So my friend did a Freedom of Information Act request on himself for Project Prism

gevorg

Diamond Member
Nov 3, 2004
5,070
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I bet they put these requests on a fridge in their water cooler room :)
 

Hayabusa Rider

Admin Emeritus & Elite Member
Jan 26, 2000
50,879
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Ok, here's the thing. Suppose your friend was a budding terrorist. Let's say he has planned an attack but wanted to check if any potentially incriminating evidence might be on record. What to do? File a FOIA form.

I'm among the first in line to object to the program and invulnerability to accountability, however I think I've answered why this response was made.
 

Balt

Lifer
Mar 12, 2000
12,673
482
126
It took them a couple of weeks to send me their rejection letter.

Only a couple of weeks? They got that form letter approved in record time for a government agency.
 

Lithium381

Lifer
May 12, 2001
12,452
2
0
Ok, here's the thing. Suppose your friend was a budding terrorist. Let's say he has planned an attack but wanted to check if any potentially incriminating evidence might be on record. What to do? File a FOIA form.

I'm among the first in line to object to the program and invulnerability to accountability, however I think I've answered why this response was made.

Evidence of something that hasnt happened yet?
 

michal1980

Diamond Member
Mar 7, 2003
8,019
43
91
If you have nothing to hide, then why is government hiding your information? hmmm

answer that anti privacy nutters.
 

Oldgamer

Diamond Member
Jan 15, 2013
3,280
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That's really not the point....

It's a direct violation of Constitutional rights...period.

This is the problem I have with all this, they over classify everything. Everything is a secret so if they are violating your rights, they aren't going to tell you, and you won't know till at some point they decide to use any information (innocent or not) against you, like say, you decide to be a protestor. Or you want to participate in protesting events. There is no transparency what so ever, and that means they can violate anyone's rights, abuse the information they garner, and keep all this from you and the public. There is no "checks and balances" in Government anymore. Period. I would suspect that if it was an actual terrorist or someone associated with real terrorists they could easily send that type of letter to them, they have the information on them and know who they are to be able to distinguish a real threat and a non threat. But to do this to your average Joe citizen who poses no threat to anyone just makes no sense. Too many American's are getting to comfortable with all this and taking it way too lightly.

Taking your constitutional rights for granted and being non chalante' on these matters, thinking its no big deal will eventually come to bite everyone in the ass at some point.
 

Acanthus

Lifer
Aug 28, 2001
19,915
2
76
ostif.org
If you have nothing to hide, then why is government hiding your information? hmmm

answer that anti privacy nutters.

Because they don't want you to know the extent that they are dragnetting information.

The problem is how the information, which is stored for 10+ years, can be misused.
 

CycloWizard

Lifer
Sep 10, 2001
12,348
1
81
Ok, here's the thing. Suppose your friend was a budding terrorist. Let's say he has planned an attack but wanted to check if any potentially incriminating evidence might be on record. What to do? File a FOIA form.

I'm among the first in line to object to the program and invulnerability to accountability, however I think I've answered why this response was made.
Exactly. As long as such a program exists, the answer can never be different.
 

zsdersw

Lifer
Oct 29, 2003
10,505
2
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The truly insidious thing about terrorism is what it forces free nations to do to themselves; the changes it makes them do to themselves in the name of security. That's how terrorism and terrorists win.

Even if this program specifically and much of what the NSA does in general is totally within the bounds of US laws and proper oversight, it is still something that makes the government bigger and more intrusive.. and that is almost never a good thing.
 

mikeymikec

Lifer
May 19, 2011
21,210
16,433
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The truly insidious thing about terrorism is what it forces free nations to do to themselves; the changes it makes them do to themselves in the name of security. That's how terrorism and terrorists win.

Loss of freedom/privacy in the name of security has nothing to do with "the terrorists winning"; it rarely* is the objective of terrorists to alter the way a country works in only that respect.

* - I would say "has never" or "never is", but I think "never say never", nor do I believe my grasp of history on this topic is good enough to make such a statement, but I believe it. The only hypothetical exception scenario I can think of would be a government creating a fake terrorist threat with the sole purpose of spying the living daylights out of the people.

Losing freedom/privacy as a general rule in an attempt to combat terrorism is a government's way of saying, "We don't know of anything we can do to improve our effectiveness against the enemy, so this is us looking like we're doing something, and we can keep an eye on the nay-sayers easier this way because we're worried that our incompetence will be exposed."
 

Ancalagon44

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2010
3,274
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I think if you took news of this back 40 years ago, during the height of the Cold War, the USSR would be laughing with glee at what became of their enemy. And I would think the Americans would be horrified at what they allowed themselves to become.
 

zsdersw

Lifer
Oct 29, 2003
10,505
2
0
Loss of freedom/privacy in the name of security has nothing to do with "the terrorists winning"; it rarely* is the objective of terrorists to alter the way a country works in only that respect.

It's not something the terrorists explicitly set out to do, but it is one way in which they win against the rest of us.
 

1prophet

Diamond Member
Aug 17, 2005
5,313
534
126
Ok, here's the thing. Suppose your friend was a budding terrorist. Let's say he has planned an attack but wanted to check if any potentially incriminating evidence might be on record. What to do? File a FOIA form.

I'm among the first in line to object to the program and invulnerability to accountability, however I think I've answered why this response was made.


Hollywood makes out terrorists to be some intelligent mastercriminal, but in reality they are anything but that allowing them to get through using crude devices (boxcutters, shoe bombs, pressure pots, etc.) while agencies are looking for a comic book supervillain.