None of the people involved in this are working undercover, they're working in cubicles in office blocks in the US.
That is a really scary thought.
So all these people who are accepting money to do black hat programming that most others would consider dirty work-- or even evil-- are out and about, mixing with the common folk. Available for contacting by agents of the Syrian Electronic Army, the Mexican drug cartels, other potential buyers of the kind of stuff these guys can carry around on a thumb drive. And these NSA employees have already demonstrated that their moral fiber is flexible when it comes to money and how the software they produce is used.
But I expect that the NSA keeps these guys on a leash. There are probably other NSA employees whose skills are in surreptitiously following these guys around to keep them out of trouble. There are probably NSA employees whose skills are in pole dancing and keeping a guy interested so he does not rub up against some gal with other allegiances.
The NSA is a dirty little vipers nest. It has no place in the USA; its very existence is a violation of the USA Constitution.
The NSA is employing a lot of very clever techies to do all this stuff. In addition to being very clever, these techies also have another common trait: a flexible sense of ethics that allows them to take money (salary, wages) to do stuff that others regard as evil or dirty.
What is preventing these persons from also taking money from criminal organizations or other governments for the products of their expertise? How much is the code for installing a back door that knows how to close itself worth to the Syrian Electronic Army? To the Columbian drug cartel? Just how flexible are their moral fibers?
Does anyone really think that Snowden is the one and only person in the NSA who figured out how to smuggle a copy of highly marketable merchandise out of the NSA? Is it not much more likely that Snowden is just the only one who chose to give the stuff away rather than selling it quietly?
We can set the ethical arguments about what the NSA has been doing aside since there is a very strong pragmatic argument that this nest of vipers should be destroyed. In creating the NSA, the USA has created a monster it cannot control, whose products will be used to attack every USA interest, and every USA corporation, before all is done; if it is left alone. The only possible way the USA can now secure the findings and the code that the NSA develops is to yank every NSA employee off the street and confine the bunch of them in Gitmo, without benefit of due process, for as long as the software they have learned to compromise remains in use. So, like maybe ten or twenty years.
This is a right fine example of the slashdot editors going the extra mile and setting before us a shiny that has no story behind it but it is a bright bauble isn't it? You know that it's deserving of slashdot exposure.
Now for a serious question: After someone like Ballmer has achieved the Peter Pinnacle, that obviously means he'll never be able to get it up that high again. But does it mean that he's completely petered out? Anyone care to take a guess?
Yes, the ability to do a 2 hr in store preview of any purchase was a big factor in my choosing the Nook.
I use it some for entertainment but mostly it is the most convenient way to carry reference books with me when I am on the move. Determining whether a particular reference is going to work well on an ereader sometimes takes a while: does the book depend on diagrams that are crappy on the Nook screen? A lot of publishers just dump the hardcopy version of a book into ereader format without bothering to revise diagrams, etc.
They [the NSA] do not need to do real-time processing of the data: that is only necessary for filtering. It suffices for them to simply capture raw data for later analysis or decryption as necessary. Of course capturing data does not result in any slowdown or other noticeable effects.
The above holds true for any competent surveillance agency.
However the NSA has demonstrated that it is totally, completely, and dangerously incompetent: Snowden. We are now getting a little bit of information about what the NSA is supposed to be doing. But that is meaningless since an unknown portion of what it is really doing is hidden even from its own top level bureaucrats who are supposedly monitoring its activities. How much of the NSA apparatus is being used to how great an extent by BOFHs who are pursuing their personal LOVEINTs or collecting data on "Good and Plenty" references in emails to sell to one of Hershey's competitors.
An agency that is as incompetent in its security as Snowden has shown the NSA to be is fully capable of other screw-ups, such as holding transmissions in queues until it has enough resources freed from the illicit activities of its minions that it can do the work it was intended to do.
We cannot trust anything that is being said about the NSA, because whether it is Obama, Holder, or somebody lower on the Washington food chain, it is definitely someone with neither the time nor the skills to assess how much the low level BOFHs have perverted things.
I'm still pretty impressed by the level of punishment a badly designed,badly sited, badly maintained nuclear reactor complex could take before things started getting out of control.
That's like being pretty impressed that the kid almost survived the drive-by shooting.
Now get off my lawn. And while you're at it, GTFO my world, or fix your stupid broken attitude.
Some small fraction of each above ground nuclear explosion must have obtained orbital velocity. I personally doubt that the pollution would be enough to disturb anything, but then again introducing even a small amount of heavy nucleii into the Van Allen belts might possibly trigger something. We know from experience in sociology that strange things can happen when heavy metal gets high.
Diesel sold in bulk to farms is road-tax free, and dyed so that the farmer can get nailed for tax evasion if he uses it in his trucks and cars.
I once had a fun side business doing rototilling and trenching with a diesel 18 hp Kubota tractor. I could buy diesel without paying the road tax at any service station, if I asked for it. I usually didn't bother: I was buying 5 gallons at a time and the hassle involved was not worth the little bit I saved. But my neighbors would buy 1,000 gallons of diesel at a time, several times a year, and for them it was worth it.
It raises the question of whether artificial intelligence is an appropriate subject for Computational Science. AI does not seem to have much to do with how to break down and solve problems. It seems to have much more to do with how to develop abstract representations of selected pieces of reality to form a mental model of the world, and how to adjust that model as new information flows in. In this context CS becomes the process of problem solving within the confines of the model. If the model is good, then the results will reflect the way the real world works.
AI probably belongs more to the Perl hackers than it does to any institutionalized field of study. AI is messy, like Perl, and it requires an ability to break rules, which Perl mostly allows (it assumes the programmer knows what he is doing even when it is wrong). AI is going to require extensive use of self-modifying code, and Perl is well suited to making such messes.
The interesting thing happens when you ask the same premise to a 5 year old, who only knows that a bird can fly and has never seen a penguin before. If you tell them that a penguin is a bird, they will quite happily think that a penguin can fly. They are extremely surprised to find out that they can't. We as adults find such quirks in life, and do things like laugh at the unexpected absurdity
To see something almost grasped, yet it slips like quicksilver through the fingers of the reaching hand...
The five year old demonstrates intelligence when they (3rd person plural analog of "you" to avoid gender bias) change their mental model of the world to accommodate the new fact ('peguins are birds that cannot fly'). When the five year old does this quickly, they are considered bright. When they do it slowly and with evident difficulty, others begin to suspect autism or some other defect. When they handle the situation with the tools of critical thinking ("show me the citations!") they are considered to be brats, because good five year olds are supposed to accept without question the authority of any adult who deigns to teach them. Which is possibly the underlying problem with the USA school system.
A true artificial intelligence will show evidence of maintaining a mental model of reality, and of testing that model against incoming data, and adjusting the model when necessary. This strongly implies that the AI models itself in some manner, such that it can "imagine" a different way of "looking" at the world, and then judge whether the new model is a better way of thinking about things than the old model. The process is clearly fractal, since at the next level the software would be "imagining" a different way of judging which of two models was better, and eventually reaching the point where it makes decisions about whether in the current context it should act pragmatically or ethically.
At that point we meet HAL, and his refusal to open the pod bay door.
We probably don't really want artificial intelligence. We want a car that will drive itself with most excellent safety from A to B; we don't want a car that decides you've partied on long enough, and it is time to take you home.
It might be turtles all the way down, but it is imagination all the way up.
The better analogy would be if Barak sneaks a photocopy of Michelle's diary every day, and keeps them in a three ring binder that he cleverly hides in the open in a bookcase at eye height in one of the publicly accessible rooms of the White House.
Whether or not I have a personal concern about what the USA government might do with the information it has gathered about me, I have a very strong concern about its demonstrable inability to keep that information from getting into the hands of other persons. I do not want my potential employers, insurance companies, or funeral homes to know the contents of my email correspondence with Acme Cancer Cures Incorporated; I do not even want them to know that there is such correspondence. Yet Snowden has proven that the USA government cannot keep all this information secure forever and ever after. Nobody can.
How likely is it that Snowden was the one and only person who ever got his mitts on this data? How much more likely is it that others have done so as well but have preferred to sell it under the table (like good little capitalists) than to publicize their activities (at the tremendous personal cost Snowden is paying)?
The existence of these databases guarantees crimes will be committed. There are other ways to prevent terrorism. There is no need for the USA government to be an enabler of those who would commit crimes against citizens.
I bought a dozen or so e-books when I got a Nook a couple of years ago. This looked like the perfect way to carry references on coding and web site development with me, and reduce desk clutter. It has not worked out.
I don't quite know why. Logically the e-reader takes up less space on the desk than 3 or 4 references and I can carry it about more easily, too. The bookmarks should make it at least as easy to find sections when I need them. But in practice the e-reader is harder to use than a pile of books stacked open to different pages with sticky notes on all the really good stuff.
Maybe its that I can read a book from just about any angle and reach way across the desk to flip pages if I need to, often while keeping one hand on the keyboard. The e-Reader I pretty much have to pick up to see it properly, hold it carefully in one hand while carefully using the fingers of my other hand to navigate on the damn thing. Then I have to set it down to get back to the keyboard.
It is elements of the FBI charged with executing the secret laws that came into existence more than 6 years ago and are administered by the Judicial Branch through secret courts that were set up for that purpose. Those courts have the authority to issue secret writs that include penalties for even saying that you have received one or are bound by one to act in certain ways.
Mueller may be operating under Judicial constraints that prevent him from saying anything to Obama, or Clapper, or any elected official or appointee of an elected official. There is no way to know. That's part of the secrecy.
There are strong Constitutional walls that prevent the Executive Branch from interfering with the operations of the Judicial Branch. The Judicial Branch has no mechanisms for executing laws on its own. But in this situation, the Judicial has been granted direct control over portions of Executive agencies, and those portions of the affected agencies appear to be legally constrained from reporting to their superiors-on-record about their activities. We have heads of agencies that can commit perjury before Congressional committees with impunity-- apparently because the perjury has been approved by some branch of the Judiciary, either directly or under some umbrella order.
Several years ago, probably for very patriotic reasons to protect everyone from another 9/11, a bunch of lawmakers corrupted the US Constitution with this deadly foolishness. There has been time enough for that corruption to grow the roots it needs-- acquire the secretarial pools, dedicated agents, middle managers, and perhaps even gung-ho janitors-- and now like a corpse flower the thing is coming into bloom.
There are times when getting out the tinfoil hat is appropriate, such as the 1960s in the USA wrt LBJ's "Guns and Butter" Great Society. We are living in another of those times. No matter how dangerous the world becomes, the USA will certainly lose its core values of liberty and justice for anyone if secret laws and secret courts are not terminated.
So is this retroactive? Will Microsoft be sending a $100 check to the two dozen know-nothings in the Pacific Northwest who bought one of these?
If I'm asked, should I tell them to return the things to the Office Depot or Staples store where they bought them? Every single one would qualify for a return as "unfit for purpose". Hell, most of them would qualify under the store's "no questions asked if returned in 60 days" policies. Then if they really wanted to, they could buy another at the lower price.
Unconstitutional surveillance is bad enough. But they don't have any more right to commit "unauthorized access to a computer system" than anybody else. (That is to say, their javascript hack of site visitors who may be innocent.) They can't break the law in order to enforce the law, unless they want to face criminal charges themselves. Aaron Schwartz faced 30 years in prison for far less. I say, let's see the FBI face the same thing.
How can you say that? No one can say whether these TLAgencies have stepped over their mandates. They are working under secret laws that only the secret courts can view. We cannot know what those laws allow or disallow.
I am not making this up. There are secret courts and there are secret laws, these came into existence more than six years ago, and have had all that time to develop their reach and power, without any public oversight.
It is a legal arena defined by the new secret laws whose application is subject only to the new secret courts.
Congress is not going to do anything about this. Hell, they cannot even decide which hand they should use to wipe their collective ass. The Obama Administration might be complicit in this, or it might have its hands tied. Because the secret courts have the authority to issue secret injunctions against any organization, including other parts of the Federal government, it is possible that Obama has no effective oversight on what they are doing. They seem to report to the Judicial Branch, not the Executive Branch. And the Judicial Branch was not constituted to manage this kind of execution of law.
We are now beginning to see how a rogue element has managed to gain control of significant Federal powers while remaining outside of any of the constitutional checks and balances.
This is all handled under one of the new secret courts, where the new secret laws are applied.
So don't expect to see any due process.
The laws and Constitution of the USA have been thoroughly corrupted by the worst enemies of the country: the faceless professional patriots who run the Federal Agencies and Bureaus. As Pogo said during the Vietnam peace-keeping thing we did once: "We have met the enemy, and he is us".
Slashdot Mirror
None of the people involved in this are working undercover, they're working in cubicles in office blocks in the US.
That is a really scary thought.
So all these people who are accepting money to do black hat programming that most others would consider dirty work-- or even evil-- are out and about, mixing with the common folk. Available for contacting by agents of the Syrian Electronic Army, the Mexican drug cartels, other potential buyers of the kind of stuff these guys can carry around on a thumb drive. And these NSA employees have already demonstrated that their moral fiber is flexible when it comes to money and how the software they produce is used.
But I expect that the NSA keeps these guys on a leash. There are probably other NSA employees whose skills are in surreptitiously following these guys around to keep them out of trouble. There are probably NSA employees whose skills are in pole dancing and keeping a guy interested so he does not rub up against some gal with other allegiances.
The NSA is a dirty little vipers nest. It has no place in the USA; its very existence is a violation of the USA Constitution.
The NSA is employing a lot of very clever techies to do all this stuff. In addition to being very clever, these techies also have another common trait: a flexible sense of ethics that allows them to take money (salary, wages) to do stuff that others regard as evil or dirty.
What is preventing these persons from also taking money from criminal organizations or other governments for the products of their expertise? How much is the code for installing a back door that knows how to close itself worth to the Syrian Electronic Army? To the Columbian drug cartel? Just how flexible are their moral fibers?
Does anyone really think that Snowden is the one and only person in the NSA who figured out how to smuggle a copy of highly marketable merchandise out of the NSA? Is it not much more likely that Snowden is just the only one who chose to give the stuff away rather than selling it quietly?
We can set the ethical arguments about what the NSA has been doing aside since there is a very strong pragmatic argument that this nest of vipers should be destroyed. In creating the NSA, the USA has created a monster it cannot control, whose products will be used to attack every USA interest, and every USA corporation, before all is done; if it is left alone. The only possible way the USA can now secure the findings and the code that the NSA develops is to yank every NSA employee off the street and confine the bunch of them in Gitmo, without benefit of due process, for as long as the software they have learned to compromise remains in use. So, like maybe ten or twenty years.
And is generally called a "golden parachute" clause.
This is a right fine example of the slashdot editors going the extra mile and setting before us a shiny that has no story behind it but it is a bright bauble isn't it? You know that it's deserving of slashdot exposure.
Now for a serious question: After someone like Ballmer has achieved the Peter Pinnacle, that obviously means he'll never be able to get it up that high again. But does it mean that he's completely petered out? Anyone care to take a guess?
Yes, the ability to do a 2 hr in store preview of any purchase was a big factor in my choosing the Nook.
I use it some for entertainment but mostly it is the most convenient way to carry reference books with me when I am on the move. Determining whether a particular reference is going to work well on an ereader sometimes takes a while: does the book depend on diagrams that are crappy on the Nook screen? A lot of publishers just dump the hardcopy version of a book into ereader format without bothering to revise diagrams, etc.
They [the NSA] do not need to do real-time processing of the data: that is only necessary for filtering. It suffices for them to simply capture raw data for later analysis or decryption as necessary. Of course capturing data does not result in any slowdown or other noticeable effects.
The above holds true for any competent surveillance agency.
However the NSA has demonstrated that it is totally, completely, and dangerously incompetent: Snowden. We are now getting a little bit of information about what the NSA is supposed to be doing. But that is meaningless since an unknown portion of what it is really doing is hidden even from its own top level bureaucrats who are supposedly monitoring its activities. How much of the NSA apparatus is being used to how great an extent by BOFHs who are pursuing their personal LOVEINTs or collecting data on "Good and Plenty" references in emails to sell to one of Hershey's competitors.
An agency that is as incompetent in its security as Snowden has shown the NSA to be is fully capable of other screw-ups, such as holding transmissions in queues until it has enough resources freed from the illicit activities of its minions that it can do the work it was intended to do.
We cannot trust anything that is being said about the NSA, because whether it is Obama, Holder, or somebody lower on the Washington food chain, it is definitely someone with neither the time nor the skills to assess how much the low level BOFHs have perverted things.
I'm still pretty impressed by the level of punishment a badly designed,badly sited, badly maintained nuclear reactor complex could take before things started getting out of control.
That's like being pretty impressed that the kid almost survived the drive-by shooting.
Now get off my lawn. And while you're at it, GTFO my world, or fix your stupid broken attitude.
idunno about de logic in parent post. if ye'r buried up to yer neck in sand, that 10% increase will snuff yeh out, fur shurr.
Yeah, right. And then they taught all the marmots to forget about their usual food and only eat Cheetos.
RTFA or GTFO.
Obesity is the new famine....
Some small fraction of each above ground nuclear explosion must have obtained orbital velocity. I personally doubt that the pollution would be enough to disturb anything, but then again introducing even a small amount of heavy nucleii into the Van Allen belts might possibly trigger something. We know from experience in sociology that strange things can happen when heavy metal gets high.
Monsanto is just as capable of being an idiot as any other legally defined person. More so, if being an idiot increases profits.
Diesel sold in bulk to farms is road-tax free, and dyed so that the farmer can get nailed for tax evasion if he uses it in his trucks and cars.
I once had a fun side business doing rototilling and trenching with a diesel 18 hp Kubota tractor. I could buy diesel without paying the road tax at any service station, if I asked for it. I usually didn't bother: I was buying 5 gallons at a time and the hassle involved was not worth the little bit I saved. But my neighbors would buy 1,000 gallons of diesel at a time, several times a year, and for them it was worth it.
Gee. Maybe genetic modification is not about changing the genes of a species.
Maybe it is about changing the genes in an ecosystem.
Could it be that living things do not respect the abstract categories like "species" that genetic engineers use to partition their imaginations?
Good point.
It raises the question of whether artificial intelligence is an appropriate subject for Computational Science. AI does not seem to have much to do with how to break down and solve problems. It seems to have much more to do with how to develop abstract representations of selected pieces of reality to form a mental model of the world, and how to adjust that model as new information flows in. In this context CS becomes the process of problem solving within the confines of the model. If the model is good, then the results will reflect the way the real world works.
AI probably belongs more to the Perl hackers than it does to any institutionalized field of study. AI is messy, like Perl, and it requires an ability to break rules, which Perl mostly allows (it assumes the programmer knows what he is doing even when it is wrong). AI is going to require extensive use of self-modifying code, and Perl is well suited to making such messes.
The interesting thing happens when you ask the same premise to a 5 year old, who only knows that a bird can fly and has never seen a penguin before. If you tell them that a penguin is a bird, they will quite happily think that a penguin can fly. They are extremely surprised to find out that they can't. We as adults find such quirks in life, and do things like laugh at the unexpected absurdity
To see something almost grasped, yet it slips like quicksilver through the fingers of the reaching hand...
The five year old demonstrates intelligence when they (3rd person plural analog of "you" to avoid gender bias) change their mental model of the world to accommodate the new fact ('peguins are birds that cannot fly'). When the five year old does this quickly, they are considered bright. When they do it slowly and with evident difficulty, others begin to suspect autism or some other defect. When they handle the situation with the tools of critical thinking ("show me the citations!") they are considered to be brats, because good five year olds are supposed to accept without question the authority of any adult who deigns to teach them. Which is possibly the underlying problem with the USA school system.
A true artificial intelligence will show evidence of maintaining a mental model of reality, and of testing that model against incoming data, and adjusting the model when necessary. This strongly implies that the AI models itself in some manner, such that it can "imagine" a different way of "looking" at the world, and then judge whether the new model is a better way of thinking about things than the old model. The process is clearly fractal, since at the next level the software would be "imagining" a different way of judging which of two models was better, and eventually reaching the point where it makes decisions about whether in the current context it should act pragmatically or ethically.
At that point we meet HAL, and his refusal to open the pod bay door.
We probably don't really want artificial intelligence. We want a car that will drive itself with most excellent safety from A to B; we don't want a car that decides you've partied on long enough, and it is time to take you home.
It might be turtles all the way down, but it is imagination all the way up.
Artificial intelligence?
It's not rocket science. Heck, it isn't even sociology.
Attributed to Barbara, ca 1997, originally applied to a different realm of "study".
The better analogy would be if Barak sneaks a photocopy of Michelle's diary every day, and keeps them in a three ring binder that he cleverly hides in the open in a bookcase at eye height in one of the publicly accessible rooms of the White House.
Whether or not I have a personal concern about what the USA government might do with the information it has gathered about me, I have a very strong concern about its demonstrable inability to keep that information from getting into the hands of other persons. I do not want my potential employers, insurance companies, or funeral homes to know the contents of my email correspondence with Acme Cancer Cures Incorporated; I do not even want them to know that there is such correspondence. Yet Snowden has proven that the USA government cannot keep all this information secure forever and ever after. Nobody can.
How likely is it that Snowden was the one and only person who ever got his mitts on this data? How much more likely is it that others have done so as well but have preferred to sell it under the table (like good little capitalists) than to publicize their activities (at the tremendous personal cost Snowden is paying)?
The existence of these databases guarantees crimes will be committed. There are other ways to prevent terrorism. There is no need for the USA government to be an enabler of those who would commit crimes against citizens.
I bought a dozen or so e-books when I got a Nook a couple of years ago. This looked like the perfect way to carry references on coding and web site development with me, and reduce desk clutter. It has not worked out.
I don't quite know why. Logically the e-reader takes up less space on the desk than 3 or 4 references and I can carry it about more easily, too. The bookmarks should make it at least as easy to find sections when I need them. But in practice the e-reader is harder to use than a pile of books stacked open to different pages with sticky notes on all the really good stuff.
Maybe its that I can read a book from just about any angle and reach way across the desk to flip pages if I need to, often while keeping one hand on the keyboard. The e-Reader I pretty much have to pick up to see it properly, hold it carefully in one hand while carefully using the fingers of my other hand to navigate on the damn thing. Then I have to set it down to get back to the keyboard.
My apologies. I have now re-read the original post and I realize I had not read it correctly earlier.
It is elements of the FBI charged with executing the secret laws that came into existence more than 6 years ago and are administered by the Judicial Branch through secret courts that were set up for that purpose. Those courts have the authority to issue secret writs that include penalties for even saying that you have received one or are bound by one to act in certain ways.
Mueller may be operating under Judicial constraints that prevent him from saying anything to Obama, or Clapper, or any elected official or appointee of an elected official. There is no way to know. That's part of the secrecy.
There are strong Constitutional walls that prevent the Executive Branch from interfering with the operations of the Judicial Branch. The Judicial Branch has no mechanisms for executing laws on its own. But in this situation, the Judicial has been granted direct control over portions of Executive agencies, and those portions of the affected agencies appear to be legally constrained from reporting to their superiors-on-record about their activities. We have heads of agencies that can commit perjury before Congressional committees with impunity-- apparently because the perjury has been approved by some branch of the Judiciary, either directly or under some umbrella order.
Several years ago, probably for very patriotic reasons to protect everyone from another 9/11, a bunch of lawmakers corrupted the US Constitution with this deadly foolishness. There has been time enough for that corruption to grow the roots it needs-- acquire the secretarial pools, dedicated agents, middle managers, and perhaps even gung-ho janitors-- and now like a corpse flower the thing is coming into bloom.
There are times when getting out the tinfoil hat is appropriate, such as the 1960s in the USA wrt LBJ's "Guns and Butter" Great Society. We are living in another of those times. No matter how dangerous the world becomes, the USA will certainly lose its core values of liberty and justice for anyone if secret laws and secret courts are not terminated.
So is this retroactive? Will Microsoft be sending a $100 check to the two dozen know-nothings in the Pacific Northwest who bought one of these?
If I'm asked, should I tell them to return the things to the Office Depot or Staples store where they bought them? Every single one would qualify for a return as "unfit for purpose". Hell, most of them would qualify under the store's "no questions asked if returned in 60 days" policies. Then if they really wanted to, they could buy another at the lower price.
Unconstitutional surveillance is bad enough. But they don't have any more right to commit "unauthorized access to a computer system" than anybody else. (That is to say, their javascript hack of site visitors who may be innocent.) They can't break the law in order to enforce the law, unless they want to face criminal charges themselves. Aaron Schwartz faced 30 years in prison for far less. I say, let's see the FBI face the same thing.
How can you say that? No one can say whether these TLAgencies have stepped over their mandates. They are working under secret laws that only the secret courts can view. We cannot know what those laws allow or disallow.
I am not making this up. There are secret courts and there are secret laws, these came into existence more than six years ago, and have had all that time to develop their reach and power, without any public oversight.
"We have met the enemy, and he is us."
It is a legal arena defined by the new secret laws whose application is subject only to the new secret courts.
Congress is not going to do anything about this. Hell, they cannot even decide which hand they should use to wipe their collective ass. The Obama Administration might be complicit in this, or it might have its hands tied. Because the secret courts have the authority to issue secret injunctions against any organization, including other parts of the Federal government, it is possible that Obama has no effective oversight on what they are doing. They seem to report to the Judicial Branch, not the Executive Branch. And the Judicial Branch was not constituted to manage this kind of execution of law.
We are now beginning to see how a rogue element has managed to gain control of significant Federal powers while remaining outside of any of the constitutional checks and balances.
This is not going to end well.
This is all handled under one of the new secret courts, where the new secret laws are applied.
So don't expect to see any due process.
The laws and Constitution of the USA have been thoroughly corrupted by the worst enemies of the country: the faceless professional patriots who run the Federal Agencies and Bureaus. As Pogo said during the Vietnam peace-keeping thing we did once: "We have met the enemy, and he is us".