Why The NSA's Surveillance Program Is Illegal And Unconstitutional
techdirt.com
techdirt.com
Too bad they never considered reading the patriot act before signing it...
Also, I think I'll need an XKCD graph to understand just when WP and NYT stopped being Obama puppets...
Now whether the courts would accept that in this situation or not is an open question. But one could still at least make the argument that the activity is illegal.
If the law is relatively black-and-white as written then that's the law, whether the person who wrote it anticipated that consequence or not.
I would love to see that applied to the Patriot Act: It's well known that the large majority of Congress didn't read it before passing it, so their intent was clearly to pass generic anti-terrorism legislation rather than any of the unknown-to-them specific text of USA PATRIOT. And, of course, without any specific text you would expect the law to be found unconstitutionally vague.
That should also have the gleeful side effect of setting the precedent that members of Congress have to read and understand legislation before passing it or the law in question is unconstitutional.
I'm just thinking whether Snowden's lawyers could use this kind of argument. Of course this is not that simple, since he disclosed a national secret, and I guess that national secrets regulations are perfectly constitutional.
My understanding is that US law does not have any specific constitutional courts. Indeed, I think one could argue that US law is not necessarily "based on the constitution" but based on English Common Law since even the constitution is interpreted in light of this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_law
The US Supreme Court regularly decides on constitutionality, and its rulings are binding on all other courts in the country. But it is not a "constitutional court" in the sense of, e.g., Germany's Constitutional Court, because the US Supreme Court (1) only makes constitutional rulings when needed to resolve "actual cases or controversies", and (2) it also decides other matters not involving disputes over constitutional provisions.
> I guess that national secrets regulations are perfectly constitutional.
Yes, regardless of whether the NSA's spying is unconstitutional (and thereby illegal), it is clear that Snowden's actions were illegal under federal law.
Moreover, anyone who knows about how the internet works knows that packets travel over public and private lines and are routed through public and private computers. By design these machines read the headers of packets to know where to direct them. Computation is done on the contents of packets to ensure checksum validity.
One may strongly dislike the NSA's activities, but this is a specious argument.
Tell that to anyone who doesn't know what a "tracking cookie" is. A normal, non-technical, rational person will have an expectation of privacy with regard to their Internet browsing habits.
Rejecting standing was how the SCOTUS disposed of Proposition 8; how does it compare to find a way to have standing for this issue? Yeah, I know it's something of an over-broad question, but I don't know enough to pare it down better.
You'd have to demonstrate you were actually harmed by a program, which is going to be difficult for someone on the outside of these programs to ever prove.
[1] http://prospect.org/article/slow-motion-destruction-establis...
[2] http://balkin.blogspot.com/2007/04/standing-and-executive-po...
Would I expect a ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party to reflect upon their role in history, or have a meaningful discussion with others beyond "you're all wrong" and pouting, thinking the topic is beneath them when it's the other way around? Nah, something like that hardly ever happens, it is left to others.
That. In a community where several people have worked in such schemes and/or with the government, I guess that's to be expected. There's this notion that "tech guy == liberal" or at least against any kind of suppression of freedom of information and such, but real life doesn't work that way. There have been tons of tech guys and/or scientists that have willingly and cheerfully helped every rotten regime on the planet. It's a profession, after all, not an ideology.
People think walking out of it ends the discussion and the thought process -- but it simply means I am thinking about you instead of with you, and you get to hear it from others instead of directly. Some things are too big to end at the sensibilities of any person on this planet. Since I know for a fact that the people at the top are deluded and could really use some saving from themselves -- without knowing any of them, simply because power and wealth as ends in and of themselves are black holes, and only the mediocre pursue them -- there is simply nothing left to tip toe around, just a lot to discuss.
And the initial condescension reminded me of this quote, the bit about privilege:
I've heard quite a lot of people that talk about post-privacy, and they talk about it in terms of feeling like, you know, it's too late, we're done for, there's just no possibility for privacy left anymore and we just have to get used to it. And this is a pretty fascinating thing, because it seems to me that you never hear a feminist say that we're post-consent because there is rape. And why is that? The reason is that it's bullshit.
We can't have a post-privacy world until we're post-privilege. So when we cave in our autonomy, then we can sort of say, "well, okay, we don't need privacy anymore, in fact we don't have privacy anymore, and I'm okay with that." Realistically though people are not comfortable with that. Because, if you only look at it from a position of privilege, like, say, white man on a stage, then yeah, maybe post-privacy works out okay for those people. But if you have ever not been, or if you are currently not, a white man with a passport from one of the five good nations in the world, it might not really work out well for you, and in fact it might be designed specifically such that it will continue to not work out well for you, because the structures themselves produce these inequalities.
So when you hear someone talk about post-privacy, I think it's really important to engage them about their own privilege in the system and what it is they are actually arguing for.
-- Jacob Appelbaum ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3h46EbqhPo&t=7m46s )
Maybe outrage isn't helpful, as a constant emotional state that is, but let's say "if you're not discussing this seriously, you're not paying attention", neither to today nor to history.
You may recall they were involved in plotting to destroy journalist Glen Greenwald and his family.
http://www.salon.com/2011/02/15/palantir/
Plotting to destroy journalists who out government corruption and illegal behavior. Can't think of anything more undemocratic, actually the correct description is that an organization that plots to destroy journalists can not be described as anything other than a terrorist organization which is at war with the american people. But these terrorists at Palantir are proud of their affiliation with this terrorist crime syndicate.
http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Palantir
From posts on HN we see either that fascism and a hatred of freedom and democracy are extremely common in the tech industry OR there are a lot of organized sock puppet and persona accounts here. I personally think the latter is more likely - look at the "top voted" comment from a 1 day old account. Legit votes pushing it to the top? No way.
Actually, let me rephrase, Fuck Palantir. There is a point at which I disregard the technical hurdles that they overcome, due to the fact that they're at odds with our constitution. They are far, far past that point.
http://www.cryptogon.com/?p=35851
http://cironline.org/reports/license-plate-readers-let-polic...
Anonymous got a lucky break and found out about what was really going on at a few of these firms. There are a lot more firms and it isn't going to be so easy for grey hats to break in and release documents in the future. This doesn't mean that these firms aren't still engaging in widespread programs that make the Stasi look like a child's birthday game.