Ninth Circuit rules NSA's bulk collection of Americans' call records was illegal • Hacker News Board

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

#421

Post by autisticcurio » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 2:19 PM UTC

imglorp wrote: post #410

Gibbon1 wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Far as I understand the first director the FBI J. Edgar Hoover had blackmail on a lot of federal politicians. Which is why he left his position feet first. When Hoover died Nixon replaced him with someone with no previous ties to the agency. The CIA has deep ties to the American upper classes. And probably serves their interests over the states. Or their own interests. Aldrich Ames was living well beyond is means for…

Right. Look at the din over the Epstein stuff, due to covering/blackmailing/etc over the misbehavior by a small group. Then imagine a single entity that has every domestic text, phone call, and email ever sent, searchable and indexed, on any politician, judge, or candidate. It's far, far, more power than merely spying on foreign powers.

The security services have to do some unpleasant stuff in order to attempt some control over people. Whats the oldest profession in the book, then ask yourself what is the second oldest profession in the book? Would that be blackmail?

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

#422

Post by WarOnPrivacy » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 2:28 PM UTC

jaywalk wrote: post #412

mattacular wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a family member that watches Fox News and then check some of their primetime programming out, you'll see both the fear and where that fear comes from.

And you could do the same with CNN and MSNBC. Don't single out one source, they're all peddling fear just in different ways.

Whenever news org echo dire Gov warnings

[1] without vetting the evidence (or highlighting the lack thereof) &

[2] without the context of how often these turn out to be true/false

they're part of the FUD Generation Machine

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

#423

Post by ardy42 » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 2:29 PM UTC

AaronFriel wrote: post #144

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…

I don't think it would be unconstitutional ex-post-facto. Obergefell v. Hodges didn't define sex discrimination in marriage certificates unconstitutional after a certain date . It was always unconstitutional, and was recognized as such in their ruling. And yes, I would like to see, actually, qualified immunity removed and governments held liable for rights violations. Perhaps not prison time for the clerks - who were…

> I don't think it would be unconstitutional ex-post-facto. Obergefell v. Hodges didn't define sex discrimination in marriage certificates unconstitutional after a certain date. It was always unconstitutional, and was recognized as such in their ruling.

Maybe not on some technicality, but the effect would be the same. Conduct that was reckoned to be legal (and in fact required by law) becomes retroactively illegal because of the new interpretation.

> How different a world would it be...

You'd have officials second guessing the law left and right, so it wouldn't be much of a law anymore. You can imagine situations where that might be good, but there are just as many (if not more) where that would be very bad.

You chose your examples, but there'd be others that may be less compelling to you: cities being forced to pay compensation because they tried to regulate gun ownership, retroactive holes in the budget because the individual mandate was declared unconstitutional. Those are just some thing I can think of off the top of my head. Is that how you want good faith efforts to solve problems treated?

I think this is a care where idealism and practicality are in a pretty severe conflict, and there have the be pretty strong limits on retroactivity.

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

#424

Post by save_ferris » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 2:29 PM UTC

maeln wrote: post #355

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…

They are not toothless, they put them in those positions of power and do so gladly. Remember that Snowden always said he was ready to come back to the U.S and be trialled, as long as the trial wouldn't be a secret trial. Those who created the laws for those secret trial where not the CIA or the NSA, it was politician. The same way they made it so that it is forbidden to talk about the programs of certain agencies, ev…

> They created those laws, not the NSA, not the CIA, they could choose as easily to remove them. But it is too useful for them.

This is true, but it's not the entire truth either. Most congressmen don't have access to the really sensitive intelligence that comes from these surveillance operations, so it can't be that useful to many of them.

A legislator's primary goal is to get reelected, and working to remove powerful operations like this deeply threaten a legislator's political viability during elections. Remember, there's an incredible amount of money changing hands in the military-industrial complex, and money plays a huge role in winning elections.

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

#425

Post by throwaway0a5e » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 2:33 PM UTC

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #413

Gibbon1 wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Far as I understand the first director the FBI J. Edgar Hoover had blackmail on a lot of federal politicians. Which is why he left his position feet first. When Hoover died Nixon replaced him with someone with no previous ties to the agency. The CIA has deep ties to the American upper classes. And probably serves their interests over the states. Or their own interests. Aldrich Ames was living well beyond is means for…

> The CIA has deep ties to the American upper classes That’s hardly unique to the US. Other nations’ intelligence agencies tend to attract the aristocracy, e.g. all the Oxbridge alum at MI6/GCHQ.

Joining the intelligence services was basically the way the British upper class avoided combat service in ww2

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

#426

Post by sudosysgen » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 2:36 PM UTC

Proziam wrote: post #360

sudosysgen wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US officially has no enemies as of yet.

If a senator woke up tomorrow and wanted to help a martian terror cell that nobody knew existed, they would still be assisting an enemy of the state. It would still be treason, and I doubt that interpretation would be a topic of debate. There are also groups who openly consider us their enemy and take action to harm the United States, even if we don't 'officially' recognize them. Some of these groups are nation-state…

A communist wouldn't accept that installing communism in the US is "waging war against the US", and legal precedence in the US is that its legal to be a communist, so I'm not sure what you meant by that.

In fact, even supporting the Soviet Union would not be treason. Enemies, in this context, is very narrowly defined as an entity the US has declared war against.

À senator helping a Martian terror state, as long as they did not engage in violence against the US, wouldn't be convicted of treason.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/americans-have-forgott...

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

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Post by ric2b » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 2:38 PM UTC

yyyk wrote: post #112

danenania wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that just the pardon power by itself is fundamentally incompatible with democracy and the rule of law. It's like saying you're a pacifist... except for Tuesdays when you go on a weekly killing spree. I imagine that if we can survive and progress long enough to have real democracy and rule of law, our present system will be viewed a transitional period that, for all its very real improvements, was still…

There's no choice in a democracy but to have something like the pardon power. The reason is that we need protection also from the power of judicial branch, which is abusable like any branch with power. Not having a pardon power allows bad judges to throw anyone they don't like into jail with no recourse by anyone. In a democracy, all branches are checked by the others, and this is a necessary check on the judicial br…

Sure, the ability for someone to be pardoned should exist, but it's complete nonsense that the President alone controls it. I agree with you, Congress should also take a vote, so that the power to pardon doesn't rest on a single person.

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

#428

Post by hosteur » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 2:52 PM UTC

iratewizard wrote: post #241

dx87 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, we can't forget that he also took a bunch of information that had nothing to do with this ruling.

He learned from his employer to cast a wide net.

And he published none of it. He gave it to a few trusted journalists exactly to have them sort out what was not deemed in the public interest.

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

#429

Post by heimatau » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 3:03 PM UTC

salawat wrote: post #411

heimatau wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Besides Hamilton, they absolutely did not. How would you define the ability to vote, as only going to select white men? Land owners of a certain acreage, looks like only 6% of the population fit that bill [1]. These people were a bit contradicting. 'All men' didn't mean all men. It meant all, white land owners. Also, to be clear, the founders and early civil servants were upper-middle-class British that moved to Am…

>How would you define the ability to vote, as only going to select white men? Land owners of a certain acreage, looks like only 6% of the population fit that bill [1]. Aristocratic comes with way more baggage than what you describe; and you only have to look at jolly old England to see that. To be an Aristocrat. You had to be landed, but you also had to fit somewhere in the Peerage or established Nobility. That whole…

> Aristocratic comes with way more baggage than what you describe; and you only have to look at jolly old England to see that. To be an Aristocrat. You had to be landed, but you also had to fit somewhere in the Peerage or established Nobility. That whole system of class stratification? That came with an entire Parliamentry House in the form of the House of Lords.

You never answered my question, "How would you define the ability to vote, as only going to select white men?"

My point still stands as historically sound. The founders/govt were upper-middle class by England's standards and they recreated a very similar aristocratic structure here in the 13 colonies but with the founders at the top.

My point can also be supported by how State Legistatures would pick Senators, the electoral college, lifetime appointments to SCOTUS, lack of term limits on Congress and POTUS. These are all putting power in a select few. The select few aren't as wealthy as England's elites but the founders were very rich (the elite of American society).

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

#430

Post by heimatau » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 3:04 PM UTC

king_magic wrote: post #400

heimatau wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better late than never to learn.

It’s clearly sarcasm.

Yes but I felt it was wise of me to talk to readers whom...might've thought you were serious. :)