Hacker News Reader

Comment by bnejad | Hacker News Reader

"A federal court in San Francisco sided with the U.S. Department of Justice, ruling that the plaintiffs could not win a significant portion of the case—a Fourth Amendment challenge to the NSA’s tapping of the Internet backbone—without disclosure of classified information that would harm national security. In other words, Judge Jeffrey White found that “state secrets” can trump the judicial process and held that EFF’s clients could not prove they have standing."

From the linked ruling in the article. This type of ruling is mind boggling - what a giant cop out that the government can just say "oh sorry national security!" to end court cases.

View on HN

Indeed the very first case that established this right for the government is seen by many as an example of the privilege being abused.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Reynolds for the story.

It's unbelievable to me, too. It basically means the government can both violate the Constitution and absolve itself for the reason of "national security". To think how that would have gone over in the 18th century!

Of course it can. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/president-lincoln...

Lincoln was president in the 19th century. Washington, Adams, etc, were the 18th century presidents.

And my money is on Washington and Jefferson spinning in their graves every time "national security" is used to squash a court case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts

I'm responding to the outrage over

>It basically means the government can both violate the Constitution and absolve itself for the reason of "national security"

Why does the century matter?

Eh, "national security" was basically the rationale for replacing the Articles of Confederation, so...

Both of those court cases said it can't.

Both of those court cases didn't matter.

Frustrating as well because supporters of the programs like to bring up how they've been challenged in court before so they're perfectly fine and legal. Well, not exactly...

Who says the specific programs have been challenged in court? The argument is that they rest on principles that have been set forth in previous Supreme Court opinions.

Look at the EFF's handy image: https://www.eff.org/files/2015/03/19/backbone-2015-color.jpg.

Do you see the box labeled "filtering aimed at eliminating fully domestic transactions"? That's there because precedent says the 4th amendment does not protect things crossing the border. So the crux of the case is showing that the unconstitutional part happens in the first box--when the data is first copied.

In my opinion, none of it is protected once it's on the backbone. If hundreds of AT&T or Verizon engineers can access a data stream, it's not "private." But I also think the question should be litigated in court.

The question already has been litigated in court. To monitor a domestic phone conversion (which prior to digital exchanges the switchboard operator could listen into) requires a warrant to capture. Same principle here.

Just because something can be easily listened to doesn't mean the government doesn't need a warrant.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com