This bit of breaking news from the Guardian is even worse than the screaming headline suggests.
NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily
The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.
"Phone records?" That sounds like who I called, and who called me. "Frank Whitaker called Jiffy Pizza at 10PM."
But the feds are collecting a LOT more info than which numbers I called, as illustrated by the Guardian's photocopy of the original warrant.
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"All call detail records or "telephony metadata" created by Verizon!"
This includes "comprehensive communications routing information," along with the "Internation Mobile station Equipment Identity (IMEI) number" and the "trunk identifier."
ForeignPolicy.com brought in Allan A. Friedman, a techie from the Brookings Institution to explain this jargon.
According to Friedman, it might include, for example, data tracking how a cell phone user moves from one cell phone tower to another while traveling -- information that would obviously be useful for tracking the whereabouts of an individual.
And likewise with "trunk identifier."
The trunk identifier provides additional data on how a call is routed through a telephone system and where it originated. In a landline system, for example, the trunk identifier can be used to identify the regional center through which a call is routed.
The same trick works for mobile phones, as
explained by Wikipedia in this hash of acronyms.
The MSC (Mobile Switching Center) is connected to a close telephone exchange by a trunk group. This provides an interface to the (Public Switched Telephone Network) (PSTN). It also provides connectivity to the PSTN. The region to be served by a Cellular Geographic Serving Area(CGSA) is split into geographic cells.
So the feds can track all Verizon customers at least within the limits of a "Cellular Geographic Serving Area,"with a radius of about 3 miles, and then within a "cell" of that area.
And it probably gets worse.
Does the data from GPS receivers embedded in iPhones and Androids fall into the incredibly over-broad category of "all telephony metadata?"
It's data! It's in your telephone! Is it "telephony metadata?" Why or why not?
Does this grab-all authorization exclude anything about your phone, except the specific content of communications?
We don't know for sure if the feds actually harvest all this info, but I think its fair to say that they can get your exact location if they want it, without further legal fuss and bother, and that gives me the creeps.