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What are they doing with all that data?
According to stories I've been hearing lately, the CIA has been capturing virtually ALL Internet traffic for quite a while. They've been using special, secret rooms in various telecom facilities across the country.
And the odds are very good that the CIA and/or the NSA have been tapping all US phone traffic - foreign and domestic.
These are just cases of them "listening in" - this is recording ALL traffic and analyzing the contents in detail. Over the last several years.
The question that crossed my mind is, what are they doing with all that information?
So far the only answer I can possibly imagine is that they're using it to gain and consolidate political power - in other words, as a weapon against the American people, and against the Constitution itself. This shouldn't be a startling notion. It's what virtually every government has done when given the unchecked power to spy on their own people. And what with the in-your-face torture, signing statements, renditions, etc., Bush & Co. have made it very plain that they are just about the least self-restrained government on the face of the planet.
The thing is...how would they do it? What would their methodology be? These people don't have a track record of subtlety, after all. I'm trying to figure out where they'd game the system, how they'd use all that personal information, in order to increase their power.
The one thing that crosses my mind is that it wouldn't totally surprise me if they were simply blackmailing opposition politicals. How strange it is that so many Democrats turned so gutless! They've given in on every issue that Bush & Co. cared about. I recognize that not all Democrats have turned, but a startling number of them have. Why? What happened over the past several years to change them from a sometime-effective party into a national joke?
Perhaps Bush & Co have been using their "total information awareness" to gather blackmail data on any Democrat with any sort of skeletons in the closet. Given that Democrats have been persecuted at a ratio of 5-1 (or was it 7-1?) over Republicans by the Justice Department, it seems quite possible that that's yet another thrust of the Bush intelligence operation.
But how is it that not one person has come forward? That's what puzzles me. There's something going on here, something dark and ugly behind the scenes. But what is it? Will we ever find out?
And the odds are very good that the CIA and/or the NSA have been tapping all US phone traffic - foreign and domestic.
These are just cases of them "listening in" - this is recording ALL traffic and analyzing the contents in detail. Over the last several years.
The question that crossed my mind is, what are they doing with all that information?
So far the only answer I can possibly imagine is that they're using it to gain and consolidate political power - in other words, as a weapon against the American people, and against the Constitution itself. This shouldn't be a startling notion. It's what virtually every government has done when given the unchecked power to spy on their own people. And what with the in-your-face torture, signing statements, renditions, etc., Bush & Co. have made it very plain that they are just about the least self-restrained government on the face of the planet.
The thing is...how would they do it? What would their methodology be? These people don't have a track record of subtlety, after all. I'm trying to figure out where they'd game the system, how they'd use all that personal information, in order to increase their power.
The one thing that crosses my mind is that it wouldn't totally surprise me if they were simply blackmailing opposition politicals. How strange it is that so many Democrats turned so gutless! They've given in on every issue that Bush & Co. cared about. I recognize that not all Democrats have turned, but a startling number of them have. Why? What happened over the past several years to change them from a sometime-effective party into a national joke?
Perhaps Bush & Co have been using their "total information awareness" to gather blackmail data on any Democrat with any sort of skeletons in the closet. Given that Democrats have been persecuted at a ratio of 5-1 (or was it 7-1?) over Republicans by the Justice Department, it seems quite possible that that's yet another thrust of the Bush intelligence operation.
But how is it that not one person has come forward? That's what puzzles me. There's something going on here, something dark and ugly behind the scenes. But what is it? Will we ever find out?
no subject
This seems like a variation on the old notion that the Common Market had a giant computer called The Beast which had a record of everybody in the world and an identification for each person in the form of three six digit numbers. Something like that.
no subject
To be fair, I'm not sure that he actually said that ALL Internet data was being copied. But he definitely implied that all of the Internet traffic which was going through the AT&T site where he was working was being both copied and analyzed. And he specifically said that the content was being analyzed, not just the headers. He also said that there were similar CIA rooms at AT&T sites across the country.
Here's a link. Unfortunately they're charging for the transcript, but you can listen to the audio here:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16088947
As for the CIA recording all telephone conversations, I don't think it was discussed (I was riding in the car with Teri when I heard it, and I haven't had a chance to listen to it again). But it doesn't seem that out-of-character for the administration to take that sort of action. They clearly feel entitled.
I agree that it seems unlikely that they'd have voice recognition technology powerful enough to analyze every word of every phone conversation, but it doesn't seem impossible that they could A) have a system that flagged certain keywords with a fair degree of accuracy, and B) have "greater interest" lists of people that they particularly wanted to keep tabs on - Democratic politicians, media people of all sorts, liberal and anti-war activists, etc.
But I still don't see how the blackmail angle could work. How could they know that someone wouldn't decide to go for broke and announce the blackmail on national TV?
Maybe they could control them more effectively through their children, or families. But again, I just don't see how they could count on everyone co-operating and keeping quiet. Although if they have the media as well (and yes, I realize that this sounds paranoid), that would act as a bit of a belt-and-suspenders protection, since they could simply have the media not report on any slip-ups.
But no, it's just not plausible. On the other hand, neither is the determined suicide of the modern Democratic party. I don't know...
no subject
no subject
Probably not much at this point. The sheer quantity of communication makes any form of mass surveillance incredibly difficult; indeed it is almost impossible to maintain a totalitarian state once a communications network reaches a certain density.
no subject
Y'know, I wouldn't be surprised if the media is just refusing to report any of the slip-ups. They could also just be very, very good at deciding who to blackmail.
Honestly, I suspect they arn't doing that much with all that info, yet. Give them ten years to learn how to do everything better. Then, we're effing screwed.