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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.
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.
Phone records. I don't think Yahoo or Google is a phone company in the sense AT&T, Verizon, Sprint or T-Mobile are. As others have pointed out, there is no reason for them to challenge these orders, as they a) get paid for the costs of complying (from what I understand), b) the orders themselves are classified, so no real risk (until now) of people knowing what is going on and c) it would cost them money to challenge. The entire system is stacked against privacy.
So if they won't win, you don't have to worry about them getting elected :) and you still get to send a FUCK YOU to the main parties... If enough people start voting for the crazies, then maybe the main parties will change their ways to woo you back.