‘We Kill People Based on Metadata’

[xchrom]

https://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/05/11


A "drone shadow" created for the Istanbul Design Biennial. (Photo: STML/ Creative Commons/ Flickr)

Supporters of the National Security Agency inevitably defend its sweeping collection of phone and Internet records on the ground that it is only collecting so-called “metadata”—who you call, when you call, how long you talk. Since this does not include the actual content of the communications, the threat to privacy is said to be negligible. That argument is profoundly misleading.

Of course knowing the content of a call can be crucial to establishing a particular threat. But metadata alone can provide an extremely detailed picture of a person’s most intimate associations and interests, and it’s actually much easier as a technological matter to search huge amounts of metadata than to listen to millions of phone calls. As NSA General Counsel Stewart Baker has said, “metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody’s life. If you have enough metadata, you don’t really need content.” When I quoted Baker at a recent debate at Johns Hopkins University, my opponent, General Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and the CIA, called Baker’s comment “absolutely correct,” and raised him one, asserting, “We kill people based on metadata.”

It is precisely this power to collect our metadata that has prompted one of Congress’s most bipartisan initiatives in recent years. On May 7, the House Judiciary Committee voted 32-0 to adopt an amended form of the USA Freedom Act, a bill to rein in NSA spying on Americans, initially proposed by Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy and Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner. On May 8, the House Intelligence Committee, which has until now opposed any real reform of the NSA, also unanimously approved the same bill. And the Obama administration has welcomed the development.

For some, no doubt, the very fact that this bill has attracted such broad bipartisan approval will be grounds for suspicion. After all, this is the same Congress that repeatedly reauthorized the 2001 USA Patriot Act, a law that was also proposed by Sensenbrenner and on which the bulk collection of metadata was said to rest—even if many members of Congress were not aware of how the NSA was using (or abusing) it. And this is the same administration that retained the NSA’s data collection program, inherited from its predecessor, as long as it was a secret, and only called for reform when the American people learned from the disclosures of NSA contractor Edward Snowden that the government was routinely collecting phone and Internet records on all of us. So, one might well ask, if Congress and the White House, Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, all now agree on reform, how meaningful can the reform be?

[djean111]

1. Just want to add that no one has to "listen" to millions of phone calls.

As a private citizen, I can buy software for as little as $10 a month that will record, store, and search phone conversations for keywords. Imagine what the NSA can do.
I also assume that when the NSA says it is not doing something, they just may be lying on behalf of National Security.
When I look at how many billions of dollars are wasted on experimental weaponry, I have no problem thinking that there are vast sums spent on data storage.
I do not think reforms will be meaningful at all. Just words.

[marmar]

2. k/r

[marions ghost]

3. “...metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody’s life"

"we kill people based on metadata"...chilling.

The amended form is a step in the right direction but I'm still skeptical of anything called "the USA Freedom Act."

From the OP article:

-------------
"Even with all these reforms, however, the USA Freedom Act only skims the surface. It does not address, for example, the NSA’s guerilla-like tactics of inserting vulnerabilities into computer software and drivers, to be exploited later to surreptitiously intercept private communications. It also focuses exclusively on reining in the NSA’s direct spying on Americans. As Snowden’s disclosures have shown, the NSA collects far more private information on foreigners—including the content as well as the metadata of e-mails, online chats, social media, and phone calls—than on US citizens.

The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 permits the NSA to intercept the content of communications when it can demonstrate nothing more than reason to believe that its targets are foreign nationals living abroad, and that the information might relate to “foreign intelligence.” “Foreign intelligence” is in turn defined to include any information that might inform our foreign affairs, which is no restriction at all. Under this authority, the NSA established the PRISM program, which collects both content and metadata from e-mail, Internet, and phone communications by millions of users worldwide. It is probably under this authority that, according to The Washington Post, the NSA is recording “every single” phone call from a particular, unnamed country. Documents leaked by Snowden demonstrate that the NSA also collects, again by the millions and billions, foreign nationals’ e-mail contact lists, cell phone location data, and texts. This is the very definition of dragnet surveillance.

Congress is far less motivated to do anything about the NSA’s abuse of the rights of foreign nationals. They are “them,” not “us.” They don’t vote. But they have human rights, too; the right to privacy, recognized in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the US has signed and ratified, does not limit protections to Americans. Snowden’s revelations have justifiably led to protests from many of our closest allies; they don’t want their privacy invaded by the NSA any more than we do, and they have more to complain about than we do, as they have suffered far greater intrusions.

In the Internet era, it is increasingly common that everyone’s communications cross national boundaries. That makes all of us vulnerable, for when the government collects data in bulk from people it believes are foreign nationals, it is almost certain to sweep up lots of communications in which Americans are involved. The initial version of the USA Freedom Act accordingly sought to limit the NSA’s ability to conduct so-called “back door” searches of content collected from foreigners for communications with Americans citizens. But that provision was stripped in committee, leaving the back door wide open."

[bvar22]

4. Its "ONLY" the Metadata!

[MisterP]

5. like they DIDIN'T know that when they were yelling "it's only metadata"

it's like the deeper impulse behind the encomiums for Butcher Harris or LeMay: they resist the idea that cremating whole cities didn't much shorten the war but in fact magnified deaths because they've abdicated their decision-making to their superweapons and machine systems and they need to justify that--not out of any real cost-benefit analysis

they think that those who were killed deserved to die because they did--simple as that

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

6. No cause justifies the deaths of innocent people. Albert Camus

[okaawhatever]

7. Common Dreams. ROFL. I don't waste my time on that garbage. Find a reputable website for those

of us here at DU that prefer factual information.

[stillwaiting]

8. If metadata is good enough to determine who we need to kill, just how revealing is it?

I think we know the answer to that.

Or else, our nation is run by complete psychopaths.

[Shandris]

9. If you're interested...

...here is a small TED demonstration by some individuals about the power of their own metadata. It's not overly long and for the lay follower is incredibly informative (or at least it was to me!).

Enjoy!

Edit: I keep forgetting I don't need to describe the link anymore since it embeds it automagically. You'd think I'd learn!

[warrprayer]

10. kick