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Federal Prosecutors, In a Policy Shift, Cite Warrantless Wiretaps As Evidence
schwit1 sends this quote from the NY Times "The Justice Department for the first time has notified a criminal defendant that evidence being used against him came from a warrantless wiretap, a move that is expected to set up a Supreme Court test of whether such eavesdropping is constitutional. The government's notice allows the defendant's lawyer to ask a court to suppress the evidence by arguing that it derived from unconstitutional surveillance, setting in motion judicial review of the eavesdropping. ... The practice contradicted what [Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr.] had told the Supreme Court last year in a case challenging the law, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. Legalizing a form of the Bush administration’s program of warrantless surveillance, the law authorized the government to wiretap Americans’ e-mails and phone calls without an individual court order and on domestic soil so long as the surveillance is “targeted” at a foreigner abroad. A group of plaintiffs led by Amnesty International had challenged the law as unconstitutional. But Mr. Verrilli last year urged the Supreme Court to dismiss the case because those plaintiffs could not prove that they had been wiretapped. In making that argument, he said a defendant who faced evidence derived from the law would have proper legal standing and would be notified, so dismissing the lawsuit by Amnesty International would not close the door to judicial review of the 2008 law. The court accepted that logic, voting 5-to-4 to dismiss the case."
There have been a lot of firsts for Eric Holder's corrupt and diseased justice department.
an ill wind that blows no good
we will know if it's pitchfork and torch time.
This crap is never going to stop as long as the evil Rethuglicans are in power.
How are we, the U.S., different from East Germany?
I come here for the love
I'm not kidding. He thinks the devil is a real living person who exists on earth to tempt people into sin.
If that is the mentality of the top judges in the United States, the whole country is fucked.
This is NOT a test of whether a warrantless wiretap is constitutional. It is a test of whether the Supreme Court is willing to blatantly disregard the fourth amendment AGAIN.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I become king when they learn it's God. Bring it on. I'm impatient.
Like it or not, the Patriot Act effectively suspended the Constitution. Under the Patriot Act the government basically does as it pleases and they don't even have to tell anybody what they do. It is only because of Edward snowden that we even know about any of this. Will the supremes uphold the constitution? I doubt it. The Global War On Terror isn't over until politicians declare it over. Get some new politicians, and we'll see then.
The US can kill an American and his teenage son, yet no one can challenge the action because they were not directly affected. If all the relatives are taken out in one action, then the US is free and clear.
We can't just protest to have unconstitutional laws removed, we have to prove they were used on us. Simply keep quiet about parallel construction and you're good to go. If the defendant says "yes they did" and the US says "no we didn't", then the constitutionality of the law makes no difference, the US is free and clear.
This thing about not challenging a law because it doesn't affect you is bullshit.
If a law is unconstitutional, then it should be possible to challenge the law on its face.
Given that under several Secret Executive Orders Obama Claims Rights to Detain, Torture and Kill any USA Citizen, be it (a human) Congressman, Federal Employee, or Supreme Court Judge, at his lofty discretion, I would say that the Obama Regime is playing with FIRE.
Does Obama WANT to instigate a citizens REVOLT, from ALL of the STATES, and LAY SEIGE on Washington D.C.?
Does Obama THINK that his beloved and succulent Secret Service Personnel armed with 22 caliber pop pistols will quell the revolt?
Obama will not answer.
Why?
Obama sees himself as GOD of the USA and ALL OF EARTH.
Someone, just kill the fuck out of this fucker and leave US alone.
QED
Must be tough looking at innovation everywhere and not seeing anything exciting come to the court room since the tape recorder. :/
Just wondering why not !!
The next one is SCHEDULED to be over soon !!
CELEBRATE this time !!
More Snowden ??
Was that
A> warrantless wiretapping was only being done when it involved one foreign contact on the other end.
B> such wiretapping couldn't be used as evidence in any trial anyway.
Essentially a splitting of hairs but the US citizen be brought up on charges.
This is now turned on its ear - the Obama Administration is saying they can gather evidence on you WITHOUT permission (IE Illegally!) and they can charge you with a crime so long as they inform the accused they gathered such information... Illegally...
WTF has this country come too?!
A lot of times you don't use information you have because it would reveal your methods and sources. But now that a lot of NSA methods and sources are known, they can use the information out in the open like this. Assuming the court accepts it as admissible under rules of evidence.
We are the 198 proof..
He's a representative sample of what the U.S. government has become, and that's by no means limited to either component party of the Ruling Class.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
... hang high during a policy shift.
And the home, of the alleged.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
It's sad to see the US turning into a police state. Or perhaps it's too late, that's been done, and they're just dotting the I's and crossing the T's.
If this evidence is deemed acceptable, you can expect the scope of the surveillance to expand dramatically as there is suddenly a reason for tapping the people in-country: prosecution. You can expect widespread surveillance to capture gang bangers, drug dealers, and probably even the guy next door who works "under the table" to avoid paying the IRS.
Modern technology gives the government powers far over and above anything that has ever been available before when it comes to monitoring the population. And not merely monitoring, but controlling. Unlike with television, the "message" you get on the internet can be customized and tailored based on where and how you're surfing from. Newspaper sites have already been doing this for years, tailogring the news based on which nation someone is surfing from.
I must admit I would never have predicted the abuses that I'm seeing happen. There was so much hope for the benefits of the internet when it was starting that no one ever really discussed the potential for abuse. Worse, you can't even try to stop the abuse because if you implement the end-to-end encryption that can prevent it, the government comes down on the companies involved to force them to stop. You're not allowed to maintain your privacy through a service like LavaBit in this new surveillance society.
There was a Sylvester Stallone movie years ago that porttrayed an idyllic society above ground where it was illegal to even swear, and where in-room monitors spat out tickets for such offenses automatically.
Is that where our world is headed? Towards a stale and staid managed society where any crime is a major shock because the people have stopped even thinking about performing criminal acts because they expect to be caught immediately if they try? It sounds like a lifestyle of fear and repression far beyond anything even the Nazis or East Germany ever dreamed of.
I'd say that it all starts with this case, but we all know that's not true. It started years ago, when the surveillance began. This case is merely a continuation of the world government's mission to enslave humanity.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
"The court accepted that logic, voting 5-to-4 to dismiss the case."
The court has 4 idiots on it, and the result almost ended in disaster for citizens who believe in the constitution.
The supreme court can't rule on the legality of these wiretaps unless they are used in a court case.
Of course, they might be ruled constitutional...
... there is NOTHING FREE !!!
I am speaking on experience.
I am an American, a naturalized American citizen.
I came from China.
I, and many others, risking our lives and swam to Hong Kong back in the 1970's. They were shooting at us, back then.
We risked our lives not because we were poor (and we were) but because there was NO FREEDOM for the people.
Everything that we did - who your friends were, where you been to, what you did, why you did what you did, everything - was under the watchful eyes of the BIG BROTHER.
I went to the United States precisely because, back then, the United States of America was the only country that could guarantee my freedom, because, back then, the government of the United States of America still had respect for The Constitution.
I became an American citizen precisely because I found the freedom that I had longed for.
That was back then.
Not now.
Nowadays, the so-called "freedom" has all but evaporated.
When the prosecutors (or rather, persecutors ) can charge people with warrantless wiretaps , what is the difference between the United States of America and the former East Germany under Stasi or China under CCP ?
Back when I became a naturalized citizen of the United States of America, my new government was still operating under the Constitution of the United States.
No more.
Under the Obama administration, I am sorry to say, the Constitution of the United States has become as valuable as soiled disposable diaper.
As an American, I am sad.
As one who was from an oppressed state, risking live in order to gain freedom, I am HORRIFIED.
I am watching THE COUNTRY THAT I ADOPTED turning into just like the one I ran away from.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Justices do nothing. Judges do nothing. Defense Attorneys do nothing.
Let's just cut the fake crap and put the Honorable Prosecutor on the Bench itself. The Accused shall appear before the Prosecutor to receive Punishment. That's how Justice happens in reality, right?
The only reason the court system still exists is to trick idiots into believing that TV court shows are real.
Please, stop regarding the Constitution (of any country) as some sacred document. In every country, including obviously despotic states where the judicial system is staffed by the reigning dictator's stooges, the Constitution is simply what the supreme court of the land says it is. So effectively the Supreme Court IS the constitution. Sure there are violent and non-violent ways to fix the problem, throwing out the government or the simpler political expedient of impeaching and throwing out the recalcitrant justices.
Speaking of sacred texts, even the Bible, Koran, etc are subject to interpretation by whoever preacher/guru/imam you want to listen to. So even those documents are by no means clear as to what they mean.
There is no way that 300 million people can be subjugated by these
swine if they don't bow down willingly.
The ballot box didn't work, the soap box didn't work, so you know ...
what's left
I know it's very fashionable to compare US to the communist countries, which most of you haven't lived in, and aren't even old enough to have seen on TV. I did - and let me just say it's nothing alike.
Still, perhaps it's worth reading the "FA" to understand exactly what it means?
tl;dr; version - some US prosecutors have been using evidence so derived in criminal cases without notifying defendants. Sometime during this summer someone higher up in Justice Department became aware of this (I'll take this claim at face value for now) and after some discussion (and presumably some opposition from those prosecutors who found the practice very convenient) it was decided that hiding the warrantless wiretaps from defendants is not acceptable (based on the way the law is interpreted).
Based on that, find 3 differences between US and East Germany. I'll take a stab at it:
1. There is a discussion in the prosecutorial branch wrt. legality of application of such law, and the outcome of that discussion is factual information provided to defendants, that may aid in their defense.
2. The court will take this in consideration, and we will see this debated, probably at every level of judiciary all the way to Supreme Court.
3. We are reading about all of this in the major media news outlet.
Do you need me to tell you which of these items did not apply to the "Soviet Russia"? You, people, have no f-ing idea and your childish fits undermine legitimate efforts to create more transparent government and more just society.
Of course the NSA shares data with all other agencies. In the aftermath of 9/11, the agencies were heavily criticized for failing to share data. Now they do and everyone is complaining again? They are just doing what you asked for.
Here is a petition to modify the Oregon Constitution to give "Natural Individuals Rights Initiative". Giving Natural Individuals (People) greater privacy. When this passes in November The Zeroth Amendment will be finally stated as law. "Natural Human Privacy" Something so taken for granted by the founding fathers that is was not stated.
http://egov.sos.state.or.us/elec/web_irr_search.record_detail?p_reference=20140023..LSCYYY.
It would appear that Verilli has argued that the Justice Department is entitled to get the cake, and now he does not want to eat it too?
I mean, he was clearly talking out of his ass when he stated that ACLU and their ilk could not sue against a practice of warrantless wiretapping because nobody told them they were wiretapped warrantlessly, and someone certainly would.
Now it would seem that he has qualms to be seen talking out of his mouth, as that would establish that there is clearly more than one orifice involved.
Obviously, with all that wiretapping going on and the prosecution knowing of it, it would become unbelievable if there was no case at all where the defendant was informed of the practice, like they lied to the Supreme Court.
So this is up to challenge. The NSA has taps on everyone, but you can expect that only a very select few of those wiretapped into court will actually get notice, and those will be the most blatant cases imaginable in order to make the Supreme Court queasy at letting them get off free as a consequence of adhering to the constitution.
Or perhaps they'll do the notification dance in cases where they have ridiculously little to lose because the charges were stupid, anyway. Then they have a few cases where they can say "see, if anything with wiretapping is wrong, you have a chance to object to it and nothing will happen".
At any rate, this tree will continue to bear a lot more poisonous fruit than what will admit to be eaten.
Exactly. Look at Scalia... he'll be one of those eventually passing judgement, and we know his track record.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the SCOTUS judges are absolutely immune from uproar. The only thing that can affect them is bribes, favors and power distributed sub rosa among them, their families, and their co-conspirators (here, I'm giving them credit for the intelligence they claim, in that I do not believe for a moment that they know not what they do.)
To put it another way, nothing they do WRT liberty will affect their income, social standing, property ownership, freedom, or cocktail party invitation stream.
The problem is the constitution is toothless: There is no penalty or other mechanism for punishing those who violate what is supposedly the highest laws in the land.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Wireless wiretaps started around 10 years ago and now your lovely government starts using them as as Kafka style "evidence". Who needs this pesky "proper" evidence after all. Two years ago Obama, (in typical, cowardly way - on New Year Eve), signed NDAA that contains sections 1021 and 1022 that allow government thugs to jail citizens at whim and keep locked them indefinitely in military facilities without evidence and without access to court. Who needs this pesky judge after all. Guess when (NOT 'if') your ruling class will start using it in large scale against citizens they don't like. Countdown has started, folks.
It is rare for the Federal Government to invite a test case over a practice that is clearly unconstitutional.
If we accept the premise that the Federal Government does not take on a "test case" unless it knows it is going to win, we can conclude quite reasonably that not only has the SCOTUS majority opinion already been written, but also that this is going to be the final nail in the coffin for the 4th Amendment.
to create a "6 degrees" map of every US citizen to someone like OBL, or some other foreign target. By doing so they can justify continued eavesdropping on communications of US citizens by claiming their surveillance is targeting this foreign person, and look- "this us citizen is only 3 or 4 people away from the target! Looks like a possible connection there- we better keep listening!:"
I'll bet it isn't hard to link even the most tea-bagged, gun toting, bible thumping, hillbilly in 'merica to OBL if you have all the "metadata".
in which the feds believe they would prevail if it went to supreme court.. setting the precedence they need to keep doing what they're doing.
The real terrorists are the Feds and named names like Pelosi Barrack Clinton Reid Bush Biden.
The car is going over the edge of the cliff and the American people are in it. These maneuvers have nothing to do with crime, terrorism, or anything else. The system is evolving to protect itself against the eventuality that the people will rise against it with force of arms. And there is a good chance that will happen when people realize they have been betrayed.
The wiretapping, the saturation of police forces with ex-military shooters, the warrant-less seizures. Its all pretty simple: they are broke and they are laying the groundwork to maintain control as the car plummets towards wherever its going to end up.
These guys are not stupid and they will do whatever they can to scare/cow/kill the public into toeing the new line. They are probably doing it "for our own good" to keep the patriots from deserting en-masse or turning against them.
Its as simple as that.
"Any reasonable reading of the IRS evidence shows that it was going after both parts of the political spectrum equally."
This is complete bull excrement. READ ACTUAL DOCUMENTS and NOT the transcripts of the Rachel Maddow show or some comedy central jokemaster. The IRS specifically shunted decisions on organizations with names related to the TEA Party or libertarianism to Washington where they were left in legal limbo for YEARS (conveniently through Obama's 2012 re-election cycle) which meant that these organizations were unable to even file an appeal (which they could have quickly done had they been given negative results by the IRS). Left-wing hacks CLAIM that because left-wing groups were also NAMED, they were equally abused...NOT TRUE - Left-wing groups were EXPEDITED!!!!! The claim that the left was equally abused keeps being raised as a way to get headlines, which the left knows are the only things many people actually read; TEA Party groups were stalled for YEARS while liberal groups got through in DAYS. To prove this, one TEA Party group submitted identical applications with just two different names. The one with the TEA Party name stalled and the one with a "green", pro- environment" name sailed right through.
The IRS has admitted all this, and it's in the congressional record.
Ah, you used the word "monkey" in your attack on Issa's legitimate congressional committee (Democrats LOVED everything that committee did and held it up as the ultimate in legitimate oversight during the decades they ran it) so I see you got the Democrat party official talking points. It's funny to see a bunch of chimps all use the same words/phrases at a particular political juncture and imagine that we're all to dumb to notice the coordination.
As to Valerie Plane (the lady whose "undercover" position at a desk in DC was outed by Obama supporter Colin Powel's assistant Richard Armitage) and whose outing put her and her husband in so much danger that they sought new secret identities and.....ooops, no, they went on a book tour and did a movie, etc..... The "White House aid" whose prosecution you cite was Scooter Libby who was an aide to V.P.Cheney and he was NOT prosecuted for the leak (which the prosecutor admitted he DID NOT DO). Libby was convicted of lying about a phone call with journalist. There are no records of the call (it was before Obama had the NSA monitoring to all our phone calls) and the two people on the phone had differing recollections of the content; the prosecutor sided with the journalist, even though he was of opposite political leanings to Libby. Let's all hope non of us ever gets prosecuted for disagreeing about our recollections of a phone call made over a year ago.....
Let's see about some Obama "outings" shall we???? Biden "outed" SEAL Team 6 (as part of the Obama admin Bin Laden raid ball spiking) and then they outed the doctor in Pakistan who helped us (which led to him being jailed for treason in Pakistan), and then there were those Israeli agents in Iran who were outed to Turkey, who in-turn outed them to Iran (which in-turn deprived the west of intel on the Iranian nuke program)...
For you to post as you did on Slashdot is for you to out yourself as completely dishonest and untrustworthy
The "your guns won't protect you from missiles and bombs" line is one the Democrats always use to try to say "your guns are useless, so give them up"
It seems to make sense at first glance (always seems to elicit a "Score:5, Insightful" on Slashdot where there are plenty of unthinking Obamabots) but then the same Obamabots point to things like Libya, Egypt, Syria and talk of "Arab Spring" etc.
First, the American right to keep and bear arms is meant to allow the individual to protect himself and his family
Second, the right was also supposed to prevent the federal government from keeping a large "standing army" that some tyrant could use someday to oppress the people (a permanent Navy was not such a concern, nor would an Air Force have been (and no, our founders were not ignorant hicks unable to imagine an Air Force; Ben Franklin was aware of balloons and wrote of the potential to use such craft to move armies in the future).
Jets and rockets and bombs can be used to destroy military targets, BUT they cannot take and hold land or control populations.
The right to keep and bear arms does not provide an individual the ability to hold-off a jet or a ship, BUT it does indeed provide the individual with the ability to put doubt into the mind of a government bureaucrat who shows up and attempts to abuse a citizen (just LOOK at how many cops are needed to deal with just ONE crazy madman with a gun...) In a nation where a significant portion of the population stands up with its guns and says "no more" there will not be enough government agents with guns to oppress the citizens.
Furthermore, your idiotic talking point ASSUMES both that the people with guns have no access to other assets and tech (you forget that many of us design and build the systems you presume will be used to successfully kill us, and we understand them quite well) and also assumes that the men and women of the US military would all turn on their own friends and families. The last time Democrats made this stupid calculation, they were quite wrong... the majority of the US military sided with the decent Republicans and after a long civil war killed enough evil slave-owning Democrats the military men who'd sided with the Democrats surrendered. In the immediate aftermath of that war, NOBODY in the US wanted to be identified as a Democrat. You Democrats should spend a LOT less time fantasizing that the government will use its police to disarm Republicans and Libertarians and/or its military to kill them; you might not like what you get.
"WTF has this country come too?!"
EXACTLY what Obama's supporters wanted.
Oh, they'll whine and scream and complain..... but ALL left-wing utopian dreams lead to totalitarianism and anybody who supports those dreams is either eager for all the inevitable effects or willfully ignorant; There's simply so much history here that you have to intentionally look away from it to not see it coming. All the "free" stuff Obama offered to his supporters? It has to come from SOMEWHERE and SOMEBODY must provide it and EVERYBODY needs to get happy with it (the dissatisfied cannot be tolerated because that can lead to dissent and eventual deconstruction of the mechanisms of power needed to provide the supporters of the dream with their "free" stuff). Most lefties manage to hide the thuggery for a while with borrowed/printed money. Germany's national socialist workers party did not have these options because their nation had already exhausted these options.
Getting the "stuff" from somebody else requires TAKING it from people who have it. Getting people who are used to providing services for a fair negotiated price to instead provide it at a lower price affordable to all requires FORCE. Getting dissenters to shut up and not try to stop or undo the revolution requires FORCE (notice all left-wing thug nations are always worrying about "counter-revolutionaries"????). Since moral people do not steal from and abuse other people, every attempt at forced transition to utopia gets rolling with the advocates making "temporary" use of thugs (people willing and even eager to abuse other people) and thug measures. It does not matter if it is national socialism (the NAZIs) or international socialism (the Soviets or the Chinese) it requires the heavy boot of government on the necks of people.
Obama made no secret of his plans... he even said on several occasions that he wanted to "fundamentally transform" America or that he was only X number of "days away from the fundamental transformation" of America. His team, including his wife, repeatedly asserted that Americans needed to abandon their traditions and their history. We do not wish to "fundamentally transform" the things we love.
If you voted for Obama and are claiming to be surprised by ANYTHING he is doing, you are either faking your shock (presumably so your friends/family do not know that you support this nastiness) OR you are seriously ignorant of history and basic economics and so closed-minded that you actively ignored all the warnings by all the libertarians, conservatives and (some)Republicans who repeatedly and loudly warned that this was exactly where things would head.... and things are going to get a whole lot worse the further we go down this hell hole. No previous totalitarian state had any realistic dream of having the use of technology like the Obama people have access to for the oppression of any dissenters. No previous American president has so boldly used to levers of government to hurt his political opponents (previous Presidents have wrongly used government to go after rich powerful opponents, but Obama has gone after middle-class people). Historical reminder to you lib Dems: One of the articles of impeachment you used against Richard Nixon was that he TALKED about using the IRS against his opponents (like the Kennedy and Johnson admins had done)
If Mr. Obama is running a "more transparent" government and it's leading to a "more just society" then why is his Attorney General currently in contempt of congress for hiding documents from the legitimate congressional oversight committee, why was the "Obamacare" website specifically designed to hide prices until after you hand over all your personal data, and why are we learning about most of our government's spying activities from a low-level employee of the great machine who has had to flee to Putin's Russia for safety?
Did Mr. Snowden need to run to Russia because he knew that if he stayed home as a "whistleblower" the Democrats in congress would support their Democrat President "no matter what" as they have always done with Democrat presidents? (and unlike Republicans, who do the honorable thing and oppose their president when he goes too far (as they did with Nixon, and as many did with Bush)) Was it because Snowden knew that even the Republicans (crippled by "rhinos" who always surrender to Democrats if you give them enough time) would fail to protect him, as a whistleblower, from Obama and Holder?
The three phony points you cite are phony precisely because we have a mountain of evidence and decades of experience that shows that:
1. Democrat Attorney Generals ALWAYS do what their Democrat presidents demand, no matter what. When Nixon assumed Republican Attorney Generals would do the same he got his fingers burned as his people formed the traditional Republican "circular firing squad"..... Nixon had to leave after Republican Senators went to see him and told him they'd lost his support (something Democrats would never do to "one of their own")
2. The courts have become very political. Heard of the ninth circuit? And the secret FISA court? You're dreaming if you think an intelligence-related matter will get "the openness" treatment
3. The same media that has ALWAYS hidden the scandals and secrets of left-wing politicians??? The media that hid FDR's disability and his affair? The media that hid JFK's health problems and numerous affairs (and things like the removal of US missiles from Turkey as part of the Cuban Missile Crisis resolution, which the press portrayed as a one-sided Kennedy victory)? the media that performed as cheerleaders for LBJ for years on his Vietnam war (only turning on him as the base of the Democrat party was offering-up the option of further-left candidates)? The media that hid all of Clinton's womanizing (including the accusation by his own secretary that he raped her in the whitehouse) and that even Chris Matthews admitted (after Clinton was in the Lewinsky scandal) that the press had been fully aware of before the 1992 election) ? Oh, the media that failed to report on Obama's "Fast and Furious" and Benghazi and then when they finally mentioned the scandals did so in an attempt to help Obama blame Bush and YouTube? The same press that let the Democrats ram Obamacare through without anybody reading it ("we have to pass the bill so you can find out what's in it...") and that never did an "investigative report" on it during those months to put Democrats on the "hot seat" about what was in the impending law and why it was all being done in secret behind closed, locked, doors when Obama campaigned on the promise that ALL negotiations would be done live on C-SPAN???......Yeah.... we can really count on those guys to expose the underbelly of a Democrat administration....
The "global village" is also smaller than before. You don't need to live next to somebody in order to learn about them, their quality of life, or their values etc.
That said, many people just read Fox News and prefer to ignore that there is any world outside their local city/state, let alone country/continent.
1. There is a discussion in the prosecutorial branch wrt. legality of application of such law, and the outcome of that discussion is factual information provided to defendants, that may aid in their defense.
* I heard this a respond with: state secrets, secret evidence, and secret courts. Even without the previous being common, there's always the increasing use of an "anonymous tip" provided by some mysterious outside entity (couldn't be from an illegal wiretap, no siree)