NSA's Novel Claim: Our Systems Are Too Complex To Obey the Law 245
Reader Bruce66423 (1678196) points out skeptical-sounding coverage at the Washington Post of the NSA's claim that it can't hold onto information it collects about users' online activity long enough for it to be useful as evidence in lawsuits about the very practice of that collection. From the article: 'The agency is facing a slew of lawsuits over its surveillance programs, many launched after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked information on the agency's efforts last year. One suit that pre-dates the Snowden leaks, Jewel v. NSA, challenges the constitutionality of programs that the suit allege collect information about Americans' telephone and Internet activities.
In a hearing Friday, U.S. District for the Northern District of California Judge Jeffrey S. White reversed an emergency order he had issued earlier the same week barring the government from destroying data that the Electronic Frontier Foundation had asked be preserved for that case. The data is collected under Section 702 of the Amendments Act to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
But the NSA argued that holding onto the data would be too burdensome. "A requirement to preserve all data acquired under section 702 presents significant operational problems, only one of which is that the NSA may have to shut down all systems and databases that contain Section 702 information," wrote NSA Deputy Director Richard Ledgett in a court filing submitted to the court.
The complexity of the NSA systems meant preservation efforts might not work, he argued, but would have "an immediate, specific, and harmful impact on the national security of the United States.'
Adds Bruce66423: "This of course implies that they have no backup system — or at least that the backup are not held for long."
Re:Fine ... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Fine ... (Score:5, Informative)
So, basically, your saying that they should just expect everybody to simply trust that what they're doing is entirely legal? Because the logistics of actually proving this is so difficult they can't do it?
I say horseshit to that.
We know the data they scrape is massive. What we don't know is that they're complying with the law in order to do it.
And I fail to see why the benefit of the doubt should be given in this case.
Sorry, but it's "trust, but verify", and if you can't verify, you can't bloody well trust. The whole point of these lawsuits is that they likely go beyond the scope of their legal mandate. Saying you couldn't possibly be bothered to hold onto the evidence the court has demanded is just too damned bad.
Re:Fine ... (Score:5, Informative)
Please stick to the topic on hand and not make up a scenario that did not happen.
Re:Too Big to Be Indicted... (Score:0, Informative)
You are full of shit. I've been making changes to banks prod systems for years, and it isn't all that hard. NSA is full of shit too. They can retain any data they want, or what's the point of collecting it all in the first place? How are they going to use it against anyone if it keeps disappearing? You don't even need to know the details of their system. The claim fails a simple logic test on its face. Any judge that agrees with them is in cahoots.
Re:Too Big to Be Indicted... (Score:2, Informative)
True nobody forces me into debt but for all intents Im forced to to have a bank account so I can get paid my wages.
Re:Too Big to Be Indicted... (Score:5, Informative)
Unlike politicians, who impose themselves even upon those, who voted against them, banks have no power over you if you don't use them. You don't have to convince other people to stop using banks â" just stop doing it yourself and you'll be free from them...
Uhhhh... The global recession puts the lie to your notion that not doing business with banks means I'm free of their ill effects.
Nobody forces people into the debt. They take it voluntarily and are genuinely happy, when their applications are approved. Without banks, you'd have to save money for 10 years before buying a house. With banks, you can move-in right away and pay off in 15 years. Loans are a service, that banks provide to willing customers.
During the mortgage bubble, banks were doing several things
1. Forging a higher stated income onto loan documents so they could lend more money
2. Giving loans to people that they knew would not be able to afford it (NINA/NINJA loans [wikipedia.org])
3. Offering minorities ARM loans or loans with much higher interest rates than they would offer to white borrowers with the same credit score.
Blaming the borrower ignores the mountains of evidence showing wildly illegal, fraudulent, and outright deceptive behavior by the loan industry.
If you don't know this stuff, you must be willfully ignoring the facts as they've been reported.
Even Fox News has been reporting on it.
Re:Too Big to Be Indicted... (Score:3, Informative)
Nope. You are only affected as much as you were involved with the banks — being there customer or an employee, or dealing with other people, who were. But the recession was not the bank's fault — rather it is that of the politicians, who forced banks (with the threat of "discrimination" lawsuits) to give money to unqualified borrowers [ornery.org].
Nope. It was not the banks doing the forging — it was the applicants. Bank-employees may have looked the other way, but the actual forgery was done by the customers.
Refusing to issue such a loan was to expose the firm to a discrimination lawsuit. But, once again, you are ignoring the role of the actual applicants, who lied on their applications — putting the blame solely on those, who were supposed to catch the lies.
Citation needed.
Issuing repayable loans is the banks' bread-and-butter. That's, what they do. They normally have every incentive to issue as many loans to qualified borrowers as they can, while keeping the unqualified out. The bubble started, when the government messed up those incentives by, on the one hand, suspecting every rejection of being racially-motivated and, on the other, lowering the standards, under which banks could unload (sell) their loans to the government [nytimes.com]. It was this combination, that created the mortgage bubble — not some inherent evil of the "banksters".
Nope. The borrower signing a fraudulent loan application is the main guilty party. Those failing — willfully or otherwise — to catch his lies may be somewhat responsible too, but the primary responsibility is with the applicant.
Yeah, yeah. And if I don't agree with you, I must be stupid and incompetent [wikipedia.org].