[Vision2020] Are the police tracking your calls?

Paul Rumelhart godshatter at yahoo.com
Wed May 23 18:13:07 PDT 2012


The one I use is called VyprVPN and is made by a company called golden 
frog.  It's a little more expensive, starting at $14.99 a month.  I get 
it free through another service I subscribe to (Giganews - for reading 
Usenet).  There are others out there, but I don't know how good they 
are.  Here is a review site I found: http://www.vpnreviews.com/  Google 
"private vpn reviews" for more.

Paul

On 05/23/2012 05:24 PM, Art Deco wrote:
> Good advice.  Do you have any recommendations for a VPN provider?
>
> w.
>
> On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 4:43 PM, Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com 
> <mailto:godshatter at yahoo.com>> wrote:
>
>     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
>     <mailto:art.deco.studios at gmail.com>>
>     *To:* vision2020 at moscow.com <mailto: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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>
>     -- 
>     Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
>     art.deco.studios at gmail.com <mailto:art.deco.studios at gmail.com>
>
>     =======================================================
>     List services made available by First Step Internet,
>     serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
>     http://www.fsr.net
>               mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com <mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com>
>     =======================================================
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
> art.deco.studios at gmail.com <mailto:art.deco.studios at gmail.com>
>
>
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>   serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
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