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U.S. NSA domestic phone spying program illegal: appeals court

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. NSA domestic phone spying program illegal: appeals court

#101

Post by teacup50 »

count wrote: post #69
hackuser wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It appears that the government is starting to lose the ability to always dismiss constitutional rights ... The text you quoted said dismissing the complaint without reaching appellants' constitutional arguments . > organizations like the ACLU and the EFF need funding Serious question: Do the ACLU and EFF profile their donors by collecting information from and reporting it to third parties? It's my understanding tha…

Metadata collection is only bad when it's the Government doing it! FWIW: I've not received anything but EFF-related spam from EFF to the email address I used to donate to them back in the day. Not sure about ACLU.

Of course, collecting metadata -- especially via centralized services like Google Analytics -- means you're creating a very tempting trove of information for both the government and private entities that may make use of it to your users' disadvantage.

Re: U.S. NSA domestic phone spying program illegal: appeals court

#102

Post by Karunamon »

ericcumbee wrote: post #70
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That one's easy to get around. Congress does budgets. If Congress has backbone (but not 2/3 majority backbone), they can pass a budget that de-funds NSA to whatever degree desired. The president can veto it. But then there's no budget, so there's still no money for the NSA...

The easy part is that would take only 1/2 of one chamber. the hard part is forcing a government shutdown is risky business, and maintaining the resolve of the caucus becomes more difficult the longer one drags on.

And whoever's opposed to it can easily spin the action as a reckless disregard for America's security. (Nevermind I think the NSA could disappear tomorrow in a puff of logic and nobody would be the worse..)

Re: U.S. NSA domestic phone spying program illegal: appeals court

#103

Post by nickbauman »

count wrote: post #69
hackuser wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It appears that the government is starting to lose the ability to always dismiss constitutional rights ... The text you quoted said dismissing the complaint without reaching appellants' constitutional arguments . > organizations like the ACLU and the EFF need funding Serious question: Do the ACLU and EFF profile their donors by collecting information from and reporting it to third parties? It's my understanding tha…

Metadata collection is only bad when it's the Government doing it! FWIW: I've not received anything but EFF-related spam from EFF to the email address I used to donate to them back in the day. Not sure about ACLU.

Governments can use force on those they track. Corporations can't yet (they're working on that).

Re: U.S. NSA domestic phone spying program illegal: appeals court

#104

Post by uxp »

snowwrestler wrote: post #73
hackuser wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It appears that the government is starting to lose the ability to always dismiss constitutional rights ... The text you quoted said dismissing the complaint without reaching appellants' constitutional arguments . > organizations like the ACLU and the EFF need funding Serious question: Do the ACLU and EFF profile their donors by collecting information from and reporting it to third parties? It's my understanding tha…

Ghostery reports Omniture(Adobe Analytics) on the ACLU homepage, and additionally Adobe Test and Target on their donate page. On EFF, Ghostery only reports Piwik Analytics on their home and donate pages. For comparison, the NYTimes homepage shows 35 trackers. Personally, I don't have a problem with this. I am concerned about overreach in government policy, not nonprofits trying to learn a bit more about their support…

This is fairly off topic, but in case you cared, Ghostery's business model is to sell your browsing habits and blocked ads and blocked trackers data back to the people their extension blocks. They claim it's anonymized, and I'd venture to say it probably is, but it's still data about you.

Re: U.S. NSA domestic phone spying program illegal: appeals court

#105

Post by techlibertarian »

Igglyboo wrote: post #87
patzerhacker wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or even when the answer is going to be yes? Snowden shouldn't need a pardon for what he's done. Any federal prosecutor that would even consider laying charges should be removed from office immediately.

Snowden very blatantly broke laws, if a federal prosecutor doesn't charge him they should be removed from office. The laws he broke being immoral/unconstitutional/for the greater good is to be determined by the judge/jury, not the prosecutor.

A law being a law doesn't mean it's right.

Re: U.S. NSA domestic phone spying program illegal: appeals court

#106

Post by schoen »

Istof wrote: post #100
diafygi wrote: post #13

The actual judgment: http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/nlj/NSA_ca2_20150507.pdf From the ruling: > Because we find that the program exceeds the scope of what Congress has authorized, we vacate the decision below dismissing the complaint without reaching appellants’ constitutional arguments. It appears that the government is starting to lose the ability to always dismiss constitutional rights abused on "state secrets" ground…

How do you explain this from a few days ago: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/one-of-the-biggest-privacy-... ?

There was no state secrets assertion in that case and the court decided it on constitutional grounds (under which the government won) rather than statutory grounds (like here, under which the government lost).

Davis: there's no fourth amendment obstacle to the government getting cellphone location data (of particular people)

Clapper: the government's interpretation of part of the Patriot Act's supposedly allowing it to easily get everyone's phone calling records is mistaken

I guess the fact that Davis undermines our privacy rights and Clapper protects them might seem incongruous if you expect a nationwide trend of all Federal courts either protecting or failing to protect privacy. But these were two different courts in different parts of the country applying different legal theories to different legal questions, not just something like "is privacy good?" or "is government surveillance out of control/sketchy/terrifying?".

Re: U.S. NSA domestic phone spying program illegal: appeals court

#107

Post by mhurron »

techlibertarian wrote: post #105
Igglyboo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snowden very blatantly broke laws, if a federal prosecutor doesn't charge him they should be removed from office. The laws he broke being immoral/unconstitutional/for the greater good is to be determined by the judge/jury, not the prosecutor.

A law being a law doesn't mean it's right.

But in reality that's not the prosecutors call to make. In the US laws are challenged in the court system, or overturned by lawmakers. I would say that the current government in the US is not going to be open to changing these things so that requires charges to be brought and a trial to be convened and then let the process move from there.

A presidential pardon solves Snowdens issue, but does not change the law.

Re: U.S. NSA domestic phone spying program illegal: appeals court

#108

Post by splat »

mhurron wrote: post #107
techlibertarian wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A law being a law doesn't mean it's right.

But in reality that's not the prosecutors call to make. In the US laws are challenged in the court system, or overturned by lawmakers. I would say that the current government in the US is not going to be open to changing these things so that requires charges to be brought and a trial to be convened and then let the process move from there. A presidential pardon solves Snowdens issue, but does not change the law.

It is very much the prosecutor's call to make. Prosecutors aren't (at least in theory) supposed to charge the accused with as many crimes as possible. It is the job of the prosecutor to ensure that justice is served, whatever that might mean given the facts before them. Sometimes that might mean throwing the book at the accused, but in other cases it might mean dropping the case even when it is clear that the accused really did break the law. Unfortunately prosecutors are rewarded for successful convictions, so it is not surprising that prosecutors act as though their job is to charge the accused with as many crimes as possible.

Re: U.S. NSA domestic phone spying program illegal: appeals court

#109

Post by scott_karana »

plorg wrote: post #66
scott_karana wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike the arguable Manning, Snowden had a deliberate, slow, controlled release of information. No informants were exposed; et cetera. What is wrong with responsible whistleblowing of unlawful activity? I think it should be encouraged!

While it has certainly turned out that way, considering the process of dissemination, both Snowden and Manning dumped a pile of documents on a third party. It's that third party that, in the case of Manning's files (WikiLeaks), was hasty and cavalier in its release of information, whereas Greenwald/Poitras/Etc. have been more careful and deliberate in their releases. To the extent that the individual leakers could ha…

You're right. Greenwald and Poitras deserve a lot of credit for the responsible dissemination.

To his credit, Snowden did attempt to vet reporters as I recall. ;)

Re: U.S. NSA domestic phone spying program illegal: appeals court

#110

Post by rl3 »

scott_karana wrote: post #57
wehadfun wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We may be glad with what he did but do we want to encourage this type of thing? I think quietly "being nice" to him is fine but a public pardon, a welcome hope party, adoring media coverage may inspire some idiot to be the next Snowden and we probably do not want that.

Unlike the arguable Manning, Snowden had a deliberate, slow, controlled release of information. No informants were exposed; et cetera. What is wrong with responsible whistleblowing of unlawful activity? I think it should be encouraged!

Snowden's document leaks, and by extension the journalists with whom he entrusted them to, were not restricted in scope to only disclosing illegal domestic collection activities.

In fact, the majority of disclosures were foreign in nature, and of those, quite a few ran counter not only to American foreign policy and security interests, but Western interests in general.

The articles exposing intelligence activities in Indonesia were but one example.[1]

Indonesia is such a nice, non-repressive country[2], and it's not like they aren't making significant progress on the human rights front[3]. How dare western intelligence spy on them. /s

Other examples include severe damage to foreign relations with China[4], coverage of offensive capabilities such as network infiltration and hardware implantation[5], the CIA using co-traveler inference to shake tails in the field [6], and more.

Today's news is certainly a positive thing, but I think it's fair to say Snowden's whistleblowing is far from responsible, even if it isn't wantonly reckless (i.e. Manning).

-

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/18/australia-tried...

[2] http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/06/08/letter-president-yudhoyon...

[3] https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/03/04/indonesia-begins-roll-ba...

[4] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/13/snowden-revelat...

[5] http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-nsa-uses-power...

[6] http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-tr... (very last paragraph)

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