As such, Congress currently has no idea how many warrantless requests are made to ISPs each year. How can it hope to make sane policy in this area, when it has no useful data?
The Intelligence select committee knows pretty well what's going on. That's why Mark Udall and Ron Wyden were screaming bloody murder last month before the patriot act extension vote [1]. Because they know, and it's bad.
It seems much of the uproar is about the business records portion and how it is being applied to broad requests to telcos for call detail records without suspicion of terrorism. Often that will be all of the target's call detail records, and then the call detail records of everyone he calls, and very possibly even the CDR's of everyone those people called. You don't have to make that many of those requests before you essentially have the entire country's phone records in one great big database.
The Intelligence select committee knows pretty well what's going on. That's why Mark Udall and Ron Wyden were screaming bloody murder last month before the patriot act extension vote [1]. Because they know, and it's bad.
It seems much of the uproar is about the business records portion and how it is being applied to broad requests to telcos for call detail records without suspicion of terrorism. Often that will be all of the target's call detail records, and then the call detail records of everyone he calls, and very possibly even the CDR's of everyone those people called. You don't have to make that many of those requests before you essentially have the entire country's phone records in one great big database.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/us/27patriot.html