US Federal Judge Rules NSA Data Collection Legal 511
New submitter CheezburgerBrown . tips this AP report:
"A federal judge on Friday found that the National Security Agency's bulk collection of millions of Americans' telephone records is legal and a valuable part of the nation's arsenal to counter the threat of terrorism. U.S. District Judge William Pauley said in a written opinion (PDF) that the program 'represents the government's counter-punch' to eliminate al-Qaeda's terror network by connecting fragmented and fleeting communications. In ruling, the judge noted the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and how the phone data-collection system could have helped investigators connect the dots before the attacks occurred. 'The government learned from its mistake and adapted to confront a new enemy: a terror network capable of orchestrating attacks across the world. It launched a number of counter-measures, including a bulk telephony metadata collection program — a wide net that could find and isolate gossamer contacts among suspected terrorists in an ocean of seemingly disconnected data,' he said."
Re:And now where does this go? (Score:4, Insightful)
You heard it here first: Fourth Amendment defeated 5-4.
Re:Time to appeal (Score:5, Insightful)
If nothing else I would think this would expedite this to the Supreme Court since there are two conflicting district decisions.
Re:Dear NSA, (Score:5, Insightful)
What makes you think the real mission of the NSA is to track terrorists?
Valuable how? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hw much did he get paid to say that? (Score:5, Insightful)
More likely just plain judge selection. Common enough technique, though usually used by prosecutors. For someone well-connected into the legal system - someone who knows schedules, who will be busy and when - it isn't hard to have some influence over which judge a case will come before. Just got to bias events towards one sympathetic to the government position.
Useful vs Legal? (Score:5, Insightful)
How does if something is useful or not have any bearing on if it's legal or not?
Re:Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And now where does this go? (Score:5, Insightful)
Terrorism is irrelevant. Whether the programs work or not is irrelevant. All that matters is whether or not it's constitutional, and it's not.
But even if this nonsense does eventually get shut down, there's clearly a problem with our system if it takes decades to get rid of unconstitutional garbage.
So by his ruling... (Score:4, Insightful)
Authorities should just send speeding tickets to all drivers, since we all do it?
Those pesky dots (Score:5, Insightful)
"In ruling, the judge noted the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and how the phone data-collection system could have helped investigators connect the dots before the attacks occurred."
Oh please. It has been said time and time again that the dots were in front of their faces but they didn't take notice. Same with the Boston marathon bombings. More tugging at the heart strings of America.
" 'represents the government's counter-punch' to eliminate al-Qaeda's terror network by connecting fragmented and fleeting communications." ....Said the CIA man in the judges chamber during judge Pauley's coaching before returning to the bench to read his ruling. It couldn't sound any more insincere and staged. Now I sound like a conspiracy theorist.
Seriously. After all of these shenanigans have been exposed, who can trust anything the government says? They will keep on happily pissing on our rights while the courts fall in line with them telling the people "look how good this is for you! You should be happy and embrace it!" Fuck you William Pauley for selling us up the river you sackless pussy. (had to rant for a sec.)
No comparison, idiot judge trying to justify (Score:5, Insightful)
That data is given voluntarily. People may be pretty glib in giving the information, but it is still their choice. Maybe I do want Facebook knowing everything, but don't want my government to. Still, my choice. I never opted-in at the NSA web site.
Re:Time to appeal (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Time to appeal (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And now where does this go? (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article: "Every day, people voluntarily surrender personal and seemingly-private information to transnational corporations, which exploit that data for profit," Pauley wrote in . Few think twice about it, even though it is far more intrusive than bulk telephony metadata collection.
So, you know, some people tell everything to Facebook and Google. It's totally cool if just spy on everyone now, right? Because terrorism and stuff. We are just going to keep feeding off of something that happened over a decade ago.
Fucking Activist Judges (Score:3, Insightful)
This judge's opinion reeks of corruption of personal feelings. Judge's are supposed to interpret what the law says to determine if a particular activity or Law fits within the narrow confines of constitutional authority.
This judge is a proponent of "anything is okay as long as it's for the War on Terror(TM)" and didn't seem to read one word of existing case law and simply ruled from the perspective of their personal agenda.
Re:And now where does this go? (Score:5, Insightful)
The implication of that quote is that such information is given out so freely that it's not a Fourth-Amendment-covered "search" to gather it, because there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. Note the paragraph directly above:
He also found that the right to be free from search and seizures "is fundamental, but not absolute."
That part has been upheld by the SCOTUS repeatedly.
Re:Useful vs Legal? (Score:3, Insightful)
The constitution says no un-reasonable searches.
An argument for reasonableness is that usefulness outweighs intrusiveness.
The thing is that now that this program is widely known, the bad guys will just adjust their tactics.
The guys who did 9/11 could likely have avoided being caught by this system.
The recent judge's ruling seems to ignore adjustments to tactics.
Another reasonableness question is does this system cause an unhealthy imbalance of power between the govt and the people.
Especially considering that the main safeguard is our trust that the NSA will always only do good things.
These are good folks, but that sure is a lot of tempting, concentrated power.
The pen-register decision had safeguards built in due to the effort required to gather the data.
This made the search a reasonable trade between usefullness and intrusion.
Advances in technology have removed these safeguards in the current program.
The founding fathers understood human nature and concentrated power and wrote checks and balances into the Constitution to address this.
Seems like a reasonable reading of the constitution should dictate either less power and/or more safeguards in this situation.
New York, New York (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm guessing the NSA had some juicy details about this judges private life.
I doubt it's that complex - just look at which circuit this guy is in charge of: New York, New York.
You know, that police city-state on the East Coast, the one where people are regularly shot by cops just for standing in the wrong place, assaulted with chemical weapons for speaking out against the corrupt government, stopped and searched without any regard to the 4th Amendment, arrested for expressing their 2nd Amendment right, and oh yea, tried to ban big fucking sodas.
Taking all that into account, I'd be surprised if the judge didn't decide in favor of the elite ruling class.
Re:unavailable information (Score:5, Insightful)
Answer this question: Is there any data that you want to be **completely unavailable** to law enforcement with **proper warrant**?
There will be a lot more of it now. This is not a zero sum game. If people know their shit is being abused they will not use it or develop alternate solutions which can only be cracked with a $5 wrench. By overstepping you actually create a feedback loop whereby your capability is eroded. Warrants are useless if the capability to execute does not exist.
Our military and law enforcement absolutely must be able to use all means to catch the bad guys.
Just a second there you can't just lump Military and Civilian systems together. NSA is supposed to be military. They are not supposed to be in the LEA business.
Remember who is actually being killed by whom in this country. I'll give you a hint >12k are not being killed by terrorists in the US every year.
The problem is *how* the data is collected and used....which is controlled by regulations.
The problem is the NSA has warrantless access to all of it. How they get it is irrelevant the fact they have it is what matters.
The answer is **transparency** of the process, not allowing criminals a walled garden that law enforcement cannot have access to.
The government has already lost its legitimacy in this regard. I hope it tries to recover some of it..that would mean at minimum stopping secret (interpretation of) law, secret courts and secretly collecting data on everyone without cause.
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Re:unavailable information (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree we should have expected it, not because it *had* to happen, but because US judges are just as corrupt and self-interested as US politicians. They won't ever do anything to rule against the system, no matter how screwed up the system's behaviour has become, because its the same system thats giving them their power, status and wealth.
>> Our military and law enforcement absolutely must be able to use all means to catch the bad guys.
Sorry but thats crazy talk. You've totally bought into the brainwashing. Yours is exactly the same excuse all dictatorships, terrorists and psychopaths use. Once we start acting like them, even just in order to beat them, we have already lost because we have become no different from them.
Re:Valuable how? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Counter-punch? (Score:5, Insightful)
The NSA spying on Americans en masse without warrants is a counter-punch to 9/11?
Well, maybe.
Al Qaeda provided the initial punch on 9/11 and now the NSA is delivering a "counter-punch." Only problem is that the American people are the targets of both punches!
Re: Time to appeal (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Time to appeal (Score:4, Insightful)
The solution is as simple as defunding the NSA. That will never happen, of course, since we have two big-government parties who only argue over where the ever-increasing government checks should be sent.
Re: (Score:5, Insightful)
You're misunderstanding a key part of the process. The system doesn't need to be perfectly accurate. It just needs to be accurate enough to fit the workload of the humans involved. The system may identify 10,000 "terrorists" in a month, which can then be passed off to a team of 100 humans who can pull up more records to see if there's anything actually suspicious, or if the system's just inaccurate as usual. The dozen or so each month that have enough evidence could then be submitted for real search warrants to start a full investigation.
The problem with such a human-moderated system is the imbalance in consequences between finding or dismissing an actual terrorist. None of those 100 reviewers wants to be the guy who let a terrorist escape, so they're likely to have lowering standards of evidence. Schneier has covered the problem well [schneier.com].
Re: And now where does this go? (Score:1, Insightful)
So why not simply give NSA access to the public profiles on Facebook and Google. Problem solved :)
Re:Dear NSA, (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And now where does this go? (Score:4, Insightful)
The implication of that quote is that such information is given out so freely that it's not a Fourth-Amendment-covered "search" to gather it, because there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.
I damn well have a reasonable expectation that the government isn't spying on my communications; this is supposed to be "the land of the free and the home of the brave," after all. Some people's decision to surrender their data to certain parties has nothing to do with my data, and furthermore, they only surrender it to certain parties, not the government. Allowing the government to essentially outsource its spying to corporations is a terrible idea and almost defeats the purpose of the fourth amendment in this day and age.
That part has been upheld by the SCOTUS repeatedly.
Doesn't matter.
Re:And now where does this go? (Score:2, Insightful)
Agreed 100%. Allowing the police to conduct monthly and random searches of houses, person, and property would reduce crime and help them gather evidence but and would help them greatly but that too is illegal. What is terrorism? It is moving target. Eventually "terrorism" will mean anything, evidence and due process will mean nothing and our remaining rights will be gone. Unlike 250+ years ago in this country, people will blindly accept this because a majority are making a living off of the same government that is making these rules. Will I get my montly checks? Yes, well then no problem.
Re:And now where does this go? (Score:5, Insightful)
The fourth amendment has been dead since civil forfeiture became common.
Re:True Terrorism (Score:5, Insightful)
You should be even more outraged if you live outside USA. This is about if US citizens have any kind of right, but what is not even considered is that foreigners have human rights at all for them, outside borders is free hunting area.
In fairness, inside the USA is fair hunting areas for foreign intelligence agencies.
That fact highlights another issue, though, which is that even if all countries protect their own citizens from snooping by their own agencies (most don't, actually), this is easy for allied powers to work around through sharing agreements. "I'll spy on your people and you spy on mine, then we'll swap". We need to institute some protection against that as well.
Re:And now where does this go? (Score:5, Insightful)
What in the living hell does people's voluntary decision to share information on a corporate owned website have to do with the government grabbing people's private conversations and correspondence against their will?
This "judge" goes far beyond just being a hack or a political tool. He could serve as the figurehead for everything wrong with our overwhelming powerful and grasping Federal government. There are no, literally no, constitutional arguments to be made in favor of mass data collection. So he just weaves a big web of irrelevant bullshit and then rules the way his masters want.
Re: Unconstitutional (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's not forget that the Supreme court for nearly a hundred of years upheld slavery as constitutional. It took an act of congress and the 18th amendment to the constitution to ban it. A modern person reading the constitution might go, gee, doesn't "life, *liberty*, and the pursuit of happiness" constitutionally protect against slavery? But, nope, to the simple minds of those in the 1800s, slaves were property not people, unless the new 13th amendment says otherwise.
Similarly, a person from the future might read the constitution and go, gee, doesn't "unreasonable search and seizure" apply to digital content? But, nope, to the simple minds of those today we need a new amendment saying digital privacy is a form of privacy just as it took the 18th amendment to say a differently pigmented person is still a person. Just because a computer is used to generate nudie pics of you a the airport doesn't suddenly make it "not a strip search" by the TSA. Just because a computer is used to communicate with someone else doesn't make it "not mail". We have all these laws already passed protecting us against strip searches and folks opening our mail, but NONE of it applies if a computer is involved. That's why patents can be so easily passed by adding "with a computer" to take an old idea and suddenly qualify as a new idea worthy of patent protections. Only congress can pass new laws -- yes, that congress, the one with an 18% approval rating that is slowly bankrupting us and threatens to default and shutdown the government twice a year; they are our only hope for sanity, not the courts; and, yes, we're screwed.