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NSA (partially) Declassified
Lally Singh writes "Posted yesterday on the National Security Archives was the NSA's "Transition 2001" report, prepared as an introductory report for President Bush (II)'s incoming administration. "The largest U.S. spy agency warned the incoming Bush administration in its 'Transition 2001' report that the Information Age required rethinking the policies and authorities that kept the National Security Agency in compliance with the Constitution's 4th Amendment prohibition on 'unreasonable searches and seizures' without warrant and 'probable cause,' according to an updated briefing book of declassified NSA documents posted today on the World Wide Web.""
The 4th clearly wasn't tough enough. It is simply all to esay to make up phony causes "like the war on drugs", like "catching terrorists" as an excuse to do anything they want. The 4th should have been much more demanding, and demanded harsh punishment for those who do anything that has the effect of weakening it.
The 4th is already void
No.
We as a society only exchange the 4th for the 84th. The 1984th, that is.
What? Are you against USA PATRIOTism?! Are you a comm-- I mean a terriest?! We may need to "investigate" you in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib then.
Before anyone points out that now we'll find out the truth about the infamous NSAKEY in Windows or some dirty little secrets of Bush administration, I would like to remind you that according to Bruce Schneier "algorithms from the NSA are considered a sort of alien technology: They come from a superior race with no explanations."
Isn't that quote from the days when cryptography research was still behind the classified organizations?
The most important implication of declassifying NSA would be a better understanding of the mysterious rationale of many of NSA decisions in crypto algorithms, because even many aspects of DES remain a mystery to this day.
What?! Which aspects would these be?
So please stop the explosion of crackpot conspiracy theories and focus on the most important issue: cryptoanallysis.
That would be "cryptanalysis." Also, that statement doesn't make any sense.
Freedom is never "won". It's not a battle that you fight, win, and from then on people can enjoy the victory.
It's always, ALWAYS hanging by a thread.
Every generation will have to keep fighting for it, over and over, until the end of time.
Those who look at things like Nazism as freak accidents are only fooling themselves. Oppressive governments are the rule, not the exception in history. People are easily convinced, either quickly in harsh circumstances, or in slow, careful and quiet measures in good times, to at first not care about others, and then not care about themselves.
Even if you're lucky enough to live in a country whose founding is based on some good ideals, you've still got to realize, that country will spend the rest of its history struggling to get anywhere near living up to those ideals.
This comment has nothing to do with the NSA or this story whatsover.
Go post this in your journal, but this comment does not deserve to be modded up just because you agree with it.
I find it interesting that with all of the flag waving, and beating of drums to "protect America", we never hear urgent discussion of the greatest threat this country has ever faced.
If blowing up a building is terrorism, surely attempting to evicerate the Constitution and sacrificing every thing that makes the U.S. worth protecting is high treason!
If the terrorists goal is to destroy the American way of life, what does that say about those federal agencies and Congresscritters that are so anxious to dismantle the principles of the American way of life?
If terrorism is the deliberate creation of fear in the civillain population to further a political goal, what does that say about DHS's perminant orange alert telling us to be afraid.
What does the fact that I wonder if I should post this anonymously say?
Hey, it's ok officer, I shot him with a hand gun, not a rocket launcher.
good argument.
The accellerating attacs on civil liberties and human rights, in particular under Bush II, are very worrysome. The new General Attorney is the very same man that wrote in a memorandum that the Geneva Convention is obsolete when it come to "the war on terror". That torture could be done. Who are now the bad guys? It's sure is getting confusing :
...let's keep in mind that the NSA exists for a reason, and that reason is important.
/. tends to drift into Pollyanna-land where the only thing we have to fear is those 'debbils' in government that want to take our freedoms away. No. Let's keep our priorities straight and remember that while overzealous policemen certainly need to be disciplined and corrected, they are STILL the "good guys" as long as you are realistic and remember the really BAD alternatives out there.
In the same sense that tinfoil-hatters are constantly alert to the possibilty that "they are watching us", the NSA exists because there are countries and organizations and individuals whose interests ARE inimical to the United States. It shouldn't have to be said this shortly after the Cold War, or even Sept 11, but the security agencies of the United States have a serious and IMPORTANT function.
Do they go overboard? Once in a while, no question they exceed their mandate, usually from an overzealous interpretation of their duties. Yes, it's important to find a careful compromise between secrecy and oversight REQUIRED by a free society.
However, I think occasionally
-Styopa
I'd argue that you haven't been looking very hard then.
The Church Commission clearly showed that the FBI and CIA were in cahoots spying on legitimate political activity in the US during the 60s (ya know, all those pesky civil rights people, socialists). One of the positive outcomes of the Church Commission was that a firewall was erected between the CIA and FBI. Right now all the 9-11 ambulance chasing anti-patriots are busy trying to rip down that wall and have largely succeeded in doing so.
Or you could take a look at Echelon where the nogoodniks of the State Terrorist Superpower known as the USA were conducting industrial espionage against our "allies" in Europe.
Add to this that all this "declassification" crap relates to activities years ago instead of the shenanigans going on now which is necessary to inform our voting behavior and I'd say you're pretty complacent.
The NSA warned Bush that action must be taken to protect the 4t amendment.
..
Bush then passed the Patriot Act, with effectively suspends the 4th amendment (and 6th).
And the American people said
"thank you thank you! please take more of my inaliable rights away from me so I can feel safe from the enemies my government makes for itself!"
The average american decided it was ok to allow their fellow citizens to be arrested and held without charge, without being allowed to see a lawyer or even notify family. As long as the thousands of citizens that were now being abused was not them personally, then who cares.
When really, they should have carried out their own Constitutional Responsibility to fight for those rights to the point of overthrowing Bush.
But the average american stopped thinking they need to act on their responsibilities a few decades ago when suing everyone for any stupid reason became the norm.
America has died at the hands of its own people. Welcome back to 1930's Germany.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
The House of Representatives did. The US Senate did by a margin 98-2 or similar. Even John Kerry voted for it and never went back to vote against it.
Kinda like the Kyoto Accords - they went down in the US Senate 95-0.
Hell, the US declaration of war against Japan after Pearl Harbor had more opposition.
Someone in cuba only gets 3 hours of sleep a day.. thats just.. hitler would be proud.
You do realise that our society made a lot of progress over the past millenium, don't you? 1000 years ago the best torturing techniques were often fatal and physically destructive to the detainee. How often do we read in historical fiction about prisoner who died from torture before the interrogators could extract the information they seeked? Today this risk is minimized through careful application of "harmless" torture methods that have very few long-lasting effects. The advances of psychology and medicine help torture the victims in such a way.
In case you still don't realise it, I shall explain that such methods are better than old-fashioned rack and scrching needles only in one respect - they do not kill or maim the victim. In every other respect - in the amount of pain and suffering, in ther loathsomeness and immorality they are exactly the same.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Tell that to these people's loved ones.
There are people in the world who want to kill other people with every fibre of their being, danila. You don't play patty-cake with people like that. Our government has an important responsibility to protect us from those people. We need to know where, when, and how they intend to try to kill us so we can try to prevent that from happening. It's about saving lives and promoting peaceful co-existence. Simple, really.
That's well-documented, and horrific. It also has nothing to do with detainees in Afghanistan.
If I was a soldier there and someone was laughing about blowing up cafe's full of children promising he will one day do it again, you know I might just beat him to death too, on accident
Well, then I'm glad you're not a soldier there. Not for high ideals, but because it makes ME less safe.
Torture produces bad intelligence. People will say anything to make it stop.
Public knowledge that we torture and kill prisoners is also a fine recruitment tool for terrorists.
Do you really believe that or are you trolling?
1) Terrorists are not monsters. Yes, they want to kill other people, but how is that different from presidents and kings? Of course, the masses are brainwashed to believe that Osama bin Laden is the devil's incarnate, but the "elite" knows the truth. He is just an enemy, nothing more, nothing less.
2) Car accidents kill orders of magnitude more people than terrorism. Do you support torture to be used against bad drivers who fail their driving tests?
Your arguments are really at the Dark Ages level. Since then we (the cultured intelligent minority, it seems) learned that you can't retain your humanity and build a better world through torture and blatant disregard for human rights of others.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Rack one up for gullible Slashdot readers who moderated this guy's B.S. as interesting, I guess as B.S. goes it is interesting, but it is B.S. or a troll. I'll let half of this obnoxious grand standing go but these deserve some attention:
"1) The NSA is the most likely to be concerned about "unreasonable searches and seizures" and other Bill of Rights issues. The FBI and CIA routinely take the "extreme circumstance" route and use common loopholes to justify citizen and non-citizen monitoring. I would argue, however, that I have yet to see an ill-intented abuse of their power."
You must be working a technicality, like you haven't physically "seen" the abuse but the DOD, NSA, FBI and CIA have all engaged in well documented and proven abuses of their powers over the years. They haven't been nailed lately but that is only because we are living in, for all practical purposes, a one party state, and the Republican's especially since 9/11 has been literally letting these agencies get away with murder. For example the Pentagon last week investigated itself and amazingly found itself innocent of ordering or condoning torture, though there are documented cases of varying degress of torture going on across the globe, far to widespread to be rogue national gaurdsmen. When abuse is this wide spread in the military either the chain of command is ordering or condoning it, or there is massive deriliciton of duty in the chain of command, the officers and civilian leadership, in letting it happen on such a large scale.
When you say something this blatantly and provably false it so undermines your credibility, we can safely assume the rest of your post is either a troll or B.S. too.
"2) Members from all branches of the Department of Defense are active Slashdot readers and contributers. They just never talk about what they do and some use "Tor" to post from work."
Not sure I follow why they anyone in the DOD would be using Tor to post to this silly little web site. Not like anyone on Slashdot is tracking their IP address. If someone is using Tor from a DOD facility with DOD's blessing, and posting on Slashdot or anywhere else, it tends to suggest they must be part of the DOD's rapidly growing propaganda machine, so you can't believe a thing they say. I have no doubt people from all branches of government read and post here, SO WHAT. If they post anything controversial or sensitive, from a government facility, they are just begging to be fired. I'm sure the DOD can read everything they are posting, and Tor isn't going to make any difference. Not sure I've ever read any post on Slashdot that rose to a level of importance the DOD would ever care.
"5) There is one member of the CIA that is single-handedly responsible for saving us from the plan devised by Jose Padilla. Unfortunately, they will never get the credit they deserve. It only took one person to say, "Why is this American talking with Abu Zubaydah twice?"."
Whatever Padilla was planning, if anything, wasn't nearly as dangerous as the precedent being set by the Bush administration in how they've abused his most basic civil liberties in arresting and detaining indefinitely, in isolation in a military brig in South Carolina. The Bush administration is seeking, through Padilla, to establish a precedent where the executive branch can arrest any American citizen, anywhere and deprive him or her of all of the most basic constitutional protections we thought we had in this country. In particular American citizens have a right to an attorney, a right to be charged, and a right to a speedy trial, and to be imprisoned only if found guilty by a jury of their peers. If Padilla is guilty of something, charge him, prove it, get a conviction or let him go.
The Supreme Court, spineless politicians that they are have passed on hearing his case on technicalities leaving this precedent in place for two years. A federal judge a week or two ago ruled the executive branch has NO constitutional authority to arrest, and hold in ind
@de_machina
Anybody who understands the historical context of the Geneva Convention would agree that it is obsolete. Read the bloody document, then come back and participate in the discussion.
I read it. It's not obsolete. It's only called "obsolete" by certain people who want to justify their "need" for systematical torture.
The Geneva Convention was designed for exactly the kind of crisis that we face, namely large-scale conflicts where a lot of people are threatened by certain forces. While it wasn't specifically written for the case of terrorism, its teleological ideas of human rights hold up, and it's the duty of democrat (as in "believes in the democratic system", not as in the political party) to rise up against a government pulling human rights through the dirt, for a very unspecific "war on terror" with badly defined targets.
Make no mistake, times will come where the US government will be punished for their self-righteousness they currently show to the world.
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
Umm, ok.. well how about this...
... he gasses and tortures 100,000 of his own people, but we don't care.
We (the CIA) helps put Saddam Hussein into power, we provide him with chemical weapons 'precursors' so he can fight 'our enemies'.
Once we need his Oil, we attack and take over the country and start building permanent (yes, *permanent*) military bases there. Do you really think we will *ever* leave until the oil is gone?
I don't know why the Iraqi's would want us there at all, other than the political elite, who have been "buddy buddy" with the CIA for years.
Yes, europe wants no part of it. I really don't like *us* being part of it. don't get me wrong, I support our troops.. I just believe that if we're gonna send our 18-20y/o's into battle, we'd better have a good reason... not "WMDs.. oh, never mind. " I'd actually feel better about having our kids over there, if the government would just come right out and say "we're there for the oil" instead of trying to come up with BS excuses like "we're there to spread freedom" -- BS. We're there to install a puppet government that will let us take their oil and build military bases to attack other countries with oil. period.
Its a real stretch to say that what they've been doing is even legal. Its no accident the U.S. is puting most of its prisoners in Gitmo or unnamed spots around the world and outside the U.S. They are using Gitmo because its mostly outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. legal system and its obviously not under the jurisdiction of the host country, Cuba. They are using Gitmo precisely so they can skirt the law and international treaties to which the U.S. is a signatory.
They are also using the CIA's semi secret rendition program for the same reason. They ship prisoners to countries who are eager to torture prisoners during interrogation, they take the usally bad intelligence that results(and most intelligence from torture is bad because people will say anything to make the pain stop) so they are completely complicit in the torture. This allows the American's to deny they are torturing anyone though in fact they are the ones snatching, often innocent, people off the street with no proof they are guilty of anything, cutting their clothes of with razors, shoving a tranquilizer up their ass and flying them to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria or Jordan to be tortured. These aren't "terrorists" for the most part, they are suspects. This is the whole problem with the civil rights abuses in the "War on Terror". There is usually little or no evidence most of these people being held indefinitely, tortured and sometimes killed have actually done anything. The extermely fallible agencies and agents involved are acting as judge, jury and executioner. When you do this you are flouting the rule of law, something the U.S. constantly preaches to other countries about. Well the U.S. circumvents the rule of law any and everytime they find it necessary so it is rank hypocrisy for the U.S. to lecture anyone else about it. Rendition is also clearly violating the sovereignty of countries where snatches have taken place without the consent and cooperation of the host country.
Fact is the U.S Senate approved the UN treaty on torture in 1994 and the Geneva conventions go back further than that and the U.S. is clearly violating these treaties. Countries sign the UN and Geneva conventions on torture as a measure of protection for their citizens to discourage them from being tortured if the are imprisoned. Now that America has established a clear track record of endorsing torture, its citizens will no moral high ground to protect them if they are imprisoned.
You might be able to argue stateless combantants like Al Qaeda don't fall under the Geneva conventions but I assure you every Iraqi tortured in Abu Graib did as did every Afghani in Afghanistan. When Gonzalez opened the pandora's box on torture for Al Qaeda he opened it up in Iraq and Afghanistan where it is clearly a violation of international treaties, to which the U.S. is a signatory, to torture citizens of an occupied country. When such violations occur they are normally considered war crimes, if it were any country doing it other than the precious U.S. with its double standards that is. The Geneva conventions, to which the U.S. is a signatory clearly defines how you treat citizens of an occupied country which both Iraq and Afghanistan are, and this covers all citizens of the country not uniformed combatants. There is a seperate article for uniformed combatants that clearly doesn't apply here which is something Gonzalez and company glossed over. The citizens of an occupied country rules clearly do apply to Afghans in Afghanistan and Iraqis in Iraq. The convention for treatement of people in occupied countries specificly bans torture and humiliation of prisoners.
@de_machina