Court found NSA surveillance unconstitutional in 2011
blog.rongarret.info
blog.rongarret.info
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
Who was Joseph Goebbels? Per Wikipedia: Paul Joseph Goebbels (29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels)
<sarcasm>And what? You dare to question the absolute veracity of wikipedia? You will be sent to the Re-Education Camp immediately?</sarcasm>
<notsarcasm>Having to use the sarcasm tag means enough people are unable to recognize sarcasm. I blame the education system. It's a damn shame though.</notsarcasm>
"But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success."
"War Propaganda", in volume 1, chapter 6 of Mein Kampf (1925), by Adolf Hitler
I'm referring to the constant reuse of the term 'no direct access to servers'cough propaganda cough
I sure as hell was not taught enough (and most of what I was taught, prior to high school history classes, was whitewashed propaganda. Things like "The Russian space program was awful", "The Native Americans and settlers got along swimmingly", or "Columbus thought the Earth was flat". Stuff no adult familiar with the material believes for a moment, but that we teach children anyway.)
Keyword being "children." Starting in middle school through high school, you hear much less biased info.
This isn't true. I was being taught worthless fables at both of the highschools I attended.
The Nazi's managed to document things exhaustively, so it serves as a jumping off point into a bunch of other places you will very likely find interesting books and articles about most of the aspects of the regime.
Can I get an email or something when this site decides it wants to return to technology and not be r/Politics?
If I wanted to know what the major current events were in a foreign country I'd turn on CNN.
>If I wanted to know what the major cybersec/surveillence stories were in the country with defacto control of a large portion of the world's internet, a hotbed of technological innovation, and the home country of this website, I'd turn to one of the least reputable news sources in that country.
There is nothing new coming from this, other than the fact that people seem to have had their bubbles of ignorance burst.
The internet is the same today as it was yesterday, because a large majority of people simply don't care. You may find this disturbing, but it is undeniable.
The circle jerk of the last few days has more properly resembled a university politics class than it has technology and entrepreneurship. I'm not saying politics isn't important though, I'm saying it is better discussed elsewhere.
There is nothing new or insightful being added at this point. It's all just meaningless twaddle.
If you care, get off your ass and go join a campaign for a person that will stop this stuff.
This is different. Now there's proof. Leaked documents implicating the largest consumer Internet companies that are recognizable names for every US citizen. Now these large Internet companies have to stand in front of their customers, their shareholders and say something about this. Now's our chance to demand answers from them and from our government. Now there's money involved; this strikes me as a very nice lever with which to move the world.
I agree, standing around saying, "Well, I know there's spying going on but, oh well!" is not productive. My ass has been gotten off of for a very long time.
But thinking that nothing is different today is over-the-top cynical.
So. Fucking. What.
Call me cynical, I don't care. I've grown out of my desire to completely change the world. Right now I want a nice safe place for my family to be allowed to go about its business. I have that now, like I had it yesterday, and based on all available data I'll have that tomorrow. Yes, even with someone possibly monitoring that I called Indonesia 10 times over the past 15 years.
Most western democracies have had this shit in place for years. Canada has CSEC (http://www.cse-cst.gc.ca/index-eng.html). ECHELON has been around since the cold war (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON). France has internet monitoring. So does Australia.
In case you haven't noticed, none of the nonsense around constitutions, human rights, legal decrees and such really matters. They're just guidelines, and how we interpret the words can and does change every damn day. The same law that upheld segregation is the same law that maintains that it is unconstitutional. It's all just interpretation.
Get enough people to agree with your interpretation, and you can justify anything. Good luck fighting against that.
Define "this".
For the last few days, these huge comment threads have been completely empty of information. People are complaining about "NSA spying" or simply "this" and calling it unconstitutional without defining what these actions were and why they are unconstitutional. In the absence of detail, people are substituting their own worst fears. For the most part, that is also the case in the linked articles.
So far, by my understanding, we have:
1. A court order for Verizon to create a database of phone transaction metadata and make it accessible to the NSA. We don't know what (if any) procedures are in place for controlling access to the data.
2. A non-technical document claiming that the NSA has direct access to "the servers" and is getting information from several companies. News reports imply that this refers to internal company servers. The companies named unanimously deny that this is the case. We don't know the details of what information the NSA is collecting or how they are collecting it; specifically, we do not know and cannot say that they are failing to follow the 4th Amendment and other legal procedures.
3. Something called PRISM exists. People are fearmongering about PRISM being some horrible unconstitutional crime when nobody knows what it is (my guess: it's just a UI for collecting reports from the companies that they send enough information requests to for them to use a standard data format).
None of this justifies the current panic, the uprating of spammy slogans, and the top-rated comment in a 300-point thread saying this is just as bad as Hitler.
First, for the record, I think it's helpful to not define this surveillance in terms of illegality or unconstitutionality. By definition, if the branches of the US government have enacted this (executive made the policy order, legislative reviewed it, judicial signed off) then it is constitutional and legal. It's not very useful to debate it on those terms.
My primary objection is the lack of transparency by my government. Democracies simply do not work without the informed consent of the governed. How do I know who to vote out if my elected representatives don't tell me what they're doing? Thus my definition of "this" includes "keeping the extent of the surveillance a secret". Every time you say "we don't know" you are agreeing with me.
My secondary objection is the institutionalization of easy spying. Every defense I've seen from the administration includes some proviso that they're only gathering data about foreign nationals suspected of terrorism. I prefer my governmental legal structures built with the understanding that they could be used for ill. Having no public, non-governmental discourse about these processes prevents the electorate from making that judgement call.
My third objection is to the easy reliance on xenophobia and fear-mongering in the defense of these policies that we don't know enough about. "Oh good," I (am supposed to) sigh with relief. "This network is only to be used for spying on foreign terrorists." Given that global relations are the new reality I find it deeply troubling that my government is defending itself by throwing the rest of the world under the bus.
I wouldn't call my reaction panic. I never said this was "as bad as Hitler" which, in itself, is a meaningless and unhelpful statement.
What I want are answers and accountability.
As for the people that didn't care before, this changes nothing, really.
"...it should be evident Ingram’s Law does not excuse irrelevant, improper mentions of Nazism in any discussion. It is not a purely rhetorical device. But it ought to be used to counter any attempt to side-step proper mention or comparison with Nazism and Hitler or avoid admitting the similarities between Nazism or Nazi practices"
http://richardvaningram.hubpages.com/hub/Godwins-Law-and-Ing...
Incidentally it turns out the Glenn Greenwald wrote a little commentary on Godwin's Law a few years back: http://www.salon.com/writer/glenn_greenwald/
In the comments to that article, Godwin himself showed up, and wrote that his Law was intended only to discourage frivolous comparisons to Nazis, not substantive ones.
Making a comparison equating a US spy/wire tapping program to a homicidal antisemitic lunatic that played a major role in exterminating 9 million people is naive at best and idiotic at worst.
Believing such a comparison is apt does in fact make you a fool, by definition, because what you are displaying is foolishness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foolishness
By all means though, continue to believe in nonsense. That's your right. Don't attempt to tell me I can't call a spade a spade however.
I've been around here for more than a year. More than a few years, actually. It looks like you're throwing a temper tantrum over these NSA-related posts on HN. Come back next week, I'm sure there will be something new over which you can complain.
Meanwhile, there are plenty of us for whom this is a very important topic. No, government spying isn't new, whether in the US or elsewhere (I'm in Canada). But there is a place to talk about how we ought to handle this, as the targets of that spying.
Regarding this thread, it was probably time to let it die before it started. There's nothing to be accomplished by arguing over wording and metaphorical choices from five posts back.
Nobody said the US government is a bunch of Nazis. But the US government is following a public relations play book that is similar many ways... A deeply disturbing development.
"The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude." -- George Orwell
I'd argue something similar goes for HN. Especially since "Politics" basically means how people live together in cities, and here a lot of the architects of our virtual city hang out. Yes, surveillance and effectively autocracy is older than technology, but with how the marriage is going lately, it's very much our concern. It's not like any of this would be possible without engineers and mathematicians who made it so.
Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
Declaring wars is so old school though. Now we just send drones wherever we want.
I mean, I feel like following the constitution is probably the most important thing we can encourage, and its basically like "meh, lets hope they stop violating the constitution". I simply do not get it. Priority #1 should be making sure that the NSA is following the constitution. There is 0 point in fighting foreign wars or anything like that until this is fixed. The NSA's budget should be reduced to 0 until there is 100% proof this has stopped.
Obeying them is a strong suggestion, and disobeying could conceivably be used as evidence in an impeachment trial, but that's about it.
This isn't a new issue either. It's over 150 years old. Andrew Jackson didn't even get a slap on the wrist for not enforcing the Supreme Court's ruling in Worcester v. Georgia.
Actually, it's one of the fundamental checks and balances. The judiciary has no executive power. The reason a conviction in court sucks for the defendant is because the executive branch actors enforce that conviction by taking the convict to jail.
It's called checks and balances for a reason.
There is no center of power, though the balance may shift over time (and yes, the executive has a great deal of power).
Also, of course, these activities are Very Important so America can win the War on Terror and eliminate Al Qaeda and all the other Evil People in the whole World, so, as a Senator, you would find yourself hard-pressed for raising your re-election campaign funds if you were to "side with the terrorists" and failed to approve the budget for these secret activities.
When it comes to these votes on these issues where intelligence is discussed, members look to follow the lead of members of this committee for guidance on how to vote, as these members are barred from divulging the exact contents of the meeting. (Though it may be argued they could easily enter it into the public record and have immunity via the speech and debate clause.) This committee is also supposed to exercise oversight but that's often problematic because...
Once the Congress has passed these laws, the Executive Branch will often interpet the laws as they see fit, and because of the clandestine nature of all of this, there is currently no mechanism by which they must or do inform the committee on how they've interpreted the law. There is very little Congressional oversight of clandestine activities, and this has been the case historically except for very rare occasions where the lid has been blown off so to speak and public hearings were held. The oversight here is the weakest link and in the absence of strong oversight, people in power will continue to expand and condense their power in Washington as history has shown.
They might even take it a step further with drones.
you have to know everything in order to be completely safe
- Erich Mielke, head of the Stasi, East GermanyThat said this is a good opportunity for both ends of the spectrum to work together.
Progressives would turn a lot of stomachs off the blue coastal areas. This site has an overrepresentation from California and Europe, which skews our perception.
Here's Groklaw's bit on it: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130610101148583
>The opinion Movant seeks cannot be released by the Government not only because it is classified but also because it is under this Court’s seal. As Judge Bates has explained, “[t]he FISC is a unique court,” whereas “[o]ther courts operate primarily in public, with secrecy the exception; the FISC operates primarily in secret, with public access the exception.” In re Release, 526 F. Supp. 2d at 487-88. The FISC maintains this operational secrecy because, unlike any other court, its “entire docket relates to the collection of foreign intelligence by the federal government.” Id. at 487.
It's secret simply by the nature of the court, not by specific executive instruction.
The idea behind seeking temporarily secret court-orders was that they would effect ongoing investigations, but that the court-orders would become public when the charges were brought.
An example is obtaining a wire-tap order for an individual. If it were automatically public, the individual might be watching the public record and see that they were being wire-tapped and make the wire-tap meaningless.
Now we have a situation where the decisions remain in secret for perpetuity? It's simple bullshit and an attempt to "route around" the Constitutional protections.
It is interesting that yet again we end up in a preposterous situation, where you can suck in all call data and not tell anyone, due to a long chain of small concessions (patriot act, fisa review, 'business records' condition, etc.)
"EFF asked the government for a copy of "any written opinion or order" of the FISA court in which the court held that the surveillance conducted under the FISA Amendments Act (2008 version) "was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment" or had "circumvented the spirit of the law." After some of the usual back and forth in discovery, the government revealed that it had found one such [!], but it refused to provide it on the grounds that it had no authority under FISC rules "to release FISC opinions to a FOIA requester or any other member of the public without a FISC order." So that's why EFF is now approaching the court itself, asking for a ruling that the government is allowed to provide it. The ACLU asked, and was denied, once before for the same relief it now is asking for, but now, after the latest events and the President's encouragement of public debate saying it's healthy for a democracy, it is renewing its request."
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/government-says-secret...
If the legislature makes 10% as many rules as the executive, who really legislates?
If branches of the executive insist on their "independence" from elected officials, is the US really a Democratic Republic?
What kind of country do we live in, really?
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-05-24/opinions/39495...
This seems to be an instance of the old "telephone game" of blogs citing other blogs, in an admittedly emotional issue, although as far as I can tell the actual court activity here involves the rather technical issue of unsealing court records, not the merits of any constitutional matters.
However, it seems that a new type of quantum key distribution system [1] may allow us citizens to share the keys such that not even the government may be able to get them. I don't really know much about this but it does seem promising. It may be the only way to ensure that only those that we choose can see our data. I would not be surprised though if the government tried to pass laws to make such technology illegal. Just like it tried to make military grade encryption illegal by claiming it was a munitions weapon.[2]
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/03/13/cryptog...
http://www.cfr.org/us-election-2008/obamas-speech-woodrow-wi...
"This Administration also puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand. I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining our Constitution and our freedom.
That means no more illegal wire-tapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient. That is not who we are. And it is not what is necessary to defeat the terrorists. The FISA court works. The separation of powers works. Our Constitution
works. We will again set an example for the world that the law is not subject to the whims of stubborn rulers, and that justice is not arbitrary.
This Administration acts like violating civil liberties is the way to enhance our security. It is not. There are no short-cuts to protecting America, and that is why the fifth part of my strategy is doing the hard and patient work to secure a more resilient homeland."
I'm still wondering when this idea of defending the people against this type of thing went out the window. . .
The moment it achieved it's intended political goal, I suspect.
Nixon was impeached for spying on a few competitors but eerily similarly using the FBI, CIA and IRS to spy on competitors and was statesman enough to resign.
Bill Clinton for being too good and making people pry into his personal life.
So far this trumps both combined.
Granted this is the first time technology has allowed this amount of spying and illegal search and seizure of papers so timing would put any president there.
I am scared at what will happen 2-3 presidents from now if the executive branch overreach continues, the exact thing Obama was complaining about in 2008. Considering he was not for it before he became president.
Whether its door to door unreasonable search (hello first amendment), or account to account unreasonable search, its still the same thing! And no court in their sound mind should find it different.
It is "better", in that:
1. It goes to the original source, not a blog post giving a five-line summary of another blog post.
2. It is relevant to the acts of which the NSA was recently accused (specifically, the collection of Verizon metadata) and not about some other vague undefined activity that the NSA has already been forced to stop doing.
3. It discusses in detail the Constitutional issues involved and the history of related court rulings.
4. It is the actual US Supreme Court ruling on the subject.