Re: FBI now cares about metadata harvesting when its their data being targeted

From the «dickwads on wheels» department:
Title: Phone Metadata Suddenly Not So ‘Harmless’ When It's the FBI's Data Being Harvested
Author: admin@soylentnews.org
Date: Sat, 01 Feb 2025 22:42:00 +0000
Link: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=25/02/01/1359255&from=rss
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upstart[1] writes:
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Phone Metadata Suddenly Not So 'Harmless' When It's The FBI's Data Being
Harvested[2]:
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The government's next-best argument (after "Third Party Doctrine yo[3]!") in
support of its bulk collection of US persons' phone metadata via the (now
partly-dead) Section 215 surveillance program was this: hey, it's just
metadata[4]. How harmful[5] could it be? (And if it's of so little use to the
NSA/FBI/others, how is it possible we're using it to literally kill people[6]
?)
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While trying to fend off attacks on Section 215 collections (most of which
are governed [in the loosest sense of the word] by the Third Party Doctrine),
the NSA and its domestic-facing remora, the FBI, insisted collecting and
storing massive amounts of phone metadata was no more a constitutional
violation than it was a privacy violation.
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Suddenly — thanks to the ongoing, massive compromising[7] of major US telecom
firms by Chinese state-sanctioned hackers — the FBI is getting hot and
bothered about the bulk collection[8] of its own phone metadata by (gasp!) a
government agency. (h/t Kevin Collier on Bluesky[9])
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[...] The agency (quite correctly!) believes the metadata could be used to
identify agents, as well as their contacts and confidential sources. Of
course it can. That's why the NSA liked gathering it. And that's why the FBI
liked collections it didn't need a warrant to access. (But let's not pretend
this data was "stolen." It was duplicated and exfiltrated, but ATT isn't
suddenly missing thousands of records generated by FBI agents and their
contacts.)
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The issue, of course, is that the Intelligence Community consistently
downplayed this exact aspect of the bulk collection, claiming it was no more
intrusive than scanning every piece[10] of domestic mail (!) or harvesting
millions of credit card records[11] just because the Fourth Amendment (as
interpreted by the Supreme Court) doesn't say the government can't.
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[...] The takeaway isn't the inherent irony. It's that the FBI and NSA spent
years pretending the fears expressed by activists and legislators were
overblown. Officials repeatedly claimed the information was of almost zero
utility, despite mounting several efforts to protect this collection from
being shut down by the federal government. In the end, the phone metadata
program (at least as it applies to landlines) was terminated. But there's
more than a hint of egregious hypocrisy in the FBI's sudden concern about how
much can be revealed by "just" metadata.
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Original Submission[12]
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Read more of this story[13] at SoylentNews.
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Links:
[1]: https://soylentnews.org/~upstart/ (link)
[2]: https://www.techdirt.com/2025/01/23/phone-metadata-suddenly-not-so-harmless-when-its-the-fbis-data-being-harvested/ (link)
[3]: https://www.techdirt.com/2014/08/18/ron-wyden-its-time-to-kill-third-party-doctrine-go-back-to-respecting-privacy/ (link)
[4]: https://www.techdirt.com/2013/07/08/anyone-brushing-off-nsa-surveillance-because-its-just-metadata-doesnt-know-what-metadata-is/ (link)
[5]: https://www.techdirt.com/2017/03/31/how-little-metadata-made-it-possible-to-find-fbi-director-james-comeys-secret-twitter-account/ (link)
[6]: https://www.techdirt.com/2014/05/12/michael-hayden-gleefully-admits-we-kill-people-based-metadata/ (link)
[7]: https://www.techdirt.com/2024/12/17/att-verizon-fail-to-inform-customers-about-major-salt-typhoon-hack/ (link)
[8]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-16/fbi-has-warned-agents-it-believes-hackers-stole-their-call-logs (link)
[9]: https://bsky.app/profile/kevincollier.bsky.social/post/3lfuyz476x22j (link)
[10]: https://www.techdirt.com/2024/07/08/for-whatever-reason-the-us-post-office-is-still-running-its-mail-cover-surveillance-program/ (link)
[11]: https://www.techdirt.com/2013/09/16/nsa-is-also-grabbing-millions-credit-card-records/ (link)
[12]: https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsubsubid=64865 (link)
[13]: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=25/02/01/1359255&from=rss (link)
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