151–160 of 300 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's extremely disingenuous to characterize his role as "continued policy begun by previous administration" when his Vice President wrote the core legislation of the Patriot Act, he was actively working to expand those policies for 8 years, and one of his very last acts was to issue an EO further entrenching them.
Citations needed.
While this article offers the clearest presentation of the issue I've seen to date, I think the key point (which the article points out halfway in) is that the truth of Trump's claim that he was wiretapped does not depend on the presence or absence of a FISA warrant. The system is designed to be used without warrant, so those harping on the detail of whether or not a warrant existed that had Trump in scope are not fo…
The current system is worse than being designed to be used without warrant - it's explicitly setup to subvert the warrant process. Remember, FISA court proceedings are secret, and at least as of 2013 (I'm getting this info from Wikipedia), a massive 12 out of 35,529 FISA warrent requests were rejected.
Related fallacy: there is not a standard ratio of people who should fail school tests.
While this article offers the clearest presentation of the issue I've seen to date, I think the key point (which the article points out halfway in) is that the truth of Trump's claim that he was wiretapped does not depend on the presence or absence of a FISA warrant. The system is designed to be used without warrant, so those harping on the detail of whether or not a warrant existed that had Trump in scope are not fo…
However, there is an audit trail in the system. As an investigation will occur on this matter, I am sure that cleared representatives will have access to this for review.
While this article offers the clearest presentation of the issue I've seen to date, I think the key point (which the article points out halfway in) is that the truth of Trump's claim that he was wiretapped does not depend on the presence or absence of a FISA warrant. The system is designed to be used without warrant, so those harping on the detail of whether or not a warrant existed that had Trump in scope are not fo…
Why, in a thread about unacceptable reach of executive power, is the top comment a defense of the sitting president (the wielder of such power) and a canard about a mostly-unrelated political scandal?
This is true no matter who is in charge.
> top comment a defense of the sitting president
It is not a defense, but if you perceive it that way you reveal your own bias. It is merely a point about the relevance of a FISA warrant when reasoning about the issue.
> the wielder of such power)
Of course, my caution about the irrelevance of FISA warrants applies equally to the sitting president and to past and future presidents.
> a canard about a mostly-unrelated political scandal
I'm not really sure how to respond to your characterization of the Snowden revelations as a unrelated political scandal. If we're talking about "wiretapping", Snowden revealed that there is a vast power of surveillance that can be wielded by a large number of people with little oversight.
While this does not lend credence to Trump's claims, it does reveal that those rebuking Trump for making the claims based on the lack of a FISA warrant are likely attempting to deceive/misdirect the public about how the apparatus actually works.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There is absolutely an audit trail, including non-repudation for the analyst who performed the query (They must use their smartcard or "PKI"). What do you make of Snowden's assertion that he could have eavesdropped on anyone he wanted? Was he failing to mention that his actions could be audited? Was he failing to mention that he had access to someone else's PKI with which to do the surveillance? Other? Assuming you…
Here's another perspective on Snowden's claims https://www.thecipherbrief.com/article/exclusive/first-ciphe... He was a Sharepoint admin with access to Office type files. This is why you don't see raw intelligence from his leaks. From my own experiences working at the agency, GP is correct in that very few people can task FISA data.
I wish he were a participant on HN so he could chime in here and defend himself.
My impression is that he held several jobs over a few years which gave him access to more of the breadth of what was going on.
Surely after the revelations more security checks would have been implemented. But the other instances of large caches of leaked material suggest that there are not effective internal controls.
As a thought experiment, I'd suggest that the small size of teams required to maintain security, combined with a 'need to know' rule, results in an environment where creating an internal audit trail puts operational security at risk, and so it is avoided. All the anti-Trump leaks suggest that this is true, since surely Trump would have asked who had access to the leaked information, and the list would have been small enough (b/c of need-to-know) that he could have made a spectacle of the leaker.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Someone (the EFF?) put out a really interesting widget a few years ago that demonstrated what you could learn about a hypothetical person using two-removes metadata. In fact, they managed to build a metadata feed which cast the innocent person as a major terrorism threat by sheer coincidences.
I'd love a link!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any oversight of the NSA is entirely voluntary. Queries may well get flagged but then what? Does every flagged query get reviewed? We have to trust the NSA, who have clearly demonstrated that they are not to be trusted. Now in the probably very rare event that the NSA decides to tell on itself to the oversight committees, tell me just exactly what you think they are going to do about it. Nothing, that's what.
I think this is a misconception, but I totally do understand where it comes from. The OGC and IC IG genuinely do care a lot about these things but due to the classified nature of the NSA's work any disputes and arguments about all the nuances are occurring behind closed doors. The specific big case which the public knows about would be the domestic telephony metadata collection. Nobody knows about the discussions rel…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've always felt like the intent of a warrant was to prove to ME that the police were authorized to search my property. I'm thinking back to when people had to physically show up and be allowed entry into your estate. If my feeling on warrants match up with the true intention of the law (as it was originally written) then no-knock warrants are suspect as well as any kind of secret warrant to tap your phone/computer.…
The 4th Amendment doesn't just require "a warrant". The English government was using "writs of assistance", a type of general warrant that granted broad powers. As a protection against that type of easily-abused power, the founders created a set of requirements that limit the scope of allowed warrants. ... and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describ…
Almost every no knock is executed in such a way that 'proper' targeting is impossible.
A warrant cannot magically excuse police from their improper conduct. It took a deaf dumb blind and ignorant bench for that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There is absolutely an audit trail, including non-repudation for the analyst who performed the query (They must use their smartcard or "PKI"). What do you make of Snowden's assertion that he could have eavesdropped on anyone he wanted? Was he failing to mention that his actions could be audited? Was he failing to mention that he had access to someone else's PKI with which to do the surveillance? Other? Assuming you…
> What do you make of Snowden's assertion that he could have eavesdropped on anyone he wanted? Was he failing to mention that his actions could be audited? Was he failing to mention that he had access to someone else's PKI with which to do the surveillance? Other? I think he was not really telling the truth. And I don't mean that he intended to be dishonest, but rather, he was trying to explain the issue as he unders…
One recent historical point I'd mention based on your reasoning is that there was a period of time toward the end of Obama's presidency when there was immense political pressure on him to "do something" about Russia meddling in the US election to benefit Trump.
It seems plausible that since Obama was willing to impose last-minute sanctions on Russia and expel diplomats only weeks before leaving office, his administration might have also been pressured into explicitly investigating allegations of improper association between Trump and Russia via surveillance.
If such an investigation had been initiated and turned up any damning evidence, it is quite likely Trump would not have been sworn in as president.
I interpret Obama's willingness to impose sanctions and expel diplomats as an indication of how much pressure he was under to use his power to intervene in what was viewed by many as the effective rigging of an election.
I am not a Trump supporter, so I don't make this point in defense of Trump, merely as a possible indication of the amount of pressure Obama was under in his final days in office.
While this article offers the clearest presentation of the issue I've seen to date, I think the key point (which the article points out halfway in) is that the truth of Trump's claim that he was wiretapped does not depend on the presence or absence of a FISA warrant. The system is designed to be used without warrant, so those harping on the detail of whether or not a warrant existed that had Trump in scope are not fo…
> It would be nice if all surveillance could be traced back to FISA warrants However, there is an audit trail in the system. As an investigation will occur on this matter, I am sure that cleared representatives will have access to this for review.
What seems odd to me is that this "investigation" takes more than a few minutes. How is a system that allows easy auditing and checks and balances also the same system that takes weeks or months to determine who accessed specific records.
I think it's unlikely we'll see any raw data. Chances are that if there was any investigation going on into anyone on Trump's team (which we know there was), then those individuals showing up at Trump Tower for a meeting creates a metadata correlation to Trump Tower. Hence Trump's claim of "wiretapping Trump Tower" would seemingly be trivially true if even the simplest metadata link between, say, Flynn and Trump Tower were followed or considered potentially relevant by any analyst.