[Vision2020] Are the police tracking your calls?
Paul Rumelhart
godshatter at yahoo.com
Wed May 23 19:12:23 PDT 2012
I'm working on the assumption that I'm not on the governments top ten
list. I don't put a lot out there, either. But I do like to correspond
through email and look at web pages. So why not do so in privacy?
Paul
On 05/23/2012 06:55 PM, Donovan Arnold wrote:
> Paul writes,
> "The VPN (virtual private network) encrypts the connection between
> your computer and the rest of the internet, so nobody without a spare
> /*supercomputer*/ will be reading your emails or seeing what web pages
> you go to."
> Gosh, let's hope the government never gets a hold of one of those
> supercomputers. My secret to not having any unwanted information about
> me or my personal conversations over the Internet leaked is to just
> not put them there in the first place. I know it is low tech, but
> sometimes low tech is the best way to go. Americans spent millions
> developing a pen that could write in space. Russians, they just used a
> number 2 pencil.
> Donovan J. Arnold
>
> *From:* Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com>
> *To:* Art Deco <art.deco.studios at gmail.com>; "vision2020 at moscow.com"
> <vision2020 at moscow.com>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, May 23, 2012 5:43 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [Vision2020] Are the police tracking your calls?
> I recommend using a private VPN service for this reason among others.
> The VPN (virtual private network) encrypts the connection between your
> computer and the rest of the internet, so nobody without a spare
> supercomputer will be reading your emails or seeing what web pages you
> go to. It can also help keep ISPs from doing deep packet inspection,
> which some ISPs use to vary your data speeds if you use bit torrent or
> if you are using a competitors video stream. I don't know if any
> local ISPs do that, but better safe than sorry. It can also help keep
> advertisers from getting a bead on where you are geographically, which
> can foil their attempts to figure out what you search for and what
> sort of stuff you like to buy online.
>
> The downside is that you have to pay for them (a small monthly fee)
> and they can be slow if you use the wrong private VPN provider. You
> can mitigate this by only activating the VPN when you are worried
> about privacy (such as downloading email or browsing the web) and
> leave it off for when you play World of Warcraft.
>
> I have nothing against the police getting this information, provided
> they get a warrant from a judge. Why make it easy for them? The real
> reason I use it, though, it to prevent others from intercepting my
> communications either locally or somewhere between me and the endpoint
> I'm going to. I don't like what advertisers and other large companies
> are doing with what they know about each of us, so I fight against
> this. I also recommend browsing the web with Firefox with AdBlock and
> NoScript extensions.
>
> Paul
>
> *From:* Art Deco <art.deco.studios at gmail.com>
> *To:* vision2020 at moscow.com
> *Sent:* Wednesday, May 23, 2012 3:30 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [Vision2020] Are the police tracking your calls?
> A closer to home issue is whose emails, texts, twitters, etc are the
> various local law enforcement agencies tracking on the internet
> without warrants, and which ISPs are allowing/abetting them by
> cooperating.w.
> On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 2:18 PM, Donovan Arnold
> <donovanjarnold2005 at yahoo.com <mailto:donovanjarnold2005 at yahoo.com>>
> wrote:
>
> Their new symbol should be the same eagle being stripped
> searched of all its feathers and another guy confiscating and
> making a copy of the key it is clutching so tightly, every time it
> tries to make another flight.
> Donovan J. Arnold
>
> *From:* Ron Force <rforce2003 at yahoo.com <mailto:rforce2003 at yahoo.com>>
> *To:* Donovan Arnold <donovanjarnold2005 at yahoo.com
> <mailto:donovanjarnold2005 at yahoo.com>>; Art Deco
> <art.deco.studios at gmail.com <mailto:art.deco.studios at gmail.com>>;
> "vision2020 at moscow.com <mailto:vision2020 at moscow.com>"
> <vision2020 at moscow.com <mailto:vision2020 at moscow.com>>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, May 23, 2012 9:52 AM
> *Subject:* Re: [Vision2020] Are the police tracking your calls?
> These are the guys intercepting international calls (and some say,
> all calls).
> http://www.nsa.gov/
> Ron ForceMoscow Idaho USA
> *From:* Donovan Arnold <donovanjarnold2005 at yahoo.com
> <mailto:donovanjarnold2005 at yahoo.com>>
> *To:* Art Deco <art.deco.studios at gmail.com
> <mailto:art.deco.studios at gmail.com>>; "vision2020 at moscow.com
> <mailto:vision2020 at moscow.com>" <vision2020 at moscow.com
> <mailto:vision2020 at moscow.com>>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, May 22, 2012 8:35 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [Vision2020] Are the police tracking your calls?
> I don't think the local police do tht much. But I think it is
> evidently clear the FBI and CIA do with international calls. They
> have hardware that listens to cell phone conversations over the
> airwaves looking for key words and phrases like your voice
> recognition software on your android. It isn't possible for the
> police to track every conversation, not to mention it would be
> boring and extremely expensive unless you were a suspect in a crime.
> I am more concerned about Google. They control phones, Internet
> searches, emails, personal passwords, credit and financial
> information, soon even your car, and do not have the same
> restrictions on the use of them that law enforcement and the
> government have. You legally consent to giving them that
> information when you use their software, just like you legally
> consent to a strip search when you enter an airport.
> Donovan J. Arnold
>
> *From:* Art Deco <art.deco.studios at gmail.com
> <mailto:art.deco.studios at gmail.com>>
> *To:* vision2020 at moscow.com <mailto:vision2020 at moscow.com>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, May 22, 2012 4:29 PM
> *Subject:* [Vision2020] Are the police tracking your calls?
>
>
> [CNN]
> *Are the police tracking your calls? *
> By Catherine Crump , Special to CNN
> updated 3:23 PM EDT, Tue May 22, 2012
>
> CNN.com
>
> Are the police tracking your calls?
> Whom you text and call and where you go can reveal a great deal
> about you, says Catherine Crump.
> Whom you text and call and where you go can reveal a great deal
> about you, says Catherine Crump.
> Editor's note: Catherine Crump is a staff attorney with the
> American Civil Liberties Union's Speech, Privacy and Technology
> Project.
> (CNN) -- Do you know how long your cell phone company keeps
> records of whom you text, who calls you or what places you have
> traveled? Do you know how often cell phone companies turn over
> this information to the police and whether they first ask the
> police to get a warrant based on probable cause?
> No, you don't. Not unless you work for a cell phone company or a
> law enforcement agency with a specialty in electronic
> surveillance. You aren't alone: Congress and the courts have no
> idea either.
> The little we do know is worrisome. The companies are not legally
> required to turn over your information simply because a police
> officer is curious about you. Yet wireless carriers sell this
> information to police all the time.
> As far as the cell phone companies are concerned, the less
> Americans know about it the better.
> Whom you text and call and where you go (tracked by your cell
> phone as long as it's on) can reveal a great deal about you. Your
> calling patterns can show which friends matter to you the most,
> and your travel patterns can reveal what political and religious
> meetings you attend and what doctors you visit. Over time, this
> data accumulates into a dossier portraying details of your life so
> intimate that you may not have thought of them yourself. In
> comparison with companies such as Facebook and Google, which
> collect, store and use our information in one way or another, cell
> phone companies are less transparent.
> U.S. Rep. Edward Markey, co-chairman of the Congressional
> Bipartisan Privacy Caucus, recently requested that cell phone
> companies disclose basic statistics on how our personal data is
> shared with the government. Let's hope the companies are
> forthcoming -- but don't hold your breath.
> To be sure, there can be legitimate reasons for law enforcement
> agents to track individuals' movements. For example, when officers
> can demonstrate to a judge that they have a good reason to believe
> that tracking will turn up evidence of a crime. But with a
> surveillance technique this powerful, the public has a strong
> interest in understanding how it is used to ensure that it is not
> abused. While the details of individual investigations can
> legitimately be kept secret, the public and our elected
> representatives have a right to know the policies in general so
> their wisdom can be debated.
> Cell phone companies have long concealed these facts, and they're
> fighting vigorously to keep it that way. In California, the cell
> phone industry recently opposed a bill that would have required
> companies to tell their customers how often and under what
> circumstances they turn over location information to the police,
> complaining that it would be "unduly burdensome."
> What little has come to light so far about the companies'
> practices does not paint a comforting picture. Addressing a
> surveillance industry conference in 2009, Sprint's electronic
> surveillance manager revealed that the company had received so
> many requests for location data that it set up a website where the
> police could conveniently access the information from the comfort
> of their desks. In just a 13-month period, he said, the company
> had provided law enforcement with 8 million individual location
> data points. Other than Sprint, we do not have even this type of
> basic information about the frequency of requests for any of the
> other cell phone companies.
> The poorly understood relationship between cell phone companies
> and police raises grave privacy concerns. Like the companies, law
> enforcement agencies have a strong incentive to keep what is
> actually happening a secret, lest the public find out and demand
> new legal protections. More than 10 years ago, the Justice
> Department convinced the House of Representatives to abandon
> legislation that would have required law enforcement agencies to
> compile similar statistics, arguing that it would turn "crime
> fighters into bookkeepers."
> The excessive secrecy has frustrated the ability of the American
> people to have an informed debate on just how much information
> police should have access to without judicial oversight or having
> to show probable cause. It has also prevented Congress and the
> courts from effectively addressing these intrusive surveillance
> powers. That is not how our system of government is supposed to work.
> It would not be difficult for the carriers to tell customers how
> their data is collected, stored and shared. In fact, an internal
> Justice Department document from 2010, dislodged through a public
> records request by the American Civil Liberties Union, showed the
> data retention policies of all major carriers on a single piece of
> paper. The phone companies have all created detailed handbooks for
> law enforcement agents describing their policies and prices
> charged for surveillance assistance, a few dated versions of which
> have seeped out onto the Internet.
> If the cell phone companies can provide this information to law
> enforcement agencies, they can and should provide basic
> information about their sharing of data with law enforcement to
> their customers, too. While law enforcement sometimes argues that
> making members of the public aware that cell phone companies can
> track them will make it more difficult to catch criminals, it is
> too late in the day for that argument now that cell phone tracking
> is a staple of television police procedurals.
> Why aren't these policies available on the companies' websites?
> With such information, consumers could vote with their wallets and
> punish those companies that don't protect privacy. Keeping their
> customers in the dark about surveillance is better for business,
> it seems.
> We pay the cell phone companies to provide us with a service, not
> keep tabs on us for the government. And yet the companies that now
> have access to some of our most private information refuse to
> reveal even the most basic facts about their policies? We deserve
> better.
> w.
>
> 4 5 1 , 5 6 0 , 5 3 1
>
> <http://www.formatdynamics.com/saving-paper-trees-ink-and-money/>
>
>
>
>
> ! <http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/22/opinion/crump-cellphone-privacy/>
>
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> <mailto:art.deco.studios at gmail.com>
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