= new reply since forum marked as read
Auto warranty extensions, people wanting to buy my house, Microsoft and Spectrum calls, etc.....
.......
I just hope the CIA collects data usage fees and sends it to Treasury.......
Thanks for posting this, Marie999. Not surprising at all after 9/11 but these damn things need to be reined in after a reasonable number of years.
The goal of wholesale surveillance, as (Hannah) Arendt wrote in “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” is not, in the end, to discover crimes, “but to be on hand when the government decides to arrest a certain category of the population.” And because Americans’ emails, phone conversations, Web searches and geographical movements are recorded and stored in perpetuity in government databases, there will be more than enough “evidence” to seize us should the state deem it necessary. This information waits like a deadly virus inside government vaults to be turned against us. It does not matter how trivial or innocent that information is. In totalitarian states, justice, like truth, is irrelevant.
Chris Hedges, The Last Gasp of American Democracy
Have a link, the CNBC link isn't working for me: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10500779/Senators-CIA-secret-program-collects-American-data.html
A lot of agencies and other groups operating by or linked to the National Counterterrorism Center work on analyzing data collected by various programs. Other groups and entities (some without official names) access this data as needed. After 9/11 with the Patriot Act and other legislation, the firewalls between agencies were at least partially eliminated. Data sharing was facilitated in the name of national security and Homeland saw to it that inter-agency operating groups maintained all the access they needed.
Places like the Utah Data Center store information on an almost unimaginable scale. Some data collect by the US is shared among counties with whom we have treaties and agreements. Some agreements are public knowledge (like Five Eyes) and some are run on the fly. The State Department may or may not be involved. But places like EPIC and LCIC provide facilities for groups that chase terror groups, cartels and other enemies of the state.
Is it legal? I suspect legality is determined by powerful and influential folks during unofficial meetings on outcome based results. These folks are very good at what they do and there have been hints that what can't be done legally here is privately financed to be done elsewhere. 