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Ninth Circuit rules NSA's bulk collection of Americans' call records was illegal

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Re: Ninth Circuit rules NSA's bulk collection of Americans' call records was illegal

#321

Post by sudosysgen »

Proziam wrote: post #218
ardy42 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You know what I don't get? There is no penalty for violating the highest law of the land (the constitution). How is it anymore than a suggestion or a guidline if government officials are not punished for violating it? And that is exactly how lae enforcement and intelligence community treat it. It's because it can't reasonably work like that. At a certain point, defining punishments is moot, because there's no highe…

> If the Constitution says "Congress shall make no law..." and Congress still makes a law, what are you going to do, throw Congress in jail? That's nonsense. The only nonsense is that we haven't done exactly that. If someone in power betrays the public trust they should be punished. The punishment ought to be severe so there is no doubt about the stakes at play. > That might actually be unconstitutional ex-post-facto…

The US officially has no enemies as of yet.

Re: Ninth Circuit rules NSA's bulk collection of Americans' call records was illegal

#322

Post by Voliokis »

propogandist wrote: post #180
mLuby wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He knowingly and clearly broke laws by stealing and disclosing classified information. I think he was ethically correct to do so, and his act qualified as civil disobedience, but that's why the US government is after him.

Media is calling Snowden a "leaker" rather than whistleblower, because Trump has been considering pardoning him. The only thing the media cares about is 'orange man bad'. >Trump says he is considering pardon for leaker Edward Snowden https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-politics-snowden/trum... discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24174265

Seems to me like you're the one that cares too much about "orange man bad".

https://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/edward-snowden-t...

https://phys.org/news/2016-07-wikileaks-nsa-leaker-edward-sn...

https://edition.cnn.com/2014/01/23/us/edward-snowden/index.h...

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2013/06/12/try-nsa-...

https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/nsa-leaker-edward-snowden-fai...

https://www.france24.com/en/20140807-snowden-russia-nsa-resi...

https://www.newsweek.com/edward-snowden-latest-nsa-leaker-wo...

Check the dates. Most of them are from before Trump, and the last one is long before Trump floated the idea of pardoning Snowden.

Re: Ninth Circuit rules NSA's bulk collection of Americans' call records was illegal

#323

Post by Cd00d »

est31 wrote: post #225
portpecos wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but Gina had unanimous support by Democrats, Republicans, and the entire CIA to become the Director of the CIA. Let’s not forget that Obama re-signed the Patriot Act even after campaigning in 2008 to end it. This kind of behavior is a problem that spans generations of government positions. It’s about time something is done about it.

> Yeah but Gina had unanimous support by Democrats, Republicans, and the entire CIA to become the Director of the CIA. * 109 generals oppose her nomination in a letter: https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/sites/default/files/RMLSena... * yes, there were some democrats who voted in her favour, but there were republicans too who voted against her. Overall though, the overwhelming majority democrats did vote against her. F…

I have no goal in undermining your point; it has only raised a curiosity for me. Overall your point is strong with your second bullet, it's just the first bullet I want to discuss without detracting from.

109 generals sounds like a large number. It's a compelling metric!

But, I don't really know how many generals (and admirals) there really are in the military. I just know that the US military is kinda huge, so there's got to be a lot of them. I mean, the Pentagon alone is a massive building (the largest office in the world!) that I imagine being full of generals.

And then, I see in the letter that all of the signees are retired, which expands the total number of generals (and admirals) alive significantly.

I guess, I'm trying to ask a question about metrics, because I face this constantly. The absolute metric (>100 generals!) looks very strong, but the relative metric (nn% of all living generals and admirals active and retired) would possibly be underwhelming. It's no small feat to get a person with a real voice to sign a public letter like that so, the absolute number is big, but if the cause were of broad interest the relative number would be significant too....

On a minor bit of research I see there can only be 231 flag officers active at any time. I don't know how many are retired, but that does indicate the absolute number is a significant relative number. I still just struggle with the right way to report and digest metrics like this.

Re: Ninth Circuit rules NSA's bulk collection of Americans' call records was illegal

#324

Post by ByteJockey »

AaronFriel wrote: post #208
ByteJockey wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine that the rights you're talking about would never have been recognized in such a world. Maybe I'm just being cynical, but it was hard enough to get those rights recognized in the realm of argument, I imagine putting a giant pile of money on the other side would make it functionally impossible to change anything. Putting financial penalties on admitting your mistakes doesn't usually make people more compassio…

I don't think individuals involved in the government should always be liable, it should be the government itself in these institutional cases. If a police department, a county clerk, or a school repeatedly violates someone's rights, I don't think it's fair to say "Well, we 'fixed' the problem for anyone who comes after those folks." For one thing, due to qualified immunity with police brutality the problem never actu…

> I don't think individuals involved in the government should always be liable, it should be the government itself in these institutional cases.

Yes, I get that. I'm not talking about individual liability, I'm talking about institutional budgets.

I'm saying that if acknowledging rights generally costs a large sum of money (in your hypothetical, in payments to people who have had their rights infringed upon) you will see less of it, as pressure gets put on legislators and judges to save money.

To take the recent example of gay marriage, I would expect the phrase "we can't let them marry, there's a budget crunch going on" to be used unironically.

I think that what you're advocating for would end up with less of what you seem to actually want (you seem to want people's rights to be respected).

Re: Ninth Circuit rules NSA's bulk collection of Americans' call records was illegal

#325

Post by AnonHP »

Whenever I see such news and then look around at what they’ve been doing and continue to do (revealed sometimes in congressional hearings), it seems to me that the executive and the legislature are truly toothless in the face of these three-letter agencies. Nothing they say or put forth as law will be obeyed. So why even have laws then?

Then you also have top representatives from these agencies lying outright in public hearings with hardly a consequence. There ought to be criminal proceedings and punishments for this. A resignation here and there isn’t enough (one way they’d handle that is by joining the privacy sector and getting back into the game by proxy).

Re: Ninth Circuit rules NSA's bulk collection of Americans' call records was illegal

#326

Post by AndrewBissell »

AnonHP wrote: post #325

Whenever I see such news and then look around at what they’ve been doing and continue to do (revealed sometimes in congressional hearings), it seems to me that the executive and the legislature are truly toothless in the face of these three-letter agencies. Nothing they say or put forth as law will be obeyed. So why even have laws then? Then you also have top representatives from these agencies lying outright in publ…

> it seems to me that the executive and the legislature are truly toothless in the face of these three-letter agencies.

This is by design, a design which was cemented in place on November 22, 1963. If real accountability ever comes to the intelligence agencies, it won't come from the executive or legislative branches over which they exert a lethal veto.

Re: Ninth Circuit rules NSA's bulk collection of Americans' call records was illegal

#327

Post by KingOfCoders »

portpecos wrote: post #202
lehi wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A reminder that a CIA officer who oversaw, ordered, and participated in systematic detainee torture, then wrote the order to destroy the evidential tapes of said torture, was not only not punished or prosecuted but promoted to the current Director of the agency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_CIA_interrogation_videota... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gina_Haspel

Yeah but Gina had unanimous support by Democrats, Republicans, and the entire CIA to become the Director of the CIA. Let’s not forget that Obama re-signed the Patriot Act even after campaigning in 2008 to end it. This kind of behavior is a problem that spans generations of government positions. It’s about time something is done about it.

Both republicans and democrats will do everything to keep up the American empire. Their foreign policy doesn't differ too much (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Syria, Bay of Pigs/Cuba, Panama, ...) as does their management of the three letter agencies (CIA torture and drug trading, NSA listening in, ...). Kennedy, Obama and Clinton haven't been that different from Nixon, Reagan or Bush in that area. Sometimes their tools differ.

Re: Ninth Circuit rules NSA's bulk collection of Americans' call records was illegal

#328

Post by visarga »

_8j50 wrote: post #6

You know what I don't get? There is no penalty for violating the highest law of the land (the constitution). How is it anymore than a suggestion or a guidline if government officials are not punished for violating it? And that is exactly how lae enforcement and intelligence community treat it. The US constitution needs lots of updates but this maybe the most important item -- manadatory prison terms for anyone acting…

> You know what I don't get? There is no penalty for violating the highest law of the land (the constitution).

Constitution is an interpretable document. Depends how you read it, so it's not as simple as 'violating' the constitution, it ends up in the interpretation of a comma or something.

Re: Ninth Circuit rules NSA's bulk collection of Americans' call records was illegal

#329

Post by [deleted] »

joshuamorton wrote: post #289
ColanR wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"held accountable != "punished" or "punative". I'm not talking about punishment or punative action. I'm talking about accountability, where being 'held accountable' could be a synonym for 'held responsible'. In this case, the way I used the phrase, Britain was 'held responsible' by simply being told to 'go away'.

But being "held responsible" and being "held accountable" are very different. Holding someone responsible means to blame them. Holding someone accountable means giving them consequences. Many people blame the government for all sorts of things. Only a very small number of those things is the government ever held accountable for. I agree that many people blamed the British Government for their problems, indeed that wa…

[deleted]

Re: Ninth Circuit rules NSA's bulk collection of Americans' call records was illegal

#330

Post by jacobn »

AndrewBissell wrote: post #326
AnonHP wrote: post #325

Whenever I see such news and then look around at what they’ve been doing and continue to do (revealed sometimes in congressional hearings), it seems to me that the executive and the legislature are truly toothless in the face of these three-letter agencies. Nothing they say or put forth as law will be obeyed. So why even have laws then? Then you also have top representatives from these agencies lying outright in publ…

> it seems to me that the executive and the legislature are truly toothless in the face of these three-letter agencies. This is by design, a design which was cemented in place on November 22, 1963. If real accountability ever comes to the intelligence agencies, it won't come from the executive or legislative branches over which they exert a lethal veto.

For those of us with less detailed knowledge of US history: I take it you are referring to the assassination of president John F Kennedy?
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