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Obama to release FISA court opinion that ruled NSA surveillance unconstitutional

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Re: Obama to release FISA court opinion that ruled NSA surveillance unconstitutional

#121

Post by Sauer_Kraut »

droopybuns wrote: post #118
Sauer_Kraut wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After being informed nearly daily of how one's work assists another in their deeds, then continuing to accept salary, it is compliance and complicity. Others have shown they do not need to comply, to various ends. Snowden[1], Klein[2], Manning[3], Barrett[4], Levison[5]. This is a terribly narrow range of those who refused and resisted in recent history. From admin to technician to analyst to activist to owner, you c…

When violent revolution is around the corner, I will buy this argument. The deficiency in your position is that it assumes change cannot happen from within. Additionally there are great things that these companies do in spite of government intervention. If these services were abandoned, peoples lives can be put at risk. Your arguments only make sense if the country is on the verge of revolution. Given the ratings on…

You assume that I made that assumption, that is wrong.

My position is those attempting to cause change from within have while at work helped give inertia and acceptance to what they think they want to fight against while at home watching the evening news.

Nothing stops them from finding other venues of employment, many excuses are made as to how they want to fight from within. We end up with users on forums attempting to defend their profiting from the entire ordeal. Complicit.

Essentially I am saying working from within is only a good choice for those who find themselves already in that position, like Snowden. Otherwise more harm is done.

Re: Obama to release FISA court opinion that ruled NSA surveillance unconstitutional

#122

Post by Clanan »

JPKab wrote: post #36
mark_l_watson wrote: post #29

I donated money to Obama's 2008 campaign and voted for him twice. I am very disappointed with him. Now, my honest opinion is that at worst he sometimes flat out lies, or at least cleverly tries to confuse people. He says that he had an orderly plan for reviewing privacy issues, all the while, I think that his administration has consistently been trying to keep things hushed up.

Mark, I agree. I think that the situation is this: politicians, in the short term, view the security side of the security vs. freedom debate as the best option. If you can stop a terrorist attack from occurring by infringing freedom, then do it. An attack will make you look much worse than a few intelligent people being upset about privacy invasion. That, sadly, is the unfortunate incentive happening here. I think th…

The Executive Branch enforces, the Judicial judges. The Constitution says it quite explicitly in Articles 2 and 3.

You give far too much credit to politicians. They don't think of this as security vs. freedom, they think of it as power. Power for them, power for their party, power for their people. It's a simple explanation, but it fits. Heck, research has even shown that politicians will decide based on what keeps them in office, not what they "should" do [1]. Jefferson said it best: "All men having power ought to be mistrusted. Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad."

[1] Congress: The Electoral Connection by David R. Mayhew

Re: Obama to release FISA court opinion that ruled NSA surveillance unconstitutional

#123

Post by bsbechtel »

dragonwriter wrote: post #83
jseliger wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote this a couple days ago in response to another HN comment but it's relevant here too; the first paragraph is the one I responded to: >The question is then; in a two party system where both offer the blue pill, who the hell do you vote for? Greens or libertarians, which I have been doing for a long time. Real change starts at the ballot box.

> Real change starts at the ballot box. No, real change starts with working to build a mass constituency that believes that real change is necessary, and agrees on the general direction of change. If you want it to work, change through the ballot box is fairly late in that process.

If you want to affect change, maybe helping out with this would be a start:

https://medium.com/surveillance-state/7d456a6a04df

Re: Obama to release FISA court opinion that ruled NSA surveillance unconstitutional

#124

Post by droopybuns »

Sauer_Kraut wrote: post #121
droopybuns wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When violent revolution is around the corner, I will buy this argument. The deficiency in your position is that it assumes change cannot happen from within. Additionally there are great things that these companies do in spite of government intervention. If these services were abandoned, peoples lives can be put at risk. Your arguments only make sense if the country is on the verge of revolution. Given the ratings on…

You assume that I made that assumption, that is wrong. My position is those attempting to cause change from within have while at work helped give inertia and acceptance to what they think they want to fight against while at home watching the evening news. Nothing stops them from finding other venues of employment, many excuses are made as to how they want to fight from within. We end up with users on forums attemptin…

Then we are in disagreement. People on the inside are the only ones who can make meaningful change.

Re: Obama to release FISA court opinion that ruled NSA surveillance unconstitutional

#125

Post by AnthonyMouse »

anigbrowl wrote: post #97
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would also help significantly if the default for their opinions not be that they are automatically classified and put the burden of proof on the government in each individual case to justify why the public shouldn't know what the law is.

Well, opsec. Spying is by definition a clandestine activity, and I think there are good arguments in favor of spying - the main one being that while it might seem nicer not to spy on anyone, you end up being less informed, and uninformed executives are more likely to end up going to war, which is a lot more destructive than spying. If you read up on the Curveball story in Iraq, that's a classic case of what happens w…

You don't have to disclose the specific targets you're spying on to publish the relevant court opinions. You can redact the names and still publish what the law is.

And there is a difference between collecting intelligence on foreign governments (which I don't think anyone could ever expect not to happen) and mass data collection. Part of the problem here is that spying on "terrorist" "suspects" is so broad and poorly defined that it could encompass nearly anything and becomes nothing but a convenient fig leaf for mass surveillance.

We lump too many things under the label of terrorism. Someone with the likes of a machete or a hand grenade is distinctly a law enforcement problem rather than a national security problem and cannot justify secret mass surveillance or data collection.

Once you take all of that out and get to the actual national security threats (i.e. nuclear or biological terrorism) you end up with a completely different threat model. More to the point, you need to keep a lot less secret because instances of attempted nuclear terrorism are much more rare. You don't have to classify every court opinion related to some idiot with defective instructions on how to make a pipe bomb just because you have to classify certain methods of preventing nuclear proliferation.

Re: Obama to release FISA court opinion that ruled NSA surveillance unconstitutional

#126

Post by anigbrowl »

bane wrote: post #112
anigbrowl wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The founders recognized this, which is why the 4th Amendment, along with the rest of the Constitution, is supposed to be enforced by the separate branch of government that is the Judicial Branch. You're saying the police power is the province of the Judicial Branch?! This is a...unique interpretation. The Constitution divides the power of the government in legislative (making law), executive (promulgating and enforci…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_Council_of_Franc...

France, too, is a civil law jurisdiction. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.

Re: Obama to release FISA court opinion that ruled NSA surveillance unconstitutional

#127

Post by anigbrowl »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #125
anigbrowl wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, opsec. Spying is by definition a clandestine activity, and I think there are good arguments in favor of spying - the main one being that while it might seem nicer not to spy on anyone, you end up being less informed, and uninformed executives are more likely to end up going to war, which is a lot more destructive than spying. If you read up on the Curveball story in Iraq, that's a classic case of what happens w…

You don't have to disclose the specific targets you're spying on to publish the relevant court opinions. You can redact the names and still publish what the law is. And there is a difference between collecting intelligence on foreign governments (which I don't think anyone could ever expect not to happen) and mass data collection. Part of the problem here is that spying on "terrorist" "suspects" is so broad and poorl…

You don't have to disclose the specific targets you're spying on to publish the relevant court opinions. You can redact the names and still publish what the law is.

If you have to redact all the of the relevant facts, then any statement of the law is meaningless because it's unclear what sort of fact pattern it should be applied to. I realize this seems abstruse, but the fact pattern is very important in common law judgments. You can't just say 'the law is X' and have it be portable to any other case. The opinion would read something like: 'HELD: the government may xxxxxxx xxxxx when xxxxx xxxx xxx in a xxxxx and xxxxxx.' Read some judicial opinions in normal cases and then imagine how little sense they'd make if the facts were matters of national security and couldn't be published. For that matter it's quite hard for a lot of people to understand the law in many regular criminal cases where all the details are available.

Someone with the likes of a machete or a hand grenade is distinctly a law enforcement problem rather than a national security problem and cannot justify secret mass surveillance or data collection.

9/11 only involved boxcutters, but I'd say that it presented a rather significant national security problem when those turned out to be sufficient to hijack planes and fly them into high-value targets. There's an assumption in some corners that since we're now more aware of the risks, no hijacking can ever work again, but that's not the case.

You're also ignoring the fact that many kinds of low-level terrorist activity aren't open to direct investigation by law enforcement. For example, suppose you pick up signals about a plot involving Mr X, who has not yet arrived in the US but whose phone number you have managed to identify. If he's in a country that's friendly to the US you might be able to get their law enforcement people to investigate him, but if not then it's logical to monitor who he communicates with for prophylactic purposes.

Re: Obama to release FISA court opinion that ruled NSA surveillance unconstitutional

#128

Post by chinpokomon »

dylangs1030 wrote: post #102
chinpokomon wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The burden of proof applies to those who's liberties are infringed. If my rights are being stripped, the burden of proof should not be that I need to prove the NSA is infringing those liberties, it should be that they need to prove that they aren't. With National Security Letters, the recipients can't even acknowledge that they've received them, and with the FISA court, we have no way to know.

You missed the point. In logic, it's fruitless to try to place the burden of proof on a negative statement. Example: "Prove there isn't an invisble ball of undetectable mass swirling in my hand." What I was saying is a general rule that's valid across every subject in logical debate, and it is valid as a response for the sentence I quoted. What you're saying isn't a rebuttal to my point.

My point wasn't about proving a negative. More to the point there is no oversight so we don't know how bad it really is. I'm calling for some sort of protective measures and putting an end to this nonsense. The current administration is taking an ends justify the means attitude, not that they are probably the first to do so, but after being caught in lie after lie they aren't to be trusted either.

Re: Obama to release FISA court opinion that ruled NSA surveillance unconstitutional

#129

Post by chinpokomon »

j_baker wrote: post #32
mullingitover wrote: post #8

It's fascinating that the situation is such a mockery of the rule of law, yet it keeps on rolling. If the FISA decided that the NSA's activities were illegal, why would it keep rubber-stamping the warrants? It seems like at that point it should deny every single request going forward until the illegal activities have stopped. Is there a process for impeaching the FISA judges for malfeasance?

Any "civil officer of the United States" can be impeached. In fact, judges are the majority of officials that have been successfully impeached. Calls for impeachment are more often frivolous than they are serious though. How do you know the court has continued to rubber-stamp the activities it considers unconstitutional?

How do you know they haven't?

Re: Obama to release FISA court opinion that ruled NSA surveillance unconstitutional

#130

Post by chinpokomon »

betterunix wrote: post #100
mark_l_watson wrote: post #29

I donated money to Obama's 2008 campaign and voted for him twice. I am very disappointed with him. Now, my honest opinion is that at worst he sometimes flat out lies, or at least cleverly tries to confuse people. He says that he had an orderly plan for reviewing privacy issues, all the while, I think that his administration has consistently been trying to keep things hushed up.

"I donated money to Obama's 2008 campaign and voted for him twice." ...after the first four years, why would you vote for him again? It became clear almost from the first day of his presidency that his campaign promises were hollow. Stop letting your fear that a Republican might win get the better of you. Vote third party until the Democrats get their act together.

I do that when I fear the Democrats might win too. Honestly, I wish more people would realize there are other options. We'd be much better if we had a greater range of choices. Unfortunately the two parties at the top have made it very hard for third party candidates.
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