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US Appeals Court Says NSA Phone Surveillance Is Not Authorized By Congress
New submitter IronOxen writes: A panel of three federal judges for the second circuit overturned an earlier ruling. The court has ruled that the bulk collection of telephone metadata is unlawful, in a landmark decision that clears the way for a full legal challenge against the National Security Agency: "'We hold that the text of section 215 cannot bear the weight the government asks us to assign to it, and that it does not authorize the telephone metadata program,' concluded their judgement." That's not exactly saying that such bulk collection is unconscionable or per se unconstitutional, but it's a major step toward respecting privacy as a default.
We have indeed tasked loyal people with a job. You misunderstand that job. The job is to keep us as safe as possible within the restrictions on methods that liberty requires.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
It means that they personally are at fault, rather than that Congress overstepped it's authority.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Amendment IV
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.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Just because it's illegal or not authorized doesn't mean that they will stop. They'll simply continue and do their best to keep it hush hush
Senator Rand Paul, a Republican presidential candidate who has made opposition to overbroad surveillance central to his platform, tweeted: “The phone records of law abiding citizens are none of the NSA’s business! Pleased with the ruling this morning.”
How fast would his attitude towards surveillance change if were elected president?
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
When that next truck bomb detonates at a sporting event or mall, or when that next muslim fan goes on an indiscriminate killing spree through a church, know in your heart that you have allowed that to happen.
I'll enjoy my freedom, thankyouverymuch, even if it does come with an 0.001% chance of dying by terrorist.
The terrorists did less damage to our way of life than this kind of government spying on its own citizens.
maybe now we can pardon Snowden?
There goes all those long lonely nights talking to my phone...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
know in your heart that you have allowed that to happen.
Show me some data showing this surveillance has worked and I might agree with you.
Other wise, if you give an ape a gun sooner or later someone gets shot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
as far as the NSA is concerned, collection is not unlawful - getting caught collecting is what's unlawful. theyll just be more careful about it
The reason there are people who want to use asymmetric warfare (terrorism) is because they are outmatched. We, the USA, were the ones who threw the first punch with our occupation of Muslim countries. We can rationalize it all we want that we are fighting for "freedom", helping the oppressed or whatever the delusional shit we tell ourselves for our ridiculous foreign policy. It's all lies. We are occupying other countries and their people do NOT like it. what is so hard to understand?!
If we were TRULY fighting for those things, then we must invade Saudi Arabia, Israel, N.Korea, China, Somalia, etc ......
And if we were fighting for freedom, then why did we oust Saddam from Kuwait and reinstate a monarchy? That makes no sense.
The US' foreign policies are hypocritical and the rest of thee World knows it and sees it. Unfortunately, we Americans have been brainwashed by our propaganda - corporate for profit propaganda - because it's what we want to hear. When the fact is we're two faced bullies.
Mr. Fjord? Is that you?
Except there's no proof that these tools are actually effective, and there are plenty of arguments made by experts that they cannot possibly be effective (too many false positives ties up scarce investigative resources). So I reject your whole premise.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
God bless America.*
*Even though I firmly believe the separation of church and state is vital and I would in no way impose religion on anyone.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Ben Franklin, Liberty, Security, etc. etc. If you don't know and understand the quote, shame on you.
It didn't stop the Boston bombing, and the government knew the perpetrators, and the same with the attempted attack the other day in Texas. Too much data is just as bad, or worse, than not enough. Hindsight is always 20/20, and in almost every attack we find that the intel was there to stop it, but wasn't acted upon. So, we're just as screwed with it as without it.
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. -- Ben F.
You've probably heard it a few times, now fucking THINK about it for a while
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
Lets see how well did the spy on everyone program work when two "nice" muslim guys from Phoenix, one of which was already being watched for terrorist ties, drove to Dallas and attempted to shoot up the event that offended them. If our government can't stop terrorists they know are terrorists through all the domestic spying why do some think they are safer by having the government spy on them?
Fair point. The federal govt. did send a warning to the state (maybe city)? Didn't help much, though. Or maybe it did, and that's why the cop who shot them both was such a badass. They put a Chuck Norris on the scene.
The terrorists did less damage to our way of life than this kind of government spying on its own citizens.
Yup. Terrorism between 1970-2007: 1 in 3,500,00 chance of being killed by a terrorist. In 2007 alone you had a 1 in 22,000 chance of being murdered in the US.
Someone mod this up.
First time I've seen anyone asking the obvious question: if the guy was being watched by the FBI for the last N years, how did he ever get close enough to the event to start shooting it up? Could have turned out a lot worse.
How many of our taxpayer dollars were wasted watching this guy to no useful end? How many are spent on even more useless activities?
Hillary, you so funny...
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
.... keeping in mind that what liberty requires in regard to restrictions may be different than what the mob believes.
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
What is this FUD?
Lets see how well did the spy on everyone program work when two "nice" muslim guys from Phoenix, one of which was already being watched for terrorist ties, drove to Dallas and attempted to shoot up the event that offended them. If our government can't stop terrorists they know are terrorists through all the domestic spying why do some think they are safer by having the government spy on them?
So you are saying if a safety program can not be 100% effective, then it is worthless? OK, remove all air bags, seat belts, inspection rules for airlines, any police on the street, any police responding to emergency calls, doctors, etc.
The problem is you can not quantify, or qualify, the attacks that were stopped, so you have the luxury of acting like the number is zero.
Also, suspecting a person may be a terrorist, and knowing they are one, are not the same thing, but nice strawman.
I disagree. They are not tasked with keeping us safe; they are tasked with safeguarding our liberties.
Well sure, but Al Capone and John Gotti have a decidedly odd slant on liberty and restrictions on government action.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
This. This. This.
Freedom >>>>>>> safety
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
If the guy was being watched by the FBI for the last N years, how did he ever get close enough to the event to start shooting it up?
He was on their radar as a suspect, and they were keeping track of various activities he was doing, but it wasn't like they had a 24/7 person watching him. Legally, until he commits a crime, there isn't anything they can do, at least not without a person like you then shouting about police overstepping their authority.
I don't understand why you think it was to no useful end. The muslim was intercepted and dispatched before he could execute his murderous plan. I consider this a spectacular success.
I'll take my chances as well. The spy program have been real successfully at stopping attacks though, oh, wait....
Probably higher if you're black.
A lot higher.
I congratulate you on your obvious, yet funny, trolling.
CAPCHA: pursuers
I would say that this constriction of our Freedumz! was the actual goal of the attack.
Make us a pack of bedwetters begging Daddy for protections, liberty be damned.
"A Republic, Ma'am. If you can keep it." - BFranklin
You're looking for quotes? See my journal.
.... keeping in mind that what liberty requires in regard to restrictions may be different than what the mob believes.
I would argue that infringing on the privacy of the people to keep them (questionably) safe(r) is just exchanging one loss of liberty for another.
How about we disregard what EVERYONE thinks and go by what the law says. How's that 4th amendment go again?
I'd actually argue that this is /exactly/ the sort of disproportionate harm that you use terrorist tactics to do. It's not like you blow up a building trying to kill everyone in a country, you blow up a building to get the people not in the building to change their behaviors. The stuff we've ended up with after 9/11 sounds pretty much like success on the "have a negative impact on the target disproportionate to the actual capability to inflict harm you have" to me.
Even if we just selected for 2001, you had a 0.001% chance of dying from terrorism if you lived in the US then. It would make more sense to declare a War On Heart Disease or a War On Cancer and toss funding to those causes.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
No the people to blame are the monsters that commit horrible acts.
You're missing the point... The mass surveillance makes it harder to keep track of actual threats and if the FBI did not spend all their time training fake terrorist to create fake victories they could start looking at real terrorist.
Hear, Hear.
When that next truck bomb detonates at a sporting event or mall, or when that next muslim fan goes on an indiscriminate killing spree through a church, know in your heart that you have allowed that to happen.
I'll enjoy my freedom, thankyouverymuch, even if it does come with an 0.001% chance of dying by terrorist.
0.001%? That's insanely high. The real rate is a couple orders of magnitude lower. It just goes to show how completely terrible human beings are at estimate the risk of extremely rare events.
The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
Well sure, but Al Capone and John Gotti have a decidedly odd slant on liberty and restrictions on government action.
You know my grandfather was kidnapped by Capone back in the 30's and that was because his would be wife was a court clerk. Not too hard to figure out what was going on there and my grandfather was a good boy and kept his mouth shut but in '64 the mafia on north shore Tahoe ripped off and killed both my grandparents on my fathers side anyway. He had wired 'hospital fund raiser' money for image sensors for a project that was run in absolute secrecy, my grandparents were killed in a plane crash immediately following that and the money never made it, in fact the USAF had to purchase the image sensors. In 1964 my great uncle Jack cancelled the CIA SR program due to a security breach because of that. My father on 5/1/2013 was killed by Sherriff's officers in Reno, NV. Sherriff's officers that were previously corrections officers on south shore Tahoe that were accused of rape of female inmates in their jail and were fired but also given letters of recommendation? These pricks wanted me to jury tamper my father on the Caputo case? WTF? For this reason I have contacted remaining folks that are still alive in the SR program and I have advised them I am moving to Germany because of this. They call them men of honor, not unlike Snowden, I call bullshit;
US-Regierung ist defekt, von mafia- kontrollierten, getÃtet und ausgeraubt radar mans projektfÃrderung, mein groÃYvater im jahre 1964, und radar mans neffe - mein vater auf 2013.01.05, setup ganze familie. groÃYneffe des radar- mans deser nach Deutschland, weil der mafia. Politisches asyl.
On 6/1/2013, I am out of here. The mafia runs your country and I just can't stop thinking about Naples, Italy in 1991 where the people attacked the mafia because they were not being represented and that same shit is going on here. There's a lot of people in this country and when this shit comes to a head, I'd rather be watching from across the pond and preferably working on what my family was doing pre 1964. That happened to be slated to be the best part of the JFK space program after satellite tech was to be implemented, but they are not honorable and they are greedy and quite willing to give up something better tomorrow for a quick buck today, this has only gotten worse in this country over the last 50 years and to the point that they no longer have a choice but to play it crooked. Screwed the US is, done it to them selves they have for 50 years, defecting, I am.
The missing piece is to be able to detain, restrict, or eliminate all the suspicious people. The US has lagged a little behind the other Western countries that only recognize collective rights, but once you have demonstrated that surveillance works to identify bad guys, there will be increasing support to do something, and rounding them up won't be a problem.
Nice false equivalency, moron. Read some history. It's public record that the FBI grooms "terrorists" to arrest later. You are a piece of shit.
Actually 6/1/2015 I am out of here.
Look at this small dicked coward. Hey, coward. Grow some balls. Look out the big bad terrorists are going to get you. Go back to Fox News, you fascist garbage.
Are you afraid of your own shadows too? Maybe we should make a law to prevent shadows too.
... if the FBI did not spend all their time training fake terrorist to create fake victories ...
Oh, so you are one of those conspiracists that believe all the news stories are fake, and probably also think 9/11 was the US blowing up the building with high explosive. Now I understand where you are coming from. Thanks for enlightening me.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/03/16/howthefbicreatedaterrorist/
Educate yourself, slime.
Captcha: bogeymen Ironically, what parent is afraid of.
Even if you took every single liberty a man can possess away, there would still be a way to disrupt, and cause terror. But then again, anyone who works in security knows that to be the case since well before this all occurred. The fact they are knowingly selling the lie and propaganda is criminal.
Read some history. It's public record that the FBI grooms "terrorists" to arrest later.
Can you please cite your sources? And please don't use a citation from a conspiracy site since when I googled it that is all that came up. Unless of course by "groom" you mean perform a sting and offer to sell weapons and explosives to suspected terrorists to see what they do - I guess a person in their mind could twist that action into "grooming" if that was their objective.
You are a piece of shit.
Ad hominem. You are falling back to this because I pointed out the relevance of what you wrote? Well, you continue to prove my point.
Go back to Fox News
When I have seen it I haven't liked Fox News, too slanted, but then I almost never see TV. The rest of your post speaks for itself.
yes but how does the war machine make money off of that?
They are not tasked with keeping us safe; they are tasked with 'safeguarding our liberties'.
Safeguarding liberty by breaking through a constitutional boundary... That's a hot one! Thanks for the belly laugh.
The Bill of Rights is the set of proscriptions deemed necessary by the founders to ensure that the citizenry was protected from the tyranny of its own unrestricted government. The fourth amendment was enshrined to limit police power to that which could be rationally supported by evidence of wrong doing. I.E., the wrong doing must logical occur prior to the collection of evidence, in a system where provision against 'unreasonable search' is in force. Blanket surveillance of all electronic communications for as many channels as possible is so completely beyond the pale of reason for anyone who claims knowledge of liberty, that it's hard to believe anyone would question the legitimacy of such an attempt. But here it is...
"how did he ever get close enough to the event to start shooting it up?"
If they're not literally doing 24/7 surveillance of everyone they think might be a threat, then how precisely do you want them to know what's going on when Bob gets in his car and starts driving?
Getting in your car in Phoenix and driving is not, in and of itself, suspicious.
By the time they realize the car is doing something suspicious (How? Series of auto plate scanner readings making a beeline east? State border crossing? Neither of those is, in itself, suspicous, mind you), he's in the wind.
You don't get to cry "waaah, why isn't the panopticon omniscient!" AND cry "waaah, intrusive government surveillance!".
Nope, you are a shilling piece of shit. It's not an ad hominem when its a fact.
I know you are a lying piece of shit. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=fbi+created+terrorist I see The Intercept, Democracy Now, The Guardian, and the New York Times. Yeah, those are conspiracy sites.
My question is, are you paid to spew bullshit, or are you just stupid?
I'll enjoy my freedom, thankyouverymuch, even if it does come with an 0.001% chance of dying by terrorist.
A bit optimistic on that estimate unless you were looking at something like your overall lifetime chance but even that might be a bit on the high side.
Time to offend someone
More likely a massive multi-branch "limited hangout" op.
The past tense of screw should be scrod.
As in we are scrod.
Hopefully the Congress will not use this court ruling as an excuse that it is ok to reauth the Patriot act as is.
They really need to do their job and make the hard choice to move the limits a bit more towards liberty.
If we work with nice round numbers and say that there were 300,000,000 people in the US and that on 9-11-2001 terrorist killed about 3,000 people then that number is about right. But keep in mind that something like 9-11-2001 is a once in a lifetime event so the 0.001% chance of death by terrorist would be for one's entire life and would seem to be a good enough ballpark number. On an annual basis it would be a couple of orders magnitude less.
Time to offend someone
0.001%? That's insanely high. The real rate is a couple orders of magnitude lower.
I don't know, am I way off? Why do you think it's lower?
It's surprisingly hard (that is, not available on the first page of google results) to find out how many people in America die each year. But if there are 300m americans, and average life expectancy is ~75, and the population growth rate is ~0 (population is growing slowly over decades, but not much change year to year) then there must be ~4m births and 4m deaths each year.
Let's do a worst case analysis. In 2001, 3,000 people died in 9/11, according to Wikipedia. So if you died in 2001, there was an 0.075% chance that you died from terrorism.
Obviously, in the best case, there are zero deaths from terrorism in a year, so if you died that year there would be a 0% chance that you died from terrorism.
9/11 is surely an outlier, but not by too much. If you scan the news headlines it seems that it's not rare for a terrorist attack to claim 100 lives. crash a plane, blow up a subway, shoot up a mall, all sorts of things. So while 9/11 is definitely an outlier it is only a 10x outlier. It's not like a nuclear bomb attack, which would be a 10000x outlier.
So, given these facts, what's a justifiable number to use in the statement "there is an X% chance I'll die from terrorism"? I'm not trying to be facetious, I would appreciate your input here.
Nope, you are a shilling piece of shit. It's not an ad hominem when its a fact.
Ad hominem - when an argument or reaction is directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining.
My position was being unable to achieve 100% effectiveness for a safety program doesn't mean it has no worth. The responder, whom I presume is you, claimed that the FBI was spending "all their time training fake terrorist to create fake victories". I pointed out that such a view is considered a conspiracy theory by the general public, though not in so many words, and it helped explain why you hold the beliefs you do. So far, everything is relating to the positions being discussed.
You respond to my argument by calling me a moron and a piece of shit, and label something I said as a "false equivalency" but don't explain what or why. What part of your attack against me versus my argument makes it not an ad hominem attack?
This is mostly a rhetorical question since I learned a lot about people who act like you are in my psychology classes. I have fed your ego enough, but fixing you is not my job. Goodbye.
Because none of that warrantless spying contributed in any way to stopping him.
Actually the terrorists did win in a way. They achieved their goal of "terrorizing" us into enacting the policies now damaging our way of life. They caused the environment that allowed the government to pass the Patriot Act enabling/justifying their spying on us.
They made us suspect ourselves and each other and we now live in a state of paranoia and distrust.
You've tasked these loyal people with a job to do in order to keep the USA and its citizens safe, and then removed the tools they need to do the job effectively. When that next truck bomb detonates at a sporting event or mall, or when that next muslim fan goes on an indiscriminate killing spree through a church, know in your heart that you have allowed that to happen. You've just allowed hundreds of people to die so that the government computers don't log your phone sex that could be embarassing, except nobody really cares - get over it. It's a shame that we are going to have to learn the hard way through another 9/11, and you'll have Snowden the traitor to blame.
What is the point of safety without freedom? Without privacy? You may find it very suitable to live in a solitary confinement cell.
There have been multiple responses giving you links to what you claim is conspiracy. You are either a troll or a shill. Which is it?
It just goes to show how completely terrible human beings are at estimate the risk of extremely rare events.
As you have just demonstrated again. It is only "extremely rare" (for some values of "extremely) in the West, at present, and not necessarily in other parts of the world. This is subject to change.
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
Well here is some "data" granted I'm not too sure about the source.
Unfortunately most people hear that and ignore that it was over a 10 year period, assume that all of those 50 attacks were going to happen in the US, and each of them would have been on a 9-11 scale of death. I say lets use those piss poor assumptions and actually believe Gen. Keith Alexander for a moment. This means we would have a somewhat impressive pile of bodies from terrorists at 150,000 in a single year. Also using data from 9-11 that would mean that there would have to probably be about 1,000 terrorists in the country. Unfortunately that body count would only put terrorism at #3 between being a fat ass and smoking in preventable causes of death. This also ignores what this country would look like with a 9-11 event happening basically every week which in my mind's eye I see something like Germany in about 1944.
Now from this impossibly high number we can start to whittle it down to something more realistic. This was 50 attacks over 10 years not 1 year so with all of the previous assumptions terror deaths are now below deaths from STDs #10 and drug abuse #11 (excluding alcohol and smoking) so maybe still in the top 15. Also a 9-11 level even is extremely unlikely given 3 things, locked cockpit door, hardened cockpit door, and the willingness of passengers to turn a terrorist into a red smear on the nasty carpet. So this really limits large attacks so most would be similar to the Boston bombing at worst while most would be like the underwear bomber. So now we are at something like 50-100 deaths from terrorism a year in the US which seems to put in the same ballpark as the number of PowerBall and MegaMillions winners in a given year. Unfortunately this number is still too high since not all of these attacks would have happened in the US. I don't know what number to use here so lets just say that half of them were going to happen in the US so now the annual body count from terrorism in the US would be 25-50. Finally keep in mind that upper limit of 25-50 extra deaths from terrorism each year had we done nothing more than locking the hardened cockpit door and turning potential terrorists on planes into a smear. Now to further depress everyone I'll just leave this here so we can all do a face palm.
Time to offend someone
Here are you links, piece of shit.
I'm calling you a piece of shit because you are. You lie about googling things, and whine about ad hominem attacks, meanwhile multiple people have posted links. Yet, you continue to fight with me, ignoring the others. I wish there was a hell, because its perfect for garbage like you. Go shill elsewhere.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/03/16/howthefbicreatedaterrorist/
http://www.democracynow.org/2015/3/19/how_the_fbi_created_a_terrorist
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/21/government-agents-directly-involved-us-terror-plots-report
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/terrorist-plots-helped-along-by-the-fbi.html
http://news.yahoo.com/fbi-pushed-muslims-plot-terrorist-attacks-rights-report-160325158.html
http://beforeitsnews.com/terrorism/2013/04/fbi-created-17-false-flag-terrorist-attacks-2446172.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/16/this-is-how-the-fbi-creat_n_6882248.html
I really hope you are just ignorant, because if you are willfully acting like this, you are sub-human trash that is helping pull us ever closer to full on fascism.
How many kids died in Hiroshima? Nagasaki?
Babies?
The hypocrisy is indeed strong with these U.S. Americans.
thank you bob. how would you respond to this comment about realistically gauging the risk?
Seriously, the worst part is that it's doesn't achieve it's stated objectives.
Intel gathered in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan and some other rogue states like Bahrain, yields actionable intel.
Intel gathered in the US has somewhere around 99 percent false leads that hide the 1 percent we would have found if we only used the above intel instead, and then used specific warrant leads.
That to me is the take home from this Illegal and Unconstitutional NSA data collection program.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
...except if you're not American, in which case you're still spied on, and no one is challenging that.
"You should never doubt what nobody is sure about." -- Willy Wonka
You've tasked these loyal people with a job to do in order to keep the USA and its citizens safe, and then removed the tools they need to do the job effectively. When that next truck bomb detonates at a sporting event or mall, or when that next muslim fan goes on an indiscriminate killing spree through a church, know in your heart that you have allowed that to happen. You've just allowed hundreds of people to die so that the government computers don't log your phone sex that could be embarassing, except nobody really cares - get over it. It's a shame that we are going to have to learn the hard way through another 9/11, and you'll have Snowden the traitor to blame.
I'm curious how your opinion will change when it is YOU on the ass-end of $20,000 worth of legal costs defending a wrongful accusation with evidence gathered illegally.
Oh wait, I forgot. Illegal evidence gathering and wrongful accusations creates jobs right?
Talk about fucking delusional.
I think he is saying he's discussing and your trying to incite and fight. To me you sound like the shill not him.
You can figure out the chance you'll die from terrorism with some statistical math if you choose an expected lifetime length and your chance to die from terrorism each year. The math is fairly simple if you assume that your chance of dying from terrorism is roughly constant over your lifetime. It's not perfect but it can give you an idea of the magnitude of the risk involved.
Let P(terrorist kills you in your lifetime) be the probability of a terrorist killing you in your lifetime. Then,
P(terrorist kills you in your lifetime) = 1 - P(terrorist doesn't kill you in your lifetime)
If we assume that the likelihood of dying in a terrorist attack is fairly constant over your lifetime then:
P(terrorist doesn't kill you in your lifetime) = P(terrorist doesn't kill you in a specific year) ^ N
Where N is the number of years you expect to live. Lets overestimate the number of people that die from the kinds of terrorists you see on the news in the United States in a year. I do not see headlines about 100 people dying a year from actual terrorists but still I am going to overestimate and say it's a 1 in a million chance. So around 300 people dead a year in the U.S.A.
P(terrorist doesn't kill you in a specific year) = 1 - P(terrorist kills you in a specific year) = 1 - 0.000001 = 0.999999
So the formula looks like this:
P(terrorist kills you in your lifetime) = 1 - ((1 - P(terrorist kills you in a specific year)) ^ N)
For a lifetime of 75 years:
P(terrorist kills you in your lifetime) = 1 - (0.999999 ^ 75) = 7.4997 x 10^-5
Which is 2 (a.k.a a couple) orders of magnitude lower than your 1 x 10^-3.
The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
I disagree. They are not tasked with keeping us safe; they are tasked with safeguarding our liberties.
I guess you aren't a big believer in the US Constitution then. There seem to be things like the army, navy, militia, and common defense mentioned. I also see that the President is given the power to grant Pardons. Might some people be in jail for breach of peace, reducing the "safety" of others? You might think so.
Preamble to the United States Constitution
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Clause 1: Command of military; Opinions of cabinet secretaries; Pardons
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
Your oversight is understandable. People here are all about Amendments 1, 2, 4, and 5. They don't really care much about any other part of the Constitution, and that inattention shows.
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
He has been given plenty of evidence from other posters. He chose to ignore it and concentrate on me. He is the shill. Go fuck yourself.
Instead of selling Stingrays and backscatter x-ray machines they sell lab equipment for medical research.
There's not reason the industrial mega-complexes have to manufacture weapons and survelance equipment. That;s just what the agencies with the big budgets want. Change the buget and capitalism will cause the focus of the big industries to change to serving the whims of whoever has the money.
To see someone feel so disempowered in life and seek to compensate by attacking others is very sad to me. I hope you get help soon, but the choice of your path is yours.
So you admit that the US government is at war with the citizens of the US, and the world at large?
From what I have seen the 2nd circuit ruling only says that section 215 of Patriot Act does not authorize the bulk collection of phone data that the NSA has been doing. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) had approved this program under section 215. The 2nd circuit is overruling FISC. This ruling apparently does not address the question of whether the bulk collection of phone data violates of the 4th amendment. There is no enforcement provisions in this appeals court ruling. The 2nd circuit is leaving it to the the district court to decide enforcement questions, such as what happens to all the data that has been collected. Section 215 of the Patriot Act expires in 3 weeks anyway unless it is re-authorized by Congress. So far it does not look like Congress is going to re-authorize section 215. Congress could reword section 215 to say it authorizes this kind of bulk data collection and pass a new authorization. Keep your eye on what Congress does in response to this ruling.
The idea that granting pardons contradicts the government's role as a guarantor of personal liberty is pretty tortuous; pardons exist so that government may more perfectly secure freedom for individuals that, by means of imperfect justice, are imprisoned. You suppose that it implies the exact opposite of what it does.
This is the best you got? Fake pity that is really an ad hominem? You still fail to address the evidence that your original premise was wrong despite evidence. You are a pathetic shill.
something about this doesn't seem right... you can only get killed once. if you get killed then you lifespan ends. you're basically asking the question, how many times will I die from terrorism over the course of my 75 year life?
+1 lolwut
I'm confused, wasn't his original premise that "being unable to achieve 100% effectiveness for a safety program doesn't mean it has no worth"? How have you shown that to be wrong? Also, I am not sure the person you are attacking in your latest post is the person you attacked previously. Also, do attack everyone?
You can't pardon and release those that aren't imprisoned. How and why were they imprisoned, and by whom? The government is responsible for more than one thing, and is granted the power to do it. Ignoring that fact does not make it go away.
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
He stated that the FBI creating terrorists was a conspiracy theory akin to 9/11 being an inside job. It is not, and i showed evidence of that. He chose to ignore it and continued to argue with me. I'm not convinced you aren't the parent poster anyway, as neither of you have still addressed the idiocy of his initial claims. Go cry somewhere else.
His (and your) behavior are typical of sock puppet behavior. Act like a piece of shit, get called a piece of shit.
So who is going to jail over this?
Somebody is at least losing their job, right?
When did the War Powers Act become some nebulous catch all for everything not authorized by law?
Here is the text of the war powers act.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20t...
SEC. 2. (a) It is the purpose of this joint resolution to fulfill the intent of the framers of the Constitution of the United States and insure that the collective judgement of both the Congress and the President will apply to the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, and to the continued use of such forces in hostilities or in such situations.
(b) Under article I, section 8, of the Constitution, it is specifically provided that the Congress shall have the power to make all laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution, not only its own powers but also all other powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.
(c) The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.
So 1) we are not at war (or quasi-war by specific statutory authorization by the Congress), and 2) the war powers act does not authorize bulk metadata collection. It really only covers the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities. I suppose you could argue that the United States Armed Forces are engaged in hostilities against the citizens of these United States of America though...
In U.S. government, agencies can only do what they are authorized to do by law and budget. Obviously, that's subject to interpretation, so a certain amount of "mission creep" is inevitable, but if a court of suitable jurisdiction says nothing authorized an activity then it has to stop, now, and arguably those doing it could face charges if it was willful.
In private, it's the other way, because The People are the source of government in the U.S. So unless something is against some law, and the law is constitutional, it's legal for a private individual or organization to do it.
Another rub on the Patriot Act, or rather the Patriot Act extension, is that it was not signed by the President. The extension bill was the first bill ever signed into law by the "autopen".
Article I, Section 7 - Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. [...]
http://www.archives.gov/exhibi...
So it says "he shall sign it", not a robot. Is it law?
Aren't there a couple of spigots somewhere that Verizon and AT&T need to turn off now?
Honestly, given where you went to school I am surprised by your childish behaviour. You're making an arse of yourself and your mum would be beside herself.
+1 lolwut
There are two sides to the CIA, one is political and by your response that shows that your charm clearly shadows your intellect, you probably know the other. Now I doubt that side has any curiosity about space exploration as you clearly would not have to look any further than between your ears to find a vacuum. Your answer to this does not satisfy the questions on space exploration for all of us. JFK had fears of a mob run country, here we are over 50 years later and I can certainly understand why but I bet that still puzzles you, but then again running two sets of books works for the mob, not so much for countries in the world arena that monitor quality of life on a world order. I can see you wouldn't be bothered by that until you can't drive your hummer anymore because the US government has printed so much money just to keep it's doors open that the Saudi's selected a different form of currency to trade the world's oil market with, the deals back in '71 after bankruptcy cut with our friends south of the border to keep the banks floating are broken, the people throwing money in the streets because it no longer has any value. These things are mentioned in the Bible but then again your presence makes us such a predictable species. They say when in Rome do as the Romans do, however it does appear to be getting pretty close to 500 A.D. all things considered. Perhaps you can pay someone to push your hummer for you while you sit behind the wheel and steer it, but that will have to be with something that the people haven't already thrown into the streets.
Now after reading this based on my understanding your response will be:
+1 lolwut
So you, might be able to conceptually grasp what I mean by predictable species.
Here's what's wrong: my value is a 0 to 1 probability. Yours is a 0-100%. So my overestimation is actually close to yours. That being said, let me explain why I'm not asking how many times you'll die from terrorism over 75 years.
The line was:
P(Terrorist DOESN'T kill you in your lifetime) = P(Terrorist DOESN'T kill you in a specific year) ^ 75
It works like this:
What is the probability that I will survive this year? 0.999999
In order to survive for 2 years, I have to survive this year and survive next year. In statistics, P(X and Y) = P(X) * P(Y).
So the probability that you'll live for two years is 0.99999^2. And to survive 75 years is 0.999999^75
The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
.... keeping in mind that what liberty requires in regard to restrictions may be different than what the mob believes.
Considering that our country was founded on the idea of consent of the governed, I'd say that "what the mob believes" regarding what liberty requires is exactly where that line falls. In the US, every government action that doesn't respect the will of the people undermines the legitimacy of the government a little more.
You don't have to get very far into the Declaration of Independence to find:
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
And when it comes to suspected criminals, it is trivially easy to convince the mob that the suspect deserves no protections. When it comes to the rights of the accused, I would much rather follow the fourth amendment than a bunch of scared/angry people who probably couldn't even tell you what the fourth amendment is about.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
"Consent of the governed" doesn't mean the same thing as "mob rule". In no way does your example follow from the passage that I quoted.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
you think being "watched" means they actually had eyes on him?
it means he's flagged in various databases if he buys plane ticket, particularly to leave the country, or purchases items that are also being "watched".
come on. the real world is like the Blacklist with unlimited agents and unlimited resources.
It's a cool show. James Spader is awesome in it.
But it's fantasy, just like your conception of what "watched" means.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
21x to be exact
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
ok, here we go, now my brain is getting sharper! [rubs hands together]
The fatal flaw in your approach is that you're assuming the probability of surviving year n and year n+1 are independent. Actually, they are quite tightly bound. If you don't survive year n, you're definitely not gonna survive year n+1!
In statistics, the equation P(X and Y) = P(X) * P(Y) only holds if P(X) and P(Y) are independent.
BOOM! Pwned!
I think if you examine the US Constitution for the acceptable means to alter its contents that street protests and tirades on Slashdot are not among them. The law is what it is until properly changed.
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
I guess you aren't a big believer in the US Constitution then. There seem to be things like the army, navy, militia, and common defense mentioned.
I am, and one of the things I notice when reading it carefully, buttressed by reading the contemporaneous writings of the founders, is that the army was never intended to be continually maintained. The Constitution attempted to specifically bound the time frame for which Congress could appropriate monies to fund an army. We've recognized the obvious workaround... just re-appropriate the money every year, but that definitely wasn't the intent, because the founders were, by and large, terrified of standing armies.
They did see the need for ongoing funding for a navy, because a navy really isn't very useful for oppressing the people. And they totally supported the militia idea; community-organized groups of men that volunteer to arm and train themselves, which in time of war can be called up via the states and then placed under federal command. But the community and state focus of the militias would ensure that they were loyal first and foremost to the people, not to the central government.
So if you're a big believer in the Constitution, you should favor abolishing the NSA, US Army, Air Force, and any other standing military forces which aren't clearly naval.
Someone mod this up.
First time I've seen anyone asking the obvious question: if the guy was being watched by the FBI for the last N years, how did he ever get close enough to the event to start shooting it up? Could have turned out a lot worse.
How many of our taxpayer dollars were wasted watching this guy to no useful end? How many are spent on even more useless activities?
What do you expect, nonstop realtime GPS tracking via secretly ingested pill with fleet of black helicopters ready to scramble if he moves? Get real.
Aren't you interested in finding others they may have conspired with? Now how do you think THAT's going to happen?
I think if you examine the US Constitution for the acceptable means to alter its contents that executive orders and laws passed by Congress are not among them.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
I don't understand why you think it was to no useful end. The muslim was intercepted and dispatched before he could execute his murderous plan. I consider this a spectacular success.
Because none of that warrantless spying contributed in any way to stopping him.
"Warrantless spying" doesn't make sense, did you mean "unreasonable search"? Spying involves a whole world of things nobody needs a warrant for, and anyone can legally do.
You're right it didn't stop them. Should it have? Is pre-crime the only goal of intelligence?
It does give us a lot of information about them and who they had been communicating with. Is that not useful?
The NSA phone surveillance programs were authorized by Presidents Bush and Obama in secret executive orders.
The reason for authorization is the presidential realization that all U.S.A. citizens are enemies of the U.S.A. and White House and must be punished. Monitoring is a requirement for delivering punishment.
IPSO FACTO
If all U.S.A. citizens are enemies of the U.S.A. and White House (Ah Ha! A subtle transitive. The White House views itself as the only legal and rightful bearer of the name, U.S.A., and no other geography need be considered.) then the Federal Courts cannot be trusted by the White House. Thus all rulings by the Federal Courts and by way of Presidential secret order, are void. All employees of the Federal Courts can be killed through Presidential secret executive order as actionable by the President, and this will be the case. The killing of Federal Court employees will endear Obama to the UN and IPCC for helping to reduce Global Human Climate Catastrophe and Human Induced Extreme Weather Events.
You're missing the point... The mass surveillance makes it harder to keep track of actual threats and if the FBI did not spend all their time training fake terrorist to create fake victories they could start looking at real terrorist.
You're missing all the hindsight it gives us. Many people think it's only to stop crime, when intelligence is valuable for more than that.
You can't predict everything, especially the specific actions people take.
I'm guessing that you didn't know that the FBI provided the money for the truck bomb used in the first attack on the WTC.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Had they actually used knowledge gained from their unamerican surveillance tactics, some LEO would have shadowed him at the event and knocked him flat as soon as he drew a gun (an actual crime in such a crowd). But they didn't. Then never do, it seems. So all that internal spying is not justifiable because it never leads to preventing anything, so it has no ROI.
You do understand that the more force or power a government uses, the more likely there are to be acts of rebellion?
Historically the united states has had a weak central government that exists as a distributed Leviathan of checks and balances and seperation of powers, making it rather difficult to even draw attention to a problem through overt terror acts. With the consolidation of power at the national government, specifically the Executive you are inviting the very thing you claim to want to prevent.
You did notice the part where the judges said there was no law authorizing these acts right?
The bit high part was because there were more than 300,000,000 people in the US on 9-11-01 and they killed slightly fewer than 3000 people so the chance would be slightly lower. To the comment you asked about it would seem that an event like 9-11 is something that happens once in a lifetime and the last big event like that was Perl Harbor which at the time was pretty much a lifetime ago. So at least to me it seems to have the right feel which plays out well. Also further down in that comment someone did point out that the probability of .00001 was done using a 0-1 scale instead of 0-100% so it was still in the same order of magnitude over one's lifetime.
It has been a long time since I have done any serious statics as that was back in my freshman year of college after I had finished with calculus so the more advanced analysis that was done I could understand it but couldn't remember the fine details to do them myself.
Time to offend someone
You're technically correct but they are only selectively dependent. If you don't die, the fact that you didn't die that year does not change the likelihood that you will die in the next year. This fact is sufficient for P(X and Y) = P(X) * P(Y) to hold for us because we are looking specifically at the probability that you DON'T die from terrorism over your lifetime. We make the dependency when you DO die irrelevant. That's why I took the path I did to answer the question "What are the chances you'll die from terrorism if you would otherwise live 75 years?"
To illustrate this, lets simplify things and take a look at a classic example: picking colored marbles from a jar. We are going to take a step back from the individual perspective and see what the probability is that a specific marble will get picked out of a larger population.
You have a jar with 3 marbles in it. 1 marble is yellow, {Y} (representing you) and 2 marbles are orange, {O1} and {O2} (representing other people). Every year, 1 marble is removed from the jar by a terrorist (representing death). And at the end of every year, 1 orange marble is added to the jar (representing someone else being born).
In year 1, there are 3 possible outcomes. 1 where the yellow marble is chosen. 2 where an orange marble is chosen.
Outcome 1: {Y}
Outcome 2: {O1}
Outcome 3: {O2}
At the end of year 1, orange marble {O3} is added. In year 2, there are 9 possible outcomes. We can apply the formula from my previous post to this. What does it say?
P(yellow will be picked over 2 years) = 1 - ((1 - (1/3))^2) = 1 - ((2/3)^2) = 1 - 4/9 = 5/9
So we would expect 5 of the outcomes to have yellow picked. Here's a table of the outcomes:
___Yr1__Yr2__
O 1 {Y}__ {O1}
U 2 {Y} __{O2}
T 3 {Y} __{O3}
C 4 {O1}_{Y}
O 5 {O1}_{O2}
M 6 {O1}_{O3}
E 7 {O2}_{Y}
# 8 {O2}_{O1}
_ 9 {O2}_{O3}
As represented by the math, there are 5 out of 9 outcomes in this table where yellow was picked. You can take this to 3 years and beyond. At 3 years, we would expect to see 8 in 27 outcomes where yellow was not picked. This makes sense if you look at the table above because outcomes 5, 6, 8, and 9 are the only ones that can generate a new outcome where yellow was not picked. In the new table, they generate 2 such outcomes each and 2 * 4 = 8.
Hopefully that clears things up a bit.
The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
I looked at other posts coming from his IP address and he consistently reverts to using vulgarity and attacks whenever his arguments are challenged. It seems to be his fallback position. At least he is consistent, in bad way though.
The problem isn't identifying bad guys, it's stopping them. The Russians told us to keep an eye on Tsarnaev, which didn't stop him from pulling off the Boston Marathon bombing. Apparently we're already fairly good at identifying bad guys through good old-fashioned police work, so I don't see what mass surveillance is supposed to accomplish.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The President has the authority to order the NSA to collect the data under the War Powers Act. We are at war, and the President has whatever means are at his disposal to win. Period.
Neither the President, nor anybody else, has any legal authority to violate the Bill of Rights. It is the highest law in the land, created to serve as the ultimate check and balance on the Presidency, the Congress, the Supreme Court, and even the states.
The Bill of Rights is an open-ended document, as a result of the 9th Amendment (rights retained by the people) and the 10th Amendment (rights reserved to the people). It was created this way because the Anti-Federalists knew full well that sooner or later government would get out of line, and there would be a need to remind the government who has the final authority.
No law passed by Congress can infringe rights the people decide are retained by them, such as the right to privacy and the right to not be spied on by their own government. The War Powers Act is a law passed by Congress. To the extent that it can be interpreted in allowing such things, it is an illegal law.
The legal profession is in a position of ethical conflict of interest with respect to recognizing the authority of the 9th and 10th Amendments. Failure to do so is unethical practice of law. For law enforcement agents, prosecutors, or judges to enforce any law, policy, procedure, or order contrary to rights retained by or reserved to the people is illegal and generally criminal.
Even during time of war, the President is limited in the means he can use. Period.
3 of the 4 planes hit their targets despite government actions. 1 of the 4 planes was stopped by the militia who ignored government orders to not interfere. Who was more effective?
How many mass shootings have been stopped by civilians?
I think "militia" is a strong word for flight 93. Also I don't think they had govt orders to stay on their seats. But flight 93 was "stopped" by the passengers (stopped as in didn't reached its intended target of the White House. Still crashed which is awful). Also, passengers stopped shoe bomber and underwear bomber. So yeah, the new mantra
is "say something, do something".
Considering that our country was founded on the idea of consent of the governed [wikipedia.org], I'd say that "what the mob believes" regarding what liberty requires is exactly where that line falls.
If it wasn't for that pesky Constitution and the actual body of law from it.
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
How about we disregard what EVERYONE thinks and go by what the law says. How's that 4th amendment go again?
Thanks, you've just demonstrated my point, pretty much exactly. Can we get some chants for Articles II and III? I'm sure that will be far less popular, but highly relevant.
You can chant "4th Amendment" till you're blue in the face, as is common here, but if the issue at hand isn't covered by the 4th Amendment then the 4th Amendment is irrelevant. Even if the 4th Amendment does apply, its application may not be what you expected.
The 4th Amendment to the US Constitution is simply law, not a magic talisman able to repel all things people here find unpleasant.
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
I agree that it is a strong word but if they were not soldiers, police, marshals, or any other type of law enforcement, then what were they? What do you call citizens who defend the nation? They performed their function despite being disarmed by the government that they protected, while lacking regulation which Congress did not provide, and against the recommendations of the government to not interfere and to go along with the demands of the hijackers.
And the lesson we learned from that is that we need more professional government to protect us.
The legitimacy of "that pesky Constitution and the actual body of law from it" is explicitly derived from the consent of the governed, just as the legitimacy of the "actual body of law from it" is derived from "that pesky Constitution". Just as a government that doesn't follow its constitution has no legitimate authority, a constitution that isn't supported by the people has no authority.
You're treating our government as if it is some immutable and permanent structure put here by God and unchallengeable by mere citizens, while the passage that I quoted clearly states how it is not that. (The passage which was written by the exact same people who wrote our Constitution and created our government.)
That's not surprising for someone like you, who is clearly enthralled with authority and in incapable of seeing that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. If the government reinterprets the Constitution to mean something with which the citizens disagree, then there is no consent of the governed and the government (and it's reinterpreted constitution) are illegitimate.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
well they were not an organized group. I think of a militia as being an organized group, like a club or something. this was ad-hoc at best. I think they were just citizens, and more importantly, passengers who took action.
And still you never responded to my proof that the FBI creates terrorists. Nice deflection.
Really? Because the last time Congress declared war was in WWII. We have not legally been at war since Japan surrendered.