Categorically false.
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Feds Push for Tracking Cell Phones
- Thread starter HardOCP News
- Start date
Categorically false.
in this capitalistic system we "all love", they must spend big when things go bad to keep the credit from collapsing. we've done it numerous times now the last 100 years, its the system our government wants. if most businesses didnt rely on credit and were forced to operate on their own budgets, the government wouldnt care less if the major banks collapsed. but thats not reality. reality is the national/international banks run our government, and when things go bad they just print more monopoly money. this will continue until a whole bunch of people want to do something about it.
no, its not. they went in and physically tapped all the major network hubs of this country, right into the fiber lines. they have a direct link to all communication, its not secret either.
I know a few friends in the CIA, and this is what they've told me:
When you place a call, chances are it is routed through some sort of computer speech recognition system that monitors it for keywords. No, not all calls are monitored - I obviously don't know the exact percentage - but the monitoring does happen. It probably happens more often for international calls...etc.
If the computer recognizes suspicious phrases, a human will listen to your call for a few minutes to make sure you aren't plotting to destroy the world. After he realizes that citizen # 34,256,893 is not a terrorist, he will move on to another caller.
If your phone call is really suspicious and the human listener thinks you're up to something, then yes, they'll pull the GPS info (or at least cell tower triangulation) and investigate further. But really, unless you make an actual bomb threat or something similar, you'll never know that any of this happened.
It's been going on since 9/11 and will continue. And personally, I don't have any issue with it. The pragmatist in me doesn't give a shit, since because I'm not a terrorist the system will never affect me. The idealist in me thinks that the best type of security is that which is invisible, and I would much rather some CIA agent know where I am than, say, my parents. And to be completely honest, the nerd in me thinks it's pretty cool that we have the ability to do this.
And no, I do not think the government is out to get me. Call me ignorant, stupid, a sheep...etc all you want. But I haven't seen any evidence that the government has malicious intent.
When you place a call, chances are it is routed through some sort of computer speech recognition system that monitors it for keywords. No, not all calls are monitored - I obviously don't know the exact percentage - but the monitoring does happen. It probably happens more often for international calls...etc.
If the computer recognizes suspicious phrases, a human will listen to your call for a few minutes to make sure you aren't plotting to destroy the world. After he realizes that citizen # 34,256,893 is not a terrorist, he will move on to another caller.
If your phone call is really suspicious and the human listener thinks you're up to something, then yes, they'll pull the GPS info (or at least cell tower triangulation) and investigate further. But really, unless you make an actual bomb threat or something similar, you'll never know that any of this happened.
It's been going on since 9/11 and will continue. And personally, I don't have any issue with it. The pragmatist in me doesn't give a shit, since because I'm not a terrorist the system will never affect me. The idealist in me thinks that the best type of security is that which is invisible, and I would much rather some CIA agent know where I am than, say, my parents. And to be completely honest, the nerd in me thinks it's pretty cool that we have the ability to do this.
And no, I do not think the government is out to get me. Call me ignorant, stupid, a sheep...etc all you want. But I haven't seen any evidence that the government has malicious intent.
Also, the fact that many in this thread did not know that the type of tracking mentioned in the article already exists should tell you something about its intrusiveness. If you didn't even know the government has been tracking you for the past nine years, how can you say such tracking negatively affects you?
oh. my. god. may he have mercy on your enslaved soul!
seriously though, i am disheartened that you would know exactly what theyre doing to us and still think its OK. its not, and if you have ever been steamrolled by the bullshit legal system you would be terrified of this domestic random wire tapping.this i agree. i still regularly have to explain to people the bill that was passed into law around 2001, which mandated that all cell phones be tracked by gps at all times. does everyone really think gps was made for and given to us because its so cheap and easy to implement? hell no.
Devistater
Gawd
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Steve, you missed a key quote that shoulda been on front page
Three big things in that quote, a) this is warrantLESS, b) they say that american's have no reasonable expectaction of privacy (even if they are applying it to cell phones, they surely want to apply it to other things too), c) they don't think Fourth Amendment applies to cell phones
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10451518-38.html
Three big things in that quote, a) this is warrantLESS, b) they say that american's have no reasonable expectaction of privacy (even if they are applying it to cell phones, they surely want to apply it to other things too), c) they don't think Fourth Amendment applies to cell phones
TheCommander
2[H]4U
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Yep, no differences at all. Never mind that the largest Bush deficit is smaller than the smallest Obama deficit. In fact, the first Obama deficit is larger than Bush's 8 year total. And soon we will be told that taxes just "have" to be raised as Obama tries to pretend that he is a deficit hawk. I think this graph shows a pretty big difference in ACTIONS.
I will tell you another huge difference: one party wanted to increase the cost and decrease the quality of healthcare for people who are currently insured so that jobless deadbeats could get insurance. The other party stopped it cold.
Democrats and Republicans are the same. They both are chopping away at the Consitution. First the Bush administration and now the Obama administration. Even before that it was happening but Bush took it to a new level and now Obama is.
What it comes down to, both parties spend insane amounts of money, cater to special interest groups, and are increasing the size of the government.
new world order. theyre trying to grow big enough to envelop enough resources to create a real world government, one that has final say on all land of this planet. itll happen eventually, especially because we citizens dont have near the spine we used to. this all started 100 years ago with the federal reserve, but you can imagine how long it had to take to dull the most rebellious people in centuries. now that we have the best of everything, it wasnt hard to rip up the freedom contract and claim it to 'be for the better'.
Do you really think all government actions of the past century are part of a conspiracy to institute a corrupt world order to satisfy the power thirst of a select few? Really?
I'll be the first to admit: you're giving the government way too much credit.
oh. my. god. may he have mercy on your enslaved soul!
What exactly are they "doing to us?" If it weren't for my contacts in the CIA, I would have no idea any of this was happening. How is this system negatively affecting my life? The way I see it, the effects of the tracking on me are:
Pros:
-Some acts of terrorism are prevented
-Emergency services can find me if I need help
-My phone can be tracked if ever stolen
-The cell phone network is more reliable as the government has a vested interest in keeping it running
Cons:
-Slightly higher taxes to pay for the intelligence operations
To me, that's a fine tradeoff. The government is not doing anything to me. They're doing something to the bits of information flowing through the air that orginated from my cell phone, yes; but they aren't doing anything to me. From my perspective, I see no difference in a world with wiretapping and a world without wiretapping other than the pros and cons I listed above. Furthermore, I don't see how anyone could claim the contrary. What has the wiretapping done to you? The ideal security system is one which legitimate users do not even notice exists.
I understand your point about the legal system. If the wiretapping activities resulted in a lot of false alarms and annoyed innocent citizens with misguided investigations and false charges, then yes, that would certainly be an intrusive system. But I challenge you to show me evidence that such false alarms are commonplace. Considering that the existence of this system is supposed to be a secret, the government has a vested interest in avoiding such incidents; therefore, I doubt they go after someone unless absolutely certain it isn't a false lead. I believe, since the system's introduction nine years ago, I have seen one such incident in the news. And this seems like something the news would take off and run with, given the opportunity.
GPS was created for the military during the Cold War. I doubt its original intentions were for the government to track all of its citizens.
Although this does bring up an interesting point. The US military owns the GPS satellite network. Anyone with a cell phone is a user of that public network. Legally, the US government may be entitled to use the data passing through their network however they please. Just as we say Google can do whatever they want with your search history, the US government can do whatever they want with your GPS logs.
People don't realize how much of their everyday lives rely on public infrastructure.
86 5.0L
Supreme [H]ardness
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they're invading your privacy lol, thats like a random person, looking at you thru your house window, recording you with a camera
Well I guess you're right about that. I do believe cell phone networks, however, also have public funds invested.
Lol. I don't mean to sound hotheaded, like I've got some super-secret information about this that no one else knows because of my inside contacts.
The secret is out by now, no doubt. But I do not believe the US government formally recognizes the existence of the wiretapping - or at least, not its extent.A random person recording me through my window all day would make me uncomfortable, yes.
But if someone was paid by the government to record me through my window for five seconds without me knowing when - just knowing that it would happen sometime throughout the day - I wouldn't feel as invaded.
And if that person was going to do the recording from an undercover vehicle that I wouldn't notice, I would feel even less invaded.
And if that person was going to record 2,000 other homes along with mine, I would feel even less invaded.
And if that person was only going to record half of the homes in the community, and I wouldn't know if mine was selected or not, I would feel even less invaded.
And if a computer would actually be doing the recordings, with only a very small chance that my recording would be viewed by a human in an office miles away, I would feel even less invaded.
The larger and farther away a security operation is from its users, the less invasion of privacy takes place. Knowing that your phone call might be listened to, along with thousands of others, by some guy you'll never meet, in an unknown location, for a few seconds at most is, IMO, hardly an invasion of privacy at all.
I'm not too worried, I used 911 from my cell the other day and the 911 operator had no idea where I was. Sometimes I get an operator for the wrong city.
However, I'd never accept the argument of, "If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about"
It's human nature to have something to hide illegal or not. It's also human nature to abuse power over
other human beings. That's not cynical, it's reality. It's a better man than could but chooses not to...somebody profound like Bruce Lee or someone said that...
However, I'd never accept the argument of, "If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about"
It's human nature to have something to hide illegal or not. It's also human nature to abuse power over
other human beings. That's not cynical, it's reality. It's a better man than could but chooses not to...somebody profound like Bruce Lee or someone said that...
Monkey God
Mangina Full of Sand
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My father worked for AT&T his whole adult life. (Retired a while back). They had the ability to record any call made back in the 70's. Fact. They did so without warrants.
Regardless of who it is or where they are doing it. IT IS STILL INVASION OF PRIVACY
We do not live in a Capitalist system, don't fool yourself. China is more Capitalist than the U.S. is.
I'm calling BS. Why would anyone in the CIA risk their jobs and national security telling you their plans so you could come and play "I have inside info everybody!" on a internet message forum? Nope, not buying it.
piscian18
[H]F Junkie
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Not sure how I feel about this because I really really like Ghost in the Shell
night_2004
2[H]4U
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Alright, I can solve this problem. Turn the phone off, and remove the battery. Doesn't exactly work when you need to receive calls though.
or use skype. use a prepaid card to pay for it, and connect through a mcdonalds wifi... very cheap calling and should be a hell of a lot more private then a cell phone. although ive heard the government can listen to skype unencrypted too so maybe its no different.
Lol. I'm not certain of the quality of the information myself. This is just someone I ride to work with whose wife works for the DHS. One time I pondered whether the government could track your cell phone, and he replied with a serious face, "they can..." That led to an interesting conversation.
We have private property, investors, and a free market. The private sector makes up a large majority of the jobs in the US. I would call that a capitalist system.
We do have a public sector, and recently, it has been getting larger in relation to the private one; as of yet, it is still foolish to call our economy government-based, however.
You're right, though; present day China is very capitalist, perhaps moreso than the US.
If you're going to do something illegal (premeditated) then take the battery out of the phone or better yet leave it in someone elses car so you have an alibi. Honestly mr Government I was no where near that crime scene. Check your cell phone tracking logs for my whereabouts. Now get the driver to side with you and you are all good.
Zepher
[H]ipster Replacement
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That doesn't work. As soon as you pay for said phone, security systems grab your image and upload it to a database for facial recognition. They also take screen grabs as you leave the store to see if you drove there and then they can grab the plate info of the car and try to extrapolate who you are.
Best thing is to have some random person buy you the phone, that way they get targeted.
Having the ability to record any call =/= all calls are recorded
I know several people in the intelligence community (not household names, but near the top of important agencies). The process HOCP4ME described is accurate. The guy who said all calls are recorded and could be listened to years later is a loon.
Umm, this isn't classified info, it's just not something commonly known or discussed. At any rate, I fully support these efforts. Most of you have no idea how easy it would be to pull off a biological attack that would make 9-11 look like a joke. If there was a massive warehouse with recordings of every single phonecall to be datamined, that would be over the line. But the current policy is a good balance between privacy and security.