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NSA Overstepped the Law On Wiretaps
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that legal and operational problems surrounding the NSA's surveillance activities have come under scrutiny from the Obama administration, Congressional intelligence committees, and a secret national security court, and that the NSA had been engaged in 'overcollection' of domestic communications of Americans. The practice has been described as significant and systemic, although one official said it was believed to have been unintentional. The Justice Department has acknowledged that there had been problems with the NSA surveillance operation, but said they had been resolved. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the intelligence community, did not address specific aspects of the surveillance problems, but said in a statement that 'when inadvertent mistakes are made, we take it very seriously and work immediately to correct them.' The intelligence officials said the problems had grown out of changes enacted by Congress last July to the law that regulates the government's wiretapping powers, as well as the challenges posed by enacting a new framework for collecting intelligence on terrorism and spying suspects. Joe Klein at Time Magazine says the bad news is that 'the NSA apparently has been overstepping the law,' but the good news is that 'one of the safeguards in the [FISA Reform] law is a review procedure that seems to have the ability to catch the NSA when it's overstepping — and that the illegal activities have been exposed, and quickly.'"
Isn't this the same Obama administration that recently defended warrantless wiretapping?
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/obama-doj-worse-than-bush "The Obama Administration goes two steps further than Bush did, and claims that the US PATRIOT Act also renders the U.S. immune from suit under the two remaining key federal surveillance laws: the Wiretap Act and the Stored Communications Act. Essentially, the Obama Adminstration has claimed that the government cannot be held accountable for illegal surveillance under any federal statutes."
Perhaps to expand on what you are saying, because you are dead on accurate: GSM and many POTS telephone services use CCITT7, this comes with SANC, OPC, DPC, & ISPC codes (along with many others), these are all well established. The majority of countries that want to play nice with the rest of the world actually have to use these codes properly too. (Signalling systems are a complex business!) So what actually are these codes? They describe the geography of international telephone circuits. The phone companies latitude and longitude if you will, accurate to about the first digit. I did not say decimal place! :-) What can they be used for? Hypothetically speaking, one would feel confident in presuming these would be used by your local 3 letter agency to 'filter out the good guys' - that's about the only way I can figure it could be done practically anyway. Well, aside from I guess using the label written on some masking tape in sharpie at either end of the international fiber to figure out roughly who is using it. (Note: your good guys may not match my good guys, but that's a political thing)
Now obviously the diligent programer of this particular 'black box' would be inclined to put switches in to do this filtering based on these pretty little acronyms, thus allowing the owners of the 3 letter agency to legitimately talk about 'safeguards' and such. This is great, fantastic. Now, step in greedy middle level managers, directors, and politicians looking for that fast track up the ladder, or just in love with the whole "I can spy on your telephone call!!1!one!!" Rhetorical Question: You really think those switches are going to be in safe mode?
The practice has been described as significant and systemic, although one official said it was believed to have been unintentional.
My 10 year old daughter uses that excuse. 'I didn't mean to throw cookie dough at my friend.
'For 10 minutes.'
Joe Klein at Time Magazine says the bad news is that 'the NSA apparently has been overstepping the law,' but the good news is that 'one of the safeguards in the [FISA Reform] law is a review procedure that seems to have the ability to catch the NSA when it's overstepping -- and that the illegal activities have been exposed, and quickly.'"
Yeah, quickly. They were exposed almost 5 years [1] ago. An entire term of office for the US chief executive, for those of you keeping score. The FISA Reform act was not required to expose the activity. It was required to stop the activity. Maybe Time Magazine doesn't remember history very well, but we do. And we prefer not to implicitly lie with our choice of verb.
Nor do we believe for a moment that the activity actually was stopped. Secret (kangaroo) courts and secret meetings and the utterly worthless assurances of the US Justice Department. Of course it's still on-going. I don't even have to wear a tin-foil hat to proclaim that. I don't sound the least bit nutty, saying that, because even major media reported the story, in detail, for months, and nobody cared.
You think they're going to stop now? Of course they're not. Nobody was shot for treason when they endorsed a program that raped the US Constitution. Nobody was sent to jail when they designed a spying program that raped the US Constitution. Nobody lost their job when they implemented a surveillance program that raped the US Constitution. Nobody had their pay docked for listening to the phone calls of random citizens. Nobody got their knuckles rapped with a ruler for reading the email of random citizens. No, instead, they got condemned in the press. Oooooooo. The horror.
They got away with it. Completely and utterly and totally. So why would they stop? When there are no negative consequences whatsoever, there's no reason at all to stop.
The saddest part of all is that it can not be stopped. If Congress chose to do something about it, the members who led the effort would be pilloried as partisan and would lose reelection. Daring to stand on principle would result in losing their job, because that's what the voters think is right.
Oh my people...
My bank has a record of every purchase I make, my doctor has my medical history, and my ISP knows what web sites I visit, but I'm not worried. So why do I care if the federal government has that information? Because I don't trust them, and for good reason. The Patriot Act was supposed to protect us from terrorists, but as soon as it was enacted the government used it to enforce copyright violations, kick homeless people out of a train station, and investigate drug dealers. Demonstrate some integrity and you'll earn people's trust.
When were U.S. citizens given rights to privacy over a public infrastructure such as phone lines
Katz vs. United States, which established that private telephone calls are protected by the Fourth Amendment.