Somehow, “everybody who uses Verizon” just doesn’t seem all that “particularly described,” does it? Especially when you have to assume every other phone company is obeying similar secret orders.
Somehow, “everybody who uses Verizon” just doesn’t seem all that “particularly described,” does it? Especially when you have to assume every other phone company is obeying similar secret orders.
Good thing there is the Internet; good thing there is encryption. Hopefully the telephone will die, like the newspapers, from following government orders. Perhaps, Skype will, or does now have, encryption abilities. Who needs a phone anyway?
One would think Apple and others who make all sorts of communication devices would take a stand against becoming informants for the government.
How come they don’t? Surely, they are not that naive.
For some reason I keep thinking of that 90’s movie ‘In the Mouth of Madness’ where the world eventually goes completely batshit crazy.
jc2k, you sure that’s not “In the Mountains of Madness”??
More and more these days, I feel as if I’m in the middle of a Lovecraft horror story…
Why is it that I strongly suspect that all of the Big Corporate Tools, particularly O/S like Windows, Apple, and Android, have had the back doors built in for years?
This is, for the most part, confirmation of the perfidy.
Claire, I can only pray and hope that THIS will make enough of us wake up to the tyranny and the fact that we must stop supporting this illegitimate government, and indeed, resist in every possible way. Your question is answered: it is TIME.
This isn’t just Verizon: you can be sure that EVERY cellular provider, and EVERY landline/traditional provider and every system for computer/web-based phones has this: Skype, Goggle Voice, and probably every ISP in the nation. Why just Verizon?
Outrageous, but nothing will come of this. Homeland Security wants to collect every scrap of data it can on all of us; Congress either supports this or just doesn’t care; clearly the judges are on board (this alleged secret order was issued by the FISA court, a rubber stamp if there ever was one; in the 31 years from 1979 to 2010, it rejected precisely 11 out of 30,348 requests, and I’m sure that it’s gotten no better since then); the phone companies have no interest in resisting because they don’t want to appear uncooperative; and no one else has either standing to challenge the order or the ability to do so given its secret nature.
The government will continue to do this because it can. The comms providers and comms equipment makers only exist because the government allow them and have prospered because the government creats laws and regulations that allows them to profit handsomely. The govt knows it will not face retaliation by the citizens, the courts or or the voters. Govt only pays lip service to the bill of rights and is working with the Supreme Court (third branch of govt) to nullify that bill.
CLAIRE, please check email for a question and comments.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/04/telephone-calls-recorded-fbi-boston
Maybe we should revisit last months mention of further possible collection:
“BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It’s not a voice mail. It’s just a conversation. There’s no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?
CLEMENTE: “No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It’s not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.
BURNETT: “So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.
CLEMENTE: “No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.”
———-
There is something to be said for hand-to-hand courier service.
Yes, it is slow, cumbersome and sometimes downright impractical, but unless you physically take the message from the carrier you won’t see $#&*. To guard against that the good Lord gave us a brain and one-time ciphers.
Claire: “Somehow, “everybody who uses Verizon” just doesn’t seem all that “particularly described,” does it? “
Nope. And it’s worse than you think. It isn’t everyone who uses Verizon; it’s also anyone who has called, or been called by, a Verizon user no matter who their provider is.
cctyker: “Perhaps, Skype will, or does now have, encryption abilities.”
Backdoored already. Skype allows access on request from national .govs.
I’d like to point out a few things. 1) Never minding NSA capabilities for the moment, under even the original ’96 CALEA rules the FBI can tap darned near anyone they want. Tap; the phone conversation itself, not just call data. Grabbing all the call data in the country simply tells them who to specifically CALEA tap with the existing, in-place infrastructure.
2) We already know from a previous whistleblower that the feds tapped the main backbone Internet routers on the East and West Coasts. That alone gives them the ability to actively monitor anything that goes through them. What goes thrrough them? Do a tracert from your computer to telegraph.co.uk. You go through them. And even if they only tracked routing headers… Well, routing headers are the data equivalent of phone call CDRs. They know who you’re talking to, when, for how long, and whether you are being suspicious (i.e.- using encryption like a “terrorist”). So now they know whose Internet traffic (and phone calls) to actively tap.
3) If they tapped those routers, did they tap into any others, using the excuse that “We aren’t monitoring Americans, just foreign nationals that might be communicating with Americans”? Sound familiar?
4) Just from having worked in telecomm for a few decades, and knowing what the tech could allow, I’d be willing to bet that it’s worse than you think. A lot worse.
5) We know schools accessed students’ laptop cameras to spy on kids at home. In the nude. Eating candy. If schools are doing that…
Orwell’s Big Brother would be jealous. All he had was two-way telescreens.
testing… testing…
OK. That’s creepy. My attempts to post an actual comment just… evaporate. But my test post goes through fine. (And no, I didn’t have any URLs in the real comments.)
Claire, did those two go into moderation for some reason?
Verizon treats you like garbage anyway…. Unless you invest in a big huge family plan you’ll get a raw deal from them. I was dumb enough to get a contract with them cause I wanted a Droid phone when I first started getting decent paychecks…biggest waste of money ever. Their so called super awesome coverage is totally pointless to have when you live on an ISLAND and are gone either off the map or out of the country like 50 percent of the time.
…getting the latest smartphone for $200 bucks is nothing but a trick…you pay way more than the difference down the line. I would’ve saved so much money if I payed in full for the phone and got a pay as you go plan from somewhere else like Mobi or whatever
(and yes, this was a little before I fully learned my lesson about contracts and how much they truly suck)
Bear, for some reason those went not into moderation but into spam. The ways of WordPress are mysterious. I pulled them out and approved one. The other, being identical, I held.
Thanks, Claire. Weird. I must have hit some keyword “Bingo!”.
Now that Mr. Greenwald has also “outed” the Prism system (a front door into the servers of MS, Google, Apple, etc.) there is only one question left.
What base will the CIA use to launch a Predator against a U.S. citizen who lives in Brazil?
This site is going to need an update but in case anyone isn’t already encrypting damn near everything: https://securityinabox.org/en
Is that securityinabox.org website run by the NSA?
I just can’t understand why the magic words in the Holy U.S. Constitution aren’t working. The Prophet Spooner tried to warn us about that piece of paper, but nobody listened.
I’m trying to fabricate a mojo bag to ward off evil politicians and their thuggish servants, but the voodoo ain’t working either.
Well, it looks like it is time to start encrypting the cell phone calls! I have to tell you dodging all of this government nanny state and surveillance is really becoming a full time occupation.
I have not tried this personally, so I can’t attest to its effectiveness, but this company…
https://whispersystems.org/
Claims to use an open source program based on encryption by Phillip Zimmerman that will encrypt cell phone calls. Probably worth a look. Phillip Zimmerman himself released a program that does the same thing, but it appears to only work on VOIP over the computer.
Unfortunately if you are on Verizon, and probably the rest of the services, I don’t think there is a solution to stop them from seeing WHO you are calling and WHEN, which is what they claim they are ONLY doing that now and nothing else. Sure, if you believe that I have a bridge to sell you in Arizona…
This is actually old news — Telco switching centers usually has space set aside for the Feds. Built right in. They have been in bed with them for decades.
Doesn’t make it right. But don’t kid yourself; the Republic is long dead. We live in the Empire.
I’m telling ya, it doesn’t matter what encryption program you use, they have backdoors into everything and monitor and record everything.
How NSA Access Was Built into Windows
This is from a 1999 report by Heise.de:
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/06/how-nsa-access-was-built-into-windows.html
You wanna use and trust a program such as Tor, built by da goberment, go ahead. It just seems to me, they’re prepared and anticipate you.
Have you wondered this?:
Are the Data Collection Leaks Just a Set Up by the Government?
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/06/are-data-collection-leaks-just-set-up.html
From the comments:
“Regarding the government data collection, I believe the reason this is all coming to light is because the government wants to start being able to openly use this type of information in order to intimidate and/or prosecute people for whatever is politically unpopular at the moment.”
We live in the Empire.
“We live in the Empire.”
But maybe not for long, IAM.
The world is becoming a Philip K. Dick novel.
Two months ago, I was living a quiet life as a law-abiding citizen who, I believed, did not have an enemy in the world. Apart, that is, from one especially annoying Internet troll. Who, I believe, hacked my Facebook account and placed a threatening post on a page there. On May Day (interesting coincidence) I was placed under arrest by three Sheriff’s deputies in full battle gear for “making terroristic threats”. There is no record of my having made the post in question, but it traces back to my IP address. I am told this could be accomplished by anyone who knew my e-mail address, perhaps even less. The local yokels, however, refuse to believe it. At least five pieces of tracking/remote access software turned up on my computer. They never heard of such a thing.
My attorney hired an investigator who set out to find the troll, whose online persona is that of one whose parents were siblings and who was probably dropped on his head as a child besides. He’s fond of posting videos of his activities on YouTube–he’ll make a harassing phone call and post a video of himself ranting at someone’s answering machine. Check it out for yourself: his account is Old School Dayton Fool. In one of the videos he made a mistake–he showed his license plate. That was enough for the investigator.
The “fool” is a Lieutenant Colonel in Air Force Intelligence, who specializes in Information Technology. Could he spoof a Facebook post? Of course…and he probably does it every day as part of his job.
The Air Force OSI was notified and replied that there was nothing for them to investigate. And quite suddenly….things went downhill fast.
My attorney went, over the course of a few days, from being extremely optimistic to being utterly apathetic toward me an hinting that he cannot or will not make a serious attempt to defend me. Police entered my home on at least two occasions, neither time while in possession of a warrant. On the second occasion, the “found” allegedly illicit items for which, suddenly, I am being threatened with a far more serious charge “if the terroristic threats charge is not resolved”.
Can you say: “somebody got a phone call”?
This appears to have begun as harassment which got out of hand. It became something more when the Air Force apparently set out to protect one of its assets, or at least its ass. I am about to be “disappeared”. And there will be no headlines for me, no protesters….perhaps not even any witnesses in the courtroom. My only crime is that I became inconvenient.
At our last meeting, my attorney asked me to get copies of my medical records, hinting that a long-time disability (chronic fatigue syndrome) could be introduced as a “mental illness” and used as a “mitigating factor”. A “mitigating factor” to something I did not do?
My requests thus far have yielded only a few pages of records, some of which have been altered, others of which are woefully incomplete with portions said to be “missing”. How does this all come together in one situation? There is a point where there are too many incidents to be coincidence.
Someone is bound to say that my tin foil hat has slipped. Feel free to go to the Facebook page “Darlie Routier: Forgive Or Forget?” or to the YouTube channel mentioned above, where you will find a lot of ranting about me, most of which is untrue or manipulated. And if you want more details, drop me a line. The wrong people can find me. I hope some of the right people can as well.
If someone can do this to me, they can do it to you. And they will. Which of you, I wish I knew so I could warn you. You’ll just have to look out for yourselves….and perhaps some of you will try to help me as well. I no longer know where to turn.