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Wiretapping Program Ruled Legal
BuhDuh writes "The New York Times is carrying a story concerning that well known bastion of legal authority, the 'Foreign Intelligence Surveillance' court, which has ruled that the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping program was perfectly legal. It says, 'A federal intelligence court, in a rare public opinion, is expected to issue a major ruling validating the power of the president and Congress to wiretap international phone calls and intercept e-mail messages without a court order, even when Americans' private communications may be involved, according to a person with knowledge of the opinion.'"
You should ask the people in Cairo where they think we're heading. Egypt's a "democratic" country terrorizing its people under the guise of a "war on terror." Really, you just need to intercept communications of those people who oppose you in any form or fashion and simply provide even the slightest proof that they belong to The Muslim Brotherhood. The screams in the night are nothing to concern you, comrade, you haven't done anything wrong so why should you be worried?
I don't think anything really bad is being done against the American people at this moment. I do think that boundaries are being crossed whereby if the wrong person gets into power, there is no going back. Just ask yourself: What Would Nixon Do?
My work here is dung.
This right on the heels of a god damned act of treason by
Supreme Court just yesterday: http://www.freep.com/article/20090115/NEWS07/90115015
Seriously, can anyone tell me ANYTHING whatsoever that the 4th amendment does now?
And just in case anyone out there is still Hoping for Change starting next week: sorry, the New Boss supports this shit too - and he's a "constitutional scholar"!
Every last one of these sons of bitches should be in jail.
It's not like they don't have what's best for you in mind.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Well, in the fine tradition of our founding fathers then, let's assemble publicly, choose representatives from amongst us, and then send them out internationally to work towards encrypting the network and locking it down, taking away the ability of our government to spy on us at the network level. You don't play well with others, and soon you'll have nobody to play with. Simple. Of course... who will bell the cat?
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
So what time do the riots and looting start? I'm not off work til 5pm but I gotta pickup the kids and get them home by 6pm, oh and I have to watch an episode of House MD before I can head out. On second thought, I do have to work tomorrow and don't want to be inconvenienced, so lets put them off until its warmer outside as well, maybe next year, or the year after?
*Goes back to staring at the god box and doing as told.
cheers.
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So the FISA court just ruled itself irrelevant?
go buy more ammo for my soon to be banned guns.
Jefferson was right
But I strongly suspected this already. Most people who actually analyzed the situation and the LAW thought it was a strong possibility.
Unfortunately, every time I attempted to discuss the actual LAW, I (and others) were shouted down (and modded down) by the "WHARGARBLL FUCK BUSH BLAHGHGHG!!" crowd, who'd rather not have their prejudices disproven.
Things can be legal, and still be intrusive and wrong on a moral level.
Perhaps in the future, all of you who screamed "Illegal wiretaps!!!!" at the top of your lungs will take the time to listen.
PS, I think it's shitty too, but that doesn't make it illegal.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
The FISA court is simply recognizing that no one has a right to privacy when making an international call. Freedom of Speech does not make any guarantee of privacy, nor does Freedom from Search & Seizure exist at the border. The NSA program specifically targeted phone calls between the US and a foreign country.
The FISA court still needs to exist to temper abuse for domestic wire taps.
I've explained this several times on this site and I'm glad to see the court has finally figured out how to read.
This is about the program under the law passed by Congress which authorized warrantless wiretapping after the President was doing it; not the program which was carried out prior to that by the President in direct contravention to the prohibitions of the statute law existing at the time.
Of course, one might reasonably question whether the decision comports with the Constitution even there, but its an important distinction to make, since there have been issues both with the power of government as a whole and the independent power of the President, regardless of the laws passed by Congress relating to warrantless wiretapping, and the two issues sometimes get muddled.
In other news, the Fox Court has ruled that hen-house raids by foxes are legal. Shocking.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
The problem with this statement is that both the current administration and the upcoming administration don't seem to mind that it's not constitutional. Facts have an odd way of falling through the cracks in a bureaucracy.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
The tag "bushcrimesyndicate" is inaccurate. For those of you who haven't read the Constitution, Congress is responsible for setting up all Federal courts, including the FISA court (surely nobody believes that Bush created FISA...).
"politiciancrimesyndicate" is much more accurate.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
They're not the one hearing the class action cases. They're also not the supreme court.
They can say anything they want, but, while they have authority to issue warrants, they are by no means the final authority on the interpretation of law in regards to the constitution.
That would be the USSC.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Depends on if that "communication" goes over lands/buildings/properties exclusively owned by a private individual US Citizen with 4th Amendment protections OR does that transmission cross some line of demarcation onto property that is not solely owned by that 4th Amendment protested individual?
To walk around your house naked is legal as it your right to privacy, but to go outside and walk down the street naked, your rights to privacy vanish!
My email have been ruled to be "unprotected" once it passes my line of demarcation and this is no different.
Putting it another way, two parties yelling across a public alley at one another from each of their private homes (or even if signaling each other in Morse Code with Naval Signaling Lights) are not protected by the 4th Amendment in their "Communication" as intercepting it can be done from lands and property not owned by either party. (And the same would be true if the same individual owned both homes, because the message crossed lands and property not subject to the 4th Amendment protections of the individual citizen.
IANAL, but as I understand the 4th Amendment, it was written over SEARCH and SEIZURES in/of a Private US Citizen's PROPERTY/HOME, and does not cover PUBLIC locations. For public locations, the Police need to abide by their own ROE and typically only probable cause or some other suspicion or wrongdoing is needed for the Police to search your person or vehicle (as you would NOT be located on/in YOUR 4th Amendment Protected private property but in a public location.)
If the warrants can be issued retroactively, then there is really no point in getting the order except as some sort of CYA.
Getting the warrant allows the evidence to be used in court. No warrant - no evidence. At least until yesterday.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 says:
1. A warrant is not required to collect intelligence when the target is not a US Person, regardless of where the collection occurs, including within the US.
2. A warrant is always required to collect intelligence when the target is a US Person, whether inside or outside of the US (more strict than previous law).
This requires the assistance of telecom operators in the US. In order to determine which traffic can be legally intercepted without a warrant, basic information about the traffic, such as its source and destination, must also be examined. Such examination of traffic -- a "pen register" -- also does not require a warrant.
The job of our foreign intelligence services is to collect information on the activities and plans of US adversaries. This activity has never required a warrant, because these individuals are not protected by the Constitution of the United States.
The path traffic takes shouldn't prevent us from doing this job.
What the holy hell are you tin-foiling about?
Since December 15, 1791.
The first amendment allows freedom of expression, even if the idea being expressed is to abolish the existing government.
The second amendment was not passed to protect the rights of hunters. It was passed so that common citizens could, in the inevitable instance that their government becomes tyrannical, can be overthrown. In 1791, "well-regulated" did not mean that the militia would be "regulated" or licensed by the government (you didn't need a license for anything in 1791). "Well-regulated" meant a militia that could shoot straight.
These ideas were not outrageous to the founding fathers. They themselves had just violently overthrown their government. While not law, these ideas are expressed clearly in the opening of the Declaration of Independence:
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
That's bull. What hate America, left wing source gave you that information and tried to compare us to Egypt in terms of democracy? This is patently false on it's face. Egypt instantly fails the first test anyone would do when trying to determine see if a country is a democracy. They don't have any free or fair elections. Hosni Mubarak proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt. They have been a mild dictatorship at best for decades, and everyone knows it. Contrast that to the US... if we were a dictatorship under president Bush, as so many on the left wildly claim, then why is he voluntarily leaving power? A dictator doesn't care about term limits. And why is someone he didn't vote for coming to power? Because we still respect the will of the people in this country. We actually are a democracy and don't have hand picked successors.
How about we ask, "What would George Washington do?" Answer: The exact same thing. Ever since this country was founded we have done this same sort of stuff. The early presidents all found spying ok, all engaged in it, and all inspected foreign mail during war. Move forward a little and you'll find that FDR and JFK did the same sorts of warrantless wiretapping we are doing now, and they are Democrat heroes. In fact, Robert Kennedy did more than probably anyone in history. There is a difference between regular criminal mischief and war, and a difference between American citizens protected under the constitution and people from other countries. Most reasonable people recognize this. During wars especially, but even when not at war, the US (and all other nations) have the right to spy on each other without asking for a warrant from the international court. Only our own citizens are protected from illegal search and seizure under the constitution. Foreign enemy terrorists are not. Sorry.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
No one actually cares about the truth here, any of the issues at play, nor the legality of any programs. Most make it a huge political issue, and is it any surprise that even the "leakers" have all had a political axe to grind with the Bush administration?
They just scream "unconstitutional" and rant about Bush, when the very mechanisms set up in our society to render legal opinions on actions of various components of government and to rule on issues of legality or constitutionality have judged certain things to be legal.
The issue is summed up fairly well by comments of DNI Mike McConnell (video) at Harvard's Kennedy School:
FISA is a dedicated branch of the Federal Court system set up for the sole purpose of handling warrants for the intelligence agencies. All of it's members are required to have a Top Secret or better security clearance and it is very much a closed door court.
Most of the paperwork that goes through FISA is classified in some way or another, so its not available for review like normal court documents. In some ways, it's a lot more like a Grand Jury where everything is sealed until after the trial. The only problem is that Intelligence agency work is almost never done, so nothing ever becomes unsealed.
As for history, FISA was created in response to Nixon & Watergate. It satisfied the needs of the intelligence community to be able to work in secret inside the US to handle cross border work, while still maintaining checks & balances on the actual activity. Currently, god only knows what kind of check it's actually performing - last report I saw was rating @ 99+% approval of warrant requests.
Then what's this for?
What?
to go outside and walk down the street naked, your rights to privacy vanish!
That is a dangerously authoritarian approach to the issue. If we were expected to give up all rights to privacy simply because we were no longer on our own land, we might as well have no privacy at all because only the invalid and the insane can be expected to live their lives without a significant, if not majority, of time spent outside of their own property.
The supreme court ruled, in Katz v US, that regardless of whether you are on public or private property, what matters is that you have a reasonable expectation to privacy whatever the location may be.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
" The American government and Constitution were founded on the idea that everyone has the same rights, whether they are citizens of the U.S. or not."
Despite there being Slavery at the founding of The American Government.
Despite everyone NOT having the same rights at the founding of the American Government (women couldn't vote for example).
Despit your claim that "everyone has the same rights, whether they are citizens of the U.S. or not." appearing NOWHERE in the Constitution.
Now, don't presume that I disagree with the idea that equality is universal, but your claims about it being historically true in respect to the American Government are unequivocally false.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
The common mythology, that the purpose of the Second Amendment is some sort of backstop against an unjust government from taking over, has little historical basis. Like the rest of the Amendments, it was written for a pratcial purpose, not an esoteric one.
That practial purpose was: It protected the interests of the slave states by explicity granting them the right to use the tools (firearms) necessary to maintain their economic interests (slavery).
The common mythology, that the Second Amendment is intended to protect from tyrrany, is turned on its head when looked at from the slave's point of view.
Don't misunderstand me, I'm not suggesting the Founding Fathers would have banned private ownership of guns in the absence of slavery. But the individual's right to bear arms is specifically carved out in the Constitution to protect the interests of the slave states.
Look at the language of the Second Amendment itself. Ask yourself "What did a militia do 200 years ago?" One of the things they did was put down slave uprisings.
Answer: political posturing.
Treason is almost never charged. In the two hundred and twenty years since the US Constitution went into effect, the grand total of treason indictments: less than 40. Number of convictions: even less. Minimally, history has shown that we can run a country successfully without much use of the charge of "treason"; I'd say we probably could get by without that particular charge at all.
The framers seem to have been ambivalent about treason. It's mentioned in the Constitution, but in a way that suggests that they saw treason as a charge which invites political misuse. In order to convict somebody of treason, there has to be an overt act that is witnessed by two people or confessed by the guilty party. Furthermore, they are anxious to avoid treason as an pretext for seizing property, or disinheriting or disenfranchising relatives.
Treason, in the sense described by the constitution, is a political crime. What does it mean to "adhere to the enemies" of the United States, given that the President or a majority of Congress can name anybody they please as "enemies"? Is the government of Iran an enemy of the United States? How about the people of Iran? What about people who simply favor rapprochement with Iran? Can they be considered enemies as well? If Iran is an enemy, is aiding somebody sympathetic to the interests of Iran aiding, albeit indirectly, and enemy of the US?
The framers were wise in trying to make political crime an awkward crime to prosecute. I'd go further though, and make the trial of political crimes explicitly political. I think that it is perfectly feasible, given that treason cases come at a rate of about one every six years, to require a procedure similar to that used for impeachment. A person guilty of treason should be indicted by the House, and tried by the Senate, but I'd also add the restriction that he must be convicted by a supermajority of 60 Senators, and with the assent of the President.
It may be that treason has an inevitable place in our consciousness as a kind of horrendous crime of malicious and destructive disloyalty, whether we want it there or not. Even if we think that the government should not try people for political crimes, it is important that provisions be made for trying political crimes. The procedure be there, so that other charges are not politicized.
If someone is truly guilty of an act of supreme, depraved disloyalty, then it should be possible to attract support for conviction across a majority of the political spectrum. If it is not possible to get a majority of the people's representatives to support conviction, then the act cannot reasonably be considered treason. It is important to keep such a politically oriented charge out of the hands of any small number of people.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The reason that the Constitution is so short, and so vague, is that it is a Treaty among the states that could not agree on anything. Prior to the failure of the Articles of Confederation, the states, having just rebelled against a Federal Power in Great Britain, did not want any power over them at all. They only adopted the Constitution because the founders recognized that there existed a need for a small, but powerful, Federal Government, to provide for some basic, common things, like military and regulation of commerce among the states.
Anything else, not in the Constitution, is explicitly left to the states, and that says, essentially, that if it is not in the Constitution, then the Federal Government is NOT allowed to do it.
So yeah, you could make a pretty strong case that, in the strict sense, Bush's wiretapping is illegal as it is not an enumerated power. However, this country, perhaps wrongly, largely believes that the Constitution is a "living document", not the treaty that it is. While this view is propagated by the American left wing - Obama even spells this out in his book, it is also true that the right wing, particularly under President Bush, has also taken the "living document" approach. Thus, the Federal Government now has the power to regulate the environment, local schools, hiring practices, voting within the states (and THAT is blatantly unconstitutional), and any other number of things.
So, it's not just that Bush is unconstitutional. It's that, every President since even Jefferson and arguably even George Washington has been unconstitutional! Jefferson, you will recall, argued rather violently against a strong federal government, but then had no problem with actually going out and purchasing the Louisiana territories from the French, lying to Congress, fighting an undeclared war against the French and Barbary Pirates, all the while writing about Freedom in an enormous set of letters to Madison and everyone else, bitching about slavery while knocking his own slaves up.
So yeah, you -could- make the case, that all the Presidents are unconstitutional, and the whole damn thing was a failure, except that, there were those who actually saw the Constitution as the creation of a President as essentially a king for a democratically restricted length of time, his power for war and taxation removed from him, but pretty much able to do whatever he wanted, and within that history then, you would really have to square Dick Cheney's view of the Presidency as Hamiltonian, more than anything else.
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Currently, FISA is constitutional. As a Law passed by Congress and ratified by the President, it will remain presumptively constitutional until and unless the US Supreme Court rules it otherwise.
As of 2007, the NSA program is perfectly legal, accoring to the court. It does not necessarily mean that the program has always been legal. In fact, it's pretty likely that it violated a number of statues, and that's what's technically important here.
The powers of the President to wage war and to protect national security are subject to Congressional oversight and regulation. While most people are aware that the Constitution names the President "Commander in Chief", the powers granted to him are significantly less than those of a military dictator, even with respect to the policy and management of the military. For example officer commissions are approved by the senate Although this is largely a pro forma affair. Indeed every aspect of running and employing the military is subject to Congressional regulation.
This is important because in US Constitutional law, there is no explicit right of personal privacy, and the exact extent of the implicit right of privacy (under the Ninth Amendment) is not perfectly clear. If the Executive Branch is empowered to do something, that means it is up to Congress to see to it that it does not violate the Ninth Amendment.
It is largely due to Congress's power regulate Executive functions that we have many restrictions on wiretapping at all. While the reach of the Fourth Amendment has been considerably widened by court opinions in the 20th Century (e.g., Katz v. US) for criminal investigation, intelligence investigation inherently requires a violation of the "expectation of privacy", something that Katz says can only be done with a warrant in criminal cases.
So, if Congress says the President can intercept phone calls for intelligence purposes, it seems probable that this will be treated by the courts as constitutional. If that's not the case, it is Congress that has failed in its duty to safeguard Americans from the Executive Branch.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Of course its Ok now; Now that the current regime takes power.
Trust us, we are Liberal!
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