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>https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/01/17/could-this-company-be-the-answer-to-obamas-big-data-problem/
did obama give NSA data, all of our phone data, to NEUSTAR?
JANUARY 17, 2014, 10:13 PM
President Obama announced on Friday that a huge database of all Americans’ phone records will be moved out of the National Security Agency, where it’s currently stored, and kept either with phone companies or a third party."This will not be simple," Obama warned. The approach could be more expensive and legally ambiguous than if the government held the records, and it could raise a host of new privacy concerns, the president said.
Who would want, or even be capable of such a job?
Meet Neustar, Inc., a company most people have probably never heard of but have almost certainly dealt with in some form, even if they didn’t know it.If you’ve ever changed cell phone carriers and wanted to keep your old phone number, Neustar "ported" it over for your from one carrier to another. To do that, it keeps a record of all cell phone numbers in the United States. The company also acts as a kind of middleman between law enforcement agencies serving surveillance warrants on telephone companies, ensuring that the companies only give over the amount of information they’re legally required to disclose.
So: third-party organization — check. Maintain huge logs of phone data — check. Field surveillance requests from government officials — check.
Neustar, which has headquarters in Sterling, Va., and an office in downtown Washington, D.C., hasn’t been contacted by anyone from the administration or the intelligence community, nor has anyone at the company discussed whether it could be the solution to the Obama administration’s new big-data problem. But "it’s absolutely not a wild and crazy idea," Rodney Joffe, Neustar’s senior vice president, told Foreign Policy. Any organization chosen to hold of Americans’ phone records "certainly would take some of the strengths we have. We handle very big data. We have to have absolute reliability and security."
Neustar is not a government contractor. But as the administrator of the Number Portability Administration Center — which allows you to keep that old cell phone number — Neustar has to abide by neutrality regulations enforced by the Federal Communications Commission. That means the company can’t show any favor towards a company or segment of the telecom industry.
That status as an "honest broker" between companies and government will be essential for whatever organization is ultimately elected to house Americans’ phone records. The idea is that an outside party with no allegiance to the government or the company will be more likely to adhere strictly to the law and only give over that information that’s being requested, and nothing more. Phone giants like Verizon and AT&T, other potential custodians, have already started to push back against any attempt to make them hold onto years’ worth of customer records.