybody opining on the relative likelihood of 1 vs. 2 is engaging in some level of speculation/jumping to conclusions.

And also the WaPo story by Robinson posted above.

28 Heywood Jabloeme  Fri, Jul 19, 2013 6:51:00pm

re: #18 Heywood Jabloeme

Verizon providing all call records to U.S. under court order

By Eugene Robinson, Published: June 18 at 4:08 pm

To my knowldge, there has NEVER been a govt denial of this reporting. The last I heard Robinson speak of this was somewhere around the end of June and he still spoke as if this were fact.

Link

In case you missed it.


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