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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNSA Collecting All the Information Needed to Kill You
From the Washington Post:
On the line with the SEAL was the drone operator and a collector, an NSA employee at the agencys gigantic base at Fort Gordon in Augusta, Ga. The collector was controlling electronic surveillance equipment in the airspace over the part of Afghanistan where the CIA had zeroed in on one particular person. The SEAL pleaded with the collector to locate the cellphone in Afghanistan that matched the phone number that the SEAL had just given him, according to someone with knowledge of the incident who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
The collector had never before done such a thing. Before even intercepting a cellphone conversation, he was accustomed to first confirming that the user was the person he had been directed to spy on. The conversation would then be translated, analyzed, distilled and, weeks later, if deemed to be interesting, sent around the U.S. intelligence community and the White House.
On that day, though, the minutes mattered.
We just want you to find the phone! the SEAL urged. No one cared about the conversation it might be transmitting.
The CIA wanted the phone as a targeting beacon to kill its owner.
By September 2004, a new NSA technique enabled the agency to find cellphones even when they were turned off. JSOC troops called this The Find, and it gave them thousands of new targets, including members of a burgeoning al-Qaeda-sponsored insurgency in Iraq, according to members of the unit.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-growth-fueled-by-need-to-target-terrorists/2013/07/21/24c93cf4-f0b1-11e2-bed3-b9b6fe264871_story.html
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/21/1225525/-Breaking-NSA-Collecting-All-the-Information-Needed-to-Kill-You
Why Snowden Asked Visitors in Hong Kong to Refrigerate Their Phones
By HEATHER MURPHY
New York Times Lede Blog
June 25, 2013, 9:41 am
Before a dinner of pizza and fried chicken late Sunday in Hong Kong, Edward J. Snowden insisted that a group of lawyers advising him in the Chinese territory hide their cellphones in the refrigerator of the home where he was staying, to block any eavesdropping, as my colleague Keith Bradsher reported.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/why-snowdens-visitors-put-their-phones-in-the-fridge/
Why a refrigerator? The answer does not, as some might assume, have anything to do with temperature. In fact, it does not matter particularly if the refrigerator was plugged in. It is the materials that make up refrigerator walls that could potentially turn them into anti-eavesdropping devices http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/world/asia/snowden-departure-from-hong-kong.html?_r=2&
Mojorabbit
(16,020 posts)Response to kpete (Original post)
Downwinder This message was self-deleted by its author.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/21/1225525/-Breaking-NSA-Collecting-All-the-Information-Needed-to-Kill-You
...stupid hyperbolic Daily Kos diary title.
NSA growth fueled by need to target terrorists
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-growth-fueled-by-need-to-target-terrorists/2013/07/21/24c93cf4-f0b1-11e2-bed3-b9b6fe264871_story.html
Octafish
(55,745 posts)We the People formed a more perfect Union to stay away from this kind of thing.
AllINeedIsCoffee
(772 posts)Bueller?
Bueller?
leveymg
(36,418 posts)These killings have been abroad, but these things proceed incrementally.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/eric-holder-americans-killed-drones/story?id=19236300
Attorney General Eric Holder has disclosed in a letter to Congress that four Americans were killed by U.S. drones in the course of the government's attacks on terrorists.
"Since 2009, the United States, in the conduct of U.S. counterterrorism operations against al-Qaida and its associated forces outside of areas of active hostilities, has specifically targeted and killed one U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Aulaqi," Holder wrote.
"The United States is further aware of three other U.S. citizens who have been killed in such U.S. counterterrorism operations over that same time period: Samir Khan, 'Abd al-Rahman Anwar al-Aulaki and Jude Mohammed. These individuals were not (it is claimed) specifically targeted by the United States," Holder wrote.
Previous to 2009, http://www.juancole.com/2013/05/continue-targeted-killing.html
At least three additional US citizens have been killed in US drone attacks. In the first ever drone strike outside a battlefield, US citizen Kamal Darwish was among six men killed by the CIA in Yemen in 2002. The Bush administration insisted at the time that the intended targets were alleged al Qaeda suspects accompanying Darwish in the vehicle.
And veteran Washington reporter Bob Woodward has revealed that on November 7 2008, many Westerners, including some US passport holders died in an attack near Miranshah in North Waziristan.
As Woodward noted in his book Obamas Wars, in a subsequent meeting with Pakistans President Zardari The CIA would not reveal the particulars due to the implications under American law. A top secret CIA map detailing the attacks had been given to the Pakistanis. Missing from it was the alarming fact about the American deaths The CIA was not going to elaborate.
markiv
(1,489 posts)but if they ever do, they'll be the first to tell us about it
this administration is all about transparency
cali
(114,904 posts)It's about the technology and who controls its use, and who will potentially control it. It's about signature strikes that are happening now. I realize that some not very sharp people are as placidly OK with all of this as cows grazing in a Vermont field. Forgive me if I don't find that terribly reassuring. Too many times in history, surveillance has turned internal with disastrous results. That it may not happen is no reason to be complacent.
Arctic Dave
(13,812 posts)under the pretense of TWOT, now they will use it elsewhere.
Just like they prison state they made Iraq.
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)But it is just "meta data".
They fear a general uprising against the kleptocracy far more than jihadist idiots.
Progressive dog
(6,904 posts)It doesn't need to be put in a refrigerator, if it has no power it can't put out a signal, if it can't put out a signal no one can track it.
Downwinder
(12,869 posts)Progressive dog
(6,904 posts)It would be possible to make a cellphone that didn't really turn off, the problem becomes how you keep that hidden from the user and why would the manufacturer do this.
warrprayer
(4,734 posts)via the CALEB back door without even indicating that they have been turned on to the user. Taking out the battery is the only surefire way to turn them off.
Progressive dog
(6,904 posts)fridges don't work.
warrprayer
(4,734 posts)... wait, let me rephrase that...
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1029-6140191.html
Progressive dog
(6,904 posts)To access the microphone, the phone must be on. Let me repeat, the phone must be on!!
warrprayer
(4,734 posts)"The surveillance technique came to light in an opinion published this week by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan. He ruled that the "roving bug" was legal because federal wiretapping law is broad enough to permit eavesdropping even of conversations that take place near a suspect's cell phone.
Kaplan's opinion said that the eavesdropping technique "functioned whether the phone was powered on or off." Some handsets can't be fully powered down without removing the battery; for instance, some Nokia models will wake up when turned off if an alarm is set. "
from the cnet link
Progressive dog
(6,904 posts)the phone had been modified to TRANSMIT the output of the microphone to a RECEIVER.
If an alarm is set and it wasn't a secret on-it turned on for a purpose and sounded an alarm-- like hey I'm bugging you now. Not fully powered down is far away from on.
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)I've also figured out that if I just stop using all of the tech invented since 1978 my privacy won't be invaded and I'll be safe from intrusive mass domestic surveillance in clear violation of the 4th amendment, except of course that my failure to be "on the grid" will set off a red flag and result in more traditional physical surveillance techniques.
Again, thanks for -splaining this.
Progressive dog
(6,904 posts)Did they write the 4th amendment before or after telephones, telegraphs, or other electronic communications?
Anyway, they have to catch Eddie before they go after you, so if they stop talking about him that would be the time to go off the grid.
They might even use your home wiring as a microphone and read what you say from the voice frequency modulation on the power lines, the only way to stop this would be the main circuit breaker unless they can turn that back on too.
tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)then secret robots eliminate the "threat"
it won't be long before we start eliminating the middlemen and let the machines take care of it all.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)markiv
(1,489 posts)it's what 'CONELRAD' was all about, alternating emergency broadcast tower use so that enemy bombers couldnt use them for zeroing in on targets
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CONELRAD
NoPasaran
(17,291 posts)I hear the reception sucks anyway.