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DOJ Announces New Methods For Reporting National Security Requests 117

As the NSA metadata collection scandal has developed, a number of technology and communications companies have fought to increase the transparency of the data collection process by publishing reports on how much data government agencies are asking them for. These transparency reports have been limited, however, because most government requests are entwined with a gag order. In a speech two weeks back, President Obama said this would change, and now the Dept. of Justice has announced new, slightly relaxed rules about what information companies can share. According to an email from the U.S. Deputy Attorney General (PDF) to the General Counsel of Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft, and Yahoo, the companies can publish: how many Criminal Process requests they received, how many National Security Letters they received, how many accounts were affected by NSLs, how many Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act orders were received (both for communications content and 'non-content'), and how many customers were targeted by FISA requests. The companies still aren't allowed to give specific numbers, but they can report them in bands of 1,000 — for example, 0-999, 1,000-1,999, etc. Information requests for old services cannot be disclosed for at least six months. The first information requests for a new service cannot be disclosed for two years. The companies also have the option of lumping all the NSL and FISA requests together — if they do that, they can report in bands of 250 instead of 1,000.
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DOJ Announces New Methods For Reporting National Security Requests

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  • by _gladius_ ( 410350 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @04:40PM (#46094149)

    This is to be expected. Instead of repealing the police state, they are normalizing it. Welcome to the new Normal.

    • by vikingpower ( 768921 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @04:46PM (#46094215) Homepage Journal
      Mod parent up. This is going on in several European countries, too ( UK, NL ). Congratulations, BTW, for inventing a new terminus technicus: the normalized police state. As much as I hate the thought, I can not but admire the term. Yes, that is what we are going to live in, for the next years.
      • by Jane Q. Public ( 1010737 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @05:24PM (#46094581)

        "Yes, that is what we are going to live in, for the next years."

        How pessimistic.

        But what I want to know is: where are these "changes to regulations" coming from? Are they orders directly from the President? Was Congress involved?

        Bureaucrats don't get to make national security laws. Just more evidence of Obama administration ignoring actual law, and doing whatever the hell it wants.

        • by NatasRevol ( 731260 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @05:30PM (#46094643) Journal

          Seriously?

          It's from the DOJ. Go see who they report to.

          • by Jane Q. Public ( 1010737 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @06:04PM (#46094987)

            "It's from the DOJ. Go see who they report to."

            That's not an answer.

            I didn't ask who was ultimately responsible (both Obama and Congress are culpable). I was asking who actually made the change to the regulations... or did they? Are they just ignoring regulations? Did they change regulations? Or are they just ignoring all the rules as they usually have in this administration? Or maybe they're ceasing to ignore the laws as they actually existed?

            This is all very ambiguous. And it should not be.

          • by Jane Q. Public ( 1010737 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @06:11PM (#46095063)
            The reason I wrote the above is because it has a real impact on our lives.

            Let's take Obamacare for an example, because it's a recent and good example. Congress passed, and Obama signed, some things into law.

            When events did not go as planned, Obama announced that they were going to ignore certain parts of the law. (Which, in fact, he has no legal authority to do.)

            But that means the law is still in place. If he can ignore it by degree at any time, then he can reinstate it by decree at any time.

            If the law isn't changed, but just some bureaucrat is deciding to ignore the regulations today, who is to say they won't stop ignoring it again tomorrow?

            Answer: nobody. And that's why it's important to know.

            This country is supposed to be subject to The Rule Of Law. It isn't run by "whatever the fuck I feel like doing today".
      • by lgw ( 121541 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @05:34PM (#46094693) Journal

        Well, we can certainly act according to whether politicians do anything about this. If none of them strike back at the NSA, then we're screwed, but if some of them take action we can at least reward them.

        Time has the text [time.com] of a resolution the RNC just passed, which calls for action by Republican legislators in very stark terms. The RNC is as "inside the beltway", disconnected from voters, and generally unconcerned with the sort of issues that make Slashdot as it's possible for a human to be, and yet even those buffoons are up in arms about this.

        This is just a call to action, not a bill, but the RNC is usually who the GOP listens to instead of the voters. I'll quote the whole thing below, but they outright call these programs unconstitutional and they call for them to end, with no mention of national security or terrorism. They're also using interesting language: calling for review in a public court, not a secret court.

        Let's see whether the DNC does something similar, and what congresscritters do as a result. I'd actually be surprised if there isn't at least a bill voted on to end these programs, which if voters actually care they could hold their local critter to accout for.

        Resolution to Renounce the National Security Agency's Surveillance Program

        WHEREAS, the secret surveillance program called PRISM targets, among other things, the surveillance of U.S. citizens on a vast scale and monitors searching habits of virtually every American on the internet;

        WHEREAS, this dragnet program is, as far as we know, the largest surveillance effort ever launched by a democratic government against its own citizens, consisting of the mass acquisition of Americans' call details encompassing all wireless and landline subscribers of the country's three largest phone companies;

        WHEREAS, every time an American citizen makes a phone call, the NSA gets a record of the location, the number called, the time of the call and the length of the conversation, all of which are an invasion into the personal lives of American citizens that violates the right of free speech and association afforded by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution;

        WHEREAS, the mass collection and retention of personal data is in itself contrary to the right of privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, which guarantees the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, that warrants shall issue only upon probable cause, and generally prevents the American government from issuing modern-day writs of assistance;

        WHEREAS, unwarranted government surveillance is an intrusion on basic human rights that threatens the very foundations of a democratic society and this program represents a gross infringement of the freedom of association and the right to privacy and goes far beyond even the permissive limits set by the Patriot Act; and

        WHEREAS, Republican House Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, an author of the Patriot Act and Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee at the time of Section 215's passage, called the Section 215 surveillance program "an abuse of that law," writing that, "based on the scope of the released order, both the administration and the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court are relying on an unbounded interpretation of the act that Congress never intended," therefore be it

        RESOLVED, the Republican National Committee encourages Republican lawmakers to enact legislation to amend Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, the state secrets privilege, and the FISA Amendments Act to make it clear that blanket surveillance of the Internet activity, phone records and correspondence -- electronic, physical, and otherwise -- of any person residing in the U.S. is prohibited by law and tha

      • This is going on in several European countries, too ( UK, NL ). Congratulations, BTW, for inventing a new terminus technicus: the normalized police state. As much as I hate the thought, I can not but admire the term. Yes, that is what we are going to live in, for the next years

        Communism rolled into the Eastern part of Europe after the fall of Hitler's Nazi regime. That was in the 1940's.

        Communism didn't fell until ***DECADES*** later, and they fell mainly because of fiduciary mismanagement (they ran out $$$).

        On the other hand, the Western part of Europe (and now almost engulfing the entire European continent) managed their money better than the communists, which means, whatever form of "system" they want to run, it'll sure run much longer.

        Now that the democratic Europe has morphed into " normalized police states ", I sincerely think that the police state will get to continue for at least 50 or 70 more years in Europe.

    • Sad, but true. It has a definite "slowly being boiled" feel to it. What would once have been beyond the pale is now supposed to make us feel happy, because it's better than what we had yesterday...

    • Instead of repealing the police state, they are normalizing it.

      *yawn* overhype much?

      If we lived in a police state - they wouldn't be allowed to talk about the requests at all. These things are despicable and incompatible with normal criminal procedure, but the hype and irrationality surround them helps no one.

      *Sigh* but the 'net's tendency towards shrillness. overhype, and irrationality has already 'normalized' these things.

    • by deconfliction ( 3458895 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @05:15PM (#46094507)

      I have found over the last 10 years or so, that it really helps my sanity to see them play these kinds of reindeer games. The thread that helped keep my sanity together thinking about the security vulnerability of all the closed source firmware I was using was this thought- "If my human society and government was anywhere near the sort of thing I could respect and depend on to protect my 'inalienable rights' those in high levels would be talking openly about how as a society we should be considering such potetential surveillance state styles". It was the fact that I was hearing in the public debate, only (not so) vague attempts from all directions to direct the conversation precisely *away* from that center. That is what kept me sane believing that the center really was there, and at the time, in darkness.

      Similarly, this summary, if accurate, is an example of the same thing. The hoops, and games they are willing to go through to try and 'normalize' this, after all that has been revealed in the last year- proves in my mind- exactly how bad things really must be.

      I may be crazy. That is how I've seen the world in the past 10 years.

    • by symbolic ( 11752 ) on Wednesday January 29, 2014 @12:38AM (#46097359)

      Are we really that completely helpless? All of this was perpetrated by, and maintained by *congress*. It can easily be fixed by congress. Little will change, however, if we do not step up and hold our elected representatives accountable, by first and foremost, ensuring that the *right* people are serving in office. And by "serving" I do not mean "self-serving," which seems to be standard fare these days.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @04:40PM (#46094151)

    We received somewhere between -978 and 22 requests.

  • by Thud457 ( 234763 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @04:42PM (#46094169) Homepage Journal
    sweet, sweet, meta-metadata!
  • by DickBreath ( 207180 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @04:43PM (#46094187) Homepage
    Keep the number of requests below 1000.

    Vastly expand the scope of each request.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @04:47PM (#46094229)

    You know... 0-999 is a band of 1000. But so is 1-1000. And 2-1001. And 3-1002. *taps nose* Seems like an obvious tactic that could be used to report the exact number.

  • by atari2600a ( 1892574 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @04:57PM (#46094325)
    It's really really REALLY sad that we have this mid-30s Germany censorship going on here in what can now best be described as a quasidemocracy. Isn't 1K chunks what they were doing before they got the OK from the govt? I wonder when the internet will succeed from the world government bodies & exist as its own sovereign state? Then the companies could apply for embassy status & be void of all this bullshit.
  • First amendment (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Hatta ( 162192 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @04:59PM (#46094345) Journal

    Any gag order at all is incompatible with the First Amendment's prohibition on infringement of free speech.

    • by noh8rz10 ( 2716597 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @05:32PM (#46094661)

      Supreme Court has always said that first amendment isn't absolute, in the face of extraordinary circumstances. fire in a crowded theater and all that. That's not just an expression, it was actually used by a justice in a Supreme Court ruling.

    • by bleckywelcky ( 518520 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @05:34PM (#46094703)

      This has baffled me. I know you can be held accountable for yelling fire in a crowded theater. But even then, the act of yelling fire in a crowded theater is not illegal itself. Just the deaths as a result of yelling fire can be attributed to the yeller.

      How the government can strictly deny someone from stating mere facts makes no sense. "Yes, I received a FISA subpoena today." Have gag orders been contested at any level of the judicial system?

      • by Adrian Lopez ( 2615 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @05:52PM (#46094877) Homepage

        This has baffled me. I know you can be held accountable for yelling fire in a crowded theater. But even then, the act of yelling fire in a crowded theater is not illegal itself. Just the deaths as a result of yelling fire can be attributed to the yeller.

        Anytime someone mentions fire in a crowded theater, I think of this:

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... [youtube.com]

        "Fire, fire, fire, fire. Now you’ve heard it. Not shouted in a crowded theatre, admittedly, as I seem now to have shouted it in the Hogwarts dining hall. But the point is made. Everyone knows the fatuous verdict of the greatly over-praised Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who, when asked for an actual example of when it would be proper to limit speech or define it as an action, gave that of shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre.

        It’s very often forgotten what he was doing in that case was sending to prison a group of Yiddish speaking socialists, whose literature was printed in a language most Americans couldn’t read, opposing Mr. Wilson’s participation in the First World War, and the dragging of the United States into that sanguinary conflict, which the Yiddish speaking socialists had fled from Russia to escape. In fact it could be just as plausible argued that the Yiddish speaking socialists who were jailed by the excellent and greatly over-praised Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes were the real fire fighters, were the ones shouting fire when there really was a fire in a very crowded theatre indeed."

        People offer it as an example of the limits of free speech, all the while completely unaware of the saying's origin.

        • by Sabriel ( 134364 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @09:02PM (#46096331)

          People offer it as an example of the limits of free speech, all the while completely unaware of the saying's origin.

          I suspect because people expect common sense sayings to have common sense origins. It is a good example after all - it's not the saying's fault that Holmes used it in Schenk outside of its proper scope (e.g. from Wikipedia, "Chafee argued in Free Speech in the United States that a better analogy in Schenk might be a man who stands in a theatre and warns the audience that there are not enough fire exits").

    • by SirGarlon ( 845873 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @05:41PM (#46094785)
      And the right to due process. It's hard to contest a demand for records when that demand is accompanied by a gag order.
  • by fallen1 ( 230220 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @05:00PM (#46094353) Homepage

    This is simply obfuscation through aggregation. All this is for is to make it SEEM like the DOJ is listening to the companies and the public outcry.

    Don't believe the hype. Don't believe the lies.
    Down this pathway, freedom dies.

    • by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @05:01PM (#46094363) Journal

      Freedom is already dead. This is what is simply the icing the on surveillance state's cake.

      • Re:Obfuscation (Score:4, Insightful)

        by DickBreath ( 207180 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @05:21PM (#46094551) Homepage
        Oh, I think we've only started down the road. We're not close to the end of the road yet.

        Yes, they can stop us for any reason. Detain us. Search our laptops and devices without a court order or oversight. There are huge constitution free zones. They can snoop into all private communications to the point where no two human beings can have a private conversation. We have to take our shoes off at the airport and submit to naked scans and patdowns. People like Aaron Swartz can be harassed to death over things that are minor crimes if they are even crimes at all. Rich people routinely get away with things that poor people go to jail for -- for years. Compare penalties for copyright infringement to penalties for murder or robbery. Police brutality is becoming more common. Filming the police from a distance without interfering is treated as a crime.

        How soon do you think it will be before they can search your home without a warrant? How soon before you have to show ID to travel within the US -- maybe even within a city? How long before anonymous cash disappears?

        I'm just asking. But if you think this is just the icing on the cake, I want to tell you that this is still the cake, and there is a lot more cake to come before we get to the icing.

        Those who fail to learn from history. Etc.
        • by Entropius ( 188861 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @06:05PM (#46094999)

          Filming the police from a distance without interfering is treated as a crime.

          SCOTUS has said, very explicitly, that this is legal.

          • by BlueStrat ( 756137 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @06:46PM (#46095407)

            Filming the police from a distance without interfering is treated as a crime.

            SCOTUS has said, very explicitly, that this is legal.

            That has not stopped LEOs from harassing & arresting citizens video recording them. YouTube is filled with videos of this still occurring widely with very little in the way of serious consequences for those LEOs, despite SCOTUS' ruling.

            Strat

          • by DickBreath ( 207180 ) on Wednesday January 29, 2014 @12:03PM (#46100317) Homepage
            Since when does what SCOTUS says, or the constitution says, or the written law says, matter to police who have determined that you are a person that needs to be physically assaulted?
        • by deconfliction ( 3458895 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @06:25PM (#46095217)

          Police brutality is becoming more common.

          Citation and clarification of statistic requested. I'm guessing the rate of Rodney King style common police brutality has been a fairly steady drop over my lifetime. At least from casual observation of mainstream news sources. I do suspect there is much underhanded 'brutality' going on that merely uses things like 'government blacklisting' (as mentioned in the Seeger news articles today). But as for club blows and kicks raining down on people, I feel like I see less of that in the news over the years, not more. So I worry that one comment, unless you bolster it, really works against the rest of everything you said.

        • by AssholeMcGee ( 2521806 ) on Wednesday January 29, 2014 @12:10AM (#46097249)

          As the NSA metadata collection scandal has developed, a number of technology and communications companies have fought to increase the transparency of the data collection process by publishing reports on how much data government agencies are asking them for.

          Right lets ignore the fact that companies are trying to save face after being exposed for intentional back doors and exploits in there hardware/software, and all the other "warning systems" that were ignored from the agencies hacking into systems.

          This shouldn't be about people protecting or feeling sorry for million/billion monopolies, but we should continue to include the possible fact they're in on it of there own freewill.

          These request letters, are more or less a disguise/decoy to what people should really be talking about. The government has had tremendous success in going after the little guys and getting them shut down, for refusing to co-operate, and the little guys have gone public over it. Large Companies kept quite over it, because they're part of it, not because they were being threatened, I'm getting a little annoyed with people using that argument when it comes to million/billion dollar companies that are contracted with government to provide infrastructure, and other services, that there victims.

          This should be a full on attack at everyone involved, the government surveillance of US citizens is decades old, but companies willfully participating to make it easy for them should be closely investigated, and publicized as much if not more then the stories over the NSA and other agencies doing something they have done for years.

          Transparency, for the NSA is going to do nothing when there are at least another 10 agencies that will continue where the NSA has been exposed, and companies will continue to aide those agencies until [or if] someone exposes there operations, then we will be right back at this very discussion yet again.

        • by s.petry ( 762400 ) on Wednesday January 29, 2014 @01:33AM (#46097533)

          How soon do you think it will be before they can search your home without a warrant?

          Katrina and the Boston Marathon bombing make it clear that this can happen and has happened, and they are trying to normalize it by not discussing it.

      • by noh8rz10 ( 2716597 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @05:32PM (#46094673)

        Mmm, cake... I could go for some of that right now!

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @05:02PM (#46094377)

    as the never ending perfect balance holycost burns higher. are imaginary semi-chosens expecting some kind of warnings? double digits will not help extreme unction does not work either the great hereafter is here now

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @05:06PM (#46094415)

    I.e.:
    "percentage of requests that we bet are bullshit"
    "number of man-hours wasted collecting the NSA's data"
    "estimated amount of force required to insert clue into requesting agent"

  • by s.petry ( 762400 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @05:06PM (#46094417)

    Nothing of value is being done, which reflects the politicians which are offering no valuable solutions. End the programs, end the corruption, and for pity sake end the careers of these corrupt politicians. The data collection and paid shilling are useless to the population. They have value to an entrenched group of people who use all available means (illegal and legal) to further entrench themselves.

    Claiming that FISA courts can't release any data is idiocy and completely against the spirit of the Constitution/Bill of Rights. John Doe could be redacted from the court documents so that we could see what is happening without assisting John Doe. If Company A may be a risk, Company A could also be redacted for the same purposes.

    Nobody should be surprised at this decision, Obama stated that nothing would change except for who is holding the data that is collected. The solution is to vote out every career politician and elect people of high moral character.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @05:18PM (#46094529)

      "Vote out?" Plurality voting leads to there being exactly two viable choices in any election. And the stable-state for a 2-choice election is one where the two candidates are very close ideologically. www.rangevoting.org has a great explanation of all of this.

      The only solution is to replace plurality voting itself with a better method.

    • by PrimaryConsult ( 1546585 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @05:29PM (#46094623)

      Nobody should be surprised at this decision, Obama stated that nothing would change except for who is holding the data that is collected. The solution is to vote out every career politician and elect people of high moral character.

      Except by default someone has to be a career politician to get anywhere. To get from "mayor of small town" to "US Senate" you need to win a series of progressively more aggressive elections (effectively making a career out of it). The best solution to this is to decentralize power to the point where the decisions made by people closer to the "mayor of a small town" level are more important in your day-to-day life than those made by "US Senator".

      Barring that, I think something crazy like this would work: randomly select 9 registered voters as candidates for each electable position (from the pool of people eligible to vote for that position). Fund their campaigns, and disallow anyone outside that pool from campaigning. Think of it as a political version of the draft or jury duty. As seemingly bad as this scheme sounds, I find it hard to imagine the end result being any worse than what we have right now.

      • by s.petry ( 762400 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @06:22PM (#46095179)

        Except by default someone has to be a career politician to get anywhere.

        Nope, they don't. You have been trained to have this belief, but that belief is nowhere near reality. Study Plato's "The Republic", the answer has been known for thousands of years (about 2,500 that we know of). This is why people are not taught this information, and in most College classes you will only study a few of the books.

        That out of the way, I agree with your statements about decentralizing power. This is how the US was founded, and we functioned for a short duration with these principles.

        The lottery method is not a better version of what Socrates laid out. It may seem good because it's simple, but simple is not necessarily better when it comes to Government.

        • by floobedy ( 3470583 ) on Wednesday January 29, 2014 @10:28AM (#46099571)

          Nope, they don't. You have been trained to have this belief, but that belief is nowhere near reality. Study Plato's "The Republic", the answer has been known for thousands of years (about 2,500 that we know of).

          What? I think you misunderstood something in the parent post. The parent poster was claiming that it's impossible (or at least very difficult) to win high elections, like US Senate elections, unless you are a career politician. He was making a claim about the current political system of the United States. Plato's "Republic" certainly does not contain any information about how difficult it is to obtain high office in the current US if you are not a career politician.

          You have been trained to have this belief,

          By whom? How would you know? Do you even know who the poster is? Were you present during his training?

          Such training certainly is not part of the standard educational curriculum in the US. In fact, young people in the US are trained to have the opposite belief.

          This is why people are not taught this information, and in most College classes you will only study a few of the books.

          You are making a statement about the motives of people who create college curricula. Are college professors all really part of the political agenda which you're implying (to suppress information in Plato's Republic)? What evidence do you have to support that?

          • by s.petry ( 762400 ) on Wednesday January 29, 2014 @11:16AM (#46099939)

            What? I think you misunderstood something in the parent post. The parent poster was claiming that it's impossible (or at least very difficult) to win high elections, like US Senate elections, unless you are a career politician. He was making a claim about the current political system of the United States. Plato's "Republic" certainly does not contain any information about how difficult it is to obtain high office in the current US if you are not a career politician.

            The US currently does things the right way and we only elect the best people for office? That is hardly true, perhaps one time long ago it was but not in the last 40 or so years at least (I can only attest to what I have been aware of). What the Republic spells out is that there can not be career politicians because human nature combined with this being allowed leads to corruption. No, it's not one sentence that states this but rather a concept laid out over several books.

            By whom? How would you know? Do you even know who the poster is? Were you present during his training?

            Propaganda does this, and has done this for decades. As an example, a single event in the past can prevent a person from holding an office, no matter how long ago it was. This is of course _if_ the entrenched don't want this person in office. In other cases, events are hidden and buried. The examples of this occurring are too many to count and very easy to find. Who in the media denounced Bush or the Republican party for the blackmailing of Ross Perot? The answer is nobody in media did any such thing, the issue was buried and no connection to Bush was ever attempted. This is one example of thousands where propaganda is used to tell you how a person in office is supposed to "be".

            There are thousands of other examples of manipulation in different ways. For example in order to become a US Citizen there are questions related to who can run for office, and what the two political parties in the US are. So yes, people are being educated to believe that you can only vote for one of these two parties. The rhetoric that has been spread around for 40 years again of "if you don't vote for one of the two parties you waste your vote" are also too common to count.

            No, there is no opposite belief that is taught in school either. Give me one class that is required nationally where young people learn about the concepts behind the US Constitution. Hell, even when I was young we had to memorize a few names out of the Bill of Rights, but we never had to understand where these came from or what they were about.

            You are making a statement about the motives of people who create college curricula. Are college professors all really part of the political agenda which you're implying (to suppress information in Plato's Republic)? What evidence do you have to support that?

            This is another easy target to find. There is no shortage of data regarding professors that were suspended and fired for teaching certain subjects and no shortage of data showing that the Government has restricted education and controlled learning. This is not new, it started back in the McCarthy era and continues today. Read various college Philosophy classes and count how many teach the full of Plato's Republic. You won't find many, if you find any at all. Show me any college that suggests students read the complete work and again you will come up short.

            That's not to state that the Republic should be required, though honestly I believe it should be to some extent. That is to say that people are pushed away from learning these works and any other works that people in power believe would endanger their position.

  • by Charliemopps ( 1157495 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @05:10PM (#46094455)

    They have the undersea cable tapped, all of Goolge/Facebook/yahoo's equipment hacked and therefor only need to issue an NSL when they are taking someone to court. So what's the point of this?

    • by redelm ( 54142 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @05:48PM (#46094835) Homepage

      Good point. The question is whether TLAs can backdate NSLs so their ill-gotten trove can be used as evidence and not just threat identification/blackmail. Since NSLs are supposed to be secret, how can a judge rule on the [in]admissibility of evidence? One might hope that failing some authorization (warrent, unsealed NSL? etc) an intercept would be ruled inadmissible.

  • by Bob9113 ( 14996 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @05:22PM (#46094557) Homepage

    According to an email from the U.S. Deputy Attorney General (PDF) to the General Counsel of Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft, and Yahoo, the companies can publish:

    Ahh, I feel so much better, now. The rich who monitor everything we do have convinced the powerful who monitor everything we do to disclose slightly more about their constant surveillance of us to We The People, sovereigns of this nation.

  • by jpschaaf ( 313847 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @05:31PM (#46094653)

    The government doesn't want any metadata surrounding their requests to be released to the public.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @05:32PM (#46094675)

    If they report each block separately in units of 1000, then report the total in groups of 250 units, then using subtractive reporting, also in units of 250, they could get us to with 250 for both sets independently without falling afoul of the rules.

    The fact that we as citizens even allow this to happen is beyond me.

    It's time for a simple grassroots movement to evict the current government entities and get people who stand up for us, not themselves in place.

    Wholesale clearing out of the incumbents, along with some long jail terms for those who committed acts of treason by violating the constitution.

    Tops on those lists, the entire House of Congress, Senate, President, Vice-President, Attorney General, NSA, FBI and CIA top officials, should all be serving time in prison right now for their cowardly acts of treason.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @05:37PM (#46094743)

    I bet stoners in Colorado will be lighting up to Obama's one-liners. :-D

    When Obama mentions 420, take a drag.

    When Obama mentions ACA, take two drags.

    When Obama mentions Marry Jane Legalization hit the "Hoover" switch and fill your lungs.

    When Obama mentions alcohol break out a bong and don't stop.

  • Can't say "none" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Jonathunder ( 105885 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @06:11PM (#46095055) Homepage

    I read the letter. The smallest "bands" that can be reported are zero through 250 for aggregate orders, or zero through 999 for more discrete types. In other words, the companies are not allowed to say there were none; instead they have to say between 0 and x.

  • by manu0601 ( 2221348 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2014 @10:43PM (#46096877)
    New rules may be nicer than the previous, but the whole concept of a secret justice remains a shame.
  • What could the terrorists (as if it's even remotely about them anymore) glean from the exact numbers that they couldn't deduce from rounded numbers? I.e. what state secret goes out the window if we knew 1024 NSLs were sent to Google rather than 1000-2000? This is what bugs me the most about petty pointless crap like this. They graciously are "allowing" us to know the rough numbers but give no justification for the added secrecy.

"So why don't you make like a tree, and get outta here." -- Biff in "Back to the Future"

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