Verizon under FISA order to turn over all phone records for all customers to government

[Fragile Bird]

To me it sounds like the records of Verizon of phone calls made on their system between date A and Date B. Sounds very specific to me.

[Shryke]

No, I'm saying that the goverment is conducting an unreasonable seizure as "every phone call every single Verizon customer makes" does not particularly describe the "place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized".

That's a general seizure, not a particular one.

Is it a seizure though?

It seems more akin to having you tailed then seizing property.

[Tears of Lys]

Fringe nut jobs with an axe to grind are never going to be eliminated. Its just a fact of life - and it always has been. People seem to think we live in a particularly violent and dangerous time that requires a new level of security and vigilance (and I mostly blame over-saturation of media for that), but I really don't think that is true. Its just life. Whether someone's gripe is justified or not, there will always be people who are unsatisfied enough with their lot in life to do something fucking crazy about it.

You could eliminate any and all privacy for everyone and people will still sometimes slip through the cracks or act alone leaving no trail to follow. The odds of any particular person being harmed in a terrorist incident are astronomically low. You are thousands of times more likely to be killed in a car accident, or even the victim a regular old homicide (which is still fairly unlikely). Even assuming we could put a stop to any and all attacks and attempts, which we cant, I don't even know if its worth the manpower and resources and I certainly don't think its worth anyone losing privacy or civil liberties over.

Just on a quick google search.. since 1985 about 3,400 people have died in the United States from terrorism. And that is includes spikes in 1995 from the Oklahoma City bombing and in 2001 from 9/11. Take away those two incidents and about 150 people have died in the US from terrorism in the last 28 years. To put that in perspective the 10th leading cause of death in the United States in 2010 was suicide. In that year alone over 38,000 Americans killed themselves. If you average out the deaths from terrorism even including 9/11 and Oklahoma City you'll average about 120 deaths from terrorism per year. So you are approximately 315 times more likely to have killed yourself in the single year of 2010 than to have been killed by terrorism in the US over a nearly 30 year period. And as I said that was 10th on the list so there are 9 other ways even more likely to have your number than suicide. The extremely widespread paranoia surrounding terrorism is, imo, one of the most absurd things about the world we live in and the US in particular.

QFT.

OP, has no one even SEEN the ending to Raiders of the Lost Ark where the ark of the covenant is placed in a gigantic storehouse with other "TOP SECRET!!11" items and promptly forgotten about?

[The Progressive]

Yeah I'm with Fragilebird here, "the records of Verizon of phone calls made on their system between date A and Date B" seems very particular to me.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Shryke,

If a FISA order issues how can Verizon resist the order if it is open to the general public? The muted response to this order is based on the fact that most assumed this information was being mined anyway. Why would we believe terrorists would be less likely to believe or assume the same thin that DG or Merentha assumed and took precautions on that basis.

As such I again ask... why keep this a secret?

[Fragile Bird]

@ S John

Here's an article that takes a stab at the costs of the "War on Terror" since Bush used that phrase in response to 9/11: http://useconomy.about.com/od/usfederalbudget/f/War_on_Terror_Facts.htm

If this money had been used on infrastructure, educating children from grade school to graduate school, setting up a health care system much better than Obamacare, etc etc, think of what a better place the USA would be.

You could make an argument that the War on Terror has held back terrorists and helped prevent open season on world travel in general, and the world is a better place right now because of that, I suppose. :dunno: But how much on the over a trillion dollars spent by the US alone was wasted money.

[leon grayboat]

To me it sounds like the records of Verizon of phone calls made on their system between date A and Date B. Sounds very specific to me.

Yeah I'm with Fragilebird here, "the records of Verizon of phone calls made on their system between date A and Date B" seems very particular to me.

I read somewhere it's renewed every three months. That's why it's date A to B.

[Fragile Bird]

I'm sorry, but "metadata" records of billions of phone calls is hardly specific. It's nothing more than "let's sort through billions of phone calls and see what we can find". They're trawling to see what shakes out which effectively makes anyone who places or accepts a call with a Verizon service a suspect.

But it seems to me that you are arguing from the point that the mere records that phone calls were made is constitutionally protected information, which, it was shown up thread, the US courts have already declared they are not.

[Shryke]

Shryke,

If a FISA order issues how can Verizon resist the order if it is open to the general public? The muted response to this order is based on the fact that most assumed this information was being mined anyway.

I'd say if you want to characterize the response as muted, it is so based on people not really caring. As pointed out earlier, the aftermath of 9/11 showed that the US public is all gung-ho to trade liberty for security.

Why would we believe terrorists would be less likely to believe or assume the same thin that DG or Merentha assumed and took precautions on that basis.

Because terrorists or criminals aren't always the smartest?

As such I again ask... why keep this a secret?

For the reasons I gave you. It doesn't look good for either party and it compromises operational security.

Stuff that is perfectly legal can be unpopular or can require secrecy. Even things that you would agree should be legal.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

FB,

If there is no right to privacy with regard to the information in the FISA order and everyone is assuming the Government was looking through that information anyway... why keep the order secret?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Shryke,

So the administration that promised transparency decided to keep this order secret, at least in part, for political cover?

[TerraPrime]

I am still mulling over the logical routes that connect "civil liberties" with "logs of my phone calls." Intuitively, it seems that should be the case. But I can't find an argument that connects them. Maybe The Great Unwashed or Inigima or Kouran can help me connect the dots?

[Fez]

FB,

If there is no right to privacy with regard to the information in the FISA order and everyone is assuming the Government was looking through that information anyway... why keep the order secret?

Optics.

[Clueless Northman]

I'm unclear as to if you're arguing that the government has no right to seek for these records, or if they should not have done it in secrecy, or that verizon shouldn't have kept these records in the first place?

The biggest issue here, in my opinion, is obviously that they just asked for their entire records for months. Had they asked the record of person X, suspected terrorist, I could understand. But gathering information for every single person is monstrous.

Besides, the fact that the Democrats and Obama administration never seriously tried to abolish the Patrio Act and all the nutjob lawmaking that had been going on after 9/11, which could only be justified in cases of national emergency where the country's future is at stakes (so very few cases if any apart from Independance War, 1812, Civil War, WWII), is a face and an outrage.

[Fragile Bird]

Well, Ser Scott, to add to what Shryke and Tempra have said already, I think the government would rather not have the general public become even more paranoid than it already is. At least they got a warrant. And Verizon so far is up $1.68 today, so the stock buying public is not fazed by the info handover.

I'm sorry, but "metadata" records of billions of phone calls is hardly specific. It's nothing more than "let's sort through billions of phone calls and see what we can find". They're trawling to see what shakes out which effectively makes anyone who places or accepts a call with a Verizon service a suspect.

No it doesn't. When the government gets a warrant for corporate records in an investigation, for example, they get masses of information about the transactions that corporation entered into. That doesn't make ever party that ever contacted the corporation a suspect, it makes it a mass of information that has to be examined in order to find out who the suspects are. Every customer of Verizon is not a suspect, the government is looking for patterns which it will then look at more closely to find out if anything is suspicious. There's a hell of a lot of chaff they're going through to find a few grains of wheat.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Fez,

"Optics"

Could you please unpack that statement?

FB,

Okay, how is that not concealing the NSA's actions for purely political motives?

[Fragile Bird]

FB,

Okay, how is that not concealing the NSA's actions for purely political motives?

I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. Are you suggesting they are looking for phone calls between Republicans?

Because, as was pointed out upthread, the only thing that restricts them to "logs of my phone calls" at this point in time is a lack of computational power to sort through the content of those calls/emails/etc. As a liberal, I assume that you believe we have a constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy, and to me, that means the government should not have the ability to abrogate that right unless they specifically suspect me of a crime, and have enough probable cause to issue a warrant.

I don't think that the government should have the ability to trawl through my private conversations or read my private writing simply because the judicial and legislative bodies have an archaic understanding of my right to be secure in my person, papers and effects.

No, that's not what it means. It means that the mere record that a phone call was made is not private, the contents of the phone call are constitutionally protected communications. The issue about e-mails is more complicated, and there was quite a discussion about that topic and the status of e-mails a little while ago. I can't remember which thread - does anyone else? Was it a US Politics thread or a separate thread?

[Shryke]

Because, as was pointed out upthread, the only thing that restricts them to "logs of my phone calls" at this point in time is a lack of computational power to sort through the content of those calls/emails/etc. As a liberal, I assume that you believe we have a constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy, and to me, that means the government should not have the ability to abrogate that right unless they specifically suspect me of a crime, and have enough probable cause to issue a warrant.

I don't think that the government should have the ability to trawl through my private conversations or read my private writing simply because the judicial and legislative bodies have an archaic understanding of my right to be secure in my person, papers and effects.

You still haven't answered his question though. You are simply assuming the point he is asking you to show.

Specifically, how are records of who you called and when (not what was on those calls, mind) a matter of civil liberties? How are they private information?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

FB,

No, that the order was made secret at least in part because it would piss people off. This from the administration that promised transparency.

[DanteGabriel]

FB,

No, that the order was made secret at least in part because it would piss people off. This from the administration that promised transparency.

Jesus Christ, yes, the administration promised transparency, and George W Bush promised a humble foreign policy, and Bill Clinton promised not to chase tail, and George HW Bush said "No new taxes."

Politicians are disappointing, Scot. Get over it and move on.

ETA: Actually -- did he promise transparency, or did he promise "greater transparency?" Because if it's the latter, he only has to clear the bar set by his predecessor, which was already lower than a snake's asshole.