Pesident Obama appeared on Charlie Rose's show to discuss the NSA surveillance scandals. With a defense of the sort that Obama put forward, prehaps he should have stayed off of the TV. Obama explained that the NSA cannot legally listen to phone calls of Americans without a court order. Charlie Rose than almost fell off his seat trying to get Obama to says that the NSA DOES NOT do that. Obama agreed.
So what. We keep getting stories that do not agree with what Obama is saying. Indeed, just the other day, the reports came out that NSA analysts have the authority to listen to calls if they deem it necessary as part of their investigations. We need to know which version of the story is true. Does the NSA listen in, or not.
Even more important, we need to understand what use is made of the so called meta data that everyone agrees is being collected by NSA. For example, we know that NSA collects the location of cell phones that have GPS locators in them. That involves most newer cell phones, so it is a heck of a lot of data. Suppose that the FBI has been following a suspect. Can the FBI give the locations where the suspect has been and ask for a list of which cell phones have been in close proximity over the last month? Will that sort of information put innocent people on a list of suspects if they happened to eat in the same restaurant as the suspect? Once that proximity is identified, will the calls and email of that innocent person then be reviewed by the FBI or NSA? Would this proximity alone be enough for the feds to get a warrant from the FISA court? Right now, it appears that the answer to all these questions is yes -- if you happen to be near a suspect, you get swept up into the investigation too.
What all this means is that the feds are not providing a basis to a court to conduct a search of many people. Instead, the feds are creating that basis by manipulating the meta data. So much for privacy.
So what. We keep getting stories that do not agree with what Obama is saying. Indeed, just the other day, the reports came out that NSA analysts have the authority to listen to calls if they deem it necessary as part of their investigations. We need to know which version of the story is true. Does the NSA listen in, or not.
Even more important, we need to understand what use is made of the so called meta data that everyone agrees is being collected by NSA. For example, we know that NSA collects the location of cell phones that have GPS locators in them. That involves most newer cell phones, so it is a heck of a lot of data. Suppose that the FBI has been following a suspect. Can the FBI give the locations where the suspect has been and ask for a list of which cell phones have been in close proximity over the last month? Will that sort of information put innocent people on a list of suspects if they happened to eat in the same restaurant as the suspect? Once that proximity is identified, will the calls and email of that innocent person then be reviewed by the FBI or NSA? Would this proximity alone be enough for the feds to get a warrant from the FISA court? Right now, it appears that the answer to all these questions is yes -- if you happen to be near a suspect, you get swept up into the investigation too.
What all this means is that the feds are not providing a basis to a court to conduct a search of many people. Instead, the feds are creating that basis by manipulating the meta data. So much for privacy.
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