Comment Re:1982 is an interesting comparison in other ways (Score 1) 74
Orwellian commercial and governmental surveillance, censorship by various nations,......
...the executive order [EO 12333] authorizes collection of the content of communications, not just metadata, even for U.S. persons. Such persons cannot be individually targeted under 12333 without a court order. However, if the contents of a U.S. person’s communications are “incidentally” collected (an NSA term of art) in the course of a lawful overseas foreign intelligence investigation, then Section 2.3(c) of the executive order explicitly authorizes their retention. It does not require that the affected U.S. persons be suspected of wrongdoing and places no limits on the volume of communications by U.S. persons that may be collected and retained.
Now you say that that only pertains to data that is scooped up in foreign communications, but you have to realize that in modern telecommunication networks, data often transverses borders as packets are routed to phone switches that may be physically located in, say, Canada. So call from you in Nevada to your mom in Michigan may be recorded if your call is routed through a phone switch in Toronto, Canada.
It is interesting that the set of agencies commonly made reference to as the TLAs
at this point have near total control over most of the routing infrastructure and could
change routes such that the data passes through an international resource.
I find it amusing that my "location services" often get my location wrong by three time zones.
One time my location was N. Virginia another time some place in MD and I believe
I have been triangulated west and south of the Golden Trumpet just west of one
of the largest holes in the earth known to exist in N. America.
These routing anomalies mostly appeared to be the phone and ISP folk shaping traffic
in ways to give "data" truth to their position that internet transparency and net neutrality
now I wonder... wonder should I click PA or not...