"FBI Recorded 27 Million FISA 'Sessions' in 2006... with only 2176 FISA Court Orders" ...LINK

[Blackhatjack]

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/12/fbi-recorded-27.html

FBI Recorded 27 Million FISA 'Sessions' in 2006

By Ryan Singel December 19, 2007 | 6:36:32 PMCategories: Privacy, Sunshine and Secrecy

"At the end of 2006, the FBI's Telecommunications Intercept and Collection Technology Unit compiled an end-of-the-year report touting its accomplishments to management, a report that was recently unearthed via an open government request from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Strikingly, the report said that the FBI's software for recording telephone surveillance of suspected spies and terrorists intercepted 27,728,675 sessions.

Twenty-seven million is a staggering number given that the FBI only got 2,176 FISA court orders in 2006 from a secret spy court using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

According to the math that means each court order resulted in 12,742 "sessions," all in regards to phone, not internet, surveillance."

MORE

[JeffR]

1. K & R. Hugely important info.

:kick:

[originalpckelly]

2. Who knew there were 12,742 members of al-Qaeda in America?

They must not be too swift a terrorist group to have so many members here without any further attacks. Or maybe our fuhrer has been protecting us?

Or, wait, what if there aren't 12,742 members of al-Qaeda in America and they're spying on people who aren't in al-Qaeda?

[alfredo]

7. Not al Qaeda, pederast priests.

[ThomWV]

12. Roughly 250 of those were Democrats in Congress

[madokie]

15. and that I'd bet money on

if I was a gamblin man that is

[EFerrari]

3. They're ridiculous already.

27 MILLION sessions?

LOL!

Talk about padding your productivity. "This posse couldn't find itself -- if it wanted to."

[Mnemosyne]

4. KnR for more visibility. n/t

[blogslut]

5. I'll kick this

I am really digging Wired's coverage of these issues.

[Double T]

6. A record the KGB would envy.

[williesgirl]

8. Heil America. rec'd

[DCKit]

9. Teenagers Rejoice!!!! Finally a reason to justify your having a cell phone....

with unlimited calling and text messaging: To help protect Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, the Aunts and Uncles and all their friends from domestic spying by overloading the NSA and CIA systems with your inane bullshit, undecipherable teen-speak and IM codes.

[Richard Steele]

10. K&R

[kelliebrat]

11. K & R

To keep this out there.....:kick:


You think maybe the MSM will pick this story up? :rofl: :rofl:

[OzarkDem]

13. And they still haven't found Bin Laden

or caught any terrorists, or prevented any terrorist attacks.

Wasn't that supposed to be the purpose of these programs?

:sarcasm:

[ThomWV]

14. Put this in perspective - that is how many they did With warrants. How many did they do Without?

[tekisui]

16. If each session averaged a minute, it would be over 350 days

of information. That's just to hear/read it once.

They are not seriously studying that much information. They are collecting much, but probably viewing only those that most interest them.

The key to this program is to let us know that they have no problem spying on anyone. As Naomi Wolf said, "Surveillance leads to fear. Fear leads to silence."

[Blackhatjack]

17. This paragraph should 'chill to the bone' any civil liberties protector....LINK

"Of note is that the software at issue, the DCS-5000 gets information from carriers after they turn on surveillance on their switches once they get a court order (CALEA mandates the switches be wiretap-compliant). That means this number ostensibly has nothing to do with the government's secret warrantless wiretapping program, or the government's data-mining of billions of call records."

[creeksneakers2]

18. It doesn't say 27 million domestic calls

Only domestic calls require FISA warrants. Perhaps the rest of the 27 million were intercepted foreign calls made in foreign nations?

[kentuck]

19. That's a lot of terrorists in our country.

I had no idea there were millions of them? Of course, everyone knows they would not intercept any phone calls of American citizens. Right?