NSA spying ruled illegal.

[shortylickens]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/08/u...ollection-ruled-illegal-by-appeals-court.html

A federal appeals court in New York ruled on Thursday that the once-secret National Security Agency program that is systematically collecting Americans’ phone records in bulk is illegal. The decision comes as a fight in Congress is intensifying over whether to end and replace the program, or to extend it without changes.

In a 97-page ruling, a three-judge panel for the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that a provision of the U.S.A. Patriot Act, known as Section 215, cannot be legitimately interpreted to allow the bulk collection of domestic calling records.

The NSA will probably appeal it to the Supreme Court, in which case they get to keep doing it for another year or two.

 

[dank69]

The turtle is on it. Here we can see both parties are the same.

 

[Genx87]

The turtle is on it. Here we can see both parties are the same.

Spot the liar

“According to the CIA, had these authorities been in place more than a decade ago, they would have likely prevented 9/11,” McConnell said on the floor of the chamber. He called soon-to-expire provisions of the PATRIOT Act “ideally suited for the terrorist threat we face in 2015.”

 

[waggy]

even if the supreme court says its illegal. do you think they are going to stop?

lol prevented 9/11? nope. From the things i read the amount of data they are collecting may actually cause them to miss something. Instead of just getting info on people that are more likely to commit something like 9/11 they are collecting on everyone. They have to much data to search

 

[Jaskalas]

Yup... Patriot Act sure prevented those Boston Bombers, or the shooters in Texas...

As for this subject, shouldn't we be thanking Edward Snowden?

 

[fskimospy]

Yup... Patriot Act sure prevented those Boston Bombers, or the shooters in Texas...

As for this subject, shouldn't we be thanking Edward Snowden?

Well this sort of thing was revealed by the NYT several years before Edward Snowden was around. Considering the pace of the courts it seems highly likely this lawsuit was filed pre-Snowden. (although I haven't checked the case's details)

That being said, Snowden definitely provided a lot of valuable information about the scope and scale for the NSA's illegal activities, and he should be thanked for that.

 

[Oyeve]

Yup... Patriot Act sure prevented those Boston Bombers, or the shooters in Texas...

As for this subject, shouldn't we be thanking Edward Snowden?

Snowden. let him rot in russia or wherever he is hiding. We've been spied on for decades. Why stop now?

 

[Knowing]

Is this going to stop the FBI from doing it? What about the DEA? Marshal service? Your local police?

This probably won't even stop the NSA, which is chartered for foreign intelligence and is consistently used as a punching bag.

"Early on in an intelligence career we learn a very valuable lesson. There are only four outcomes to any crisis situation. You can have a policy success, a diplomatic success, an operational success or an intelligence failure." - Lt. Gen. Ron Burgess

What we appear to have here is an "intelligence failure" being used as a distraction from the policy success of establishing a domestic digital panopticon under false pretenses.

 

[ch33zw1z]

It won't stop those organizations. It's just going to make them better at hiding it. At this point, it's safe to assume everything you do on a connected device is logged somewhere...mostly likely Utah.

Welcome to the USA, the home of the freedom mirage, but we still send the brave to die.

 

[Subyman]

Welcome to the USA, the home of the freedom mirage, but we still send the brave to die.

Brave? Unsuspecting youths is more appropriate.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Can't argue with that.

 

[Knowing]

Brave? Unsuspecting youths is more appropriate.

Can't argue with that.

No great dependence is to be placed on the eagerness of young soldiers for action, for the prospect of fighting is attractive to those who are strangers to it.

There's a reason for that.

 

[Moonbeam]

There's a reason for that.

Is there a justification?

 

[blankslate]

Yup... Patriot Act sure prevented those Boston Bombers, or the shooters in Texas...

As for this subject, shouldn't we be thanking Edward Snowden?

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slat...one_records_illegal_second_circuit_rules.html

As the Second Circuit candidly admits, its decision on Thursday is entirely the result of Edward Snowden's decision to leak details of the bulk collection program two years ago. Before that leak, Americans hoping to challenge NSA surveillance were unable to establish standing—that is, legal authority to challenge a law—because they couldn't prove the surveillence targeted them. The documents Snowden leaked, however, proved that the NSA forced Verizon "to produce detail records, every day, on all telephone calls made through its systems or using its services where on or both ends of the call are located in the United States." Thanks to that leak, Verizon customers have standing to challenge that surveillance in court, since they can now be certain the government spied on their phone records.

Apparently the documents that were released by reporters like Glenn Greenwald on Edward Snowden's behalf gave the people suing Verizon standing in the eyes of the court. Which allowed them to go forward with the lawsuit.

Anyone who says "fuck Snowden" is angry at the wrong entity imo. If the NSA was more judicious in its surveillance and not just bulk collecting every last fucking thing perhaps Mr. Snowden wouldn't have decided to become a whistleblower.


....

 

[Brian Stirling]

It won't stop those organizations. It's just going to make them better at hiding it. At this point, it's safe to assume everything you do on a connected device is logged somewhere...mostly likely Utah.

Welcome to the USA, the home of the freedom mirage, but we still send the brave to die.

Yeah, the data center in Utah most certainly has the largest collection of porn anywhere. Sadly, most of it is bad porn...


Brian

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

This is a positive step forward, but don't you guys think the media and public are too focused on the whole phone records issue? I'm not trying to justify it, but let's think about it for a second. The phone records of who I call are already logged by carriers. This data isn't exactly top secret. It's not like some anonymizer like Tor or whatever to begin with. Even if we took bulk collection out, I'm sure most people would agree that in a catastrophic national security situation, we'd give authorization for law enforcement to go in and snatch specific records given court authorization--which is what it was pre-9/11 anyway.

So my point is, who I call isn't exactly top secret, and I shouldn't expect it to be with or without bulk collection.

Isn't it more concerning that the NSA is forcing encryption keys to be turned over or tapping into Microsoft's network and pulling data before it gets encrypted (remember Outlook is supposed to be encrypted?) or really implementing any backdoor into a system that's supposed to be secure to begin with?

 

[nickqt]

This is a positive step forward, but don't you guys think the media and public are too focused on the whole phone records issue? I'm not trying to justify it, but let's think about it for a second. The phone records of who I call are already logged by carriers. This data isn't exactly top secret. It's not like some anonymizer like Tor or whatever to begin with. Even if we took bulk collection out, I'm sure most people would agree that in a catastrophic national security situation, we'd give authorization for law enforcement to go in and snatch specific records given court authorization--which is what it was pre-9/11 anyway.

So my point is, who I call isn't exactly top secret, and I shouldn't expect it to be with or without bulk collection.

Isn't it more concerning that the NSA is forcing encryption keys to be turned over or tapping into Microsoft's network and pulling data before it gets encrypted (remember Outlook is supposed to be encrypted?) or really implementing any backdoor into a system that's supposed to be secure to begin with?

What we want to guard against is the government violating our personal privacy, i.e. the 4th Amendment.

Sure, AT&T, Sprint, etc. have phone records of who we call. We've entered into a contract in whatever form with our carrier in order to make those calls. The 4th Amendment should give us a reasonable right of privacy against the government.

Besides, if the government wants a warrant, they'll get a warrant. Let's not pretend that they can't get a warrant for any reason they want. But the point is, they have to at least go through the process of getting a warrant, which also means that there is one section of government that gets in the way of another section of government just delving right into your private information. And it becomes a matter of quasi public record that the government is investigating you (not necessarily to you, but to other sections of the government that can provide oversight).