Spying on citizens
“SRI officials are testing a supersnoop computer system that sifts through personal information on Romanian citizens… Data can include credit-card purchases, telephone or Internet details, medical records, travel and banking information.”
“The SRI program is designed to extract relationships and correlations from large amounts of data… to use data mining technologies to sift through personal transactions in electronic data… to find ‘hidden relationships in the data’…”
“The technology is expected to analyze more than 3 million ‘relationships’ or connections per hour, says the report, which included an example of how friends, family members, locations and workplaces can be linked by pinging the data.”
Fiction, you say? It’s not possible for the Romanian government to have such massive tracking over Romanian citizens?
But I thought Romania was proudly working hard to mimic America.
Both photos from Romanian Stencil Archive
March 9th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Source?
March 9th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Sorry, CO, I’m still reeling with putrid nausea. The exercise here was to click the only link, then extrapolate imaginatively down the path we’re headed.
March 9th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
What do you mean big brother is watching? Pffft.
*cough* http://albumoftheday.com/facebook/ *cough*
March 9th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
Apparently, they already have something like that in a little secret room at AT&T. One of AT&T’s ex-technicians came forth and alledged that all the AT&T traffic *and* the traffic of AT&T peers (giant tier-1 carriers like Sprint, UUNET, Level 3, Cable&Wireless etc) is routed through that room. Basically, that means most of the Internet traffic in the US.
Have a look at this: http://www.infowars.net/articles/february2007/200207NSA.htm
March 9th, 2007 at 5:39 pm
xamox - The privacy statements of companies in Romania are just as bad, if not very often entirely worse. There seems to be either no mention of any privacy at all or a declaration of complete surrender of all privacy. I’ve yet to find any company who specifically aims to engender privacy in Romania.
CO - Of course, some people will think you’re nuts to talk about the truth of the government spying on you. I mean, if you aren’t arrested this afternoon, why worry about it? It’s idiotic to think about tomorrow, paranoid freak.
There are other similar facilities in other locations in the US, although that one is remarkable for being ousted. The government denies their programs whereby the listen to every call, read every email, save every IM message you send, archive these blog comments and then filter them looking for patterns about you, individually. This time the denials didn’t last too long because the whistle was blown.
All of this is a re-hash of Total Information Awareness which existed earlier in the Bush Administration and spied on citizens en masse. They denied the project capabilities and details during that round of spying on citizens shortly after 9/11. But eventually, admitted it was true and Congress supposedly terminated it (or large parts thereof).
Prior to Bush being elected, I remember the big hubbub about the Omnivore and Carnivore systems being rolled out into major city’s primary internet backbone exchange rooms. It was a system implemented by the FBI to monitor the personal and business communication of US citizens en masse. It would filter text, voice, and other data over the internet for trends and generate reports about individuals. They denied its existence and capabilities vehemently, but eventually admitted it.
Prior to the 9/11 security lockdown, I had been inside an interesting room more than once which hosts the majority of Houston’s data flowing through internet exchange routers in a building owned by an oil company. It was really interesting. Quite.
Shortly before that, in 1994, Congress passed CALEA which mandated that telecommunications providers be required to tap any voice communications over digital channels, such as VoIP or your sexy Yahoo chat session with the cute person using a web cam. That was almost 15 years ago. After determining that this monitoring of US citizens wasn’t enough, they began the slow roll-out of Omnivore (above).
For decades before broad adoption of the Internet, there was the Echelon program which monitored communications around the globe, including that of US citizens. Since the government body which overseeing the capture and filtering of phone calls, faxes, and more over those decades was ostensibly not allowed to monitor US citizens, they simply gave system access to the UK which acted as full partner in monitoring US citizens on behalf of the agency which was, technically, not allowed.
It was a great workaround and allowed Americans to be monitored for decades. As always, the government denied it was true and labeled people as crazy for mentioning it. Eventually, they have come to admit it was true all along.
Romania supposedly has its own history. The details seem locked away in mythology, however. I’ve yet to find much facts among the hype and fear.
More importantly, what do you think the government here is doing right now to monitor and permanently record the communications of Romanian citizens?
And will they get better in this age of American partnership on so many levels?
And how will Gigi Becali use it, if elected? What about Vadim Tudor?
Or anyone else.
March 9th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
Howdy! And welcome to a page from Mr. Bush’s world! Whose role model was the great Wizard of Oz. (the guy behind the curtain pulling the levers and pushing everyone’s buttons)
March 9th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Poindexter. More or less the same crew that’s been interoperating with one another since around the time Echelon was put into good use. It’s little wonder they intend to boost it’s capabilities, exploit the fear they’ve generated. And find a new partner in Europe who can help share the burden, in exchange for other benefits.
Here in Romania, many of the same players from the Communist Party and their SRI intelligence service still hold significant sway in the circles of power. What do you imagine their predisposition is?
“The Great Oz has spoken. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”
March 9th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
I like knowing that people check my credit card purchases. I try to make a lot of interesting purchases to entertain them.
March 9th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
Yes, in fact my RSS reader just flashed me about the discount you received on a new vibrator your purchased along with a bottle of wine shortly after the MSN chat where you talked about disappointment with your recent date, which was verified by travel logs showing your flight to visit him as well as medical records from seeing a doctor shortly afterward. But according to phone transcripts, he just now left you a pathetic voicemail to apologize awkwardly…
March 9th, 2007 at 6:41 pm
Strudel&Al-Capone, a worldwide established company is proud to inform you about its new IT services.
Official data deleting or Uploading false data -
Affair with mistress - $1,000 flat - Tax dodging 1 cent per each buck you didn’t pay- Insulting the governement $100 flat- Embargo violations 1% of earnings - ….. JUST SOME INSTANCES !
WE DO NOT SELL OPIUM-STREETWALKERS-TVs-NEWPAPERS.
We do apologize about our poor English, but our headquarters are in Sicily.
March 9th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
What no keywords for terrorism, Allah, CIA renditions? For Romania, you just need to mention Szekler autonomy, PSD corruption, CNSAS, Noua Dreapta, George Voicu, and -of course- the apparent resurrection of Frank O’ Connor.
March 9th, 2007 at 8:07 pm
I like to think the SRI guys are too incompetent to pull something like that.
March 9th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
In this place and time, how do we go about knowing?
Edit: Sweden to implement new spying on its’ citizenry and seeks to calm people down by saying “hey, man, we’ve been doing it for decades already!” (via /.)
March 9th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
> In this place and time, how do we go about knowing?
In theory, all you have to do is ask. There’s a law (act 544/2001) that forces public institutions to answer inquiries coming from members of the public. Of course, the answer could be “the information is classified”.
March 9th, 2007 at 11:12 pm
You’ve just given me a new mission.
March 10th, 2007 at 12:14 am
Make sure you send the request via snail mail as a “recomandată cu confirmare de primire”. The post office will send you a confirmation as soon as the letter reaches its destination. The request should sound “official”. Something like:
„Domnule Director,
Subsemnatul, ……………………., cetăţean al Statelor Unite ale Americii, posesor al paşaportului ……………………, domiciliat pe str. ……………….., nr. ….., bl. ……, sc. …….., ap. ……, Braşov, cod poştal …………, doresc acces la următoarea informaţie de interes public în temeiul legii 455/2001: ……………………………..
Braşov, zz.ll.aaaa [signature]”