FISA court rules NSA can resume bulk data collection • Hacker News Board

Re: FISA court rules NSA can resume bulk data collection

#141

Post by linkregister » Wed, Jul 01, 2015, 4:50 PM UTC

tootie wrote: post #110

gjm11 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine a system that works as follows. You can have people assassinated. In order to do so, however, you need to fill in a hundred-page form with exhaustive details of your personal finances, your medical history, and the contents of your computers' hard drives; and then you need to play six sets of tennis against a strong player and win at least two; and then you need to play a 7-game chess match against a holder o…

That's a terribly analogy. The bureacracy isn't there as just a speedbump. It's there to make sure you don't waste time on cases doomed to fail. Secondly, surveillance is an essential tool in fighting crime. Assassinations are not.

The mission of FISA is explicitly not for fighting crime! It is for foreign intelligence collection only. It's also ill-suited for the purpose.

State and federal law enforcement can request a warrant. The turnaround time is far lower, the search methods more diverse, and the evidence gathered can be used in court.

Unfortunately, state law enforement can still subpoena your email metadata and your phone records without a warrant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_v._Maryland

Re: FISA court rules NSA can resume bulk data collection

#142

Post by AndrewKemendo » Wed, Jul 01, 2015, 4:53 PM UTC

saosebastiao wrote: post #119

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can tell you from first hand experience that getting a warrant TO the FISA court from a sponsoring agency is a massive bureaucratic battle in and of itself. Reason being, the agency powers that be don't want to send something up that will be disapproved because it takes significant time and effort of general counsel and leadership of these agencies to process, implement and track to maintain compliance - even if th…

If the evidence bar is so high, why exactly have there never been any arrests made using the data? That is an awful lot of people affected negatively for a zero benefit program. You would think a massive bureaucratic battle to only submit valid warrants would result in at least one arrest.

>why exactly have there never been any arrests made using the data?

To clarify the statements in press have been that no terrorists have been arrested based on the data. That is not the same as never having arrests.

There have been plenty of domestic arrests but they don't typically fall under the "terrorism" scope because of the nature of the act. Espionage etc... can be proven with this data and actions can be taken (like arrests) more quickly and easily than determining if someone is going to attack something a la terrorism.

I have no involvement in this case but I would say almost for certain that portions of surveillance in this case went to FISA for approval: http://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-we-arrested-a-russian-spy...

A gripe I have with the community at large is that the messaging focuses too much on terrorism and not enough on the other functions that are seeing successes everyday (counterintelligence etc...).

Re: FISA court rules NSA can resume bulk data collection

#143

Post by AndrewKemendo » Wed, Jul 01, 2015, 4:58 PM UTC

harry8 wrote: post #73

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can tell you from first hand experience that getting a warrant TO the FISA court from a sponsoring agency is a massive bureaucratic battle in and of itself. Reason being, the agency powers that be don't want to send something up that will be disapproved because it takes significant time and effort of general counsel and leadership of these agencies to process, implement and track to maintain compliance - even if th…

I don't believe you, sorry. You may be telling the truth but there are so many lies we've been told that I just don't. Sorry, that's how it is and I'm sure a very large number of people would agree with that. The FISA court /is/ a rubber stamp, how do we know? Ed Snowden told us about all the incredible amounts of overreach that the FISA court approved in secret. We're at far more risk from public servants with delus…

We're at far more risk from public servants with delusions of grandeur and infallibility going unchecked than lunatics with bombs. Lunatics with bombs cannot destroy democracy & freedom

Definitely in agreement there. Look at history, it's always been the case.

Re: FISA court rules NSA can resume bulk data collection

#144

Post by saosebastiao » Wed, Jul 01, 2015, 5:03 PM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #127

saosebastiao wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the evidence bar is so high, why exactly have there never been any arrests made using the data? That is an awful lot of people affected negatively for a zero benefit program. You would think a massive bureaucratic battle to only submit valid warrants would result in at least one arrest.

They have been hiding the activities of FISA by using parallel construction as the basis for arrests: 1) Get dirt on someone illegaly. 2) Find a legal avenue to discover that same information now that you know it's there. That protects their collection methods when defendants try to find out how they were nabbed. The FISA warrant never has to be disclosed if no one outside the community knows it exists. Consequently…

So the justification of the warrants is to use a "national security" cover for spying on people while evading discovery for when we don't actually use it for national security? That sounds pretty impeachable to me.

Re: FISA court rules NSA can resume bulk data collection

#145

Post by hglman » Wed, Jul 01, 2015, 5:44 PM UTC

john_b wrote: post #133

tootie wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a terribly analogy. The bureacracy isn't there as just a speedbump. It's there to make sure you don't waste time on cases doomed to fail. Secondly, surveillance is an essential tool in fighting crime. Assassinations are not.

> "Secondly, surveillance is an essential tool in fighting crime." This is a very dubious assertion. I'm not aware of any evidence that mass surveillance deters or prevents crime at all, much less is "an essential tool" for doing so. But even if one, for the sake of argument, concedes the point that mass surveillance does significantly deter or prevent crime, you still have a system set up where the costs of that sur…

Exactly that, as long as you have those who have access and those that don't you have something to be exploited. There you move towards a great divided in power, towards total lack of privacy or you don't gather the data. I think the later is actually the least likely. There are a lot of really powerful things you can do with good data, that seems worthwhile. The issue is then exploitation of that knowledge. For sure advantage will be had by someone, question is extent of imbalance and lack of privacy.

Re: FISA court rules NSA can resume bulk data collection

#146

Post by andreyf » Wed, Jul 01, 2015, 9:42 PM UTC

gjm11 wrote: post #97

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can tell you from first hand experience that getting a warrant TO the FISA court from a sponsoring agency is a massive bureaucratic battle in and of itself. Reason being, the agency powers that be don't want to send something up that will be disapproved because it takes significant time and effort of general counsel and leadership of these agencies to process, implement and track to maintain compliance - even if th…

Imagine a system that works as follows. You can have people assassinated. In order to do so, however, you need to fill in a hundred-page form with exhaustive details of your personal finances, your medical history, and the contents of your computers' hard drives; and then you need to play six sets of tennis against a strong player and win at least two; and then you need to play a 7-game chess match against a holder o…

That's a straw man argument. Andrew said that the reason the court doesn't decline a lot of requests warrants is because the cases that are not "airtight" never make it to the court. I think this is a fair response to the original comment analyzing the court's "historical performance" as being too lax.

Re: FISA court rules NSA can resume bulk data collection

#147

Post by andreyf » Wed, Jul 01, 2015, 9:48 PM UTC

r00fus wrote: post #50

dmix wrote: post #9

Just a reminder about FISA's historical performance: > Between 2001 and 2012, the FISA judges approved 20,909 surveillance and property search warrants - an average of 33 a week. During that 12-year period, the judges denied just 10 applications. Prosecutors withdrew another 26 applications. > From 2007 to 2012, FISA judges also approved 532 "business record" warrant applications, the category used in the order that…

> In a statement, he said: "The perception that the court is a rubber stamp is absolutely false." Is it me? I just hear Nixon saying "I'm not a crook"...

You're right, he's not very good at the rhetoric [1]. That doesn't mean anything logically.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironic_process_theory

Re: FISA court rules NSA can resume bulk data collection

#148

Post by andreyf » Wed, Jul 01, 2015, 9:55 PM UTC

0x5f3759df-i wrote: post #76

fru2013 wrote: post #13

I personally think that creating laws to prevent government surveillance is a pointless endeavor. The NSA has ignored and broken laws in the past, why would we expect them to follow new ones that are passed? The only way to prevent surveillance is with a technical solution (encryption), not a legal solution (more laws).

I'm sorry but no. https://xkcd.com/538/ You need both. By that same logic do you think the constitution and bill of rights is a pointless endeavor? Our government has violated these rights many times in our history. I could just as easily say that the constitutional amendments passed after the civil war were pointless because there was still institutionalized discrimination and racism for another hundred years. How m…

> How much did encryption help Lavabit? The court forced them to hand over the encryption keys anyway.

Lavabit has a pretty bad system because it did not take the law into account at all and was run by someone that does not seem to understand legal concepts very well. From what I understand, the court that forced them was not FISA, but a plain old federal trial court. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Re: FISA court rules NSA can resume bulk data collection

#149

Post by aoeusnth1 » Wed, Jul 01, 2015, 10:50 PM UTC

harry8 wrote: post #73

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can tell you from first hand experience that getting a warrant TO the FISA court from a sponsoring agency is a massive bureaucratic battle in and of itself. Reason being, the agency powers that be don't want to send something up that will be disapproved because it takes significant time and effort of general counsel and leadership of these agencies to process, implement and track to maintain compliance - even if th…

I don't believe you, sorry. You may be telling the truth but there are so many lies we've been told that I just don't. Sorry, that's how it is and I'm sure a very large number of people would agree with that. The FISA court /is/ a rubber stamp, how do we know? Ed Snowden told us about all the incredible amounts of overreach that the FISA court approved in secret. We're at far more risk from public servants with delus…

Totally agreed with you. Just look at anything David Cameron says for incontrovertible evidence of your last paragraph.

Re: FISA court rules NSA can resume bulk data collection

#150

Post by aoeusnth1 » Wed, Jul 01, 2015, 10:53 PM UTC

andreyf wrote: post #146

gjm11 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine a system that works as follows. You can have people assassinated. In order to do so, however, you need to fill in a hundred-page form with exhaustive details of your personal finances, your medical history, and the contents of your computers' hard drives; and then you need to play six sets of tennis against a strong player and win at least two; and then you need to play a 7-game chess match against a holder o…

That's a straw man argument. Andrew said that the reason the court doesn't decline a lot of requests warrants is because the cases that are not "airtight" never make it to the court. I think this is a fair response to the original comment analyzing the court's "historical performance" as being too lax.

Why should we believe Andrew?