First Amendment U.S. Is Secretly Collecting Records of Verizon Calls

Discussion in 'Bill of Rights' started by stg58, Jun 6, 2013.


  1. stg58

    stg58 Monkey+++ Founding Member

    Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court? Wow George Orwell could never envision what barry is is doing.

    I will do something I rarely do, tune into msnbc and watch the libs gloss over this.


    BTW, They must be doing it with AT&T and the other mobile providers.....
    .............................................................................................................................................................................
    WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is secretly carrying out a domestic surveillance program under which it is collecting business communications records involving Americans under a hotly debated section of the Patriot Act, according to a highly classified court order disclosed on Wednesday night.
    The order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in April, directs a Verizon Communications subsidiary, Verizon Business Network Services, to turn over “on an ongoing daily basis” to the National Security Agency all call logs “between the United States and abroad” or “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.”

    The four-page order, which The Guardian published on its website Wednesday, requires the communications giant to hand over "originating and terminating" telephone numbers as well as the location, time and duration of the calls -- and demands that the order be kept secret.
    The order applies to Verizon Business Network Services. It was not immediately clear how many phone records it covers. Verizon does not describe its Business Network Services operation on its website.
    The Guardian said the order involves "millions of U.S. customers of Verizon."
    "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 article says.
     
  2. Quadfather

    Quadfather Monkey

  3. VisuTrac

    VisuTrac Ваша мать носит военные ботинки Site Supporter+++

    I'm sure it's just the tip of the Iceberg.
    We still have AT&T, TMobile, ... I'm sure that they haven't gone along with this. :rolleyes:
     
  4. stg58

    stg58 Monkey+++ Founding Member

    Someone asked what the AP phone records thing, the idiot Holder and the IRS deal would lead to that will likely fade away but now with this thing looking like an onion just starting to peel back the layers may lead somewhere.
     
  5. Yard Dart

    Yard Dart Vigilant Monkey Moderator

    Obama White House spying on half of America | Fox News

    I think Judge Napolitano has hit the nail on the head. The constitution has been shredded and the example is all of these recent scandals that show the .gov is to powerful. The .gov answers not to the people but only to itself.
     
  6. DarkLight

    DarkLight Live Long and Prosper - On Hiatus

    From what I understand, Verizon was actually the LAST company to turn over the records and that's because they were actually fighting it. I'll have to find the link where I read/heard that.
     
  7. BTPost

    BTPost Stumpy Old Fart,Deadman Walking, Snow Monkey Moderator

    Oh Boy, I guess my Telco Number is in the Foreign Call Database, because I have been talking to Alaskachick, in Africa.... I will keep an eye out for the Black Choppers.... Drones fly to high for Me to spot, but they do show up on my Aircraft Transponder Receiver.... The USCG is using Predators, for scouting, off their High Endurance Cutters in the North Pacific... I don't know if they are armed, or not....
     
  8. Yard Dart

    Yard Dart Vigilant Monkey Moderator

  9. DarkLight

    DarkLight Live Long and Prosper - On Hiatus

    And I found this one, which of course is full of "unnamed sources close to the matter", that mention AT&T, Verizon and Sprint.

    Reports: NSA gets phone records from Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, as well as data from Apple, Google and others - FierceWireless

    If the order were signed in April and Verizon is just now handing it over...I'm sure they were in fact fighting it. It's not that hard to give them the information they want and they are going to have to provide daily differential dumps from the time they start until July 19th (unless it gets extended...which may not be as likely as they had hoped), so doing it on a daily/ongoing basis is at least seen as "not that hard" by the people demanding the information.
     
  10. Yard Dart

    Yard Dart Vigilant Monkey Moderator

    Verizon EVP to employees:
    Statement from Verizon EVP to employees regarding report of phone records seized | Fox News
     
  11. DarkLight

    DarkLight Live Long and Prosper - On Hiatus

    Way to go Verizon EVP! I'm not happy about what's going on but damn, talk about screaming "OH HELL YES! They demanded and we HAD to comply or they would have SHUT OUR A$$ES DOWN!" without saying boo.

    Tickles me some...
     
  12. Quigley_Sharps

    Quigley_Sharps The Badministrator Administrator Founding Member

    941612_574788692544041_1629816151_n.
    they were on public assistance they probably had one of them free Obama phones ... I think those are exempt
     
    Gator 45/70 and VisuTrac like this.
  13. VHestin

    VHestin Farm Chick

    I have prepaid cellphone, and I have the urge just to start calling random out of state/country numbers.
     
  14. VisuTrac

    VisuTrac Ваша мать носит военные ботинки Site Supporter+++

    I may have called the Ukraine, but it was a wrong number, honest.
     
  15. stg58

    stg58 Monkey+++ Founding Member

    hearing-everyone-now.
     
    tulianr likes this.
  16. Witch Doctor 01

    Witch Doctor 01 Mojo Maker

    [​IMG]
     
  17. stg58

    stg58 Monkey+++ Founding Member

  18. tulianr

    tulianr Don Quixote de la Monkey

    Verizon, AT&T get most bucks from feds for wiretaps

    EXCERPTS:
    WASHINGTON How much are your private conversations worth to the U.S. government? Turns out, it can be a lot, depending on the technology.

    In the era of intense government surveillance and secret court orders, a murky multimillion-dollar market has emerged. Paid for by U.S. tax dollars, but with little public scrutiny, surveillance fees charged in secret by technology and phone companies can vary wildly.

    AT&T, for example, imposes a $325 "activation fee" for each wiretap and $10 a day to maintain it. Smaller carriers Cricket and U.S. Cellular charge only about $250 per wiretap. But snoop on a Verizon customer? That costs the government $775 for the first month and $500 each month after that, according to industry disclosures made last year to Congressman Edward Markey.

    Meanwhile, email records like those amassed by the National Security Agency through a program revealed by former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden probably were collected for free or very cheaply. Facebook says it doesn't charge the government for access. And while Microsoft, Yahoo and Google won't say how much they charge, the American Civil Liberties Union found that email records can be turned over for as little as $25.
    What-companies-charge-government_bar_chart_620x_v03_1.
    Industry says it doesn't profit from the hundreds of thousands of government eavesdropping requests it receives each year, and civil liberties groups want businesses to charge. They worry that government surveillance will become too cheap as companies automate their responses. And if companies gave away customer records for free, wouldn't that encourage uncalled-for surveillance?

    But privacy advocates also want companies to be upfront about what they charge and alert customers after an investigation has concluded that their communications were monitored.

    "What we don't want is surveillance to become a profit center," said Christopher Soghoian, the ACLU's principal technologist. But "it's always better to charge $1. It creates friction, and it creates transparency" because it generates a paper trail that can be tracked.

    Regardless of price, the surveillance business is growing. The U.S. government long has enjoyed access to phone networks and high-speed Internet traffic under the U.S. Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act to catch suspected criminals and terrorists. More recently, the FBI has pushed technology companies like Google and Skype to guarantee access to real-time communications on their services.
    .....

    But as the number of law enforcement requests for data grew and carriers upgraded their technology, the cost of accommodating government surveillance requests increased. AT&T, for example, said it devotes roughly 100 employees to review each request and hand over data. Likewise, Verizon said its team of 70 employees works around the clock, seven days a week to handle the quarter-million requests it gets each year.

    To discourage gratuitous requests and to prevent losing money, industry turned to a section of federal law that allows companies to be reimbursed for the cost of "searching for, assembling, reproducing and otherwise providing" communications content or records on behalf of the government. The costs must be "reasonably necessary" and "mutually agreed" upon with the government.

    From there, phone companies developed detailed fee schedules and began billing law enforcement much as they do customers. In its letter to Markey, AT&T estimated that it collected $24 million in government reimbursements between 2007 and 2011. Verizon, which had the highest fees but says it doesn't charge in every case, reported a similar amount, collecting between $3 million and $5 million a year during the same period.
    .......

    In 2009, then-New York criminal prosecutor John Prather sued several major telecommunications carriers in federal court in Northern California in 2009, including AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, for overcharging federal and state police agencies. In his complaint, Prather said phone companies have the technical ability to turn on a switch, duplicate call information and pass it along to law enforcement with little effort. Instead, Prather says his staff, while he was working as a city prosecutor, would receive convoluted bills with extraneous fees. The case is pending.

    "They were monstrously more than what the telecoms could ever hope to charge for similar services in an open, competitive market, and the costs charged to the governments by telecoms did not represent reasonable prices as defined in the code of federal regulations," the lawsuit said.

    The phone companies have asked the judge to dismiss the case. Prather's lawsuit claims whistle-blower status. If he wins, he stands to collect a percentage - estimated anywhere from 12 percent to 25 percent - of the money recovered from the companies.

    Verizon, AT&T get most bucks from feds for wiretaps - CBS News
     
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