When the NSA Shows Up At Your Internet Company 309
Frosty Piss writes "When people say the feds are monitoring what people are doing online, what does that mean? How does that work? When, and where, does it start? Pete Ashdown, CEO of XMission, an internet service provider in Utah, knows. He received a Foreign Intelligence Service Act (FISA) warrant in 2010 mandating he let the feds monitor one of his customers, through his facility. He also received a broad gag order. Says Mr. Ashdown, 'I would love to tell you all the details, but I did get the gag order... These programs that violate the Bill of Rights can continue because people can't go out and say, This my experience, this is what happened to me, and I don't think it is right.' In this article, Mr. Ashdown tells us about the equipment the NSA installed on his network, and what he thinks it did."
Tiny Utah-based ISP makes a name for itself. (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Tiny Utah-based ISP makes a name for itself. (Score:5, Informative)
Something to consider:
I once worked for a company that used XMission's downtown SLC location as its colo location; excellent guys, and kick-ass service. That said, there's one other bit: a large number of their 30k customers are some rather large(-ish) corporations and companies - a few of whom have the ear of Sen. Orrin Hatch, among others in both state and federal government... not to mention (guessing this part, but given their location and name) they likely have a very strong hook into the LDS hierarchy.
(By the by, XMission is one of the few (and IMO lucky) ISP's who provide for/with the UTOPIA fiber-to-home networks, and IIRC the only local/SLC-based one. )
IOW, they're not just some tiny naive dial-up provider. If they didn't have a line to some heavy-hitters, I'd wager that they'd likely buckle to the demands out of sheer survival instinct, if for no other reason.
Re: Tiny Utah-based ISP makes a name for itself. (Score:5, Informative)
I once worked for a company that used XMission's downtown SLC location as its colo location; excellent guys, and kick-ass service.
I second this. My boss was a good friend of Pete's, and our site was hosted there. I got to hang out with Pete quite a bit, and he's a superb example of a human being. Moral, upstanding, and fair. XMission isn't just a 'tiny ISP', it's a long-proven company with a history of smashing success; rather than expand to a national then multinational power, it has kept sight of its core, takes care of its people, and focuses on offering the best product for its customers. This is the ISP after which all others should be modeled. Pete Ashdown for president!
They are the best (Score:5, Informative)
And I still drive with Pete Ashdown sticker on the back of my car since he ran for the US Senate - but it is not easy do win for a Democrat in one of the most Republican states.
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And I still drive with Pete Ashdown sticker on the back of my car since he ran for the US Senate - but it is not easy do win for a Democrat in one of the most Republican states.
Oh, crap! I totally forgot he did that!
As for his odds? Gotta remember that SLC did elect Rocky Anderson awhile back...
Re: Tiny Utah-based ISP makes a name for itself. (Score:4, Interesting)
I once worked for a company that used XMission's downtown SLC location as its colo location; excellent guys, and kick-ass service. That said, there's one other bit: a large number of their 30k customers are some rather large(-ish) corporations and companies - a few of whom have the ear of Sen. Orrin Hatch, among others in both state and federal government... not to mention (guessing this part, but given their location and name) they likely have a very strong hook into the LDS hierarchy.
Really, it's even more impressive. Pete Ashdown ran as a Democrat against Orrin Hatch in the 2006 senate election. [wikipedia.org] Lost, of course, but Hatch ended up spending close to five megabucks on the campaign, and Ashdown did better than anyone else has against Hatch in recent memory, despite Hatch's ridiculous campaign funding and stranglehold on Utah politics.
Pete Ashdown is an impressively brave and principled individual, and it'd surprise me greatly if he even imagined any possible support from Hatch or the majority of the Church hierarchy in any civil liberties dispute with the feds. He's just a badass in general.
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I'd like to second the parents refutation that XMission has any special connections within the church. Given that they host Maddox [xmission.com] for free and Pete Ashdown ran as a Democrat, I doubt they have any connection with the church. Their customers might but...
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The company, a comparative midget with just 30,000 subscribers, cited the Fourth Amendment in rebuffing warrantless requests from local, state and federal authorities, showing it was possible to resist official pressure says it all http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/09/xmission-isp-customers-privacy-nsa [guardian.co.uk]
In the immortal words of James Tiberius Kirk, "We come in peace, shoot to kill".
Hack the black box? (Score:3)
Wonder what the consequences of that would be? Do two skeevy acts add up to a good act?
Re:Hack the black box? (Score:5, Interesting)
You'd probably be charged with a wide range of crimes, like tampering with evidence, disrupting an investigation, espionage and wiretapping (because the NSA is authorized, but you aren't).
No Surprises Here (Score:2, Insightful)
You can't contest these FISA orders because even acknowledging them is a federal crime.
First rule of FISA: Don't talk about FISA
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It was only when they popped by with the full document from the FISA court that it became "legitimate". Before then it was simply a piece of paper that cannot have provenance attached to it, so what the attorney should have said is "it is probably legitimate".
I've got a number of emails from Nigerian princes and domain renewal documents that are just as "legitimate"...
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Re:No Surprises Here (Score:5, Insightful)
How does one authenticate their authenticity?
When men with guns say it's authentic, it is.
Apply some technology here? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No Surprises Here (Score:4, Informative)
Having worked for an ISP and at one point having to deal with these myself, you don't really. You send it up to the lawyers. They can do some basic checks. The request comes in, there's an agents name and where he/she works. The lawyers call there, talk to someone that's NOT him about it... that's about as far as you can check it. The main thing you're trying to prevent is someones ex-husband requesting his ex-wives call logs and such... that actually happens more than you'd think. Once it was even a cop and the case number and everything were bullshit. But if the entire law enforcement agency in question is up to no good, there's no way to prevent that. It's not like you can call up the judge and ask them about it.
I've mentioned this in the past but it bears mentioning again, we RARELY got requests. There were very very few. It always suggested to me that had better/easier ways to get the same info and it was only in rare cases that they needed to come to us.
Ethics versus Legality (Score:5, Insightful)
The NSA's corrupt and unethical activities have shown a bright light on the blackened and burned out husk of our ethics within the justice system. Which is to say, there really aren't any left to speak of.
The law has absolutely nothing to do with right or wrong anymore. It's just a prescription for what is allowed and isn't, not whether you should or shouldn't. It's not unlike owning a gun; By itself, it's harmless. Put it someone's hands, and what they do with it can be catastrophic. Laws are just tools. It's what is done with them we need to look at.
So far, I'm not encouraged by what I am seeing those tools used for. Perhaps its time to take them away, until they can learn to handle them responsibly.
Re:Ethics versus Legality (Score:5, Insightful)
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The problem with that law is it is meant for people, it depend on people to be honest, not wanting extra money, not being able to be blackmailed or social engineered, not falling into common human bias like the ones shown in the Stanford prison experiment [wikipedia.org].
So, assuming humans aren't humans is how laws are meant? I don't agree with that assessment. The "wanting extra money" jab makes you sound like a misanthrope conservative/libertarian complaining about who people on welfare vote for.
Current laws are bad because they assume complete knowledge of the law (ignorance of the law is no excuse, and all that) but the law is unknowable (it changes faster than people can read, and is based on "case law" that is semi-closed and highly complex. When you commit 3 fel
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Current laws are bad because they assume complete knowledge of the law (ignorance of the law is no excuse, and all that) but the law is unknowable (it changes faster than people can read, and is based on "case law" that is semi-closed and highly complex. When you commit 3 felonies a day, then why bother trying to follow the law?
Ironically, the law suffers from the exact opposite problem at the same time - it is possible to have complete knowledge of certain areas of the law and thereby design a set of actions that both complies with the letter of the law and completely subverts its intent. That's why you can have 14 congressional hearings after some big disaster and yet nobody goes to prison.
For ordinary people the law is a tangled web waiting to snare them. For the spiders crawling around the web, the law is a weapon used to sn
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You don't think that breaks things a bit?
Keep in mind that the very powerful have an interest in the existence of welfare (it presumably helps to prevent reigns of terror from upsetting the social order), but also have the interest and power to make sure that it is paid for by those less powerful. Including those who are so unpowerful that they actually need the benefits. Perhaps even people who wouldn't need the benefits if they didn't have to pay for them...
Re:Ethics versus Legality (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with that law is it is meant for people, it depend on people to be honest, not wanting extra money, not being able to be blackmailed or social engineered, not falling into common human bias like the ones shown in the Stanford prison experiment.
If people were honest, not greedy, and incapable of having any vices, and weren't stupid... there'd be no need for laws! The problem isn't the law, it's the people enforcing it. Think about the legal texts of old -- the Magna Carta. The Constitution. Hell, why not even throw in a few holy texts -- the Bible, Koran, etc. My point is a basic code of conduct took one book or less to draw the boundaries for most situations. Now, I don't want to discuss their relative merits, coz that'll take us to nasty flaming troll of doom land, it's just there to illustrate that the legal process doesn't have to be complex to be fairly complete.
This extra complexity is meant to blunt the minds of its critics and enable people to operate under color of authority to do things that many of us consider unethical or immoral. And that is the problem. The judicial process no longer has any feedback mechanism -- no way of saying "good" or "bad". Laws are written, but rarely repealed. They have no expiration date. So the system grows more and more complex, and people's ethics and morality slowly erode. Slow enough, anyway, that it's not obvious to anyone what's happening... at least until most of it has been lost.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
best laws leverage human failings (Score:3)
A Constitutional example is balance of power.
Congress critters are power hungry. So are presidents. So th
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just remember to take the blue pill
But please note that if you experience headache, upset stomach or heartburn, flushing, nasal congestion, dyspepsia, nasal congestion or impaired vision, including photophobia and blurred vision, you had better contact your physician immediately.
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Second, you have no idea what this information has been used for nor do you have any evidence of this data being used irresponsibly.
I feel that you should distrust the government by default.
Is it? I honestly doubt it.
Why do you doubt it? Has history's long line of abusive and tyrannical governments given you any reason to do so? I don't think so.
Personally, I have more faith in the integrity NSA employees than the marketing guys at Facebook or any number of other companies that collect my data and have a great incentive to monetize it.
Then you're naive. Government employees are nowhere near being perfect beings, so any trust in them is misplaced.
Challenge the Gag Order (Score:5, Interesting)
Most gag order statutes have been voided for being unconstitutional.
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What the NSA is actually doing is blatantly ignoring our bill of rights. These gag orders are not legal because they are not constitutional, regardless of what the NSA insists.
I would like them to see them -- and the court officials that go along with their little scheme, pay for their crimes against humanity (and yes, that's what it actually is). Hilarious that this organization has become the very monster it was created to destroy: a terrorist network.
Harder done than said (Score:5, Informative)
National Security Letters, which are similar, result in a lot of difficulty challenging the gag order without violating the gag order.
At the eff, they talk about national security letters. [eff.org] They have made some progress in challenging the gag orders, but this is years later. The recipient of this gag order would likely not have even been able to get it into court before they had already removed it 9 months later.
The OP was served with a FISA warrant, which is apparently more rare and somewhat different. I don't know much about these, but the eff has some info here [eff.org].
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What happens if one of those letters shows up on Wikileaks and it can't be traced back to the recipient?
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Don't agree to the gag order and expose the corrupt practises of the Government in the media. The terrorists won on September 11, 2001, although not in the way they planned
The terrorists won, but not the terrorists on the outside, the terrorists on the inside. They took advantage of the situation to put terror into people, and get them to agree to things they otherwise wouldn't have.
It's sad, but I'm more afraid of three letter agency agents than I am of Islamists with bombs. The worst the latter can do is kill me.
Re:Harder done than said (Score:5, Insightful)
The terrorists won on September 11, 2001, although not in the way they planned.
More like not in the specific way that they had hoped. IIRC they hoped to get the US military out of Saudi Arabia. But the sort of stuff in the news now is also the kind of thing they were hoping for [cnn.com]. A rather nice consolation prize. It is certainly a revenge of sorts. The entire country has been punished. Countless generations of Americans will be forced to live in an Orwellian dystopia. They could not have done it without help from our own politicians, but nevertheless it is undeniably a very real victory for Bin Laden's group. No honest person can continue to call the US free and there is no going back.
Re:Challenge the Gag Order (Score:5, Insightful)
Most gag order statutes have been voided for being unconstitutional.
Great, so all you have to do is go ahead and violate an order (publishing some single event that on its own is trivial), then watch the powers descend on you, take away all your stuff, and possibly lock you up as well. Then you can begin a 5-10 year court battle to get it all back, facing the risk of a long prison term the entire time. That battle will likely cause you to lose your job and waste away a good portion of your adult life.
But yes, in the end there is a decent (but far from certain) chance that you will win. If so, you won't even get an apology - they'll just let you return to life with little more than the clothes on your back so that you can start saving what little you can for your retirement.
Terminate contract instead? (Score:5, Interesting)
What if the contract had a clause that said services would be terminated with no notice and no explanation if we receive a lawful warrant to participate in monitoring said customer?
Sort of canary?
Re:Terminate contract instead? (Score:5, Interesting)
Contracts can't override a lawful order. My thought is that they might try to charge you with something, such as hindering an investigation.
Maybe have the contract say something like "You will be charged $0.01/month if we are required to install monitoring gear" and have it show up on their bill. :)
Re:Terminate contract instead? (Score:5, Interesting)
How would terminating a customer account violate a lawful order.
Fisa order for customer Joe arrives.
Joe's account immediately terminated.
Fisa replied to with no such account exists.
Joe calls up pissed. Receives Reply: read clause 24.65 of your contract.
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Re:Terminate contract instead? (Score:4, Informative)
Since the gag order is unconstitutional in the first place the feds would just let it go rather than risk a loss in court.
There are already companies that offer cloud storage that has customer side encryption that prevents them from honoring a nsa letter or a search warrant. So writing such a contract is not illegal. See SpiderOak.
Re:Terminate contract instead? (Score:4, Informative)
Those companies are not refusing to cooperate, and they are not circumventing the order. They deliver what they are asked to deliver; too bad that it's zero bits - and here is why...
But the proposed solution would be an obvious obstruction of justice, and any first minute law student can tell why - because you chose to terminate the service instead of following lawful instructions from the court. Hello, conspiracy charges.
Re:Terminate contract instead? (Score:4, Informative)
The founders went further than simply creating a supreme court to decide what the law is. That route was surely open to them. But they chose a different route. Why: Because the people would not accept the Constitution with out it:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
No possible subsequent law can get around that, and any judge who rules otherwise has violated his oath of office.
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The laws of the USA define many crimes where the offense is just words. For example, talking about a crime that co-conspirators are preparing. If you believe this is against the Constitution and against the will of people, please go ahead and impeach the entire government.
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Believe you me, if I had the power to do that last I'd have done so long ago.
Re:Terminate contract instead? (Score:4, Interesting)
There is no law authorizing a gag order that courts routinely hand out. They usurped the authority. They weren't prohibited. Only Congress was. They just took it upon themselves to invent that and declare it legal, and wont allow it to be found otherwise.
However with FISA laws, CONGRESS made a law authorizing the gag, and that makes it illegal. "Congress shall make no law".
Its a whole different ball game.
Re:Terminate contract instead? (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless you're willing to be the guinea pig who runs it through to the SCOTUS, it's perfectly 'legal' until SCOTUS says otherwise.
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Not to mention that if the FISA court issued an illegal gag order, I'm sure they won't have a problem illegally convicting you of violating said illegal gag order.
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Unless you're willing to be the guinea pig who runs it through to the SCOTUS, it's perfectly 'legal' until SCOTUS says otherwise.
This was precisely the sort of thing The Founders were afraid of. This is why there is a ninth amendment. I don't know how they could have made it any more clear that this is exactly how they did not want things to work.
Re:Terminate contract instead? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Terminate contract instead? (Score:4, Informative)
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The contract wouldn't be overriding the order. The ISP would dutifully provide the required monitor port to the discontinued service. The service having been discontinued in the normal course of fulfilling the signed contract.
Re:Terminate contract instead? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Terminate contract instead? (Score:5, Interesting)
Basic boiler plate for legit (actual judge, actual crimes etc) warrants have a clause to keep the service active. They pay all expenses and reasonable fee's with a very loose definition of reasonable (billing out a jr techs $35 a hour time as $400 an hour was considered fairly cheap). It can be rather annoying had a dedicated server under scrutiny they had setup encrypted VPS's on the box with a spammer on one VPS that the client refused to turn off. It got bad enough that our up streams were complaining and had to get a letter and a conf call with the FBI case agent to get things settled (they were exploiting a 3 way session, spoofing the outbound packets and relaying the reply packets over a vpn to bypass our outbound spam filtering effectively just using out clean IP's).
The specifics to this one look OK they had them host a server with a single connection to a span port for the web site in question. They only had access to what the provider sent them and would still have to break through any encryption. I've done similar for warrants on shared servers hundreds of times. Performing some digging related to servicing these I've found child porn etc hiding behind rather boring looking fronts.
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NSA equipment: rent space? charge for electricity? (Score:5, Informative)
You may be required to cooperate with their investigation, but space in a data center is not free, and the electricity certainly isn't, either. If they're taking what's yours, they should pay fair market value, and that includes space, power, cooling, and such.
Re:NSA equipment: rent space? charge for electrici (Score:5, Informative)
As is described in the article, they will happily pay that. However this particular ISP was against profiting in any way from monitoring their customer
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stand up (Score:3)
Re:stand up (Score:5, Insightful)
That could also be read as a widespread conspiracy involving multiple companies to coordinate to commit felonies. The problem is the American people, have until recently been strongly supportive of this nonsense. The companies can't stand up to it until they know for sure a jury will never convict and they can't know that yet.
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That could also be read as a widespread conspiracy involving multiple companies to coordinate to commit felonies.
No.
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What would the claims be in the law suit? The NSA has not broken any laws any using FISA warrants. It is the same as POTS companies having to cooperate with wire taps.
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One of the problems for the Big providers (Score:2)
is that the government is typically their single largest customer. Kind of tough to risk that much revenue.
Not defending the big providers, but admitting to reality.
Legitimate order or not . . . ? (Score:5, Interesting)
So, in TFA he said he was not allowed to make a copy of the order, but just take some notes about it. His attorney said it was legitimate . . . how?
I mean, you can't take a copy yourself to a secret court to ask them if they authorized it. You could call up a number that they give you, but what does that prove? And the whole damn thing is supposed to be secret, so that nobody knows nothing anyway.
Does anyone know how this works?
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US Constitution, Article. III. Section. 1.:
"The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish...."
Congress established the FISA court by law.
The FISA court isn't a secret court, it is a court that handles secrets. In either case it looks like Congress can create such courts as it see fit.
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You don't need a secret court and secret laws to keep wiretaps under a sealed order. It's done all the time in regular courts.
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So why wouldn't you complain about sealed orders? All you seem to be doing is kicking the can down the road.
Re:Legitimate order or not . . . ? (Score:5, Informative)
You do what they say, or else they come shoot you and plant drugs on your body.
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Does anyone know how this works?
Of course not, that's the point.
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If you don't get a copy what happens when, 5 years later, you get sued for doing an illegal wire tap ? The spooks will deny that they ever asked you to do it and will happily see you carry the can for their actions. I think that it has to be a case of: ''no copy, I can't comply -- take me to court''. Hopefully the court will give him an order that he can keep. I fear that they might just sling him into gitmo on the basis of a secret court order that he never attended the hearing.
So how come he's writing about it now? (Score:2)
I don't understand this article clearly. If he's not allowed to refer to it, why is he writing about it now? Did the gag order expire?
I see from the Guardian article that he ran for Senate in Utah, but lost to Orren Hatch. Too bad.
Secret laws enforced by secret courts (Score:5, Insightful)
He is absolutely right that we shouldn't have secret courts issuing secret laws. Temporary gag orders are fine but they should expire rapidly and then what happened be subject to public scrutiny. Faretta v. California talked about how many of our laws for trial procedure and rights in the constitution evolved from a reaction against the Star Chamber. The core idea of the Star Chamber was secrecy to deal with defendants who were too powerful to be tried openly for fear the the realm could not control the impact, and we have decided to replicate this in full.
Intelligence (Score:3, Insightful)
There is absolutely [a] need for secrecy when you are dealing with a criminal investigation. You don’t want to tip off criminals being monitored. But you can’t say, “You can never talk about this ever, for the rest of your life.”
The criminals may never know exactly how they were caught. Some of the tapped information may come out but the authorities may have enough other evidence derived from this tap not to reveal all their methods. The better criminals know how they are being monitored the better the criminals can avoid the monitoring.
As to being a benign web site, the actual site may have noting to do with the criminal activity. It may just be a transit point for communications between criminals and the authorities are after those communications.
As for the tap being on 9 months; there are criminal investigations that take years to gather enough information on enough people to take down an organization.
As for the Bill of Rights and the Fourth Amendment in particular;
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
By law A FISA warrant is a warrant and therefore the Amendment has not been violated. How exactly is the Fourth Amendment violated?
The FISA court should be a public court, and documents should be sealed for a set period of time, [to] let people audit the actions later.
I disagree. When one make public who and how someone else it being watched it it makes the suspects more difficult yo watch in the future. Maybe this investigation didn't gather enough for a conviction but the next one might. I may agree if the set period was 30 years or so but that is not what you seem to be talking about.
Re:Intelligence (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Intelligence (Score:4, Insightful)
That's NOT how the Constitution works. It GRANTS powers to government. Everything that is not given as a power in the Constitution is NOT a legitimate function of government. There is no power to make courts secret.
On the other hand the Constitution does NOT contain a list of all the rights of citizens. The 9th Amendment makes this quite clear. There are many rights NOT enumerated. Due process IS listed as a right.
How the hell can you have due process if a court and laws can be secret? The idea is preposterous.
Re:Intelligence (Score:4, Insightful)
Flying on an aircrift is a right. Or more to the point preventing people from flying on an aircraft is a right that the government does not possess. Or can you point out the part of the constitution that grants the government that right? You cannot because it doesn't exist and not just because aircraft didn't exist. Because they would have considered the idea of preventing people from traveling within the borders of their own country to be tyranny almost beyond their ability to imagine. To them it would have been like asking the government permission to breathe.
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The fourth amendment has specific requirements (probable cause, specificity about exactly what is to be searched) that the FISA 'warrants' dont typically appear to meet. The fourth amendment was written specifically to prohibit overbroad warrants - it ties the probable cause directly to a specification of what is to be seized, so that only things actually covered by the probable cause can be taken. That is fundamentally incompatible with the goverments 'grab everything' approach.
The bigger violation in rela
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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The great lesson about the fall of the Soviet Union is that the thugs will regain power over the people. Actually that was also the lesson of the Russian Revolution over the thuggish aristocracy and Czar.
They host cygwin distributions (Score:2)
I recognized them because I use them for my cygwin distribution mirror.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
What's in the box? (Score:5, Funny)
Hello, NSA?
Remember that box we put in our server room for you a couple of weeks back? Well last night, four heavily armed masked men broke into our facility and held our techs at gunpoint while they removed your box. When they left, all we heard was the sound of their helicopter. It was night, so we didn't see anything. I think they had Russian accents.
We would have filed a police report, except we are not supposed to discuss the details of you activities with anyone.
Does anyone else... (Score:3)
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"It wasn’t like a guns and ammo website." (Score:3, Insightful)
The subject of my comment is a direct quote from the website. I'm curious as to why the author believes a "guns and ammo" website would warrant this type of surveillance. It seems everywhere you look these days the left is looking to encroach on our rights as American citizens (the provider is based in Utah). The irony here is that the main point of the article seems to be that this type of surveillance is an invasion of someone's privacy and at least an inconvenience to the provider.
This is also a video you should watch about this (Score:3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eT2fQu50sMs [youtube.com]
http://events.ccc.de/congress/2010/Fahrplan/events/4263.en.html [events.ccc.de]
The importance of resisting Excessive Government Surveillance [27C3]
About "National Security Letters".
Reverse canary (Score:3)
The idea of explicitly stating that you aren't under a gag order has been addressed a few times, and I'm not sure it works - can you really not be forced to explicitly keep lying about it? After all, you'd have to lie in response to a direct question as well. Otherwise you could just tell your customers to regularly ask you about gag orders.
However, consider this: If you are not under a gag order, then it is not illegal to lie and say you are. (Except under oath.) Yet if you are under a gag order, saying you are would be illegal.
Thus, if you publically and untruthfully state (in messages or on your website) that you are under a gag order, then an actual gag order would force you to remove that statement. That removal then becomes the warning.
The gag order couldn't reasonably force you to tell people about it and not tell people about it.
Re:Xmission? (Score:5, Interesting)
Or they could say they were monitoring Maddox, when in reality, they were snooping on someone else, or just mooching server space to use in a distributed network they were running. You have no idea, and neither do most people working at the NSA, or the FISA court, etc, etc.
For all anyone knows, this "monitoring equipment" could have been hosting (and let me just go for the Godwin Gold here) a child porn darknet for a ring of senior paedophiles operating inside the NSA. And if anything went wrong, or was discovered, the NSA could ahve just pinned it all on XMission, Mr. Ashdown, and his attorneys. After all, there's no official record, all are gagged from revealing what they know, and the NSA would just lie about it.
And in case this seems hyperbolic: If the NSAs programs continue for long enough, this will happen. History is the definitive proof.
Re:Xmission? (Score:4, Informative)
Kinda hard to do any hosting if your only connection is a port mirror, you can watch, but you can't talk over said port.
Re: (Score:2)
Where exactly is 'outside US jurisdiction' now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ask Eric Snowden, I hear he has some experience with this very thing.
The ONLY reason Snowden is not a resident of GITMO, is the US can't invade Moscow Airport.
If he was in a less powerful country, like Panama, for example, he would already be in custody.
Times have changed somewhat, Butch Cassidy....Mexico, or Canada, are no longer safe havens to escape the US.
Re:Where exactly is 'outside US jurisdiction' now? (Score:4, Interesting)
When's the last time someone *saw* Snowden? I never thought he was in Moscow. I initially thought he sent a dummy west because he had to change planes in Taipei, Sydney, Tokyo or some other place that there was a good chance of the US seiznig him before he got there. But if he's on a plane going west, it'd be easier to "sneak" east. He swapped passports with a look-alike and was in South America before his Cuba plane departed. They are delaying the disclosure of this as long as possible to cover his tracks, and tracks of those who helped him.
Re: (Score:2)
Ask Eric Snowden, I hear he has some experience with this very thing.
Hate to be Mr. Obvious, but his name is Edward Snowden.
Re:Where exactly is 'outside US jurisdiction' now? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
More likely, "Go fuck yourself, eh?"
Re: (Score:3)
There are not stupid forced gag orders in Canada. If some government official asks to install unknown equipment on a private companies network, the company can effectively say "go fuck yourself", and the courts will back the company.
That's not to say it doesn't happen because of corruption and bribes and general shadiness with all the big ISPs, but it's not universal among companies, and no can force small ISPs to comply.
Fuck America is screwed up.
OTOH, at least the average American isn't under the delusion that this sort of shit doesn't happen in their country.
Re: (Score:2)
And then you're party to this nonsense. Maybe you can sleep with that on your conscience. I know I can't. Knowing I'd be putting my company at risk by not complying with the order (and thus all of my employees) would make it a hard decision. I suppose it's a good thing I'm not running the show, because I'd still stand up and be civilly disobedient.
Re:Trading Places (Score:5, Funny)
Dear AC.
You are being recruited by the intelligence services due to your deep insights into the Trayvon Martin case. You will provide us with assistance and your personal insights into the politics and evidence surrounding this incident.
However, for purposes of national security, we will be placing a gag order on all of your communications regarding this case. You will not be allowed to divulge the scope of your knowledge, or the content of our communications in any matter regarding Trayvon Martin or Barak Obama.
Thank you for your support in making this country a safer place.