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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."
So, if this does go to the Supreme Court, it will be interesting to see what if anything shakes out of it.
I don't have much confidence that the Supreme Court would rule any differently, especially considering other rulings this supreme court has made. Have to try though, and if not time to start throwing people out of office.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I think (long) this article provides the right background.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
This will bounce back and forth until it reaches the Supreme Court. I'm sure they are already dreading it.
Were I in possession of the Snowden documents, I would simply wait and see how this plays out. If it simply goes back to "business as usual" for the NSA by being declared completely legal by our bought-and-paid-for judicial system, I would simply pull another juicy document or two out of the pile and add it to the growing pool of public knowledge. Wash, rinse and repeat until the government finally does the right thing ( or you run out of documents I suppose )
Either way, it's a win for privacy. ( We get a little bit of it back, or learn how much of it we've lost )
It's sad to see that theses acts of terrorism have succeeded and freedom as it was once known is being slowly dismantled.
If I lived in the USA I would be outraged.
What makes you think the real mission of the NSA is to track terrorists?
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
Even if we disregard the obviously nasty privacy implications, in what way is a completely and utterly ineffective program "valuable"? I mean, come on. This extremely expensive program has stopped precisely zero attacks (source). I seriously hope the ACLU's lawyers are up to the task of arguing the idiocy of this program.
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?
Another judge drops their britches to expediency over the Constitution and the Founders. In a continuing assault on rights, one wonders how long before Americans start appeals to the ultimate Appeals Court of Messrs Colt, Smith and Wesson. Living in a big brother dictatorship is not going to be fun.
NSA has dirt on Judge William Pauley.
You are the the idiot with the torch.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
TFA didn't appear to go into the matter of law - does the program violate the 4th or not, and why. The decision must have done so. It's little short of bizarre that a judge went on about matters not of law - how the program is valuable or a "counter punch" for 9/11 or whatever. Surely such talk is all about an end justifying a means. I'm not allowed to break the law just because I've got a valuable end in mind; the government, the same, one would think. If the end justified the means, then, heck , allow cops to search every house at will for evidence of child-molestation.
The NYT article says specifically that he ruled that the 4th does not apply to information given to 3rd parties. TFA notes that he went on about how we give info to 3rd parties all the time so that they can profit from them. What the heck voluntarily and openly giving over information to vendors in return for free services or whatever has to do with the government taking information non-voluntarily and without notification, he doesn't seem to have explained.
So one comes back to the "end justifies the means" parts of his comments. There seems to be capture of the 3rd-branch "regulator" here: he believes the program is saving lives, or something, whereas the judge two weeks ago noted that he was cleared for all possible secrets, yet was shown no cases where they'd averted a crime that would otherwise have occurred. So much for the "54" terrorist plots averted.
[assuming the summary is accurate] each of the main points can be easily shown to be factually incorrect and logically incoherent. We've done this a thousand times here, so it's not useful to do it again.
What people should realize here is that the "Justice" system is in place to, primarily, protect the power structure. If you're still accepting that "justice is blind" and "rule of Law" fairy tale they taught in government schools, it's time to wake up and smell the tyranny.
Just watch - when it gets there SCOTUS will put a very mild restraint on the NSA to placate the masses and give cover to the politicos and leave the majority of the programs in place. Note that making such a prediction does not depend on interpretation of The Law - The Law will be be bent to achieve the per-ordained outcome.
When that happens, you'll have to decide if you're going to do anything substantive about it. Now's the time to think about what that might (or might not) be.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Authorities should just send speeding tickets to all drivers, since we all do it?
Win if you can... Lose if you must... But always CHEAT!
The good old ends justify the means justification for violating the 4th amendment.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
After the previous "Likely unconstitutional" ruling, it was only a matter of time before any momentum counter to the "everybody's a terrorist and that gives us an excuse to do whatever we want" point of view was stopped in its tracks. I'm not surprised this happened and I am even less surprised that his NSA-fellating ruling sounds like it was written for him.
"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."
Oh please. It has been said time and time again that the dots were in front of their faces but they didn't take notice. Same with the Boston marathon bombings. More tugging at the heart strings of America.
" 'represents the government's counter-punch' to eliminate al-Qaeda's terror network by connecting fragmented and fleeting communications." ....Said the CIA man in the judges chamber during judge Pauley's coaching before returning to the bench to read his ruling. It couldn't sound any more insincere and staged. Now I sound like a conspiracy theorist.
Seriously. After all of these shenanigans have been exposed, who can trust anything the government says? They will keep on happily pissing on our rights while the courts fall in line with them telling the people "look how good this is for you! You should be happy and embrace it!" Fuck you William Pauley for selling us up the river you sackless pussy. (had to rant for a sec.)
The United States doesn't even pretend to be a democracy anymore. So very sad, I was once proud to be an American.
That data is given voluntarily. People may be pretty glib in giving the information, but it is still their choice. Maybe I do want Facebook knowing everything, but don't want my government to. Still, my choice. I never opted-in at the NSA web site.
Is a threat to the Constitution. And should be removed from his post.
Judge William Pauley is nominated to the Federal Appeals bench, while Judge Richard Leon is passed over once again.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
What makes you think the real mission of the NSA is to track terrorists?
Was that aimed at the GP, the NSA, or the judge that said the data collection was legal because it helped track terrorists?
Take your pants down while a cast a spell to protect you from tigers.
Next time, take off your underwear also, this way the spell can effect you better.
This time, for the spell to work, I have to touch you down there.
Pretty soon, your fucked either way, but at least it's not ERMAGHERD TIGERS.
Silence is a state of mime.
The problem is the third party doctrine which holds that voluntary disclosing information to 3rd parties removes any expectation of privacy.
That works more or less pre-digital age. However the idea that disclosing all of this information now is voluntary is ridiculous. You would have to live like Thoreau did in his shack on Walden Pond to avoid this.
There needs to be legislation or even better an amendment to fix this.
Lots of things are legal, for a time, before they are struck down as being unconstitutional.
Anybody want a peanut?
Given how deep they're in it, do they have any other viable option? As I understand it, any ruling that would acknowledge that sweeping bugging is wrong would legitimise (pun intended) popular rebellion against the NSA. But by legitimising bugging and with so many people who have been made to believe "what is legal is acceptable" then the govenment is off the hook.
Citation: BOSTON MARATHON
Are you telling me that the US government has decided that that US government is indeed allowed to do anything it wants with regards to total surveillance on every living person in the world without any actual cause? I didn't see that one coming at all.
Seriously, if anyone, even for one second thought that checks and balances existed with it comes to the government grabbing power for it self, you are out of your F'ing mind.
Historically, there is only one way to curb the power of an out of control ruling class. That, however, is something most people won't have the stomach for until things get far worse.
This judge's opinion reeks of corruption of personal feelings. Judge's are supposed to interpret what the law says to determine if a particular activity or Law fits within the narrow confines of constitutional authority.
This judge is a proponent of "anything is okay as long as it's for the War on Terror(TM)" and didn't seem to read one word of existing case law and simply ruled from the perspective of their personal agenda.
Excuse me, but FUCK YOU.
The ends do not always justify the means. If something is illegal for government to do, it is illegal for government to do, even if they really really pretty please with a cherry on top want to, and even if the outcome might be positive sometimes. It's still illegal.
The thing is because nothing happened, we can never tell if it worked and stopped a terrorist attack or didn't. We can only say nothing happened on X day.
In general this is true -- but in this case, it shouldn't be. This is a passive system that "works" when it connects dots and flags suspects. The fact that it has not done so for any potential or real terrorist threat shows that we can tell it didn't work -- considering there WERE plenty of potential and real terrorist threats that it DIDN'T flag up.
Of course, the system isn't designed to flag threats in the first place -- it's designed as a forensics tool, to clean up after a threat has been realized. Anything else it does is just a "bonus". Thus, if 9/11 happened again, it wouldn't prevent it -- it would just be a very quick method of rounding up many of the (still alive) people who were involved and getting insight into how big the thing was in the first place.
Our military and law enforcement absolutely must be able to use all means to catch the bad guys.
No. Freedom is more important. People who use these means are the bad guys.
Take a look at the article. It isn't just that nothing happened, but they didn't even have any positive detections. And it only takes a little bit of knowledge of neural networks and statistics to understand that this kind of program is doomed from the very start: the signal these data collection systems are looking for is exceedingly tiny. There are at most dozens of actual terrorists seriously working on plans to attack somewhere in the US at any given moment, compared to a population of over 300 million. In order for the system to actually detect those terrorists, then, it needs to have a detection accuracy that is better than the ratio of the non-terrorists to the total population. Otherwise, most of the "detections" will actually be false detections that do nothing but mislead law enforcement and infringe on the rights of innocent citizens. If we assume 50 terrorists, that means the system would need a precision better than 99.99998%.
It's almost impossible for any learning model to have a precision that high. Learning models in general have this problem with what are called long-tail errors. If you want to know what these errors are, check out Google's or Apple's speech recognition software on a smartphone (you can also access Google's speech recognition on the web on any PC with a microphone). Most of the time, it's pretty good. But sometimes the mis-detections are so far off it's ludicrous. Why in the world would you ever trust a system that needs obscenely high precision to an algorithm that has such nasty errors?
To be fair, it is possible to reduce the needed precision by filtering out people in the population who are unlikely to be terrorists (e.g. children, the elderly, women), but it's just not possible to reduce it enough to make sifting through large pools of information worthwhile.
I'm guessing the NSA had some juicy details about this judges private life.
I doubt it's that complex - just look at which circuit this guy is in charge of: New York, New York.
You know, that police city-state on the East Coast, the one where people are regularly shot by cops just for standing in the wrong place, assaulted with chemical weapons for speaking out against the corrupt government, stopped and searched without any regard to the 4th Amendment, arrested for expressing their 2nd Amendment right, and oh yea, tried to ban big fucking sodas.
Taking all that into account, I'd be surprised if the judge didn't decide in favor of the elite ruling class.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
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.
I agree we should have expected it, not because it *had* to happen, but because US judges are just as corrupt and self-interested as US politicians. They won't ever do anything to rule against the system, no matter how screwed up the system's behaviour has become, because its the same system thats giving them their power, status and wealth.
>> Our military and law enforcement absolutely must be able to use all means to catch the bad guys.
Sorry but thats crazy talk. You've totally bought into the brainwashing. Yours is exactly the same excuse all dictatorships, terrorists and psychopaths use. Once we start acting like them, even just in order to beat them, we have already lost because we have become no different from them.
Nuke the crap out of the middle east.
I mean, hey, the end justifies the means, right? And it would be cheaper and more expedient than spying on the whole world waiting for a bit of data to connect to another bit of data that proves (and stops) nothing.
And really, we wouldn't be violating the rights of anyone any more than we are now. Right now we selectively target people we 'think' are terrorists and drone strike them. Whether they are or not is irrelevant and they can't have their day in court because we blew them up (and anyone else around them). So, what's the difference between that and just simply killing every muslim?
And hey, let's start with Saudi Arabia if you're going to quote 9/11. Plus we get free oil if you don't mind it slightly radioactive.
So how is my idea any different? In fact, my idea is better because you aren't affecting Americans, right? And only Americans "count" in this world.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Our military and law enforcement absolutely must be able to use all means to catch the bad guys.
Well, they'd probably kill a couple of bad guys if they dropped nukes on all of our major cities. So, is that OK with you, sparky?
You're an idiot.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The NSA spying on Americans en masse without warrants is a counter-punch to 9/11?
Well, maybe.
Al Qaeda provided the initial punch on 9/11 and now the NSA is delivering a "counter-punch." Only problem is that the American people are the targets of both punches!
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
It will go to the Supreme Court, they will handle it the same fashion they did "Citizens United" and we will be screwed, people make far too much money of this "surveillance" to ever give it up.
You want privacy? Stop using cell phones and the Internet, you've got no one to blame but yourself.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Terrorist can use any words they want, common phrases but given a different and agreed upon meaning within their dialog constraints.
On the other hand and within the timeline there was need to have an ear to the public in order to know how to respond in the cover up of 9/11 (Building 7 was not hit by a plane, It obviously was taken down by demolition and what it contained needed to be removed to help the cover up.) This is verified!
What the government knew for certain is that they could create a feedback loop with the help of the media, so to influence the public to their bias.
They did not have to look for the needles in a hay farm (terrorist), as they were looking at the hay....... the public.
They never needed technology that didn't yet exist to process so much information for terrorist finding. They just made use of what technology they could get
Spying on Americans....
Given the recent articles on slashdot regarding the NSA data collection and inability to process it all but wanting more and more...
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/12/23/1323212/member-of-president-obamas-nsa-panel-recommends-increased-data-collection
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/12/26/234216/nsa-drowns-in-useless-data-impeding-work-former-employee-claims
The above is the only conclusion of spending taxpayer money ..... to spy on the taxpayers.
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.
It is, for varying definitions of "terrorist", up to and including "you there, reading this Slashdot article".
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
It is not. The mission of the NSA is to "Collect (including through clandestine means), process, analyze, produce, and disseminate signals intelligence information..."
It is up to the politicians you and I elect to set the boundaries.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
It's a WASTE of taxpayer money. America was just hit with a terrorist attack and the NSA has done nothing. 40 Million Credit and Debit cards were stolen from "Target". And you don't think that's economic terrorism??
And the good 'ol NSA has no leads, and no clue on how to solve this, despite having access to everything. The Boston Bombers? They had to set up a warehouse full of FBI agents looking at 7-11 surveillance tapes to find those guys. Facial recognition software did nothing.
The USA will be attacked again and again, and the NSA will continue to sit on its hands doing nothing. Why should they ever do anything after all? They keep getting unlimited money to do what they want in the "war on terror", but when the time comes to do something, they mysteriously won't be able to do squat.
I have a feeling a lot of your taxpayer money is going up someone's nose. Any data out there on what the head honchos at the NSA get paid? I bet their lifestyle exceeds their income, and they aren't even trying to hide it, and it will come out, it may take 20 years, but it will come out that half the money going into the NSA is being spent on hookers and blow.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
The only question left is how much he was paid, or what was he blackmailed with, to generate this "opinion?" Time, will of course, tell. After the next economic fail, followed rapidly by governmental rearrangement, the information will surely come out. It will be too late by then, of course.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Which logical fallacies apply to this?
False Cause - They perceive that 911 happened because we didn't have enough info so their solution is to collect "ALL THE INFO".
Appeal to Emotion - You don't want another terrorist attack, now do you?
Black or White - Either we collect all of the information on everyone or the terrorists win. Whose side are you on?
Additionally, courts have used Burden of Proof before. Want to prove this is illegal? Well, first you need to have been negatively impacted by this uber-secret program. Since it's an uber-secret program, you aren't allowed evidence that they spied on you. Since you have no evidence, you can't prove anything. Lawsuit tossed out. Next!
Finally, I propose a new Logical Fallacy - the More Information Fallacy. This one presumes that we'd be able to do X if only we had more information or less roadblocks to obtaining information. This is true in a sense. The police could arrest a lot more people if they didn't need to worry about so many rules about evidence. Do you know how many criminals would be behind bars if they didn't get off on a technicality? However, the flip side to this is lowered rules lead to corruption and abuse. Lower rules on evidence handling and you can have cases where evidence is planted or tampered with and innocent people get convicted.
In the case of the NSA, they think that "more information" will help them spot terrorists. In an ideal situation (for them, not us), knowing everything about everyone *would* let them spot and stop terrorist attacks. However 1) this would lead to abuse and mission creep to the point that the program would be used for non-terrorism related crimes or for attacking people the NSA didn't like and 2) the NSA would never be able to parse through that much data in the real world. So the claims that "more information will stop attacks" are just plain false.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Rather specifically, if you consent to having your information in a computer, the sysadmin can get it. That arguably means that you cannot expect privacy on any computer you don't personally administer.
That certainly seems to apply to the NSA!
davecb@spamcop.net
This ruling was made by a Clinton appointee to nullify the decision made by a Bush appointee. Sometimes things are exactly what they appear to be.
Even before wikileaks and Snowden, most terrorist elements had to realize that their electronic communications were under surveillance.
Security through obscurity won't work for a company like Microsoft, or Google, or Apple, because they're a giant target that thousands of attackers will try to access. But for a terrorist group, they can circumvent these monitoring systems with simple obfuscating tricks because they have anonymity. Mail a paperback book full of one-time pads written in page margins to a friend in France, who mails it to a friend in Morocco, who mails it to wherever it's supposed to go. Then send messages using the pads. Encode messages in cat pictures and post them to Tumblr. Agree to use the basketball news items on Yahoo, and then send each other a string of numbers which are just the indices to the words in your message. Text what appears to be a wrong number, but in fact "sorry" means something specific and "oops" means something else specific. etc... Any of those are trivial for the NSA to defeat, but only if they know which people to watch and whole physical mail to intercept first. They can't put that kind of surveillance on everyone.
The way that they are playing this it is putting in question that 9/11 was actually a false flag event. The way they define terrorists, they are a middle eastern form of mob, either with or without state and/or religious support. Instead of an actual declaration of war on a state that is operating in support of a terrorist organization they attack the rights of the people and change our way of life. To me that is a white flag, terrorism won, our leadership failed and needs to be held accountable for the way this has been handled. IMO, declaration of war not on a sanctioned state is unconstitutional, further I do not believe the people have been scared into this, in fact attacking the rights of the people is exactly in the interest of corporations. If corporations are so scared over this then they should put their money where their mouth is, produce evidence that said state is harboring said organization, if said state fails to respond appropriately then declaration of war is drafted against said state, either a surgical strike or option to turn them into a self illuminated glass parking lot is made available. The state in question can choose their own fate. So corporations, put your money where your fear is, either shit or get off the pot. During the Vietnam war the US had the capability to place a .308 rifle on a tripod, discharge the weapon over a mountain to take out military leadership whilst the poor sod was taking a dump in an outhouse, corporations (the represented) have had over a decade now to fix this crap at the expense of the people and their rights, you have failed, either nuke them or admit you can't fix this and step down.
What makes you think the real mission of the NSA is to track terrorists?
The real mission of the NSA is signal intelligence. I think it is safe to assume that the primary target for that intelligence collection effort is going to be the nuclear armed nations that directly threaten the US or its allies - often by explicit statements or military actions*, along with various rogue nations (Iran, North Korea) that threaten the US, US allies, free trade routes, or strategic resources. Lower tier threats and concerns are going to be things like diplomatic issues, terrorism, international crime networks, and so on.
You will note that I didn't include domestic political oppression. I'm going to go out on a limb and state that I think that is what you were insinuating as the "real mission" of the NSA. Do you care to confirm or deny that? If you want to confirm it, what is your evidence? I'm unaware of any showing that anybody in the US has been arrested and imprisoned for the act of voting for the wrong party, not even for dog catcher. The closest you could get as far as I know is the admitted abuse by the IRS in the treatment of tax exempt status applications and standing of groups opposing the Obama administration's demonstrated governing philosophy.
Do you want to know the real kicker? Based on the demonstrated level of concern it seems that few people posting here would care if the US government were to actually engage in political oppression, as long as it is by the IRS. We have had story after story after story about the NSA, and so far it amounts to the NSA collects phone bills, and it knows how to crack codes. People are hysterical about that, but not about the IRS engaging in political oppression that may have even tipped the last presidential election by some reckoning. Well, who cares if the US ends up as a one party state in practice, and the door to other abuses opens because of it, just so long as it takes the NSA an extra 2 hours to get some phone bills. There is a lot of distorted thinking going on here. A lot.
For anyone that cares: The IRS Scandal, Day 232
* China has recently published multiple articles in state controlled media showing nuclear strike maps against the United States by submarines and now bombers. Russia has decided to assume the mantle of the Soviet Union as an adversary of the West and restart probing Western defenses with bombers, submarines, and surface naval vessels. It has been threatening NATO allies for hosting a limited missile defense system for protection against Iran.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
They sure can harass you and put you on a list of promising targets, though.
Do any of you even know how the 4th Amendment works/is enforced?
Since when do they care about the fourth amendment? Throw in a "national security" excuse, and in some cases, that protection might just vanish.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Following that same logic, I guess it would be perfectly acceptable to round up everyone in the neighborhood to make it easier for the police to catch a suspected local burglar.
This judge is an idiot, who used inaccurate information to base his opinions on. He used the adminstrations misinformation that only metadata was collected and not content, while its been nearly confirmed that content was also being recorded and kept. The judge also thinks the surveillance system was put into place to fight terrorists, instead its known that the government is really using it for black ops abuses and to hide illegal activity of the US government. They are spying on all Americans as a method of control, to know our every thought and action, to use it on us as a weapon.
http://www.oregonstatehospital.net/d/russelltice-nsarnmebl.html
Isn't a judges ruling supposed to be about whether or not a law has been broken. In all the text I only saw that the government learned from its mistakes and could isolate gossamer contacts among suspected terrorists, etc. Shouldn't the ruling be "The government is allowed because of clause x y z of the something or other act." It doesn't or shouldn't matter to a judge whether it works or is a good idea. It should only matter that it is or is not in compliance with the constitution and the applicable legal statutes. Why would he even comment on it effectiveness?
No sigs in BETA. Beta SUCKS.
I do. See "parallel reconstruction".
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
We need to count on more decent people who work for the NSA and other agencies of the government to step forward.
You've got peoples' attention now, and we are closer to a breaking point than many (especially in the media) care to admit.
This has nothing to do with security and everything to do with the power of the private corporations that are doing the spying for the government. There are entire Virginian suburbs where every McMansion and every Mercedes belongs to someone who is in on this boondoggle.
Think of it: the intelligence contractors are today's version of the old military contractors who would end up bribing lawmakers (see Duke Cunningham and his toilets made of gold). You don't need a big industrial plant and tens of thousands of workers. You just need a server farm and big pipe to all the telecoms. Then you hire some nerds with antisocial tendencies and you're good to go.
You can bet there are twenty-somethings around the DC area who are walking around with pictures of your wife or daughter on their cell phones, showing off the letters you wrote to your wife when you were traveling or your medical records.
I'm telling you, they will never willingly give up this power. It's going to have to come to blows, I'm afraid.
You are welcome on my lawn.
filtering out people in the population who are unlikely to be terrorists (e.g. children, the elderly, women)
At which point, any terrorist organization with half a brain starts using exclusively teen and elderly women. For people willing to suicide bomb and kill random civilians, do you really think they wouldn't?
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
I am not personally concerned about privacy. People who are wealthy through shady methods probably have concerns about the authorities discovering the sources of their wealth. If people spy on me, I am not particularly concerned. I have nothing that I need to hide.
I object to only privileged institutions (and privileged people who have access to those institutions) having exclusive legal access to all that "private" data that I generate. This is the twenty first century, and everything has changed. Privacy, like copyright and patents, is dead and gone forever. Get used to the idea.
We should make all that phone metadata public. And the output of all publicly funded webcams. Repeal all those laws that criminalize information hacking. The NSA has that access, so why should not everybody have the same access? If you are concerned about stalkers, I would expect that apps would soon be available that would advise of who is researching your data or watching you.
Sure, our moral standards will have to change. Surreptitious liaisons will cease to exist. Even now, your partner is probably available 24/7 by cell phone.
One thing for sure. Not giving legal protection to privacy would expose a lot of corruption. Hopefully, it might even reduce my tax bill.
Yup. Pretty much why the entire program is unworkable.
You are ignoring the effect of air resistance or assuming that these people are in an vacuum, which would probably solve the problem by itself.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I would like to be the guy getting the sales commission on the data storage that the NSA will require to hold that useless data until they determine it's really useless and then discard it....or keep it...you know, just in case.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
The government learned from its mistake and adapted to confront a new enemy
...A population of mindless consumer zombies most likely to die in a car accident yet intensely afraid of low-probability events like shark attacks and terrorists.
Wow. Un-fucking believable. Golly, it sure would help the government if everyone would just put a camera in their living room, and designed homes to minimize the number of places the camera can't see...
Well, perhaps it would be a good idea to read the actual opinion then?
First off, the stuff they quoted in the summary was mostly from the intro paragraph. Not going in the details of the matter of law in an intro is no huge deal.
I did notice a bit further in as the decision went more into the pre-911 intelligence a bit of a historical error. The official 911 report actually showed that there was intelligence flagging the terrorists. As one example, one of the local FBI field offices flagged the fact that a lot of Middle-east nationals were taking flight training classes, and were showing no interest in learning how to land. The main problem the official report flagged was lack of communication between agencies, not lack of data (which is why its main recommendation was to combine all the intel agencies, NOT to gather more intel). So anyone who says the government didn't have enough data is arguing directly against the government's own 911 findings.
Historical misinterpretations aside, what is the legal argument? Reading through the body, it appears to be the following:
In other words, the logic is that the (unanimous) Keith decision in 1972 established that the government could write much more aggressive laws for national defense intelligence gathering than it can for criminal cases, and subsequent laws have done so. So at the moment its is both constitutional and legal. I'll let folks who know constitutional law comment on how kosher this interpretation of things is.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Answer this question: Is there any data that you want to be **completely unavailable** to law enforcement with **proper warrant**?
A very large part of this issue is that it was NOT done "with proper warrant."
People with power will abuse said power, and if not them the ones who succeed them. And apparently all this is not having any effect at all at stopping terrorists, in addition to fucking over the citizens' rights.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Answer this question: Is there any data that you want to be **completely unavailable** to law enforcement with **proper warrant**?
Definitely! There are protections, or used to be, that made certain information totally off limits to law enforcement no matter what kind of "proper warrant" they might have. One example: conversations between husband and wife.
In your world, there would be no such protections.
Our military and law enforcement absolutely must be able to use all means to catch the bad guys.
So now everybody is a "bad guy" - and the military and law enforcement can do anything to us?
It is important, very, very important that we keep in mind that you can't "catch the bad guys" if you become the bad guys. If the military and law enforcement break the law to gather information, then they are the bad guys!
"Not unconstitutional (very arguable in this case) != OK."
Absolutely incorrect.
One reason we get upset at a lot of *other* Supreme Court cases is because at that level the rules change. They sometimes let "smaller things" slide that feel unfair, including mistakes by courts, but then decide on "is X constitutional", say yes it is, then kick it back for re-do in the lower courts.
The very definition of what the S. C. does is decide if things are constitional, and if not, it is *NOT OKAY*. It's the highest level of Not-Okay in the land.
Now, there's plenty of arguing, but re-phrasing your partial point would go like:
"There's nothing direct in the const. to cover this, but we feel it *does not violate the spirit*, so it's Okay." There's been some pretty bad results there, to be sure. But by definition the S. C. picks which of its two stamps it wants to bang on the motion.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I'm kinda thinking along the same line. Did the NSA supply the Dept of Justice with dirt on this Judge, or the Judge's kids that might ruin their career? I would really think not. But we all know that this is the inherent issue with widespread surveillance. They can game the system whether it is against criminals or their own judges. Maybe there was no dirt, just a promise that they'll get reappointed in 7years or possibly be up for something bigger down the road and maybe their kids would get an inside track on what ever route they are taking in life. In the end of the day, you start to think these are they guys that cheated all through their lives with the idea that "do whatever it takes to win, you must be the person on top no matter what cost...it is only you that matters!" When you think about how they are finding ways to cheat the laws of the land in the name of something else, what else do they cheat at or on?
What a coincidence! The people who think it's a good idea, think it's legal. And the people who think it's a bad idea, think it's illegal.
Where are the people saying "It's awesome we're doing this stuff, but unfortuantely, we need to pass an amendment to legalize it," and the "This is undesirable and contrary to the country's interests, but the constitution clearly does grant the government this power," people?
When I see people split along the lines they're splitting on, I think everyone is full of shit.
Yeah, ok: even me. ;-) But that doesn't undermine my point!
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
If the program to spy on American citizens without a warrant is perfectly legal, then why is is it so super-secret? Why is Edward Snowden in so much trouble? Why did James Clapper feel the need to lie under oath to Congress? Why am I asking so many rhetorical questions?
Since the usual "appointed by Bush" is conspicuously absent, I'm going to hazard a guess and say this one is a Clinton appointee. Yep, appointed in 1998 by Bubba.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Note that you haven't actually changed the problem at all, just added humans to the system that needs to be better than 99.99998% accurate.
Though you have accurately identified one of the major reasons why the human part of the human/machine system will never achieve that level of discrimination: ass-covering.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
You asked for it; you got it; so now you are belittling the examples?
Is there any data that you want to be **completely unavailable** to law enforcement with **proper warrant**?
YES. We should not attempt to bend the rules of physics or disrupt the working structures that hold our society together simply for the benefit of our nation's police forces, at any level. I don't care who they get to sign off on it, building a time machine to go back in time and snoop on any documents that have historically been un-snoopable (even if it were possible) is not the way to fight nebulous enemies of the state. The difference between an invisible time machine, and blanket surveillance of all communications "which isn't looked at until there is a warrant" is essentially the same. We wouldn't give anyone the state-sanctioned ability to go back in time and use infrared cameras to peep through bedroom windows of even Marilyn Monroe, because it's simply not ethical; if they can do it to her, they can do it to anyone. And here we are, doing it to everyone, recording the whole thing, and calling it OK because hey, it wasn't a human being behind the telescope.
Look, I don't dispute that there are bad people attempting to do bad things. The question is really one of cost, and there's a popular Benjamin Franklin quote going around I could refer you to. My own take is that, if you give up the freedoms that have made America the best country on earth, you are sacrificing the parts which most make America worth defending in the first place. It's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Secret power is a dangerous society-killing drug: just say no.
Goddammit just when I get my first +5 the Beta rolls out and kills everything
You are making the mistake of assuming the reason the NSA is collecting this data to find terrorists.
Like the Boston bombers that were referred by the Russians, if I recall correctly?
if the team of 100 humans were following up real leads, instead of computer psudorandomly generated leads...
Wow. Two examples in 100 years, both resulting in punishment. Truly a damning indictment against the system.
You asked for evidence that "any" federal judge had been bribed for their decision. I took the time to give you twice as many examples as you asked for (and gave you convictions, not just "evidence", because it was clear that you would refuse to believe OJ-type situations).
I've shown you your "unpossible" black swan in the flesh and so now you want to claim "well, it's only a small problem" because I didn't invest more time to give you an exhaustive list?
Frak you.
It's an optimization problem. If recruiting elderly women and children was as easy as recruiting in their usual demographics, you'd be perfectly right. But it's not or they would already do it. So the terrorists will have to balance the cost of recruiting outside of their usual demographics with the increased probability of success. Besides, inciting terrorists to recruit outside of their target demographics would give us more opportunities to plant spies and double agents among them.
They do it and they have done it. Female suicide bombers are not unknown in Iraq.
And the more disaffected people there are, the bigger the recruiting pool becomes. By spying on US Citizens, the NSA is potentially - if not already - expanding that pool to include a vast number of people who don't meet the tradtional stereotype.
It doesn't matter whether or not it works, it's unconstitutional. That's what the judge should be ruling on.
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.
You are neither a terrorist nor "terrorist" for reading Slashdot, but real terrorists could read Slashdot if they were so inclined, just like they could read the New York Times or watch CNN.
What is the source of the distorted thinking in the thread above? There seems to be an endless supply of it.
And yes, we know that real terrorists use computers, cell phones, and the internet.
Finding treasures in Bin Laden computers*
Inside Al-Qaeda’s Hard Drive
*Where would Bin Laden store and view his pr0n without computers besides everything else he used them for?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
That data is given voluntarily. People may be pretty glib in giving the information, but it is still their choice. Maybe I do want Facebook knowing everything, but don't want my government to. Still, my choice. I never opted-in at the NSA web site.
Oh, bullshit, I am so tired of hearing this argument. I do NOT want and have never wanted to give the telcos and thus the government information about my exact location at all times, and I'm damn sure there was nothing about that in the original contract I signed way back when I first got a cellphone... But now GPS is baked into every phone by law (and why exactly is that done, again?) and THERE IS NO CHOICE, THERE IS NO "VOLUNTARY"!! Since when did the deal become, "If you want a phone, they get to track you"? In today's society there is almost nothing as basic and essential as owning a wireless device, it's a true "must have", so citizens are caught, they must go along with all this... But that doesn't mean people are happily and voluntarily giving out this information! They are FORCED to do it. Until there is some possibility to opt out of surrendering metadata, it's disingenuous if not dishonest to say the information is being disclosed voluntarily.
You can only vote for the POTUS/VPOTUS, House of Rep and Two Senators. That gives you four choices in control of your representation at the Federal level. That however is counter-balanced by the millions of folks who believe in Santa, the Tooth Fairy, Twitter Feeds and that the Federal Government is this beneficent thing. It's not. It's a large eating machine that feeds other eating machines and fucks with you on so many levels it's astonishing. On important matters it's the slowest mechanism to deliver change but on other matters it's the quickest to jump to conclusions and write poor legislation like the Patriot Act that enabled this shit in the first place. We're supposed to have three branches of government that balance each other out but more often then not they sing from the same choir book especially where them Terrorists are concerned because Terrorism is bad and we must fight it by declaring war on it, never mind the fact that the enemy is in a bunch of caves that a few tactical nukes could handle. And because we've created these new "tools" for the beneficent and powerful government, now we have prosecutors labeling gang members as Terrorists so how much longer before a common speeding ticket gets labeled as such? Future news headline: "Today a Speeding vehicle terrorized other motorists. The Feds have stepped in to charge the man under the special provisions of the Patriot Act."
So sing with me from page 666 of your hymnal... for at least the next three years "We're all fucked.."
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Chalnoth's accuracy calculation is wrong. To identify 50 terrorists out of 300,000,000 people, we need 100% accuracy. The 99.99998% figure is the number of people the system must accurately reject, and it must also accurately flag 0.00002% as terrorists. 100% must be accurately identified.
Rather than needing to perfectly identify exactly 50 people out of 300 million, the problem as I framed it is now identifying 10,000 candidates out of those 300 million, and doing it every month. I haven't the time to compute acceptable error rate presently (and frankly don't remember how for this kind of selection), but it's easier than being perfect.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Not really. Just pointing out that one of the judge's justifications for finding this "legal" is absolutely bogus: that it's useful. It is absolutely not useful at all in preventing terror attacks. It might be useful in helping to pinpoint perpetrators after the fact, but it's worthless as a preventative measure. And, of course, as many others have noted, how useful it is is independent of its unconstitutionality. One wonders, then, why the judge even mentioned that.
"Red Alert! Red Alert!"
"You crossed my line of death! "
"You haven't dismantled your MX stockpile!"
"Pakistan is threatening my border!"
"Nuke Em! Get them before they get you!"
Ahh when I think of RoboCop... That movie had so many things right..
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
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.
The Constitution doesn't say "life, *liberty*, and the pursuit of happiness". That's in the Declaration of Independence. The 15th Amendment says "... nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
And the 18th Amendment banishes alcohol.
Go back to school.
Uh-huh, so they claim. Now where's the proof of its effectiveness? Because without that evidence, and also how many false negatives it throws up, we can't properly guage it's effectiveness and this judge is just blowing hot air out of his ass.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
The GP most likely mixed up "Sent up the river" and "sold downriver"
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
His ruling was based on similar case
...In which the government once again undermined the constitution and people's rights. I do not think it's a good idea to allow the government to let corporations spy for them.
You willfully use Facebook and Google's services
No, I don't. Also, giving information to private companies != giving government thugs permission to collect it also.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
The government is not permitted to ignore the Constitution. The government is not permitted to violate the 4th Amendment at will. Every branch of government has utterly failed to honor their oaths to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. They have all done so not out of ignorance or mistakenly, but willfully. They have set themselves on a policy of shredding the Constitution. Every single one of them must be removed from office through impeachment and legal procedure, if possible, by force if not. Every single member of the executive, judiciary, and legislative branch who has signed off on what the NSA has been doing is in gross violation of the foundational law of our country.
If we don't burn them out now, they will burn the rest of us down forever.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
The Government knows what's best for you.
Ugh just thinking of that sentiment gives me the creeps real bad. That's all I heard when I was a kid / teen ('80's for the curious). That's the party line no matter what party was up at bat.
If this stays, I thinks our world is over. Aw hell it was over in 1973, it's just taken it 40 years for the corpse to realize it.
Still, in a word, Bullshit! Even if they had this deep, massive, dynamic oh-so-easy-to-misuse body of information back in 2001, they wouldn't find the perps before the planes took off because they (NSA, FBI, USA) can't find their own asshole with two hands *and* a flashlight! (torch for our uk-ish readers).
And even that's irrelevant, really. If this stays, we've become a de-facto dictatorship with a rotating figurehead and lower cabinet, to present the illusion of movement at the top every n years. LIke said up there in the main thread, the 4th Amendment is dead, if this thing stays. And that's the paper-thin line that keeps us from being a police state, at least on paper it does.
Y'know, now I think of the third paragraph up there.. we became one a long time ago, didn't we -- a dictatorship with a rotating head.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
What do you think would happen if a terrorist plot was uncovered? The NSA calls the perpretrators and tells them "hey, guys, we know what you are up to so please stop"? There would obviously be arrests and court procedures. Since we know of no trials where key evidence was collected through the NSA surveillance program, we must conclude that no such evidence has been collected.
"There's someone in my head but it's not me." - Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon
You apparently have not heard about J. Edgar Hoover, nor his not so subtle methods of manipulating various congresspeople.
Yeah, I know, Hoover was with the FBI, but you'd have to be the most naive idiot in the world to think the NSA couldn't, or wouldn't, do the same shit.
In short, the GP's point was spot on. Of course, when I got about halfway through your comment, I looked to see who wrote it. Imagine my lack of surprise when I noted that the NSA's head bootlicker and astroturfer was the author.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
nuts -- left out the citation:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/08/02/fbi-director-hoover-s-dirty-files-excerpt-from-ronald-kessler-s-the-secrets-of-the-fbi.html
An article about the book: The Secrets of the FBI By Ronald Kessler
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
(Hw much did he get paid to say that?) More likely just plain judge selection
I hear you and you are probably right! But no -- this whole case is a useless straw man. And with everyone here discussing it and reacting to it as if it is the 'REAL BATTLE' -- EVERYONE HERE is LOSING the battle. Distraction Complete. Pleas stop letting yourselves be distracted, people.
Telephone records, regardless of how much or how ever they are collected, are what judges and lawmakers consider to be "pen register trap and trace device record". There is legal precedent to this data collection which has been expanded, despite Internet protest, to include so-called header fields of email and HTTP request/response.
If you don't like that there is a whole shit-load of legislation that needs to be rolled back or repealed starting with USA Patriot going back through several iterations to specific provisions of the Electronic Communications (un)Privacy Act of 1984. In order even to understand the legal framework you are standing on this moment, you need law school training. Law enforcement has made several successful arguments that they deserve the right to access this data, and Congress has codified it. It is now that complicated and meshed.
I don't like it either but it seems the Democan and Republicrat parties do, each for their own stupid and naive reasons.
So it comes to be that this judge is ruling specifically on 'NSA Bulk Telephony Metadata Collection' and chooses to do so in a utopian frame of mind where Al-CIA-da is the supreme enemy. The ruling reads like a Zero Dark Thirty you-go-guys puff piece for the New York Times. How convenient for him, inconvenient for the rest of us.
The NSA's backbone fiber optic taps, which allow them to capture that same metadata in-network without a single silly provider agreement -- along with full content -- remain unaddressed. Even the Slashdot Headline mentions "NSA Data Collection" as if it is 'the battle'. It is a straw man.
NSA probably didn't want any public furor over their meta-data agreements, but on this day they are likely to be fanning this issue -- to distract attention away from taps and bulk content collection -- because when their wrist is slapped and, with great fanfare, metadata collection programs are 'scaled back', they can sink back into relative obscurity again.
If I have a tap on the backbone, why would I need AT&T, Verizon or Zaxxon to send data. As a stopgap measure perhaps, but the gap is closing. Why do you think Utah among others was chosen as a location? The scenery?
It is centrally located in a era where terrestrial fiber is still the best way to move gigabits.
The closest a judge has ever come to ruling on the real issue at hand is Hepting vs. AT&T. As Americans in defense of America exposing and dismantling the NSA content collection apparatus is one of our only remaining battles. It is high time to begin.
Thar be dragins in our midst. Slay them.
NSA and the Desolation of Smaug
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Of course the ones who get caught get punished. Seriously -- how often do we punish people who, for example, don't get caught robbing a bank?
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Left off the second part of my point which was that for all those who get caught and punished, certainly many more slip through the cracks.
J. Edgar Hoover slipped through the cracks his entire life despite running a subtle blackmail operation in congress.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
It said right in the constitution that no laws concerning slavery could be passed until 1808, at which time they promptly outlawed the importation of slaves. Also, the 9th amendment implicitly gave the right to regulate slavery to the states. If you'll recall, from fourth grade history, some states were "slave" states and some were "free". So, this arrangement was morally wrong, but constitutional. The sticking point came with the fugitive slave law, which many called unconstitutional because, again, slavery was in the jurisdiction of the states. But the federal government pulled out the weapon which eventually became the Swiss-army-knife of government oppression we know today: "regulation of interstate commerce". So it decided it had the ability to force escaped slaves dwelling in free states to return to their masters.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
From the special report on NSA surveillance to the president:
Recommendation 31:
(1) Governments should not use surveillance to steal industry secrets to advantage their domestic industry;
(2) Governments should not use their offensive cyber capabilities to change the amounts held in financial accounts or otherwise manipulate the financial systems;
During the Bush administration, there were several national demonstrations concerning immigration --- each one knocking the news item of the day completely off the national news, and each time that news item was: warrantless wiretapping!
By warrantless wiretapping, they referred to the eavesdropping on emails, wire transfers, all forms of data transmission, computer systems, etc.
Both of these marches were organized by Spanish-language radio stations. The next obvious question is: who owned those Spanish-language radio stations?
At that time they were owned by the largest private equity/leveraged buyout firm around, the Blackstone Group. Founded by David Rockefeller's protégé, Peter G. Peterson, with seed money from Rockefeller, along with co-founder Stephen Schwarzman, a Yalie Skull & Bones member, chosen for that fraternity by a group of upperclass men including one George W. Bush.
Curious that the senator who ardently pushed for legal immunity for AT&T and the other telecoms from warrantless wiretapping was none other than Sen. Jay Rockefeller!
Today, the Blackstone Group is the single largest landlord in America, owning some 41,000 rental homes. Their latest financial scam is to issue a rental home-based security.
Amazing, given that revenue streams --- from those rental homes --- to pay investors will be diverted from normal expenses: upkeep and normal home maintenance, property taxes, homeowner's insurance, etc., etc., etc.
(And that's assuming all the rental homes are fully paid for --- no monies going towards paying off the mortgage lenders and/or banks.)
Just does not compute! ! ! !
The Blackstone Group enjoys a nefarious past: buying and shutting down oil refineries to drive up the price of oil; speculating on oil and energy futures during the 2007 - 2008 period (when the paper price of oil rose to 13.8 times higher than its actual physical price), broker on the World Trade Center deal prior to the 9/11 attacks, and mortgage holder of record of WTC Building 7, and after the 9/11 attacks, overseer of the $1 billion captive insurance fund awarded to Blackstone from the US government, ostensibly to help out the families of the victims of 9/11; leveraged buyouts across the US healthcare sector, driving up the price of healthcare from 2000 - 20008, and, taking Blackstone Group public, as in on the New York Stock Exchange, while somehow still ONLY paying capital gains rate on taxes, when legally they should be paying the higher corporate tax rate!
Recommendation 31 begs the question: on whose behalf was NSA manipulating financial systems and accounts?
Was it Monsanto?
The Blackstone Group?
JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley?
GE and AT&T?
Or all of the above?
Recently, the news reported that the Obama Administration is suppressing a $40 million report on illegal CIA torture --- been suppressed for about a year now.
John Kiriakou was charged with treason and is now in jail for leaking information that implicated the CIA in illegal torture --- most notably torture of innocents, as the CIA would pay Afghanistani warlords per Taliban they handed over to them, and said unscrupulous warlords would round up innocent villagers (perhaps they liked the looks of their wives, daughters, etc.) and sell them to the equally unscrupulous CIA.
There were multiple reasons the CIA did this: they could point to their capt
Wow, the tinfoil is strong in this one...
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
And once you've got your 10,000 monthly candidates, then what?
Then you have to use some kind of systematic process (whether automated, manual or some mixture) to narrow that list down to the 50 terrorists (less the ones that slipped through the first filter). Thus, you're back to the original problem.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
They probably don't 'need' AT&T to Verizon to send data, beyond allowing that tap in the first place. The places the NSA would need cooperation are the commonly-utilised SSL-accessed services, primarily Facebook and Google mail/docs. Can't just fiber-tap those, and even if you could it'd be a nightmare trying to reconstruct things from taps alone. Having access to their databases would make utilising the information a lot easier.
Legal reform looks unlikely bordering impossible, so what other approaches are there? The crypto-anarchists have a partial solution at least - introduction of technologies designed to be more resistant to monitoring and control. That could certainly bother any monitoring agency, be they the NSA or someone more aggressive in political control like the Chinese government, for example. The problem with that, aside from all the overhead it can impose, is that it requires some level of active interest - and most internet users just want to go on facebook or argue on blog comments, they don't want to have to learn about public-key infrastructure or even deal with port forwarding.
All the NSA guys must wear "I read your email" T-shirts.
If your not doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about. So they are watching. So what! Great! I am glad someone is paying attention Romans 13:13 Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities,(A) for there is no authority except that which God has established.(B) The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2 Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted,(C) and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended.(D) 4 For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.
Thanks for that. The 1972 decision seems quite specific in that it applies to foreign surveillance, not domestic, where a warrant is still required. It still strikes me as "in the tank" for the government to fail to go on at that point to subject the prima facie* claim of foreign-ness to a review by this branch of government, since both of the other two seem willing to take the NSA's word for it. Does "we program our computers to review anything with what, in our sole judgement, seems to be a 51% of having a foreign endpoint" count? Does it count to actually tap every phone, but only check the logs if the 51% is estimated to be true? Does it count as breaking the law to have policies of control over these log-checkings run by the same information staff that let Snowden walk out with gigabytes?
All of these would have been cool things for the court to consider, and would have lent great legitimacy to the program if these burning issues sucking up so much cable news airtime were found to actually be minor issues, or well-handled at least. Instead he basically said, "My read of Keith says they're within the Constitutional limits since they say they're just checking out foreigners, and their word on that is good enough for me".
One hopes that will be a basis for appeal.
*See, I know two words of Latin. So I must be right.
And if you do that, you're a traitor who should be put to death.
You could try reading. Having a human second tier means the computer system doesn't need to be as accurate, neatly avoiding the original intractable problem:
It's almost impossible for any learning model to have a precision that high.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
The legal argument isn't one of efficacy; it's one of Constitutionality. It doesn't matter whether the program could have prevented 9/11 -- a lot of arguably unconstitutional actions could also have prevented 9/11 -- but whether the program follows the letter and spirit of the Fourth Amendment and related law. Does the government have an inherent right to know about any and all communications simply because they occur? The answer should be an obvious "no."
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Is it time to think about American Revolution #2?
1) Office of the President - corrupt, violating oath of office, violating Constitution (for the last few presidents) - CHECK!
2) Congress - corrupt, violating oath of office, violating Constitution (by passing unconstitutional laws) (for the last several congresses) - CHECK!
3) Judicial Branch - corrupt, violating oath of office, don't know the constitution much less what the founding fathers meaning behind it was, ruling based on political agenda - CHECK!
Looks like all three branches are completely out of control.
F" 'em!!!!!
The Truth is a Virus!!!
Was that aimed at the GP, the NSA, or the judge...?
Yes.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
If the program to spy on American citizens without a warrant is perfectly legal, then why is is it so super-secret? Why is Edward Snowden in so much trouble? Why did James Clapper feel the need to lie under oath to Congress? Why am I asking so many rhetorical questions?
For one thing he revealed classified information about NSA spying on the Chinese....
Are dwarfed by Medical Malpractice.
Why are not the so called doctors (and nurses) who routinelly kill mass amounts of people considered terrorists ?
I have nothing to lose but my bindings.
"Not unconstitutional (very arguable in this case) != OK."
Absolutely incorrect.
What the other poster was saying is that Legal != Morally "Right". Although the example used is a bit far-fetched; forced government adoption of all children would likely be held unconstitutional for many different reasons (treating persons as property, forced or coerced revocation of parental rights without proof of harm, and several others come to mind immediately).
The release of documents by Snowden put the evidence of the collection into the public light and was accepted by the courts, reviving a barely-live case by proving that the party was under surveillance. Once it's out in the open, it's impossible to get a state secrets claim approved.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Are they talking about the data collected on those outside the country, or spying on US citizens? Those are very different things in the context of "the threat of terrorism".
Twinstiq, game news
If you want privacy then do it the old fashion way and lie.
I do. There are several online services that think I was born at the North Pole on New Year's Day, to my proud parents, John and Jane Doe.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
If you think the US is a genuine one party state today you don't have a useful understanding of US politics regardless of where you live. There are basic facts that elude you.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
You're still missing the point. The overall system, comprising the automated learning model + human analysis, still has to achieve impossibly high levels of accuracy. Decomposing it into two stages doesn't change the problem.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
If a judge says this is legal it does not mean it is right. It only means it is within the law or precedent as the judge sees it or claims to see it. It does not remotely mean it is right or even Constitutional. And I don't give a damn. What the NSA is doing is utterly wrong. Unbearably wrong. It shall not stand.
Yep. All means are not legal to catch bad guys. Never have been and never will be.
So you're nominating this judge for sainthood, eh? Gotta show me three miracles of his first.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
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.
I am an American and I do share your concern.
But I am a naturalized American, not one who was born inside the United States of America.
As a naturalized American, I get to see America from both outside in and inside out.
What I see right now is a very discouraging view.
It's not an "if", but a matter of "when" - The Constitution itself has been proved too cumbersome for the BIG BROTHER and sooner or later the Constitution itself will be ruled "ILLEGAL".
You may laugh at my prediction - but I came from a very repressive country and I have a first hand experience of living under BIG and very OPPRESSIVE BROTHER, and the only thing that has managed to stop the United States of America from falling into the abyss of TOTALITARIANISM is the Constitution.
Thus, the Constitution and the accompanying Bill of Rights have proven to be way too cumbersome and troublesome for the BIG BROTHER.
Today we still get to talk about NSA and what NSA has done because the Constitution is still legal - and that's one of the reason why the BIG BROTHER wants to do away with that document.
BIG BROTHER does not believe in "We, the People". They only believe in "WE, the Master".
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The places the NSA would need cooperation are the commonly-utilised SSL-accessed services, primarily Facebook and Google mail/docs. Can't just fiber-tap those, and even if you could it'd be a nightmare trying to reconstruct things from taps alone. Having access to their databases would make utilising the information a lot easier.
Google has implemented Perfect Forward Secrecy (via ECDHE) since 2011 for clients which support it. You can test sites yourself with the Qualsys tool, look for 'FS' in the cipher list.
The widespread use of PFS will mitigate a purely human vulnerability: a distinct possibility that a some few humans in each of these major providers could be secretly supplying NSA with the operational SSL private keys that are used for HTTPS/SMTPTLS/SPOP/SIMAP.
Without PFS, imagine someone working IT at a bank exchanging a tiny flash drive containing years' worth of private SSL keys for a briefcase full of money. The moment the spooks plug in those keys, years of recorded encrypted SSL intercepts become readable, instantly. We are still at this stage, and most of the Internet is still vulnerable to this approach.
Is NSA/Utah breaking encryption codes with servers in a facility that requires 1.7 million gallons of coolant water per day? To some extent maybe, but the main emphasis will be on mass collection and bulk storage. And I am sure they have a map of tap points that surround Tier One exchanges, with an ever-increasing number of pins placed on it. Stalin would be proud.
Going into telephones -- cell providers aggregate roaming and billing information in a few central COs where a stream of call data is received. Land line providers are no different, and since there are no landline-only telecom providers left, the call information is likely to be accumulated in a few central places. Just a few taps and they have all the call and roam data they are accustomed to receiving. Will those telecom providers become aggravated that NSA is tapping their central offices, as Google is? Nope, with a nudge nudge wink wink they will leave their call metadata links encryption-free and be grateful that the straw man of voluntary data sharing has been brought down.
The ONLY HOPE of thwarting this turnkey police state is to publicly expose the existence of the taps (thank you Snowden) and DEFUND and DISMANTLE them.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Conversations with your lawyer are completely unavailable even with a proper warrant. We have an amendment specifically allowing me to refuse to answer questions that could incriminate me (in the US at least). Finally, if someone came up with a device that could read minds would you be in favour of the government being able to use it on people if they had a 'proper warrant'? Because currently any information in my head is completely unavailable unless I choose to disclose it (though it is a criminal offence to withhold it).
There were people smarter than you hundreds of years ago who knew that neither the military or law enforcement need to be able to use all means, so though you may think they do, that says far more about your inability to keep a rational perspective than any real security needs.
But, nope, to the simple minds of those in the 1800s, slaves were property not people, unless the new 13th amendment says otherwise.
It's more complicated than this. Many opposed slavery, even before the 1800s. Ben Franklin was the head of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery League and once justified the revolution as necessary because he claimed Britain would never end slavery voluntarily. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson freed their slaves (and Jefferson tried repeatedly to end slavery in Virginia). Gouverneur Morris gave a damning indictment of slavery at the Constitutional Convention.
So then, as now, there were people who realized what was going on was wrong and needed to change, but the forces of entrenched corruption were able to keep things going their way for a long time. Then, as now, it was -- as much as anything -- corruption in the legal profession that permitted the long term abuses of fundamental rights. It appears Judges swearing oaths to uphold the Bill of Rights find it inconvenient to acknowledge the open-ended nature of the Bill of Rights (the 9th Amendment provides for unspecified rights retained by the people, the 10th Amendment for unspecified rights reserved to the people, thus requiring the government to NOT enforce any law that could reasonably be supposed to violate rights the people might want to assert, a check and balance over the system that many people overlook).
Presumably the people involved get offers to support them in their candidacy for higher positions in return for their decisions, though I suppose we shouldn't rule out straight cash payments or blackmail as motivators. The legal profession as a whole has an enormous vested interest in not acknowledging the open ended nature of the Bill of Rights, so that probably plays a role as well.
For some reason, judges and prosecutors are immune to retribution when they uphold laws that violate fundamental human rights, even when doing so is clearly contrary to the oaths that are preconditions for holding these offices (or for that matter, the oaths that are required to engage in the practice of law). One would suppose that a person acting contrary to an oath that is a precondition for office would, by their actions, immediately and permanently be disqualified from holding that office (or any other position of public trust or responsibility).
It is cleat that the lessons of Nuremberg regarding individual responsibility to do no wrong have yet to take hold in the US legal profession.
It said right in the constitution that no laws concerning slavery could be passed until 1808, at which time they promptly outlawed the importation of slaves. So, this arrangement was morally wrong, but constitutional.
Incorrect. There is no limitation on laws regarding slavery in general in Article 5 (where the 1808 reference is found) or Article 1 Section 9 (where the importation reference is).
What is ACTUALLY said is that amendments can not prevent migration or importation of persons under state law until after this date. This is very specific. NOTHING is said about what new amendments can do with respect to limiting slavery AFTER a person has been imported or has migrated. In other words, laws concerning slavery COULD be passed both before and after 1808.
With the wording given, the federal government could simply allow slaves to be imported, then require they be set free at some point after landing. This would, after all, not constitute interference with the "import" process, which is complete once the ship arrives.
The specificity of this wording was probably deliberate: it can be taken as recognizing the current political strength of the pro-slavery faction while setting up the means to overturn slavery at some future date should that faction weaken. Recall that some of the Founding Fathers were strongly opposed to slavery, and these were very intelligent men who could easily have recognized the need to comprise in the present while setting up mechanisms to make sure that things would get corrected over time.
The word slave does not even appear in the Constitution: it is implied by Article 1 Section 2 and Article 4 Section 2, but even here the wording is quite careful. Article 1 Section 2 can be taken as implying, "you can force us to count the slaves for now, but nothing prevents us from removing slavery at a later date" and Article 4 Section 2 can be taken as saying "we won't let one STATE interface with the laws regarding forced servitude of another, but nothing prevents the FEDERAL government from doing this".
It is also interesting to note that Article 5 prevents prevents future Amendments from altering Senate membership, but doesn't say anything about Amendments altering membership in the House of Representatives, essentially providing a wide open invitation to alter Article 1 Section 2 ...
Further, an extremely strong argument can be made that the acceptance of the Constitution was conditional upon a Bill of Rights being added (two states outright rejected the Constitution without a Bill of Rights, in others promises were made by men of honour whose word was trusted to the effect that a Bill of Rights would be added), and as such, the Bill of Rights can and should be viewed as superseding ANYTHING and EVERYTHING in the original document in the event of a conflict.
Also, the 9th amendment implicitly gave the right to regulate slavery to the states.
Also incorrect. The 9th Amendment was added to the Bill of Rights to address the objection of the Anti-Federalists that any Bill of Rights would necessarily be incomplete. By providing for the assertion of unspecified rights retained by the people, it allows the assertion of rights against government. Note that this is the assertion of rights against government at any level, not just the Federal Government. It is a myth that the Bill of Rights was only intended to limit the Federal Government: we know this 1) from James Madison's personal history, 2) from his original text for the Bill of Rights and 3) from the fact that the 1st Amendment specifically limits only CONGRESS and the other Amendments DON'T.
The Bill of Rights being open-ended, it could readily be argued that it implicitly gave the federal government the right to outlaw slavery. After all, some of the most fundamental rights the people might want to assert as being "retained by" them or "reserved to" them, and thus protected under the 9th and 10th Amendm
A terrorist is a freedom fighter who isn't on your side.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/29/fbi-called-mlk-most-dangerous-negro-in-the-u-s-after-i-have-a-dream-speech/
Casteism
"Judges swearing oaths to uphold the Bill of Rights find it inconvenient to acknowledge the open-ended nature of the Bill of Rights (the 9th Amendment provides for unspecified rights retained by the people, the 10th Amendment for unspecified rights reserved to the people, thus requiring the government to NOT enforce any law that could reasonably be supposed to violate rights the people might want to assert, a check and balance over the system that many people overlook)."
Wow. To use the rhetorical flourish, "brainwashing is complete when you no longer even realize it"!
I'm pretty well aware of the emerging news under Amendments 1,4 and 5.
But it's time to re-write the reality of 9 and 10!
New #9: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the GOVERNMENT AND CORPORATIONS."
New #10: "The powers not delegated to the PEOPLE by the Constitution, or the States, are reserved to the United States, or the States."
(Executive Memo added: "A Reason must be given each time a Right of the People is granted to the Governments. The current Reasons are Preventing Terrorism, Protecting Children, and various alternates.")
All the battlegrounds over the lower amendments can be viewed in light of usurping #9 and #10! Yikes!
So far #3 hasn't been subjected to the wholesale assault yet ...
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
hey thanks for the measured response...
I have to admit that your points are valid. My problem was I didn't RTFA....I didn't realize this was about the 'metadata' gathering w/o warrant, so that's my bad.
Sorry slashdot...
Thank you Dave Raggett
There are two glaring absurdities in this ruling: 1) This is making the absurd assumption that NSA wasn't collecting any of this junk prior to 911, let alone that they "could" have done anything about it (if we're going to find this needle, we need MOAR HAY!!!). 2) The question before the court was "is this a constitutional seizure of Americans private information?" not "can we imagine a scenario in which this could have been applied to 911 investigations?". Absurd.