Real law abiding patriotic cell phone subscribers tell Uncle Sam what they had for lunch

The Guardian.uk recently released a classified court order [pdf] detailing U.S. Justice Department instructions to Verizon Wireless to release information on their entire domestic customer base. While the actual recordings of calls were not released under this order, the government acquired data that includes who called whom, how long they spoke for, and up to the minute location data on every single subscriber.

It is not known if the veteran reporter Glenn Greenwald or editors at the Guardian will be facing indictment in the United States for releasing the full text of the classified order. It is also unknown if the release would have been permitted under the new secret rules now being developed by Eric Holder and cooperative, patriotic news organizations.

The United States government recently named a reporter at Fox News as an unindicted co-conspirator in a leaking case with much less sweeping implications. The warrant obtained granted the FBI access to virtually all his private communications.

The revelations drew the ire of several prominent political figures on Twitter, including former Bush spokesperson Ari “watch what you say” Fleischer who tweeted “Drone strikes. Wiretaps. Gitmo. O is carrying out Bush's 4th term. Yet he attacked Bush 4 violating Constitution. #hypocrisy.”

Friendlier talking points began to circulate from the White House and Capitol Hill later in the day and were dutifully amplified and defended by the editorial boards of America's patriotic media. See the Wall Street Journal's “Thank You for Data Mining.”

The chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Diane Feinstein (D-CA), confirmed the memo as a routine renewal of a standing order to spy on all Americans since 2006. Feinstein claimed the program had stopped multiple terrorist attacks, although she declined to offer any facts as to which, where, how many or what types of attacks had been foiled.

Other experts extolled the value of the data that has been collected, arguing that it should be scrutinized to open the door for other possible investigations. “Once you have this big chunk of data and you have it forever… you can do all sorts of analytics with it using other data sources," said Joseph DeMarco, a lawyer now in private practice with Devore & DeMarco, to the USA Today, "A data set like this is the gift that keeps on giving."

DeMarco made his name in public service as an assistant US Attorney prosecuting cybercrimes. In this capacity, he led the prosecution of Adrian Lamo for hacking into the New York Times in 2003 and using their Lexis-Nexus account to for research purposes without paying. The mentally ill Lamo was convicted in late 2004 and given an exceedingly light sentence of six months house arrest and two years on probation. This sentence stands in stark contrast to the long sentences faced by people convicted of stealing information on human rights abuses without thought of personal gain.

It is not known if any secret deals were made between DeMarco and Lamo. What is known is that Lamo resurfaced in 2010 as the key informant against Bradley Manning. In his resurrected patriotism, Lamo accused Manning of “basically trying to vacuum up as much classified information as he could, and just throwing it up into the air."

Lamo had been working as a volunteer for a private security company called Project Vigilant, which recruits private sector hackers to spy for the government. With 600+ employees and volunteers, Vigilant spies on millions of Americans through their internet service providers, a practice which is legal through the end user license agreements that consumers sign allowing their ISPs to share their data with other companies. Project Vigilant then provides this information to spy agencies.

DeMarco has given a presentation justifying the prosecution of Manning and the secret indictment of Julian Assange. The slide show details can be seen here. It is unknown to the Free Press at this time whether the presentation was given at SXSW, a private law seminar in California or at Columbia University.

What DeMarco's slide show does not detail is the vast amount of information about a person that can be divined from their cell phone records. A cell phone constantly reports its position to the carrier. Armed with this information, intelligence services can tell who attended what political meetings, what coffee shops a person frequents and who else was present, what church or mosque a person attends as well as who they call and how long they talk.

DeMarco and other surveillance state advocates seem to agree that all patriotic Americans can feel better protected with the federal government and corporations knowing their every move for the last seven years.