Confiscating the Phone Records of US Citizens

[heironymouspasparagus]

Breadburner:  are you okay?  In the last few months,most of your posts have not made any sense. Its not that I disagree with them or think they are mean, they are incoherent.  That wasn't a trend until recently.  What gives?

- -


The split on issues like this continues to surprise me.   We have seen a shift in the last ~25-30 years.  The conservatives are now more likely to trust the government and want to grant it more powers, the liberals are more likely to be skeptical of the power of the State and to check it.  Ideologically, that seems backwards to me. 

We went over that extensively in the cow methane section.  He is huffing way too much methane and nitrous oxide.



It is backwards.  Conservatives are more likely to "trust" it because they have had such overwhelming control for so long.  The reverse was true previously, and reversed before that, and so forth.   I don't trust either side, ever.

[patric]

The split on issues like this continues to surprise me.   We have seen a shift in the last ~25-30 years.  The conservatives are now more likely to trust the government and want to grant it more powers, the liberals are more likely to be skeptical of the power of the State and to check it.  Ideologically, that seems backwards to me. 

Its possible the conservatives furthest to the right assume they will be on the winning side if we sink into a police state, believing they will somehow be able to control it.   A delusion fueled by opioids and too much National Enquirer?

[Breadburner]

LOL...Phone records...Hah....

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/26/us/christy-mirack-slaying-update-trnd/index.html

[patric]

Khashoggi friend sues Israeli firm over hacking he says contributed to the journalist's murder

A Canada-based Saudi activist filed suit this week against an Israeli cybersecurity firm, alleging that the Saudi government used the firm's spyware to hack his cellphone and access sensitive conversations he conducted with slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Attorneys for Omar Abdulaziz, 27, who is based in Montreal, lodged a civil case against the NSO Group in Tel Aviv on Sunday, legal papers show. The opposition activist has said he learned that his phone had been hacked in August, some two months after he clicked on an infected link.

The Citizen Lab, a University of Toronto project that investigates digital espionage aimed at civil society, concluded with "high confidence" that the Saudi government targeted his cellphone using Pegasus spyware created by NSO.

Before being notified that his phone had been hacked, Abdulaziz was in regular contact with Khashoggi, with whom he had struck up a friendship. Khashoggi, a contributor to The Washington Post's Global Opinions section and a critic of the kingdom, was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 by members of a 15-man team from Saudi Arabia.

The legal filing argues that the Israeli software provided the Saudis with knowledge of conversations between Abdulaziz and Khashoggi about projects they were working on. The sophisticated software enables the operator to access all information stored on a target's phone and to secretly film or record audio.

The filing says Abdulaziz will argue that use of Pegasus spyware to expose his communications with Khashoggi contributed to the decision to murder him.

The NSO spyware also has been used to target two Saudi activists in London and an Amnesty International researcher, according to the Citizen Lab.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/khashoggi-friend-sues-israeli-firm-over-hacking-he-says-contributed-to-the-journalists-murder/2018/12/03/ddcb28ee-f708-11e8-8642-c9718a256cbd_story.html

[patric]

TULSA, Oklahoma - On Wednesday the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics Tulsa District Office got information from the Tulsa Office of Homeland Security investigators that a package was seized by the United States Customs and Border Protection which contained a half pound of ecstasy.
http://www.newson6.com/story/39672429/tulsa-food-truck-owner-busted-for-various-drugs

Cough...cough... Stingray...Cough Cough...

[patric]

Most states ban texting behind the wheel, but a legislative proposal could make Nevada one of the first states to allow police to use a contentious technology to find out if a person was using a cellphone during a car crash.

The measure is igniting privacy concerns and has led lawmakers to question the practicality of the technology, even while acknowledging the threat of distracted driving.

If the Nevada measure passes, it would allow police to use a device known as the "textalyzer," which connects to a cellphone and looks for user activity, such as opening a Facebook messenger call screen. It is made by Israel-based company Cellebrite, which says the technology does not access or store personal content.

Opponents air concerns that the measure violates the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure.

Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, also raised questions over how the software will work and if it will be open sourced so the public can ensure it doesn't access personal content.

John Whetsel, former sheriff of Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, said the practice is not consistent among agencies because distracted driving is still a relatively new issue. Plus, laws vary between states and securing a search warrant for a phone can depend on an agency's resources, he said.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/03/17/cell-during-car-crash-nevada-may-let-cops-use-tech-find-out/3194082002/

[patric]

Every minute of every day, everywhere on the planet, dozens of companies — largely unregulated, little scrutinized — are logging the movements of tens of millions of people with mobile phones and storing the information in gigantic data files. The Times Privacy Project obtained one such file, by far the largest and most sensitive ever to be reviewed by journalists. It holds more than 50 billion location pings from the phones of more than 12 million Americans as they moved through several major cities.

Each piece of information in this file represents the precise location of a single smartphone over a period of several months in 2016 and 2017. The data was provided to Times Opinion by sources who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to share it and could face severe penalties for doing so. The sources of the information said they had grown alarmed about how it might be abused and urgently wanted to inform the public and lawmakers.


https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/19/opinion/location-tracking-cell-phone.html

[patric]

    In seven years, no one has named a single American who died as a result of revealing the unlawful program of domestic mass surveillance—because it didn't happen. But exposing that crime did reform American laws—and strengthen our rights. https://t.co/3nLhObCDNv
    — Edward Snowden (@Snowden) December 16, 2020

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/18/politics/gop-divided-edward-snowden-trump-pardon/index.html

[patric]

Military-grade spyware licensed by an Israeli firm to governments for tracking terrorists and criminals was used in attempted and successful hacks of 37 smartphones belonging to journalists, human rights activists, business executives and two women close to murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to an investigation by The Washington Post and 16 media partners.

The phones appeared on a list of more than 50,000 numbers that are concentrated in countries known to engage in surveillance of their citizens and also known to have been clients of the Israeli firm, NSO Group, a worldwide leader in the growing and largely unregulated private spyware industry, the investigation found.
The targeting of the smartphones would appear to conflict with the stated purpose of NSO's licensing of the Pegasus spyware, which the company says is intended only for use in surveilling terrorists and major criminals.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2021/nso-spyware-pegasus-cellphones/


More than 50,000 terrorists? What constitutes terrorists in that part of the world?

Israeli president calls Ben & Jerry's boycott 'a new form of terrorism'
https://nypost.com/2021/07/21/israeli-president-calls-ben-jerrys-boycott-a-new-form-of-terrorism/





https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/jul/19/edward-snowden-calls-spyware-trade-ban-pegasus-revelations