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."
Time to appeal (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Time to appeal (Score:5, Funny)
I'm guessing the NSA had some juicy details about this judges private life. Guess we'll find out how many of the SCOTUS Justices have secrets they'd sell their souls to keep private.
It's sad that the people who should most value privacy will rule against it, but that's why pervasive spying is so corrosive - the power just builds and builds.
Re: Time to appeal (Score:2, Funny)
Re: Time to appeal (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: Time to appeal (Score:5, Informative)
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This basically shows the lie that parties perpetrate constantly -- the one that goes, "our guy isn't perfect but look at how batshit crazy the other guy is .. you can't let that person win!"
One of the reasons I only vote for third parties, and the absence of a third party candidate, for my cat. I vote a straigh
Re: Time to appeal (Score:4)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well I think the fact that the IRS did target political opponents of the administration is so obvious now that only the most steadfast supporters of the Obama administration deny it. The events leading to the death of the ambassador were largely an almost comic display of incompetence and stupidity and not the big conspiracy that the right makes it out to be. The lies they told were to try in a pathetic way to make it seem they were not absolute and total idiots. As for the NSA tracking every communicati
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Well I think the fact that the IRS did target political opponents of the administration is so obvious now that only the most steadfast supporters of the Obama administration deny it.
So which "political opponents" had their 501c4 application denied? That should be an easy question since it's "so obvious".
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They were approved. The only two groups that didn't get approved were Liberal groups.
Re: Time to appeal (Score:5, Interesting)
What a nice conspiracy theory you have there.
Unless you live in a monastary or a convent all your life, you have something to hide, whether it was cheating on a question on an exam, your neighbor hitting on you while your wife was passed out, something. Just read the FBI files on Martin Luther King Jr. And you think there isn't a damned thick dossier on all the Supremes? Hell, *I* have an FBI file simply because I was in the military and they investigated me for security clearance. I'm not rich, famous, or particularly influential, but that 40 year old file is still in the stacks.
Re: Time to appeal (Score:5, Informative)
What a nice conspiracy theory you have there.
COINTELPRO [wikipedia.org] is a conspiracy, but it's not just theoretical; TFS shows it's on its way to becoming Law.
Counter Intelligence Program does what? Discredit and silence "radical subversives" to control the socio-political space. It's not like that's something foreign to the NSA: Hey, let's use porn habits against the "radical" folks we don't like. [techcrunch.com] The civil rights movement was considered "radical". The privacy rights movement -- Eradication of government secrecy --is considered "radical" too. With secrets the people can never trust their governments to be performing in their best interest. A secret oversight committee just moves the problem around. With covert secret programs we can't even be sure they're telling the truth about 9/11 or the Iraq War -- We shouldn't have to wonder if it was only a threat narrative created to leverage the disaster and manufacture consent. [youtube.com]
Now, here's something interesting: Heart disease and accidents kill four hundred times more people than a 9/11 scale attack every year. [cdc.gov] The flu claims 6 times more lives than a 9/11 scale attack every year. Why isn't there a War on Cars and Cheeseburgers? Why are the DHS, NSA and other anti-terrorist programs consuming such huge amounts of resources when you're 4 times more likely to be struck by lightning? We could save more lives by mandating foam pads on rails and giving away free traction mats for bathtubs since falling down is a far more dangerous threat to American lives than terrorism. So, the government knows the terrorist threat is laughably inconsequential, yet the scaremongers' message of fear echoed all your mainstream news sources, policy maker statements, and judges opinions. Sounds like a fucking conspiracy to me.
It's silly to excuse malice as ignorance when the "professionals" who's job it is to quantify the terrorist threat are blatantly misrepresenting the threat. You're aware conspiracy is a real thing, right? I'm a rationalist, I attribute degrees of certainty and am never 100% sure of anything; Like any good scientist. It's far more likely the NSA and other agencies are carrying on the COINTELPRO tradition to keep the military industrial complex funded -- As Eisenhower warned us. [youtube.com] Than to believe that agencies tasked with counter intelligence are not doing so, and that everyone in the media, politics, congress, the executive and judicial branches, etc. just never took a look at the numbers.
The NSA and DHS should be eliminated. Lives do have a cost that is weighed against freedom and expense. Life is dangerous, and certain risks are acceptable: Thus we don't have a ban on Cars, Cheeseburgers, or Freedom Fries even though since 9/11 these claimed 4000 times more lives than 9/11. If anyone is scared of terrorists then they shouldn't be driving, dining out, or go anywhere without a lightning rod. If you really must fund the NSA, DHS, etc. then give them 1/6th what we spend to prevent the flu, that's the rational thing to do. Anything else in the name of protection reeks of deception for ulterior motives, i.e., Conspiracy.
Re:Time to appeal (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
Comment removed (Score:4, 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.
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It has been "leaked" several years earlier, by Russ Tice:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6m1XbWOfVk [youtube.com]
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With a trebuchet.
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Depends, often times it is more effective to throw very small light things....very quickly.
Afterall E = 1/2 mv^2 - better to double the velocity than the mass :)
State of Deception (Score:2)
Expected (Score:5, Interesting)
Were I in possession of the Snowden documents, I would simply wait and see how this plays out. If it simply goes back to "business as usual" for the NSA by being declared completely legal by our bought-and-paid-for judicial system, I would simply pull another juicy document or two out of the pile and add it to the growing pool of public knowledge. Wash, rinse and repeat until the government finally does the right thing ( or you run out of documents I suppose )
Either way, it's a win for privacy. ( We get a little bit of it back, or learn how much of it we've lost )
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Valuable how? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Facts don't matter when you're in the middle of a Kool Aid drinking frenzy....
Re:Valuable how? (Score:5, Insightful)
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The thing is because nothing happened, we can never tell if it worked and stopped a terrorist attack or didn't. We can only say nothing happened on X day.
In general this is true -- but in this case, it shouldn't be. This is a passive system that "works" when it connects dots and flags suspects. The fact that it has not done so for any potential or real terrorist threat shows that we can tell it didn't work -- considering there WERE plenty of potential and real terrorist threats that it DIDN'T flag up.
Of course, the system isn't designed to flag threats in the first place -- it's designed as a forensics tool, to clean up after a threat has been realized. A
Re: (Score:5, Interesting)
Take a look at the article. It isn't just that nothing happened, but they didn't even have any positive detections. And it only takes a little bit of knowledge of neural networks and statistics to understand that this kind of program is doomed from the very start: the signal these data collection systems are looking for is exceedingly tiny. There are at most dozens of actual terrorists seriously working on plans to attack somewhere in the US at any given moment, compared to a population of over 300 million. In order for the system to actually detect those terrorists, then, it needs to have a detection accuracy that is better than the ratio of the non-terrorists to the total population. Otherwise, most of the "detections" will actually be false detections that do nothing but mislead law enforcement and infringe on the rights of innocent citizens. If we assume 50 terrorists, that means the system would need a precision better than 99.99998%.
It's almost impossible for any learning model to have a precision that high. Learning models in general have this problem with what are called long-tail errors. If you want to know what these errors are, check out Google's or Apple's speech recognition software on a smartphone (you can also access Google's speech recognition on the web on any PC with a microphone). Most of the time, it's pretty good. But sometimes the mis-detections are so far off it's ludicrous. Why in the world would you ever trust a system that needs obscenely high precision to an algorithm that has such nasty errors?
To be fair, it is possible to reduce the needed precision by filtering out people in the population who are unlikely to be terrorists (e.g. children, the elderly, women), but it's just not possible to reduce it enough to make sifting through large pools of information worthwhile.
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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].
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Like the Boston bombers that were referred by the Russians, if I recall correctly?
if the team of 100 humans were following up real leads, instead of computer psudorandomly generated leads...
Useful vs Legal? (Score:5, Insightful)
How does if something is useful or not have any bearing on if it's legal or not?
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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 betwee
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The idea is that an overriding government concern ("compelling state interest") can allow for infringements on constitutional rights. If this is to be a compelling state interest, then the judge must believe it to be effective. If it's not effective, then it can't be a compelling interest.
expediency (Score:2)
Translation: (Score:5, Funny)
NSA has dirt on Judge William Pauley.
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NSA has dirt on all judges, unless there is one that is so clean that no dirt exists. Why do you think they do what they do?
Re:Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
To the judge and all who support his reasoning (Score:2)
You are the the idiot with the torch [youtube.com].
Seems to be going on about ends justifying means. (Score:5, Interesting)
TFA didn't appear to go into the matter of law - does the program violate the 4th or not, and why. The decision must have done so. It's little short of bizarre that a judge went on about matters not of law - how the program is valuable or a "counter punch" for 9/11 or whatever. Surely such talk is all about an end justifying a means. I'm not allowed to break the law just because I've got a valuable end in mind; the government, the same, one would think. If the end justified the means, then, heck , allow cops to search every house at will for evidence of child-molestation.
The NYT article [nytimes.com] says specifically that he ruled that the 4th does not apply to information given to 3rd parties. TFA notes that he went on about how we give info to 3rd parties all the time so that they can profit from them. What the heck voluntarily and openly giving over information to vendors in return for free services or whatever has to do with the government taking information non-voluntarily and without notification, he doesn't seem to have explained.
So one comes back to the "end justifies the means" parts of his comments. There seems to be capture of the 3rd-branch "regulator" here: he believes the program is saving lives, or something, whereas the judge two weeks ago noted that he was cleared for all possible secrets, yet was shown no cases where they'd averted a crime that would otherwise have occurred. So much for the "54" terrorist plots averted.
Re:Seems to be going on about ends justifying mean (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is the third party doctrine which holds that voluntary disclosing information to 3rd parties removes any expectation of privacy.
That works more or less pre-digital age. However the idea that disclosing all of this information now is voluntary is ridiculous. You would have to live like Thoreau did in his shack on Walden Pond to avoid this.
There needs to be legislation or even better an amendment to fix this.
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Well, perhaps it would be a good idea to read the actual opinion [sbnation.com] then?
First off, the stuff they quoted in the summary was mostly from the intro paragraph. Not going in the details of the matter of law in an intro is no huge deal.
I did notice a bit further in as the decision went more into the pre-911 intelligence a bit of a historical error. The official 911 report actually showed that there was intelligence flagging the terrorists. As one example, one of the local FBI field offices flagged the fact tha
What a Stream of Horseshit (Score:4)
[assuming the summary is accurate] each of the main points can be easily shown to be factually incorrect and logically incoherent. We've done this a thousand times here, so it's not useful to do it again.
What people should realize here is that the "Justice" system is in place to, primarily, protect the power structure. If you're still accepting that "justice is blind" and "rule of Law" fairy tale they taught in government schools, it's time to wake up and smell the tyranny.
Just watch - when it gets there SCOTUS will put a very mild restraint on the NSA to placate the masses and give cover to the politicos and leave the majority of the programs in place. Note that making such a prediction does not depend on interpretation of The Law - The Law will be be bent to achieve the per-ordained outcome.
When that happens, you'll have to decide if you're going to do anything substantive about it. Now's the time to think about what that might (or might not) be.
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Hey, justice is blind!
Why do think they have a scale? The side who puts the most money on the scale wins! The judge could not care less what the person looks like, or even it is "person".
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Hey, justice is blind!
Why do think they have a scale? The side who puts the most money on the scale wins! The judge could not care less what the person looks like, or even it is "person".
FYI: contrary to popular belief, rants tacitly alluding to the Citizens United ruling are *not* relevant when discussing all possible judicial decisions.
This particular case is a perfect example of a scenario where it is irrelevant.
So by his ruling... (Score:4, Insightful)
Authorities should just send speeding tickets to all drivers, since we all do it?
The good old... (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone all that surprised? (Score:2)
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.)
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The expression is "sold down the river". "Sold up the river" would be relatively good (given that you are a slave anyway). Conditions further south were worse for slaves.
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.
Judge William Pauley (Score:4)
Is a threat to the Constitution. And should be removed from his post.
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No, he is a threat to our very way of life and our prosperity. He should be executed for high treason.
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No, he is a threat to our very way of life and our prosperity. He should be executed for high treason.
"High treason" is overkill. In this country, we have a firm definition of that term. Go look it up.
In unrelated news (Score:2)
Magic rocks (Score:2)
Take your pants down while a cast a spell to protect you from tigers.
Next time, take off your underwear also, this way the spell can effect you better.
This time, for the spell to work, I have to touch you down there.
Pretty soon, your fucked either way, but at least it's not ERMAGHERD TIGERS.
Legal != Constitutional (Score:3)
Do they have a choice? (Score:2)
Fuck your dots, Pauley (Score:3)
How bizarre (Score:3)
Are you telling me that the US government has decided that that US government is indeed allowed to do anything it wants with regards to total surveillance on every living person in the world without any actual cause? I didn't see that one coming at all.
Seriously, if anyone, even for one second thought that checks and balances existed with it comes to the government grabbing power for it self, you are out of your F'ing mind.
Historically, there is only one way to curb the power of an out of control ruling class. That, however, is something most people won't have the stomach for until things get far worse.
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.
I can stop terrorism right now... (Score:3)
Nuke the crap out of the middle east.
I mean, hey, the end justifies the means, right? And it would be cheaper and more expedient than spying on the whole world waiting for a bit of data to connect to another bit of data that proves (and stops) nothing.
And really, we wouldn't be violating the rights of anyone any more than we are now. Right now we selectively target people we 'think' are terrorists and drone strike them. Whether they are or not is irrelevant and they can't have their day in court because we blew them up (and anyone else around them). So, what's the difference between that and just simply killing every muslim?
And hey, let's start with Saudi Arabia if you're going to quote 9/11. Plus we get free oil if you don't mind it slightly radioactive.
So how is my idea any different? In fact, my idea is better because you aren't affecting Americans, right? And only Americans "count" in this world.
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!
NSA's entire program is useless (Score:3)
It's a WASTE of taxpayer money. America was just hit with a terrorist attack and the NSA has done nothing. 40 Million Credit and Debit cards were stolen from "Target". And you don't think that's economic terrorism??
And the good 'ol NSA has no leads, and no clue on how to solve this, despite having access to everything. The Boston Bombers? They had to set up a warehouse full of FBI agents looking at 7-11 surveillance tapes to find those guys. Facial recognition software did nothing.
The USA will be attacked again and again, and the NSA will continue to sit on its hands doing nothing. Why should they ever do anything after all? They keep getting unlimited money to do what they want in the "war on terror", but when the time comes to do something, they mysteriously won't be able to do squat.
I have a feeling a lot of your taxpayer money is going up someone's nose. Any data out there on what the head honchos at the NSA get paid? I bet their lifestyle exceeds their income, and they aren't even trying to hide it, and it will come out, it may take 20 years, but it will come out that half the money going into the NSA is being spent on hookers and blow.
Logical Fallacies (Score:5, Interesting)
Which logical fallacies apply to this?
False Cause [yourlogicalfallacyis.com] - They perceive that 911 happened because we didn't have enough info so their solution is to collect "ALL THE INFO".
Appeal to Emotion [yourlogicalfallacyis.com] - You don't want another terrorist attack, now do you?
Black or White [yourlogicalfallacyis.com] - Either we collect all of the information on everyone or the terrorists win. Whose side are you on?
Additionally, courts have used Burden of Proof [yourlogicalfallacyis.com] before. Want to prove this is illegal? Well, first you need to have been negatively impacted by this uber-secret program. Since it's an uber-secret program, you aren't allowed evidence that they spied on you. Since you have no evidence, you can't prove anything. Lawsuit tossed out. Next!
Finally, I propose a new Logical Fallacy - the More Information Fallacy. This one presumes that we'd be able to do X if only we had more information or less roadblocks to obtaining information. This is true in a sense. The police could arrest a lot more people if they didn't need to worry about so many rules about evidence. Do you know how many criminals would be behind bars if they didn't get off on a technicality? However, the flip side to this is lowered rules lead to corruption and abuse. Lower rules on evidence handling and you can have cases where evidence is planted or tampered with and innocent people get convicted.
In the case of the NSA, they think that "more information" will help them spot terrorists. In an ideal situation (for them, not us), knowing everything about everyone *would* let them spot and stop terrorist attacks. However 1) this would lead to abuse and mission creep to the point that the program would be used for non-terrorism related crimes or for attacking people the NSA didn't like and 2) the NSA would never be able to parse through that much data in the real world. So the claims that "more information will stop attacks" are just plain false.
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And they are doing it wrong in an effort to prop up the government spying. Traditionally privacy is held to the strict scrutiny standard, and that means the government is supposed to prove its actions aren't unconstitutional (as opposed to the plaintiff proving it is).
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I propose the Smoother Operations Fallacy.
That is. The argument is not about surveillance per se, but rather about any action that can be taken to make it easier for law enforcement to act.
I have seen this a lot in the swedish surveillance debate. The argument is that we should spy on the people, because this makes it easier for the cops to catch bad guys.
(which is inherently problematic, because taken to its logical extreme it means the police should be allowed to do ANYTHING, as that'd be the optimal way
Re:And now where does this go? (Score:4, Insightful)
You heard it here first: Fourth Amendment defeated 5-4.
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.
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.
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: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: 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.
Re: Unconstitutional (Score:5, Interesting)
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You are making assumptions that their purposes are what they claim they are. It's quite possible to presume that they lied about what their purposes are, and that they have quite successfully executed plans that succeed in achieving those purposes. They may well not be the incompetent criminals they pretend to be, but instead be rather competent ones.
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:And now where does this go? (Score:5, Informative)
Thankfully, at least one Supreme Court Justice seems to disagree, because it isn't like people have an actual choice in the matter -- either you live in some manifesto shack in the middle of nowhere, or you participate in modern society by having a phone, a bank account, a doctor, etc. Anyway, this is what Justice Sotomayer had to say about this topic in the Recent Jones v. US case:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/10-1259#writing-10-1259_CONCUR_4 [cornell.edu]
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Uhhh, you screwed up the slashdot car analogy -- this one makes sense, it isn't supposed to do that.
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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.
Welcome to the invented concept of "Standing". This is the current tool that is used to prevent Constitutional challenges to this law: you're not hurt, so why should we care? And you can't prove you're hurt, go home and pound sand.
The Supreme Court is doing everything it can to NOT decide the Constitutional questions, and is inventing law to make sure it never has to.
Re:And now where does this go? (Score:5, Insightful)
The fourth amendment has been dead since civil forfeiture became common.
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Civil forfeiture is an abomination. But most people don't really care. They just see it as free money for the heroic police which helps keep their taxes low.
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It's really pretty depressing how credulous people are when it comes to "don't worry, this is only applied to BAD people, and we need it to stop those bad people doing evil things." But that's not just in the case of asset forfeiture. You could just as easily substitute "horrifically militaristic raids that lead to civilian fatalities" or mass surveillance or extraordinary rendition or whatever. Few people really seem to care. You get a lot of, "yes, but..."s. At least I do. From pretty smart people, too.
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The fourth amendment has been dead since civil forfeiture became common.
Not dead, but badly bruised and put on the cart.
That really needs to be fixed, now.
Federal Case Could Make It Easier For Victims To Defend Themselves Against Civil Forfeiture [forbes.com]
Pennsylvania judge calls civil asset forfeiture “state-sanctioned theft” [ij.org]
IJ Scores Major Federal Court Victory In Massachusetts Civil Forfeiture Case [ij.org]
The Rise of Asset Forfeiture Abuse [volokh.com]
Bill Would Prohibit Asset Forfeiture In Michigan Without Criminal Conviction [michiganca...ential.com] - State has been ground zero for money and property seizures
Unless
Re:Dear NSA, (Score:5, Insightful)
What makes you think the real mission of the NSA is to track terrorists?
Re:Dear NSA, (Score:5, Insightful)
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You apparently have not heard about J. Edgar Hoover, nor his not so subtle methods of manipulating various congresspeople.
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What makes you think the real mission of the NSA is to track terrorists?
The real mission of the NSA is signal intelligence. I think it is safe to assume that the primary target for that intelligence collection effort is going to be the nuclear armed nations that directly threaten the US or its allies - often by explicit statements or military actions*, along with various rogue nations (Iran, North Korea) that threaten the US, US allies, free trade routes, or strategic resources. Lower tier threats and concerns are going to be things like diplomatic issues, terrorism, internat
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.
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The places the NSA would need cooperation are the commonly-utilised SSL-accessed services, primarily Facebook and Google mail/docs. Can't just fiber-tap those, and even if you could it'd be a nightmare trying to reconstruct things from taps alone. Having access to their databases would make utilising the information a lot easier.
Google has implemented Perfect Forward Secrecy (via ECDHE) since 2011 [theregister.co.uk] for clients which support it. You can test sites yourself with the Qualsys tool [ssllabs.com], look for 'FS' in the cipher list.
The widespread use of PFS will mitigate a purely human vulnerability: a distinct possibility that a some few humans in each of these major providers could be secretly supplying NSA with the operational SSL private keys that are used for HTTPS/SMTPTLS/SPOP/SIMAP.
Without PFS, imagine someone working IT at a bank exchanging a ti
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Excuse me, but FUCK YOU.
The ends do not always justify the means. If something is illegal for government to do, it is illegal for government to do, even if they really really pretty please with a cherry on top want to, and even if the outcome might be positive sometimes. It's still illegal.
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.
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.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:True Terrorism (Score:5, Informative)
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.