NSA Has Secret Court Order to Collect Verizon Phone Records

Susanne Posel
Occupy Corporatism
June 6, 2013

Mainstream media is reporting that the National Security Agency (NSA) has a secret court order to syphon telephone records from millions of Verizon US customers.

In April of this year, the court order was allegedly issued and will continue through July 19th. The order states that Verizon will “ongoing” and on a “daily basis” hand over data on customers to the NSA that pertain to calls made by US customers within the country and outbound calls to other countries.

The order was initiated by an application provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) to have Verizon “produce” records to the NSA “and continue production.”

Telephony metadata, which Verizon is ordered to give to the NSA, is defined as “comprehensive communications routing information . . . session identifying information, trunk identifier, telephone calling card numbers and time and duration of call.”

Essentially, telephony metadata consists of:

• Phone numbers of callers and receivers
• Serial numbers of both phones
• Possible GPS location of caller and receiver when call occurred

Verizon is bound to secrecy as the order states: “It is further ordered that no person shall disclose to any other person that the FBI or NSA has sought or obtained tangible things under this Order.”

It is not clear whether or not the contents of individual conversations are included in the order.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) granted the order. FISA was created in 1978 to “designate seven federal district court judges to review applications for warrants related to national security investigations.”

Interestingly, “warrant applications under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act are drafted by attorneys in the General Counsel’s Office at the National Security Agency” because of the necessity of a judicial warrant to “conduct national security related investigations.”

Ed McFadden, spokesman for Verizon said that the corporation had no comment with regard to the leaked secret court order.

Spying on customers of digital communications corporations is not new. The Obama administration, through the Department of Justice (DoJ), has been conducting surveillance on customers of many internet service providers (ISPs) such as Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and others.

This is known as the DIB Cyber Pilot .
The justification is an endeavoring to monitor digital infrastructure to protect the US government from hackers.

DIB is now ongoing, under the name Joint Cybersecurity Services Pilot (JCSP), and collaborated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) who renamed the program Enhanced Cybersecurity Services (ECS).

DHS has analyzed the ECS and claims that the corporate participants are prompted to “an electronic login banner [saying] information and data on the network may be monitored or disclosed to third parties, and/or that the network users’ communications on the network are not private.”

Tim Clemente, former FBI counterterrorism agent, explains that government agencies “have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation.”

In fact, all conversations being had in America are intercepted and monitored without warrant in real time. Clement states that “no digital communication is secure” which includes:

• Phone calls
• Emails
• Online chats

All these communications are collected and stored for use at the discretion of the government.

In 2006, the NSA was secretly collecting phone calls made by Americans through corporations such as Verizon, BellSouth, and AT&T.

The majority of the people surveyed were under no suspicion of a crime. The NSA simply analyzed the calls, looking for patterns under the guise of searching for terrorist activity.

Late last year, Verizon patented technology that turns a DVR into a personal spying tool to watch Americans in their own homes.

Verizon is calling this endeavor FierceCable that is able to display “acute sensitivity in customers’ living rooms: argument sounds prompt ads for marriage counseling, and sounds of cuddling.”

Verizon explains: “If the detection system determines that a couple is arguing, a service provider would be able to send an ad for marriage counseling to a TV or mobile device in the room. If the couple utters words that indicate they are cuddling, they would receive ads for a romantic getaway vacation, a commercial for a contraceptive, a commercial for flowers, or commercials for romantic movies.”

In home ambient activities such as “eating, exercising, laughing, reading, sleeping, talking, singing, humming, cleaning, and playing a musical instrument; as well as cuddling, fighting, participating in a game or sporting event” can be surveilled using this technology. All cellular phones can interact with this device as a separate mode of surveillance.

Information associated with the user, such as gesture, profile, voice and facial recognition are methods that can identify the user which will produce the most effective advertisement based on the “media content presentation system” (MCPS).