Americans Are The Most Spied On People In World History
At Washington's Blog, via Crid:
Mike Masnick from TechDirt notes:
In a radio interview, Wall Street Journal reporter Julia Angwin (who's been one of the best at covering the surveillance state in the US) made a simple observation that puts much of this into context: the US surveillance regime has more data on the average American than the Stasi ever did on East Germans.
More from America's blog:
The American government is collecting and storing virtually every phone call, purchases, email, text message, internet searches, social media communications, health information, employment history, travel and student records, and virtually all other information of every American.Some also claim that the government is also using facial recognition software and surveillance cameras to track where everyone is going. Moreover, cell towers track where your phone is at any moment, and the major cell carriers, including Verizon and AT&T, responded to at least 1.3 million law enforcement requests for cell phone locations and other data in 2011. (And - given that your smartphone routinely sends your location information back to Apple or Google - it would be child's play for the government to track your location that way.) Your iPhone, or other brand of smartphone is spying on virtually everything you do (ProPublica notes: "That's No Phone. That's My Tracker").
As the top spy chief at the U.S. National Security Agency explained this week, the American government is collecting some 100 billion 1,000-character emails per day, and 20 trillion communications of all types per year.
...He says that if anyone gets on the government's "enemies list", then the stored information will be used to target them. Specifically, he notes that if the government decides it doesn't like someone, it analyzes all of the data it has collected on that person and his or her associates over the last 10 years to build a case against him.
This is terrifying stuff. Those of you who aren't actively fighting for our civil liberties need to start.
Related: Glenn Greenwald writes at Guardian.co.uk, "GOP and Feinstein join to fulfill Obama's demand for renewed warrantless eavesdropping: The California Democrat's disgusting rhetoric recalls the worst of Dick Cheney while advancing Obama's agenda."
There are no comments because there's nothing to say about how right Amy and her cites are about all this.
It makes me ashamed, all though I'm not sure what for... What exactly would I have done in my five decades to have made America less susceptible to perversion of this kind?
For selfish and small-minded and ego-maniacal reasons, every sentient being on the surface of this globe seems to have decided that American governmental power is civilization's best artifact. And the lizard-brains hosting these appraisals are now scratching with the full might of their claws for a sliver they can call their own... Because the sentiments of the Constitution (etc.) — which nourished generations of unremarkable people into deep comity and considerable wealth — aren't really worth defending.
I have friends with small children. The children are crazy-cute, but they are so fucked. Twenty years ago I wouldn't have thought this possible.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at December 30, 2012 12:01 AM
This would scare me a lot more than it does, if I hadn't worked for the government. The massive volume of information, and the utter lack of organizational skills of most government employees will keep most of us, under the radar.
However, anyone who thinks Petraeus was outed by the suspicions of a loose cannon FBI agent needs to realize that his affair and his personal emails were probably monitered by the powers that be, way before he became the chief of the CIA.
When they didn't want him to testify on Benghazi, this was the card they pulled out of the deck.
This administration, is Nixon and J Edger Hoover on steroids.
Isab at December 30, 2012 2:55 PM
Yeah, Nixon or LBJ would have going absolutely gonzo if they had access to the capabilities that exist today. I do wonder how well their systems can actually organize and key and make all that information searchable so it can actually be retrieved. But if a rogue Administration decided they wanted to go after a political high-value target, ways would be found.
I don't have a smartphone mainly because, well, I don't see that I really have a use for one, and also I'm too cheap to pay for the data plan. However, being (somewhat) less trackable is a bonus.
Cousin Dave at December 30, 2012 9:12 PM
> I don't see that I really have a use for one,
> and also I'm too cheap to pay for the data plan.
A man after my own heart!
[1.] Slavish devotion to electronic fashions can fuck you up.
[2.] Creeping acquisition of routine monthly bills can fuck you up.
I broke down and got an Android recently for specialized work needs as much as anything else (a year after letting go of my land line expenses). But the truth is, the cheapest cell phone you can own (which is what I've had for most of the last decade) is as trackable as anything.
And I think Isab is really on to something important here —
> The massive volume of information, and the
> utter lack of organizational skills of most
> government employees will keep most of us,
> under the radar.
Two years ago I heard that half the computer data in world was less than two years old. Every new telephone owner shoots a couple hours of high-resolution video in the first few days, etc.; we shouldn't be surprised if that tipping point is now one year. Data is EXPLODING.
There's no way the government can do anything useful with all this information, though it's easy to imagine them doing a lot of things that are destructive. We might imagine a few atrocious intrusions on our freedoms in the years ahead, monstrous prosecutions on behalf of political careers and well-connected businessmen (etc.) which compel the Supreme Court to step in with new regulations...
But even if it doesn't happen that way, it's possible that the sheer mass of information is going to choke efforts to constrain individual freedoms in meaningful ways.
I mean, in the last decade, American government lost track of clear title for real estate... One of civilization's oldest, dearest and best-documented regulatory chores.
Should you care if they know you were in your mistress's neighborhood last Thursday?
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at December 31, 2012 7:12 AM
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