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Privacy Democrats Government United States Politics

NSA Spying Wins Another Rubber Stamp 87

Posted by Soulskill from the once-more-unto-the-privacy-breach dept.
schwit1 sends this report from the National Journal: A federal court has again renewed an order allowing the National Security Agency to continue its bulk collection of Americans' phone records, a decision that comes more than a year after President Obama pledged to end the controversial program. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved this week a government request to keep the NSA's mass surveillance of U.S. phone metadata operating until June 1, coinciding with when the legal authority for the program is set to expire in Congress. The extension is the fifth of its kind since Obama said he would effectively end the Snowden-exposed program as it currently exists during a major policy speech in January 2014. Obama and senior administration officials have repeatedly insisted that they will not act alone to end the program without Congress.
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NSA Spying Wins Another Rubber Stamp More

NSA Spying Wins Another Rubber Stamp

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  • Wasn't that Senator Obama?!?!?!

    "If you like your plan, you can keep it."

    • Wasn't that Senator Obama?!?!?!

      Not in JAN 2014 it wasn't. Or did you think he was elected President late last year?

      • Re:"Obama pledged to end the controversial program (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28, 2015 @12:04PM (#49153825)

        Wasn't that Senator Obama?!?!?!

        Not in JAN 2014 it wasn't. Or did you think he was elected President late last year?

        Senator and Candidate Obama railed against "warrantless wiretapping" and pledged he'd end such activities were he elected.

        Seven and eight years ago.

        He's had six fucking years as President to do what he as a Senator and candidate said he'd do.

        Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Obama seems to have fooled YOU for seven years running.

        • Senator and Candidate Obama railed against "warrantless wiretapping" and pledged he'd end such activities were he elected.

          "Wiretapping" - Definition: Listening to the actual conversation being made, not looking up who called who and when, which has always been subject to judicial subpoenas without the need for a warrant. Hell, in that old 1995 movie "Clueless", Alicia Silverstone's character is shown helping her lawyer dad go through call sheets of who called who in a civil lawsuit. This sort of stuff always has been so common that it was put in a rom-com.

          Here's the thing. Law is very much like coding. The specifics matter.

    • More like

      "if you don't like NSA spying, you can keep it"

  • He will only act alone (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28, 2015 @11:41AM (#49153705)

    - to block oil pipeline construction
    - to import millions of new immigrants to compete with you for jobs
    - to have the IRS harass his political opponents
    - to spy on the press
    - to send troops to Iraq
    - to postpone nearly every legal deadline in Obamacare
    - to approve the Comcast -Time Warner merger
    - to impose new taxes on your internet service in the name of net neutrality

    But when he's using the NSA to spy on you, he blames Congress.

    • yawn

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Alwin Henseler ( 640539 )

      But when he's using the NSA to spy on you, he blames Congress.

      "using the NSA" ?!?

      I doubt anyone is "using" the NSA @ this point. Other than as a source of info - for those who have access.

      More like the NSA is an 'entity' that operates on its own. With money flowing in from a variety of sources, some government, some non-government, some legit, some non-legit. Doing whatever it's doing without much oversight, possibly continuing to do some things even if declared illegal by a court of law.

      I assume there's some people in that organisation that

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cas2000 ( 148703 )

        your government has created a monster that they don't dare rein in - any serious attempt to do so would be political suicide because the spies can dig up dirt (and probably already have done so) on all of them.

        the dirt doesn't even have to be evidence of wrong-doing or illegality, as long as it's disturbing or annoying to enough of the public (and the american public are mostly judgemental arseholes over even trivial things)....has a mistress, is a closet homosexual, did drugs (and inhaled!) and other irrel

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by anagama ( 611277 )

      Don't forget destroying the War Powers Act to wage war in Libya. Remember to thank Obama when another Dick Cheney type commits random war without even a nod to Congress or the Constitution.

  • Cool... so now what? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Seriously though... now what?

    I'm getting sick of people telling me I'm a "lazy, apathetic american" for letting this happen.

    Right... like there's something I, or any of us, could've actually done to prevent any of this. Secret courts, laws that aren't actually laws, and judges that continue to pull sh!t like this?? Tell me, honestly... what do you REALLY think we can do? And if you do have a great idea, please let us know while it's still legal.

    • there is. you could have not voted for obama the 2nd time when you saw how horrible he was the first time

  • PRISM lists companies not software (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28, 2015 @11:48AM (#49153745)

    It's worth remember at this stage, that PRISM, NSA's bulk mass collection program is a list of company NAMES, not software products or databases:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%29#mediaviewer/File:Prism_slide_5.jpg

    So it is not a hack of Microsoft or Google, and it is not that 'MSN Messager' was decrypted, it lists COMPANIES, it is Microsoft not a product within Microsoft.

    So you need to realize that these companies provide data feeds to the NSA for their customers, not limited to terrorists or suspicion, bulk data feeds to fill up Utah and the other 5 mega data centers they're building.

    And it only covers the data feeds up to 2012 when Apple was added. After that there's been a massive increase in the surveillance, courtesy of Android.

    All those permissions you have those messaging apps, your financial stuff, your taxi/ride-sharing app that tracks your every move, all that crapware installed on Android that gets all the rights it can and takes all the data it can.

    It's far beyond the meta data on the telephone calls. That wouldn't even fill the tiniest corner of one of those data centers.

  • spying is a drug (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TheGratefulNet ( 143330 ) on Saturday February 28, 2015 @11:49AM (#49153757)

    and the various governments (this is not about the US, its about the new trend, or rather the new-found ability in mankind to truly neutralize all privacy and secret communications) are all addicted to this drug.

    they can't give it up. they have a monkey on their back.

    the stingrays are the gateway drug; and it soon is not enough and you want more. you want ALL the wireless and wired datacomms traffic.

    we should shift our war-on-drugs effort to the real drug that is invading everyone's lives, though due to no fault of their own.

    and again, this is not about the US or its agencies. do you really believe your own government is not wanting or having the ability to do this, as well?

    this is about mankind and one of his worst weaknesses.

    we should make a 'teaching moment' from this and disallow ourselves this ability. just like we really can't handle the responsibility of nukes, as a people, we can't handle THIS much power, either.

    no one should have it. and yes, I truly mean NO ONE. you give it to one, and the rest want it (both good guys and bad guys).

    will we use this as a teaching moment and make some change for the better?

    well, I'm over 50 and have no hope left for us, as a species. we have proven we can't handle this level of responsibility. I don't expect change, but I do expect people to at least SEE what's going on and to try to work around it without giving up, entirely.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      well, I'm over 50 and have no hope left for us, as a species. we have proven we can't handle this level of responsibility. I don't expect change, but I do expect people to at least SEE what's going on and to try to work around it without giving up, entirely.

      Nope, everyone is too busy with the stupid dress optical illusion to care.

    • Actually, spying on citizenry is really the effect of democratic rule if you think about it.

      Any body with political power will naturally try to preserve its power, just like anything likes to hold onto what it has. Thus it will do everything possible to insure that it continues in power. Anything that is a danger to the exercise of its power must be observed, controlled or eliminated or else one loses political power.

      In a monarchy, the threats to power are usually other possible candidates to the throne, or

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by boa ( 96754 )

        "Even Aristotle said that a democracy naturally degenerates into despotism. The United States is simply repeating the past, though one must say in a much faster tempo than its predecessors."

        ITYM Rosseau, not Aristotle.

        "When the State is dissolved, the abuse of government, whatever it is, bears the common name of anarchy. To distinguish, democracy degenerates into ochlocracy, and aristocracy into oligarchy; and I would add that royalty degenerates into tyranny; but this last word is ambiguous and needs expla

        • Actually, Rousseau is just copying from Aristotle's Politics [5, v]. Here is an interesting quote [mit.edu] that reminds us of our own times. (in this translation despotes is made into 'tyrant') :

          Revolutions in democracies are generally caused by the intemperance of demagogues, who either in their private capacity lay information against rich men until they compel them to combine (for a common danger unites even the bitterest enemies), or coming forward in public stir up the people against them. The truth of this rem

    • ...well, I'm over 50 and have no hope left for us, as a species.

      BAH! You kids know nothing. We're at the top of our game, and getting better! Get the fuck off my lawn!

  • Re: (Score:1, Redundant)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Well what do you expect when it doesn't even arouse the feeblest of resistance? In fact it is rewarded. The lone simple fact is that people are okay with it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by anagama ( 611277 )

      Even here, on /., a comment in support of the Constitution and privacy is downmodded. Things are pretty hopeless.

  • Son of Carnivore (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dragon Bait ( 997809 ) on Saturday February 28, 2015 @12:21PM (#49153907)

    Is there are reason that we haven't heard about the Clinton's FBI's Carnivore [wikipedia.org] (or descendants of carnivore) lately?

    Don't get me wrong. I'm glad we're hearing about Obama's continuation of Bush's domestic spying. But just wondering why we aren't hearing about Obama continuing Clinton's domestic spying.

    • simple. hillary

  • Jon Lovitz [yahoo.com] had nooo idea what he was starting..

    Politicians are all card carrying members of the Pathological Liars Anonymous club...

  • The problem is not the renewal ... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by CaptainDork ( 3678879 ) on Saturday February 28, 2015 @01:02PM (#49154141)

    ... it's that there are not a WHOLE lot more Mannings and Snowdens.

    Leak that shit both from the US and UK.

    Secrets are a bitch when 1.) you get caught with one and 2.) it's no longer a secret.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jodido ( 1052890 )
      Not clear to me why more leaks would help. We got lots of info from Snowden and Manning and what did that fix?

      • Good point, but ... ... Manning's shit was mostly political. For that reason, we can assign about a 50% priority to the stuff because there are at least two reactions to that: for or against.

        Snowden's stuff is more provocative, and upsetting, but it's dated.

        What we need is transparency. Looks like the only way that's going to happen is if Americans in the "know," step up.

  • Obama is not spying on people. What does he care. He would never use the government to hurt people. And since a Republican will never be elected again we have nothing to worry about.
  • Sad to see the court continue it, but not unexpected. I would expect we'll continue to hear how at risk we are from (insert name of Islamic fanactical group here - ISIS currently) etc. by the intelligence establishment in a building crescendo to the renewal date (as a justification, even though it didn't help a whit with Boston or prior events) - cause here's the thing, IMHO, 95% of U.S. politicians are cowards and the cowardly view on this is the following: If I vote against renewing mass surveillance an
  • I guess people will take their e-commerce business elsewhere. No point in supporting the playground bully. Other hubs will surface, hegemony won't last.

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