The Government and Businesses Have Files on Everyone!!!111!
The NSA metadata collection thing has alarmed many people, and many articles are discussing the government's collection of information about citizens of the US. Most people don't think about other ways the government keeps records on everyone, though, and they are extensive. Here's a partial list of government agencies who store and have access to huge amounts of information on everyone in the country:
Internal Revenue Service - This agency has a great deal of information, including your Social Security information, a record of every place you have ever lived, every place you have ever worked, and how much you were paid at every job you have had. These records are maintained with no limits on time and extend back as far as your first job, no matter how old you are. Old paper records have been converted to data.
Social Security Administration - Like the IRS, this agency has a complete record of your employment, throughout your life. It knows who you worked for, how much you earned, and almost certainly has a copy of your birth certificate if you've interacted with them anytime recently.
US Military - If you served in the US Military, complete records of your service are maintained forever. Those records include your Social Security information, and everything connected with your military service.
FBI - If you have ever had a security clearance or have been arrested for a misdemeanor or felony, the FBI has a file on you. There also may be a file if you have ever participated in political activism. How much is in that file depends on your life history. Your fingerprints are almost certainly on file with the FBI if you have ever been fingerprinted.
State Department - Have a passport? If so, you have a file with the US State Department. It contains information required for you to obtain a passport, including your birth certificate, SS#, and more. In addition, records are maintained of any international travel you have done.
Selective Service Administration - If you are a male and over the age of 18, you have a file with this agency.
State Income Tax Organization - If your state uses income taxes to collect revenue, the state has all of the information the IRS has for as long as you have been a resident.
State Driver's Licence Organization - If you have a driver's license or own an automobile, these agencies have records on file for you, including detailed vehicle information, any traffic violations you have had, and any other information related to vehicle ownership and driving record. Records include your Social Security number, photos of you at various ages, and biometric information.
State Fish & Game Organization - If you hunt or fish, these organizations in whatever state where you have done so maintain files on you. Those files now include your Social Security Number, Driver's License number and biometric information you have supplied.
County Clerks & Recorders - From birth certificates, marriage records, deeds, mortgages, legal judgments, and other information, the counties where you have lived during your life maintain a file. For identification, your Social Security number is used. This information is accessible by data miners, credit bureaus, and others on payment of a small fee.
Law Enforcement Agencies - All interactions with these organizations are included in the data they store about you. Have you reported criminal activity? There's a file. Traffic accidents, arrests, being fingerprinted for employment, and many other interactions will open a file that can be accessed. Criminal background checks include this information, and are available for a fee for those authorized to run that check.
Schools & Colleges - Public school systems maintain records of your attendance, grades, disciplinary actions, and more. Any colleges you attended also maintain files that include a great deal of information about you. Accessibility of these records varies.
Other Governmental Agencies - Any governmental agency you have had any interaction with maintains records of those interactions. The amount of data collected and stored varies.
Non-Government Organizations - Everyone keeps files on you if you have had any interactions with them. Banks, credit issuers and credit reporting companies store the most information, but every business, too, maintains as much data as they can collect on you. If you provide personal information on any website, that information is stored and often sold, traded, and made available to others by the owners of those websites. You have volunteered the information, and agreed to that website's terms of service and privacy policy statement, whether you read those or not.
Your medical information, too, has wide circulation. Every clinic you visit, every hospital you go to, and your health insurance provider have complete medical records on you, or can obtain them. You have signed papers allowing this, and the information is shared widely among health care organizations.
Do you participate in online polls? They exist to gather data on those who participate. Their business model is to sell that data to others. Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and every other search engine and social media company make their livings by providing your data to others. That data may include your internet use habits and much more. And each entity they provide data to also creates a file on you, including that personal data.
Bottom line: Every time you provide any information about yourself, it is stored as data connected to you, and can end up in the files of places you have never even heard of. Even they have your data.
There are literally thousands of files maintained containing your personal data. Thousands. Once they are created, they become permanent. It is impossible to remove your data from most of them, even if you know they exist. Most of the time, you won't even know they exist.
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One is the privacy issue associated with listening to phone conversations/reading emails, along with all the questions of whether or not the laws are constitutional, or whether or not they are even being followed. This has always been the case with the 4th Amendment, ever since the country was founded.
The second concern is completely new, and it has to do with the use of metadata. Metadata is used to create the targets for a counterinsurgency operation. Sometimes (or according to research, in most cases) the most influential person in a social network (or insurgency) is not the most high profile or the most vocal individual in the group. With very large groups (OWS for example), this new technology identifies those individuals who's participation in the group is the most critical.
That, in a nutshell, is what the metadata is being collected and used for. It should be obvious how this information can be used/misused to affect our first amendment freedoms, specifically our right to peaceably assemble. There are a couple of stories floating around today about how the MIC is targeting opponents of the keystone pipeline. This counterinsurgeny technology and training is being used against law-abiding citizens right here in America.
Because the algorithms being used are easily handled by computers, and because no errors are introduced by trying to decode or translate any communication content, the system can create a very precise mapping of our social networks. Only actual metadata associated with each communication is logged into the software, and from that the algorithms sort out the social connections.
Almost everything about this particular type of surveillance is new. The science behind the algorithms that are used and the computers that store and sift the data are new. The idea behind controlling the pubic is not new, however. It has been done before, and very effectively, even without this new weapon.
This all fits into the bigger picture of the War on Terror. Remember that our country was founded by insurgents. Many, if not all of our heroes, would have been easily thwarted under this type of surveillance regime and folks have written about how Paul Revere could have been stopped.
For some basic info about how the science is implemented, google the keywords:
thesis+insurgent+social+network
This use of the metadata seems to be the more dangerous issue. This is the part where individuals are systematically and scientifically targeted. Once targets have been identified, the eavesdropping part can then be used to disrupt/detain/dissuade/discredit any target. But it's the scientific selection of targets is what thwarts our (the ones who are trying to change things) ability to properly organize any resistance. This is serious. Without organization we have no idea who to aim our pitchforks at.
Basically, we are racing toward future where you either support the 1% or else you are a terrorist. This path leads to the restoration of slavery. There is no doubt about it.
Robosigners
As for the content part of the question, basically the law requires someone to certify certain things. In the case of the mortgage thefts they robosigned all sorts of documents saying that they had reviewed the original paperwork on the transaction and stuff like that. They never even had the paperwork in most cases, but they hired people to swear that they did, and that they had reviewed it all.
In the spy analyst case it's sort of the same thing, only now it's official policy. An actual person has to certify (for instance) that if we don't listen to this specific call or read this specific email then we will all die at the hands of terrorists.
So what they've done is they have set up a system where (most likely, because I don't really know too many details of this software) when an analyst logs onto the system his authorization code (or electronic signature) is automatically attached to every transaction that he does. Hence the robosigning analogy.
In order to have this authority to robosign this stuff, he only has to be verbally authorized to do so by either the Attorney General or the Director of National Intelligence.
Apparently he has instant access, on his own authority, to pretty much the entire database.
The top box in the slide represents the form tool or template that the analyst must fill out. That form or template includes boxes for inputting all of the legal requirements that must be met for the analyst to take a peek at stuff. I imagine one of the requirement would be some sort of affidavit by the analyst (this is merely speculation on my part, the stuff about an affidavit) that gets tracked for later submission to the FISA court.
Then, immediately (or in a few milliseconds), the analyst request is approved by all of those other software function modules. There does not seem to be any other human input required. All of the automated FISA requests, together with all of the other record keeping functions, are automatically generated by the system software modules.
Snowden, by all accounts, was a damn good systems analyst and he also claims he had authority as an analyst to use this particular system. He would have been one of the many who would fill out the form or template to request email or voice content.
As for real evidence of the robosigning, it's all there in the information that has been released. The analysts simply fill out a form or template and they have immediate access to the contents of emails and phone calls.
The template or form drives all of the computer modules that compile all the information needed for requesting a warrant from the FISA court. This ensures that the requirements for the warrant are complied with.
Then, sometime during the following 72 hours, the warrant request is sent to the FISA court. It is automatically approved since all the "legal" requirements have been met when the analyst completes the form or template that starts the process. I imagine thousands of communications can be requested by a single warrant.
Any analyst is authorized to obtain the content of any voice or email record, on his own authority, if he has been verbally authorized to do so by either the Attorney General or the Director of National Intelligence.
It's all covered in the FISA law itself, and then made crystal clear by the document releases that Snowden made. The laws were already known, Snowden explains the policy used to implement the law, which I never heard anything about before his disclosures.
If you are familiar with how robosigners were used to flout legal hurdles in the home repossession scandals, then you have to understand that this system of having the analysts become robosigners is done for exactly the same purpose. The only difference being that in the NSA spying case the robosigning has been made the official policy, which I think makes it legal, even though it violates the spirit of the law.
The policy could be ruled illegal by the Supreme Court, but no one has been able to argue the case there because all Americans lack legal standing.
One of the documents that Snowden released was the Verizon warrant which should provide legal standing to Verizon customers since they can now prove to the court that they are being targeted. In the past the court denied standing to everyone because no one could really know whether or not they were on a list since it was all secret.
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If you protest illegal and immoral US wars there might be a special file for you
If you protest Wallstreet & big bank's corruption there might be a special file for you.
If you protest corporate pollution like that of Koch Industries as an environmentalist there might be a special file for you
If you are a union activist there may be a special file for you
If you are a church leader advocating civil rights there may be a special file for you....
They are watching our thoughts form as we type! Quick, everyone! Learn sign language!
[hr][font color="blue"][center]There is nothing you can't do if you put your mind to it.
Nothing.[/center][/font][hr]
sign language interpretation algorithms to read your mind. 
