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EFF Documentation Victory in Telco Spying Case
Krishna Dagli sent on a link to Ars Technica's coverage of an EFF victory in a court case related to the NSA/Telco spying scandal. "Judge Vaughn Walker ruled today that AT&T, Verizon, Cingular (now part of AT&T), Sprint, and BellSouth (also part of AT&T now) must all maintain any data or papers related to the NSA spying case that Walker is overseeing in California. The EFF had requested the ruling out of concern that documents would be destroyed as part of routine data deletion practices before the case could even progress to discovery."
...but if this Telecom immunity crap gets through its a moot point.
I hope the rest of you have called your Congressmen.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
Granted, the EFF is a group of lawyers, but they are lawyers working for a better Internet. Sometimes they make me just want to cry. Hopefully this is just the beginning. The NSA has gone way beyond breaking the law. The ease at which they put people under surveilance and on watchlists flies in the face of the constitutional ban on unreasonable searches and bills of attainder. This is great news.
I got a catholic block.
...they will go on to lose the case itself. Too bad.
all time low since the war
Let us know when they manage to make it better than it was before the war started.
From yesterday:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/07/AR2007110700006.html?sub=AR
I unfortunately must agree with the first statement about their being a very small chance of punishment. That is a sad enough statement in and of itself.
I can not understand the callousness shown to others who lives are in danger through no fault of their own. Deriving enjoyment from the situation going badly in Iraq is also not a moral or enlightened position.
Modding this post up must be some kind of mistake I hope.
may indeed be a distant headlight of a big oncoming train. I can't help but think that if more and more judges are making reasonable decisions, even if not enough such decisions, then the country is waking up from the darkness. Yes, I know, DST doesn't really help, but every little bit of goodness counts. It's not like jurisprudence works like the latest fashion fad, it takes time. Now, we only need for a couple of them to have emails go missing (seems a favorite of the current administration) to show culpability, or some semblance of it. Hopefully, enough to shut down the spying and cause enough outrage to force it onto the election issues agenda.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Last time I checked the average death rate in Iraq (around about the height of the violence) was lower since the beginning of the invasion than the average death rate over Saddam Hussein's rule.
Convenient (for telcos) how they're required by law to retain personal data on people which they exploit for profit, but routinely delete evidence of telco crimes.
"These days it's all secrecy, and no privacy." - The Rolling Stones, "Fingerprint File"
--
make install -not war
"along with various reports of the violence at an all time low since the war "
Simply not true. It has dropped to the level of violence we experienced in 2005 so that's good.
Thalasar
Last time I checked
You checked? I call bullshit.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Wow, after 5 years and almost a Trillion pissed away into the sand, things are improving slightly! Yeah, take that terrorists! Fuck with the big bad USA and 5 years later we might actually get something done! I feel for those who were already in when this idiotic aggressive invasion took place. Those who enlisted after? Tough shit on them for supporting an evil agenda and being too stupid to realize that they were being lied to. We shoulda cleaned up in Afghanistan, gone home and secured our borders, and stayed vigilant. Pre-emptive strikes are bad precedent.
No declaration of war was made, no conscription, no rationing, no sacrifices made except to our rights and liberty. If this 'terrorist threat' was as serious as the government and their military cheerleaders say it is, why isn't there conscription? Why don't we have the 1/2 Million men in Iraq that military guidelines stated was needed to succeed there? Why doesn't our dear leader require Americans to ration gasoline and food so we can afford to properly equip those soldiers? The whole idea of invading Iraq was stupid because it wasn't involved, and then to top it all off, they went in with no plan.
Because this conflict was not to secure America, but to enrich the already-rich Americans with connections to politics. I'm sorry over 4k soldiers have wasted their lives for this crock of shit, but hey, they did volunteer knowing that even if a nut-job was elected that they would have to follow orders.
Sorry if that puts some hurt on your sacred cows, but reality often does that.
Blar.
Here's a longer NPR part than the article
This whole thing just reeks of sketchiness. If congress wanted to show some actually fortitude, they should knock the immunity out, even if there is a veto by the President.
import system.cool.Sig;
Maybe you should check the news about our failures more often.
I think we've been here before. Once bitten twice shy and all that.
Indeed, this press release, for example is *very* encouraging:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030501-15.html
I'm sure glad its almost over... again.
Regardless of how you feel about the war, which I disagree with completely, you are ass for hoping we lose in Iraq. The time for proving who is right is over. Let's get out in the best way possible and try not to "smirk" while soldiers and civilians die.
Well that, and the big smirk I get every morning when I find out how much worse things have gone in Iraq. Man, I love watching the failure of ignorant assholes who ignore good advice.
So it's about winning the argument, eh? You're not alone in predicting that invading Iraq was a bad move. But taking satisfaction in our failure in Iraq seems perverse to me. After all, although the Executive made mistakes and Congress rubber stamped them, the mistakes hurt us all (Iraqis included). Every time I see another Bush misstep, I cringe. We'll be paying for this for a long time. To me, fixing our problems is a lot more important than saying "I told you so."
If we keep going down the "us and them" path in our own politics, we'll wind up like the Sunnis and Shiites, self-righteous to the end, destroying our own country in the name of winning an argument.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Dude... YHBT. As a recovering biter I would like to invite you to join Biters Anonymous.
You don't HAVE to bite the trolls' trolls.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
If you would bother to read the comment without your own emotional baggage and with a little more literacy skill you would discover that the only enjoyment he is referring to is how the situation is backfiring on the assholes who started it. This in no way implies that the author enjoys the fact that so many Iraqis had to die. If you argue about him not mentioning the brave americans that did died... well frankly the US casualties amount to less than 1% of the total deaths. I bet an Iraqi would say "cry me a river" if he knew the phrase.
Judges generally grant motions related to discovery to be on the safe side, to limit chances of appeal later. Only the most unreasonable discovery requests are likely to be refused.
The EFF have to find something in that discovery to win their action, and that is the uphill battle....
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
the telcos would quite happily delete the data anyway and be in contempt... they'd get pardoned for it and a pat on the back from the executive branch...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
You know, those guys signed up to be called on when a disaster hits their home state. You know, like those tornadoes and hurricanes that hit and we have no resources for now.
We already lost in Iraq. We lost in Iraq in 2003, when after initial military success it turned out we had no plan. As to proving who was right, I think this is as good of a time as any. A stupid decision to invade was made. People behind this decision are still in power. They press on with their stupid policies and rhetoric. You just propose we pull together and clean up their shit. I don't think so.
I see it as my duty to criticize, berate, insult and generally annoy anyone who in any way supports, implements or justifies this war. The logic here is: the next time another idiot in Washington decides to go to war, he will remember all the crap the last guy had to deal with and will change his mind. Hopefully. Hey, it's a better plan than yours.
Given that Iraq has at least 100,000 deaths (that's according to the U.S. Army, other sources estimate 250,000 and more) due to homicide and war since 2003, that's four years and on average 25,000 each year. The death poll of Saddam Hussein's rule is put at 300,000 for the whole of more than 30 years, which results in 10,000 per year. Basicly the death rate has more than doubled since the starting of the Iraq war.
"If we keep going down the "us and them" path in our own politics, we'll wind up like the Sunnis and Shiites, self-righteous to the end, destroying our own country in the name of winning an argument."
You use the future tense - I think the past tense is more appropriate.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
"Now, Mr. Telco, you be good now and don't destroy any of those documents that may incriminate you in the future, okay? We don't know what documents you have, but we'll ask you to not shred them until we actually can proceed to ask you for them."
Really why is the system set up this way? It's like telling a suspected murderer to please not dispose of the murder weapon if he has it until the prosecutor can get a search warrant.
Anybody who thinks that Congress will stand up to the Administration on Telecom snooping is crazy. Here is the dialogue that I see:
W.H. Staffer: "Lord Cheney, House Judiciary Committee Chair Conyers is trying to block the Telecoms are real Patriots Immunity Bill
Cheney: "Oh ya? Hold on . . . Here it is. Let me make a call.
Cheney: "Mr. Black? this is Lord Cheney.
Mr. Black: "We know it is you. How can we do your bidding?
Cheney: "Conyers is getting in the way of the TARP bill. What can you give me? I need that NARUS STA-6400 data crunched right now!
Mr. Black: "Conyers . . . Conyers, OK here we go, House ISP routers and home routers . . . OK do you want his home e-mail? office e-mail? You want it summarized or verbatim?
Mr. Black: "Oh, I know, how about web page browsing history for the last two years?
Cheney: "I don't care. Just get me something good!
Mr. Black: "Ah, yes. Here is what you want. oooh. Nasty. Shall I send it to you or do you want me to send it to Mr. Conyers directly? Anonymously, of course.
Cheney: Send it to me damn it. This will be fun.
Because the sources I have seen call bullshit.
http://wais.stanford.edu/Iraq/iraq_deathsundersaddamhussein42503.html
"Along with other human rights organizations, The Documental Centre for Human Rights in Iraq has compiled documentation on over 600,000 civilian executions in Iraq. Human Rights Watch reports that in one operation alone, the Anfal, Saddam killed 100,000 Kurdish Iraqis. Another 500,000 are estimated to have died in Saddam's needless war with Iran. Coldly taken as a daily average for the 24 years of Saddam's reign, these numbers give us a horrifying picture of between 70 and 125 civilian deaths per day for every one of Saddam's 8,000-odd days in power"
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=392881
"During the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88), 730,000 Iranians died. You will
recall that Hussein was the aggressor in this war, because he wanted
full control of the Arvand/Shatt al-Arab waterway at the head of the
Persian Gulf. (For more information on the war, see "Iran-Iraq War,"
at Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/i/irani1raq.asp
) Approximately 1,000 Kuwaiti nationals were killed in the Iraqi
invasion of Kuwait. It's estimated there were 1,500,000 refugees from
this war, displaced by Iraq's occupation of Kuwait. 750,000 "endured
brutalities, oppression, and torture." Although the date for the end
of the war is usually given as 1988, the struggle continued, and
500,000 Iranians were late killed (the Iranians say it was closer to 1
million), 100,000 by Hussein's chemical weapons. In one day, 5,000
men, women, and children were gassed. ("Sadaam's Other Crime," In The
National Interest: http://www.inthenationalinterest.com/Articles/Vol3Issue29/Vol3Issue29Askari.html
and "Charges Facing Saddam Hussein," BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3320293.stm )"
So, we have to make a decision about what you did here. Either the numbers, as a whole, are so unreliable that they fail to be useful, or you're cherrypicking numbers you like and ignoring the ones you don't.
In either case, your opinion is worthless.
And of those deaths, the vast majority, in excess of 90%, were caused by...
wait for it....
OTHER IRAQIS!!! Not US servicemen.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
In other words... you went in, started a civil war, and still want to claim success?
Well, I guess if a Washington Post article and an article from a militarty website say all is going great in Iraq, who am I to argue?? Obviously those are both completely bias-free sites... (insert joke about "liberal media" here)
"But this one goes to 11!"
not really "started", we just evened the odds of the pre-existing civil war, now all 3 groups die instead at roughly the same rate instead of the sunni cleansing everyone else.
But I've fucking had it.
I love a good political rant as much as the next guy, but the ONLY mod for that guy is "offtopic".
Jesus Christ mods, do you even know what the hell the moderations you give actually mean?
Could you tell us where that 90% figure comes from? Even if you're exaggerating, it would be interesting to see.
You use the future tense - I think the past tense is more appropriate.
We haven't yet taken to the streets, AK-47s in hand. One nice thing about the rule of law is that for all the absurdities of our government and our legal system, people don't generally resolve disputes in America with bullets. I think we tend to forget that a lot when we talk about how jacked up the government is, how we should kill all the laywers, etc. Life without daily bloodshed has a lot to recommend to it.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
AT&T gave feds access to all Web, phone traffic, ex-tech says
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2004001159_spying08.html
he alleged that the NSA set up a system that vacuumed up Internet and phone-call data from ordinary Americans with the help of AT&T and without obtaining a court order.
NSA built a special room in San Francisco to receive data streamed through an AT&T Internet room containing "peering links," or major connections to other telecom providers. Other so-called secret rooms reportedly were constructed at AT&T sites in Seattle, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Jose, Calif
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
The death poll of Saddam Hussein's rule
There's your problem. You're asking dead people.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I believe this was a president, full of hubris, [...]
My main problem with this theory is that it presumes that the President was the prime mover in this plan.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Source or bullshit
Not this useless Vaughn Walker again.
Bad judge, bad decision.
Because it's my understanding that the #1 cause of violent death in Iraq is still US airstrikes. Lots of explosives going off in urban areas leads to lots of death. In all this talk about suicide bombers people see to forget that the US air power drops MUCH larger bombs on targets in Iraq. Shia death squads are a very close second. Deaths from Sunni insurgent snipers and bombers don't even really come close. This is easy to understand when you realize they're outnumbered 5 to 1 by the Americans and 3 to 1 by the Shia militias.
I'm willing to concede that deaths from Shia death squads may have eclipsed deaths from US airstrikes in the past year or so. Nobody really knows, except perhaps the Pentagon, and they aren't talking. However, this would still mean that the majority of deaths in Iraq came from US airstrikes. As the war drags on, that percentage is dwindling.
What you fail to take into account is that nearly all of the Iraqis who killed other Iraqis were around for years before the US invasion, and most didn't kill anyone at all in years preceding our invasion. Don't you find it odd that someone can be a peaceful citizen for decades and then one weekend turn into a murderous militant?
While I agree US servicemen didn't cause those deaths directly, if those US servicemen had never invaded Iraq, nearly all of the civilian deaths simply would not have happened. To say we don't share some blame is pretty laughable.
US troops in Iraq are in the same position as pieces of shrapnel in an artery. Pulling them out will cause trouble, but leaving them there will also cause trouble--but the larger point is that they never had any business being there in the first place.
Yeah those tanks and anti-aircraft weapons they give the national guard are real effective against floods and tornadoes.
Idiot.
Who is John Galt?
Actually, according to a peer-reviewed study published in the Lancet in 2006,
31% of those were attributed to the Coalition, 24% to others, 46% unknown.
Ok... Let me rephrase that:
Before the invasion Iraqis killed Iraqis at a rate of 10,000 per year. After the invasion Iraqis killed Iraqis at a rate of 22,500 a year. That's helping progress towards democracy exactly how?
I am not a bible type at all, but one sentence I think is very important: Matthew 7,16 (rephrased in Matthew 7,20): "So then, you will know them by their fruits."
OK, yeah. I pulled the number out of my ass. But I still contend that the vast majority of killings there are Iraqi on Iraqi.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
You wish. The ORB poll two months that put the Iraqi civilian death toll since the invasion at a million and the Lancet study in October 2006 that put it at 650,000 are both talking about excess deaths; that is, above and beyond what they would have been under Hussein's rule.
Even if you consider those numbers to be too high (and you'd better have a good reason for believing so besides not wanting to believe them), there's absolutely no denying the fact that the civilian death rates have skyrocketted since the US invasion.
I don't want my taxes paying for a standing army of 1/2 Million. That is what conscription is for! That's how we won WW2!
Blar.
"There are no facts there."
;)"
Criminals have free will. Fact (and please try to argue that, so I can quote your post that agrees)
So, now that it's obvious you're wrong, care to support your accusations of name calling?
Or admit you can't? You won't, your kind never does, you just lie and troll and run away when defeated.
"It's kind of hard to commit a crime when you've been thrown in jail after the first crime.
Crimes don't occur in jail? Wow, you're getting less and less coherent as you get more and more refuted.
Support your accusation or retract it. Step up and admit you were lying.