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Judge dismisses Wikimedia case against NSA over Upstream surveillance

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Re: Judge dismisses Wikimedia case against NSA over Upstream surveillance

#91

Post by cwkoss »

monocasa wrote: post #60
JaimeThompson wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The technology to make small, compact, high output thermonuclear weapons isn't out in the open nor is a lot of the technology used to reduce the CEP of ICBM warheads.

The big thing we're missing for modern weapons is the nature of aerogel between the primary and secondary stages. You'll still get a nice boom if you screw that up.

Ooh neat, I had never heard about this use for aerogel.

Do you have a speculation on the function of aerogel in a warhead? Useful for its thermal insulation properties?

Re: Judge dismisses Wikimedia case against NSA over Upstream surveillance

#92

Post by m-p-3 »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #62
criddell wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> programs that were in no way illegal, or unconstitutional I noticed you didn't say unethical .

It doesn’t really matter. It’s wrong. The Fourth Amendment is a thing regardless of what the government does or says.

The government is responsible of applying the Constitution. If they don't apply it, then the Constitution doesn't really matter.

Re: Judge dismisses Wikimedia case against NSA over Upstream surveillance

#93

Post by a1369209993 »

jethro_tell wrote: post #71
mindfulgeek wrote: post #66

Why can’t there be an independent party with top secret clearance do a code inspection and see if the hypothetical theory holds water? It seems like there should be a way to testify about it without compromising secrets.

The problem is that those get stacked with defense hawks not civil liberty activists and you're back to square one.

Pick twelve people uniformly at random from the US population and require them to be read in to all relevant clearances. This is a solved problem and has been since at least the 1700s.

Re: Judge dismisses Wikimedia case against NSA over Upstream surveillance

#94

Post by brokenmachine »

hammock wrote: post #64
post_below wrote: post #5

From the article: "Judge Ellis said: "For Wikimedia to litigate the standing issue further, and for defendants to defend adequately in any further litigation, would require the disclosure of protected state secrets, namely details about the Upstream surveillance program's operations. For the reasons that follow, therefore, the standing issue cannot be tried, or otherwise further litigated, without risking or requirin…

>they can use this as justification to keep anything they want secret, even when there is no real national security concern with revealing the information. Aren't these secrets revealed to the judge, who then decides if the intel agency is justified in state secrets defense? At least that is a check and balance.

Even if this does happen, a judge would (justifiably) be heavily inclined to take the advice of the intelligence community on whether or not the secrecy rating is warranted.

Re: Judge dismisses Wikimedia case against NSA over Upstream surveillance

#95

Post by khawkins »

javajosh wrote: post #59

Being a fan of lightweight activism, I would like Wikimedia to please publish a list of sensitive articles, so that I can look at them occasionally or, better yet, write a browser extension that simulates looking through them that other people can run. The default state of government is totalitarian dictatorship; democracy is carved out of that rock every time we the people reserve a right for ourselves. Clearly the…

I'm not a big fan of NSA surveillance, but given that you acknowledge this case is activism, it's concerning to me that the nonprofit built to sustain the allegedly unbiased encyclopedia Wikipedia is moving in the direction of political activism.

Poor stewardship of Wikipedia is a far greater threat to democracy than what the NSA is doing, in my opinion. Wikipedia is literally writing the history book of the modern age, and the amount of power their administrators have over public thought cannot be underestimated enough. Sure, it's largely written by the "users", but an insulated class of administrators and super users largely decide which characterizations get to stay and which get removed.

No doubt there are going to be abuses of power at Wikipedia, but activism like this makes it clear that Wikipedia has a bias, and the mandate is coming from the top down. Again, I don't think the activism itself is problematic but precisely who is doing it is the problem.

Re: Judge dismisses Wikimedia case against NSA over Upstream surveillance

#96

Post by monocasa »

cwkoss wrote: post #91
monocasa wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big thing we're missing for modern weapons is the nature of aerogel between the primary and secondary stages. You'll still get a nice boom if you screw that up.

Ooh neat, I had never heard about this use for aerogel. Do you have a speculation on the function of aerogel in a warhead? Useful for its thermal insulation properties?

It's this stuff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOGBANK

Basically we know why we want it (optimally igniting the second stage using the energy of the first stage), but we don't know exactly what it's made out of or the process for making it. We know it's gnarly, toxic stuff though.

Re: Judge dismisses Wikimedia case against NSA over Upstream surveillance

#97

Post by Avamander »

khawkins wrote: post #95
javajosh wrote: post #59

Being a fan of lightweight activism, I would like Wikimedia to please publish a list of sensitive articles, so that I can look at them occasionally or, better yet, write a browser extension that simulates looking through them that other people can run. The default state of government is totalitarian dictatorship; democracy is carved out of that rock every time we the people reserve a right for ourselves. Clearly the…

I'm not a big fan of NSA surveillance, but given that you acknowledge this case is activism, it's concerning to me that the nonprofit built to sustain the allegedly unbiased encyclopedia Wikipedia is moving in the direction of political activism. Poor stewardship of Wikipedia is a far greater threat to democracy than what the NSA is doing, in my opinion. Wikipedia is literally writing the history book of the modern a…

That "insulated class of administrators" is unfortunately not enough, Wikipedia is being constantly modified to spread a specific agenda. I've caught a few occurrences but Wikipedia doesn't really have enough moderators watching over edits.

Re: Judge dismisses Wikimedia case against NSA over Upstream surveillance

#98

Post by merpnderp »

chishaku wrote: post #16
HenryKissinger wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "state secrets" firewall means that the public has no ability to police government surveillance. The public can change the composition of the Congress, which has oversight and lawmaking authorities over domestic intelligence agencies.

Why is this comment being downvoted? What alternatives are there other than achieving meaningful representation in government e.g. Congress?

Because often people who don’t get their way can’t believe their ideas didn’t win and much prefer saying democracy is broken.

Re: Judge dismisses Wikimedia case against NSA over Upstream surveillance

#99

Post by MiroF »

HenryKissinger wrote: post #49
OnlineGladiator wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Edward Snowden did not go through the proper channels. If he had, doing so would not have led to his prosecution. I'm not sure why you're so trusting of the government that is openly admitting they are unwilling to release their secrets, and not only that but the court system is designed to protect this. From what I heard, he tried to go through the proper channels, and was rebuffed. So it's his word against the go…

If you go through the proper whistleblowing channels and get nowhere, it simply means that whatever it is you tried to blow the whistle on, isn't illegal, unethical, or unconstitutional. You humbly recognize that you were wrong, and go back to work. You don't start betraying your country and flee in the arms of the enemy.

Pshh

Re: Judge dismisses Wikimedia case against NSA over Upstream surveillance

#100

Post by CriticalCathed »

HenryKissinger wrote: post #49
OnlineGladiator wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Edward Snowden did not go through the proper channels. If he had, doing so would not have led to his prosecution. I'm not sure why you're so trusting of the government that is openly admitting they are unwilling to release their secrets, and not only that but the court system is designed to protect this. From what I heard, he tried to go through the proper channels, and was rebuffed. So it's his word against the go…

If you go through the proper whistleblowing channels and get nowhere, it simply means that whatever it is you tried to blow the whistle on, isn't illegal, unethical, or unconstitutional. You humbly recognize that you were wrong, and go back to work. You don't start betraying your country and flee in the arms of the enemy.

Or, you realize that it was unconstitutional but that the government doesn't care anymore. And so you do the thing patriots do and sacrifice your life to make the information known.

Snowden is a patriot and an American hero. The traitors are those who didn't speak up, and those in power who allow the violations of our constitutional rights to continue.

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