The NSA: Never Not Watching

Trailrunner7 writes "For many observers of the privacy and surveillance landscape, the revelation by The Guardian that the FBI received a warrant from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to require Verizon to turn over to the National Security Agency piles of call metadata on all calls on its network probably felt like someone telling them that water is wet. There have been any number of signals in the last few years that this kind of surveillance and data collection was going on, little indications that the United States government was not just spying on its own citizens, but doing so on a scale that would dwarf anything that all but the most paranoid would imagine." And now the Obama administration has defended the practice as a "critical tool."

Comments

seems all the politicos are in favor

[Trepidity]

And now the Obama administration has defended the practice as a "critical tool."

Not only is the Executive branch in favor, but there's strong bipartisan support in the Legislative branch: immediately after this leak, both parties' ranking members on the Senate Intelligence Committee (Dianne Feinstein for the Democrats, Saxby Chambliss for the Republicans) held a press conference to defend the necessity of this kind of dragnet surveillance, and to claim that it's not a big deal since it's "just" metadata.

Critical Tool

[gewalker]

In this case, the "critical tools" are Obama, Eric Holder, or who-ever is behind this large-scale invasion of privacy. I know plenty of people (mostly liberals) complained when the warrant-less wiretaps happened under Bush. It appears that these are considerably larger in scope.

Re:Critical tools

[SirGarlon]

You should be a lot more afraid of the government than of terrorists. Your probability of being affected by a terrorist attack is approximately zero (odds of being killed by terrorists are about one in 20 million for Americans). Your probability of being affected by your government is approximately one.

Re:Constitution

[bill_mcgonigle]

Because telling Bin Laden

Everybody of significance involved in planning 9/11 is dead, at least those listed by the non-redacted portion of the 9/11 Commission Report.

What's going on now is not that. Maybe we should be asking what it is, exactly?

According to some, it's a hunt for every person in the world who may not in the future submit to the will of the US Government. War without End, in other words.

Re:Constitution

[mc6809e]

"Would you please provide X" is not an "ask" when it is followed by a directly associated "or you'll go to jail."

or you'll get audited by the IRS

or you'll have OSHA drop by

or you'll have the NLRB prevent you from opening an office in another state...

The regulatory power of the executive is enough of a threat.

Re:Constitution

[myth24601]

"They were even advised that seeking a lawyer's advice before complying would be a crime."

I would love to see how that would play out in court.