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The Criminal N.S.A.

nytimes.com

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Re: The Criminal N.S.A.

#41

Post by rhizome »

anigbrowl wrote: post #34
andrewljohnson wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you construing an unconstitutional surveillance program as a political question? I don't see how any of the Court Cases listed on the wikipedia article are relevant. These all seem to relate to truly political things, like which branch has what authority, or how districts are apportioned. The article only cites 5 areas the courts have clear precedent on - wars, treaties, gerrymandering, impeachment, as well a…

I'm not all that sure it is unconstitutional, for one thing - aren't you begging the question here? And on a more general level, shouldn't you be considering precedent on justiciability, rather than basing your whole argument on your personal opinion of the waht the constitution means? I might note in asssing that I favor a constitutional amendment that would create an explicit right to privacy; I'm not in favor of a…

FISA courts may be unconstitutional, as in they don't satisfy the requirements for Article III courts, and FISA courts are the only valve on this behavior (such as they are). Congress is only told what is going on, and not very much (and to very few members) at that.

Re: The Criminal N.S.A.

#42

Post by tommi »

h0w412d wrote: post #39
mtgx wrote: post #37

Here's the thing. If file-sharers have the right to anonymous speech , what does that say about everyone being spied upon by the NSA? http://torrentfreak.com/file-sharers-have-right-to-anonymous... I'm starting to think more and more that beyond this being a US Constitution issue, it's a human rights issue, and we should fight to ban all such spying internationally. Yes, I realize how hard that that may be to achieve…

How about we popularize encryption, and take the choice out of the hands of corporations and governments?

How do we do that when people don't care about privacy?

Re: The Criminal N.S.A.

#43

Post by dantheman »

h0w412d wrote: post #39
mtgx wrote: post #37

Here's the thing. If file-sharers have the right to anonymous speech , what does that say about everyone being spied upon by the NSA? http://torrentfreak.com/file-sharers-have-right-to-anonymous... I'm starting to think more and more that beyond this being a US Constitution issue, it's a human rights issue, and we should fight to ban all such spying internationally. Yes, I realize how hard that that may be to achieve…

How about we popularize encryption, and take the choice out of the hands of corporations and governments?

Do both :)

Re: The Criminal N.S.A.

#45

Post by rustynails »

fragsworth wrote: post #40

The blowback from this mess could very soon be more severe than everyone might think. I expect several foreign countries to ban American tech company operations in their jurisdictions. The bans in the foreign nations could easily stem from foreign business owners pressuring their politicians to ban American-operated companies under the guise of national security, privacy, and anti-American-power-mongering, but their…

Thou doth jest. Most western countries are lap-dogs to the US, and almost certainly exchange spying data with the US so that they don't breach their own privacy laws. This will have little impact with US allies.

Re: The Criminal N.S.A.

#46

Post by Uhhrrr »

anigbrowl wrote: post #33
Uhhrrr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like "lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it" doesn't apply here. The 4th amendment clearly applies to the question of whether the government should be recording your mother's phone calls.

Read Smith v. Maryland and get back to me. The issue of standing is more complex, and lies along a philosophical fault line about the role of the judiciary; I refer you to this law review article for an overview of those issues: http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...

For call metadata, the pen register comparison might fly. If they are storing content, as is likely, it won't.

The beginning of the article on standing does raise questions I hadn't thought about. How would you decide the penalty for something with the potential for abuse? Just because the NSA is storing the largest ever collection of personal info with potential for blackmail, election skullduggery, stalking, identity theft, etc. doesn't mean that those things would happen. If all their data centers were hit by EMPs tomorrow, there may be no injury.

It would seem that when information which would indicate standing is itself concealed, though, that the threshold should be lower. Eh, I'll keep reading.

Re: The Criminal N.S.A.

#47

Post by _s »

h0w412d wrote: post #39
mtgx wrote: post #37

Here's the thing. If file-sharers have the right to anonymous speech , what does that say about everyone being spied upon by the NSA? http://torrentfreak.com/file-sharers-have-right-to-anonymous... I'm starting to think more and more that beyond this being a US Constitution issue, it's a human rights issue, and we should fight to ban all such spying internationally. Yes, I realize how hard that that may be to achieve…

How about we popularize encryption, and take the choice out of the hands of corporations and governments?

I agree with this but why not take it a step further? We're hackers, working on tools/applications that facilitate the transfer of information - why don't we implement encryption from the get-go? There wouldn't be a need to 'popularize' something exists by default.

GnuPG/PGP are fairly trivial to implement; here's some apps that are ripe for production:

- Messaging application that exchanges public keys on first contact, and henceforth every back and forth message is encrypted/decrypted without the user ever knowing

- An email client that works on the same basis as the messaging application; the user doesn't need to know - they just wanted their messages sent securely.

^^ Thats probably 90% of the uses cases for the average joe covered.

Re: The Criminal N.S.A.

#48

Post by sk00byd00 »

mtgx wrote: post #37

Here's the thing. If file-sharers have the right to anonymous speech , what does that say about everyone being spied upon by the NSA? http://torrentfreak.com/file-sharers-have-right-to-anonymous... I'm starting to think more and more that beyond this being a US Constitution issue, it's a human rights issue, and we should fight to ban all such spying internationally. Yes, I realize how hard that that may be to achieve…

> No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

> Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

https://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/

Re: The Criminal N.S.A.

#49

Post by [deleted] »

h0w412d wrote: post #39
mtgx wrote: post #37

Here's the thing. If file-sharers have the right to anonymous speech , what does that say about everyone being spied upon by the NSA? http://torrentfreak.com/file-sharers-have-right-to-anonymous... I'm starting to think more and more that beyond this being a US Constitution issue, it's a human rights issue, and we should fight to ban all such spying internationally. Yes, I realize how hard that that may be to achieve…

How about we popularize encryption, and take the choice out of the hands of corporations and governments?

[deleted]

Re: The Criminal N.S.A.

#50

Post by beefsack »

tommi wrote: post #42
h0w412d wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about we popularize encryption, and take the choice out of the hands of corporations and governments?

How do we do that when people don't care about privacy?

If there's any time to do it, it would be now while it's such a big issue.
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