[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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> -- Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)art.deco.studios at gmail.com 
> <mailto:art.deco.studios at gmail.com>
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