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FISA Court Will Release More Opinions Because of Snowden
cold fjord sends this news from the Washington Post:
"Call it the Edward Snowden effect: Citing the former NSA contractor, a federal judge has ordered the government to declassify more reports from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. In an opinion from the FISC itself, Judge F. Dennis Saylor on Friday told the White House to declassify all the legal opinions relating to Section 215 of the Patriot Act written after May 2011 that aren't already the subject of FOIA litigation. The court ruled (PDF) that the White House must identify the opinions in question by Oct. 4. 'The unauthorized disclosure of in June 2013 of a Section 215 order, and government statements in response to that disclosure, have engendered considerable public interest and debate about Section 215,' wrote Saylor. 'Publication of FISC opinions relating to this opinion would contribute to an informed debate.' The ruling comes in response to a petition by the American Civil Liberties Union seeking greater government transparency. But because the ACLU already has a similar FOIA case pending in another court, Saylor wrote that the new FISC order can only cover documents that don't relate to that case."
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that Snowden's information leaks started conversations that should have happened a long time ago. Also, the privacy reform panel created by President Obama met for the first time earlier this week. It did not discuss the NSA's surveillance activities. [Two attendees of the Monday meeting said the discussion was dominated by the interests of major technology firms, and the session did not address making any substantive changes to the controversial mass collection of Americans' phone data and foreigners' internet communications, which can include conversations with Americans."
'nuff said.
Thank you for your service.
or other comments about the data sets been too big or not for domestic use are now history.
Snowden has moved the crypto debate into the 21C and lets hope the next generation of students and professors learn something about trusting their codes and the hardware 'offered'.
Skilled US legal teams will start talking with academics and law makers. Overtime more will become clear and the rest of the world can start thinking about the products they import or who they trust data to.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
>" 'The unauthorized disclosure of in June 2013 of a Section 215 order, and government statements in response to that disclosure, have engendered considerable public interest and debate about Section 215,' "
Well, yeah, amazing isn't it? That is the way a democracy is SUPPOSED to work. It DOESN'T work properly when tons of things are all held in secret.
I suspect that at least half what is currently kept secret from the public is unnecessarily secret. And probably much more than half of what is left could at least be shared with Congress committees.
having these conversations (referring to Clapper) when he was the one actively LYING about the extent of activities under his jurisdiction.
So: We should be having these conversations, but I actively lied about it to avoid having these conversations.
My general experience is when people are lying about things in response to very direct questions, they're usually doing it to hide activities that they know they shouldn't be doing.
General Alexander's games only work because he can tell one story to one group of people, and another story to another.
The 5 eye allies get to see intelligence from abroad and don't see the surveillance of their own people, their companies and their politicians, and so think they are 'special', not spied up, protected and private, even as they spy on their own people for the NSA.
The FISA court was told stories about how NSA was using its warrants and how essential those warrants were. I suspect FISC never authorized storage of everything. Rather it probably authorized collection of everything, filtering out just the terrorist related and storing of that. But once General Alexander had access to all the data, he didn't need to throw it away, because FISC would never know he kept it and who is powerful enough to stop him?
Dianne Feinstein, seems to have been told all manner of court orders are needed and the data has never been abused (she said it as though she believed it). Perhaps she was shown snippets of terrorist info, and the occasional tip about her political rivals, but never shown her own record, or all the abuse of data stories, or the surveillance of ordinary Americans for reasons other than terrorism.
Obama was told all sorts of warrants are needed, and kept talking about telephone calls, as if that was the limit of the surveillance. To tap a US telephone, its done by computer request, and apparently a very large portion of US calls are routinely recorded without a warrant. They only need a warrant if they decide they need a warrant after listening and concluding both parties are American. But who would know if they didn't flag it? No one. General Alexander says only 300 selectors in 2012 were searched, yet the NSA 'auditor' says 20 million searches a month against the big database.
David Cameron was probably told only the terrorist data is filtered out of the UK feed and then the rest thrown away. But it isn't, it's kept and handed to Israel on presumably others. Used for commercial and political surveillance, there's no special relationship with 5 eyes, only 4 idiots deluding themselves and betraying their countries.
DEA thinks it's given hot tips in secret, which is why it needs to cover up the source, in reality it could well be party to falsify a crime, or covering an entrapment, or coercion. Who knows!? Because the evidence is never examined, instead a false cover story is examined in court.
Each party thinks THEY are not being spied on and only get to see OTHER people's data. General Alexander plays a very compartmentalized game to keep it so. As the FISC court saw the leaks, so it see that the FISA warrants don't correspond to the reality and want them released.
If you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide. But 'wrong' in the free world is supposed to mean 'illegal' not 'upset someone powerful'. The courts are there to protect people and if they did that, and the NSA ignored the court and did its own thing, then its time we knew. FISC court is happy to let people see what it authorized, so let see how the reality and the warrants correspond.
Obama is hardly going to pardon someone that outed his own criminal behaviour.
But what should be happening is a special prosecutor. Snowden would be easy to get back in the country, just give him immunity. I am sure he would be happy to come back and testify in a real court about the crimes he has knowledge of.
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After the Snowden revelations about security standards subversion I've been casting fresh eyes over the state of OSS security - parts are truly dismal. It may or may not actually be related to the NSA, that's immaterial really, but things are waaaay overcomplicated and flawed. For example, standard "wisdom" on OpenLDAP configuration is to never verify client side certificates, and I haven't seen anyone suggest specifying a olcTLSDHParamFile (which is required for perfect forward security). The whole idea of negotiating both encrypted and non-encrypted connections over one port is flawed - not only can a small configuration error cause all traffic to be suddenly in the clear, but a misconfigured client will send passwords in the clear no matter how locked down the server end is (although of course they won't connect successfully). OSS needs to get back to the Unix philosophy of keeping things simple... but it's in large players interests (be they big businesses or NSA or ???) to keep things so complicated the weekend hacker can no longer stay secure let alone make a useful contribution.
Two attendees of the Monday meeting said the discussion was dominated by the interests of major technology firms
Fancy that.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
FISA Court Will Release More Opinions Because of Snowden?
Nope. Any releases will be made as part of the administration's drive to increase transparency while retaining the tools needed to protect against the terrorists. It's not coming because of public pressure or legal challenges. No siree, not like last time:
https://www.eff.org/mention/obama-administration-dishonestly-wants-public-believe-it-voluntarily-declassified-secret-nsa
This time they'll be truthy. We can be certain of course that this information would have been released even if Snowden hadn't kicked-off this shit-storm. After all, isn't this the most transparent administration, with unprecedented levels of openness? Must be true - it says it on the White House site:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment
-- Using the preview button since 2005
The problem is that the government has no credibility. How do we know what they release are the real documents? And they can still [redact] it to the point of uselessness.
"The NSA provides a valuable service to this country and should not be limited by red tape." That 'red tape' is called the Constitution.
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After Snowden's in prison, do the same to those whom have aided and abetted the release of such information - including those at the Washington Post(if the NSA does its job right, that newspaper should have wished that it had done the right thing by not publishing national secrets).
Given the evidence that he not only broke his trust to keep secrets, he also did so in a manner that harms this country entirely. If there should be any pardons and praise, they are to be reserved for anyone who may be prosecuted in bringing Snowden to justice. In addition, reward and protect them from any retaliation that may occur from any Snowden fanatics.
Of course, this won't all go well with those that worship Snowden as some idol and not rightfully consider him as a betrayer of one's country. However, I do not recognize any value in destroying the country or ensuring that it cannot protect itself from threats within and without.
Harmed the country or harmed the Administration? Which is the greater harm: revealing to our enemies that they are being spied on or hiding from every American that they are being spied on?
Finally! Someone who gets it.
Of course, this won't all go well with those that worship Snowden as some idol and not rightfully consider him as a betrayer of one's country. However, I do not recognize any value in destroying the country or ensuring that it cannot protect itself from threats within and without.
Couldn't agree more. I found out that my brother had been raping his own daughter, and I did not recognise any value in destroying the family or ensuring that it cannot protect itself from threats within and without. My cousin wanted to get the cops in, so we threatened her to keep her quiet. The relative (unnamed for obvious reasons) has promised to stop raping his kid, and the family avoids the scandal and serious financial loss that'd come from him being convicted.
You know what's frustrating? The journalists at the post probably broke now laws, but we know they should be arrested for something. Just like my cousin - the whistleblower who risked ruining my entire family for the sake of one girl who's probably not going to be raped much anymore. How will we have an America to hand to our children if we don't allow the government what it needs to protect itself and us? If my niece could stop crying for a minute I know she'd agree.
Exactly. The 4th amendment was put into the constitution specifically to outlaw what was called a general warrant. This happened when someone connected to any authority had it in for you. They would get a general warrant, it allowed them to search you, your house, place of employment, or anything any time they wanted in hopes of catching you doing something wrong so that charges could be brought against you.
This kind of data collection and retention is specifically the kind of actions the amendment was designed to make impossible.