Slashdot Mirror
Secret Court Upholds Phone Data Collection
cold fjord writes "The Houston Chronicle reports, 'A newly declassified opinion from the government's secret surveillance court says no company that has received an order to turn over bulk telephone records has challenged the directive. The opinion by Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Judge Claire Eagan, made public Tuesday, spells out her reasons for reauthorizing the phone records collection "of specified telephone service providers" for three months. ... 'Indeed, no recipient of any Section 215 order has challenged the legality of such an order, despite the explicit statutory mechanism for doing so.'"
Relatedly, the UN Human Rights Council is discussing the surveillance situation.
Why would a 'for profit' corporation go out of its way to protect the rights of consumers that don't even know they're having their privacy invaded to start with?
USA needs to get rid of the secret courts.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Is the U.S. in a constant state of emergency? If so, why?
"Orwellian" is an overused term, but it applies here. The state in 1984 has extraordinary powers because it's in a constant war/state of emergency.
when faced with the option of complying with federal law or challenging it, im willing to guess most major corporations that butter their bread with federal dollars would be reluctant to question so much as the color of the stamp on the envelope in which the request was delivered.
Good people go to bed earlier.
My experience with telephone companies tells me that their only response upon receiving such an order would be to figure out how to pass along double the costs of it to me and if it ever became public tell me it was an upgrade.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
We are cattle. When they want us for dinner they will come calling.
Our government is so far out of hand that I don't recognize it anymore.
So is the Secret Court lying, or is Yahoo's Marissa, google, lavabit and a handful of other companies that supposedly challenged their compliance lying?
because someone is, and my guess is the people that are running the 'secret' courts are lying.
Here's the deal:
Either you go along with our investigation, and hand over all your data on everyone, or we investigate you.
We'll come in, confiscate a few vital servers, demand all your documents, interview all your staff.
This will shut down your business and cost you tens of thousands of dollars or more, but that's not our concern.
So which do you want -- rat out your customers, or get shut down?
Sincerely,
The Government
Futurist Traditionalism
If none of the tech-savvy phone corps objected to turning over bulk data, when the process gave them that opportunity, one can conclude that Americans are mostly happy to the surveillance, probably because it gives them an illusion of safety.
I have a tip for our sheepish friends: Appoint a dictator, totalitarian regimes are much better at policing than democracies.
This is not a signature.
Wow. That statement sounds like something that could have been written by the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union back in the 1970s.
Proverbs 21:19
And the Public court might decide that if we don't have privacy rights, then neither does Judge Claire Eagan.
It's sad to say, but American is currently one of the biggest threats to privacy and security in the world, because they're undermining both for their own ends.
And increasingly, the rest of the world is losing interest in having that happen. This is going to create a lasting backlash against the US and US companies as being a bunch of self-entitled assholes.
I'm waiting for some countries to declare these people criminals and issue warrants in absentia like they did for some of those CIA people doing illegal grabs.
I know it is popular to blame the phone companies here, but don't forget what the government did to Qwest. The CEO of Qwest stood up to the government and said "NO." They put him in prison for insider trading because he sold shares months before the government canceled classified contracts in retaliation.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
It also says that FISA court believed that Congress has been told about the programs, when they voted to renew it. However we learn that this is not true. Congress members were kept in the dark by Mike Rogers (Michigan's rep).
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130917/14032124558/fisa-court-pretends-congress-actually-was-told-details-bulk-surveillance-even-though-it-wasnt.shtml
FISA court thought one thing, and NSA's stooge Mike Rogers of Michigan decided Congress should be kept in the dark and vote based on lies. So the court voted to uphold it.
Curious how secrecy can be leveraged into laws by these creeps. The Telco's are not the ones being spied on, so they're not the 'protagonist' in any lawsuit. Worse they make a good profit from the NSA, so they're more like NSA contractors, paid to spy on Americans. Hardly likely to complain!
Nice idea. But democracies specialize in creating majorities with different (divergent) interests, and thus no consensus on any single issue, which means that (a) issues fights are perpetual and (b) there's less actual oversight of government.
Futurist Traditionalism
The sad reality is that you should assume that any electronic communication you make - any electronic transaction you're a part of - is at least ~able~ to be read by the NSA if not actively being seen.
Now, from a practical standpoint, chances are that unless you're being explicitly targeted by federal agencies or law enforcement, no human being is actively looking at YOUR records.. but they ~could~.
However, it chills me to the bone that our government has and uses that power and the potential for abuse is massive... I really do feel that our government has seriously crossed the line... and we the people ~let it happen~... hell, a large number of us (I was not one of them, but I use "us" collectively) screamed to congress in September 2001 "DO SOMETHING" and they did.
The only way this can stop is if the American people decide that the level of surveillance and eavesdropping is unacceptable and demand that it stop. We need to elect lawmakers that value our privacy and freedom and we need to vote out those who would trade our essential liberties for security theater.
We did this to ourselves, and we are the only ones who can stop it... by speaking loud and strong that we DO NOT WANT.
The Digital Sorceress
I'm confused.
Were the corporations expected to challenge this? Is that how the system works?
I thought the courts enforced the law, by disallowing blatantly illegal procedures.
Does this mean that anything not specifically challenged is OK?
Civil liberties? What's that?
"I am above the law!"
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
They work for the government, not the people, even when they pretend that they're "judges". The FISA court is not a court of law, it is an unconstitutional rubber-stamp that only exists to allow criminals to pretend to themselves that they're not violating their oath.
A "secret cout" is very clearly prohibited by the bill of rights.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Secret police? We've had one of those for decades, called the FBI.
I am officially gone from
We do not recognize the authority of any secret court. The United States is a country of laws, of truth and Justice. Until a bonifid court rules on the subject, no decision was made.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I feel so much better about my government violating my 4th amendment rights six ways from sunday as long as the phone companies aren't challenging it, as told by a secret court.
Whew!
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Except for Joseph Nacchio of Qwest, who openly defied the NSA in 2002, and demanded a court order. He was then prosecuted for "insider trading" for selling some stock just before the US government pulled all Qwest's contracts as revenge for helping to expose the program of illegal surveillance. Nacchio was a hero, and no one even noticed. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm
The courts and judges are part of the same system as the NSA and the president and the congress, whose political goal is the defense of capitalism. When their core interests are threatened there are no laws that can keep them from doing whatever they think they need to do to stay in power. The courts will put a "legal" seal of approval on it. As Malcolm X so insightfully pointed out many years ago--you can't rely on any part of the government to protect your rights. Not Congress, not the White House, not the courts. No matter which party whose purpose is defense of capitalism holds whichever office.
nobody fights it because everyone who has gets shut down by the government. lavabit anyone?
What are these mysterious "statutory mechanisms" for challenging an order by a secret court that is required to be kept secret?
It looks like it is time for Zimbabwe to call for sanctions on the US police state. Obama is making Mugabe look really good.
The telephone companies are being payed well to allow the government to spy on everyone. Do you think they would want a few bucks from you for service, or a few bucks from you and many bucks from the government for each line? They cant help themselves.
How explicit was it that a challenge could be issued? If a company receives a notice with "CONFIDENTIAL" and "OBEY" splattered all over it from the "comply or we fuck you up" secret overlords of Room 101, are they really going to look that closely at the boilerplate section printed in 6pt text and containing "there is an avenue of challenge to this, but we wouldn't advise you even think about it"?
And how does "no one has objected (because if they did, we'd hit them in their bottom line), therefore it is legal" even compute?
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
Does this mean that one may use this precedent as a defense when one publishes the campaign damaging phone records of the politically elite? If there is no reasonable expectation of privacy, then why not?
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
Let's suppose for a second that Yahoo's CEO was telling the truth when she said that refusing to comply with the NSA was treason. Now suppose you run an ISP (or any other business for that matter) and you are approached by the NSA. Chances are they aren't going to ask politely whether they can spy on your network/customers. Instead, they'll order you to comply with threats of treason, expensive lawsuits, having your business shut down, etc. if you don't immediately fall in line. Anyone who pushes back after the threats could find the NSA making business (and life) hard for them until they comply. This is an organization that used their database to spy on their own girlfriends, do you really think harassing a business that is being "troublesome" would raise any ethical quandaries with them?.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Reading page 8 of the opinion, we see the messed up logic: You (you individual you) have a 4th Amendment rights, but others can't assert them for you. Lots of individuals can't be grouped together to suddenly have a 4th Amendment right. The government is calling these "business records" and an individual has no expectation of a "business record" being private. It doesn't matter if the government is asking for 1, 100, or 100 million business records.
Yeah, these sound about the same to me, too: Jimmy Hoffa and the entire population of the United States.
Of course they're not going to protest the Federales wishes if the threat of money loss / promise of money gain is on the line.
Even now, these money-grubbing cowards still have to band together in a large colony to try and construct an artificial spine.
...'Indeed, no recipient of any Section 215 order has challenged the legality of such an order, despite the explicit statutory mechanism for doing so.'"
It costs to challenge the legality of an order. And, under current legislation, it's probably legal. It was, I believe, perfectly legal to gas gypsies, jews, homosexuals and a wide variety of proscribed persons in Hitler's Germany. Indeed, you would get punished - maybe shot - for disobeying an order to do so, and your punishment would also be legal.
Challenging the MORALITY of the order, now, that's a different matter. But the government have also arranged that any such challenge:
1 - must be kept secret ...
2 - will be ignored
"the collected data is nothing more than a pen register and trap and trace data, so there is no expectation of privacy"
Seems like the above example has been applicable when law enforcement was interested in a specific phone or person.
If you have done nothing to warrant such suspicion, then under the above precedent, you would still have an expectation of privacy.
The precedent may justify collection for a specific group where there is suspicion. Using it for a dragnet seems another matter.
This doesn't say that the dragnet is necessarily un-constitutional, just the the Supreme court needs to think about how it affects the overall balance of power before making it ok. (Given the example that the useful revolution of 1776 could not have happened if the King of England had had this much information, it seems that the balance is a serious issue to overcome.)
Also, the idea that the extension of this order is ok because the folks it was served to did not complain, is interesting. These folks tend to profit from carrying out these orders. Any harm is to the public in general, not to these folks.
Who cares what the companies think? It's citizens that are being affected. It's like asking if geese care where their crap lands.
How many telecom executives run sufficiently honest businesses that they could stand up to "Comply or we'll investigate whether you are racketeering?".
http://www.linuxadvocates.com/2013/07/retroshare-true-internet-privacy.html
Secret court finds secret spying OK. News at 11...