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Surveillance Watchdog Concludes Metadata Program Is Illegal, "Should End"
An anonymous reader writes "Three out of five PCLOB board members are in agreement: The NSA spy programs are illegal.. Unfortunately, these lawyers are not in a position to act or make any changes, only to advise congress and the president. Could this be the start of change to come? 'According to leaked copies of a forthcoming report by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), the government's metadata collection program "lacks a viable legal foundation under Section 215, implicates constitutional concerns under the First and Fourth Amendments, raises serious threats to privacy and civil liberties as a policy matter, and has shown only limited value As a result, the board recommends that the government end the program.'" Not surprisingly, the Obama administration disagrees.
Also submitted by me 4 hours earlier... but who's keeping track :)
http://slashdot.org/submission...
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
The only time the government has ever shut something down is if it is costing it too much money. And no one has attacked the NSA's finances.
Surveillance Watchdog Concludes Metadata Program Is Illegal, "Should End"
Any rational person with half a brain would come to the same conclusion.
Brave Sir Robin ran away. ("No!") Bravely ran away away. ("I didn't!")
So it's illegal. So I guess someone's going to go to prison for the crime then.
Uh...
ba-dum-tschhh....?
It's really sad that the idea of widespread illegalactivities by the government yielding prison sentences for those involved is a joke. But that half ounce of pot you got caught with...
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Those who run this will continue to say it's legal, and even if it isn't legal, it's Too Important to stop doing it.
And then they'll just have to find more creative ways to hide that people are being charged on the basis of illegal spying -- why no your honor, this was a routine traffic stop, and his laptop fell open.
Because, I'm pretty sure I've seen stories about how the spy agencies have been briefing law enforcement in how to cover up the involvement of the three-letter-agencies.
So, they'll continue to break the law, and then they'll just lie about where the information came from.
The comparisons to the Stasi get more relevant every day, and many of us are old enough to remember the old "papers please, comrade" jokes.
Sadly, we're heading there, to the applause of some, and horror of others.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Since it has already passed muster with the courts, Congress, and President, I doubt there will be much outcome. They are advisors, not "deciders."
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
Betteridge's Law of Headlines says that if a headline ends with a question mark, it can be answered "no." Does this apply to questions asked in summaries too?
In this case, I'm going to guess yes, the answer is no.
Indeed. Expect the government to replace one PCLOB member.
Liberty in your lifetime
From a higher level, metadata, who calls whom, and when, would have been used to round up the Founding Fathers. Had they still managed to be successful, they would have forbidden that to government without warrant.
It's really that damned simple, people.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
launch_drone_strike(target::NSA);
execute;
Somebody in the government ordered that each citizen will have to:
After finishing a phone conversation it must submit a written statement to its 'supervisor' stating to whom he called, for how long and what was the topic of the conversation, such statement will store in a safe vault and the 'supervisor' promises to not to look at it.
After sending an email to somebody (or for that matter any chat in electronic form) will also require to submit such statement along with the full content of the email / chat, again under promises of not peeking at it.
Citizens are recommended to use and carry with them the 'personal tracking device' (aka smartphone) at all times whenever possible, also to constantly submit a report of it's location for proper storing by the 'supervisor'
Failure to do so will automatically add such citizen into a list of suspicious persons and also registered as a dissident of democratic regimes.
The good news is that Obama decided to invest unlimited amounts of money in technology to provide an automated service that does that for every citizen in the planet, alleviating the harrasment that such continuous 'report' causes to us all.
Because in soviet russia...
I rather like the cat and mouse game of eluding surveillance. It's rather fun. Reminds me of the cold war in many ways.
That is the $6 trillion question.
(yes, that's the cost)
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
There are many who will despair that reports like this will get ignored. What I think we can learn from history is that big legal and social changes in the United States don't happen overnight. It takes a long time to build the political will to fix a broken system. We saw that with the civil rights movement, we're seeing it now (in my humble opinion) with marijuana legalization and same-sex marriage.
Even though the agency that issued this report has no authority, it's one more source of media coverage, one more expert opinion saying the surveillance programs are un-American. What we need are years, not months, of frequent and critical media coverage. That is what change looks like.
I know the NSA's abuses can't end soon enough. The democratic process makes wise decisions slowly and foolish decisions instantly. Keep the pressure on, and give it time.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Consider for a moment your standard, run of the mill credit report that is easily obtainable by just about anybody. It contains an actual chronological record of anything you do from a financial standpoint, but the metadata that is able to be gleaned from it tells a much more invasive story about you than just who you called and when. It tells me the kind of car you drive, the amount of money you make, the kind of neighborhood you live in, I know where you work, where your kids go to school. I can even make a pretty good estimate on if you are having marital problems. This data collection has been going on for decades, without your consent, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. You can't even own the data about yourself, and others are both allowed and encouraged to make money off said information, mostly be way of penalizing you if they don't like what it says. Where is the outrage? Where is the oversight? Is it because one dataset is owned by corporate pimps and the other is owned by the government? I personally don't give a shit if the NSA knows who I called. The furniture store down the street can spend $7 and find out all about my medical procedure from 2007, and absolutely anything else about my life they care to look into within about 30 seconds. We conceded privacy for the sake of convenience a long, long time ago.
A thing like this ought to be legal or illegal regardless of whether it is useful or not... So, though I'm glad they've reached this conclusion, I'm hesitant to rejoice — if these are the standards to apply, we may have something horribly invasive coming in the future, which will survive legal scrutiny because it will be useful, even if otherwise illegal...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
If you're waiting for congress or the president to act, don't hold your breath...unless you can hold it for a few years because anyone who wants to run for congress or the president has 2 options. They can be against surveillance and obamacare or they can lose. The public will not vote for someone who has a differing opinion. They're both surprisingly not party line issues anymore.
unbless FISA
We see what you did there, Citizen. A neurolinguistic programming antipatriot is what you are. You're on our list.
Surely this would mean that there is now grounds for someone (not sure who) to challenge the metadata collection operation in a court? Or sue? Or pursue happyness? *shrug*
"I love deadlines. I love the "whooshing" sound they make as they pass by." - Douglas Adams.
Yeah, you already know the response White House, Obama isn't agreeing with the finding.
Back in 2005 then Senator Obama complained about the Patriot Act, which he's now defending.
“This is legislation that puts our own Justice Department above the law.If someone wants to know why their own government has decided to go on a fishing expedition through every personal record or private document, through the library books that you read, through the phone calls that you made, the emails that you sent, this legislation gives people no rights to appeal the need for such a search in a court of law. No judge will hear your plea. No jury will hear your case. This is just plain wrong.Giving law enforcement the tools that they need to investigate suspicious activities is one thing. And it’s the right thing. But doing it without any real oversight seriously jeopardizes the rights of all Americans, and the ideals America stands for.”
So by his own statements he's jeopardizing the rights and ideals of all Americans.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
You mean like the programs set up to deal with the drought in the 1930s which continue to cost billions of dollars in excessive food prices and waste farmer's resources?
I WISH government programs that were too expensive would be shut down.
I can't think of ANY significant federal programs that have been shut down.
The FISA court doesn't rule on constitutionality of an issue, that's up to the Supreme Court ultimately and that's what the EFF and the ACLU have been fighting for the past few years. Unfortunately the way the legal system, that third check and balance we're supposed to have, requires vast amounts of time and resources along with legal success to ever ultimately get something to a final decision through the courts. Sure, you can have a lower Federal Judge say "unconstitutional" and then have the Court of Appeals say "No it is constitutional" based on the losing party in the case appealing. If the parties still pursue it there's no guarantee that the SCOTUS will ever here the case and like a lot of times, petitions to SCOTUS aren't granted Certiorari which is a nice way of letting what ever the last, highest ruling court's decision stand or for whatever else they don't want to get their grubby hands dirty with. Ultimately the people in this country need to stop voting based upon what the political parties want you to hear and vote for candidates that will step up for our rights and not sell us out.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
...and now this?
How in the world will our government keep us pious and safe now?
Is this a new committee? Or did they just not know about this stuff until Snowden told them?
Isn't that evidence enough that there's a serious problem?
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Only if you choose to ask the furniture store to give you furniture without you paying for it can they pull your credit. If you ask them to front you some furniture, they can see what happened to other people who loaned you money. My credit report is almost empty, it lists a car loan and that's about it. Nobody sees my report because I don't go around asking people to let me spend money I don't have.
Contrast this with the government. They have thousands of records on me, every phone call I've ever made or received. All of my emails. There's no way to opt out. If I tried hard enough to get away from their prying, they have squadrons of heavily armed men to send after me.
See the difference?
I understand where you're coming from. However, consider the following.
The Constitution is quite clear that "the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed". However, you can't bear arms in the White House,
and that's Constitutional. You have a right to bear arms. The government has a duty to protect the president. The usefulness ("furtherance of a
legitimate government interest") is larger than the freedom cost of prohibiting carry in the White House and a limited number of other locations.
As the courts have ruled repeatedly, Constitutional issues often involve balancing two sides that are both "right". The guy who wants to be ready to defend himself and others is "right", the Constitution guarantees that freedom. The Secret Service who wants to protect the president is right, they have a Constitutional interest in doing so. Therefore the court must balance the two sides. In such cases, the court will ask how useful it is and also whether the same degree of usefulness could be achieved via a smaller intrusion on citizen's rights. For example, they wouldn't uphold a law saying you can't have a pistol within 500 miles of the president, because same usefulness could be achieved by prohibiting it only within 500 FEET rather than 500 MILES.
In this case, it is legitimate for the federal government to "raise and support an army and navy" (including the Office of Naval Intelligence), and to "provide for the common defense". It is therefore a legitimate question whether the NSA's is useful enough in "providing for the common defense" that it outweighs the "small" intrusion into "a few" people's privacy. The correct answer is that that the intrusion isn't small, the number of people intruded upon isn't small, but the usefulness is small. Therefore, it's not constitutionally justified.
and book Clapper for perjury, too. he's unquestionably guilty.
when government flouts the law, citizens can't be blamed for doing so too.
> "I don't use credit so there is nothing to see" is no more valid than my
> "I don't talk about terrorist plots so I have nothing to hide" where phone calls or email are concerned.
It's entirely different. In the case of the NSA, there are thousands of records for every person. There IS data being stored about your daily activities. Someone might say that there isn't anything INTERESTING to see about them, but there most certainly is a LOT to see - all of their phone calls, for example.
For the credit reporting agency, there simply isn't any data there if you don't go around borrowing money. You can claim the NSA data about you isn't important, but it is collected. The credit data on me does not EXIST. It's literally nothing (beyond maybe a phone book listing). So you're comparing NOTHING, no data being collected, to a vast database of our daily activities. You're saying the NSA spying is equalivent to - literally - nothing.
IMO, the reason that these things don't conflict is not because you don't have the right to bear arms everywhere you go, but rather because you don't necessarily have the right to go into the White House.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
For the credit reporting agency, there simply isn't any data there if you don't go around borrowing money.
Not true.
The credit data on me does not EXIST. It's literally nothing (beyond maybe a phone book listing). So you're comparing NOTHING, no data being collected, to a vast database of our daily activities. You're saying the NSA spying is equalivent to - literally - nothing.
If I claimed "I don't use the phone or email" then I am re-framing your own argument. You are saying that one collection is BAD and one is OK based solely on the volume of information.(and since there is nothing of any value or volume, in your case, which is not at all true for the majority of people). You make an allowance for CR agencies because you (incorrectly) believe that its all about you asking for something from someone, or using their service. That same argument could be turned around if the government facilitates any network that your data travels over, then. So what's your problem?!? You want them to give your data a free ride, they just want a quick peek at its content! How is that unfair?!?!? /s
> I wanted to by a house and no credit history meant I couldn't get a mortgage loan.
If that's still an issue, or may be in the future, message me. I can give you the exact step-by-step plan I used for my mortgage. I even got to write my own mortgage documents, so it's assumable after it's 50% paid, I wrote the terms regarding late fees, etc.
3 guys decided that an organization established by Congress, performing duties as directed by the executive branch and monitored by the judicial branch was doing something illegal? That's right up there with me and my drinking buddies thinking that toll roads should be illegal.
That Obama will spend the next 8 years trying to get "consensus", and nothing will be touched in any meaningful fashion. Just like every other policy change he's failed to even attempt.
Unlikely. More likely is they'll just make up some sophist nonsense, the same way they did when they started cooking up ex post facto laws, and viola, they'll declare surveillance as "not surveillance." It's truly amazing (and depressing) to see the depths that the higher courts plumb in order to excuse the direct violation of their oaths.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I browsed at 4+ comments, and didn't see any responses like this:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Seems pretty simple?
I wonder when General Alexander will be facing charges?
Trust a lawyer's self importance to think that his job is not a make-work career and that the president and congress and the people who tell them what to do actually give a fuck about the law and what's illegal or not.
Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.