Dennis Claxton wrote:
>
> Doug quoted:
>
> >The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone
> >call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by
> >AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the
> >arrangement told USA TODAY.
>
> In applications for wiretap authorization (few of which are denied)
> there is boilerplate language about phone toll record analysis being
> a good investigative tool, but not enough to achieve the goals of
> "this investigation." Toll records get a foot in the door, then you
> get a court order.
Probably, but it is more serious than that. as I've recently posted on the marxist list:
Louis Proyect wrote: [same material Doug has posted]
This is called traffic analysis, one of three divisions of "communications intelligence." (The other two are cryptanalysis and area studies.) It has always been the main source of communications intelligence, since what is derived from the content of intercepted/decrypted messages is very often too spotty (and trivial) to be of much use. Traffic flow can be a gold mine of information. And this is why this NSA project should be taken rather more seriously than wiretaps, etc. -----
That is, the phone records, without any wiretaps or other access to content, can provide immense amounts of information. And without the trouble of listening to endless hours of chit-chat on wiretap tapes.
E.g., P phones once to Q. P also phones once to R. No big deal, and probably not a lot of information from a record of the calls. But then Q phones many many times to R. Both phone 2 times to S -- and the single calls PtoQ and PtoR immediately follow those calls from RtoS. Bingo. And even without today's computing power such records can reveal all sorts of interesting information
Carrol