Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government?

The real capabilities and behavior of the US surveillance state are almost entirely unknown to the American public because, like  most things of significance done by the US government, it operates  behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy. But a seemingly spontaneous  admission this week by a former FBI counterterrorism agent provides a  rather startling acknowledgment of just how vast and invasive these  surveillance activities are.

Over the past couple days, cable news tabloid shows such as CNN’s Out Front with Erin Burnett have been  excitingly focused on the possible involvement in the Boston Marathon  attack of Katherine Russell, the 24-year-old American widow of the  deceased suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. As part of their relentless stream  of leaks uncritically disseminated by our Adversarial Press Corps, anonymous government officials are claiming that they are  now focused on telephone calls between Russell and  Tsarnaev that took place both before and after the attack to determine  if she had prior knowledge of the plot or participated in any way.

On Wednesday night, Burnett interviewed Tim Clemente, a former FBI counterterrorism agent, about whether the FBI would be  able to discover the contents of past telephone conversations between  the two. He quite clearly insisted that they could:

BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It’s not a voice mail. It’s just a conversation. There’s no way they actually can find  out what happened, right, unless she tells them?

CLEMENTE: “No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It’s not  necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of  her. We certainly can find that out.

BURNETT: “So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.

CLEMENTE: “No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.”

“All of that stuff” – meaning every telephone conversation Americans have  with one another on US soil, with or without a search warrant – “is  being captured as we speak”.

On Thursday night, Clemente again  appeared on CNN, this time with host Carol Costello, and she asked him  about those remarks. He reiterated what he said the night before but  added expressly that “all digital communications in the past” are  recorded and stored:

Let’s repeat that last part: “no digital communication is secure”, by which he means not  that any communication is susceptible to government interception as it  happens (although that is true), but far beyond that: all digital  communications – meaning telephone calls, emails, online chats and the  like – are automatically recorded and stored and accessible to the  government after the fact. To describe that is to define what a  ubiquitous, limitless Surveillance State is.

There have been some previous indications that this is true. Former AT&T engineer Mark Klein revealed that AT&T and other telecoms had built a special network that  allowed the National Security Agency full and unfettered access to data  about the telephone calls and the content of email communications for  all of their customers. Specifically, Klein explained “that the NSA set  up a system that vacuumed up Internet and phone-call data from ordinary  Americans with the cooperation of AT&T” and that “contrary to the  government’s depiction of its surveillance program as aimed at overseas  terrorists . . . much of the data sent through AT&T to the NSA was  purely domestic.” But his amazing revelations were mostly ignored and,  when Congress retroactively immunized the nation’s telecom giants for  their participation in the illegal Bush spying programs, Klein’s claims  (by design) were prevented from being adjudicated in court.

That every single telephone call is recorded and stored would also explain this extraordinary revelation by the Washington Post in 2010:

Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store  1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications.

It would also help explain the revelations of former NSA official William Binney, who resigned from the agency in protest over its systemic spying on the domestic communications of US citizens, that the US government has  “assembled on the order of 20 trillion transactions about US citizens  with other US citizens” (which counts only communications transactions  and not financial and other transactions), and that “the data that’s  being assembled is about everybody. And from that data, then they can  target anyone they want.”

Despite the extreme secrecy behind which these surveillance programs operate, there have been periodic reports of serious abuse. Two Democratic Senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, have been warning for years that Americans would be “stunned” to learn what the US government is doing in terms of secret surveillance.

Strangely, back in 2002 – when hysteria over the 9/11 attacks (and  thus acquiescence to government power) was at its peak – the Pentagon’s  attempt to implement what it called the “Total Information Awareness”  program (TIA) sparked so much public controversy that it had to be official scrapped. But it has been incrementally  re-instituted – without the creepy (though honest) name and  all-seeing-eye logo – with little controversy or even notice.

Back in 2010, worldwide controversy erupted when the governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates banned the use of Blackberries because some communications were inaccessible to government  intelligence agencies, and that could not be tolerated. The Obama  administration condemned this move on the ground that it threatened core freedoms, only to turn around six weeks later and demand that all forms of digital communications allow the US government backdoor access to intercept them. Put another way,  the US government embraced exactly the same rationale invoked by the UAE and Saudi agencies: that no communications can be off limits. Indeed,  the UAE, when responding to condemnations from the Obama administration, noted that it was simply doing exactly that which the US government  does:

“‘In fact, the UAE is exercising its sovereign  right and is asking for exactly the same regulatory compliance – and  with the same principles of judicial and regulatory oversight – that  Blackberry grants the US and other governments and nothing more,’ [UAE  Ambassador to the US Yousef Al] Otaiba said. ‘Importantly, the UAE  requires the same compliance as the US for the very same reasons: to  protect national security and to assist in law enforcement.'”

That no human communications can be allowed to take place without the  scrutinizing eye of the US government is indeed the animating principle  of the US Surveillance State. Still, this revelation, made in passing on CNN, that every single telephone call made by and among Americans is  recorded and stored is something which most people undoubtedly do not  know, even if the small group of people who focus on surveillance issues believed it to be true (clearly, both Burnett and Costello were shocked to hear this).

Some new polling suggests that Americans, even after the Boston attack, are growing increasingly  concerned about erosions of civil liberties in the name of Terrorism.  Even those people who claim it does not matter instinctively understand  the value of personal privacy: they put locks on their bedroom doors and vigilantly safeguard their email passwords. That’s why the US  government so desperately maintains a wall of secrecy around their  surveillance capabilities: because they fear that people will find their behavior unacceptably intrusive and threatening, as they did even back  in 2002 when John Poindexter’s TIA was unveiled.

Mass  surveillance is the hallmark of a tyrannical political culture. But  whatever one’s views on that, the more that is known about what the US  government and its surveillance agencies are doing, the better. This  admission by this former FBI agent on CNN gives a very good sense for  just how limitless these activities are.