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
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
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.
American's "appointed leaders" prefer the illusion of security over freedom.
FTFY
In America (and Canada, Britain, and Australia) the law is based on an adversarial legal process. If everyone is friends, then this process doesn't really work. Theoretically, the government isn't supposed to be friends with anyone. The founding father's never trusted government, and hence they built in safeguards to protect the country from tyranny. Today's situation where the government is closely linked to large corporations is a new and different form of tyranny. Unfortunately, this was not invisaged when the founding father's wrote the constitution, and hence the courts are not set up to deal with it.
" Nacchio was a hero, and no one even noticed."
I did.
And, if he ever runs for office (don't care which one) in a district I can legally vote, he has my vote. Same goes for Ladar Levison (Lavabit). When it comes to politicians, actions are all that matters--what they say can no longer be trusted. Granted, these guys are not politicians, but as far as I am concerned they've already met the requirement for pretty much any position they could hold in government, that requirement being at least a scrap of social-responsibility and morality.