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NCTC Gets Vast Powers To Spy On U.S. Citizens
interval1066 writes "In a breathtaking new move by (another) little-known national security agency, the personal information of all U.S. citizens will be available for casual perusal. The 'National Counterterrorism Center' (I've never heard of this org) may now 'examine the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them.' This is different from past bureaucratic practice (never mind due process) in that a government agency not in the list of agencies approved to to certain things without due process may completely bypass due process and store (for up to 5 years) these records, the organization doesn't need a warrant, or have any kind of oversight of any kind. They will be sifting through these records looking for 'counter-insurgency activity,' supposedly with an eye to prevention. If this doesn't wake you up and chill you to your very bone, not too sure there is anything that will anyway."
With enough media attention this will be shut down.
Remember when people were screaming that Bush was the root of all evil? How's that whole Obama thing working out for you.
Not collecting much of new data, and it's one agency allowed to centralize it instead of every little local agency keeping it forever. I'd rather have one agency with a long time limit than a hundred agencies with long time limits...just keep the others low.
I mean really. TFS has a link to Wikipedia (OK, now we know what the NCC is and I guess it's not a space ship), then a paywalled article.
OK, I'm willing to go along with the concept that the US Federal government has gotten even more intrusive however, a little real info would be nice. Very nice. How about taking 30 seconds more and finding a better link.
I know some feel that the ACLU is a bit on the left wing insane side, but it's a nice balance to the the WSJ right wing insane. And the blog is at least free, readable and nominally interesting.
tl;dr - we're doomed.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
You are giving yourself an excuse. Maybe that is true, but you are ignoring the many, many ways the U.S. government is VERY corrupt. The U.S. financial system steals trillions of dollars. The kill-other-people-and-destroy-property groups associated with the U.S. government have stolen trillions of dollars to kill people in lands most citizens can't find on a map, partly for profit and partly because they are mentally ill.
Citizens and taxpayers are not even allowed to know the names of all the secret groups that secretly get taxpayer money to do secret things that benefit people who taxpayers are not allowed to know.
U.S. government corruption is a problem for everyone on the planet, not just U.S. citizens.
Do the work of stopping corruption in the U.S. government.
Clearly both you and the op are terrorists.
There's the rub, isn't it? As long as you call people terrorists, you can do anything to them.
Blow up buildings? Terrorist.
Free animals from research facilities? Terrorist.
Do a web search about bomb-making? Terrorist.
Say "terrorist" in an airport? Terrorist.
Run a red light? Terrorist.
Post a "subversive" comment on Slashdot? Terrorist.
Read this message? Terrorist!!!
In information security compartmentalization, least privilege, need to know and other similar concepts are considered a good thing. These concepts exist to security confidentiality of information. But the NCTC has the authority to share the information with anyone according to the ACLU: "Perhaps most disturbing, once information is gathered (not necessarily connected to terrorism), in many cases it can be shared with “a federal, state, local, tribal, or foreign or international entity, or to an individual or entity not part of a government” – literally anyone. That sharing can happen in relation to national security and safety, drug investigations, if it’s evidence of a crime or to evaluate sources or contacts. This boundless sharing is broad enough to encompass disclosures to an employer or landlord about someone who NCTC may think is potentially a criminal, or at the request of local law enforcement for vetting an informant." http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security-technology-and-liberty/biggest-new-spying-program-youve-probably-never-heard
Now it's perfectly understandable that they have to vet informants and sources, investigate terrorism, and defend national security because that is the fundamental purpose of a federal government. Some of that of other stuff however is highly political and some of it gives far too much power to far too few people and is ripe for abuse. "Crime" is vague and could mean literally anything, and I'd be willing to say we are all criminals so that applies to all of us. Drug investigations are highly political because not all of us believe in the war on drugs and in fact a majority of us aren't even for these sorts of investigations in the first place so to include that is highly political and ripe for corruption. To share information with a person not part of a government or with individuals? What reason would they have to ever do that?
The problem I have with the NCTC isn't their spying capability but the fact that they bypassed the Democratic process and the will of the people, and that they aren't following any sort of information security protocol in their sharing. You can share information with people who are cleared, or who have a need to know, but the more you share the more leaks there could be, the more problems there will be. And the more broad the excuse to spy on people the more corruption and oppression there could be in the process. Let's spy on this citizen because they jay-walked or ignored a red light or have a marijuana plant in their closet. So now we got to unleash the full power of the federal government, NSA, CIA, Satellites, and all? That to me is bullcrap and highly political.
For these reasons I think media attention should be brought to this not to get rid of the spy program itself but to restrict it to a narrowly defined purpose. To simply spy on everyone just to give the government power over people and then to spread that power out to random people who aren't even necessarily American citizens is a problem and probably isn't even Constitutional.
McCarthy supports this group from beyond the grave.
If that doesn't work, try the google cache
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324478304578171623040640006.html
December 12, 2012, 10:30 p.m. ET
U.S. Terrorism Agency to Tap a Vast Database of Citizens
By JULIA ANGWIN
Top U.S. intelligence officials gathered in the White House Situation Room in March to debate a controversial proposal. Counterterrorism officials wanted to create a government dragnet, sweeping up millions of records about U.S. citizens--even people suspected of no crime.
Not everyone was on board. "This is a sea change in the way that the government interacts with the general public," Mary Ellen Callahan, chief privacy officer of the Department of Homeland Security, argued in the meeting, according to people familiar with the discussions.
A week later, the attorney general signed the changes into effect.
Through Freedom of Information Act requests and interviews with officials at numerous agencies, The Wall Street Journal has reconstructed the clash over the counterterrorism program within the administration of President Barack Obama. The debate was a confrontation between some who viewed it as a matter of efficiency--how long to keep data, for instance, or where it should be stored--and others who saw it as granting authority for unprecedented government surveillance of U.S. citizens.
The rules now allow the little-known National Counterterrorism Center to examine the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them. That is a departure from past practice, which barred the agency from storing information about ordinary Americans unless a person was a terror suspect or related to an investigation.
Now, NCTC can copy entire government databases--flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others. The agency has new authority to keep data about innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years, and to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior. Previously, both were prohibited. Data about Americans "reasonably believed to constitute terrorism information" may be permanently retained.
The changes also allow databases of U.S. civilian information to be given to foreign governments for analysis of their own. In effect, U.S. and foreign governments would be using the information to look for clues that people might commit future crimes.
"It's breathtaking" in its scope, said a former senior administration official familiar with the White House debate.
Counterterrorism officials say they will be circumspect with the data. "The guidelines provide rigorous oversight to protect the information that we have, for authorized and narrow purposes," said Alexander Joel, Civil Liberties Protection Officer for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the parent agency for the National Counterterrorism Center.
The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution says that searches of "persons, houses, papers and effects" shouldn't be conducted without "probable cause" that a crime has been committed. But that doesn't cover records the government creates in the normal course of business with citizens.
Congress specifically sought to prevent government agents from rifling through government files indiscriminately when it passed the Federal Privacy Act in 1974. The act prohibits government agencies from sharing data with each other for purposes that aren't "compatible" with the reason the data were originally collected.
But the Federal Privacy Act allows agencies to exempt themselves from many requirements by placing notices in the Federal Register, the government's daily publication of proposed rules. In practice, these privacy-act notices are rarely contested by government watchdogs or membe
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
depends on the church.
and in points in history they did. The reason they do not is because legal authority has been taken from them.
Which is the reason for the seperation of church and state. Not only does it protect the state from the influence of the church, it protects the church from the influence of the state.
McCarthy was screwing up people's lives based on often completely specious accusations of communism, while these upstanding civil servants are screwing up people's lives based on often completely specious accusations of terrorism. Anybody who can't see the obvious differences between the two must be a terrorist.
I am officially gone from
For the next incarnation of the government I vote we model it after something a little less dystopian, like Star Trek.
At this point, I might be OK with strange women lying in ponds distributing swords.
I am officially gone from
Memorable quotes for
Looker (1981)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082677/quotes
"John Reston: Television can control public opinion more effectively than armies of secret police, because television is entirely voluntary. The American government forces our children to attend school, but nobody forces them to watch T.V. Americans of all ages *submit* to television. Television is the American ideal. Persuasion without coercion. Nobody makes us watch. Who could have predicted that a *free* people would voluntarily spend one fifth of their lives sitting in front of a *box* with pictures? Fifteen years sitting in prison is punishment. But 15 years sitting in front of a television set is entertainment. And the average American now spends more than one and a half years of his life just watching television commercials. Fifty minutes, every day of his life, watching commercials. Now, that's power."
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"The United States has it's own propaganda, but it's very effective because people don't realize that it's propaganda. And it's subtle, but it's actually a much stronger propaganda machine than the Nazis had but it's funded in a different way. With the Nazis it was funded by the government, but in the United States, it's funded by corporations and corporations they only want things to happen that will make people want to buy stuff. So whatever that is, then that is considered okay and good, but that doesn't necessarily mean it really serves people's thinking - it can stupify and make not very good things happen."
- Crispin Glover: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000417/bio
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"It's only logical to assume that conspiracies are everywhere, because that's what people do. They conspire. If you can't get the message, get the man." - Mel Gibson (from an interview)
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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." - William Casey, CIA Director
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"The real reason for the official secrecy, in most instances, is not to keep the opposition (the CIA's euphemistic term for the enemy) from knowing what is going on; the enemy usually does know. The basic reason for governmental secrecy is to keep you, the American public, from knowing - for you, too, are considered the opposition, or enemy - so that you cannot interfere. When the public does not know what the government or the CIA is doing, it cannot voice its approval or disapproval of their actions. In fact, they can even lie to your about what they are doing or have done, and you will not know it. As for the second advantage, despite frequent suggestion that the CIA is a rogue elephant, the truth is that the agency functions at the direction of and in response to the office of the president. All of its major clandestine operations are carried out with the direct approval of or on direct orders from the White House. The CIA is a secret tool of the president - every president. And every president since Truman has lied to the American people in order to protect the agency. When lies have failed, it has been the duty of the CIA to take the blame for the president, thus protecting him. This is known in the business as "plausible denial." The CIA, functioning as a secret instrument of the U.S. government and the presidency, has long misused and abused history and continues to do so."
- Victor Marchetti, Propaganda and Disinformation: How the CIA Manufactures History
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George Carlin:
"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehous
The "war" on crime has always been a morality issue. The entire point of a legal system is to enforce moral codes.
No, the legal system is not about enforcing moral codes. The legal system is about responding to actions which cause harm to others: whether harm was done, how much harm, by whom, whether the harm was deliberate, what actions can justifiably be taken in response, etc. The critical thing about the law is that, unlike morality, it should not vary depending on your point of view. Morality is subjective; legality should be objective. There is significant overlap, of course, but the fact that some action is wrong under some particular moral code has no bearing on whether the action should be considered illegal. Conversely, what is legal is not always right.
There may even be cases where an action is required by a particular moral code, and yet legally the moral actor still owes compensation to those harmed by it. For example, your morality may require you to steal from the rich to aid the poor, but legally, it's still theft and you owe compensation to your victims. As a deliberate action, they also have the right to retribution, meaning they can justly take from you as you have taken from them.
Morality (right/wrong) and justice (legal/illegal) are completely separate concepts which merely happen to agree, in select cases, for particular varieties of morality.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat