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When FISA Court Rejects a Surveillance Request, the FBI Issues a NSL Instead
An anonymous reader writes We've talked quite a bit about National Security Letters (NSLs) and how the FBI/DOJ regularly abused them to get just about any information the government wanted with no oversight. As a form of an administrative subpoena -- with a built in gag-order -- NSLs are a great tool for the government to abuse the 4th Amendment. Recipients can't talk about them, and no court has to review/approve them. Yet they certainly look scary to most recipients who don't dare fight an NSL. That's part of the reason why at least one court found them unconstitutional. At the same time, we've also been talking plenty about Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, which allows the DOJ/FBI (often working for the NSA) to go to the FISA Court and get rubberstamped court orders demanding certain 'business records.' As Ed Snowden revealed, these records requests can be as broad as basically 'all details on all calls.' But, since the FISA Court reviewed it, people insist it's legal. And, of course, the FISA Court has the reputation as a rubberstamp for a reason — it almost never turns down a request. However, in the rare instances where it does, apparently, the DOJ doesn't really care, knowing that it can just issue an NSL instead and get the same information. At least that appears to be what the DOJ quietly admitted to doing in a now declassified Inspector General's report from 2008."
It's good we elected Obama who has made sure to bring us "Hope and Change". It's good to know we elected someone who has limited and stopped all the abuses from the Bush era. Just imagine if he had just lied to us and instead simple extended and expanded these abuses of his predecessors. Hopefully we will get a constitutional amendment passed so we can vote our Glorious Leader in for a third term.
Obama alone can't turn the entire government of the United States of America rogue
He has a lot of help from the inside --- people whose sole aim is to turn America into a police state
The bad news is, the government of the United States of America is out of control
The worse news is, we have NO ONE to reign in the government of the United States of America
And that is not enough, the ABSOLUTELY WORST NEWS is, too many of the American citizens have turned into sheeples, and never care how their government functions nor how bad it has turned into
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I can't believe any FISA request was ever turned down. Basically, I thought the purpose of the FISA act was to suspend the constitution. What went wrong?
Basically, Law and a Programming Language should basically be the same, from the basic definition they are, but sometimes law is interpreted (this is good and bad both at the same time)
a.) in human interaction law specifies rules & processes for man
b.) in machine operation a programming language specifies rules & processes for machines
And in both domains people try to (ab)use the specified rules to behave in a way, which was not forseen/intended by the rule maker.
I judge this as an exploit of type priviledge escalation.
But we should start hacking law, FBI has a head start!
If I received a NSL and I were in the mind to ignore it to whom should that hypothetical me send that NSL to in order to get maximum press coverage before being shuffled off to prison?
Would a NBC or a CNN publish it?
We have to throw all of them out. All of them. And repeat until they do what they should.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
They sure as HELL would never vote for the vermin selected by the elite and presented to them as approved puppet candidates in the primaries and general elections. They would make GODDAM sure that none of the states tried to deny them their right to write in their choice on the ballot, and then they would BLOODY WELL USE that right.
As it is, the voters - as a body, not as individuals - get the regime they so richly deserve. Time after time.
I think that the problem is far worse then people not knowing or caring. It seems like the overwhelming majority are strict authoritarians who almost demand that the government is involved in everyone else's life every waking second.
The 'I have nothing to hide' crowd are the most unamerican, morally bankrupt, cowardly scumbags on earth, and they vastly outnumber the rest.
Put it to you this way; if a thousand teenagers can rush and overwhelm a mall, then the NSA isn't all powerful.
Did you seriously just try to use the existence of flash mobs as an argument that the NSA surveillance state is inept?
I don't even...
They have found a way to game the system, and then found others who will finance and follow their criminal model. Eventually with time and money the foam rises to the top of the septic tank...
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
I wish you would all crawl back into your bunker full of hot-pockets and stop poluting the air with your rancid breath
Well, see here, that's not how democracy works. You don't get to suppress someone else's view simply because it is not in accord with your own.
So go fuck yourself
You seriously think fascist cares about democracy?
To the fascists 'democracy' is, borrowing a term coined by a very well known fascist from Turkey, a 'bus'
According to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, democracy works like a 'bus'. He hops on that bus, use the bus to get him to his destination, and then, he gets off
Fascists are all alike, no matter if they are Islamists from Turkey or Obama-cronies from the United States of America. To them, democracy is but a tool for them to attain what they want, and once they got what they want, democracy can go to hell
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
It happens all the time, at all levels. Another common example is carefully crafting laws to work around judicial decisions.
Say, the supreme court rules that women have a right to first-trimester abortion as an extension of the right to privacy in medical and personal matters. There's not enough political agreement throughout the country to get a constitutional amendment passed changing this, which would be the appropriate solution for those who disagree with the ruling. So what's the solution? Keep abortion legal. But mandate background checks on all women, require clinics be subject to ridiculous health regulations just to dispense a pill, require they all have a doctor granted admitting privlidge at a local hospital while knowing full well that many hospitals will refuse to grant it to anyone who performs elective abortion, require a two-day waiting period, and require women be informed against all medical knowledge that the procedure will increase their risk of cancer. The supreme court is thus subverted: Abortion is legal, but effectively unavailable to many.
There's a similar approach with the Mount Soledad Cross - every time a court rules it illegal, the government quickly shifts ownership to another jurisdiction and thus takes it out of the authority of that court, or renders the decision inapplicable. Nearly thirty years that legal battle has been going on now, and late last year (2014) congress snuck a clause in an appropriations bill authorising the sale to a private party in order to pull the same trick again.
Or the issue with sex offender exclusions. Courts have ruled that cities cannot pass laws prohibiting released sex offenders from residency, because that would be effectively an extra punishment on top of that which the court has authorised as a proper part of the justice system, plus it's legally prohibited to retroactively increase the severity of a sentence. So instead they pass exclusion zones, saying that sex offenders may not live within so many yards of any school. Or shopping mall. Or daycare center. Or school bus stop. Or ice rink. Or cinema. Or playground Anywhere children might be encountered. With enough exclusions, entire cities are rendered off-limits. Or they can impose reporting requirements that are intentionally impossible to comply with, like requiring the offender to go around to every neighbour within a certain radius and announce their address and sex offender status - thus ensuring they are subject to vigilantee attacks and destruction of property, with the ultimate intention of making life so unbearable they are forced to leave the city. Once again the court is subverte by achieving indirectly what cannot be done openly.