The Government's Insane Quest To (Illegally) Lodge Itself Permanently Up The Ass Of Every American

[kpete]

Secret Spy Court Repeatedly Questions FBI Wiretap Network
By Ryan Singel June 11, 2008 | 3:13:54 PM
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/06/secret-spy-cour.html

No patterns to see here. Move along.
by Kagro X
Thu Jun 12, 2008 at 09:00:22 AM PDT

Ryan Singel, Wired magazine's "Threat Level" blogger has just been an absolute monster on covering all aspects of the government's insane quest to (illegally) record everything, and generally lodge itself permanently up the ass of everyone in America. His latest entry continues his streak of startling revelations:

Does the FBI track cellphone users' physical movements without a warrant? Does the Bureau store recordings of innocent Americans caught up in wiretaps in a searchable database? Does the FBI's wiretap equipment store information like voicemail passwords and bank account numbers without legal authorization to do so?

That's what the nation's Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court wanted to know, in a series of secret inquiries in 2005 and 2006 into the bureau's counterterrorism electronic surveillance efforts, revealed for the first time in newly declassified documents.

Well, it sure looks like it. One item at issue here is the question of whether the FBI has been using its pen register orders (which don't require a warrant, because they capture only numbers dialed, not conversations) to capture numbers dialed after the phone number is completed and the call is connected, or so-called "post-cut-through" numbers. That'd be numbers like voice mail passwords or phone banking PINs, and those require a warrant.

The documents (.pdf) show that the majority of FBI offices surveyed internally were collecting that information without full-blown wiretap orders, especially in classified investigations. The documents also indicate that the information was being uploaded to the FBI's central repository for wiretap recordings and phone records, where analysts can data-mine the records for decades.

The agency that was caught in thousands of abuses of National Security Letters, that originated the now-ridiculous "No-Fly List", and that "accidentally" Hoovers up (ha) the e-mail traffic of hundreds of innocent bystanders when it's supposed to be going after a single target now turns out to also have been secretly recording and storing your privacy codes.

Because... well, because they could.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/6/12/10336/7126/362/534590