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US Appeals Court Upholds Nondisclosure Rules For Surveillance Orders (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: A U.S. federal appeals court on Monday upheld nondisclosure rules that allow the FBI to secretly issue surveillance orders for customer data to communications firms, a ruling that dealt a blow to privacy advocates. A unanimous three-judge panel on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco sided with a lower court ruling in finding that rules permitting the FBI to send national security letters under gag orders are appropriate and do not violate the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution's free speech protections. Content distribution firm CloudFlare and phone network operator CREDO Mobile had sued the government in order to notify customers of five national security letters received between 2011 and 2013.
The link seems to go to an article on net neutrality. Correct link is here: http://www.reuters.com/article...
What was the reason again that the colonies rebelled against England? Was it government that didn't represent the people. Anyone in government listening to history?
Just a note that this is still (as upheld by the Canadian Supreme Court and the EU) a violation of their citizens rights to privacy worldwide.
Besides, everyone knows the US is the sick man of NATO. Can't even afford healthcare for their citizens. Sad.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
not shocked they got it wrong
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
THE 9th is the most often overturned appeals court of any, so maybe there is hope for a Supreme Court overrule.
Why would you tell a criminal that you're monitoring them? They'll simply go underground until you stop watching, then they'll go back to criminal activity. Plus you'll miss out on the opportunity to identify their conspirators. It's completely reasonable to maintain a level of secrecy about active criminal investigations. Non-disclosure rules make a lot of sense. Criminals are already encrypting their communications, so why give then additional unnecessary advantages over law enforcement?
And some other sources reporting the story:
the hill http://thehill.com/policy/nati...
zdnet http://www.zdnet.com/article/u...
Yahoo https://finance.yahoo.com/news...
National security letters serve the same functions as a warrant but do not require judicial(disinterested party) oversight. A gag order is too large a step to permit one branch/agency to decide.
I've come up with v2 of my hosts file security tool. I run a local DNS recursor that CNAMES everything to imabiggaybaby.com. It requires me to still run a hosts file to post on slashdot, but that's a small price to pay for getting the most out of my web browsing.
apk
You can still use a warrant canary, right?
Beyond that problem, my other problem is non-disclosure forever. I understand the need for non-disclosure, it makes no sense to tell the person you're investigating that you're investigating them. But the gag should be of limited duration. Something like 6 months. Just to limit abuse. I believe that warrants have to be made available for public inquiry after some amount of time. It just makes sense to help hold the police accountable.
Remember, Congress has stated that a term mandated by the Constitution has being only for a "limited period" is perfectly acceptable to set at "forever minus a day"; given such abuse of discretion I'm just shocked, shocked I say that the 9th Circuit decided once again the Constitution means the opposite of what it says. Because its a "living document", and living things can change their mind, right?
It is not good advice to making enemies of the people, for any reason.
Cyber warfare has been long talked about as a future kind of warfare, something to put in the movies.
It is already here.
We are deflected into thinking it is Russia vs USA vs China vs etc etc.
The reality is there is a Cyber Civil War occurring (many instances) and it is being talked about, just in limited and often misunderstood ways.
Russia, China, Germany, UK, and all the other large nations of the world's intelligence agencies don't know what to do about it either.
The USA are dumb enough to collect and retain the data, and criminals like Hillary still manage to get away with 'bleaching' data.
As it has been said before, the revolution will not be televised.
It seems the 5th amendment would be much more applicable.
You make a case for why the first amendment is a bad idea and ought to be repealed. I understand. Gun control advocates make a pretty good case for why the right to bear arms should be infringed. I'm sure people in law ernforcement can give some excellent reasons why the 4-6 amendments really ought to go, as they're making their jobs harder and you less safe.
For every amendment in the Bill of Rights, I bet you can make some pretty damn good arguments for why we would be better off without that amendment limiting the power of government. Think of the tax money we're wasting on military bases when we could just force homeowners to quarter soldiers.
Yet, for whatever reason, these damn amendments, which limit the power of our government (WTF, how can that possibly be a good idea if you're trying to make a good government), are still on the books! Why haven't we repealed the Bill of Rights yet? Wouldn't it be easier and more efficient, if we could eliminate all these things which waste the courts' time? Wouldn't this case have been handled much more quickly, if the appeals could have just explained, "The government can do anything it wants, so therefore of course this law is legal"?
All I can think of, is that some weirdos in the past placed these seemingly-arbitrary limits on the powers of government, because they had a totally different idea of what makes sense. Were they trying to optimize some other value? Could it be that they thought there might be more important things than worrying about whether or not a suspected criminal might find out that someone suspects? I can't imagine what.
It's all so mysterious! As Yangs, I think we ought to just stick to memorizing our holy words, and get rid of all these silly constraints on effective governance.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
They're simply talking about the well known revision to the 1st amendment, which reads as follows:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances, except when a gag order is issued related to terrorism or protecting the children."
That must be it.
A unanimous three-judge panel on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco sided with a lower court ruling in finding that rules permitting the FBI to send national security letters under gag orders are appropriate and do not violate the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution's free speech protections
Well, they're wrong.
It more like protection during a fishing expedition or the hunch phase of a legal investigation.
Everything has to be protected until a friendly court can retroactively rubber stamp an investigation later on.
How is the need for an investigation going to be proved? Well what was gathered under the gag order will show any court that further investigation was needed and the gag order was correct.
If people get a legal document from a court they might secure funds to gets real lawyer, remove evidence, escape or change habits.
With a gag everything can be looked at with out alerting interesting people and then presented to a court.
Once all evidence is gathered and safe then the formalities of a court can be engaged.
Too many people in the telco systems, courts, human rights groups, legal system, private sector, gov, mil, banks, media or local police might be in a cult, sympathetic to or share the same faith. Once altered supporters start to find lawyers and hire outside experts, want to see actual evidence, then go to the press and talk about investigative methods.
A gag stops news about an investigation spreading beyond a limited number of experts needed to extract information and secure systems or documents.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
What's stopping the person or organization being investigated from blurting it out anyway?
Gag orders are unconstitutional. It's not up for debate.
You can trust the government to interpret government laws
At this point, it's simply stupid for any company processing any kind of customer data to have any operations in a country as hostile to privacy as the US.