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US Federal Judge Rules NSA Data Collection Legal
New submitter CheezburgerBrown . tips this AP report:
"A federal judge on Friday found that the National Security Agency's bulk collection of millions of Americans' telephone records is legal and a valuable part of the nation's arsenal to counter the threat of terrorism. U.S. District Judge William Pauley said in a written opinion (PDF) that the program 'represents the government's counter-punch' to eliminate al-Qaeda's terror network by connecting fragmented and fleeting communications. In ruling, the judge noted the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and how the phone data-collection system could have helped investigators connect the dots before the attacks occurred. 'The government learned from its mistake and adapted to confront a new enemy: a terror network capable of orchestrating attacks across the world. It launched a number of counter-measures, including a bulk telephony metadata collection program — a wide net that could find and isolate gossamer contacts among suspected terrorists in an ocean of seemingly disconnected data,' he said."
More likely just plain judge selection. Common enough technique, though usually used by prosecutors. For someone well-connected into the legal system - someone who knows schedules, who will be busy and when - it isn't hard to have some influence over which judge a case will come before. Just got to bias events towards one sympathetic to the government position.
How does if something is useful or not have any bearing on if it's legal or not?
Terrorism is irrelevant. Whether the programs work or not is irrelevant. All that matters is whether or not it's constitutional, and it's not.
But even if this nonsense does eventually get shut down, there's clearly a problem with our system if it takes decades to get rid of unconstitutional garbage.
From the article: "Every day, people voluntarily surrender personal and seemingly-private information to transnational corporations, which exploit that data for profit," Pauley wrote in . Few think twice about it, even though it is far more intrusive than bulk telephony metadata collection.
So, you know, some people tell everything to Facebook and Google. It's totally cool if just spy on everyone now, right? Because terrorism and stuff. We are just going to keep feeding off of something that happened over a decade ago.
Answer this question: Is there any data that you want to be **completely unavailable** to law enforcement with **proper warrant**?
There will be a lot more of it now. This is not a zero sum game. If people know their shit is being abused they will not use it or develop alternate solutions which can only be cracked with a $5 wrench. By overstepping you actually create a feedback loop whereby your capability is eroded. Warrants are useless if the capability to execute does not exist.
Our military and law enforcement absolutely must be able to use all means to catch the bad guys.
Just a second there you can't just lump Military and Civilian systems together. NSA is supposed to be military. They are not supposed to be in the LEA business.
Remember who is actually being killed by whom in this country. I'll give you a hint >12k are not being killed by terrorists in the US every year.
The problem is *how* the data is collected and used....which is controlled by regulations.
The problem is the NSA has warrantless access to all of it. How they get it is irrelevant the fact they have it is what matters.
The answer is **transparency** of the process, not allowing criminals a walled garden that law enforcement cannot have access to.
The government has already lost its legitimacy in this regard. I hope it tries to recover some of it..that would mean at minimum stopping secret (interpretation of) law, secret courts and secretly collecting data on everyone without cause.
sarcastic insinuations of sweeping corruption not backed by any evidence?
Are you serious? How much evidence are you prepared to ignore?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
You're falling into the chasm of rational arguments they are trying to shepard you into. Keep in mind the initial argument. We are protected from having them collect this data. You have already started arguing how the data is valuable. That's exactly what they want you to do, because now if they can prove it's valuable (even in some false manner), they've 'won' that portion of the argument. Always return to the initial argument. You CAN NOT SPY ON AMERICAN CITIZENS LIKE THIS. Regardless of how 'valuable' it might be. It'd be even more valuable to put a chip in each and every one of us to monitor every last thing we do. Then there would never be crime that goes unsolved. Force all foreigners coming in to get the same chip. After all, wouldn't stopping all crime be extremely valuable? This judge was gotten to in some way. Because he ignored the laws and simply started justifying the actions. Don't fall into the trap of changing the basis of the argument. It's illegal. Leave my information alone unless I give it to you.
You're misunderstanding a key part of the process. The system doesn't need to be perfectly accurate. It just needs to be accurate enough to fit the workload of the humans involved. The system may identify 10,000 "terrorists" in a month, which can then be passed off to a team of 100 humans who can pull up more records to see if there's anything actually suspicious, or if the system's just inaccurate as usual. The dozen or so each month that have enough evidence could then be submitted for real search warrants to start a full investigation.
The problem with such a human-moderated system is the imbalance in consequences between finding or dismissing an actual terrorist. None of those 100 reviewers wants to be the guy who let a terrorist escape, so they're likely to have lowering standards of evidence. Schneier has covered the problem well.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
The fourth amendment has been dead since civil forfeiture became common.
You should be even more outraged if you live outside USA. This is about if US citizens have any kind of right, but what is not even considered is that foreigners have human rights at all for them, outside borders is free hunting area.
In fairness, inside the USA is fair hunting areas for foreign intelligence agencies.
That fact highlights another issue, though, which is that even if all countries protect their own citizens from snooping by their own agencies (most don't, actually), this is easy for allied powers to work around through sharing agreements. "I'll spy on your people and you spy on mine, then we'll swap". We need to institute some protection against that as well.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
What in the living hell does people's voluntary decision to share information on a corporate owned website have to do with the government grabbing people's private conversations and correspondence against their will?
This "judge" goes far beyond just being a hack or a political tool. He could serve as the figurehead for everything wrong with our overwhelming powerful and grasping Federal government. There are no, literally no, constitutional arguments to be made in favor of mass data collection. So he just weaves a big web of irrelevant bullshit and then rules the way his masters want.
Let's not forget that the Supreme court for nearly a hundred of years upheld slavery as constitutional. It took an act of congress and the 18th amendment to the constitution to ban it. A modern person reading the constitution might go, gee, doesn't "life, *liberty*, and the pursuit of happiness" constitutionally protect against slavery? But, nope, to the simple minds of those in the 1800s, slaves were property not people, unless the new 13th amendment says otherwise.
Similarly, a person from the future might read the constitution and go, gee, doesn't "unreasonable search and seizure" apply to digital content? But, nope, to the simple minds of those today we need a new amendment saying digital privacy is a form of privacy just as it took the 18th amendment to say a differently pigmented person is still a person. Just because a computer is used to generate nudie pics of you a the airport doesn't suddenly make it "not a strip search" by the TSA. Just because a computer is used to communicate with someone else doesn't make it "not mail". We have all these laws already passed protecting us against strip searches and folks opening our mail, but NONE of it applies if a computer is involved. That's why patents can be so easily passed by adding "with a computer" to take an old idea and suddenly qualify as a new idea worthy of patent protections. Only congress can pass new laws -- yes, that congress, the one with an 18% approval rating that is slowly bankrupting us and threatens to default and shutdown the government twice a year; they are our only hope for sanity, not the courts; and, yes, we're screwed.