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Government The Courts

Judge Denies Administration Request To Delay ACLU Metadata Lawsuit 107

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the let-the-battle-begin dept.
sl4shd0rk writes "Federal Judge William Pauley has dismissed an Obama Administration request to delay a hearing on Verizon/NSA data sifting. The ACLU has argued that the sifting is not authorized by statute and even if it were it would still be unconstitutional. The Obama Administration requested the delay on the grounds it needed more time to search through its classified material to determine what was suitable for disclosure." See also the case docket. Motions must be filed by August 26th, and oral arguments begin on November 1st.
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Judge Denies Administration Request To Delay ACLU Metadata Lawsuit More

Judge Denies Administration Request To Delay ACLU Metadata Lawsuit

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  • Well that's it then. (Score:5, Funny)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) on Friday July 26, 2013 @02:55PM (#44393479) Homepage Journal

    In hot water for all that monitoring of my veeblefetzers, potrzebies and axolotls.

    It's a great day for antidisestablishmentarianism and neoanarchalsocialrepublicanists.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by zzottt ( 629458 )
      wow those are big words, at first I thought you just put up some techno-babble but its not and for that I salute you sir!

    • In hot water for all that monitoring of my veeblefetzers, potrzebies and axolotls.

      It's a great day for antidisestablishmentarianism and neoanarchalsocialrepublicanists.

      Okay, I was aware of "axolotl", but veeblefetzers [wikipedia.org] and potrzebies [wikipedia.org] surprised me. Wikipedia pages and all!

      You can even ask google to convert "1 potrzebie" to metric [google.com].

      +1 internets to you, sir!

      (This is going into my WTF? that's real? list, alongside "Legends of Nascar" commemorative plates [ebay.com].)

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by ackthpt ( 218170 )

        In hot water for all that monitoring of my veeblefetzers, potrzebies and axolotls.

        It's a great day for antidisestablishmentarianism and neoanarchalsocialrepublicanists.

        Okay, I was aware of "axolotl", but veeblefetzers [wikipedia.org] and potrzebies [wikipedia.org] surprised me. Wikipedia pages and all!

        You can even ask google to convert "1 potrzebie" to metric [google.com].

        +1 internets to you, sir!

        (This is going into my WTF? that's real? list, alongside "Legends of Nascar" commemorative plates [ebay.com].)

        Both Donald Knuth and I are massive fans of the old Mad Magazine. This seems to be a Potrzebie Friday, if ever there was one. I'm building an inventory system and test data are Veeblefetzers, Potrzebies and Axolotls. For further research I may have to fish out my copy of Gasoline Valley.

        This is all rather off-topic, but the spirit of the OP was to obfuscate in event anyone is (ha!) monitoring us.

    • Care to join my 43-man Squamish team? We're short an Overblat.

  • Good job, your honor! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by intermodal ( 534361 ) on Friday July 26, 2013 @02:55PM (#44393481) Homepage Journal

    Now if we could just get the wheels of justice to turn quicker on this one. Every day this is delayed is potentially one more day before this nonsense is put to an end.

    Though realistically, the NSA will keep doing it and just try harder to hide it. It's quite clear they operate outside of any actual level of control.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 )

      Now if we could just get the wheels of justice to turn quicker on this one. Every day this is delayed is potentially one more day before this nonsense is put to an end.

      Though realistically, the NSA will keep doing it and just try harder to hide it. It's quite clear they operate outside of any actual level of control.

      They're probably already surfing the US Constitution, Bill 'o Rights and Magna Cum Arta for a loop de loop they can fly the next monitoring thing through. And both parties may wring their hands and wibble in public, but behind the closed doors they're all in bed together, watching us on their big screen TV and avin' a larf.

      • Re:Good job, your honor! (Score:5, Informative)

        by intermodal ( 534361 ) on Friday July 26, 2013 @03:31PM (#44393823) Homepage Journal

        The Administration and NSA didn't care about the constitution before Snowden, they're not going to start now.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by spire3661 ( 1038968 )
          Thats what the 2nd is for.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            Thats what the 2nd is for.

            Drones incoming in ... 3 ... 2 ... 1

            Oh, how cute. You thought that you'd be backed up by defecting members of the armed forces who put their country's ideals ahead of their military oaths. So far we've seen what, 6 of them?

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Mashiki ( 184564 )

              Oh, how cute. You thought that you'd be backed up by defecting members of the armed forces who put their country's ideals ahead of their military oaths.

              Oh look, a /. AC who knows less about military oaths than a foreigner does. How sad, bet you don't know that the oathkeepers are exceptionally wide-spread in the US military as well.

          • Wait, you mean it's not so we can go hunting?

            • No, the second amendment does not secure your right to hunt ducks or deer.

              It does secure your right to hunt congressmen should there be an open season for them.

              • Minor verbiage nitpick here. It's not a "right" to hunt them which this protects. It's the right to properly equip yourself to do so in case it becomes necessary. You're absolutely right about that reason though in spirit.

              • No, the second amendment does not secure your right to hunt ducks or deer.

                It does secure your right to hunt congressmen should there be an open season for them.

                I think the 2A should secure a perimeter around the Capitol Visitor Center long enough for a few dozen cement trucks to dump their cement down the secret elevator and ventilation shafts going down to the classified FISA court facilities located under the Capitol Visitor Center and persist until the bubbles stop. Rinse & repeat for NSA domestic data storage facilities.

                Publicly posting all available personal data of judges and their families that serve on the FISA court might also serve to reverse this ST

                • Re: (Score:3)

                  by Proteus ( 1926 )

                  Publicly posting all available personal data of judges and their families that serve on the FISA court might also serve to reverse this STASI-like system of secret courts and secret laws.

                  If only that would work. Unfortunately, when you show people in power that they're vulnerable too, they don't see the light and act for change -- they double-down. They decide that such acts are evidence that they need even more power.

  • It takes time and diligence (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    to weave a web of lies that can't be demolished beyond reasonable doubt in the time frame of a court case.

    Of course, it becomes easier when you can claim secrecy whenever the questions run close to a hole in the fabrication.

  • Pray to FSM (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ThatsNotPudding ( 1045640 ) on Friday July 26, 2013 @03:06PM (#44393593)
    Let's all pray to the FSM for this judges' health, lest he come down with a terminal case of Hastings.

  • it's (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Should be "its" rather than "it's" in the summary.

  • The Constitution is clear on this (Score:5, Informative)

    by WCMI92 ( 592436 ) on Friday July 26, 2013 @03:12PM (#44393639) Homepage

    Government has to get a warrant in an OPEN COURT. It has to describe SPECIFICALLY the person or things to be searched and seized. Government has no rights, the People have ALL rights. Government has no more authority to collect everyone's e-mails than it does to send a black van down each street, pull the mail from everyone's mailbox and photocopy it...

    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.

    I don't see any "Because TERRORISTS!", or "Because Someone doesn't like Obama" exceptions in there, do you?

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday July 26, 2013 @03:22PM (#44393735)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:The Constitution is clear on this (Score:5, Insightful)

        by WCMI92 ( 592436 ) on Friday July 26, 2013 @03:37PM (#44393895) Homepage

        Unfortunately, judges who will enforce the constitution are few and far between. Every sitting member of the supreme court has already failed to do so on multiple occasions.

        It's way past time for Americans to stop allowing judges to have the kind of absolute power they have right now. It's also way past time for Americans to accept by default orders handed down by government in general.

        The Federal Government doesn't have rights. It has enumerated POWERS. The Constitution is written as such that they have those powers (plus extra ones amended in) and no more. If we want to put a stop to what the NSA and this unlawful Regime in DC are doing to us we need to INSIST that the government restrict itself to those enumerated powers.

        • You mean, to police the border? Because, in case you don't know it, this is the only power that the federal government is empowered to have. And a few more but only in case of war.....Ahhhh now i see, why USA is always in war (here i wakeup from the matrix, and the drones come and purge my memory)...
          What did you say? Something about Niki Minaj? Yeee, i like her....vista :D
    • I think there is a mechanism to allow Government to do this. Doesn't Martial Law need to be declared or something? Constitutional rights can be ignored in the case of National Emergency but Obama, or maybe it's the Congress, has to authorise it in that context...I think... Any constitutional scholars out there who can confirm this?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Arker ( 91948 )

        There is no provision in the US Constitution for Martial Law - a most inconvenient fact for those who wish to wield that power. As a result, they have traditionally taken to citing I:9, which does permit Congress to suspend Habeas Corpus in case of "rebellion or invasion." Since suspending Habeas Corpus and imposing Martial Law are kind of related it has been cited in this context.

        The only case law on it I can recall is ex Parte Milligan, where the Supreme Court rationalised a power to declare martial law,

        • Yeah, my memory of Martial Law was from High School History/U.S. Gov. classes...I think the teacher discussed it in the context of Lincoln, during the Civil War. but High School was a very long time ago, and memory ain't what it used to be.....

    • "Because Someone doesn't like Obama" isn't the exception that the executive branch wants. The exception is "Because Someone Opposes or Embarrasses the FBI, CIA, DoD, and/or NSA".

      It's easy to find people who absolutely hate Obama who the government has left alone. For example, there is nobody searching the world trying to capture Glenn Beck or Alex Jones.

      By contrast, look at what the US is willing to do to get Edward Snowden: Violate Bolivia's sovereignty, and threaten trade sanctions against several countri

  • To be fair, I'm not sure this federal judge could have made any other ruling, knowing as he does that there is a secret court, with members chosen in secret by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and who do not have to face congressional approval, and that this secret court, which meets in secret in a $2.5billion dollar complex built UNDER the "visitor's center" in Washington DC, and whose power supersedes that of the actual Supreme Court, or Congress, or the President, and that that secret super-Court c

  • If it ends up being the case that what they are doing is unconstitutional and illegal they don't deserve the right to keep it classified as it is engaging in illegal activity. Tired of reading the headlines daily and seeing stuff going on that if the average citizen took part in would land them in prison the rest of their days. Still to be determined if that is the case however but it seems pretty obvious.
  • Does anyone know who owns Verizon?

    Does anyone know who owns AT&T?

    Does anyone know if the same entity owns Verizon and AT&T?

    • They are both majority-owned (like most big corporations) by "mutual fund & institutional investors", which is another way of saying "Wall Street". Since many of the big Wall Street banks and brokerages are *also* owned by the same funds and institutions, effectively they form one entity with a single purpose: profit at any cost.

  • Thanks man. (Score:3)

    by WOOFYGOOFY ( 1334993 ) on Friday July 26, 2013 @10:52PM (#44396899)

    Thanks judge person. America owes you a solid.

    It is not cool that the Obama administration seeks to NOT have this conversation in public and with the public. This is a completely necessary conversation to have so we can all come to an agreement through the ancient device shared of understanding , which is pretty much the way free societies are held together .

    It bothers me that a scholar of the Constitution , a highly intelligent guy and someone who additionally had the advantage of access to the best university, the best professors, the best curricula in the most developed nation at the most enlightened time in history doesn't get this and act upon it.

    I understood when Bush was in office because what do you expect from an alcoholic guy who basically fell upwards his entire life and arrived at what age 50? with such poorly developed acumen of other people's character that he selected a sociopath for VP.

    But with Obama it's clearly a case of to whom much is given, much is expected and he's failing by that measure far worse than Bush.

    Where does that leave us in terms of hope for the future? It seems like these guys get into office and the financial gurus/charlatans like Greenspan and the operators in the establishment organizations like the CIA and the NSA are more than a match for them in terms of overwhelming them with specialized knowledge in domains the President is basically ignorant of. They have such a well developed - if inaccurate- POV that the President can't counter it and is basically led to say "OK, whatever you specialist think is best....". What else are you going to say when very large and complex systems you only have a layman's understanding of like the world economy or the details of national security are going to blow the fuck up if you decide wrongly?

    Kennedy was the last President to call bullshit on this kind of coup via ready-made vision. It's up to the President to have at the ready , should he /she be elected, people whose broad judgement he or she trusts. El Prez needs to have selected these people either through reading their published works or through personal acquaintance or some other long running process going into the office. I am saying that as soon as they conceive of the idea of being El Prez in their imagination at age 25 or whatever, this should be a major preoccupation for them from that point forward.

    What seems to happen is they look to people in government for advice at something like the last minute, as if their victory took them completely by surprise and they've got to do some hiring ! That just leads to insiders recommending insiders in what amounts to, as far as we or anyone else including the President knows, the latest iteration in a long played game of you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.

    You cant' know everything; you have to outsource some part of your judgement, or at least you have to outsource some part of your bullshit detection subsystem.

    Hard believe the transformation of Obama's POV since he's gotten into office. I guess it takes a Clinton-like character, someone who's *down*, or a Kennedy, someone who's not intimidated by the office , someone who either through self assurance or arrogance or hopefully properly placed faith in the rightness of her perceptions or what have you to be able to resist the Ready-Made Interpretation of Everything that's lying in wait for you like a cougar, the second you sit your ass down in the Oval Office.

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