US Appeals Court Says NSA Phone Surveillance Is Not Authorized By Congress 237
New submitter IronOxen writes: A panel of three federal judges for the second circuit overturned an earlier ruling. The court has ruled that the bulk collection of telephone metadata is unlawful, in a landmark decision that clears the way for a full legal challenge against the National Security Agency: "'We hold that the text of section 215 cannot bear the weight the government asks us to assign to it, and that it does not authorize the telephone metadata program,' concluded their judgement." That's not exactly saying that such bulk collection is unconscionable or per se unconstitutional, but it's a major step toward respecting privacy as a default.
Not authorized is worse than unconstional. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not authorized is worse than unconstional. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, not authorized is a lighter ruling. It means tomorrow congress can pass a law explicitly allowing it, and there would be no problem cuz it wasn't ruled unconstitutional.
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for congress ... behavior of the nsa ...
The whole thing is silly because it's re-directing the focus to a tiny subset of some archaic historical communication system (phone call metadata).
It's like saying that they shouldn't get to make maps of smoke signal fire pit locations.
This is all just to distract people from their bulk collection of internet communications; and giving politicians an opportunity to say "see, I'm tough on privacy" without actually accomplishing anything significant.
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The whole thing is silly because it's re-directing the focus to a tiny subset of some archaic historical communication system (phone call metadata).
What's silly about it? Much of the law is all about precedent. In this case, precedent says phone calls (and their metadata) are private, barring a judicial warrant. That's not silly at all... it's quite reasonable.
It's like saying that they shouldn't get to make maps of smoke signal fire pit locations.
It would only be like saying that if the smoke signals were invisible to everybody but the parties at either end plus the "smoke signal carrier", and the smoke signal conversations were therefore intended to be private.
This is all just to distract people from their bulk collection of internet communications; and giving politicians an opportunity to say "see, I'm tough on privacy" without actually accomplishing anything significant.
I disagree, since it's all part of the same conversation.
Re:Not authorized is worse than unconstional. (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't mean that - it means that the status of the constitutionality is still open to question. This ruling takes no position on that, just that Congress did not authorize it. Congress could pass a law tomorrow authorizing it, THEN it could be challenged on grounds of constitutionality.
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IANAL but I look at it this way an activity isn't constitutional or unconstitutional, its legal or illegal; a law, order, process, or procedure could be unconstitutional. What the court said essentially is it does not consider the law Congress passed to authorize the activity.
We don't know if Congress can authorize such an activity.
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We don't know if Congress can authorize such an activity.
I think you and GP are basically saying the same thing there: the court did not rule on the Constitutionality. It did not have to.
I look at it this way an activity isn't constitutional or unconstitutional, its legal or illegal; a law, order, process, or procedure could be unconstitutional
An activity can very definitely be unconstitutional. For example: if you're arrested and not read your rights before questioning, your Constitutional rights have been violated. It's not a procedure or policy to do so, nevertheless the officers involved engaged in an unconstitutional act.
Re: Not authorized is worse than unconstional. (Score:2)
don't worry, they'll order the NSA to stop right after a new TLA is spun up to take the program.
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It can supplant the NSA, TSA, DHS, DOJ... hell, we might just make it the whole of the Obama administration.
Re:Not authorized is worse than unconstional. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, not authorized is a lighter ruling. It means tomorrow congress can pass a law explicitly allowing it, and there would be no problem cuz it wasn't ruled unconstitutional.
Not authorized isn't a lighter ruling, it's a very damning ruling against the NSA, and it's the only ruling that can be made in this case simply for the reason that there was no law on the books where Congress gave authorization for the NSA to operate like this. To put it succinctly: The NSA was ruled to be operating outside the law... which effectively makes them criminals (won't be holding my breath for any actual prosecutions, though).
Now, if Congress goes back and creates a law that Authorizes the NSA to operate in this manner, then the issue can be brought back to court for Judgement to be made on the constitutionality of the law. Then that verdict will hold a more permanent weight on the future of government surveillance and the kind of laws Congress is able to write around it.
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To put it succinctly: The NSA was ruled to be operating outside the law... which effectively makes them criminals
Wait a moment. For the most part that which isn't illegal, is legal. What we prosecute the NSA for exactly? Misappropriation of funds, they used to build an unauthorized massive surveillance apparatus? Acting under the color of law, when they were requesting the records? Conspiracy of some kind?
I am not really sure there is actually much to charge them with and what there is, although fairly serious, might be hard to prove.
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Just like any government official, the patriots of the NSA have qualified immunity if they believed what they were doing was legal. The data collection program was re authorized every 90 days by a federal judge in the fisa court. This issue needs a blanket ruling on constitutionality. Like brown v. Board of education.
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The hop count and scope finally seems to be understood with the "they extend to every record that exists" (page 61).
For those who can read... (Score:5, Insightful)
Amendment IV
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.
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Remember that "Snowden" guy who got this ball rolling, and is now in exile because of it?
Too bad there isn't anything we can do to help him out....
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Remember that "Snowden" guy who got this ball rolling, and is now in exile because of it?
Too bad there isn't anything we can do to help him out....
You can do a lot of things to help him out, except they're all as "treasonous" as his disclosures.
Donating to Snowden is now illegal [reddit.com]
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Which is probably why "treasonous" was in quotes.
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What is "unreasonable"?
What is a "paper"?
What is an "effects"?
Things are only simple when one only considers the answers they want.
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Furthermore, what about all of the decisions that have been handed down since that was written? How do they play into what those three words mean?
Meaning doesn't exist in a vacuum. There's so much more that goes into the law than just the words.
Re:For those who can read... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which of my "person, house, papers, and effects" is the phone company's information about my phone calls?
It's information about me, but it belongs to the phone company, and they have it. The government can search through it without any impact to me at all.
I'm not saying they should be allowed to, but the 4th Amendment is irrelevant here.
You must interpret the meaning of the time to the technology of today. Communicating over distance when this was written was done by paper handed to a courier. Now that paper is an electronic signal and the courier is an ISP or phone company. Would you consider the government following each and every courier you sent out to see who you were talking to a violation of your privacy in the 1780s? I would
All that said, if you RTFA or even the summary... "That's not exactly saying that such bulk collection is unconscionable or per se unconstitutional, but it's a major step toward respecting privacy as a default. "
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Would you consider the government following each and every courier you sent out to see who you were talking to a violation of your privacy in the 1780s?
No, that one's far simpler than the issues at hand. The government has always had the power to observe behavior in public without a warrant.
Ever heard of "Private in public" doctrine? Or has the US lost that part of privacy rights?
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Ever heard of "Private in public" doctrine? Or has the US lost that part of privacy rights?
Another detail that the founders could not have predicted at the time. Though the founders attempted to provide for the unforeseen in the 9th Amendment.
Back then, staying several meters from other people meant that while you and whomever you were talking with could be seen, you could not be heard - at least not without the would be snoop being painfully obvious[1]. The founders had no concept of "wireless bugs" nor today's tiny, super direction microphones and highly sophisticated signal processing nor othe
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but not open your letter to read its contents...
Re:For those who can read... (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty sure that the individuals involved in writing the constitution and the bill of rights would have felt such data would have been considered private to the individual. I would go so far as to say they would have required the companies that recorded the data for billing purposes to remove it when the bill was paid without dispute instead of hanging on to it at all. To let the government sift through it would have been unthinkable.
They had a real clear idea of what it took to mount a revolution without the government knowing what was going on. Several of the amendments are there specifically to keep the government from laying a heavy hand on anyone in the future to ensure that what they had shed blood for would not be trampled on again by any future tyrannical powers
It's pretty clear that 200 years have dimmed the collective consciousness of the people. Poor public schooling hasn't helped.
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I would go so far as to say they would have required the companies that recorded the data for billing purposes to remove it when the bill was paid without dispute instead of hanging on to it at all.
That's a patently silly claim. There were certainly business records in the 1790s; if they were going to outlaw keeping records after billing was concluded, don't you think they would have done that in, say, the 1790s? They pretty clearly didn't do that...
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I don't disagree that there were business records kept.
When you put something in the mail in those days, that wasn't tracked by anyone that I know of at that time. It certainly wasn't tracked as it has been in recent years. That was pretty much it for common everyday communication other than face to face. Shipping large items has always been recorded, and they probably wouldn't have gone so far as to ban record keeping at that level. But that isn't the type of communication being debated. What is being deba
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Does the phone company have ownership over data about you? Should it? A person's "house, papers, and effects" recognizes a person's property rights. It doesn't seem unreasonable that use of a service, particularly a common carrier, generates new "papers and effects" that ought to be considered personal property.
For instance, we already recognize a person's right to provacy protection over their medical records, even though by y
Re: For those who can read... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yea, 200 years ago they should have known to add the terms "e-mail", "cellular phone", "book of faces", and "twitter".
I certainly consider text messages my "papers". The fact it's not written on a physical tree makes no difference to the spirit of the amendment. And my digital trail is certainly one of my "effects".
When did the world change where we let the lawyers convinced some of us that if every narrow hair split word isn't in a contract then it doesn't apply?!?! If I say "every day of the week" somehow
Yeah so? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because it's illegal or not authorized doesn't mean that they will stop. They'll simply continue and do their best to keep it hush hush
Re:Yeah so? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is true. It also severely erodes the rule of law. As more mundane average productive Americans realize that they're following the rules but the government isn't, and get screwed by it, they'll start to realize they should only follow the rules when they would get caught. This is a recipe for an uncivil society leading to a societal collapse.
Or to paraphrase a saying from communist countries; They pretend to enforce the law and we'll pretend to follow the law.
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I would argue they have already show the rule of law to be an absolute joke.
When senior officials at the White House argues "the law does not require us to make a formal determination as to whether a coup took place." so they can ignore restrictions on aid to Egypt you know the law is a joke.
When the Treasury department rewrite bankruptcy law on the fly and over bond holder objections allows foreign investors to take a large stake in an American auto company because..jerbs.. you know the rule of law is a jo
The Real Question (Score:4, Insightful)
Senator Rand Paul, a Republican presidential candidate who has made opposition to overbroad surveillance central to his platform, tweeted: “The phone records of law abiding citizens are none of the NSA’s business! Pleased with the ruling this morning.”
How fast would his attitude towards surveillance change if were elected president?
Re:The Real Question (Score:5, Insightful)
About as fast as Senator Obama's changed when he was elected president.
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About as fast as Senator Obama's changed when he was elected president.
Nailed it.
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Why do assume that because Obama is a two faced freckles asshole that Rand is?
Rand has essentially spent his entire life watching his fathers political career be pretty severely constrained by rigid adherence to principles. Keep in mind, Slashdot aside, the NSA generally does better in opinion polls than Snowden. Paul is seeking to win a national election.
Obama was running for office and said those things when the popular view was Iraq and all the stuff we were doing to fight terror were abusive acts by o
Re:The Real Question (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you drive to work today? I bet you exceeded the speed limit at some point. Or possibly pushed the limits on that yellowish-red light you ran. Have you ever sang a non-public domain song without paying a royalty (including Happy Birthday)? Jaywalked? Failed to register and/or vaccinate your pet? Not changing your address when you move?
Guess what. You're no longer law abiding. He doesn't have to change his attitude since he qualified his statement. If he said "the phone records of citizens are none of the NSA's business" then we can talk about his attitude if he were to be elected.
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So, basically everyone is non-law-abiding at some point. What follows from that?
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People tend to overestimate how powerful POTUS actually is. The bulk of the political power lies in various institutions, even within the executive branch, and the relationship between them and POTUS is much more like peers engaged in diplomacy than a leader giving commands.
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Senator Rand Paul, a Republican presidential candidate who has made opposition to overbroad surveillance central to his platform, tweeted: “The phone records of law abiding citizens are none of the NSA’s business! Pleased with the ruling this morning.”
How fast would his attitude towards surveillance change if were elected president?
Are you suggesting that it's best to elect someone who loves overly broad surveillance and despises the 4th amendment?
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Snowden? (Score:5, Interesting)
maybe now we can pardon Snowden?
Re:Snowden? (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be nice, but don't count on it. The political machine is very angry at him and wants him made an example of.
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maybe now we can pardon Snowden?
That in itself would be illegal too
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/31443f/donating_to_snowden_is_now_illegal_and_the_us
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Exoneration would be correct, but sometimes a pardon is used when exoneration is the right call . More of a "Whatever someone thinks you did wrong, I'm pardoning".
This is what they mean by (Score:3)
God bless America.*
*Even though I firmly believe the separation of church and state is vital and I would in no way impose religion on anyone.
Too little, too late... (Score:2)
More likely a massive multi-branch "limited hangout" op.
Doesn't even work (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, the worst part is that it's doesn't achieve it's stated objectives.
Intel gathered in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan and some other rogue states like Bahrain, yields actionable intel.
Intel gathered in the US has somewhere around 99 percent false leads that hide the 1 percent we would have found if we only used the above intel instead, and then used specific warrant leads.
That to me is the take home from this Illegal and Unconstitutional NSA data collection program.
Great news, everyone! (Score:2)
...except if you're not American, in which case you're still spied on, and no one is challenging that.
Jail? (Score:2)
So who is going to jail over this?
Somebody is at least losing their job, right?
Patriot Act Extension and the Autopen (Score:2)
Another rub on the Patriot Act, or rather the Patriot Act extension, is that it was not signed by the President. The extension bill was the first bill ever signed into law by the "autopen".
Article I, Section 7 - Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who
Re:We're so screwed. (Score:5, Insightful)
We have indeed tasked loyal people with a job. You misunderstand that job. The job is to keep us as safe as possible within the restrictions on methods that liberty requires.
Re:We're so screwed. (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. They are not tasked with keeping us safe; they are tasked with safeguarding our liberties.
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This. This. This.
Freedom >>>>>>> safety
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They are not tasked with keeping us safe; they are tasked with 'safeguarding our liberties'.
Safeguarding liberty by breaking through a constitutional boundary... That's a hot one! Thanks for the belly laugh.
The Bill of Rights is the set of proscriptions deemed necessary by the founders to ensure that the citizenry was protected from the tyranny of its own unrestricted government. The fourth amendment was enshrined to limit police power to that which could be rationally supported by evidence of wrong doing. I.E., the wrong doing must logical occur prior to the collection of evidence, in a system wh
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The idea that granting pardons contradicts the government's role as a guarantor of personal liberty is pretty tortuous; pardons exist so that government may more perfectly secure freedom for individuals that, by means of imperfect justice, are imprisoned. You suppose that it implies the exact opposite of what it does.
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Well sure, but Al Capone and John Gotti have a decidedly odd slant on liberty and restrictions on government action.
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Well sure, but Al Capone and John Gotti have a decidedly odd slant on liberty and restrictions on government action.
You know my grandfather was kidnapped by Capone back in the 30's and that was because his would be wife was a court clerk. Not too hard to figure out what was going on there and my grandfather was a good boy and kept his mouth shut but in '64 the mafia on north shore Tahoe ripped off and killed both my grandparents on my fathers side anyway. He had wired 'hospital fund raiser' money for imag
Re:We're so screwed. (Score:5, Insightful)
.... keeping in mind that what liberty requires in regard to restrictions may be different than what the mob believes.
I would argue that infringing on the privacy of the people to keep them (questionably) safe(r) is just exchanging one loss of liberty for another.
How about we disregard what EVERYONE thinks and go by what the law says. How's that 4th amendment go again?
Re:We're so screwed. (Score:5, Insightful)
When that next truck bomb detonates at a sporting event or mall, or when that next muslim fan goes on an indiscriminate killing spree through a church, know in your heart that you have allowed that to happen.
I'll enjoy my freedom, thankyouverymuch, even if it does come with an 0.001% chance of dying by terrorist.
Re:We're so screwed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets see how well did the spy on everyone program work when two "nice" muslim guys from Phoenix, one of which was already being watched for terrorist ties, drove to Dallas and attempted to shoot up the event that offended them. If our government can't stop terrorists they know are terrorists through all the domestic spying why do some think they are safer by having the government spy on them?
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Someone mod this up.
First time I've seen anyone asking the obvious question: if the guy was being watched by the FBI for the last N years, how did he ever get close enough to the event to start shooting it up? Could have turned out a lot worse.
How many of our taxpayer dollars were wasted watching this guy to no useful end? How many are spent on even more useless activities?
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Because none of that warrantless spying contributed in any way to stopping him.
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You're missing the point... The mass surveillance makes it harder to keep track of actual threats and if the FBI did not spend all their time training fake terrorist to create fake victories they could start looking at real terrorist.
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When that next truck bomb detonates at a sporting event or mall, or when that next muslim fan goes on an indiscriminate killing spree through a church, know in your heart that you have allowed that to happen.
I'll enjoy my freedom, thankyouverymuch, even if it does come with an 0.001% chance of dying by terrorist.
0.001%? That's insanely high. The real rate is a couple orders of magnitude lower. It just goes to show how completely terrible human beings are at estimate the risk of extremely rare events.
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0.001%? That's insanely high. The real rate is a couple orders of magnitude lower.
I don't know, am I way off? Why do you think it's lower?
It's surprisingly hard (that is, not available on the first page of google results) to find out how many people in America die each year. But if there are 300m americans, and average life expectancy is ~75, and the population growth rate is ~0 (population is growing slowly over decades, but not much change year to year) then there must be ~4m births and 4m deaths each year.
Let's do a worst case analysis. In 2001, 3,000 people died in 9/11, according to
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You can figure out the chance you'll die from terrorism with some statistical math if you choose an expected lifetime length and your chance to die from terrorism each year. The math is fairly simple if you assume that your chance of dying from terrorism is roughly constant over your lifetime. It's not perfect but it can give you an idea of the magnitude of the risk involved.
Let P(terrorist kills you in your lifetime) be the probability of a terrorist killing you in your lifetime. Then,
P(terrorist kills you
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something about this doesn't seem right... you can only get killed once. if you get killed then you lifespan ends. you're basically asking the question, how many times will I die from terrorism over the course of my 75 year life?
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Even if you took every single liberty a man can possess away, there would still be a way to disrupt, and cause terror. But then again, anyone who works in security knows that to be the case since well before this all occurred. The fact they are knowingly selling the lie and propaganda is criminal.
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I'll enjoy my freedom, thankyouverymuch, even if it does come with an 0.001% chance of dying by terrorist.
A bit optimistic on that estimate unless you were looking at something like your overall lifetime chance but even that might be a bit on the high side.
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thank you bob. how would you respond to this comment [slashdot.org] about realistically gauging the risk?
Re:We're so screwed. (Score:5, Insightful)
The terrorists did less damage to our way of life than this kind of government spying on its own citizens.
Re:We're so screwed. (Score:4, Insightful)
The terrorists did less damage to our way of life than this kind of government spying on its own citizens.
Yup. Terrorism between 1970-2007: 1 in 3,500,00 chance of being killed by a terrorist. In 2007 alone you had a 1 in 22,000 chance of being murdered in the US.
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Even if we just selected for 2001, you had a 0.001% chance of dying from terrorism if you lived in the US then. It would make more sense to declare a War On Heart Disease or a War On Cancer and toss funding to those causes.
Re:We're so screwed. (Score:4, Insightful)
yes but how does the war machine make money off of that?
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I would say that this constriction of our Freedumz! was the actual goal of the attack.
Make us a pack of bedwetters begging Daddy for protections, liberty be damned.
"A Republic, Ma'am. If you can keep it." - BFranklin
Re:We're so screwed. (Score:4, Informative)
Actually the terrorists did win in a way. They achieved their goal of "terrorizing" us into enacting the policies now damaging our way of life. They caused the environment that allowed the government to pass the Patriot Act enabling/justifying their spying on us.
They made us suspect ourselves and each other and we now live in a state of paranoia and distrust.
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know in your heart that you have allowed that to happen.
Show me some data showing this surveillance has worked and I might agree with you.
Other wise, if you give an ape a gun sooner or later someone gets shot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Unfortunately most people hear that and ignore that it was over a 10 year period, assume that all of those 50 attacks were going to happen in the US, and each of them would have been on a 9-11 scale of death. I say lets use those piss poor assumptions and actually believe Gen. Keith Alexander for a moment. This means we would have a somewhat impressive pile of bodies from terrorists at 150,000 in a single year. Also using data from 9-11 tha
Hardly (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason there are people who want to use asymmetric warfare (terrorism) is because they are outmatched. We, the USA, were the ones who threw the first punch with our occupation of Muslim countries. We can rationalize it all we want that we are fighting for "freedom", helping the oppressed or whatever the delusional shit we tell ourselves for our ridiculous foreign policy. It's all lies. We are occupying other countries and their people do NOT like it. what is so hard to understand?!
If we were TRULY fighting for those things, then we must invade Saudi Arabia, Israel, N.Korea, China, Somalia, etc ......
And if we were fighting for freedom, then why did we oust Saddam from Kuwait and reinstate a monarchy? That makes no sense.
The US' foreign policies are hypocritical and the rest of thee World knows it and sees it. Unfortunately, we Americans have been brainwashed by our propaganda - corporate for profit propaganda - because it's what we want to hear. When the fact is we're two faced bullies.
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We, the USA, were the ones who threw the first punch with our occupation of Muslim countries.
When the WTC was bombed the first time (By Radical Muslims), which Muslim Country did we occupy?
I won't hold my breath waiting.
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Well, we had been in Afghanistan, Iran & Iraq since the 1970s....trying to play king maker, gun runner, behind the scenes operator
You might want to get a bit more educated. Before you hold your breath.
At least go watch Argo to get a small part of the picture.
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our occupation of Muslim countries
trying to play king maker, gun runner, behind the scenes operator
Criteria ... not met. The accusation was "Occupation". And we (USA) actually supported the Muslims in Afghanistan when they were invaded by the Soviet Union (actual occupying force).
You might actually want to review who actually occupied Afghanistan during the 80s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]
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I disagree. But I modded you up. Your opinion seems honest and relevant to the topic.
It would be hypocritical of a people like us Americans to deride others for asymmetrical warfare when we won our freedom from England using just that, so if that's the scope of what you're hearing: agreed, hypocrits. My objection to it is the targeting of children. If terrorists blew up Fort Knox, that's fair game.
It is similarly condemnable when US drone strikes hit kids too. That's just NEVER ok.
As for the line you
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The question is whether to lay down your own life or kill someone to preserve it.
The U.S. invading Japan would've involed a LOT of U.S. soldiers dying. And maybe more Japanese, depending on how strongly they resisted, than the atomic bombings anyway (remember, those were just 2 cities, and we're talking about conquering the entire home islands).
I don't think it would be an easy sell to all the families at home if you told them that X% of their husbands and fathers had to die to end the war. Not that the pub
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Hardly. The USA is a latecomer by many decades.
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We, the USA, were the ones who threw the first punch with our occupation of Muslim countries.
Hardly. The USA is a latecomer by many decades.
Millennia actually.
Re:We're so screwed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Except there's no proof that these tools are actually effective, and there are plenty of arguments made by experts that they cannot possibly be effective (too many false positives ties up scarce investigative resources). So I reject your whole premise.
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Ben Franklin, Liberty, Security, etc. etc. If you don't know and understand the quote, shame on you.
Re:We're so screwed. (Score:5, Insightful)
It didn't stop the Boston bombing, and the government knew the perpetrators, and the same with the attempted attack the other day in Texas. Too much data is just as bad, or worse, than not enough. Hindsight is always 20/20, and in almost every attack we find that the intel was there to stop it, but wasn't acted upon. So, we're just as screwed with it as without it.
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Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. -- Ben F.
You've probably heard it a few times, now fucking THINK about it for a while
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News at 11: 3 federal judges, from the second circuit court, found by NSA to be the masterminds of a terrorist plot.
Some guy from a black helicopter stated "We knew they had something to hide when they ruled against our metadata collection."
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When did the War Powers Act become some nebulous catch all for everything not authorized by law?
Here is the text of the war powers act.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20t... [yale.edu]
SEC. 2. (a) It is the purpose of this joint resolution to fulfill the intent of the framers of the Constitution of the United States and insure that the collective judgement of both the Congress and the President will apply to the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hos