Edward Snowden Says a Report Critical To an NSA Lawsuit Is Authentic (techcrunch.com) 70
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: An unexpected declaration by whistleblower Edward Snowden filed in court [last] week adds a new twist in a long-running lawsuit against the NSA's surveillance programs. The case, filed by the EFF a decade ago, seeks to challenge the government's alleged illegal and unconstitutional surveillance of Americans, who are largely covered under the Fourth Amendment's protections against warrantless searches and seizures. It's a big step forward for the case, which had stalled largely because the government refused to confirm that a leaked document was authentic or accurate. News of the surveillance broke in 2006 when an AT&T technician Mark Klein revealed that the NSA was tapping into AT&T's network backbone. He alleged that a secret, locked room -- dubbed Room 641A -- in an AT&T facility in San Francisco where he worked was one of many around the U.S. used by the government to monitor communications -- domestic and overseas. President George W. Bush authorized the NSA to secretly wiretap Americans' communications shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.
Much of the EFF's complaint relied on Klein's testimony until 2013, when Snowden, a former NSA contractor, came forward with new revelations that described and detailed the vast scope of the U.S. government's surveillance capabilities, which included participation from other phone giants -- including Verizon (TechCrunch's parent company). Snowden's signed declaration, filed on October 31, confirms that one of the documents he leaked, which the EFF relied heavily on for its case, is an authentic draft document written by the then-NSA inspector general in 2009, which exposed concerns about the legality of the Bush's warrantless surveillance program -- Stellar Wind -- particularly the collection of bulk email records on Americans. "I read its contents carefully during my employment," he said in his declaration. "I have a specific and strong recollection of this document because it indicated to me that the government had been conducting illegal surveillance."
Much of the EFF's complaint relied on Klein's testimony until 2013, when Snowden, a former NSA contractor, came forward with new revelations that described and detailed the vast scope of the U.S. government's surveillance capabilities, which included participation from other phone giants -- including Verizon (TechCrunch's parent company). Snowden's signed declaration, filed on October 31, confirms that one of the documents he leaked, which the EFF relied heavily on for its case, is an authentic draft document written by the then-NSA inspector general in 2009, which exposed concerns about the legality of the Bush's warrantless surveillance program -- Stellar Wind -- particularly the collection of bulk email records on Americans. "I read its contents carefully during my employment," he said in his declaration. "I have a specific and strong recollection of this document because it indicated to me that the government had been conducting illegal surveillance."
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But what if they didn't, though? What if that perception of that particular public preference was just the symptoms of coordinated astro-turfing already, way back then? What if we all fell for it? I know I was one of the people clamoring against creating a giant creeping national security liability under the guise of national security. Weren't you, too? What if we all were? What if nobody wanted this except for a handful of rich and viciously evil traitors or foreign nationals? What if they tricked u
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But you don't actually know that. You didn't talk to them each personally. Nobody did. You couldn't possibly have even got a reasonable sized sample set by now if you had tried.
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Do you have any citation for that?
I don't think Gallop polls elections, and the polls in general showed a very close race (and were about as accurate as any given year).
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I only witnessed the media saying it. Yes, the fake media.
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No, but I personally watched conservatives (the traditional check on this type of thing) quickly become pro mass surveillance.
And it wasn't until the Snownden leaks that anyone really seemed to care.
Re: One problem (Score:1)
I cared. I voted for Obozo in 2008 hoping he would reverse this shit, as said during campaign speeches. I did NOT vote for him in 2012, because by then he had not only kept them in place but expanded them several fold. Ordered assasinations of us citizens without at least holding a trial or military tribunal in absense. We are seeing exponential growth in surveilance since 2001. In Obozos second term he got REAL buddy-buddy with Facebook and Google. It wasnt because he needed inside tips for Farmville.
Re: One problem (Score:2)
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The sea change for post-Vietnam American defensive-aggression came in 1979 with the Iran hostage crisis. I was there and saw it happen. The 9/11 attack was just a further and much greater escalation.
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Too late to vote tem out, too early to start shoot (Score:2, Interesting)
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It is the nature of governance that it corrupts. No government can ever be kept free of corruption, it's impossible.
The only thing we can do is keep it accountable. The more public their actions, the better behaved they are. Public accountability is the only thing we have that works.
Tools that allow us to sneak around unseen may help us to do things of which they disapprove (including completely legal things such as honest journalism and so forth), but it won't stop them from being corrupt nor from harmi
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You are correct about the nature of the problem, so one option is a heuristic. If government is self-replacing, it never lasts long enough to corrupt.
A second option is to have no common vector. Have the second house be chosen at random from a meritocracy or a noocracy. Hybrids are stronger than pure systems. Fixed, single terms from a random population of achievers and thinkers mean all the attack vectors for a democracy don't work. There are new attack vectors, but they don't work on a democracy.
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Re: Too late to vote tem out, too early to start s (Score:2)
For the legislative branch, make it like jury duty. Itâ(TM)s not like these fucking idiots know what the hell theyre doing. Didnâ(TM)t know anything about the shit they vote on. They go ask a few questions and talk to a few advisors. Anybody can fucking do that. The problem with people that of been in there so long is that they know where all the bodies are buried. They use that to get their way and thats part of the reason why they are corrupt. Someone like you or me should go to their mailbox
Re: Too late to vote tem out, too early to start s (Score:2)
Every time you Give examples of hypocrisy, for either fucking party, both the candidates and all their supporters rally to explain how it is not hypocrisy because they dont believe in such a word. Give examples of hypocrisy, for either fucking party, both the candidate and all their supporters ralley to explain how it is not hypocrisy because they dont believe in such a word.
And if you do not believe the media is purposely against you, think about the way they demonize the word nationalism. Doesnt
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That's why democracy is the best system we know for the long term. It surely isn't perfect, far from it, but it allows moderation of the corruption as long as the system is balanced.
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This is why reading comprehension is important, folks.
Snowden is a hero. (Score:5, Insightful)
Snowden should be pardoned and welcomed home for the good deeds he did for us.
He broke the law because the law was being abused, and he revealed the ways that our government was boldfacedly betraying all of us and lying to us. He didn't weaken national security, he gave us the evidence we needed to call our government on their treachery.
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The primary function of government is to protect its citizens, in your opinion.
And it's a good one. However, the actual members of government have a different opinion. They think their primary function is to assert their will on to the citizens, to profit themselves at their citizen's expense.
History shows that most governments to terrible things to their people. So, we can't just let that power run unchecked, lest we be the next victims in that same history book.
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That's why the government efforts are spying on non-social, non-media communications between individuals and why we've consistently seen lone wolves on social media forums talking their anti-Semitic hate and killing people. Not only do the not look in the right places but generally there's way too many people making the same sort of nois
Re:Snowden is a hero. (Score:5, Informative)
The primary function of government is to protect its citizens
No, that's false. Politicians say that all the time, but it's NOT true. No public office holder (in the US), nor military person or Federal law enforcement officer, ever makes such a promise. Instead, the oath they are required to make is to "protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." The Constitution that includes the 4th Amendment, which forbids unreasonable search and seizure.
It doesn't matter what they think they should be doing to "protect" the citizens. Their first obligation, which they swore to as a condition of serving, is to defend the Constitution. Full Stop.
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Agreed. If they do not accept the bill of rights, have them put the changes to Congress lawfully.
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Or put more simply:
It's their job to secure the rights of the people.
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The primary function of government is to protect its citizens
No, that's false. Politicians say that all the time, but it's NOT true. No public office holder (in the US), nor military person or Federal law enforcement officer, ever makes such a promise. Instead, the oath they are required to make is to "protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." The Constitution that includes the 4th Amendment, which forbids unreasonable search and seizure.
It doesn't matter what they think they should be doing to "protect" the citizens. Their first obligation, which they swore to as a condition of serving, is to defend the Constitution. Full Stop.
Further, the courts have repeated ruled that absent a statute saying otherwise, the government has no obligation to protect citizens or people under its jurisdiction. And there is no obligation even if that same government places them in peril.
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The first job of government is to obey the law. If the law won't cut it, change it.
The problem with Big Data, which you still miss, is that. Individuals are irrelevant. It's not about people, it's about populations. These tools could not be used the way you suggest.
Third, terrorism has increased as surveillance has, none of whom were caught by
surveillance, proving it is not about protecting people.
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Snowden is a fucking traitor and nothing more than a russian spy/tool. Period.
He's a whistle blower. The government is commiting criminal acts against American citizens. The NSA's job is NOT to spy on American citizens on US soil unless they are communicating with foreigners.
The primary function of government is to protect its citizens, so no shit the government is going to surveil its citizens.
Bullshit. The primary function of government is to secure the rights of its citizens. Not to protect us from ourselves. Not to surveil us.
Do you honestly think they give a crap if some 42 y/o fat ass white man likes to watch midget porn? Nope...
The old you've got nothing to hide if you have nothing to fear trope. Whether they give a crap as a whole or not, the government is made up of people happy to abuse their
Lying is LEGAL including to congress (Score:1)
https://www.fff.org/2014/09/12/remembering-the-criminal-conviction-of-the-director-of-the-cia/
Using that twisted logic you could argue with is more important in the constitutional pecking order. The CIA or whoever do not want black letter law interpretation to go to trial. A reasonable person would say doing a Helms is OK - if you had no jurisprudence awareness.
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He is a hero - and a traitor at the same time.
And I'm pretty sure he, being the smart kid he is, was always aware of that, too. Ever since he copied the first file.
It's an enormous sacrifice.
Admissible? (Score:2)
IANAL, but the inability to cross-examine Snowden might well make this inadmissible.
(And that's without expressing my highly unfavorable opinion of the author.)
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They could choose to allow a deposition, a remote one even.
Re: Admissible? (Score:3)
That is completely untrue.
I've edited hundreds of depositions to use as court testimony specifically because the witness was outside of court jurisdiction and couldn't be compelled to testify in person.
Not only were they valid for discovery, but they were also valid for use as evidence.
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I would lean on agreeing with you, they won't allow a proper deposition.
But they certainly could. I doubt either decision (to allow or to block) would be reversible, it's pretty much up to the judge.
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I really enjoyed that book when I was a kid. (Unfortunately, it's got rather a lot of magical thinking, around the nature of the weapons themselves.)
If there were a correlation between gun ownership and freedom, you'd expect the top 10 gun owning nations [wikipedia.org] to largely overlap the top 10 most free nations [cato.org]. Oh well, correlation does not imply causation.
To think about it another way, and quoting some pop culture: "Culture eats Strategy
I remember a lawsuit against the telcos (Score:2)
For participating in helping the US gov spy on US citizens in many different ways, from email to financial transactions to listening in on phone calls after 9/11. It was thrown out by the judge.
The claim was the government was looking for terrorists but the fact of the matter is that is as insane as looking for a needle in a hay producing state. Given the fact that any terrorist group if using such vulnerable communication would simply use common phrases of which they would have different meaning among them