On Wednesday, The Guardian released a classified court order requiring Verizon to turn over records of all domestic phone calls to the National Security Agency. The revelation has led to a renewed debate over the legality and policy merits of indiscriminate government surveillance of Americans.

So what has the government been doing? And how will the program affect ordinary Americans? Read on to find out.

So the government is listening in on all my phone calls?

No. At least, that’s not what the document obtained by The Guardian shows. The court order, issued by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court, only sought metadata — a fancy word for information like what numbers you called, what time you made the calls, and how long the calls were. The order does not seek the audio of calls.

Of course, it’s possible the NSA has other programs collecting the contents of calls. In 2006 a whistleblower reported the existence of a secret, NSA-controlled room in an AT&T switching facility in San Francisco. So it’s possible the NSA is using rooms like that to listen to everyone’s phone calls. But all we know for sure is that the NSA has been requesting information about our phone calls.

I’m not a Verizon customer. Does that mean I’m safe?

Probably not. We only have proof of spying on Verizon customers, but it’s hard to imagine the NSA limiting its surveillance program to one company. There are probably similar orders in effect for AT&T and CenturyLink, the other major telephone companies.

The order may only pertain to Verizon’s wired telephony business, as Verizon Wireless is technically a separate subsidiary. But the order includes hints that the NSA is also collecting information from cellular customers. In addition to phone numbers and call times, the order seeks information about the specific cell phone tower the customer used to connect to the network during each call.

It wouldn’t make much sense to request that information from a traditional wired telephone company. So its inclusion suggests either that the order includes Verizon Wireless, or that it’s boilerplate that is also being sent to wireless companies.

So the NSA is collecting information about my location as well as who I’ve called?

It appears so. Cellphones make calls using the closest tower. So if the NSA knows you made a call using a specific tower, they can safely assume you were near that tower at the time of the call. The accuracy of this information varies. In urban areas, tower information can pin down your location to a specific city block or even a specific building. In rural areas, it might only identify your location within a mile or two.

It’s hard to be sure since both the details of the program and legal rulings on it are secret. But civil liberties groups argue the program exceeds the powers Congress has granted to the executive branch, and that such a broad surveillance program is inconsistent with the Fourth Amendment.

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The Liberty Report Take: This is a clear violation of the United State’s citizens Fourth Amendment.  Here is a quick refresher of what that says for the good people at the Washington Post:

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Click below for the full article.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/06/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-nsa-scandal/

A divided Supreme Court held Monday that police can take DNA samples from people under arrest in the hope of tying them to unrelated crimes, in a ruling that touched both on fast-changing technology and age-old issues of citizens’ rights against state searches.

Authorities previously have been able to take such samples from convicted felons, whom courts consider to possess minimal privacy rights. At issue Monday was whether people who merely have been arrested—and may ultimately be released or acquitted of the charges that led to their arrest—also must submit to a cheek swab that would be matched against a nationwide DNA database of evidence from unsolved crimes.

That practice, currently followed by 28 states and the federal government, allowed police in Wicomico County, Md., to link Alonzo King, arrested in 2009 for assault with a shotgun, with an unsolved 2003 rape. He later was convicted of the rape and sentenced to life in prison.

The Maryland Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, voided the rape conviction. It held that the state law providing for taking arrestee DNA samples violated the Fourth Amendment, which generally requires police to demonstrate probable cause that an individual has committed a crime before they can search him or her.

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The Liberty Report Take: Just another step forward towards a loss of freedom and liberty as we move toward a Police State.  It should probably be a prerequisite that the Supreme Court Justices actually understand the Constitution as well, not just prior court decisions and culturally accepted practices.

I’m finding it hard to get too worked up over the revelation that the National Security Agency has been authorized by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to collect all our call data from Verizon. Hasn’t everyone already assumed this? Everything we do in the digital realm — from surfing the Web to sending an e-mail to conducting a credit card transaction to, yes, making a phone call — creates a data trail. And if that trail exists, chances are someone is using it — or will be soon enough.

This particular style of privacy invasion looks a bit different from those old TV movies where FBI agents sit in a van listening in on phone calls and recording them on reel-to-reel tape recorders. The government isn’t interested in the content of our phone calls — our conversations — so much as who is calling whom and when, or what has become known as metadata. Your life and pursuits are less important than the statistical profile of the way you use your digital devices. This is the world of big data.

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Do you agree with the Columnist’s opinion here?  Click below for the full article.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/06/opinion/rushkoff-nsa-verizon/?hpt=hp_t4