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
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!
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
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.
On the other hand, when pluralities are fighting it out, there's less opportunity for a government to ram through extreme measures. You have to form a coalition first.
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."
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!
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.
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.
Lavabit wasn't shutdown by the government. He shut down to avoid violating his customers trust. The government didn't WANT him to shut down, they wanted him to secretly open up.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.