Like Mussolini said, the purest from of fascism is corporatism.
Well, HE was RIGHT!
"F.B.I. Data Mining Reached Beyond Initial Targets" By ERIC LICHTBLAU
WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 — The F.B.I. cast a much wider net in its terrorism investigations than it has previously acknowledged by relying on telecommunications companies to analyze phone-call patterns of the associates of Americans who had come under suspicion, according to newly obtained bureau records.
[Are you SICK of the LIES yet, reader?]
The documents indicate that the Federal Bureau of Investigation used secret demands for records to obtain data not only on individuals it saw as targets but also details on their “community of interest” — the network of people that the target was in contact with. The bureau stopped the practice early this year in part because of broader questions raised about its aggressive use of the records demands, which are known as national security letters, officials said.
[Tell me again how limited this whole thing is.
Go ahead, lie to me!
Is this fucking POLICE STATE TOTALITARIANISM enough for you, Amurka?
Being that is all based on a "TERRORISTS" LIE?!]
The community of interest data sought by the F.B.I. is central to a data-mining technique intelligence officials call link analysis. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, American counterterrorism officials have turned more frequently to the technique, using communications patterns and other data to identify suspects who may not have any other known links to extremists.
[What if you punched in a wrong number?]
The concept has strong government proponents who see it as a vital tool in predicting and preventing attacks, and it is also thought to have helped the National Security Agency identify targets for its domestic eavesdropping program.
[Hello, Amurka, WAKE the FUCK UUUP!
And, HI GOVERNMENT MONITOR! :(
Hope you LIKE what you are reading!]
But privacy advocates, civil rights leaders and even some counterterrorism officials warn that link analysis can be misused to establish tenuous links to people who have no real connection to terrorism but may be drawn into an investigation nonetheless.
Typically, community of interest data might include an analysis of which people the targets called most frequently, how long they generally talked and at what times of day, sudden fluctuations in activity, geographic regions that were called, and other data, law enforcement and industry officials said.
[Like EVERYTHING!]
The F.B.I. declined to say exactly what data had been turned over. It was limited to people and phone numbers “once removed” from the actual target of the national security letters, said a government official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of a continuing review by the Justice Department.
[Nice sounding term, isn't it?
It's like "removed" from ya, so that's like, one away from you, dumb Amurkn, so they aren't spying on YOU, right?
Hey Orwell, get out that grave!!!]
The bureau had declined to discuss any aspect of the community of interest requests because it said the issue was part of an investigation by the Justice Department inspector general’s office into national security letters. An initial review in March by the inspector general found widespread violations in the F.B.I.’s use of the letters, but did not mention the use of community of interest data.
On Saturday, in response to the posting of the article on the Web site of The New York Times, Mike Kortan, a spokesman for the F.B.I., said “it is important to emphasize” that community of interest data is “no longer being used pending the development of an appropriate oversight and approval policy, was used infrequently, and was never used for e-mail communications.”
[Yeah, they stopped and are fixing the problem!
Or are they just holding back, so later they can say it was more "than it has previously acknowledged," again?
You trust any of these liars, reader?]
The scope of the demands for information could be seen in an August 2005 letter seeking the call records for particular phone numbers under suspicion. The letter closed by saying: “Additionally, please provide a community of interest for the telephone numbers in the attached list.”
[What? No, "thank you?!"]
The requests for such data showed up a dozen times, using nearly identical language, in records from one six-month period in 2005 obtained by a nonprofit advocacy group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that it brought against the government. The F.B.I. recently turned over 2,500 pages of documents to the group. The boilerplate language suggests the requests may have been used in many of more than 700 emergency or “exigent” national security letters. Earlier this year, the bureau banned the use of the exigent letters because they had never been authorized by law.
[What's known as a FISHING EXPEDITION!]
The reason for the suspension is unclear, but it appears to have been set off in part by the questions raised by the inspector general’s initial review into abuses in the use of national security letters. The official said the F.B.I. itself was examining the use of the community of interest requests to get a better understanding of how and when they were used, but he added that they appeared to have been used in a relatively small percentage of the tens of thousand of the records requests each year. “In an exigent circumstance, that’s information that may be relevant to an investigation,” the official said.
[Yeah, MAY be! Well, anything MAY be!
Just on YOUR SAY-SO, right, fascist FBI liar?]
A federal judge in Manhattan last week struck down parts of the USA Patriot Act that had authorized the F.B.I.’s use of the national security letters, saying that some provisions violated the First Amendment and the constitutional separation of powers guarantee. In many cases, the target of a national security letter whose records are being sought is not necessarily the actual subject of a terrorism investigation and may not be suspected at all. Under the Patriot Act, the F.B.I. must assert only that the records gathered through the letter are considered relevant to a terrorism investigation.
Some legal analysts and privacy advocates suggested that the disclosure of the F.B.I.’s collection of community of interest records offered another example of the bureau exceeding the substantial powers already granted it by Congress.
Marcia Hofmann, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which provided the records from its lawsuit to The New York Times:
“This whole concept of tracking someone’s community of interest is not part of any established F.B.I. authority. It’s being defined by the F.B.I. And when it’s left up to the F.B.I. to decide what information is relevant to their investigations, they can vacuum up almost anything they want.”
Matt Blaze, a professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania and a former researcher for AT&T, said the telecommunications companies could have easily provided the F.B.I. with the type of network analysis data it was seeking because they themselves had developed it over many years, often using sophisticated software like a program called Analyst’s Notebook.
[The POLICE STATE is ALREADY HERE! Fight it, America!]
Professor Blaze, who has worked with the F.B.I. on technology issues:
“This sort of analysis of calling patterns and who the communities of interests are is the sort of things telephone companies are doing anyway because it’s central to their businesses for marketing or optimizing the network or detecting fraud. Such analysis is extremely powerful and very revealing because you get these linkages between people that wouldn’t be otherwise clear, sometimes even more important than the content itself of phone calls and e-mail messages. But it’s also very invasive. There’s always going to be a certain amount of noise, with data collected on people who have no real links to suspicious activity."
[It is almost as if the government wants to have FRAME-UP INFORMATION on people!
That sure is what this sounds like!]
Officials at other American intelligence agencies, like the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, have explored using link analysis to trace patterns of communications sometimes two, three or four people removed from the original targets, current and former intelligence officials said. But critics assert that the further the links are taken, the less valuable the information proves to be.
[Oooooh, so now it is FOUR TIMES REMOVED, huh?
Ooooooohhh!!! Oh, they told me it was only "one" time removed!!
What fucking SHIT LIARS!!!!!!!!!
You GOT THAT, government!!!
WE HATE YOUR ASS, and YOU WILL PAY for these outrages if this conduct CONTINUES!!!!
As will these bastard telecoms!
Remember the "six degrees of Kevin Bacon?"
Well, looks like the FBI (the Frame-up Bureau of Indictments) is playing the FOUR DEGREES of bin-Laden, huh?
Pffffffffftttttttttttt!!!!!!!!!!!!]
Some privacy advocates said they were troubled by what they saw as the F.B.I.’s over-reliance on technology at the expense of traditional investigative techniques that rely on clearer evidence of wrongdoing.
Michael German, a former F.B.I. agent who is now a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union;
“Getting a computer to spit out a hundred names doesn’t have any meaning if you don’t know what you’re looking for. If they’re telling the telephone company, ‘You do the investigation and tell us what you find,’ the relevance to the investigation is being determined by someone outside the F.B.I.”
[So which telecom pukes are the spies?
They got their own secret room in San Francisco?
You are ALREADY LIVING in a TOTALITARIAN FASCIST STATE, America!!
You need to GET BACK your FREEDOMS by TARRING-and-FEATHERING this government, and establishing new guards, because:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King [George] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States."
[You are PUSHING US THERE, ruling shitters, as long as you KNOW THAT!!!!!!
If not, oh, are you in for a RUDE AWAKENING SOON!!!!
