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Comments on: NSA Data Mining And Why You Should Care https://whynow.dumka.us/2006/05/11/nsa-datamining-and-why-you-should-care/ On-line Opinion Magazine...OK, it's a blog Fri, 12 May 2006 05:28:28 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 By: Bryan https://whynow.dumka.us/2006/05/11/nsa-datamining-and-why-you-should-care/comment-page-1/#comment-5806 Fri, 12 May 2006 05:28:28 +0000 http://whynow.dumka.us/2006/05/11/nsa-datamining-and-why-you-should-care/#comment-5806 I have the same last seven digits as a Federal bankruptcy court in Florida. At some point a directory came out with the wrong area code and for a month I was receiving calls from all over for the court, and still occasionally get them. It is also one digit off from a company that makes prosthetic devices and I get calls for them all the time.

That’s what makes this a waste of time as an investigative tool. They are just adding more hay, instead of more people to find the needle. This is stupid and wasteful.

The police will want to prosecute which is why they don’t want anything to do with this kind of operation. This is the kind of thing that can destroy a case because judges tend to take an expansive view of what is tainted.

OT: it took me a while to find a preview that would work without messing around and making changes.

]]> By: Steve Bates https://whynow.dumka.us/2006/05/11/nsa-datamining-and-why-you-should-care/comment-page-1/#comment-5795 Fri, 12 May 2006 04:40:24 +0000 http://whynow.dumka.us/2006/05/11/nsa-datamining-and-why-you-should-care/#comment-5795 I’ve received about a hundred phone calls or more for a fellow whose name matches mine up to the “Bates, Ste*” level. I have discovered that he either lives or once lived in my apartment complex, a big 300+ unit affair. And I have learned that he is deeply in arrears on his debts, something I most certainly am not. (If that ever happened, my late parents would come back to haunt me, in a most disapproving manner.)

What will the NSA make of the “pattern” of calls to me by debt collectors? I have a total debt equal to the price of this laptop and a wireless router, and that debt was incurred yesterday, and I am not in arrears on anything at all… period. But what will those spying on my phone calls assume?

A friend of mine contrived a worse hypothetical example. My phone number contains two pairs of double digits, and I get a lot of legitimate wrong numbers. What if a child pornographer were to misdial and reach my number?

If any of this information ever reaches law enforcement… and who is to say it won’t, given how little concern has been given to the legality of its collection… what conclusions will the police draw about me?

(OT, I’m soooo glad to see the “Preview” button… especially given how new I am to this keyboard.)

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