Slashdot Mirror
Domestic Spying Records Ordered Released
CokoBWare wrote to mention an eWeek report on the NSA's domestic spying program. A federal judge has ordered the Department of Justice to release records from the program by March 8th. From the article: "In ordering the Justice Department to expedite the FOIA request processing, Judge Henry Kennedy Jr., of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said that the department's opinion that it could determine how much time is needed was 'easily rejected ... Under DOJ's view of the expedited processing provisions of FOIA, the government would have carte blanche to determine the time line for processing expedited requests,'"
"Vague suggestions that inadvertent release of exempted documents might occur are insufficient to outweigh the very tangible benefits that FOIA seeks to further--government openness and accountability," he wrote.
This judge is my new personal hero (temporarily displacing Alton Brown), and exactly the type of person who SHOULD be a judge. He actually seems like he cares about people and knows what kind of stuff gets pulled behind the scenes.
He may as well have come out and said "Sorry, guys, you're full of shit. Give us ALL the records, and soon."
On March 8th, which page of the newspaper will this story be buried on and who will Dick Cheney have to shoot to get that to happen?
(sarcasm doesn't always transmit well via text...)
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
From TFA: "EPIC asked the Justice Department for four types of records, including an audit of NSA domestic surveillance activities, a checklist showing probable cause to eavesdrop, communications about the use of information NSA obtained, and other documents concerning increased domestic surveillance." My new hero this judge is.
This case will eventually wind up in the Supreme Court, where its chances are unspectacular. Cases like this are usually filed in a court that the filing party knows or strongly suspects will be sympathetic to their claim - a practice known as "judge shopping". I would be absolutely shocked if this suit lost in the first round.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
Why is so much time given? This gives plenty of time to gather up and redact tons of information prior to delivery. I expect we'll end up with millions of pages of black rectangles on them with few, if any, legible words on them.
Wow, an example of checks and balances. I thought that was pretty much gone now.
Next steps: The White House will declare him an "activist judge" (whatever that really means) and unpatriotic. Meanwhile a religious zealot on the ABC Family channel will pray for his death.
But nothing is more patriotic than those in power keeping the government open. Because nothing could more empower the citizens.
Developers: We can use your help.
Even if these records get released and prove to be, as claimed, solely people with direct links to known and documented terrorists, that still does not exonerate the establishment of the program. The real issue was never a matter of whether, at this particular time, the NSA was listening in on you or your grandma, it was about precedent. The real issue is whether it is acceptable for an agency like the NSA to conduct domestic surveillance without oversight, without warrants of any kind. In the past the law has been such that various types of surveillance were permitted, but as these cases have come to light each loophole has been blocked - it was precisely for this reason that the Foreign Intelligence Services Court, and the corresponding act, was originally created. An about face and progressive weakening of such laws sets a dangerous precendent, and in my view shouldn't be tolerated. Don't let the report as to what surveillance was conducted blind you to the deeper issue of whether such a precedent is acceptable.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
To turn the "law and order" types' favorite phrase back on them, the law is the law. If the government will not obey its own laws, then it has no moral authority to operate. Ironically, that's a Biblical concept, not a liberal idea. According to scripture, God's authority to stand in divine judgement handing down damnation or salvation comes from his perfection and consistency. God follows his own laws, thus he has total moral authority. But how many Bush supporters would freak out at such an argument?
In pure secular terms, the only result of giving discressionary power in 99% of all cases out there is to have the government not obey the law. The government must obey its own laws in order to ensure law and order, and having a law that says "the state shall do what it wilt, shall be the whole of the regulation of the government's conduct" is not a law. It's a license to anarchy in the pejorative sense of the word.
If our government is unwilling to even use its Article IV powers to shut down the borders in violation of NAFTA and all travel from rogue states and Saudi Arbia, then it doesn't need to even speak about new powers.
Since when does changing a law mean it applies retroactively to offenses in the past?
Just the other day, my father was bitching about seat belt laws. Saying that when they first passed the law, they said it wouldn't be used to pull you over. 10 years later, they changed the law to allow cops to pull you over for not wearing a seat belt.
My dad said "That's how they get you. They chip away at it"
And I remember thinking "Yep, and our civil rights too"
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Throwing down the "question your patriotism" card... nice... too bad most people see through those kinds of arguments. Having someone turn your own country into a warzone is not fun especially when it's a war on something you can't see... Look at what happened to the war on drugs? uhmm.... admittedly the US government funded black ops in the CIA by selling MORE drugs to Americans, not less...
Why is it unpatriotic, nevermind not OK in your view to question your government's policies on breaking civil liberties? To live under a rock and believe everything you read is unhealthy and incredibly foolish, and taking someone's word for it that the powers granted to them will be used for good is hogwash. You need safeguards... Remember Star Wars Episodes 1-3, where Palpatine chipped away the Republic to gain emergency powers and ultimately total control over the galaxy? Well certainly this US Administration is no Palpatine, but if we allow for a similar pattern to happen with no checks and balances, the US could end up with an Administration that has more power than it should and really cause a lot more loss of civil liberties than you realize.
The US was founded on the principles of providing civil liberties to its citizens. You take that away, and you take away America. How unpatriotic is that when your founding constitution is eroded to the point where it's as useful as toilet paper? If you kill the US Consitution and the Bill Of Rights, you no longer have a free America. Period.
That's surviellence of an enemy, and given the Presidents power to wage war, it's not any stretch of the imagination that this sort of activity is within his authority.
Congress determines that authority.
Do you think that Britain and the US got warrants when they were trying to break Germanys enigma code in World War 2?
Last I checked Germans weren't American citizens and afforded the rights granted by the Constitution
A significant majority of the US population approves of this activity
Apparently you have read any polls lately.
If you don't want to be monitored by the government, then don't talk to overseas agents of an organization that has killed Americans, wants to kill more, and is killing our troops every week. It's not that complex.
The FOIA request wants to make sure that that is really the case. Negligence and poor planning is what is killing a lot of our troops every week.
To those who are worked up about this,
I question your seriousness about preserving our country.
Preserving our country means preserving the system of check and balances and assures that no one is above the law.
I question your patriotism.
Blind following of leadership is not as patriotic as questioning it.
It's possible that there really was never any leak to start with.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Richard Nixon thought so, but somehow that didn't help him any.
"A significant majority of the US population approves of this activity, and they will be voting next election"
A significant percentage of the US population also believes that Saddam Hussein personally piloted both of the airplanes used in the attack on the World Trade Centre. And yes, many of them will somehow figure out how to vote in the next election.
"Sure, why not- but we're not talking about civil liberties here, we're talking about monitoring the communications of people who want to kill us, and their agents in our country. The fact that so many don't realize this- or plainly deny it because of a visceral hate for the current administration- sickens me, and you have just read the result of that disgust."
Actually, you're talking about the laws of your country and the principles upon which it was founded. You may want to try reading books instead of burning them, you may learn something.
I question your seriousness about preserving our country.
I question your patriotism.
and most of all....
I question your judgement
I question your motives. Wrapping your country in plastic and then never sitting on it will "preserve" it, but I wouldn't want to live there.
> when the monitored conversations occured between foriegn, self-proclaimed enemies of the United States who are engaged in armed conflict with us, and people inside the United States?
Who says ? The administration certainly likes to imply those were the only conversations listened to, but Gonzales went out of his way to avoid confirming this.
> I question your patriotism.
And I question yours. If being an American means anything, it means respect for the constitution. Trying to justify the efforts of a president to remove the protections in the constitution brands you as a traitor to the republic.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
Actually, some spy intercepts were purely domestic - but that's not the point. It's called "Domestic" because one person is in the US, and it isn't a purely international communication.
Since this program resulted in thousands of dead end leads, only an idiot would claim that only terrorists were monitored under this act.
If the NSA was only spying on terrorists, then FISA would have granted warrants (even after the wiretap had started). Given that the administration decided to end run around FISA, it's reasonable to speculate who else was being spied upon - particularly considering this crowd's track record with honesty.
No rational person can make the case that the disclosure of this program has damaged national security, so by making it you prove your irrationality. It's not like Al Qaeda didn't know that the NSA existed, or that the NSA was spying on phone calls. No one, and I mean no one is arguing that the NSA shouldn't be able to spy on terrorists. Why in the world would terrorists care whether or not the NSA got warrants to do this? The best excuse this administration can offer is that reminding the terrorists that the NSA taps phone calls damages national security, otherwise "they forget". If keeping the NSA out of the headlines is that important, then they'd damn well better follow the law.
It's not about eavesdropping on people who want to kill us - otherwise those thousands of dead ends wouldn't have happened. It's about whether the President can pick and choose which laws he wants to follow by invoking the excuse of a perpetual war, relegating Congress to a powerless debating soceity.
The candy asses are on the right - people who will happily give away this country's proud heritage because they're terrified of the big bad swarthy bogeyman. Grow a spine.
Do you think that Britain and the US got warrants when they were trying to break Germanys enigma code in World War 2?
I don't care what you might define this conflict as, but it sure as hell isn't a war. Wait until these terrorists control their own country and are coordinating attacks from it, then it might be considered to be on the scale of a war. Also, there is no way can you can even compare what is happening right now to WWII - which involved many nations all over the globe, took more than 60 million lives, and at the time cost atleast a trillion dollars.
Well, I guess that one reason is that he questions the patriotism of those who disagree with him. Not to mention his insinuation that those who disagree with him are "candy asses". Yeah, agree or disagree with him, that post is most definitely flame.
First, let's get this clear.. We are NOT at war. Period, end of sentence. There has always been people that want to cause damage to the US government. Are we at war with Oklohoma because an American bombed a US Government building? Did we start wars because the WTC was bombed in 1992 (maybe 93, sue me if it's wrong). Did the US President at the time use it as an excuse to start a fear campaign across the US and drag us into further conflicts? Or perhaps he said we were at "war" with the terrrorists and used it as an excuse to erode our civil Liberties? No, he didn't, are you sure? The people that can be labelled as traitors are the ones that are will to use the constitution to wipe their asses with, like our current regime. To answer your last point, there is a special court, perhaps you've heard of it by now, the FISA court. It is especially designed to handle survelance requests in a completely secure manner, even to the point of getting warrants after the fact of survelance. Our country is built on freedom, if we dont have it, the great promise our country once had, slowly goes into nothingness, we become a historical footnote of failed ideals. I love my country, the United States of America, I don't want people like you to destroy it.
but to demand investigations in order to discover the identity of the leaker(s).
And what exactly is your problem with this? You can't honestly say that there should be no such thing as classified information, unless you'd like every poor SOB who's trying to keep on eye on various actually bad guys to be strung up and shot. The classification of intel methods and collected information exists specifically to allow it do what it has to do. If you tell Kim Jong Il what time of day the next high-altitude drone will be overhead which of his slave camps, or CC the lunatic president of Iran on the intel you're sharing with EU security people about his nuclear program... you're pretty much asking for the consequences, including the unpleasant deaths of the people living in those countries and working, with our spooks, to counter the influence/acts of the mullahs or the so-honorable KJI.
Assuming you don't actually refute the need for classified and covert activities on a number of fronts, then how can you complain about tracking down the people who deliberately leak such specific operational information? It sounds like you're more in the "classified is OK, but only on the stuff I think should be classified, and then definitely the administration should be investigating the people who leak it" camp. But that's not what you're saying, and should be. At which point, you should be more clearly spelling out what you think should, and should not be classified when it comes to intercepting a phone call from a known Al Queda-type contact in, say, Lahore, Pakistan to a used-only-once-ever cell phone that was in a batch of fifty or so bought with cash. You know, a cell phone that is untraceable to a person, will never be used again, and can never be part of a FISA warrant scenario by its very nature. Is reminding the guys using those phones that we know when the person in Lahore is dialing a number from that batch of disposable phones something you think should be leaked? Is that constructive, from your perspective?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
we are spying on them? Surely not!
I find that argument completly without merit.
No American is upset about our intelligence agencies conducting surveilance to protect us. I *WANT* them to be able to do that and am very grateful to those who have made it their life's work to protect my family and me. However, I am *VERY* concerned about the desire to conduct surveilance with no oversight or accountability whatsoever. People fought and died throughout American history to protect us from this kind of stuff, so we are not about to just take someone's word that it is OK. Not even when that person is our President.
The point about the continued existence of real enemies is an important one, but the rest of this post is distortion at best. Throughout American history, Presidents and Congresses have turned to extra-legal police measures in the prosecution of war, and every time, it has resulted in the death and imprisonment of innocent people. Whether it helped secure victory is a more debatable matter.
It is true, it is not always realistic to conduct a war with full Constitutional protections in effect. But compared to other conflicts in our history (Civil War, WWI, WWII, etc.), we have virtually no chance of 'losing' this one. Terrorism does not aim to conquer, it aims to change public opinion. If we continue to support Israel, speak our minds, and behave like Westerners, we've already won.
In short, it is hardly necessary for the President to violate the Constitution, especially to the extent that he has, in order to win. And of all the War Presidents (Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, etc.) I'd say I trust this one the least with the delicate responsibility.
to shred the undesirable stuff.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
ENOUGH SAID.
Classifying illegal activities isn't right.
Leaking information about classified & illegal government activities isn't wrong.
Nothing you said addresses that fundamental issue.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The fundamental issue: people sitting in other countries have acted to kill a substantial number of people in the US and abroad.
You are wrong - that is not the fundamental issue being discussed. The issue is whether or not the president has the authority to spy on US citizens *without approval & oversight*. Bush thinks he does; many others disagree. This is a core issue of civil rights.
Twisting the argument into "but we need to do it to catch bad guys!" is a nice straw man. It's not about what "bad guys" want to do, it's about what rights law-abiding citizens have. There's plenty of people both in the US and the rest of the world, that want to kill people in a terroristic fashion (recall some examples), so at what point should we - the United States of America - draw the line between liberty & security?
As a point of reference, China doesn't seem to have had many problems with terrorism.
With one out of two parties in the US, and the tapping act itself also happening in the US, I think it would be dishonest to say that it was clearly not domestic spying. It also certainly isn't quite the same as tapping Al Capone or Martin Luther King. Luckily, we have laws that cover this. They just were ignored.
I'm a Republican. You're a Tool. or maybe...a Troll. Not sure which.
You Sir are playing word games. A person inside of the US is being spied upon. That IS DOMESTIC spying. The fact that the OTHER party is outside of the US does not mitigate that fact.
I realize that the Bush administration and its shills don't like being caught in the act of domestic spying but word games won't make it any less egregious.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
I just wanted to point out that this is one of the stupidest concepts since the Romans made plates and cutlery out of lead.
The cartoonish axioms this statement rests on are:
This is related to the slightly less stupid idea prevalent in lazy journalism: "if both sides are mad at me, we must be doing something right". No, sometimes you're just that wrong.
"If agents know their conversations might be tapped they will find ways of coding their communications. Pretty rational reason to keep the program secret."
Only if they thought they were not being listened to. I don't think they are that stupid.
I would say exposing this program has increased our national security (assuming it stops or is reduced in scope). Now maybe the FBI can do something useful rather than chasing thousands of dead ends. You chase enough dead ends and you start to assume all leads are worthless.
We have two main problems with intelligence. We don't get enough "on the ground" intel. And we have a had time turning useful intel into actions. We had sufficient intel to stop 9/11. But the intel didn't get converted into action. This program doesn't address the first issue and only make the second worse.
"Domestic Spying" is what Hoover did. And there's every reason in the world to hate it; I'm with you in that regard.
But this ain't that.
This is war; their warriors are calling people in this country, and vice-versa. If we weren't doing this, *I* would call for impeachment. And don't give me that "I agree, but it's the method" argument; it doesn't hold water.
But in the old-world media's mind, "It's not the facts, but the seriousness of the charge" as you may recall. Like the 20+ Halliburton investigations, kicking people out of office for kind words...to Democrats...who were openly racist then, and still are, just not openly.
Other than the smoke-and-mirrors 911 commission, and the obligitory war declaration, has there been even one attempt on the part of the Democrats to actually *help* fighting terrorists? All I see is them protecting them with red tape and starting rumors.
But then, liberals are always the first to help an enemy. Look how they lionize Castro, Noriega, Stalin...remember Jane Fonda sitting on an AA gun, used to shoot down our planes in Vietnam? How about the 200-or-so people who went to Iraq to be human shields? They got there and found the schools and hospitals were full of guns and ammo, not kids and sick people. Saddam had mass graves of 400,000 civilians. And *we* are evil? How's that work?
So now, every move from the left is a means of making the war in Iraq go bad, or talking down the economy, so the Democrats gan get into office. It's about as rude as it can get.
It's getting old, guys- you have elections coming up, and you still haven't decided on your core values, as McAllif has reluctantly told us. "It's coming".
Core values, the platform of a political party, should never be something to conjur or take from polls- they're a part of who you are.
Can we move on, please?
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
Your quotes from nyc.gov, the NYC mayor's website, are propaganda from Giuliani's Republican successor. Fascist propaganda.
Ghouliani had nothing to do with the TRILLIONS of dollars funneled through NYC during the Internet Bubble he lucked into. When the unemployment rate drops by half, those people aren't doing crime for their money - they're at work, and better supporting families who then do less crime.
Of course, Ghouliani's fascist police patrols, who shot unarmed poor people, especially black poor people, for no reason, did further lower crime rates - classic fascist technique. Not counting those many police crimes as crime also keeps the "crime rate" down, while keeping the streets unsafe - for poor people. And then just not counting other crimes helps with the rate. More typical fascist propaganda.
Giuliani watched as unprecedented wealth flowed through the city. And what do we have to show for it? The crime rate is still low, but that's a result of the generations of Democratic mayor policies since LaGuardia, which produced better educated, more integrated citizens, fewer unwanted childred, a stronger social fabric. We've got an $8BILLION airtrain to one of 3 metro airports, which took over a decade to build, and no one uses. The streets are in the worst physical condition I've ever seen (since the 1960s), literally caving in. The subways shut down in heavy rainstorms. Cancelling the commuter tax, on people who consume city services all day but get taxed only in the suburbs where they're too cheap to pay for as little as sidewalks, has forced city residents to subsidize the clueless people who clog our transport infrastructure. Corporations pay little of their way, while workers pay for everything.
Ghouliani was a violent, petty dictator, wielding the power of the government solely for corporate benefit at the expense, and to the detriment, of the people, covered by an incessant media myth. That's fascism to a decimal place. And without the reasonable people of NYC to hold him back, he will make the current Bush-league fascism look like Mussolini to his Hitler.
--
make install -not war
With no oversight, who's to say they even kept any records of their domestic spying?
-Rich