EFF Wins Release of Secret Court Opinion: NSA Surveillance Unconstitutional 524
mspohr writes "For over a year, EFF has been fighting the government in federal court to force the public release of an 86-page opinion of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). Issued in October 2011, the secret court's opinion found that surveillance conducted by the NSA under the FISA Amendments Act was unconstitutional and violated 'the spirit of' federal law."
Shut it down (Score:5, Interesting)
Shut it down......Shut it all down NOW!!!
Farce royale (Score:5, Interesting)
You at the other side of the pond have generated a farce beyond fantasy. Create secret court, abuse powers, secret court says "non", ignore, expand and repeat.
As a tech I'd say your system has found a resonance point where the loop-gain is so much greater than one that it might cause the earth's rotation to change....
Yeah Okay... (Score:3, Interesting)
So now what?
Re:okay so how is snowden NOT a whistleblower then (Score:5, Interesting)
The same way he "hasn't" been all along. When the lies are coming from the highest levels of the government, they can brand anybody they want as anything they like. One can only hope that the EFF is large and influential enough to cope with any fallout from this.
Looks like it might be time to donate again. There's something ridiculous about the need to buy decent government by donating to a charitable organization, but hey, they're doing better than most, and most of "us" (Slashdot readers) can probably afford it. Normally I'd suggest the option of doing it by way of the Humble Bundle, but currently they don't include that option...
Re:Impeach Obummer! (Score:5, Interesting)
Who's going to impeach him? Congress and the Senate are complicit in this, and they're the ones who have to impeach. Remember, they don't give two shits about the constitution or they'd never had passed the Bono Act or the PATRIOT Act.
Lets impeach congress next election. I want my country back.
The Kissinger Doctrine (Score:5, Interesting)
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
Constitution-worship (Score:4, Interesting)
Accountability (Score:3, Interesting)
There appears to be no accountability is the US Government any more.
Laws are only for the “little people” Taxes are only for the “little people”. Profits are only for the “real people”
Private profit, public bailouts. Money is free speech.
The question is, “What can we do?” Gerrymandering has made even our votes almost useless.
Any ideas?
Re:I should have finished reading before posting (Score:5, Interesting)
If that's what you want, then sign the petition [whitehouse.gov]!
Re:Accountability (Score:4, Interesting)
How about right now [whitehouse.gov]?
(By the way, you do realize the Republican pundit shows are just going to continue whining about Obamacare and other partisan but unimportant bullshit, right? Dealing with an issue like this is really up to us, the Actual Citizens, not the idiots on the radio.)
Re:Impeach Obummer! (Score:4, Interesting)
If you want Congress to impeach Obama over this, you should sign this [whitehouse.gov].
Re:Impeach Obummer! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Okay so the Chief FISA judge called BS but.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Impeach Obummer! (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed.
However, the problem I have with a lot of Obama critics is not that the content of their criticism is actually wrong, but rather feels disingenuous. Had Mitt won the presidency, I feel like a lot of these guys bitching about Obama would be standing right in line behind Mitt, who I believe would be doing basically the exact same thing as Obama*, charging that anyone who dared criticize that "great patriot Mitt Romney" was a terrorist-sympathizing traitor who should be rounded up and executed. I don't see Mitt having a fundamentally different stance on NSA wiretapping, the Patriot Act, or drone strikes (and I bet Benghazi would still have happened under his watch, too).
For those of you (us) who have managed to remain consistent with our criticisms of both parties, bravo.
Re:Impeach Obummer! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Impeach Obummer! (Score:5, Interesting)
Nixon wasn't so bad. At least he had enough respect for the law and the citizens to break in at night.
And enough sense of shame to resign. The more recent politicians are quite literally shameless.
Hypothetical (Score:4, Interesting)
The shit is about to hit the fan (Score:5, Interesting)
To quote one of my favorite movie characters, "The shit is about to hit the fan and I want to be here to see it." (Dr. Lazarus in "Outland" in case you're curious.)
The publication of this court ruling is going to make it much easier for a federal judge and subsequent appellate judges to slam the NSA down hard. I'm not certain about the law on this but it might also make it possible to send certain NSA officials to prison. My prediction: Heads at the NSA are about to roll and I will not be surprised if one of them is Gen. Alexander. Because he is a serving general and this shit happened on active duty, he could be courtmartialed, be stripped of rank, and lose his pension, a just punishment I believe for such a grave violation of the people's civil rights.
Unfortunately, the heads will not be literally be rolling on the floor, and perhaps that's a good thing. It's nice to contemplate, however. It would have made one hell of a great game of pool on a diabolical billiard table. General Alexander's head would be the cue ball. Some people more evil than myself might possess the belief that a certain other person's [wikipedia.org] head should be the 8-ball but I'm not one of them. But it's hilarious to visualize!
Re:Impeach Obummer! (Score:5, Interesting)
The last scary thought I shall leave with. What if J Edgar Hoover had the NSA's ability to spy on people?
I'm not sure why you're assuming that Robert Mueller is any better. Maybe because he's better at secrecy and intimidation? Think about this for a minute: After Hoover's death, when all the stuff he did came out, Congress passed a law limiting the term of any FBI director to 10 years. Yet, recently, the law was ignored and Mueller's term extended [nytimes.com] Why? Well the excuse was that it was required for "continuity", but, is that really credible coming from a Democratically-controlled Senate debating the illegal extension of term for a Bush appointee. How?
During one of the recent hearings on spying, Holder was asked if the NSA was also tapping into private phone calls and emails of members of Congress. He basically refused to answer the question, offering to "address that in a different forum." In secret, in other words. And one NSA whistle blower mentioned how the program even targeted a certain senate candidate from Illinois [youtube.com] (yep, that one).
So we may now be in an even worse position, with a J. Edgar Hoover type leading the FBI, and with much better technology and a greatly expanded police and surveillance state.
the fact that Bush was bad, half as bad as Obama.. (Score:2, Interesting)
You're point is that Obama isn't the only one on the list of "five worst presidents in US history"?
Bush sucked in his second term. For example, he ran a huge budget deficit, over-spending by billions. Obama then over-spent by trillions. That makes Obama somehow okay, because he only sucks twice as bad as some other guy? (By most objective measures, Bush is in the worst 25%, his second term is in the worst 15%, and Obama's "bad" numbers are double Bush's. Obama's debt is roughly equal to ALL OTHER PRESIDENTS COMBINED.
So yeah, politicians suck. By the numbers, the current president does as much suckage as the sum total of every other president's suckage combined.
Re:Impeach Obummer! (Score:4, Interesting)
Forget moneyed interests. Money is just a version of power.
And get it through your head that regardless of form, the powerlees are not going to use power to take power from the powerful.
It doesn't have to be moneyed interests. It could be the CIA using George HW Bush to overthrow Carter's October surprise in an act of high treason, in revenge for shaking up the CIA. It could be the Russian mafia masters using their spies to compromise NSA leaders, and use them to compromise politicans, and seize contol. It could be the masterminds behind the Nazi regime trying again through means of an occult Yale club.
It could be anything, including moneyed interests. But that's less important than the fact of where are we today?
And where we are today is a very bad place to be. The economy deliberately overthrown; the King Of Terror having us in two wars, The rule of law vanished, reporters suddenly dying in weird ways, and those who talk about doing something wanting to take us into an even worse place. Because you can't just commit a few attrocities and seize power and restore goodnes and call it a day.
There is no way back from here. I don't know what through is, or where it goes, but through is the only way.
Re:From TFA (Score:2, Interesting)
Court: Ability to police U.S. spying program limited [washingtonpost.com]
The leader of the secret court that is supposed to provide critical oversight of the government’s vast spying programs said that its ability to do so is limited and that it must trust the government to report when it improperly spies on Americans.
So in other words:
1) The court has no power to initiate an independent investigation, it must rely upon the guilty party to bring cases to it
2) Huge hullabaloo results from the Snowden leaks
3) NSA decided "grudgingly" to declassify a case where they got their hand clasped
4) Nothing to see here! Move along! See, we can effectively police ourselves - TRUST US!
Did I get that straight?
Re:Impeach Obummer! (Score:5, Interesting)
Bush was upfront about his support for these programs. Obama specifically ran against them, but defends them publically now.
In any case, today Obama's the boss - it's his ship to steer, and we should blame him for the course he sets, even if previous leaders are bad too. Gah, if there's one thing I hate at work, it's people who say "yes, this sucks, and we could fix it easily, but we're used to the pain so just deal with it".
Re:Impeach Obummer! (Score:4, Interesting)
I completely agree.
I would have voted Obama based on his campaign... now I'm incredibly disappointed. In fact, I almost believe he's been forced to change... almost...
Was he always disingenuous?
Re: Impeach Obummer! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I should have finished reading before posting (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: Impeach Obummer! (Score:5, Interesting)
The various terror groups know Obama is full of hot air and does not follow up on attacks.
I'm sure that Osama bin Laden agrees, as do the targets of all those drone strikes.
The Syrian army crossed the red line again and nothing from Barry.
The 15-minute response you seem to be asking for with regard to Syria would be about the only action that might be considered even less civilised than gassing your own civilians. Is that really what you'd like to see?
This is not some film where you hear someone shout, "Do something!" then see 30 seconds of Barry sweating as he slowly but surely remembers and inputs the Abort code that stops the timer and keeps Dr Madguy's giant laser from lighting up and cooking Los Angeles.
I've got a brilliant idea: Let's impeach Obama and replace him with you.
This is a complex scenario with a great many players--Israel, Lebanon/Hezbollah, Turkey/NATO/EU, Iraq/Kurdistan, and Russia, amongst others--having an interest in the outcome of a civil war between the militarist fascists who've held power for decades and the militant religious whackos that seek to take their place. You've also got the UN and the norms of international law to consider. At home you've got legislators to keep happy, and there is a good chance that, no matter what your response is, at least some of them will take issue with it--and of these, some of them will be doing so merely to score points against you in the media, regardless of what might really be best for the US (or for the Syrians, for that matter).
What do you propose to do, Mr President? Go ahead--the whole world is watching and waiting.
Isn't this fun?