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PCTD

A question that's not being asked or at least, not been in any news story or article yet on the NSA's monitoring of the American public's phone calls are it's treatment of Post Cut Through Digits. Are your PIN numbers, bank numbers, credit card numbers, etc being captured as well? We know it's data mining at its finest with the best technology in existence. How much of it is being collected and its all being cross-referenced... how many transactions a month do you make over the phone? Think about ALL the numbers you puch into your phone during your normal day.

Dialed Digit Extraction The FCC concedes that many post-cut-through digits (e.g., bank account numbers and PINs) constitute "content" and does not contest that telephone numbers dialed by a caller after using an 800 number to reach a long distance carrier also constitute "content" from the perspective of the local carrier. (FCC Br. at 23, 32-34.) Unlike the digits that local carriers use to route calls, which appear on the "signal" channel, post-cut-through digits are found on the "content" channel.

The FCC's argument that a carrier nevertheless must provide all information that another carrier may use to route calls proves far too much. (See id. at 23-24.) By its logic, a carrier could be required under CALEA to go into the content channel and extract not only all dialed digits, but also any spoken digits — whether to an operator who is assisting in a long distance call or to an automated voice recognition unit used by a calling card provider. Even the FBI has not claimed that CALEA goes this far.

The only reasonable interpretation of CALEA is that "call-identifying information" encompasses information used by the assisting carrier itself. To the extent that other carriers use post-cut-through digits as "call-identifying information," law enforcement can obtain that information directly from them: CALEA was "not intended to guarantee ‘one-stop shopping' for law enforcement." House Rep. at 22. Rather, it was designed only to allow law enforcement to obtain call-identifying information "reasonably available" to the assisting carrier. Contrary to the FCC's position, that standard requires evaluating the information from the assisting carrier's perspective. For that carrier, all post-cut-through digits constitute content, not call-identifying information.

The FCC acknowledges that its Order requires delivery of post-cut-through digits that are clearly content when law enforcement has only a pen register authorization. (FCC Br. at 32-34.) Even if some post-cut-through dialed digits are not content, where content and non-content information are inextricably intertwined, law enforcement must satisfy the higher Title III standard to obtain that information. It cannot bootstrap pen register authority into permission to receive content without complying with Title III or the Constitution, even where it has a duty to try to limit the use of the intercepted information. See infra Section IV.

You have a right to know how safe your information is .