Busted!
Largest database of domestic phonecalls ever assembled. Even the economy can't save you now!
The system is based on pattern recognition. For example, intelligence services will say that a terrorist is likely to call Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran. Thus, a person who makes a phone call to all of these three places will be flagged. This would appear to be a form of data mining, which is not illegal under US law and doesn't require a FISA warrant. What is unclear is where the intelligence services went after the flagging, i.e. did they automatically listen to the person's phonecall or did they request a warrant?
The announcement has some interesting implications:
* ECHELON clearly isn't being used for domestic spying. Otherwise why would the NSA need phone records when it could just capture phone conversations via ECHELON? This would seem to reinforce US comments made during the nuclear ships debacle, that ECHELON countries have a convention that they do not spy on one another (one presumes that this means ECHELON countries also do not use ECHELON to spy on themselves..)
* The NSA wiretap fraud is not as bad as first thought, in some ways this system is more just. It is, as far as we can tell, based purely on behaviour. However, Americans are likely to be more shocked by this as it's is not just faceless Arabs who are having their data mined but white people as well. Thus the wiretaps violate an unspoken US rule: It's always OK to violate civil liberties for the common good as long as they're not your own.
The system is based on pattern recognition. For example, intelligence services will say that a terrorist is likely to call Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran. Thus, a person who makes a phone call to all of these three places will be flagged. This would appear to be a form of data mining, which is not illegal under US law and doesn't require a FISA warrant. What is unclear is where the intelligence services went after the flagging, i.e. did they automatically listen to the person's phonecall or did they request a warrant?
The announcement has some interesting implications:
* ECHELON clearly isn't being used for domestic spying. Otherwise why would the NSA need phone records when it could just capture phone conversations via ECHELON? This would seem to reinforce US comments made during the nuclear ships debacle, that ECHELON countries have a convention that they do not spy on one another (one presumes that this means ECHELON countries also do not use ECHELON to spy on themselves..)
* The NSA wiretap fraud is not as bad as first thought, in some ways this system is more just. It is, as far as we can tell, based purely on behaviour. However, Americans are likely to be more shocked by this as it's is not just faceless Arabs who are having their data mined but white people as well. Thus the wiretaps violate an unspoken US rule: It's always OK to violate civil liberties for the common good as long as they're not your own.
posted by Dileepa at 6:54 am
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