What about bouncing between Dvorak and QWERTY? I assume that you've had to type on a keyboard other than your own on more than one occasion. I tried to use Dvorak for a short while but gave up because of that more than anything else.
Well the handy thing about that is if you're out of practice in qwerty, the locations of the keys are printed right there on the keyboard. That can help you in the transition between first sitting down at the keyboard and getting the old muscle memory back to let you touch type.
Though really, if I'm at someone else's computer long enough for it to really matter, then I switch the keymap.
Yes it says "light" in the title and ScuttleMonkey-added text. The very first sentence of the actual user submission specifies "visible light". Once that context is established, "light" is a perfectly valid shorthand way to refer to it, and is often (though admittedly not always) used in that way.
Did Schindler sue the government or just use his personal wealth to help people?
If Schindler had thought petitioning the government would have been a good way to get positive change, instead of a good way to get arrested and have all his employees shipped off to the camps, then he probably would have done both.:P
Since this isn't Nazi Germany, why settle for the lesser good of helping a small number of people in secret, when they can try to improve things for everyone in the state?
You know what would have been awesome? If we had discovered that the universe is really a holodeck simulation when the actor playing Moriarty in that episode said the line "Computer, arch" and an arch really did appear there in the studio. It just would have been so meta.
So sad that you take one of the few unfortunate and isolated examples of abuse, misbehavior, and disobedience of established policy and law -- no matter who was involved -- and assume that it is systemic, routine, condoned, and even encouraged, with no regard for any other considerations.
Assume? Assume?! George W Bush fucking said he authorized it! That means it was at the very least condoned, and encouraged at least to the point of establishing a TLA program dedicated to pursuing it! To whatever extent it was systemic and routine we may never know, but they had enough hardware in AT&T's office for it to be damn well systemic.
It's so fucking sad when someone rolls over and gives up their 4th Amendment rights because of unspecified "other considerations". Consider this: The Constitution is not a magical shield that protects our rights. To the extent that we have kept them, it is only because we have refused to let them go. To the extent that we have lost them, it is only because we have not reacted when they were taken.
Hello, Mr. Part of the Problem.
There was a "controversy" over TSP...and it was whether the powers granted the president allow for such considerations.
Yeah, the "controversy" was whether the President was allowed to ignore the law whenever he wanted. His legal team said "yes", and everyone with a brain and a conscience said "no".
That legal issue was never resolved,
Yeah, because nobody ever had standing to get a case and thus force it to be resolved. Considering all the times Bush's cute legal theories regarding executive power have been smacked down by the courts, I don't think it's too hard to tell what the outcome would be.
and the FISA Amendments act of 2008 explicitly disallows the invocation of war powers to allow such application of intelligence collection.
Thus putting out to pasture the completely wrong, duplicitous, and deceitful claim that the new law protects our rights more than the old one. We'll have to wait and see if that part ever survives judicial review.
Chris, what it means, in the political context, is that when President Obama's administrations continues intelligence activity under the current law, that means it wasn't the exclusively political issue people made it out to be.
And you know that Obama will continue Bush's programs how? Every pick of his for DoJ is 180 degrees away from the Bush DoJ regarding these issues. Though really, if Obama obeys the current law, then that means he absolutely won't be continuing the same intelligence activity Bush did, because the current law says you can't tap U.S. Persons without a warrant, and Bush did. So again, how exactly would this vindicate Bush and suggest it wasn't a political issue?
That's not accurate: the application of the law, previously, understood the warrant requirements to be a combination of 50 USC 1801 (i) and (j), which define a "United States person", and "United States", in a geographic sense. Even that interpretation was imperfect, but the application ended up being that whenever foreign intelligence surveillance powers were used under Title 50, section (j) -- the definition of "United States" as a geographic area -- determined where a warrant was required, regardless of an individual's status. This meant that persons under section (i) -- the definition of a "United States person" -- did not have the specific protections -- namely, protection anywhere they might be, globally -- granted under the current law. The current law changes the current law from a question of geospatial consideration to one of consideration of legal status.
Wrong! 50 USC 1801 (i) defines "United States Person" in a non-geographic sense, saying simply "citizen of the United States" (and then of course other definitions for non-citizens and types of organizations). It's essentially exactly the same definition you're claiming is "new". But it isn't. The original FISA protected U.S. citizens anywhere in the world.
(j) even says that the definition of "United States" only applies to the term "United States when used in a geographic sense". Interpreting the words "United States" in the phrase "citizen of the United States" in a geographic sense makes no sense, and could equally non-sensically be applied to the "new" definition of U.S. Person which is really the old one.
How exactly is the NSA or anyone for that matter expected to know whether the participants in a conversation are US citizens? Are they supposed to break in at the end and ask? "Hey, guys, uhm, just to cya, none of you are from the US, right?"
Naive? Yeah, I think so.
Ha! If you don't think they can know who the participants on one side of the conversation are, how do you think they figure out who the other side is either? Do you think they just start randomly tapping lines and hoping one is Osama bin Laden? Yeah, you are pretty naive.
Here's a hint: It's perfectly legal for the government to get the telecos to tell them who is calling who. This is how they figure out both that they person they are tapping is the one they want, and that no U.S. Persons are involved in the call.
Obviously it is possible for this determination to be incorrect, and you may be surprised to learn that the law covers that too. If the recording of the U.S. person was merely incidental, it can be redacted, and if it is believed that the person will be in contact with the target regularly, then they get a warrant.
Here's another hint: Somehow they were able to manage to comply with the law before the warrantless wiretapping program began. So go tell them how naive they are.
Yeah, I've had a little bit of experience with DARPA contracts and i know things can get weird. I still completely do not buy in the slightest that "companies interested" intersected with "companies capable" is a set of exactly 1. Especially not for the full range of activities for which Halliburton was given no-bid contracts. It's simply ridiculous.
But hey, maybe you can help me understand one thing: What, exactly, was the motivation for outsourcing food service in the first place? I mean I could assume it was just part of Rummy's (from an outsider's point of view) completely failed attempt to "streamline" the military by completely fucking up its logistics, but is there a better reason?
Warrantless collection on US Persons did happen under TSP, but TSP was not reauthorized after January 2007 because of the controversy.
So sad that you are correct saying it was the controversy and not the illegality that caused it to be canceled.
At least as far as we know. What exactly has happened, oversight-wise, to make me think this has actually occurred? More likely they are going to prevent this from happening again the same way Rummy wanted to prevent another abu Ghraib scandal by banning camera phones -- the problem wasn't the illegal behavior, the problem was that people found out about it.
That's the point. No one here is in a position to comment on what they were getting, or how. What we do know is that the courts, including FISC, the Intelligence Committees in the House and Senate, the executive branch -- which will soon be headed by President Obama, legislation which speaks to this issue, the legal advisors of NSA and the Intelligence Community, and the Justice Department, are aware of what is implemented, and how, and it has been judged to be legal under the Constitution and under the law. I am not certain just how much more determination is required. You (and others) are focusing on what you feel, without access to all of the information, is an overbroad technical implementation and ignoring all other review, oversight, and controls.
What does Obama taking office soon have to do with the Bush administration's opinion on whether his program was legal, and for that matter why the hell should I care what the NSA legal counsel and the Bush DoJ think? "Oh yeah it's totally illegal, but we advised the President to do it anyway"? That's ridiculous. This is the same DoJ that gave its opinion that the President could essentially ignore any law he wanted.
The only groups you mentioned who I have any reason to think are actually aware of what was implemented and how would be FISC and the Intelligence Committee, and I know Bush pulled executive privilege on the committee has tried to do the same in every non-FISA court so I'm not even so sure about that.
As far as myself, this isn't about what I feel, it's about what little I do actually know. I know they installed hardware in the telcos far in excess of what is needed to perform limited surveilance or create a pen register, and I know that they admitted to warrantless tapping of people in the U.S., and I know at least one group of U.S. citizens was in fact targeted by warrantless wiretaps because they were accidentally handed copies of the call logs. So yeah, I may not know everything, but I know enough that when they say "Oh we can't tell you any details, but trust us it was all on the up-and-up" I say "No I don't trust you."
Just because I don't know that you're pissing on my head doesn't mean I'm going to care about your careful assurances that despite being yellow and smelling of ammonia, that's definitely not piss so don't worry.
No, the old law still allowed identifying information and content of incidental traffic from a US Person to be redacted, and a warrant was required only if the collection resulted in routine interception of traffic from the same US Person. The anywhere on the globe thing is NOW legally inherent to the definition of a US Person, but they were only protected under the old law in the context of foreign intelligence collection if they were inside of the US. Now they are protected anywhere. So the new law, is, in fact, stronger with respect to protection for US Persons. That was part of the give-and-take compromise that allowed for foreign collection on non-US Persons to happen within the US without a warrant.
Bullshit. The original definition of U.S. Person was a U.S citizen (no provision for location), or anyone on U.S. soil legally. That's been the case since the original passage of FISA. Unless the new definition includes non-citizens outside U.S. jurisdiction -- which makes no sense -- then no, they didn't improve that. And the original law required a warrant any time a U.S. Person was known to be a party, it was quite explicit. It was only in the case where there was incidental recording of a U.S. Person's communication while surveiling a non-U.S. Person where redaction was allowed.
So basically those on the protecting-freedoms part of this compromise got scammed. But then again most of these were the same idiots who actually believed that USAPATRIOT powers were going to only be used to fight terrorism and never read the bill.
The exclusionary rule is an artificial judicial construct that is not a constitutional right. Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465 (1976). The Fourth Amendment only guarantees freedom from illegal search and seizure. Introducing illegally-obtained evidence in a criminal case is neither.
How exactly are you free from illegal search and seizure if the evidence seized illegally is introduced at trial? Sounds exactly like being the victim of illegal seizure, with the approval of the judiciary.
I've always thought of the exclusionary rule as essentially a corollary to the 4th Amendment, much like the judicial power to strike down a law that is in conflict with the Constitution is a corollary to the Original Jurisdiction clause which says "The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority". If the court rules that a law passed by Congress violates the 1st Amendment, that law is an illegal law, and you don't keep the illegal law on the books. You don't let a thief deposit their illegally obtained money in their bank account. And you don't let the state present illegally obtained evidence in court!
Otherwise, what the hell does "illegal evidence" even mean? That the cop might (but almost certainly won't) face disciplinary action? What does that have to do with the Constitutional right? Is the logic that the violation of rights has been committed, and having been violated, there is no more reason to consider protecting them?
The 4th Amendment doesn't say anything about whether the police violated your rights on purpose.
Excluding illegally-obtained evidence is meant to deter police misconduct but the public pays the cost in freed criminals. If the official misconduct was TRULY not intentional (setting aside your cynicism) then there is no deterrent purpose.
Yeah, other than 1) deterring the police from getting sloppy about their procedure because they know any mistake they make -- like kicking in the wrong door -- won't cost them the conviction and 2) deterring the police from "accidentally" repeating the mistake.
Seriously, if we're going to allow the police to use evidence they found by arresting the entirely wrong guy as long as we think they didn't really mean to, then how exactly are we going to identify when they are TRULY abusing their power? It'll basically take demonstrating a systematic history of abuse, which might work but then means they've been abusing their power repeatedly up to that point. I mean we really won't know if they TRULY did or not, if I take the caps there to imply some kind of magical truth detector.
No, illegal obtained evidence is not acceptable, whether the law was broken intentionally or not.
No one actually cares about the truth here, any of the issues at play, nor the legality of any programs.
Yeah, yeah, nobody but you. Yet even though you keep quoting the FISA Amendment, and even linked to the definition of U.S. Persons (inline definition for those reading along: A U.S. citizen anywhere in the world, and anybody who is on U.S. soil legally), you haven't explained how reality falls within those legal guidelines. To get a mere pen register, you don't need to shunt the entirety of traffic going through AT&T switches into a separate room. If they were getting more than that, then they were getting the communications of U.S. Persons which requires a warrant. Warrants they did not get.
The job of our foreign intelligence services is to collect information on the activities and plans of US adversaries. This activity has never required a warrant, because these individuals are not protected by the Constitution of the United States.
What tripe. A U.S. citizen who is also a dissident plotting to overthrow the government is an "adversary", and is absolutely protected by the Constitution even though they may be guilty of treason. So in other words, sometimes this does require a warrant, sometimes it doesn't. When you pay no attention to which situation it is and never get a warrant, then you're surely operating outside the law.
Speaking of tripe, here's a bit from Director McConnel: Now here's the other thing that most Americans don't appreciate, haven't been exposed to. When we redid that law, the law now says any U.S. person, any U.S. person, that's targeted for foreign intelligence must be protected by a warrant anywhere on the globe. So we actually have a much more stringent law today protecting Americans and civil liberties --
What bull crap! The old FISA law said any U.S. Person who was a party to the conversation being targeted, regardless of whether they were the target of the tap or not, must be protected by a warrant. If I read the new law correctly, it only applies when the person specifically being targeted is a U.S. Person. And the whole "anywhere on the globe" bit is inherent to the definition of U.S. Person!
The old law had more stringent protections. But since getting a warrant and respecting rights is apparently so hard, they had to do away with some and then double-speak their way into saying it's better. What a crock.
The FISA court is simply recognizing that no one has a right to privacy when making an international call. Freedom of Speech does not make any guarantee of privacy, nor does Freedom from Search & Seizure exist at the border. The NSA program specifically targeted phone calls between the US and a foreign country.
Then why did FISA (before any ammendments in the last two years) explicitly state that any communication where any party to said communication was either a U.S. citizen anywhere in the world, or any person legally within the United States, required a warrant?
Because the judiciary only rules on cases that come before them, and it wasn't until 1878 that someone tried to get away with reading postal mail without a warrant.
My goal is to see all of the Messier objects with them.
That's a cool goal. I've always thought it was really funny how what started as a "List of stuff I don't give a damn about (because they're not comets)" has essentially become "List of cool stuff for an amateur to look at."
You'll be able to see the four Galilean moons of Jupiter quite easily with a tripod, but you'll struggle to hold the binoculars steadily enough just by hand.
Eh, I have no problem seeing the moons just holding the binoculars by hand unless Jupiter is very high in the sky.
"Put food in front of soldiers" was intended to include all of that stuff, and no I still think there's no way Halliburton is the only company capable of this, that doesn't suffer from the particular kind of mismanagement you saw with AISG (As opposed to Halliburton mismanagement, which apparently only involves over-billing the government and causing the money to vanish down the hole of subsidiaries and subcontractors). I mean are you telling me that AISG is the only other company in the entire world that even has the ability to try? I don't buy it for a second.
My point was that the federal government is out of money period... In other words, that money is already gone.
No, and yes. Of course there's no "spectrum sale fund" where that money is kept. But the idea that the government is out of money and simply could not put another $500mil into the coupon program is ridiculous. They're going to be spending a heck of a lot more of this allegedly non-existent money real soon now to the tune of hundreds of billions.
The point is that they brought in $20bil from selling a public resource, spending a few hundred million to help ease the public through the transition will not in any way reduce the already negligible effect that sale had on the federal budget, nor significantly burden the government further.
I'll call your $20 bln and raise you the $700+ bln they're spending to bail out irresponsible banks and corporations.
Yeah, and if there's $18billion or $17.5billion left after funding the coupon program will make a huge difference on how much the spectrum sale offsets the bailout.
Or was that not your point... I'm having trouble figuring out the meaning of your poker metaphor.
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Geeze man, are you even aware that RSI isn't the same thing as CTS?
Repeating what people already said as if they didn't know it is fun!
What about bouncing between Dvorak and QWERTY? I assume that you've had to type on a keyboard other than your own on more than one occasion. I tried to use Dvorak for a short while but gave up because of that more than anything else.
Well the handy thing about that is if you're out of practice in qwerty, the locations of the keys are printed right there on the keyboard. That can help you in the transition between first sitting down at the keyboard and getting the old muscle memory back to let you touch type.
Though really, if I'm at someone else's computer long enough for it to really matter, then I switch the keymap.
Come on!
Yes it says "light" in the title and ScuttleMonkey-added text. The very first sentence of the actual user submission specifies "visible light". Once that context is established, "light" is a perfectly valid shorthand way to refer to it, and is often (though admittedly not always) used in that way.
Did Schindler sue the government or just use his personal wealth to help people?
If Schindler had thought petitioning the government would have been a good way to get positive change, instead of a good way to get arrested and have all his employees shipped off to the camps, then he probably would have done both. :P
Since this isn't Nazi Germany, why settle for the lesser good of helping a small number of people in secret, when they can try to improve things for everyone in the state?
Keanu has all the charm of of a ship-mounted laser turret.
I think we found his perfect role!
You know what would have been awesome? If we had discovered that the universe is really a holodeck simulation when the actor playing Moriarty in that episode said the line "Computer, arch" and an arch really did appear there in the studio. It just would have been so meta.
My pill was purple. WTF?
So sad that you take one of the few unfortunate and isolated examples of abuse, misbehavior, and disobedience of established policy and law -- no matter who was involved -- and assume that it is systemic, routine, condoned, and even encouraged, with no regard for any other considerations.
Assume? Assume?! George W Bush fucking said he authorized it! That means it was at the very least condoned, and encouraged at least to the point of establishing a TLA program dedicated to pursuing it! To whatever extent it was systemic and routine we may never know, but they had enough hardware in AT&T's office for it to be damn well systemic.
It's so fucking sad when someone rolls over and gives up their 4th Amendment rights because of unspecified "other considerations". Consider this: The Constitution is not a magical shield that protects our rights. To the extent that we have kept them, it is only because we have refused to let them go. To the extent that we have lost them, it is only because we have not reacted when they were taken.
Hello, Mr. Part of the Problem.
There was a "controversy" over TSP...and it was whether the powers granted the president allow for such considerations.
Yeah, the "controversy" was whether the President was allowed to ignore the law whenever he wanted. His legal team said "yes", and everyone with a brain and a conscience said "no".
That legal issue was never resolved,
Yeah, because nobody ever had standing to get a case and thus force it to be resolved. Considering all the times Bush's cute legal theories regarding executive power have been smacked down by the courts, I don't think it's too hard to tell what the outcome would be.
and the FISA Amendments act of 2008 explicitly disallows the invocation of war powers to allow such application of intelligence collection.
Thus putting out to pasture the completely wrong, duplicitous, and deceitful claim that the new law protects our rights more than the old one. We'll have to wait and see if that part ever survives judicial review.
Chris, what it means, in the political context, is that when President Obama's administrations continues intelligence activity under the current law, that means it wasn't the exclusively political issue people made it out to be.
And you know that Obama will continue Bush's programs how? Every pick of his for DoJ is 180 degrees away from the Bush DoJ regarding these issues. Though really, if Obama obeys the current law, then that means he absolutely won't be continuing the same intelligence activity Bush did, because the current law says you can't tap U.S. Persons without a warrant, and Bush did. So again, how exactly would this vindicate Bush and suggest it wasn't a political issue?
That's not accurate: the application of the law, previously, understood the warrant requirements to be a combination of 50 USC 1801 (i) and (j), which define a "United States person", and "United States", in a geographic sense. Even that interpretation was imperfect, but the application ended up being that whenever foreign intelligence surveillance powers were used under Title 50, section (j) -- the definition of "United States" as a geographic area -- determined where a warrant was required, regardless of an individual's status. This meant that persons under section (i) -- the definition of a "United States person" -- did not have the specific protections -- namely, protection anywhere they might be, globally -- granted under the current law. The current law changes the current law from a question of geospatial consideration to one of consideration of legal status.
Wrong! 50 USC 1801 (i) defines "United States Person" in a non-geographic sense, saying simply "citizen of the United States" (and then of course other definitions for non-citizens and types of organizations). It's essentially exactly the same definition you're claiming is "new". But it isn't. The original FISA protected U.S. citizens anywhere in the world.
(j) even says that the definition of "United States" only applies to the term "United States when used in a geographic sense". Interpreting the words "United States" in the phrase "citizen of the United States" in a geographic sense makes no sense, and could equally non-sensically be applied to the "new" definition of U.S. Person which is really the old one.
How exactly is the NSA or anyone for that matter expected to know whether the participants in a conversation are US citizens? Are they supposed to break in at the end and ask? "Hey, guys, uhm, just to cya, none of you are from the US, right?"
Naive? Yeah, I think so.
Ha! If you don't think they can know who the participants on one side of the conversation are, how do you think they figure out who the other side is either? Do you think they just start randomly tapping lines and hoping one is Osama bin Laden? Yeah, you are pretty naive.
Here's a hint: It's perfectly legal for the government to get the telecos to tell them who is calling who. This is how they figure out both that they person they are tapping is the one they want, and that no U.S. Persons are involved in the call.
Obviously it is possible for this determination to be incorrect, and you may be surprised to learn that the law covers that too. If the recording of the U.S. person was merely incidental, it can be redacted, and if it is believed that the person will be in contact with the target regularly, then they get a warrant.
Here's another hint: Somehow they were able to manage to comply with the law before the warrantless wiretapping program began. So go tell them how naive they are.
Yeah, I've had a little bit of experience with DARPA contracts and i know things can get weird. I still completely do not buy in the slightest that "companies interested" intersected with "companies capable" is a set of exactly 1. Especially not for the full range of activities for which Halliburton was given no-bid contracts. It's simply ridiculous.
But hey, maybe you can help me understand one thing: What, exactly, was the motivation for outsourcing food service in the first place? I mean I could assume it was just part of Rummy's (from an outsider's point of view) completely failed attempt to "streamline" the military by completely fucking up its logistics, but is there a better reason?
Warrantless collection on US Persons did happen under TSP, but TSP was not reauthorized after January 2007 because of the controversy.
So sad that you are correct saying it was the controversy and not the illegality that caused it to be canceled.
At least as far as we know. What exactly has happened, oversight-wise, to make me think this has actually occurred? More likely they are going to prevent this from happening again the same way Rummy wanted to prevent another abu Ghraib scandal by banning camera phones -- the problem wasn't the illegal behavior, the problem was that people found out about it.
That's the point. No one here is in a position to comment on what they were getting, or how. What we do know is that the courts, including FISC, the Intelligence Committees in the House and Senate, the executive branch -- which will soon be headed by President Obama, legislation which speaks to this issue, the legal advisors of NSA and the Intelligence Community, and the Justice Department, are aware of what is implemented, and how, and it has been judged to be legal under the Constitution and under the law. I am not certain just how much more determination is required. You (and others) are focusing on what you feel, without access to all of the information, is an overbroad technical implementation and ignoring all other review, oversight, and controls.
What does Obama taking office soon have to do with the Bush administration's opinion on whether his program was legal, and for that matter why the hell should I care what the NSA legal counsel and the Bush DoJ think? "Oh yeah it's totally illegal, but we advised the President to do it anyway"? That's ridiculous. This is the same DoJ that gave its opinion that the President could essentially ignore any law he wanted.
The only groups you mentioned who I have any reason to think are actually aware of what was implemented and how would be FISC and the Intelligence Committee, and I know Bush pulled executive privilege on the committee has tried to do the same in every non-FISA court so I'm not even so sure about that.
As far as myself, this isn't about what I feel, it's about what little I do actually know. I know they installed hardware in the telcos far in excess of what is needed to perform limited surveilance or create a pen register, and I know that they admitted to warrantless tapping of people in the U.S., and I know at least one group of U.S. citizens was in fact targeted by warrantless wiretaps because they were accidentally handed copies of the call logs. So yeah, I may not know everything, but I know enough that when they say "Oh we can't tell you any details, but trust us it was all on the up-and-up" I say "No I don't trust you."
Just because I don't know that you're pissing on my head doesn't mean I'm going to care about your careful assurances that despite being yellow and smelling of ammonia, that's definitely not piss so don't worry.
No, the old law still allowed identifying information and content of incidental traffic from a US Person to be redacted, and a warrant was required only if the collection resulted in routine interception of traffic from the same US Person. The anywhere on the globe thing is NOW legally inherent to the definition of a US Person, but they were only protected under the old law in the context of foreign intelligence collection if they were inside of the US. Now they are protected anywhere. So the new law, is, in fact, stronger with respect to protection for US Persons. That was part of the give-and-take compromise that allowed for foreign collection on non-US Persons to happen within the US without a warrant.
Bullshit. The original definition of U.S. Person was a U.S citizen (no provision for location), or anyone on U.S. soil legally. That's been the case since the original passage of FISA. Unless the new definition includes non-citizens outside U.S. jurisdiction -- which makes no sense -- then no, they didn't improve that. And the original law required a warrant any time a U.S. Person was known to be a party, it was quite explicit. It was only in the case where there was incidental recording of a U.S. Person's communication while surveiling a non-U.S. Person where redaction was allowed.
So basically those on the protecting-freedoms part of this compromise got scammed. But then again most of these were the same idiots who actually believed that USAPATRIOT powers were going to only be used to fight terrorism and never read the bill.
The exclusionary rule is an artificial judicial construct that is not a constitutional right. Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465 (1976). The Fourth Amendment only guarantees freedom from illegal search and seizure. Introducing illegally-obtained evidence in a criminal case is neither.
How exactly are you free from illegal search and seizure if the evidence seized illegally is introduced at trial? Sounds exactly like being the victim of illegal seizure, with the approval of the judiciary.
I've always thought of the exclusionary rule as essentially a corollary to the 4th Amendment, much like the judicial power to strike down a law that is in conflict with the Constitution is a corollary to the Original Jurisdiction clause which says "The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority". If the court rules that a law passed by Congress violates the 1st Amendment, that law is an illegal law, and you don't keep the illegal law on the books. You don't let a thief deposit their illegally obtained money in their bank account. And you don't let the state present illegally obtained evidence in court!
Otherwise, what the hell does "illegal evidence" even mean? That the cop might (but almost certainly won't) face disciplinary action? What does that have to do with the Constitutional right? Is the logic that the violation of rights has been committed, and having been violated, there is no more reason to consider protecting them?
The 4th Amendment doesn't say anything about whether the police violated your rights on purpose.
Excluding illegally-obtained evidence is meant to deter police misconduct but the public pays the cost in freed criminals. If the official misconduct was TRULY not intentional (setting aside your cynicism) then there is no deterrent purpose.
Yeah, other than 1) deterring the police from getting sloppy about their procedure because they know any mistake they make -- like kicking in the wrong door -- won't cost them the conviction and 2) deterring the police from "accidentally" repeating the mistake.
Seriously, if we're going to allow the police to use evidence they found by arresting the entirely wrong guy as long as we think they didn't really mean to, then how exactly are we going to identify when they are TRULY abusing their power? It'll basically take demonstrating a systematic history of abuse, which might work but then means they've been abusing their power repeatedly up to that point. I mean we really won't know if they TRULY did or not, if I take the caps there to imply some kind of magical truth detector.
No, illegal obtained evidence is not acceptable, whether the law was broken intentionally or not.
There is no indication that this spying program was limited strictly to non-US Persons.
No one actually cares about the truth here, any of the issues at play, nor the legality of any programs.
Yeah, yeah, nobody but you. Yet even though you keep quoting the FISA Amendment, and even linked to the definition of U.S. Persons (inline definition for those reading along: A U.S. citizen anywhere in the world, and anybody who is on U.S. soil legally), you haven't explained how reality falls within those legal guidelines. To get a mere pen register, you don't need to shunt the entirety of traffic going through AT&T switches into a separate room. If they were getting more than that, then they were getting the communications of U.S. Persons which requires a warrant. Warrants they did not get.
The job of our foreign intelligence services is to collect information on the activities and plans of US adversaries. This activity has never required a warrant, because these individuals are not protected by the Constitution of the United States.
What tripe. A U.S. citizen who is also a dissident plotting to overthrow the government is an "adversary", and is absolutely protected by the Constitution even though they may be guilty of treason. So in other words, sometimes this does require a warrant, sometimes it doesn't. When you pay no attention to which situation it is and never get a warrant, then you're surely operating outside the law.
Speaking of tripe, here's a bit from Director McConnel:
Now here's the other thing that most Americans don't appreciate, haven't been exposed to. When we redid that law, the law now says any U.S. person, any U.S. person, that's targeted for foreign intelligence must be protected by a warrant anywhere on the globe. So we actually have a much more stringent law today protecting Americans and civil liberties --
What bull crap! The old FISA law said any U.S. Person who was a party to the conversation being targeted, regardless of whether they were the target of the tap or not, must be protected by a warrant. If I read the new law correctly, it only applies when the person specifically being targeted is a U.S. Person. And the whole "anywhere on the globe" bit is inherent to the definition of U.S. Person!
The old law had more stringent protections. But since getting a warrant and respecting rights is apparently so hard, they had to do away with some and then double-speak their way into saying it's better. What a crock.
The FISA court is simply recognizing that no one has a right to privacy when making an international call. Freedom of Speech does not make any guarantee of privacy, nor does Freedom from Search & Seizure exist at the border. The NSA program specifically targeted phone calls between the US and a foreign country.
Then why did FISA (before any ammendments in the last two years) explicitly state that any communication where any party to said communication was either a U.S. citizen anywhere in the world, or any person legally within the United States, required a warrant?
Until Americans are afraid to go on camera with a joke about their president, we're nowhere near Egypt.
Yeah, these days Americans are afraid to go on camera without a joke about the President!
Because the judiciary only rules on cases that come before them, and it wasn't until 1878 that someone tried to get away with reading postal mail without a warrant.
My goal is to see all of the Messier objects with them.
That's a cool goal. I've always thought it was really funny how what started as a "List of stuff I don't give a damn about (because they're not comets)" has essentially become "List of cool stuff for an amateur to look at."
You'll be able to see the four Galilean moons of Jupiter quite easily with a tripod, but you'll struggle to hold the binoculars steadily enough just by hand.
Eh, I have no problem seeing the moons just holding the binoculars by hand unless Jupiter is very high in the sky.
A tripod certainly doesn't hurt though.
"Put food in front of soldiers" was intended to include all of that stuff, and no I still think there's no way Halliburton is the only company capable of this, that doesn't suffer from the particular kind of mismanagement you saw with AISG (As opposed to Halliburton mismanagement, which apparently only involves over-billing the government and causing the money to vanish down the hole of subsidiaries and subcontractors). I mean are you telling me that AISG is the only other company in the entire world that even has the ability to try? I don't buy it for a second.
My point was that the federal government is out of money period... In other words, that money is already gone.
No, and yes. Of course there's no "spectrum sale fund" where that money is kept. But the idea that the government is out of money and simply could not put another $500mil into the coupon program is ridiculous. They're going to be spending a heck of a lot more of this allegedly non-existent money real soon now to the tune of hundreds of billions.
The point is that they brought in $20bil from selling a public resource, spending a few hundred million to help ease the public through the transition will not in any way reduce the already negligible effect that sale had on the federal budget, nor significantly burden the government further.
I'll call your $20 bln and raise you the $700+ bln they're spending to bail out irresponsible banks and corporations.
Yeah, and if there's $18billion or $17.5billion left after funding the coupon program will make a huge difference on how much the spectrum sale offsets the bailout.
Or was that not your point... I'm having trouble figuring out the meaning of your poker metaphor.
Ricardo Montalban dies. Steve Jobs takes leave of absence.
Hmmm... has anyone ever seen them together?
Yes, and the photos have made me millions in blackmail money.