Since yesterday, a new scandal has broken about the NSA:
The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.
The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.
The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.
The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19.
Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered.
The disclosure is likely to reignite longstanding debates in the US over the proper extent of the government's domestic spying powers.
Um, ya, I'd certainly hope it would. With this information, the government can track your whereabouts 24x7. Cell phones do not power off when you press the button to turn them off. They continue to transmit signals for their location to nearby cell towers, so even if you aren't actively using it, your cell company can tell where you are and when. Someone who gets this data can also compare this to see who else was in the same place at the same time. They can make connections for who you meet with and when and for how long. Unreasonable search and seizure, a clear 4th Amendment violation. The only way to stop your cell phone from logging this info is to take the battery out. As long as the battery is in, the speakers and even the camera can be remotely activated, as well as the location reporting.
So how else could this be used? If you, say, wanted to stop whistle blowers or leakers, you would use this information to track, say, a cell users location and match that up with locations of journalists and see who is meeting with who and when. But the government wouldn't do that, would they? Oh wait, that's what the AP scandal was all about, they accessed the phone logs of journalists to be able to know where they were and when. It could also be used to define networks of people, say if you wanted to find out who was in a private group, or who was donating to that group. But the government wouldn't do that, would they? Oh wait, that's what the whole IRS scandal is about.
Oh, and have you seen the new NSA data warehousing and analysis building in Utah?
We are losing our freedoms rapidly. Will you stand up against this?