I wonder if the NSA spying was really as extensive as we think...

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

I have assumed since 2002 that every word spoken on a phone is not a private communication. I have no doubt the technology is dazzling and that they have billions of recordings of our calls, but I have to question the efficacy of their retrieval and analysis.

What I keep coming back to is... did those people really act like they always knew what was going to happen next? Having no idea what was going on was kind of the signature of the Bush presidency. They couldn't even read their own party's sentiment in congress half the time. Pan-cluelessness.

That's the great tension in the Bush presidency... that grinding mix of historical evil and the lowest sort of pie-in-the-face comedy.

Like a Three Stooges snuff film.

[Clio the Leo]

1. I just hope they didn't hear.....

.... my boyfriend and I doing Barack Obama impersonations over the phone into the early AM hours.

I'd hate for something like to get out ..... the sound of me saying "a-THORty." Could ruin my career.

[napi21]

2. As extensive? YES, I'm sure it was. Beneficial???? NO!

I listened to the whistleblower on KO's program last night & AGAIN TONIGHT. I believe they were gathering every bit of info they could, but the volume was so unweildy, they didn't know what to do with it. They ran searches to narrow the selections, and as Keith's guest said, they might look for all phone messages 2 minutes of less in duration because someone thought that's what a terrorist message would be. But they got things like pizza orders.

The frightening part of this is that a creative analyst coulkd take a simple message and read things into it, and if they found some suspicion, they'd flag the caller as a possible terrorist., The innocent party, having done nothing wrong, would end up on a terrorist watch list at the airport...sometimes years later...for no apparent reason!

It will be interesting to see what this new administration does with that massive terrorist watch list. Will they force a review to see who REALLY should be on it? Will somebody finally clear off the names that shouldn't be there at all????

[Hekate]

3. All that and more, and the pile of info is eternal. nt

[sohndrsmith]

4. You think it's just relegated to the phone? Do you have a computer? : )

I think (or I hope - I think I hope, anyway) that it's going to be revealed that the wiretapping, or spying, etc. is much more expansive than we can even conceptualize at this point, even with Tice's incredible disclosures.

Worse than that, (though perhaps it won't ever be proven) I fully believe that there absolutely were non-terrorist related objectives in gathering this stored data on innocent Americans. They gathered financial/credit card data, (would a serious terrorist buy something terrorist-y on his or her freaking credit card? Maybe so).

But I think there was an interest in data mining for political, electoral and financial/business/market reasons... that's just a few things that come to mind... this is so disgusting.

Can Americans file a class action lawsuit against this cretin (Bush) in any valid way? I wish it was a viable option, but I don't know the law. I might have a better concept of it than Bush/etc., though... so would a dried pile of dog doo, though too - or at least it could show more respect for the law than Bush has or can....

Oh I'm so angry... : ) Where is someone to talk one down when you need it? : )

[Radical Activist]

5. They had technology to collect info

but they never had the resources to listen to and evaluate what they collected. Same for emails.

[cliffordu]

6. "Like a Three Stooges snuff film."

Best fucking description of the last 8 years I have EVER seen.

Bravo.

:applause:

[leftstreet]

7. Smoke and mirrors - while they eavesdropped on pols and corporations

That's what I think.

Political blackmail, insider trading, data collection for $ale, etc.

And they intentionally got the M$M to freak us out; thinking we were personally being monitored and evaluated.

[old mark]

8. I just heard Senator Rockefeller say the NSA got everything they

could get on everyone.

I would not be surprised if they are getting information on everyone here.

mark

[Eurobabe]

9. no doubt about that

I assume nothing is private anymore.

[specialed]

10. It's been more extensive than you could ever imagine.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

12. The OP is in the form of a joke, but there's a serious side

Raw intel has to be processed by humans at some point and the typical bush admin. human was a moran.

There's an intellectual bottleneck. Even with the power to intercept ever call and email in the world they STILL never had a clue what was going on.

(If I had access to everyone's conversations I would hope I could use the information to anticipate events and seem really smart, but these folks were always in the wrong foot. Lesson: All the intel in the world won't help you if you only use it to confirm your stunted pre-existing notions.)

[SmileyRose]

11. I'm hoping they have me on record saying GWB is a shithead

Though I'm embarrassed to have said that. It gives shitheads a bad name.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

13. not only federal but at state level too

[dusmcj]

14. $10M buys you enough disk to spool 24 hrs of phone conversations

from a back-of-the-napkin calculation based on standard voice digitization rates and an assumed 200M phone lines in the US of which 50% are active at any moment. All very unscientific, but it identifies the ballpark. 24hrs to run voice reco, identify content of interest for further analysis, etc. Of every voice line in the US.

By now, it's a good chance they can do the analysis on the stream, no need to spool.

Yes, assume any communications over electronic media may have been intercepted and analyzed, at least rudimentarily, including for content, not just source/destination.

Enjoy.

Oh, and by the way, civil societies deal with this using the notion of "Data Privacy Laws". Of course, they would also ostracize anyone who presumed to mouth "if you have nothing to hide why do you care about privacy" as a cretin who needs remedial education. We're not yet a civil society.

[Liberal In Texas]

15. Read James Bamford's "The Shadow Factory".

The NSAs ability to store data and voice is enormous, it's almost beyond comprehension. Do they have the ability to record every text message, email, phone call, etc.? Yes they do, and apparently they've been doing it.

The very mass of data can actually be their own undoing because even though super-duper computers can sift the information the sheer size can make timely retrieval of what they're looking for very difficult.

The thing about this that is disconcerting is that it could be used for data mining. And making associations between phone numbers. For example, if a terrorist calls someone you call (even accidentally) they might make the assumption that you could be an accomplice of the terrorist. They even make associations if you call someone who calls someone who calls a guy who a terrorist called, you've been flagged. I think this is how so many people got on no-fly lists.

I also think the last administration (boy does that sound good) used the NSA to spy on political enemies...us, the Democrats.

[leftofthedial]

16. every word

every call

every email

every Internet click

[EFerrari]

17. Yes, it really was that extensive. They just grabbed everything

as we know from the ATT whistleblower Mark Klein. What these incompetent @ssholes did with the data is something else.